Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Do women shy away from competition? Do men compete too much? : A (failed) replication

Niederle and Vesterlund (2007) document a large disparity between male and female choices in payment scheme in a simple addition task. This note describes a pure replication conducted at Purdue University in 2008 that fails to replicate these results. Analysis suggests that, although other studies have replicated the previous result, a difference in confidence which is correlated with student status (i.e. undergraduate, graduate or other) is the main contributor to the non-replication. These results are in line with recent research which suggests that much of the gender difference for competition is attributed to differences in confidence and risk preferences and proposes a valuable policy avenue which may help to attenuate the gender competition divide.
RESEARCH ON PUBLIC MANAGEMENT POLICY CHANGE IN THE LATIN AMERICA REGION: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND METHODOLOGICAL GUIDE

This article presents a conceptual framework and methodological guide for researching the process of public management policy change in the Latin America region. It provides an explicit the methodological approach for case study research on this topic. The focus on the Latin America region is due to the sponsorship of the Inter-American Development Bank, which desired an explicit methodological guide for conducting research on public sector management reform. While the article is specifically geared to this purpose, it also exhibits a distinctive general approach to a large class of case study research designs. This class includes instrumental case study research about processes, incorporating variants that are rich in narrative, explicit in their explanatory framework, and comparative. Publishing the article in IMPR is appropriate since a) this class of case study research has not benefited from specialized methodological exposition and b) much public management research fits within this class. Accordingly, the article is addressed to both public management researchers interested in the specific research topic and those engaged in instrumental case-oriented research on processes, more generally.
In search of a map: using program slicing to discover potential parallelism in recursive functions

Recursion schemes, such as the well-known map, can be used as loci of potential parallelism, where schemes are replaced with an equivalent parallel implementation. This paper formalises a novel technique, using program slicing, that automatically and statically identifies computations in recursive functions that can be lifted out of the function and then potentially performed in parallel. We define a new program slicing algorithm, build a prototype implementation, and demonstrate its use on 12 Haskell examples, including benchmarks from the NoFib suite and functions from the standard Haskell Prelude. In all cases, we obtain the expected results in terms of finding potential parallelism. Moreover, we have tested our prototype against synthetic benchmarks, and found that our prototype has quadratic time complexity. For the NoFib benchmark examples we demonstrate that relative parallel speedups can be obtained (up to 32.93× the sequential performance on 56 hyperthreaded cores).
Are rectogenital chlamydial infections a marker of sexual abuse in children?

In order to examine the occurrence of chlamydial infection in sexually abused children, we cultured 51 abused children and 43 controls, 2 to 14.5 years of age. Only seven of the children were male. Chlamydia trachomatis was isolated from the vagina or rectum of two abused girls, 10 and 12 years of age, at their follow-up examination several weeks after the suspected abuse. C. trachomatis was also isolated from the vaginal culture of two controls and from the throat and rectum of another girl enrolled as a control. The two control children with vaginal infection were sisters, 7 and 10 years of age, who had been abused by their step-father 3 years previously. An antichlamydial immunoglobulin ± 1:32 or a fourfold rise in the titer of immunoglobulin G was found in 13 of 49 (27%) abused children and 2 of 40 (5%) controls. This difference was statistically significant. The isolation of C. trachomatis from a rectogenital site was not limited to children with recent sexual abuse in this population. Serology may also be of limited use since serologic evidence of recent chlamydial infection was present in 5% of controls.
Analyzing Tourism Return Intention to an Urban Destination

This article employs a mixed logit bounded random parameter model to analyze the returning preferences of tourists visiting the city of Lisbon, Portugal. The results show that accommodation characteristics and destination attributes (accommodation range, events, food quality, expected weather beach, overall quality, reputation, and safety) have a positive and significant impact on the probability of returning to the city. The model comparison shows that the mixed logit bounded random parameter outperforms the traditional mixed logit model and leads to more accurate conclusions.
Statistical Metrology of Metal Nanocrystal Memories With 3-D Finite-Element Analysis

We study the parametrical yield of memory windows for the metal nanocrystal (NC) Flash memories with consideration of the 3-D electrostatics and channel percolation effects. Monte Carlo parametrical variation that accounts for the number and size fluctuations in NCs as well as channel length is used to determine the threshold voltage distribution and bit error rate for gate length scaling to 20 nm. Devices with nanowire-based channels are compared with planar devices having the same gate stack structure. Scalability prediction by 1-D analysis is found to be very different from 3-D modeling due to underestimation of effective NC coverage and failure to consider the 3-D nature of the channel percolation effect.
Efficiency with Costly Information: A Study of Mutual Fund Performance, 1965–1984

If information is costly to collect and implement, then it is efficient for trades by informed investors to occur at prices sufficiently different from full-information prices to compensate them for the cost of becoming informed. This notion is tested by evaluating investment performance in the mutual fund industry over a 20-year period. The study finds evidence that is consistent with optimal trading in efficient markets. Risk-adjusted returns in the mutual fund industry, net of fees and expenses, are comparable to returns available in index funds; and portfolio turnover and management fees are unrelated to fund performance.
Handling adaptation governance choices in Sweden, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands. Workpackage 6, Deliverable 6A. Knowledge for Climate, Theme 7 "The governance of Adaptation"

This document presents an overview of climate adaptation policies in four countries: Sweden, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands. The present report presents a collection of the papers that were discussed during a workshop with the international partners under KfC theme 7 Governance. To guarantee coherence, each of the papers discussed a set of predefined themes. They all zoom in on various choices that climate governors in the countries have had to make in setting up a climate adaptation policy framework: problem definitions, levels and scales, timing and sequencing, modes of governance, costs and benefits, and implementation and enforcement (based on Jordan et al. 2010).
Land Acquisition in Transitional Hanoi, Vietnam:

This paper examines the institutional changes in Vietnam's urban development that have emerged as the economy has been restructured in a deliberate national policy entitled Doi Moi. The main focus is on the issue of compensation in land acquisition. Data were collected from field reconnaissance surveys, key informant interviews and secondary sources. Findings revealed a clear move towards the establishment of private property rights on land use, illustrated by the changes associated with land law and the dynamic interplays among the main actors in this transition. The government's role in land acquisition has been minimised gradually. A coalition between the government and land developers was discernible in the case studies, often associated with a low compensation rate in land acquisition, which was proposed by the government in favour of the developers but at the expense of individual sitting tenants. At another level, the law enforcement behaviour of local authorities was shaped by considerations of possible rent-seeking and concerns about intervention from higher-level authorities. These attributes of the transitional institutions in urban development will remain in the foreseeable future if Vietnam continues its current Doi Moi policy for rapid economic growth.
The casual approach to university teaching: time for a re-think?

The majority of undergraduate teaching at Australian universities is performed by casual, hourly paid, staff. This was not always the case. The casualisation of academic teaching that has occurred over the last two to three decades underscores a fundamental change in the nature of academic work and the structure of the academic labour market. At the same time, a sense of crisis is building around shortages for academic staff, with the majority of tenured academics aged over 50 and moving toward retirement. The traditional academic career path appears to be under reconstruction, and what might be thought of as the career entry point is concentrated with insecure employment. For those casual staff seeking an academic career it is unclear how time spent as a casual assists in that search, or whether working as a casual makes the transition to more secure employment more difficult. Women are entering academia in ever greater numbers and are often seen as the solution to the workforce renewal crisis, however they are also more likely to be employed on a casual basis with limited career prospects. The research forms part of a wider ARC project: Gender and Employment Equity: Strategies for Advancement in Australian Universities. Using new data from the universities superannuation fund Unisuper, obtained as part of this research project, a more thorough analysis of the casual teaching academic workforce is undertaken.
To be or not to be a Queen - Caste-specific gene expression patterns in ants

Understanding how the interaction of genotypes and environment may result in distinct phenotypes from similar sets of genes is a central theme in evolutionary biology. Social insects have been important study organisms for this question, with sociality evolving in parallel in unrelated taxa. The defining feature of advanced sociality, the separate reproductive queen and non-reproductive worker castes of social insects, is central to social evolution. Queens and workers share, most of the time, a similar genome, suggesting that the basis of this dimorphism must result from differences in expression of the same genes. Furthermore, workers forgo their own reproduction to help raise the offspring of the queen, thus queen and worker genes are expected to experience natural selection in unique ways. Yet, the regulatory architecture that governs queen and worker phenotypes remains largely unknown in social insects. This thesis demonstrates the plasticity of caste-biased expression patterns in ants at several levels. It shows that few genes retain their caste-biased expression patterns across closely related species, lineages, or development stages. For the first time, this thesis shows that biological functions, through conserved sets of genes, are strongly associated with caste phenotypic differences across the ant phylogeny. These sets of genes also appear to be co-opted for other types of key social phenotypes and likely serve as building blocks of phenotypic innovation. My thesis furthermore focuses on the interactions between caste-biased expression patterns and rates of molecular evolution to comprehend the origins and results of caste-biases. The work presented in this thesis shows that evolutionary constraints strongly affect evolutionary rates of protein-coding genes, gene expression evolutionary stability, and the ability of a gene to become caste-biased. These constraints are significant features that have been greatly under-appreciated in previous studies. The work in this thesis takes advantage of the power of genomic methodologies and technologies to provide new insights into mechanisms of social evolution, and the evolution of plastic gene expression in a more general framework. It builds on existing knowledge to provide the field of social insect research with novel concepts (e.g. coexpressed network) to understand the molecular mechanisms behind the origin and the maintenance of the two female castes.
Strong Hysteresis due to Age Effects

Strong hysteresis in the labour market (see Cross, 1995) requires workers to be heterogeneous in terms of the cost of hiring and firing. We show how such heterogeneity arises naturally in labour markets due to differences in workers’ age by showing that both the hiring and the firing thresholds for productivity are age dependent. The presence of strong hysteresis does not for this reason depend on ad-hoc differences in the cost of hiring and firing workers.
Negative priming for spatial locations: identity mismatching, not distractor inhibition.

Negative priming (NP) is commonly thought to occur because distractor inhibition is necessary for target selection (the distractor inhibition hypothesis). Contrary to this account, the selection of a target in the preceding trial is shown to be neither necessary (Experiment 1) nor sufficient (Experiments 2 and 3) for NP in a target localization task modeled after S.P. Tipper, J.C. Brehaut, and J. Driver (1990). Experiments 4 and 5 provide further evidence against the distractor inhibition hypothesis and support an alternative mismatching account: NP in the spatial selection task apparently results from a change in the symbol bound to a given location (D. Kahneman, A. M. Treisman, & B. J. Gibbs, 1992), rather than a change in the status of that location from distractor to target (S. P. Tipper, J. C. Brehaut, & J. Driver, 1990).
Costs of screening for pre-diabetes among US adults: a comparison of different screening strategies.

OBJECTIVE We evaluated various strategies to identify individuals aged 45-74 years with pre-diabetes (either impaired glucose tolerance or impaired fasting glucose). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We conducted a cost analysis to evaluate the effectiveness (proportion of cases identified), total costs, and efficiency (cost per case identified) of five detection strategies: an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), a fasting plasma glucose (FPG) test, an HbA(1c) test, a capillary blood glucose (CBG) test, and a risk assessment questionnaire. For the first strategy, all individuals received an OGTT. For the last four strategies, only those with a positive screening test received an OGTT. Data were from the Third U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2000 census, Medicare, and published literature. One-time screening costs were estimated from both a single-payer perspective and a societal perspective. RESULTS The proportion of pre-diabetes and undiagnosed diabetes identified ranged from 69% to 100% (12.1-17.5 million). The cost per case identified ranged from US dollars 176 to US dollars 236 from a single-payer perspective and from US dollars 247 to US dollars 332 from a societal perspective. Testing all with OGTT was the most effective strategy, but the CBG test and risk assessment questionnaire were the most efficient. If people are substantially less willing to take an OGTT than a FPG test, then the FPG testing strategy was the most effective strategy. CONCLUSIONS There is a tradeoff between effectiveness and efficiency in choosing a strategy. The most favorable strategy depends on if the goal of the screening program is to identify more cases or to pursue the lowest cost per case. The expected percentage of the population willing to take an OGTT is also a consideration.
Determination and Distribution of cry-Type Genes of Bacillus thuringiensis Isolates from Taiwan

Using PCR with a set of specific oligonucleotide primers to detect cryI-type genes, we were able to screen the cry-type genes of 225 Bacillus thuringiensis soil isolates from Taiwan without much cost in time or labor. Some combinations of cry genes (the cry-type profile) in a single isolate were unique. We identified five distinct profiles of crystal genes from the B. thuringiensis soil isolates from Taiwan. The cry genes included cryIA(a), cryIA(b), cryIA(c), cryIC, cryID, and cryIV. Interestingly, 501 B. thuringiensis isolates (93.5% of the total number that we identified) were isolated from areas at high altitudes. The profiles of cry-type genes were distinct in all isolation areas. The distribution of cry-type genes of our isolates therefore depended on geography. Using PCR footprinting to detect cryIC-type genes, we identified two distinct cryIC footprints from some of our isolates, indicating that these isolates may contain novel cryIC-type genes. B. thuringiensis isolates containing cryIA(a)-, cryIA(b)-, and cryIA(c)-type genes exhibited much greater activity against Plutella xylostella than did other isolates, indicating that multiple cry-type genes may be used as markers for the prediction of insecticidal activities.
Analysis and compensation of the output voltage imbalance in a four-switch half-bridge PFC

This paper provides the compensation strategies of the output voltage imbalance on the four-switch half-bridge (HB) power factor corrector (PFC). Conventionally, the imbalance compensation is achieved by PWM switching control in four-switch HB PFC. But, the output voltage imbalance compensation will be failure while the imbalance phenomenon excesses a threshold to limit the load range in the four-switch HB PFC. To enlarge the desired range of load variation, a dc component is injected in the input current to eliminate the output voltage imbalance further as the load varies to be not modulated with conventional PWM. By the integrated control strategy, the results of output voltage imbalance and power factor will be discussed and verified with experiments.
Multicomponent Systems Pricing: Rational Inattention and Downward Rigidities

The authors examine the relative magnitude of price reductions for product systems and their constituent components (e.g., cameras, computers, monitors, lenses) and hypothesize that these price reductions systematically vary across different types of systems. The authors offer rational inattention as an explanation and document patterns of downward rigidity in online prices of computers and cameras that are consistent with this view. Their basic argument is that under certain circumstances, it is rational for consumers to ignore small price changes. This results in some price rigidity because firms would see no demand effect for small reductions. The authors suggest that this inattention systematically varies across different types of multicomponent systems, leading to specific hypotheses about sellers’ pricing behavior. They first check the validity of their theoretical arguments using data from two surveys of consumers and managers. They then examine 669,557 daily price listings for 1052 high-end cameras and computers from 102 online vendors and find evidence consistent with their predictions. Using publicly available web traffic data, the authors also find that their predicted pricing behavior is aligned with better traffic response for the firm.
Corporate Governance in Africa: The Record and Policies for Good Corporate Governance

We survey, using international criteria, the institutional record for quality corporate governance in Africa. The record leads us to the conclusion that corporate governance in Africa is enriched by expanding the framework of analysis beyond the conventional criteria (homo economicus) to incorporate moral sentiments– the influence of norms and values. Such considerations, we argue, can improve our understanding of boardroom dynamics and the characteristics of the decision management and decision control they engender in ‘Business Africa’. En utilisant des criteres internationaux, nous passons en revue les antecedents institutionnels en matiere de gouvernance de qualite dans les entreprises en Afrique. Sur la base de ces antecedents, nous pouvons conclure qu’en Afrique, la gouvernance institutionnelle est enrichie par l’elargissement du cadre d’analyse au-dela des criteres conventionnels (homo economicus), et l’inclusion des sentiments moraux, l’influence des normes et des valeurs. Nous soutenons que ces considerations nous permettront de mieux apprehender la dynamique des reunions de conseil d’administration ainsi que les caracteristiques de la gestion et du controle des decisions qu’elles engendrent dans “les affaires en Afrique”.
Antenna diversity for mobile satellite applications: Performance evaluation based on measurements

This paper focuses on the achievable antenna diversity gain for land mobile satellite applications. A measurement van was equipped with four antennas, mounted at the front, back, left and right side of the rooftop. A high-power satellite broadcasting signal within the S-band was recorded along the east coast of the United States. Based on the measured high-resolution fading profile, the antenna diversity gain using maximal-ratio combining and selection combining within different environments is derived based on a prediction of the resulting word error rate.
Bioactive fraction of Saraca indica prevents diabetes induced cataractogenesis: An aldose reductase inhibitory activity

Background: The present study was designed to investigate the effect of Saraca indica (SI) flowers extract and different bioactive fraction on in vitro aldose reductase (AR) inhibitory activity, high glucose-induced cataract in goat lens and in vivo streptozotocin (STZ; 45 mg/kg, i.p) induced cataract in rats. Methods: Extract of flowers of SI tested for inhibition against rat lens AR. Furthermore, bioactive fraction was investigated against high glucose-induced opacification of the lens in vitro lens culture and STZ induced diabetic cataract in rats. Identification of the bioactive component was attempted through high-performance thin-layer chromatography, high-performance liquid chromatography and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis. Results: Ethyl acetate fraction of S. indica (EASI) produced maximum inhibition that may be due to high phenolic content. Goat lenses in media containing glucose developed a distinctly opaque ring in 72 h and treatment with EASI fraction lowered lens opacity in 72 h. Prolonged treatment with EASI to STZ-induced diabetic rats inhibited the AR activity and delayed cataract progression in a dose dependent manner. Conclusion: Ethyl acetate fraction of S. indica fraction has potential to inhibit rat lens AR enzyme and prevent cataractogenesis not only in goat lens model (in vitro), but also in STZ induced diabetic rats (in vivo). This study is suggestive of the anticataract activity of EASI fraction that could be attributed to the phytoconstituents present in the same.
A WIDER ACCOUNTABILITY? THE AUDIT OFFICE AND NEW ZEALAND'S BUREAUCRATIC REVOLUTION

Abstract Over the past decade, economic reform in New Zealand has attracted considerable international attention. In particular, New Zealand is considered to be the epitome of the “New Public Management" (NPM) in the public sector. This paper examines the various ways in which the Audit Office has facilitated or challenged the public sector reforms in New Zealand. Tension between the Treasury and the Audit Office is examined as part of a wider conflict between a “privatization" agenda and a “democratization" agenda. Recently, the latter seems to be gaining ascendancy with a shift in focus from “public managerialism" to “public governance". This makes traditional hierarchical forms of accountability difficult to maintain and poses new challenges for accounting and audit.