Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Economics of the “Second Land Reform” in China

For peasants who have been collectivized for nearly three decades, the national campaign initiated by the Party Central Committee's Document No. 1, 1984 to promote the reparcellization of collective farmland, by extending the peasants' leasehold right to over 15 years (para. 3–1), is certainly not less spectacular than the land reform of 1949–52, when land was confiscated from the rich for redistribution among poor peasant families. This “second land reform” has now firmly consolidated the long-fought policy of Deng Xiaoping for a decentralized approach towards rural management. All the cats – “black or white” – seem to have now been totally unleashed to run after their best catch. This stands in sharp contrast to the uneasy equilibrium of the “two-line struggle,” which existed throughout the entire 20-year period following the abortive communization drive of 1958/1959. Nevertheless, while probably no Chinese leader today can afford to play the role of Mao's Liu cum Deng, one wonders whether, for economic reasons, the present rural institutional solution as envisaged in Document No. 1 will mark the end of the perennial Chinese search for an “optimum” level of decentralization. In a way, the agricultural reform of recent years has begun with the drastic increases, decreed in 1979, in state farm procurement prices, averaging 25 per cent. For a regime very much obsessed with the value imperative of modernization, the farm price increases should clearly be construed as income incentives for promoting agricultural production to ease the economic constraints on industrialization. This is nothing new but is exactly the policy developed by the prominent Chinese economist, Ma Yinchu, some 25 years ago in his then much condemned “balanced growth model” for China. Thus the strategy fits in well with a western analytical model formulated by Chiang and Fei in 1966, for a “maximum-speed development through austerity. ” The model postulates that under socialism, a consumption policy which imposes an “optimum” rather than maximum degree of austerity, may induce greater labour effort and thus an output growth more than proportionate to the required marginal consumption expenditure. It follows that not only will the rate of capital accumulation not be depressed by increased consumption, but it may even accelerate and thus help to sustain a higher overall income growth rate.
On pricing and reserving with-profits life insurance contracts

As a first approximation, asset and liability management issues faced by life insurance companies originate from the sale of with-profits contracts. These contracts are bond-type products with several rate guarantees and other interestsensitive embedded options. Benefits paid out to policyholders mostly depend on the investment performance of a given asset portfolio in which premiums are invested. Thus, guarantees and options granted to policyholders may become effective when the investment performance of the asset portfolio is poor. Issuing a with-profits contract is therefore not equivalent to issuing plain-vanilla debt. The purpose of this paper is to value with-profits liabilities in a consistent option-pricing framework and to develop efficient asset or liability strategies to manage profitability and variability of shareholder value.
Runtime stress-aware replica placement on reconfigurable devices under safety constraints

Ever shrinking device structures result in an increased susceptibility of modern embedded systems to radiation and temperature-dependent aging effects. This work introduces a runtime placement algorithm for dynamically reconfigurable systems that have to meet varying safety requirements. The algorithm first allocates replicas of modules to cope with soft-errors and meet the safety-level of the module and then places the modules onto the FPGA in such a way that the stress, and therefore aging, is minimized. For the replica allocation, a lifetime analysis is employed to predict the reliability of a module depending on its sensitive configuration bits and the expected runtime of the module. Moreover, the temperature profile of each active module is utilized to predict the degradation of each part of the reconfigurable area. The presented algorithm then equally distributes active modules to minimize the degradation effects while respecting placement constraints that arise from the need for majority voting between the different replicas of a module. A case study gives evidence of the capability of the proposed online placing algorithm to harden a system against radiation effects and meet safety constraints while extending the overall lifetime of the reconfigurable device by minimizing stress.
Book Review: Economies of Signs and Space

function and meaning in architecture change over time. The weakness of the centrality of the author's argument is his reluctance to see buildings as layers of uses and complex meanings imposed by different generations of occupants . The postmodern condition increasingly separates form from function, believing that the duty of the object is to respond to culture, context and time, not programme . Markus has tried bravely to bridge the world of architecture and society, suggesting an inalienable contract between building and purpose. However, many of the case studies employed by Markus involve buildings no longer used for their original purpose . For example, Robert Owen's school at New Lanark is now a museum, a change of use which changes also the classification employed by the author . The simple lesson of buildings is that they are a form of infrastructure with social meanings and images of power which change over time. This is an important new book and worthy winner of the 1994 Sir Bannister Fletcher Award for the book which makes the most significant contribution to architecture theory .
The Evolution of Bet Hedging in Response to Local Ecological Conditions

Genotypes that hedge their bets can be favored by selection in an unpredictably varying environment. Bet hedging can be achieved by systematically expressing several phenotypes, such as one that readily attempts to reproduce and one that procrastinates in a dormant stage. But how much of each phenotype should a genotype express? Theory predicts that evolving bet-hedging strategies depend on local environmental variation, on how the population is regulated, and on exchanges with neighboring populations. Empirically, however, it remains unknown whether bet hedging can evolve to cope with the ecological conditions experienced by populations. Here we study the evolution of bet-hedging dormancy frequencies in two neighboring populations of the chestnut weevil, Curculio elephas. We estimate the temporal distribution of demographic parameters together with the form of the relationship between fecundity and population density and use both to parameterize models that predict the bet-hedging dormancy frequency expected to evolve in each population. Strikingly, the observed dormancy frequencies closely match predictions in their respective localities. We also found that dormancy frequencies vary randomly across generations, likely due to environmental perturbations of the underlying physiological mechanism. Using a model that includes these constraints, we predict the whole distribution of dormancy frequencies whose mean and shape agree with our observed data. Overall, our results suggest that dormancy frequencies have evolved according to local ecological conditions and physiological constraints.
Novel Roles for the Insulin-Regulated Glucose Transporter-4 in Hippocampally Dependent Memory

The insulin-regulated glucose transporter-4 (GluT4) is critical for insulin- and contractile-mediated glucose uptake in skeletal muscle. GluT4 is also expressed in some hippocampal neurons, but its functional role in the brain is unclear. Several established molecular modulators of memory processing regulate hippocampal GluT4 trafficking and hippocampal memory formation is limited by both glucose metabolism and insulin signaling. Therefore, we hypothesized that hippocampal GluT4 might be involved in memory processes. Here, we show that, in male rats, hippocampal GluT4 translocates to the plasma membrane after memory training and that acute, selective intrahippocampal inhibition of GluT4-mediated glucose transport impaired memory acquisition, but not memory retrieval. Other studies have shown that prolonged systemic GluT4 blockade causes insulin resistance. Unexpectedly, we found that prolonged hippocampal blockade of glucose transport through GluT4-upregulated markers of hippocampal insulin signaling prevented task-associated depletion of hippocampal glucose and enhanced both working and short-term memory while also impairing long-term memory. These effects were accompanied by increased expression of hippocampal AMPA GluR1 subunits and the neuronal GluT3, but decreased expression of hippocampal brain-derived neurotrophic factor, consistent with impaired ability to form long-term memories. Our findings are the first to show the cognitive impact of brain GluT4 modulation. They identify GluT4 as a key regulator of hippocampal memory processing and also suggest differential regulation of GluT4 in the hippocampus from that in peripheral tissues. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The role of insulin-regulated glucose transporter-4 (GluT4) in the brain is unclear. In the current study, we demonstrate that GluT4 is a critical component of hippocampal memory processes. Memory training increased hippocampal GluT4 translocation and memory acquisition was impaired by GluT4 blockade. Unexpectedly, whereas long-term inhibition of GluT4 impaired long-term memory, short-term memory was enhanced. These data further our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of memory and have particular significance for type 2 diabetes (in which GluT4 activity in the periphery is impaired) and Alzheimer's disease (which is linked to impaired brain insulin signaling and for which type 2 diabetes is a key risk factor). Both diseases cause marked impairment of hippocampal memory linked to hippocampal hypometabolism, suggesting the possibility that brain GluT4 dysregulation may be one cause of cognitive impairment in these disease states.
Criminal convictions and risk taking

An analysis of a proprietary dataset reveals that non-trivial proportions of directors, Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and Chief Financial Officers in Swedish listed companies have been convicted or suspected of crimes. Based on prior literature, we argue that directors and senior executives who have been convicted or suspected of crimes are more prone to take risk. Consistent with this argument, we find that firms with more criminally convicted/suspected directors and CEOs report more volatile earnings, engage more in goodwill writeoffs due to more unsuccessful acquisitions, and recognize bad news in earnings in a less timely manner. We also find that these firms are, on average, smaller and less profitable. These findings highlight the role personal characteristics of directors and senior management play in managerial decisions.
The Technological Dependence of Developing Countries

In less than two centuries the process of industrialisation has spread from a tiny triangle in Britain to nearly 25 per cent of the world population. But it has so far largely by-passed the Third World, including China and socialist East Asia, and the southern periphery of Europe from Portugal to Bulgaria. These developing countries account for almost 75 per cent of the world population, but for only 20 per cent of the world income. On the other hand, the developed countries, with only 25 per cent of the population, have an average income per capita about ten times as high, and account for as much as 80 per cent of the real world output.
The administrative reform trajectory of the European Commission in comparative perspective: Historical new institutionalism in compound systems

The European Commission has undergone successive waves of public management reforms since the second half of the 1990s that have led to substantive administrative change. This contribution aims at explaining how the “unique” politico-administrative context of the European Union affected the trajectory of reform of the Commission, compared with trajectories of reform of the public sector at the national level. On the basis of such analysis, the Pollitt and Bouckaert model of contextual influences on the dynamics of public management reform is revisited, and considerations on the use of historical institutionalism in the study of administrative reforms proposed.
Purpose: It Takes A Village

Jon Dreyer 2007-12-17 Meta-purpose I start with the African proverb made famous and infamous by Hillary Clinton a decade ago: “It takes a village to raise a child. ” The brouhaha around her use of this proverb focused on whether it takes a village or a family to raise a child, but in modern society we need both. At the most basic level, public schools are our formalized “village”: they perform that part of child-rearing that we as a democratic society cede to our government1.
Capturing the in-between of interactive artifacts and users: a materiality-centered approach

The materiality of interactive artifacts concerns, on one hand, design materials and activities, while on the other hand, it is strongly related to the users experiencing the materiality. However, current approaches to investigate the material and the user perspective face several shortcomings, as they focus on either the human or the artifact. In our paper, we describe a materiality-centered data analysis approach that puts the user and the artifact equally in the center of attention. Based on Actor-Network Theory and Bruno Latour's thoughts on monads, we provide examples stemming from interactions in an industrial fabrication plant in order to illustrate the potentials of such a "monadological" approach for accessing materiality from a user and artifact perspective. We show that this approach allows alternating between a human- and an artifact-oriented perspective that finally leads to the identification of material attributes of actors that are less obvious.
Measuring the gut microbiome in birds: comparison of faecal and cloacal sampling

The gut microbiomes of birds and other animals are increasingly being studied in ecological and evolutionary contexts. While methods for preserving samples and processing high-throughput sequence data to characterise bacterial communities have received considerable attention, there has been little evaluation of non-invasive sampling methods. Numerous studies on birds and reptiles have made inferences about gut microbiota using cloacal sampling, however, it is not known whether the bacterial community of the cloaca provides an accurate representation of the avian gut microbiome. We examined the accuracy with which cloacal swabs and faecal samples measure the microbiota in three different parts of the gastrointestinal tract (ileum, caecum, and colon) using a case study on juvenile ostriches, Struthio camelus, and high-throughput 16S rRNA sequencing. We found that faeces were significantly better than cloacal swabs in representing the bacterial community of the colon. Cloacal samples had a higher abundance of Gammaproteobacteria and fewer Clostridia relative to the gut and faecal samples. However, both faecal and cloacal samples were poor representatives of the microbial communities in the caecum and ileum. Furthermore, the accuracy of the sampling methods in measuring the abundance of different bacterial taxa was highly variable: Bacteroidetes was the most highly correlated phylum between all three gut sections and both methods, whereas colonic Actinobacteria correlated strongly only with faecal samples. This study demonstrates that sampling methods can have significant effects on the inferred gut microbiome in studies of birds. Based on our results, we recommend sampling faeces, whenever possible, as this provides the most accurate assessment of the colon microbiome. The fact that neither sampling technique portrayed the bacterial community of the ileum or the caecum illustrates the difficulty in non-invasively monitoring gut bacteria located further up in the gastrointestinal tract. These results have important implications for the interpretation of avian gut microbiome studies.
Legal obligation or personal lottery?

This article ‘gives voice’ to disabled employees by documenting their experiences of negotiating workplace adjustments under the terms of the UK's Disability Discrimination Act, 1995.This ad hoc process of ‘negotiation’ is explored through in-depth interviews that reveal persistent problems with the character of legislation and its implementation in public sector organizations. Negotiations on adjustments were characteristically highly individualized and outcomes almost entirely contingent upon the knowledge, attitudes and goodwill of poorly trained line managers. The adjustment process itself often led to instances of bullying by managers, resulting in stress and ill health among employees.An analysis of managers' behaviour in the context of wider debates on power and organizational decision-making concludes that, even where outcomes are positive for employees, managers still choose to abdicate responsibility in this area. Such behaviour represents a form of non-decision-making that is essentially political in character and has wider implications for equality agendas.
Resource Allocation In a Presidential Campaign

Organizational and strategic considerations are used to predict differences in the instrumental rationality of allocation patterns for various campaign resources. An analysis of resource allocation in the 1976 Carter campaign indicates that actual behavior conformed to the predicted pattern: instrumental resources (advertising funds and candidate appearances) were heavily concentrated in populous states, while ornamental resources (state-level organizational funds and personnel) were more widely dispersed.
From failure to failure: The politics of international banking regulation

ABSTRACT It is now clear that Basel III, a much discussed set of proposals to govern the international banking system drawn up by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, has fallen far short of its creators’ aims. Even more puzzlingly, this is not without precedent. Eleven years ago, partly in response to the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the Basel Committee attempted to overhaul global banking rules in order to enhance the stability of the global financial system. The culmination of its five-year efforts, the Basel II Accord, was abandoned by regulators before ever being fully implemented. In this paper, I ask why Basel II failed to meet the Basel Committee's original objectives and why Basel III has met a similar fate. Drawing on recent work on the politics of global regulation, I present a theoretical framework which emphasizes the importance of timing and sequencing in determining the outcome of rule-making in global finance. The success of this framework in explaining the failure of Basel II and Basel III is an invitation to scholars in the field of International Relations to take ‘time’ seriously as an analytical variable.
Kamu Harcamalarının Dünyada Ve Türkiye’Deki Gelişimi Ve Türkiye’De Ulusal Gelir İle İlişkisi

Bu yazimizda, dunyada ve Turkiye’ de kamu harcamalarinin ulusal gelir ile iliskilendirilmis tarihsel gelisimi kisaca aciklandiktan sonra, 1980’li yillardan sonra devlet kesiminin ekonomi icindeki agirliginin azaltilmasina yonelik politikanin ulusal gelir ve kamu harcamalari arasindaki iliskiyi ne yonde etkiledigi arastirilmistir. Kamu harcamalarinin ekonomik buyumeyi sagladigi fikri 1970’li yillardan onceki doneme hakim iken sonraki donemde gelirin kamu harcamalarini etkiledigi fikri hakim olmustur. Diger yandan, gelismis ulkelerde kamu harcamalarinin GSYIH icindeki payi yukselmesine karsilik gelismekte olan ulkelerde dusuk seviyede kalmistir. Bu iki olgu, kamu harcamalari ile ulusal gelir arasindaki etkilesimin yonu hakkinda ekonomi yazininda yeni bir tartisma baslatmistir. Bu baglamda uyguladigimiz Granger esbutunlem ve nedensellik analizleriyle, Turkiye’de son yillarda ivme kazanan ozellestirme hareketleriyle tutarlilik arz eden, gelirin harcamalara neden oldugu yonde sonuclar elde edilmistir.
Fatigued for safety? Supply chain occupational health and safety initiatives in shipping

This article investigates impacts of supply chain occupational health and safety initiatives, utilizing the case of Oil Majors’ involvement in inspecting/regulating shipboard health and safety. It reveals that while supply chain pressure has made a contribution in improving ship safety, seafarers are denied participation in the management of occupational health and safety. Instead, Oil Majors effectively pass their pressure through ship managers down to seafarers and force them to silently comply. Among the consequences are work intensification and fatigue leading to a skewed impact on seafarers’ health and safety. This article suggests that supply chain pressure cannot be an adequate substitute for what an organized workforce can achieve through effective participation in the management of workplace health and safety.
Early bilingual development: one language or two?

ABSTRACT It is commonly thought that children learning two languages simultaneously during infancy go through a stage when they cannot differentiate their two languages. Virtually all studies of infant bilingual development have found that bilingual children mix elements from their two languages. These results have been interpreted as evidence for a unitary, undifferentiated language system (the unitary language system hypothesis). The empirical basis for these claims is re-examined and it is argued that, contrary to most extant interpretations, bilingual children develop differentiated language systems from the beginning and are able to use their developing languages in contextually sensitive ways. A call for more serious attention to the possible role of parental input in the form of mixed utterances is made.
The European Central Bank: Credibility, Transparency, and Centralization

The adoption of the euro in 1999 by 11 member states of the European Union created a single currency area second in economic size only to the United States. The euro zone's monetary policy is now set by the European Central Bank (ECB) and its Governing Council rather than by individual national central banks. This CESifo volume examines issues that have arisen in the first years of ECB monetary policy and analyzes the effect that current ECB policy strategy and structures may have in the future. After a detailed description and assessment of ECB monetary policy making that focuses on such issues as price stability and the predictability of policy decisions, the book turns to two important issues faced by European central bankers: the transparency and credibility of decision making and the ECB's decentralized structure. After showing that transparency in decision making enhances credibility, the book discusses the ECB's efforts at openness, its political independence as guaranteed by law, and its ultimate accountability. The book then considers the effects of the decentralized ECB structure, focusing on business cycle synchronization, inflation differentials, and differences in monetary policy transmission in light of the enlargement of the monetary union. The book also discusses options for ECB institutional reforms, including centralization, vote weighting, and cross-border regional banks.