Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Firm size and wages

Jobs differ along many dimensions including firm size. The wage gap due to firm size of 35% is comparable to the gender wage gap of 36% for men over women and greater than the wage gap of 14% for whites over black employees. The size-wage premium is larger for men and varies across industries. It is larger in the US than in other industrialized countries. Large firms demand a higher quality of labor defined by such observable characteristics as education, job tenure, and a higher fraction of full-time workers. Part 3 examines three behavioral explanations. (1) Productive employees are matched with able entrepreneurs to minimize the sum of wages and monitoring costs. (2) Big firms pay efficiency wages to deter shirking. (3) Big firms adopt a discretionary wage policy to share rents, or in Slichter's words, "Wages over a considerable range reflect managerial discretion. When management can easily afford to pay high wages, they tend to do so. " We advance a productivity hypothesis. A large organization sets a higher performance standard that raises labor productivity but has to be supported by a compensating wage difference. In the service industries, the pace of work depends on the customer arrival rate. The economies of massed reserves generates a positive wage-size profile. The capital/labor ratio is higher in bigger firms which also are early in adopting new technologies. Both forces raise the demand for skilled labor where skill and productivity are often unobservable traits. Production organized around teams calls for conformance to common work rules which result in paying rents to infra-marginal team members. The odds of survival are higher for big firms which enable them to "produce" more durable employees who are more productive because they get more training. Firm size is a function of external market forces, technology, managerial decisions, and luck. The surplus of revenues over labor costs per employee is positively related to firm size for three reasons, lower prices for non-labor inputs, possibly greater market power, or larger overhead costs to amortize the sunk costs for capital and firm -specific work force. Rent sharing cannot be dismissed as an explanation for the wage-size premium. Taxation and regulation can also affect the size distribution of firms. The organization of work and the selection of employees (whose productive traits are not always observable) are responsible for the positive relation between wages and employer size.
Platform strategy of video game software in Japan, 1984–1994: theory and evidence

This paper analyzes a model of platform competition in markets of system products composed of hardware and complementary software, with a specific focus on exclusive contracting. When hardware products are strongly differentiated, or when consumers value the marginal benefit of additional software variety highly, we find that, in equilibrium, hardware firms will engage in exclusive contracting of software development. This finding is strongly supported by our empirical results in the Japanese home video game industry, dominated by Nintendo from 1984 to 1994. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Classifications and treatment responses in chronic immune-mediated demyelinating polyneuropathy

Background: Chronic immune-mediated demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIP) represents a heterogeneous pool of motor, sensory, sensorimotor, symmetric, or asymmetric syndromes. Objective: To evaluate published diagnostic classifications and characterize predictors of treatment response. Methods: One hundred two of 158 patients with a working diagnosis of CIP were included and clinically characterized because they had electrophysiologic and/or histologic evidence of demyelination. The biostatistical profile of patients with symmetric clinical manifestation was analyzed using three proposed classifications (American Academy of Neurology [AAN] criteria, modified AAN criteria, European Federation of Neurological Societies/Peripheral Nerve Society [EFNS/PNS] criteria). Treatment responses to IV immunoglobulins (IVIg) and their positive predictors were investigated. Results: Sensitivities (0.52 [AAN] vs 0.83 [modified AAN] vs 0.95 [EFNS/PNS]) and negative predictive values (0.68 vs 0.85 vs 0.92) differed markedly, whereas specificities (0.94 vs 0.90 vs 0.96) and positive predictive values (0.89 vs 0.89 vs 0.97) were similar. In CIP patients treated with IVIg, a positive response was found in 62 of 76 (82%). Patients with a monophasic or relapsing–remitting course or a more than twofold CSF protein increase had the highest probability to respond to IVIg, most evident when using the modified AAN criteria. Conclusions: The European Federation of Neurological Societies/Peripheral Nerve Society criteria for chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy improve treatment of patients with chronic immune-mediated demyelinating polyneuropathy, particularly with respect to diagnostic issues. To predict IV immunoglobulin treatment response, the modified American Academy of Neurology criteria are the most valuable classification provided an increased CSF protein level.
Highly Stable Amine Functionalized Iron Oxide Nanoparticles Designed for Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI)

Magnetic particle imaging (MPI) is a promising medical imaging technology that uses iron oxide nanoparticles (NPs) as clinically safe tracers. The core and hydrodynamic size of these NPs determine the signal intensity and spatial resolution in MPI, whilst their monodispersity when preserved during the biomedical applications, generates a consistently high quality MPI image. Using an effective process to coat the synthesized NPs with amine terminated PEG molecules, we show by dynamic light scattering (DLS) that they are water-soluble with long-term stability in biological media such as phosphate buffered saline (PBS) and sodium bicarbonate buffers and Dulbecco's modified Eagle medium (DMEM) enriched with 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS). Further, using magnetic particle spectroscopy (MPS), to measure the particle response function (PRF), defined as the derivative of the magnetization of the nanoparticles, we predict the MPI performance of these nanoparticles at a driving field frequency of 25 kHz. The MPS efficacy of the functionalized nanoparticles was also monitored over time, and both signal intensity and resolution remained unchanged even after seven days of incubation. This is attributed to the dominant contribution of the Néel relaxation mechanism of the monodisperse and highly stable nanoparticles, which was preserved through the incubation period.
Effectiveness and sustainability of water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions in combating diarrhoea

This paper presents a synthetic review of impact evaluations examining effectiveness of water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions in reducing diarrhoea among children. The evaluations were conducted in 35 low- and middle-income countries during the past three decades. The paper challenges the existing consensus that water treatment at point-of-use and hygiene interventions are necessarily the most effective and sustainable interventions for promoting reduction of diarrhoea. The analysis suggests that sanitation ‘hardware’ interventions are highly effective in reducing diarrhoea morbidity. Moreover, while there is a wealth of trials documenting the effectiveness of water treatment interventions, studies conducted over longer periods tend to show smaller effectiveness and evidence suggests compliance rates and therefore impact may fall markedly over time.
Performance Budgeting: Managing the Reform Process

This paper examines the process of budget system reform involved in moving from traditional centralized input-oriented systems to more modern devolved performance-based systems, focusing on the constraint of limited managerial capacity. The latter is identified both as that required to operate the new system, but perhaps more important, as the change management skills required to engineer the move from one budget system to another. Based on the experience of countries that have attempted this reform, the paper identifies the principal elements of a successful change management strategy, and the lessons learned for other countries embarking on similar reforms.
[The protective effects of ginkgolide B and hypoxic preconditioning against acute hypoxia injury in mice].

AIM To investigate the protective effects of ginkgolide B and hypoxic preconditioning against acute hypoxia injury in mice. METHODS Ordinary pressure acute hypoxia model in mice was adopted to observe the ethology, the duration of the death and the degree of brain edema. Meanwhile the expression of RTP801 mRNA and erythropoietin (EPO) were measured by RT-PCR and Western blot, respectively. RESULTS Ginkgolide B and hypoxic preconditioning could both prolong the survival time of hypoxia under ordinary pressure,and significantly decreased the degree of brain edema. Besides ginkgolide B and hypoxic preconditioning could both up-regulate the expression of RTP801mRNA and EPO. CONCLUSION Ginkgolide B has the similar effect to hypoxic preconditioning against acute hypoxia. Both of these protective effects may be associated with the up-regulation of the expression of RTP801 mRNA and EPO.
Failure detection in converter fed induction machines under different operation conditions

This paper focuses on the experimental investigation of methods for the detection of stator faults in cage rotor induction machines fed by voltage source inverters (VSI). Three experimental investigations: unbalance in one stator phase, turn-to-turn fault in one phase and one stator phase open, have been performed to study the behavior of the electrical machine under these fault conditions. The work aims to provide further documentation for an advanced condition monitoring and detection system, by monitoring electrical quantities, in order to avoid undesirable operating conditions and to detect and diagnose electrical faults. A description of the measurement system including the data acquisition and processing is presented. Stator current signature, analysis of the space phasor of the stator current and of the instantaneous power as diagnostic techniques are considered
Olson The Economics of Terrestrial Invasive Species : A Review of the Literature 179 paper

This paper reviews the literature on the economics of invasive species management as it applies to invasive species in general and terrestrial invasive species in particular. The paper summarizes a number of recent studies that assign values to the economic impact of terrestrial invasive species on a national scale. This is followed by a review of the economic literature on control and prevention of a biological invasion and the literature on international trade and trade policy with invasive species. The paper then reviews selected studies on terrestrial invasive plants, animals, and microbes, respectively.
Automatic EMI Measurement and Filter Design System for Telecom Power Supplies

Tests for compliance with conducted emission limits are usually carried out during the electrical product design process. Electromagnetic interference (EMI) filters are widely used for filtering excessive conducted emissions on a power cord. In this paper, a personal computer (PC)-based automatic EMI measurement and filter design system for telecom power supplies is proposed. The common-mode (CM) and differential-mode (DM) emissions in the live or the neutral line can be measured and recorded separately. The trial-and-error guesswork in selecting the filter components can be minimized by the proposed automatic filter design system. In other words, the EMI suppression effort is greatly reduced by the fast PC computing speed and the man-machine interface. The developed system can be an effective noise diagnosis and filter design tool for EMI engineers.
Quadratic Arch Models

We introduce a new model for time-varying conditional variances as the most general quadratic version possible within the ARCH class. Hence, it encompasses all the existing restricted quadratic variance functions. Its properties are very similar to those of GARCH models, but avoids some of their criticisms. In univariate applications to daily U.S. and monthly U.K. stock market returns, QARCH adequately represents volatility and risk premia. QARCH is easy to incorporate in multivariate models to capture dynamic asymmetries that GARCH rules out. Such asymmetries are found in an empirical application of a conditional factor model to 26 U.K. sectorial stock returns.
Exome Sequencing by Targeted Enrichment

This unit describes methods for targeted enrichment of the exon‐coding portions of the genome using Agilent SureSelect Human All Exon 50 Mb and Roche Nimblegen SeqCap EZ Exome platforms. Each platform targets and enriches a large overlapping portion of the greater human exome. The protocols here describe the biochemical procedures used to enrich exomic DNA with each platform, including recommended modifications to the manufacturers' protocols. In addition, a brief description of the sequencing protocol and estimation of the needed amount of sequencing for each platform is included. Finally, a detailed analytical pipeline for processing the subsequent data is described. These protocols focus specifically on human exome sequencing platforms, but can be applied with some modification to other organisms and targeted enrichment approaches. Curr. Protoc. Mol. Biol. 102:7.12. 1–7.12. 21. © 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Linking Managerial Behaviour to Cost and Profit Efficiency in the Banking Sectors of Central and Eastern European Countries

This paper analyzes cost and profit efficiency level and the managerial behavior of banks in nine Central and Eastern European countries (the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia), providing cross-country and time series evidence on the period 1995-2002. A stochastic frontier analysis based on a Fourier flexible form indicates a generally low level of cost efficiency and an even lower level of profit efficiency. However, we also find significant differences among countries and some evidence of an increasing tendency over time in profit efficiency and, to an even stronger extent, in cost efficiency. Cost and profit efficiency scores are negatively correlated both on a country wide as well as on a bank by bank basis. Furthermore, instead of just looking at the determinants of cost and profit efficiency (e.g. asset quality, problem loans and risk), we test several hypotheses of managerial behavior using the Granger causality approach based on the intertemporal relation between bank efficiency, capitalization and problem loans, as proposed by Berger and DeYoung (1997). Even though a static analysis shows a negative correlation between problem loan and efficiency, we find no evidence of bad management hypothesis. Results provide evidence for the bad luck hypothesis suggesting the exogeneity of bad loans triggering inefficiency.
Magnification to avoid medication errors

Medication errors are the most common errors harming at least 1.5 million people every year. [1,2] Medication errors were estimated to account for 7000 deaths in the USA in 1993. [3] The reasons for misidentification of a drug can be - look alike/sound alike drugs, syringe swap, confusing, inaccurate, or incomplete drug labels, small print, damaged labels, poor background colour, etc.[2] Cognitive impairment with small prints increases with age. Forty percent of young adults and 96% of older adults reported need for glasses. With this in mind, we decided to study the accuracy of drug label identification by staff in operating theatres and Intensive Care Units (ICU).
Bullwhip effect model and analysis of a supplementary product in supply chains

The story of "Walmart Nappies and Beer" inspires researches to find the potential relationship between a focal product (or item/SKU) and some other products (we call supplementary products here) in a supply chain. How to reflect the dependent demand relationship between a supplementary product and a focal product is significant for supply chain management and operations management. This paper investigates the bullwhip effect of a supplementary product in a two echelon (wholesale-supplier) serial supply chain. With the assumption of a first-order autoregressive demand process of the focal product and order-up-to (OUT) inventory policy, the analytical quantitative model of bullwhip effect for the supplementary product is established based on the simple moving average. The deduced model is further compared with the model without the effect of focal products. The obtained managerial insights is that in order to reduce the bullwhip effect of a product in a supply chain, exploring and sharing the demand information about dependent products is a feasible way besides information sharing on various echelons.
Identification and Partial Characterization of an Unusual Distribution of the Photosensitizer meta‐Tetrahydroxyphenyl Chlorin (Temoporfin) in Human Plasma

Abstract— Temoporfin (m‐THPC) is an extremely powerful photosensitizing drug, more than 100‐fold more photocytotoxic than Photofrin and many other drugs. The reasons for this are not yet known but are likely to be associated with the mechanism of uptake of the drug and its intratumoral and intracellular localization. Uptake itself is likely to be dependent upon the plasma binding of the drug following administration. In the current work, we have shown that the addition of m‐THPC to human plasma in vitro at clinically relevant doses of sensitizer and administration solvent (diluant) gives rise to a protein‐binding pattern quite different to that of Photofrin and other hydrophobic drugs as judged by density‐gradient ultra centrifugation. Analysis of the binding immediately after addition to human plasma has shown that lipoprotein binding accounts for only a minor proportion of the sensitizer, which is mainly associated with a high‐density protein fraction that is not coincident with serum albumin. The m‐THPC protein complex does not fluoresce significantly even on dilution. This binding pattern is highly dependent on administration conditions and storage. Over a period of 6–8 h at 37°C the m‐THPC that is associated with this unidentified fraction redistributes to the plasma lipoproteins. Plasma collected from rats after intravenous administration of m‐THPC also contains this low fluorescent complex, showing that this phenomenon is not limited to human plasma and also occurs in vivo. It is postulated that the m‐THPC bound to the unknown protein fraction is highly aggregated and that it is likely to be taken up into tissues in this form. This unusual uptake may possibly be associated with the very high activity of m‐THPC and also to the recent finding of a second peak in the plasma pharmacokinetics of the drug.
Huge gastrointestinal stromal tumor with peritoneal metastasis : a case report

A 66-year-old male with aggravating abdominal discomfort was admitted to Wujin Hospital Affiliated to Jiangsu University (Changzhou, China). An enhanced abdominal computed tomography scans demonstrated a large low-density region featuring an unclear border with uneven density on the left side of the abdominal cavity. The level of tumor marker carbohydrate antigen 125 was 437.90 U/ml exceeding the norm for 12 times. An exploratory laparotomy under general anesthesia was performed and revealed a huge, soft, uneven tumor that almost filled half the abdominal cavity. The whole tumor, a fraction of the greater curvature of stomach, tail of pancreas and the spleen were resected together. No evidence of liver metastasis, lymphadenopathy. But peritoneal metastasis and mesenteric metastasis were found. The tumor measured approximately 35 cm×29 cm×10 cm in diameter and weighed 6.8 kg. Histopathological examination of the resected specimen revealed a stromal cell neoplasm with a mitotic count of more than 10 mitoses per 50 high power fields. Immunohistochemical study indicated that the tumor cells were positive for CD117, DoG-1, CD34, CD50 and Ki-67 (20%). The final diagnosis was gastric gastrointestinal stromal tumor. The patient recovered well after surgery.
miR-146a and miR-155 expression in PBMCs from patients with Sjögren's syndrome.

BACKGROUND An increasing number of studies have revealed that microRNA (miRNA) contributes to the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases. The objective of this study is to investigate the miR-146a and miR-155 levels in peripheral mononuclear blood cells from patients with primary Sjögren's syndrome (pSS) who were not receiving medications and to examine the correlations between these miRNA levels and the clinical features of the disease. METHOD Using real-time polymerase chain reaction analysis of miRNAs, the miR-146a and miR-155 expression levels were assessed in peripheral mononuclear blood cells from 27 patients with pSS and 22 healthy controls, and the relationships between these miRNA levels and the visual analog scale (VAS) scores for dry mouth, dry eyes, and parotid gland swelling were investigated. RESULTS Compared with the healthy controls, the miR-146a expression level was significantly increased in the patients with pSS (P = 0.0182) and was positively correlated with the VAS scores for parotid swelling (r = 0.4475, P = 0.0192) and dry eyes (r = 0.4051, P = 0.0361). Although the miR-155 expression level was significantly decreased in the patients with pSS (P = 0.0131), the miR-155 expression positively correlated with the VAS score for dry eyes (r = 0.4894, P = 0.0096). CONCLUSION Our results demonstrated miR-146a overexpression and miR-155 underexpression in the peripheral mononuclear blood cells of the patients with pSS. Furthermore, the expression levels of these miRNAs correlated with the patients' clinical features. Our data suggest that miR-146a and miR-155 might play important roles in the pathogenesis of pSS and that their expression levels may be useful for diagnosing pSS and for predicting disease activity and therapeutic responses.
Validation of radio frequency telemetry concept in the presence of biological tissue-like stratified media

We discuss a novel radio frequency (RF) telemetry concept for biomedical applications. The concept consists of a miniaturized spiral inductor/antenna for bio-MEMS sensors and an external pick-up antenna integrated into a hand-held device. The measured relative signal strength in the presence of biological phantoms ranged from -5.9 to -7.5 dB for antenna separations of 5 and 10 cm. These relative signal strengths are easily measurable, therefore validating the RF telemetry concept for biomedical applications.
Analytics of the Technology Transfer Cost Issue

An increasingly important issue of trade and development is the high cost of the transfer of technology from the developed countries to the developing world. Rough estimates suggest that payments by developing countries for the use of patents, licenses, trademarks, and managerial and technical services amounted to about $1.5 billion in 1968 [19]. For Pakistan, the issue is of particular importance. l Based on conservative estimates by Mahbub ul Haq, Pakistan's annual payments for technology transfer in 1965-70 averaged $102 million; this magnitude-again reflecting payments for the use of patented knowledge and technical services only-represents a payment rate of almost 16 percent of annual export receipts r19]. If other costs such as profit repatriation and transfer pricing are included, the payment rate is substantially higher.