Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
International migration by 2030: impact of immigration policies scenarios on growth and employment

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to estimate the dynamic of international migration between the different regions of the world for 2030 and to measure the impact of different kind of migration policies on the economic and social evolution. Design/methodology/approach – The change and migration forecasting are estimated for regions of the world using macroeconomic Cambridge Alphametrics Model. Findings – The crisis and its aggravation thus clearly favour scenarios of immigration policy along the “zero migration” or “constant migration”. These choices of migration policies reinforce the deflationary process resulting in reduced opportunities for renewed growth in industrial areas and are not offset by the dynamism of growth in emerging countries. Paradoxically, the developed countries which are most durably affected by the crisis are also those that have ageing population and are in high need of skilled and unskilled labor. Practical implications – Three options are possible: one going along the depressiv.
Candida albicans- and Candida stellatoidea-specific DNA fragment

DNA was isolated from whole cells of Candida albicans and digested with MspI restriction enzyme. In addition to the expected large number of low-molecular-weight DNA pieces resulting from the digestion, multiple high-molecular-weight (greater than 3.0 kilobase pairs) fragments were generated by this enzyme, which cleaves DNA at CCGG sequences. Some of these fragments appeared highly repeated. An MspI fragment which was similar in size to one of the repeat elements (2.9 kilobase pairs) was cloned into the ClaI site of the plasmid vector pBR322 and replicated in a suitable Escherichia coli host strain. The candidal fragment was radiolabeled and used to probe Southern blots of DNA from several Candida species, various other fungi, and mouse and human cells. Only DNA from C. albicans and a strain of Candida stellatoidea was found to contain sequences of significant homology for hybridization. The cloned fragment may possibly be of use as a DNA probe for detection of the presence of C. albicans.
Image registration methods : a survey

This paper aims to present a review of recent as well as classic image registration methods. Image registration is the process of overlaying images (two or more) of the same scene taken at different times, from different viewpoints, and/or by different sensors. The registration geometrically align two images (the reference and sensed images). The reviewed approaches are classified according to their nature (areabased and feature-based) and according to four basic steps of image registration procedure: feature detection, feature matching, mapping function design, and image transformation and resampling. Main contributions, advantages, and drawbacks of the methods are mentioned in the paper. Problematic issues of image registration and outlook for the future research are discussed too. The major goal of the paper is to provide a comprehensive reference source for the researchers involved in image registration, regardless of particular application areas. q 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Building positive responses to bullying: Establishing the framework

Perhaps no other workplace issue represents better the harm that can come of neglecting emotional experiences in organizations than workplace bullying. Organizational interventions aimed at the reduction of workplace bullying generally emphasize the identification of negative employee behaviors and the punitive consequences associated with the manifestation of these behaviors at work. While such interventions raise awareness of the unacceptability of workplace bullying, we argue that they generally adopt a “compliance” approach aimed solely at dealing with bullying after it has occurred rather than developing strategic initiatives that proactively promote workplace wellness. We detail a project within the Victorian public sector, which developed a proactive framework for the prevention of workplace bullying based on the principles of positive psychology. The chapter concludes with the view that the Positive Workplace Environment framework we develop is clearly applicable to a much wider range of issues than bullying and that embedding any call for organizational change within such a framework is likely to find resonance with both practitioners and researcher alike.
Evaluation of dietary influences on Escherichia coli O157:H7 shedding by sheep

The effect of diet, an abrupt diet change, and fasting on the shedding of Escherichia coli O157:H7 was investigated with experimentally inoculated sheep as a ruminant model. Sheep were fed a grass hay diet (G), which was low in protein and digestible energy and high in fiber, or a mixture of corn and pelleted alfalfa (C), which was high in protein and digestible energy and low in fiber. After a single oral inoculation of E. coli O157:H7, all the animals shed fecal E. coli O157:H7. However, sheep that were fed G shed the bacterium almost twice as long as, and in larger numbers than, did sheep that were fed C. The number of culture-positive animals increased after the diet was abruptly changed from C to G and decreased with the opposite change (G to C). A 24-h fast did not influence E. coli O157:H7 shedding. Horizontal transmission of infection between animals occurred. Recent shedding of E. coli O157:H7 did not affect recolonization with E. coli O157:H7. The findings presented in this study indicate that preharvest control of diet may reduce the risk of E. coli O157:H7-positive animals entering the food chain.
A qualitative review of the role of qigong in the management of diabetes.

OBJECTIVE To review the evidence relating to the effectiveness of qigong in the management of diabetes. METHODS We performed a systematic literature review of qigong intervention studies published in English or Chinese since 1980, retrieved from English-language databases and Chinese journals. Qigong intervention studies conducted with adults with diabetes, which reported both preintervention and postintervention measures of fasting blood glucose and/or hemoglobin A(1c)(HbA(1c)) were included. Sample characteristics, intervention frequency/duration, and metabolic outcomes were reviewed. RESULTS Sixty-nine intervention studies were located. Of these, only 11 met the criteria for inclusion. There were consistent and statistically significant positive associations between participation in qigong and fasting and 2-hour oral glucose tolerance test results, blood glucose, and triglycerides and total cholesterol. Effects on insulin and HbA(1c) were inconsistent. There was no evidence of any effect of qigong on weight. Most of the studies were of short duration, involved small samples, and did not include a control group. CONCLUSIONS Although qigong has beneficial effects on some of the metabolic risk factors for type 2 diabetes, methodologic limitations make it difficult to draw firm conclusions about the benefits reported. Randomized controlled trials are required to confirm the potential beneficial effects of qigong on the management of type 2 diabetes.
Effect of Diabetes on Fast Response to Norepinephrine in Rat Aorta

The fast and slow components of the mechanical response to 1 μM norepinephrine (NE) were measured in aortic rings isolated from eight spontaneously diabetic rats, six streptozocin-induced diabetic (STZ-D) rats, six STZ-D rats treated with 2.5 U insulin/day during the 4 days before being killed, and six age- and sex-matched control rats. The total contraction to NE (i.e., the sum of fast and slow components) was similar in the four groups: spontaneously diabetic, 16.53 ± 1.72 mN; STZ-D, 15.68 ± 1.41 mN; insulin-treated, 16.17 ± 2.05 mN; and control, 15.27 ± 0.96 mN (NS). The fast component, measured graphically in a total contraction in 1.35 mM Ca, was greater in spontaneously diabetic (12.61 ± 1.07 mN, P < 0.05) and STZ-D (12.25 ± 0.89 mN, P < 0.05) rats compared with control (9.14 ± 0.74 mN) or insulin-treated (8.58 ± 1.23 mN) rats. The same increase of the fast component was detectable after 3 min of incubation in Ca-free medium + 2 mM EGTA (control 6.54 ± 0.47 mN, spontaneously diabetic 9.07 ± 0.76 mN, P < 0.05; STZ-D 8.82 ± 0.72 mN, P < 0.05), and it was also abolished by insulin treatment (insulin-treated 6.29 ± 0.36 mN). We conclude that the diabetic state increases the fast component of NE-induced contraction either in the absence or presence of Ca in the medium. This suggests that such an increase depends on a larger release of Ca from intracellular stores.
Tourism and marketing in Spain: Analysis of the situation and future perspectives

The importance of tourism in Spain has not been accompanied by variety of marketing studies and research. In this paper the two great factors contributing to the slow development of tourism marketing in Spain are identified. On the one hand the youth of the discipline at international level and especially at national level. Secondly, the evolution of the market itself and the passive orientation of marketing. Next the contributions emanating from Spanish tourism marketing circles are reviewed and analysed in terms of their connection with lines of research emanating from the international literature. Finally, future research perspectives for tourism marketing are indicated.
A new evolutionary multi-objective algorithm for convex hull maximization

Many real-world problems often have several, usually conflicting objectives. Traditional multi-objective optimization problems (MOPs) usually search for the Pareto-optimal solutions for this predicament. A special class of MOPs, the convex hull maximization problems which prefer solutions on the convex hull, has posed a new challenge for existing approaches for solving traditional MOPs, as a solution on the Pareto front is not necessarily a good solution for convex hull maximization. In this work, the difference between traditional MOPs and the convex hull maximization problems is discussed and a new Evolutionary Convex Hull Maximization Algorithm (ECHMA) is proposed to solve the convex hull maximization problems. Specifically, a Convex Hull-based sorting with Convex Hull of Individual Minima (CH-CHIM-sorting) is introduced, as well as a novel selection scheme, Extreme Area Extract-based selection (EAE-selection). Experimental results show that ECHMA significantly outperforms the existing approaches for convex hull maximization and evolutionary multi-objective optimization approaches in achieving a better approximation to the convex hull more stably and with a more uniformly distributed set of solutions.
Livestock and the Environment: What Have We Learned in the Past Decade?

The livestock and environment nexus has been the subject of considerable research in the past decade. With a more prosperous and urbanized population projected to grow significantly in the coming decades comes a gargantuan appetite for livestock products. There is growing concern about how to accommodate this increase in demand with a low environmental footprint and without eroding the economic, social, and cultural benefits that livestock provide. Most of the effort has focused on sustainably intensifying livestock systems. Two things have characterized the research on livestock and the environment in the past decade: the development of increasingly disaggregated and sophisticated methods for assessing different types of environmental impacts (climate, water, nutrient cycles, biodiversity, land degradation, deforestation, etc.) and a focus on examining the technical potential of many options for reducing the environmental footprint of livestock systems. However, the economic or sociocultural feasibility of these options is seldom considered. Now is the time to move this agenda from knowledge to action, toward realizable goals. This will require a better understanding of incentives and constraints for farmers to adopt new practices and the design of novel policies to support transformative changes in the livestock sector. It will also require novel forms of engagement, interaction, and consensus building among stakeholders with enormously diverse objectives. Additionally, we have come to realize that managing the demand trajectories of livestock products must be part of the solution space, and this is an increasingly important research area for simultaneously achieving positive health and environmental outcomes.
The Political Economy and the Durability of European Coalition Cabinets: New Variations on a Game-Theoretic Perspective

This paper concentrates on establishing the link between the political economy and particular aspects of coalition behavior. Specifically, it examines the effect which rising prices and the loss of jobs in society has upon the longevity of seventy-seven coalition cabinets in six European democracies. The study is viewed as a first step toward the integration of political economy and the formal theories of coalition behavior. The basic premise guiding this analysis is that by focusing attention directly upon two of the more salient phenomena of the economic environment, namely, inflation and unemployment, additional insight can be gained into the conditions which constrain the survivability of cabinet coalitions in European democracies, thereby highlighting the important role which the environmental context plays in theories of coalition behavior. The findings suggest that (1) simply identifying the types of coalitions is not enough to gauge accurately the endurance of cabinets in the face of inflation and unemployment; (2) the independent effects of inflation on the longevity of coalition cabinets are less significant, when controlling for unemployment and the "ideological displacement" of the cabinet itself; and (3) the tenure of undersized and minimum winning coalitions is substantially and significantly shortened by unemployment, while oversized coalitions are free from the effects of either inflation or unemployment. The implications of these findings, as well as implied paths for future research, are discussed at the conclusion.
Selective replacement of national by non-national seafarers in OECD countries and the employment function in the maritime sector

Commonly, in the shipping industry of the developed Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, national seafarers are progressively being replaced by non-national ones. The present paper aims to provide a model for this tendency. Our analysis is based on the assumption that when shipowners are called to make decisions concerning crew characteristics (such as crew composition and employment levels), they address themselves to two distinct seafarer markets: the domestic (seafarers from OECD countries, henceforth to be referred to as ‘national’) and the non-national (seafarers from other countries). Whilst workers of the first market are better examples in the field of ‘on-the-job-performance’ (in terms of efficiency and loyalty) than workers of the second, shipowners set their domestic employment rule with the view to maximize their profits facing wages and ‘on-the-job-performance’ from national and non-national seafarers alike. Thus, national seafarers are chiefly recruited as officers and the employment level of non-national seafarers are residual, formed thereafter. Our findings point out that the employment rule concerning nationals is negatively affected by the former's wages, and positively by the wage increases of non-national seafarers and by eventual increases of the differential between the ‘on the job performance’ of nationals and that of non-national seafarers of corresponding specialisation.
Teacher Induction Programs in Agricultural Education: Description of the Role of AAAE Higher Education Teacher Preparation Programs.

The purpose of this study is to report findings from a survey of AAAE-member colleges and universities' involvement in professional induction activities of agricultural education teachers. The basis for this research comes from five teacher induction program goals proposed by Johnston and Kay (1987) that serve as a context for presenting the data. Responses were obtained from 62 AAAE-member institutions representing Puerto Rico and 37 states. Beginning teacher induction activities are conducted by 66% of AAAE-teacher preparation institutions. The majority (73.3%) conduct workshops targeting beginning teachers. Slightly more than half (55.1 %) indicated that no other faculty besides agricultural education faculty are involved in induction activities, and 18.4% conduct induction activities as part of a formal agreement with school districts. The institutions participate through collaboration with state departments of education and state teachers associations; provide mentoring to new teachers, and consultation. Teacher induction is generally not counted in the faculty workload and is recognized as a service to the profession. Finally, the total number of student teachers prepared, the total number accepting teaching positions, participating in teacher induction activities and the number not returning after their first year is reported.
Can flexible microfinance loans improve credit access for farmers

Purpose - Using a unique dataset of a commercial microfinance institution (MFI) in Madagascar, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how credit access probabilities and loan volume rationing magnitudes for farmers change if the MFI switches to offer flexible microfinance loans, which can account for agricultural production specifics. Design/methodology/approach - The authors estimate probit models for the probability of receiving a loan and Heckman models to investigate the magnitude of volume rationing for all micro loan applications and disbursements of the MFI, differentiating between farmers with standard microfinance loans and farmers with flexible microfinance loans. Findings - The results reveal that agricultural firms with flexible microfinance loans have significantly higher credit access probabilities than non-agricultural firms and agricultural firms with standard microfinance loans. Furthermore, it was found that agricultural firms with flexible microfinance loans are stronger volume rationed than non-agricultural firms and agricultural firms with standard microfinance loans. Research limitations/implications - Even if the authors can show that access to credit for agricultural firms in Madagascar can be enhanced by the provisioning of flexible microfinance loans, the investigated MFI only introduced flexible microfinance loans in 2011 and currently only offers them through five branch offices. Thus, the product is new to the MFI, and results might change with increasing outreach to other geographic regions in Madagascar. Furthermore, the conditions for agricultural production in Madagascar are unique, and the results might change in different country contexts. Practical implications - The paper's findings suggest that flexible microfinance loans can contribute to the financial inclusion of farmers with seasonal production types. They also suggest that standard microfinance loans seem to be adequate for farmers with less seasonal production types, e.g. animal husbandry. Originality/value - To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper to investigate the effects of flexible microfinance loan provision for credit access of small agricultural firms in developing countries in general, and in Madagascar in particular.
A localization system using inertial measurement units from wireless commercial hand-held devices

This paper describes a newly developed technology for the calculation of trajectories of mobile objects, which is based on commercially available sensors being integrated into modern mobile phones and other gadgets. First, a step counting technique was implemented. Second, a novel step length estimator is proposed. These two algorithms utilize the data from accelerometer sensor only. Third, the heading information was obtained using a gyroscope with complementary filter in quaternion form. The combined algorithm was implemented on a low-power ARM processor to provide the trajectory points relative to an initial point. The proposed technique was tested by 10 subjects, in different shoes with different paces. The dependence of the performance of the technology on the attaching point of the mobile device is weak. The proposed algorithms have better balance and estimation accuracy and depend in less degree on the variety in physical parameters of people in comparison with the existing techniques. In experiments inertial measurement units were mounted in different places, i.e. in the hand, in trousers or in T-shirt pockets. The return position error did not exceed 5% of the total travelled distance for all performed tests.
International trade union action towards corporate social responsibility

In Agenda 21 the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro (1992) explicitly charged the trade unions with contributing to the implementation of sustainable development because of their specific role and responsibility as representatives of workers worldwide. In the following decade the trade union movement took up this challenge at different levels of the global governance system: through the diplomatic action of the union umbrella organisations in support of the European and international conventions on corporate social responsibility and through negotiations with transnational corporations to conclude agreements (codes of conduct) on norms of sustainable development.
Tax-Deferred Accounts, Constrained Choice and Estimation of Individual Saving

The paper analyzes the effect of tax-deferred individual retirement accounts (IRAs) in the United States on net individual saving. The results are based on a model of constrained optimization with the limit on tax-deferred saving the principle constraint. The estimates suggest that contributions to IRAs represent substantial net saving increases. Were the IRA limit to be increased, only about 10 to 20% of resulting increase in IRA contributions would be taken from other savings. About 50% would come from reduced consumption and about 35% from reduced taxes.
An Introduction to Biological NMR Spectroscopy*

NMR spectroscopy is a powerful tool for biologists interested in the structure, dynamics, and interactions of biological macromolecules. This review aims at presenting in an accessible manner the requirements and limitations of this technique. As an introduction, the history of NMR will highlight how the method evolved from physics to chemistry and finally to biology over several decades. We then introduce the NMR spectral parameters used in structural biology, namely the chemical shift, the J-coupling, nuclear Overhauser effects, and residual dipolar couplings. Resonance assignment, the required step for any further NMR study, bears a resemblance to jigsaw puzzle strategy. The NMR spectral parameters are then converted into angle and distances and used as input using restrained molecular dynamics to compute a bundle of structures. When interpreting a NMR-derived structure, the biologist has to judge its quality on the basis of the statistics provided. When the 3D structure is a priori known by other means, the molecular interaction with a partner can be mapped by NMR: information on the binding interface as well as on kinetic and thermodynamic constants can be gathered. NMR is suitable to monitor, over a wide range of frequencies, protein fluctuations that play a crucial role in their biological function. In the last section of this review, intrinsically disordered proteins, which have escaped the attention of classical structural biology, are discussed in the perspective of NMR, one of the rare available techniques able to describe structural ensembles. This Tutorial is part of the International Proteomics Tutorial Programme (IPTP 16 MCP).