Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Decomposing the Relationship between Macroeconomic Conditions and Fatal Car Crashes during the Great Recession: Alcohol- and Non-Alcohol-Related Accidents

Abstract This paper investigates to what extent and in what ways conditions related to the 2007-2008 recession reduced fatal crashes. It hypothesizes that the reduction in fatal automobile accidents operates through both the quantity of driving and changes in behaviors associated with driving. Using state-by-quarter fixed effects models, the study shows that unemployment rate increases significantly reduce fatal accidents. Decomposing the fatal accident rate into accidents per mile traveled and miles traveled per capita reveals that higher unemployment is significantly associated with fewer accidents per mile, and also reveals that fatal accidents associated with alcohol are more responsive to unemployment rate changes than are accidents overall. These results suggest that the recession’s “lost” fatal accidents occurred in areas hit harder by the recession and were in the form of fewer alcohol-related accidents per mile traveled rather than fewer miles traveled overall.
Do Intentional Efforts to Improve Boards Really Work? The Views of Nonprofit CEOs

Commentators on the effectiveness of nonprofit boards of directors usually find them wanting in a number of ways and urge that they reform themselves. A study to ascertain how many boards actually accept this advice and intentionally attempt to change the way they operate also examines what changes boards attempt to make, what provokes their efforts, and what outcomes result.
Association of Social Class with Malaria Prevalence Among Household Heads in Ghana

This is an exploratory study that investigates the association of social class with malaria prevalence among household heads in Ghana. Data utilized is taken from the 1997 Core Welfare Indicators Questionnaire (CWIQ) survey of Ghana. The survey collected information on households covering a variety of topics including education, health, employment, household assets, household amenities, poverty predictors, and child anthropometry. A total of 14,514 households were interviewed, comprising 63 percent rural household heads and 37 percent urban household heads. The research method employed in this study involves the construction of a composite index of social class from six indicators namely, education, dwelling ownership, heads of cattle, modern household items, main source of cooking fuel and type of toilet facility. Logistic regression was applied in examining the association between social class and the dependent variable, prevalence of malaria. Marital status and personal hygiene were examined together with social class as the predictor variables, while sex, age, place of residence and ecological zone were introduced as control variables. The study revealed that there was no direct association between social class and the prevalence of malaria among household heads in Ghana; rather, marital status served as a mediating factor.
First experience of high‐intensity focused ultrasound combined with transcatheter arterial embolization as local control for hepatoblastoma

The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of high‐intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) combined with transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) in treating pediatric hepatoblastoma. Twelve patients with initially unresectable hepatoblastoma were enrolled in the study. All patients received chemotherapy, TACE, and HIFU ablation. Follow‐up materials were obtained in all patients. The tumor response, survival rate, and complications were analyzed. Complete ablation was achieved in 10 patients (83.3%), and the alpha‐fetoprotein level was also decreased to normal in these patients. The mean follow‐up time was 13.3 ± 1.8 months (range, 2‐25 months). At the end of follow‐up, two patients died from tumor progression, the other 10 patients were alive. One patient was found to have lung metastasis after HIFU and had an operation to remove the lesion. The median survival time was 14 months, and the 1‐ and 2‐year survival rates were 91.7% and 83.3%, respectively. Complications included fever, transient impairment of hepatic function, and mild malformation of ribs. Conclusion: HIFU combined with TACE is a safe and promising method with a low rate of severe complications. As a noninvasive approach, it may provide a novel local therapy for patients with unresectable hepatoblastoma. (Hepatology 2014;58:170–177)
A Comparison of Cost-Benefit and Cost-Effectiveness Analysis in Practice: Divergent Policy Practices in Sweden

This paper compares the implementation of the two economic evaluation methods Cost-Effectiveness/Utility (CEA/CUA) and Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) as tools for allocation of national public funds in the health and transport sector in Sweden, respectively. We compare the recommended values for important economic parameters such as the social discount rate, the marginal cost of public funds, and the explicit and implicit valuation of health, and document a number of substantial and unexplained differences in implementation. Such differences are problematic considering that the increasing use of economic evaluations to guide policy decisions also has implied an overlap of application areas. We conclude with a discussion on the need of a harmonized procedure for economic evaluations in the public sector in order to reduce the risk of inefficient allocations purely due to different applications of the methods. Published: Online February 2017. In print December 2017.
Conformational analysis of PKI(5-22)amide, the active inhibitory fragment of the inhibitor protein of the cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase.

Fourier-transform i.r. spectroscopy, 1H-n.m. r. spectroscopy and X-ray scattering were used to study the conformation and shape of the peptide PKI(5-22)amide, which contains the active site of the inhibitor protein of the cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase [Cheng, Van Pattern, Smith & Walsh (1985) Biochem. J. 231, 655-661]. The X-ray-scattering solution studies show that the peptide has a compact structure with Rg 0.9 nm (9.0 A) and a linear maximum dimension of 2.5 nm (25A). Compatible with this, Fourier-transform i.r. and n.m. r. determinations indicate that the peptide contains approx. 26% alpha-helix located in the N-terminal one-third of the molecule. This region contains the phenylalanine residue that is one essential recognition determinant for high-affinity binding to the protein kinase catalytic site.
Investigation of EM radiation changes in SiC based converters throughout device aging

In this paper, a comprehensive analysis on near field electromagnetic radiation (EMR) of SiC power devices throughout aging is studied. To realize thermally triggered degradation, an accelerated test bench has been built to actively apply power cycles, swing junction temperature and trigger device degradation. The junction temperature of the devices under test (DUT) exposed to 30°C to 170°C swing and after each 250 thermal cycles, the devices are plugged into a Synchronous-Buck converter operating in continuous conduction mode. Device near field EMR is recorded by a fixed-to-clipper near field probe and a spectrum analyzer. In parallel, DUT electrical parameter shifts are measured by curve tracer as well. Possible causes of SiC MOSFET degradation are discussed under the light of the experimental result.
An Improved Quantitative Assay of Glycogen in Erythrocytes

Background Current methods for the quantitative determination of glycogen in erythrocytes are unsatisfactory. Methods Erythrocytes were deproteinized with perchloric acid either after haemolysing by freezing and thawing twice or without freezing and thawing, and the glycogen content was determined by an enzymatic method. Results Freezing and thawing resulted in a significantly higher glycogen content, and the recovery of added glycogen using this method was nearly 100%. The mean erythrocyte glycogen content in healthy volunteers (n=17) was 69·5 μg/g haemoglobin, a value much higher than the previously reported values in healthy subjects. Conclusion Freezing and thawing improves the assay of erythrocyte glycogen.
Pathogenesis of Peritoneal Fibrosing Syndromes (Sclerosing Peritonitis) in Peritoneal Dialysis

Drawing from diverse sources including epidemiological and clinical data, surgical observations, histopathology, serosal healing responses to fibrin and fibrinolysis, tissue reaction to chronic exposure, and to exo and endotoxins, new information on mesothelial stem cells, autocrine and paracrine influences on their proliferation and collagen synthesis, and the effect of glucose on fibroconnective tissue, we have begun to piece together the pathogenetic jigsaw of fibrosis in continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD). The reaction of peritoneal mesothelium and stroma to the stress of continual dialysis results in a spectrum of alterations ranging from opacification through a tanned peritoneum syndrome to sclerosing encapsulating peritonitis (SEP). Any agent that causes irritation of the mesothelial layer and induces serositis, or single severe or multiple episodes of peritonitis resulting in mesothelial loss, predisposes the peritoneum to fibroneogenesis. An accurate definition of the histopathological changes of peritoneal thickening is a prerequisite for defining pathogenesis. This paper is the first attempt to create such a framework. It is evident from many areas of study that fibrin deposition and fibrinolysis, hyalinization of the superficial stromal collagen possibly tanned through nonenzymatic glycosylation by dialysate glucose and the proliferative potential of mesothelial stem cells play an important and possibly interdependent role in excessive fibroneogenesis in certain patients on CAPD. Many of the pieces of the jigsaw are obviously still missing, and the picture is most surely incomplete. Nevertheless, the outline of the pathologic and etiologic landscape should now be discernible.
The Economic Crisis and its Effects on SMEs

Romania has ended a high growth cycle. The world economic crisis is worsening with every passing day and Romania increasingly feels the effects of this economic downturn. The sector of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is the most dynamic in the Romanian economy, but it will also be one of the first to be hit by the global financial crisis the ripples of which have reached Romania as well. SMEs are now considered the most sensitive sector and worst affected by the economic climate. The economic crisis has prompted the member states of the European Union, too, to adopt packages of measures to counteract the effect of the crisis. Here below I will exemplify with the cases of Romania, the Italian Republic, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Slovak Republic and the Republic of Hungary.
Job Mobility and Earnings over the Life Cycle

Previous studies have shown that in the short run quits generally lead to wage increases on the next job and layoffs to no increase or to a wage cut. The author of this study argues, however, that the prospect of a job change for any reason creates a disincentive for a worker to invest in training that is specific to the current job, and therefore those who change jobs frequently may earn less over their life cycle than those who, other things equal, seldom change jobs. An analysis of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Men supports that expectation, showing that for white males job separations usually lead to wage gains in the short run but nonmobile workers tend to achieve significantly higher wages over the long run.
Integrating Ecological and Economic Modeling of Eutrophication: Toward Optimal Solutions for a Coastal Area Suffering from Sediment Release of Phosphorus

Abstract This paper puts forward a model for managing eutrophication that integrates the salient ecological and economic characteristics of a coastal area suffering from severe nutrient enrichment. The model links the development of phosphorus concentration over time to nutrient emissions from agriculture and habitation. It accounts for differences in agricultural and municipal abatement options and their costs, as well as the need to undertake irreversible investments to set up wastewater treatment facilities. Furthermore, it considers sediment release of phosphorus as a function of annual nutrient loads. The model is parameterized for a 30-km-wide area off the Finnish coast of the Gulf of Finland. The socially optimal policy, which minimizes the sum of monetary damage caused by eutrophication and the costs of nutrient abatement over time, is determined using a dynamic programming approach. The results suggest that considerable investments are warranted to bring wastewater treatment facilities up to date. Continued efforts to reduce agricultural nutrient loading are nevertheless also called for. The analysis provided is a first step toward an integrated analysis of eutrophication that accounts for complexities inherent in the problem, such as sediment release of phosphorus and irreversible investments in abatement technology. The results are sensitive in particular to ecological assumptions and parameterization, and further research is needed in these areas.
Novel chemolithotrophic and anoxygenic phototrophic genomes extracted from ice-covered boreal lakes

Although an important fraction of the world’s lakes remains ice-covered during a large proportion of the year, little is known about the microorganisms that govern the biogeochemical processes occurring under-ice along the stratigraphic redox gradients. Reconstructed genomes provide evidence for anoxygenic photosynthesis involving fixation of carbon using reduced sulphur and iron as an electron donor in the anoxic zone of the sampled lake systems. In addition to anoxygenic photosynthesis, our molecular data reveals novel chemolithoautotrophic organisms and supports the existence of methanotrophs in bottom anoxic waters. Reconstructed genomes matched methanotrophs related to Methylobacter tundripaludum, phototrophic Chloroflexi and Chlorobia, as well as lithoautotrophic genomes affiliated to the Betaproteobacteria class and Planctomycetes phylum. Based on our in-depth characterization, complex metabolic interactomes emerge unique to each lake’s redox tower and with sulfur, iron and carbon cycling tightly intertwined through chemolithotrophy and anoxygenic photosynthesis.
Beyond the Spatial Mismatch: Welfare Recipients and Transportation Policy

Beneath the broad umbrella of agreement about transportation’s relationship to poverty is considerable discord about the specific nature of the problem and about where and how transportation solutions should be applied. Much of the existing scholarship on this topic focuses on the spatial mismatch hypothesis, the geographic separation between employment and housing. Although this concept has merit, to meet the transportation needs of welfare recipients, policy makers must move beyond conventional notions of the spatial mismatch hypothesis. This article draws from theoretical and empirical scholarship on travel behavior, transportation infrastructure, poverty, gender studies, and residential segregation and recommends transportation policies to better connect welfare recipients to employment.
Funding International Agricultural Research and the Need to be Noticed

Creating interest and excitement around new research findings has become an important part of the research funding cycle. NERICA (New Rice for Africa) is a rice type developed by the Africa Rice Center (WARDA). Since the emergence of NERICA varieties at the turn of the millennium, claims about their characteristics and potential have been made by WARDA and repeated by many of WARDA's funders, other development organizations and the media. This has led to large-scale support for these varieties, international accolades and continued funding. In this paper, the authors review the evidence that is in the public domain in relation to claims in three specific areas: yield potential, weed competitiveness and impacts in Guinea. It is concluded that the main claims about NERICA are not well supported, and that this has implications not only for WARDA but for the funding of agricultural research more broadly.
Metabolic Limits on Dive Duration and Swimming Speed in the Southern Elephant Seal Mirounga leonina

The ability of air‐breathing marine predators to forage successfully depends on their ability to remain submerged. This is in turn related to their total O2 stores and the rate at which these stores are used up while submerged. Body size was positively related to dive duration in a sample of 34 adult female southern elephant seals from Macquarie Island. However, there was no relationship between body size and dive depth. This indicates that smaller seals, with smaller total O2 stores, make shorter dives than larger individuals but operate at similar depths, resulting in less time being spent at depth. Nine adult female elephant seals were also equipped with velocity time depth recorders. In eight of these seals, a plot of swimming speed against dive duration revealed a cloud of points with a clear upper boundary. This boundary could be described using regression analysis and gave a significant negative relationship in most cases. These results indicate that metabolic rate varies with activity levels, as indicated by swimming speed, and that there are quantifiable limits to the distance that a seal can travel on a dive of a given swimming speed. However, the seals rarely dive to these physiological limits, and the majority of their dives are well within their aerobic capacity. Elephant seals therefore appear to dive in a way that ensures that they have a reserve of O2 available.
Induced Innovation Revisited

This paper studies the joint evolution of factor prices, factor shares and the type of technical progress. Its main aim is to give a microeconomic foundation to the Hypothesis of Induced Innovation of the earlier literature, which assumes that the type of progress at any moment of time is chosen so as to maximize the current rate of output growth. An important conclusion of the Hypothesis of Induced Innovation is that in the long run factor-augmenting technical progress takes the form of pure labour augmentation. Copyright 2002 by The London School of Economics and Political Science
A Review of Models for Measuring Organizational Effectiveness Among For‐Profit and Nonprofit Organizations

Induced by unprecedented growth, invasion of for-profit organizations in the nonprofit domain, and high-profile cases of mismanagement in the nonprofit sector, a recent surge in the literature suggests ample opportunities for research to compare the organizational effectiveness of for-profit and nonprofit organizations. This article presents a literature review of nonprofit organizational effectiveness from which four models of organizational effectiveness are selected. These models are discussed and analyzed because they apply to both for-profit and nonprofit organizations.
Propagation mergence for community detection

The Louvain method [1] is a successful technique for community detection that decomposes a network by optimizing the modularity of the partitions. It was not designed, however, for cases where a network is incomplete and network nodes contain some unused information. A new method is introduced here, Propagation Mergence (PM), that was designed to handle incomplete networks, and leverage node information to improve community detection. PM utilizes PageRank, propagation, and greedy merging to 1) locate local hubs, 2) discover small subgraphs, and then 3) create larger subgraphs via merging. An illustrative literature network example is presented to demonstrate that PM yields results that improve upon the Louvain method.
Drop impact life prediction model for wafer level chip scale packages

The demand for small, portable handheld electronic devices has led OEMs to reduce packaging sizes of all types and to create many choices to meet market demand. Wafer-level chip scale package (WL-CSP) is the newest technology to compete with CSP and near-CSP packaging, and has evolved under JEDEC MO-211 standard. This bare-die bumped package is able to reduce single-gate logic sizes by as much as 84%, and offer significant area savings, improved package electrical parasitics and power dissipation over leaded CSP and CSP-BGA packages. However, little is known about its mechanical performance under shock impact and how it is compared to its CSP counterparts, which is of utmost importance in handheld electronics. In this paper, a drop impact life prediction model is established for WL-CSP with excellent correlation with experimental values. Critical bump location, crack initiation site and failure mode found in failure analysis shows that the simulation model is able to give accurate qualitative and quantitative prediction and understanding of physics involved in drop impact failure of WL-CSP. With an accurate impact life prediction model, one can further establish design guidelines, such as to determine the largest bumped die allowable to still meet the number of drops before failure occur. Effects of design parameters such as solder bump pitch, solder diameter, solder standoff, and solder material (lead-free vs. eutectic) on solder joint reliability under drop impact testing are discussed in this paper. One key finding is that a smaller bump pitch results in a better drop impact performance, which is verified by both simulation and experiment. Hence, miniaturization of WLCSP with reduction in bump pitch has a positive impact on its board level drop reliability. It is also interesting to note that the distance-to-neutral-point (DNP) effect must be considered in the PCB length direction where the bending mode dominates. This is different from typical thermal cycling where the DNP effect is usually considered in the diagonal direction
OPTIMAL MEDIA ALLOCATION DECISIONS FOR GENERIC ADVERTISERS

Media allocation rules are derived for generic advertisers under a variety of market structures, marketing technologies and policy settings. The rules indicate that once the budget is set, allocation decisions can proceed strictly on the basis of media‐specific advertising elasticities. The investment decision, however, is more complex. In addition to the media‐specific advertising elasticities, generic advertisers need to take into account the price sensitivity of consumers, supply response, markup behaviour, advertising ‘tax’ incidence, policy setting, and competitive conditions. A general finding is that protection blunts the incentive to advertise collectively, while imperfect competition enhances the incentive.
Random Level-Shift Time Series Models, ARIMA Approximations, and Level-Shift Detection

The main purpose of this article is to assess the performance of autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models when occasional level shifts occur in the time series under study. A random level-shift time series model that allows the level of the process to change occasionally is introduced. Between two consecutive changes, the process behaves like the usual autoregressive moving average (ARMA) process. In practice, a series generated from a random level-shift ARMA (RLARMA) model may be misspecified as an ARIMA process. The efficiency of this ARIMA approximation with respect to estimation of current level and forecasting is investigated. The results of examining a special case of an RLARMA model indicate that the ARIMA approximations are inadequate for estimating the current level, but they are robust for forecasting future observations except when there is a very low frequency of level shifts or when the series are highly negatively correlated. A level-shift detection procedure is presented to h.