Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Frontal and Caudate Alterations in Velocardiofacial Syndrome (Deletion at Chromosome 22q11.2)

This study investigated the morphology of the frontal lobe and the caudate nucleus in velocardiofacial syndrome, a neurogenetic disorder caused by a microdeletion at chromosome 22q11.2 and frequently associated with severe psychiatric disturbances. Volumes of the caudate nucleus and subregions of the frontal lobe were compared on magnetic resonance images of 10 children with velocardiofacial syndrome and 10 age- and gender-matched controls. Frontal deep white matter was reduced significantly (by about 23%) in subjects with velocardiofacial syndrome relative to controls. Frontal and prefrontal volumes were also reduced in subjects with velocardiofacial syndrome, although not disproportionately to whole brain volume. The volume of the right caudate nucleus was increased in children with velocardiofacial syndrome. Associations between right caudate and right frontal regions were noted in controls but not in children with velocardiofacial syndrome. These findings suggest frontostriatal dysfunction in children with velocardiofacial syndrome. Insofar as up to 30% of adults with velocardiofacial syndrome (also known as chromosome 22q11 deletion syndrome) develop schizophrenia and frontostriatal dysfunction has been noted in schizophrenia, the findings support the hypothesis that velocardiofacial syndrome might represent a neurodevelopmental model of schizophrenia. (J Child Neurol 2004;19:337-342).
A Theory of Wage Dynamics

A dynamic, equilibrium model of long term (implicit) labour contracts under incomplete but symmetric information is developed. Workers are assumed to be risk averse and of unknown ability or productivity. Risk neutral firms learn, as do workers, about each worker's productivity by observing the worker's output over time. It is shown that equilibrium contracts provide for wages which never decline with age and increase only when the worker's market value increases above his current wage. In addition to characterizing the equilibrium wage contract, we also derive some of its implications for the behaviour of aggregate wages across various groups of workers. These implications explain some findings in the recent empirical literature on age-earnings profiles. In particular our model can explain why earnings may be positively related to experience even after controlling for productivity, as some empirical studies have indicated.
Turismo accesible, turismo para todos:

El articulo muestra la situacion de la accesibilidad en los espacios turisticos, presenta como el tema del turismo accesible y el turismo para todos es un hecho reciente en Espana y Cataluna. El estudio expone la escasa atencion que se ha prestado al tema desde el ambito de los estudios de turismo y como existen una serie de colectivos que quieren incorporarse con pleno derecho al ocio y al disfrute de las actividades turisticas. Cataluna presenta recientes iniciativas que adaptan sus infraestructuras a los colectivos con discapacidad y/o necesidades especiales. El articulo repasa los casos mas relevantes y muestra como en Francia ya existe una marca nacional, que reconoce la oferta turistica adaptada y como el turismo accesible puede ser un producto en alza en los proximos anos
Role of methionine in the regulation of serine hydroxymethyltransferase in Eschericia coli

Significant derepression of serine hydroxymethyltransferase is observed when metE or metF mutants of Escherichia coli K-12 are grown on D-methionine sulfoxide instead of L-methionine. The derepression is not prevented by addition of glycine, adenosine, guanosine, guanosine, and thymidine to the growth medium of methionine-limited metF cells showing that the effect is not due to a secondary deficiency of these nutrients. On the other hand, methionine-limited growth of a metA mutant leads to derepression of met regulon enzymes, but only a marginal increase in serine hydroxymethyltransferase activity. A prototrophic metJ strain grown on minimal medium has about the same serine hydroxymethyltransferase as the wild type. The enzyme activity of the metJ strain is not influenced by methionine, but it is partially repressed by glycine, adenosine, and thymidine. metK strains have about twice as much serine hydroxymethyltransferase activity as wild-type cells when grown on minimal medium; but when both types of cells are grown on medium supplemented with glycine, adenosine, guanosine, and thymidine, their enzyme activities are about the same. The results show that methionine limitation can lead to depression of serine hydroxymethyltransferase, but that the regulatory system is different from the one which controls the methionine regulon.
Expression of mRNA for membrane-type 1, 2, and 3 matrix metalloproteinases in human laryngeal cancer.

OBJECTIVE To investigate correlation of expressions of membrane-type 1, 2, and 3 matrix metalloproteinases (MT1, MT2, and MT3-MMP) to the invasion and metastases in laryngeal cancer. METHODS Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was used to examine the mRNA level of MT1, MT2, and MT3-MMP in 24 patients with laryngeal cancer. The relationships of these three MT-MMP expressions to clinicopathology were analyzed by statistics. RESULTS The expressions of MT1, MT2, and MT3-MMP were significantly higher in laryngeal cancer tissues than those in para-tumorous tissues (P < 0.01) and had a close relationship with invasive depth (P < 0.05). But no significantly different expressions of these three MT-MMPs were found in different primary location and different histological grade of laryngeal cancer (P > 0.05). The expression of MT1-MMP was obviously higher in patients with metastatic lymph nodes than that in patients without metastatic lymph nodes (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION MT1, MT2, and MT3-MMP play an important role in the progression of laryngeal cancer, and MT1-MMP may serve as a reliable marker in estimating invasive and metastatic potency of laryngeal cancer. Suppressing expressions of MT1, MT2, and MT3-MMP early may inhibit the invasion and metastases of laryngeal cancer.
Using an Analytic Hierarchy Process in Advertising Creativity

The potential contribution of an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) for enhancing the creative brief within advertising is discussed. AHP software used as a group decision support system (GDSS) can facilitate the creative process by encouraging the generation of ideas. The structuring stage facilitates the sorting of those ideas in to a coherent decision model that represents all alternatives, providing focus and relevance. Structuring and the evaluation stage encourage the blending of rational and intuitive thought. Finally, additional facilities allow the advertiser to reflect and revise their decisions. Overall, it would appear the technique has much potential for managing creativity.
Strengthening leadership as a catalyst for enhanced patient safety culture: a repeated cross-sectional experimental study

Objectives Current literature emphasises that clinical leaders are in a position to enable a culture of safety, and that the safety culture is a performance mediator with the potential to influence patient outcomes. This paper aims to investigate staff's perceptions of patient safety culture in a Danish psychiatric department before and after a leadership intervention. Methods A repeated cross-sectional experimental study by design was applied. In 2 surveys, healthcare staff were asked about their perceptions of the patient safety culture using the 7 patient safety culture dimensions in the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire. To broaden knowledge and strengthen leadership skills, a multicomponent programme consisting of academic input, exercises, reflections and discussions, networking, and action learning was implemented among the clinical area level leaders. Results In total, 358 and 325 staff members participated before and after the intervention, respectively. 19 of the staff members were clinical area level leaders. In both surveys, the response rate was >75%. The proportion of frontline staff with positive attitudes improved by ≥5% for 5 of the 7 patient safety culture dimensions over time. 6 patient safety culture dimensions became more positive (increase in mean) (p<0.05). Frontline staff became more positive on all dimensions except stress recognition (p<0.05). For the leaders, the opposite was the case (p<0.05). Staff leaving the department after the first measurement had rated job satisfaction lower than the staff staying on (p<0.05). Conclusions The improvements documented in the patient safety culture are remarkable, and imply that strengthening the leadership can act as a significant catalyst for patient safety culture improvement. Further studies using a longitudinal study design are recommended to investigate the mechanism behind leadership's influence on patient safety culture, sustainability of improvements over time, and the association of change in the patient safety culture measures with change in psychiatric patient safety outcomes.
Grower Risk Aversion and the Cost of Moral Hazard in Livestock Production Contracts

The use of contracts to vertically coordinate the production and marketing of agricultural commodities has become common practice in many agricultural sectors. To solve the apparent asymmetric information problems between processors and independent farmers that universally plague these relationships, the majority of contracts use high-powered incentives schemes to compensate farmers. In light of the renewed interest and increased pressure on the states and federal government to regulate production contracts, a legitimate question to ask is: How much are the producers going to loose if forced to replace the high-powered incentives schemes that include performance bonuses with some low-powered ones, such as simple piece rates? The answer to this question depends on the size of the cost of moral hazard. The welfare cost of moral hazard emanates from the fact that contract growers are risk averse and face uncertain income streams. The degree of risk aversion generates more or less disutility from uncertainty and plays an important role in the design of the optimal contract form. The literature on the provision of incentives in firms is based on the premise that relating pay to performance increases output, but at the cost of imposing risk on the agents, which is reflected in higher compensations. Grower welfare depends on the type of contract he has signed, the distribution of random factors affecting production, and the shape of his utility function. The objective of this article is to develop an analytical framework for the econometric estimation of the degree of risk aversion of farmers involved in the contract production of hogs and to carry out the empirical estimation of
Governance and the Decision to Issue a Profit Warning

The theoretical concept of agency costs developed by Jensen and Meckling (1976) and Jensen (2005) are used to study the assumed relationship between the quality of a firm's governance and its decision to issue a profit warning (PW), when it is overvalued. Based on a sample of Canadian companies between 2000 and 2004, results only partially support our hypotheses. The characteristics of the board seem to only play a secondary role in the decision to issue a profit warning when the firm is overvalued. Nonetheless, as expected, our study reveals the negative impact on the profit warning decision of the governance mechanisms based on market values that aim at aligning the interest of the managers and directors with those of the shareholders.
Mathematical Models for Financial Bubbles

Financial bubbles have been present in the history of financial markets from the early days up to the modern age. An asset is said to exhibit a bubble when its market value exceeds its fundamental valuation. Although this phenomenon has been thoroughly studied in the economic literature, a mathematical martingale theory of bubbles, based on an absence of arbitrage has only recently been developed. In this dissertation, we aim to further contribute to the developement of this theory. In the first part we construct a model that allows us to capture the birth of a financial bubble and to describe its behavior as an initial submartingale in the build-up phase, which then turns into a supermartingale in the collapse phase. To this purpose we construct a flow in the space of equivalent martingale measures and we study the shifting perception of the fundamental value of a given asset. In the second part of the dissertation, we study the formation of financial bubbles in the valuation of defaultable claims in a reduced-form setting. In our model a bubble is born due to investor heterogeneity. Furthermore, our study shows how changes in the dynamics of the defaultable claim's market price may lead to a different selection of the martingale measure used for pricing. In this way we are able to unify the classical martingale theory of bubbles with a constructive approach to the study of bubbles, based on the interactions between investors.
Enforcement and Disclosure Under Regulation Fair Disclosure: An Empirical Analysis

While Regulation Fair Disclosure (FD) was designed to benefit investors by curbing the selective disclosure of material non-public information to ‘covered’ investors, such as analysts and institutional investors, it can also impose costs. This paper finds that FD levies three kinds of enforcement and disclosure costs. First, investors cannot recover as part of an SEC enforcement action the gains to covered investors from their alleged use of the non-public information. Second, investors lose because the market responds negatively to an SEC enforcement announcement. Third, investors suffer because some companies post their FD filings well after the due date, without earlier public disclosure.
Locating Major League Stadiums Where They Can Make a Difference

The louder policy analysts complain about using public resources to subsidize the construction of new major league sports stadiums, the more subsidies are made, despite empirical evidence showing that public investments in stadiums to lure or keep major league teams have considerable opportunity costs. Policy analysts should consider shifting the emphasis of their work to evaluate where building stadiums would minimize opportunity costs or maximize economic interactions among locations. This article uses time-series analysis of 25 metropolitan areas to show that in terms of capturing share of economic activity, the best location for professional sports stadiums appears to be the downtown (including the central business district and nearby “edge” areas), followed by other locations in the central city. Suburban locations appear to be associated with the least amount of economic activity. This analysis has broad implications for all major public investments aimed at attracting people to sports, recreation, culture, and public assembly venues.
Growth, Redistribution and Poverty Changes in Cameroon: A Shapley Decomposition Analysis

This paper studies the decomposition of poverty changes in Cameroon. Specifically, it reviews theoretical frameworks for growth--redistribution decomposition analyses, presents the data and poverty measures and estimates the growth--redistribution components of changes in measured poverty by the Shapley value-based approach using Cameroon's household surveys. By all the P-sub-α class of measures, poverty increased significantly between 1984 and 1996. The growth components overaccounted for the increase, although shifts in national, rural and semi-urban distributions marginally mitigated the worse effects on the population. A decline in mean incomes as well as adverse distributional shifts contributed to a significant increase in urban poverty during the same period. These findings corroborate the general information in the literature that growth effects tend to dominate the effects of changes in the distribution of income. These results illustrate the potential contribution of distributionally neutral growth in household incomes to poverty alleviation in Cameroon. Although redistribution also has an important role to play, it should be accepted that there must be severe limits to what can be achieved by growth neutral redistribution. Growth in household incomes appears more likely to be essential for long-term poverty reduction and will be more effective if poverty alleviation programmes are targeted disproportionately in favour of rural and semi-urban areas. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.
When David Met Victoria

This article seeks to understand how distinctive family brands are created. Recent studies in family business have focused on the benefits for a firm to be known as family owned or family controlled. Few studies have paid attention to the distinct meanings stakeholders associate with a given family or to how that family comes to have those associations in the eyes of external stakeholders. Based on a case study of one of the entertainment industry’s most successful family brands—The Beckhams—four practices conducive to building brand distinctiveness and brand visibility are identified.
On the need of template protection for voice authentication

In this work we study the need of template protection to provide security and privacy in text-dependent pass-phrase voice authentication systems. For this purpose, we analyze the robustness of two state-of-the-art speaker veriﬁcation systems against attacks performed using input data generated from a compromised voice template. This analysis shows that compromised templates can be used to gain unauthorized access to authentication systems, when these systems use the same speaker veriﬁcation technology, background models and pass-phrase as the one from which the compromised template was stolen. However we also show that the compromised template may not be helpful to attack an authentication system which uses a speaker veriﬁcation technology or pass-phrase different from those considered in the system the template was obtained from. This fact facil-itates the fulﬁllment of the main requirements that a protected template should meet to guarantee user privacy: irreversibility and unlinkability.Finallywepropose a set of guidelines for the design of voice authentication systems that enable the preservation of user privacy and provide revocability measures in case a template is compromised.
Switching performance evaluation of commercial SiC power devices (SiC JFET and SiC MOSFET) in relation to the gate driver complexity

Silicon Carbide (SiC) power devices can provide a significant improvement of power density and efficiency in power converters. The switching performances of SiC power devices are often a trade-off between the gate driver complexity and the desired performance; this is especially true for SiC BJTs and JFETs. The recent introduction of SiC MOSFET has proved that it is possible to have highly performing SiC devices with a minimum gate driver complexity; this made SiC power devices even more attractive despite their device cost. This paper presents an analysis based on experimental results of the switching losses of various commercially available Si and SiC power devices rated at 1200 V (Si IGBTs, SiC JFETs and SiC MOSFETs). The comparison evaluates the reduction of the switching losses which is achievable with the introduction of SiC power devices; this includes analysis and considerations on the gate driver complexity and cost.
Neutrality of narrative discussion in annual reports of UK listed companies

This paper reports the results of an investigation into the neutrality of the narrative discussion of financial performance and position, as evidenced in 179 annual reports of UK listed companies. Neutrality of narrative discussion was determined by comparing the average proportions of good and bad news contained in the narrative and statutory accounts sections of the annual reports. The results of a comparison of the proportion of good news in the two sections of the annual reports suggest that the narrative sections contained a significantly higher proportion of good news than the statutory accounts sections. Comparison of proportions of bad news, however, indicates that the narrative sections contained a significantly lower proportion of bad news compared to the statutory accounts sections. Finally, the results also suggest that the proportion of good news as compared to bad news in the narrative sections is significantly higher than the proportion of good news compared to bad news in the statutory accounts section. The results are consistent with the suggestion that company management highlights good news in narrative discussions. The implications of the findings for company management, users, auditors and regulators are discussed.
Construction and analysis of fixed-income volatility indices

Implied volatility indices have mushroomed over the last decade in international equity markets. Specifically, newly created volatility indices follow the VIX methodology implemented by the Chicago Board of Options Exchange in 2003. In this thesis, we construct two different sets of implied volatility indices for the US fixed-income market and analyze whether documented properties of equity-based volatility indices apply to fixed-income volatility indices. The first set of volatility indices, which are named interest rate volatility indices (IRVIXs), reflect the market expectations of volatility of short-term interest rates over both short- and long-term horizons (from one to ten years). To this end, we use the implied volatilities of caplets (floorlets) recovered from the implied volatility quotes of caps (floors). Based on IRVIXs, we investigate two stylized facts of equity-based volatility indices, namely, the negative correlation with the underlying asset and the presence of implied volatility spillovers across international equity markets. We find that IRVIXs are negatively correlated with the underlying forward interest rates and that there is evidence of implied volatility transmission not only across international equity markets but also across equity and fixed-income markets. The second set of fixed-income volatility indices that we develop in this thesis capture the market expected volatility of five-year and ten-year Treasury notes and 30-year Treasury bond futures over the remaining 30 days. These are named Treasury bond volatility indices (TBVIXs). We calculate TBVIXs based on the concept of the model-free implied variance derived by Britten-Jones and Neuberger (2000), which is closely related to the VIX formula. We employ the Treasury bond volatility indices to investigate whether two additional features of equity-based volatility indices which have been reported in the literature hold. On the one hand, we obtain that TBVIXs spike upward during unexpected market and global events such as the Kuwait invasion by Iraq or the more recent Lehman Brothers failure. On the other hand, we find evidence that TBVIXs fall following scheduled news announcements about macroeconomic fundamentals such as the nonfarm payrolls report or Federal Open Market Committee meetings. Thus, these findings are consistent with the empirical evidence from equity-based volatility indices. References: Britten-Jones, M. , Neuberger, A. , 2000. Option Prices, Implied Price Processes, and Stochastic Volatility. Journal of Finance 55, 839-866.