Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Framework for considering the Contracting Out of Government Services

This article analyzes the contracting out decision. It assumes that the decision to assign responsibility to local government for providing a particular service to the public has already been made, and that a rationale for making that decision has been articulated, usually in the form of a legislative mandate. Therefore, the issue that remains for local government is how best to effectuate this mandate. This article offers a critical evaluation of various approaches to analyzing the contracting out decision and provides a comprehensive framework for undertaking such analyses. Adherence to the framework requires an ambiguous, comprehensive statement of service goals followed by an economic cost-benefit evaluation that takes into account all direct costs, as well as indirect costs and social costs, in order to properly ascertain whether there is any advantage to contracting out as compared to performing the work in-house.
Conspicuous Public Goods and Leadership Selection

If voters care for the relative supply of public goods compared to otherjurisdictions, decentralized provision of public goods will be too high.Potentially, centralization internalizes the negative externalities fromthe production of these `conspicuous' public goods. However, in amodel of strategic delegation of policy making, we show that in thedecentralized policy making case the median voter may delegate to apolitician who cares less for conspicuous public goods than she doesherself. By doing so, she commits to lower public goods in the homeand in the foreign country. In contrast, with centralization the medianvoter anticipates the reduction in public goods supply by delegating toa policy maker who cares more for public goods than she does herself.This last effect mitigates the expected benefits of centralization.
Recovering from overexploitation: the European fisheries of the North Sea

In the last two decades, the fisheries of the North Sea have experienced substantial declines in the population of a number of commercially harvested species. The fisheries have also experienced the development of considerable overcapacity as a result of ineffective management and subsidies. Management of the fishery is complicated by the existence not only of multiple species and gears, but also multiple countries. Concerns about regional employment have also influenced management decisions to the detriment of the resource and industry. In this paper, the underlying factors that have shaped the current situation in the North Sea fisheries are discussed and potential solutions are explored.
EFFECT OF SURVEY CONDITIONS ON SELF-REPORTED SUBSTANCE USE

"This paper examines the impact of survey conditions on the self-reported use of marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol in the 1984 and 1988 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). The analysis obtains probit estimates of lifetime and current participation rates and ordered probit estimates for the current frequency of use. The results clearly indicate that the manner in which the NLSY survey is administered significantly affects the self-reported substance use data. The presence of others at administration, self-administration, and data collection by telephone interview are particularly important influences". Copyright 1994 Western Economic Association International.
Extra-cellular matrix, angiogenesis and the immunotherapy of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma [PDAC] continues to be associated with a dismal prognosis with 5-year survival rates consistently less than 5% [1]. One of the main histopathological features of PDAC is the abnormal deposition of stromal fibrosis, also known as desmoplasia. It constitutes the tumor microenvironment in which various sub-populations of the innate and adaptive immune system are distributed. This extensive stromal desmoplasia has been suggested to favor tumor development and most importantly to prevent the diffusion of chemotherapeutic agents. Preclinical models have also shown that targeting the signaling pathways leading to extra-cellular matrix [ECM] protein synthesis could increase drug diffusion in the neoplastic tissue. However, PDAC clinical trials have yet to show a significant benefit from these therapeutic strategies [2].
On the 'Political Economy of Skill': Assessing the Possibilities for a Viable High Skills Project in the United Kingdom

Against the backdrop of an internationa l policy discourse stressing the centrality of skills, education and learning to national economic and social wellbeing, the current UK Labour government has committed itself to building a high skill, high value added economy and a culture of lifelong learning. Ultimately, this means taking Britain out of its ‘low skills, low quality equilibrium’ and tackling an economy that has been seen to compete largely on the basis of weak investment, low wages, long working hours and an undertrained workforce relative to many of its major competitors. Education and training now form the very cornerstone of New Labour’s so-called ‘Third Way’, with a raft of policy initiatives already on stream designed to help individuals secure stable incomes, maintain ‘employability’ and escape ‘social exclusion’ in a new ‘globalised’ knowledge-driven economy. However, as under their Conservative predecessors, UK vocational education and training (VET) policy continues to be premised on the belief that boosting the supply of skills, largely through an expansion of the post-compulsory education system, will be suf cient to crack the problem. If anything, the scale of policy ambition and belief in what skills can do for the country, the  rm and the individual grows ever more ambitious. Skills, knowledge, education, training and learning have come to be seen as the answer to a vast array of economic and social problems facing the UK, encompassing everything from weak competitiveness and low productivity to unemployment and community breakdown. At the same time, many commentators stress the limitations of the government’s approach. They argue that such narrowly focused initiatives neglect the problem of weak employer demand for, and usage of, skill in the UK economy in general, and fail to address a recurrent cycle of low skill, low wage and insecure job creation. By the same token, however, there has been only very limited exploration of what ‘tackling the demand side’ actually means in the UK,
Medication errors in hospitalized cardiovascular patients.

BACKGROUND The Institute of Medicine's report To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System recommends pharmacist participation in patient rounds as an immediate approach to reducing medical errors. In the same report and in prior publications, cardiovascular drugs have been commonly associated with severe adverse drug events. METHODS We systematically reviewed the experience of a clinical pharmacist on the cardiology wards between September 1, 1995, and February 18, 2000. We classified medication errors according to the type of error, medications involved, personnel involved, stages of drug administration involved, and time of year most frequently associated with errors. RESULTS Among 14983 pharmacist interventions, 4768 were related to medication errors, or 24 medication errors per 100 admissions. The most common errors involved the wrong drug (36.0%) or wrong dose (35.3%), and cardiovascular medications were involved in 41.2% of the errors. Prescribers were associated with most of the errors, and the transition from outpatient to inpatient was the most common point in the system for the occurrence of these medication errors. Higher numbers of errors were also identified during the transition period of house staff, and the total number of errors increased during the study period. CONCLUSIONS Through the clinical pharmacist's identification and correction of medication errors, 2 areas of improvement that may reduce medication errors were identified. The first is ensuring accurate knowledge of a patient's outpatient medication regimen. The second involves improving the education and support of new interns during their initial months of training. This work exemplifies the approach recommended by the Institute of Medicine to reduce medical errors through systematic analyses rather than ascribing fault to individuals.
Dimension of Projections in Boolean Functions

A projection is a subset of {0,1}n given by equations of the form xi = xj, xi = \bar{x}j, xi = 0, and xi = 1, where for $1\leq i \leq n$, xi are Boolean variables and $\bar{x}i are their complements. We study monochromatic projections in 2-colorings of an n-dimensional Boolean cube. We also study the dimension of the largest projection contained in a set specified by its density. We prove almost matching lower and upper bounds on the density of a set required to guarantee the existence of a d-dimensional projection. We also prove almost tight upper and lower bounds on the dimension of monochromatic projections in arbitrary Boolean functions. We then prove almost tight upper and lower bounds on the dimension of monochromatic projections in Boolean functions represented by low degree GF(2) polynomials. It follows from these lower bounds that low-degree GF(2) polynomials can define Boolean functions which are close to being extremal with respect to the property of having no large dimensional monochromatic projections.
NovaMedSearch: a multimodal search engine for medical case-based retrieval

Medical information retrieval systems help support health care experts in diagnostic and treatment decisions through the management of large amounts of clinical data. However, the heterogeneity and the ever growing amount of data produced in medical environments poses several challenges. In this paper, we propose a multimodal search interface for medical articles to provide better analysis tools for diagnosis and medical case retrieval. The underlying framework entered the Medical ImageCLEF 2013 challenge and is based on state of the art information retrieval, image retrieval and data fusion techniques.
Analyzing and Forecasting Movements of the Philippine Economy using the Dynamic Factor Models (DFM)

The country’s small and open economy is vulnerable to both internal and external shocks. Is it therefore important for policy makers to have timely forecasts on the movement of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), whether it will increase or decrease in the current quarter, to be able to guide them in coming up with appropriate policies to mitigate say, the impact of a shock. The current method used to forecast the movements of the GDP is the composite Leading Economic Indicators System (LEIS) developed by the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) and the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB). The LEIS, using 11 economic indicators, provides one-quarter forecast of the movement of the GDP. This paper presents an alternative, and perhaps better, procedure to the LEIS in nowcasting the movements of the GDP using the Dynamic Factor Model (DFM). The idea behind the DFM is the stylized fact that economic movements evolve in a cycle and are correlated with co-movements in a large number of economic series. The DFM is a commonly used data reduction procedure that assumes economic shocks driving economic activity arise from unobserved components or factors. The DFM aims to parsimoniously summarize information from a large number of economic series to a small number of unobserved factors. The DFM assumes that co-movements of economic series can be captured using these unobserved common factors. This paper used 31 monthly economic indicators in capturing a common factor to nowcast movements of GDP via the DFM. The results show that the common factor produced by the DFM performed better in capturing the movements of the GDP when compared with the LEIS. The DFM is a promising and useful methodology in extracting indicators of the country’s economic activity.
Elevation of systemic oxygen delivery in the treatment of critically ill patients.

BACKGROUND Elevation of systemic oxygen delivery and consumption has been associated with an improved outcome in critically ill patients. We conducted a randomized trial to determine whether boosting oxygen delivery by infusing the inotropic agent dobutamine would improve the outcome in a diverse group of such patients. METHODS On the basis of previously published recommendations, we established the following goals: a cardiac index above 4.5 liters per minute per square meter of body-surface area, oxygen delivery above 600 ml per minute per square meter, and oxygen consumption above 170 ml per minute per square meter. If these goals were not achieved with volume expansion alone, patients were randomly assigned to a treatment or control group. The treatment group received intravenous dobutamine (5 to 200 micrograms per kilogram of body weight per minute) until all three goals had been achieved. Dobutamine was administered to the control group only if the cardiac index was below 2.8 liters per minute per square meter. RESULTS A total of 109 patients were studied. In nine patients the therapeutic goals were achieved with volume expansion alone; all nine patients survived to leave the hospital. Fifty patients were randomly assigned to the treatment group, and 50 to the control group. During treatment, there were no differences between the two groups in mean arterial pressure or oxygen consumption, despite a significantly higher cardiac index and level of oxygen delivery in the treatment group (P < 0.05). Although the predicted risk of death during hospitalization was 34 percent for both groups, the in-hospital mortality was lower in the control group (34 percent) than in the treatment group (54 percent) (P = 0.04; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.9 to 39.1 percent). CONCLUSIONS The use of dobutamine to boost the cardiac index and systemic oxygen delivery failed to improve the outcome in this heterogeneous group of critically ill patients. Contrary to what might have been expected, our results suggest that in some cases aggressive efforts to increase oxygen consumption may have been detrimental.
Structural basis of substrate recognition by a bacterial deubiquitinase important for dynamics of phagosome ubiquitination

Significance Ubiquitination and deubiquitination have emerged in recent years as novel targets for the design of therapeutic agents. To our knowledge, the structure of the deubiquitinase (DUB) domain of SdeA represents the first prokaryotic DUB determined and will thus potentially serve as a model for other bacterial deubiquitinating enzymes for use in structure-guided drug design. Legionella pneumophila ubiquitin E3 ligases play important roles in the biogenesis of the phagosome permissive for bacterial replication. The discovery of effectors with DUB activity highlights the importance of modulation of host processes in a regulated and balanced manner. Manipulation of the host’s ubiquitin network is emerging as an important strategy for counteracting and repurposing the posttranslational modification machineries of the host by pathogens. Ubiquitin E3 ligases encoded by infectious agents are well known, as are a variety of viral deubiquitinases (DUBs). Bacterial DUBs have been discovered, but little is known about the structure and mechanism underlying their ubiquitin recognition. In this report, we found that members of the Legionella pneumophila SidE effector family harbor a DUB module important for ubiquitin dynamics on the bacterial phagosome. Structural analysis of this domain alone and in complex with ubiquitin vinyl methyl ester (Ub-VME) reveals unique molecular contacts used in ubiquitin recognition. Instead of relying on the Ile44 patch of ubiquitin, as commonly used in eukaryotic counterparts, the SdeADub module engages Gln40 of ubiquitin. The architecture of the active-site cleft presents an open arrangement with conformational plasticity, permitting deubiquitination of three of the most abundant polyubiquitin chains, with a distinct preference for Lys63 linkages. We have shown that this preference enables efficient removal of Lys63 linkages from the phagosomal surface. Remarkably, the structure reveals by far the most parsimonious use of molecular contacts to achieve deubiquitination, with less than 1,000 Å2 of accessible surface area buried upon complex formation with ubiquitin. This type of molecular recognition appears to enable dual specificity toward ubiquitin and the ubiquitin-like modifier NEDD8.
A tale of two duopolies: collusion and exit in a local airline industry

This article investigates two episodes of market adjustments in Hawaii’s interisland civil aviation market. One is collusion in which duopolists of similar size agreed to reduce their supply to the market. The other is unilateral exit by an individual company, which resulted in the asymmetric duopoly with respect to firm size. The analysis demonstrates that even a dominant duopolist cannot maintain sufficient market power to manipulate prices as long as competitive forces are present, while cooperative adjustment in the capacity dimension is likely to lead to higher prices on a sustainable basis. The results confirm the importance of competitive forces for mitigating price hikes in the process of adjustment.
the long-latency epoch Context-dependent inhibition of unloaded muscles during

http://www.the-aps.org/. 20814-3991. Copyright © 2015 the American Physiological Society. ESSN: 1522-1598. Visit our website at times a year (twice monthly) by the American Physiological Society, 9650 Rockville Pike, Bethesda MD publishes original articles on the function of the nervous system. It is published 24 Journal of Neurophysiology by gest on July 8, 2016 http://jnsiology.org/ D ow nladed fom
Taxation of agricultural sector in Morocco. An Analysis using a Dynamic Computable General Equilibrium Model

The agricultural sector has always been the subject of a great attention from officials in Morocco as it is a sector that maintains exchange relations with the other sectors and a production sector of the most important Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) in the rural and urban areas. Indeed, agriculture accounts for 15 to 20% of the GDP and 44% of total employment. If one adds food processing, its contribution to the GDP and employment passes respectively to 20 and 50%. However, Moroccan agriculture suffers from low productivity, low yields and high logistics costs, in particular in transport, lack of integration between production and market, insufficient development of post-harvest systems, high costs of production, high risks, low coordination within chains, inadequate post-harvest technologies, lack of quality assurance system, and limited expertise in the processing of the agricultural products. For these reasons, agriculture has benefited from huge tax exemptions extended until the end of 2013.The exemption of the sector is supposed to promote, attract and develop private investments in this sector. Effectively, for the past two years, the agricultural sector was the second sector, after the property, having benefited from tax derogations, which represents about 13.4% of total measures identified in 2011. However, it is admitted that these tax advantages are a source of distortions and inefficient allocation of investments and resources towards this sector. The optimal tax theory provides, for this purpose, lessons that are useful for our empirical study. ¶ Today, and besides the question concerning the place of the Moroccan agriculture in the economy which led to the design and implementation of the Green Morocco Plan (GMP), it should be noted that the question of its taxation was not as much in the central concerns as evidenced by the Royal orientations to establish an appropriate system to the agricultural sector in 2014 by taking into consideration the social security of the small-holder farmers. The model used is a dynamic multi-sector general equilibrium model. It registered voter in the line of the models built by Shoven and Whalley (1970) like Decaluwe and Savard (2001). Three agents, namely explicitly there the consumers, the producers and the public authorities, are introduced. However, to take into account the foreign trade and more generally the degree of opening of the Moroccan economy, we add a fourth agent to it: the rest of the world.
The Hemolytic Enterotoxin HBL Is Broadly Distributed among Species of the Bacillus cereusGroup

ABSTRACT The prevalence of the hemolytic enterotoxin complex HBL was determined in all species of the Bacillus cereus group with the exception of Bacillus anthracis. hblA, encoding the binding subunit B, was detected by PCR and Southern analysis and was confirmed by partial sequencing of 18 strains. The sequences formed two clusters, one including B. cereus and Bacillus thuringiensis strains and the other one consisting ofBacillus mycoides, Bacillus pseudomycoides, and Bacillus weihenstephanensisstrains. From eight B. thuringiensis strains, the enterotoxin gene hblA could be amplified. Seven of them also expressed the complete HBL complex as determined with specific antibodies against the L1, L2, and B components. Eleven of 16 B. mycoides strains, all 3B. pseudomyoides strains, 9 of 15 B. weihenstephanensis strains, and 10 of 23 B. cereusstrains carried hblA. While HBL was not expressed in theB. pseudomycoides strains, the molecular assays were in accordance with the immunological assays for the majority of the remaining strains. In summary, the hemolytic enterotoxin HBL seems to be broadly distributed among strains of the B. cereusgroup and relates neither to a certain species nor to a specific environment. The consequences of this finding for food safety considerations need to be evaluated.