Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Industrialization, Fossil Fuels, and the Transformation of Land Use

Human‐induced changes in global stocks and flows of carbon are major drivers of global climate change. This article presents a comprehensive and systemic account of a nation's carbon budget, comprising socioeconomic as well as ecological carbon flows in a historic time series. The example of Austria 1830–2000, for which excellent databases facilitate a comprehensive assessment, suggests that changes in socioeconomic metabolism during the agrarian−industrial transition are intimately linked with changes in land use and natural carbon flows. In the preindustrial agrarian colonization of Austria (during the thousands of years before 1830), a huge amount of carbon was released due to the expansion of agricultural land. At the dawn of Austria's industrialization (1830–1880), this process was terminated, and carbon inflows and outflows of ecosystems were approximately balanced. With rising fossil fuel consumption, Austria's socioeconomic system added growing amounts of carbon to the atmosphere each year. At the same time, fossil‐fuel‐powered surges in the productivity of agro‐ecosystems facilitated the production of growing amounts of agricultural biomass on shrinking agricultural areas. This greatly enhanced ecological carbon flows and, together with decreasing pressures on forests, allowed ecosystems to recover from past depletion and absorb increasing amounts of carbon. The systematic interlinkage between the socioeconomic energy system and carbon flows in ecosystems, as documented in this study, underlines the need for comprehensive and consistent analyses of society−nature interaction to develop monitoring tools and support strategies aimed at a more sustainable future.
An Evaluation of the Morphologic Features of Low-grade Mucinous Neoplasms of the Appendix Metastatic in the Ovary, and Comparison With Primary Ovarian Mucinous Tumors

It may be difficult to distinguish ovarian involvement by a low-grade appendiceal mucinous neoplasm (LAMN) from a primary gastrointestinal-type primary borderline (proliferative) ovarian tumor (IBMT) or an ovarian mucinous tumor arising within a teratoma, particularly when the latter is associated with mucinous ascites/pseudomyxoma peritonei. We noted that LAMNs involving the ovaries show 2 distinctive histologic features, “scalloped” glands and subepthelial stromal clefts, whereas IBMTs more often are associated with reactive cellular stroma and histiocyte aggregates (mucin granulomas). The frequency of these features was investigated in 18 LAMNs (16 with pseudomyxoma peritonei), 18 primary IBMTs, and 6 teratoma-associated mucinous tumors (selected on the basis of associated pseudomyxoma peritonei). Scalloped glands and subepithelial clefts were identified in 17 and 16 LAMNs, respectively, and in 3 and 7 IBMTs, respectively. Conversely, reactive stroma and histiocyte aggregates were present in 2 and 0 LAMNs, respectively, and in 11 and 10 IBMTs, respectively. LAMNs were often bilateral (12/18 cases) and they more frequently showed mucin dissection of the ovarian stroma and tall mucin-rich (hypermucinous) epithelial cells compared with IBMTs. Our findings suggest that scalloped glands, subepithelial clefts, cellular stroma, and histiocyte aggregates may be useful additional morphologic parameters to help distinguish these tumor types. However, teratoma-associated mucinous neoplasms can show identical histologic features to those of LAMNs involving the ovary, and therefore accurate diagnosis of such cases requires careful macroscopic and microscopic examinations of the ovaries together with complete histologic assessment of the appendix.
Self-Selection and Monitoring in Dynamic Incentive Problems with Incomplete Contracts

A dynamic trading problem is examined in which a monopsonistic employer tries to hire workers whose productivities and reservation wages are private information. The employer can only observe an employee's quality indirectly by monitoring a non-verifiable measure of on-the-job performance. The employer makes contract offers which employees can accept or reject. Once a contract has been accepted it is impossible for the employer to exchange messages with individual employees. On the unique stationary equilibrium path for the contracting game, the employer chooses between two mutually exclusive outcomes. In the market outcome, the employer offers long-term contracts and information is conveyed entirely through self-selection and delayed production. In the monitoring outcome, the employer offers short-term contracts, and contract renegotiation is conditioned by an employee's past performance. A simple characterization theorem is provided which illustrates the often surprising effects of improvements in information in this setting. For example, an employer who is initially offering short-term contracts to exploit performance information may stop monitoring and shift to market screening when the monitoring technology becomes more informative.
Arthroscopic Treatment of the Painful “Internal” Snapping Hip

Background Traditional surgical treatment for a painful snapping iliopsoas tendon has been an open lengthening of the tendon. Hypothesis An endoscopic release will alleviate painful snapping of the tendon. Study Design Case series; Level of evidence, 4. Methods Six patients with painful snapping hips who had no pain relief after magnetic resonance arthrography, which included injection of bupivacaine into the hip joint, subsequently had an ultrasound evaluation of their iliopsoas tendons and an anesthetic injection into the psoas bursa. In all 6 patients, the injection relieved their hip pain, and in 4, real-time imaging demonstrated snapping of the tendon. All hips were evaluated with the 100-point Harris hip scoring system before and at 1.5, 3, 6, and 12 months after surgery. Results Preoperative hip scores averaged 58 points. After surgery, all patients had hip flexor weakness, used crutches for 5 weeks, and had 6-week scores that averaged 62 points. The patients continued to improve, and at 6 and 12 months, their scores averaged 90 and 96 points, respectively, and none had recurrence of their snapping or pain. Conclusion Ultrasound-guided anesthetic injection of the psoas bursa is useful to confirm snapping of the iliopsoas tendon as the cause of a patient's hip pain. Endoscopic release of the tendon is a safe outpatient procedure that provides effective relief of the snapping and pain.
Crystal structure of a CAP-DNA complex: the DNA is bent by 90 degrees

The 3 angstrom resolution crystal structure of the Escherichia coli catabolite gene activator protein (CAP) complexed with a 30-base pair DNA sequence shows that the DNA is bent by 90 degrees. This bend results almost entirely from two 40 degrees kinks that occur between TG/CA base pairs at positions 5 and 6 on each side of the dyad axis of the complex. DNA sequence discrimination by CAP derives both from sequence-dependent distortion of the DNA helix and from direct hydrogen-bonding interactions between three protein side chains and the exposed edges of three base pairs in the major groove of the DNA. The structure of this transcription factor--DNA complex provides insights into possible mechanisms of transcription activation.
Are bilateral real exchange rates stationary? Evidence from Lagrange multiplier unit root tests for India

The paper examines the stationarity of India's real exchange rate vis-à-vis 16 of its major trading partner countries for the period 1960–2000. Application of the conventional ADF unit root test, the Lagrange multiplier (LM) unit root test with one structural break, and the LM unit root test with two structural breaks provides evidence that India's exchange rate vis-à-vis 15 out of 16 countries is stationary, implying support for purchasing power parity.
Are soft practices important for quality improvement

This study examines the influence of six selected soft practices (management commitment, employee empowerment, training, reward and recognition, customer focus, and supplier management) on quality improvement (QI) within 255 Malaysian electrical and electronics (E&E) firms. It uses regression and correlation analysis to test these relationships. The results reveal that management commitment, employee empowerment, training, reward and recognition, customer focus, and supplier management are significantly and positively associated with QI in the firms studied. Also employee empowerment was perceived as the dominant soft practice for QI. Employee empowerment is associated with significant increases in QI. This study contributes to a better understanding of the influence of soft practices on organisational QI among firms within the context of the Malaysian E&E sector. Suggestions for future research are discussed.
Fishing and Selling

CONSUMERS are a lot like fish, out there waiting to be hooked. Like most images, this one is a caricature of reality. The choice and search effort of consumers is suppressed in order to explore the implications of selling activity by manufacturers and retailers. In particular, the fishing analogy suggests that there is a tendency toward excessive selling activity if sellers do not take into account the effects of their activity on the costs of their rivals. However, sellers, like fishermen, have an incentive to arrange their affairs to mitigate the dissipation of rents. This argument is developed in Section I. The conclusion that sellers might overspend on selling activity appears inconsistent with the observation that increased advertising frequently results in lower consumer prices; however, it is not. The apparent paradox is resolved in Section II. In Section III, some speculations on the relationship between marketing and the destruction of social capital are put forth.
‘Dynamic Equilibrium’ with Constant Wages: J. S. Mill's Malthusian Analysis of the Secular Wage Path

SUMMARY According to Malthusian growth theory the wage rate may be maintained constant on the path to the stationary state, at a level above ‘subsistence’ by appropriate reductions in the population growth rate. In this paper we document J. S. MILL'S version of the Malthusian model and various applications thereof. ZISAMMEMFASSIMG Nach der Wachstumstheorie von MALTHUS kann die Lohnrate bei angemessener Reduktion der Wachstumsrate der Bevolkerung uber dem ≪Existenzminimum≫ gehalten werden. In dem vorliegenden Artikel wird J. S. MILLS Version des Malthusianischen Modelles dargestellt und verschiedene Anwendungen erlatert. RESUME Maintenir le taux de salaire invariable au-dessus de la ≪subsistence≫ exige, d'apres la theorie malthusienne de la croissance, l'exercise du controle prudentiel de la population. Nous demontrons ici la version du modele malthusien presente par JOHN STUART MILL et certaines applications qu'il a faites.
ON SKEW-NORMAL APPROXIMATION OF A BINOMIAL DISTRIBUTION

Approximating a binomial distribution by a suitable normal distribution is a well known practice, and widely discussed in introductory level statistics books. Recently it has been shown (in Chang et al. (2008)) that the skew-normal distributions can provide a far better approximation than the normal ones. This article revisits the approximation issue and other related inferential aspects. Though we are restricting ourselves here in binomial distribution only, our investigation shows that the same patterns hold good for Poisson, negative binomial and hypergeometric distributions as well.
A novel storage scheme for parallel turbo decoder

In this paper we discuss a novel storage scheme for simultaneous memory access in parallel turbo decoder. The new scheme borrows its idea from vertex coloring in graph theory. Compared to similar method which also uses un-natural order in storage(2), our scheme requires more memory blocks but allows a simpler configuration method when code length changes, which can be implemented on-chip. The major bottleneck of our scheme is interconnection (3) since it doesn't put any constraint on interleaver. However, experiment shows, for a moderate decoding throughput(40~50M bits/sec), the hardware cost is still affordable with 3GPP's interleaver(4), 5 iterations and 80~100MHz system clock. Keywords-parallel turbo decoding; vertex coloring; I. MEMORY MULIPLE ACCESS PROBLEM During FPGA implementation of turbo decoder, a substantial amount of memory is assigned to store channel information and extrinsic information. A decoder using parallel MAP algorithm contains multiple soft-input-soft-output modules (SISO) (1), so parallel access to these storages is required. When translated into hardware design it means that data required by different SISOs at the same time must not be stored in the same RAM block. Fig.1(a)(b) illustrates memory access during one iteration in turbo decoding, which is conceptually divided into 2 phases: (a) decoding against the 1 st component code, and (b) decoding against the 2 nd component code. During each phase, the trellis of the component code is divided into three segments, each taken cared of by one SISO module. Suppose we avoid memory access contention in the 1 st
Does financial sector development cause investment and growth? empirical analysis of the case of Ghana

This article examines whether financial sector development has ‘caused’ economic growth and investment in Ghana between 1970 and 2007. As a proxy for financial sector development we use credit to private sector as per cent of GDP, bank liquid reserve – asset ratio and liquid liability as a per cent of GDP. We use GDP growth as a proxy for economic growth and real domestic investment for investment growth. The dynamic interactions between the growth of real Per capita Gross Domestic Product, real domestic investment and indicators of financial sector development are investigated using the concept of Granger Causality after testing for cointegration using Johansen techniques. The empirical results obtained by the Johansen method suggest the existence of a stable long-run relationship between growth rate and financial sector development indicators identified in the study. The same is true for investment growth. However, with the exception of credit to private sector where the causality runs from economic growth only, we find bidirectional causality between economic growth and financial sector development indicators. For investment growth, the causality runs from investment growth to financial sector indicators except between investment growth and Liquid liability where bidirectional causality recorded. The article establishes that, in an overall sense, economic and investment have ‘caused’ financial sector development in Ghana
GMOs: The Economics of Consumer Food Safety Issues

The controversy over genetically modified (GM) foods has swept across Europe and is beginning to make inroads into the North American consumer market. It is set to become a thorny trade issue between the European Union (EU) and the United States. The issue is important, not least because of the potential scale of the problem. There has been a rapid adoption of GM crops by U.S. corn and soybean and Canadian canola producers. Approximately 57 percent of the U.S. soybean harvested acreage in 1999 was in herbicide-tolerant GM varieties (ERS). Soya is a staple in food processing, with approximately 60 percent of processed foods containing soya or soya derivatives. Canola is an important crop on the Canadian prairies. Although estimates vary, the percentage of canola seeded to GM varieties may have been 60 percent in 1999 (Western Producer, 1999). The entire canola industry has lost its access to the EU market because GM canola is not approved for entry to that market. This paper explores the nature and origins of the GM food safety concerns of consumers, assesses the problem within a theoretical frame work and discusses some public policy solutions.
Involvement of Actin Dephosphorylation in Germination of Physarum Sclerotium

Abstract The plasmodium of Physarum polycephalum grows without cytokinesis and shows an active cytoplasmic streaming under wet and nutritious conditions. It can undergo reversible differentiation into several types of dormancy to survive in adverse environments. Temperature change or osmotic stress leads to cytoplasmic division of the plasmodium into cells containing one or more nuclei: these form a macrocyst, the spherule. Desiccation also induces cell division of the plasmodium followed by formation of a sclerotium, a dormant body resistant to dry stress. More than half of the actin in a sclerotium is phosphorylated at a single site, threonine 203, resulting in loss of its ability to polymerize into actin filaments. In the present study, actin phosphorylation was found in the sclerotium but not in either the plasmodium or in the spherule. This result suggests that phosphorylation of sclerotium actin may be related to the mechanism associated with desiccation resistance rather than morphological changes through cell compartmentalization in the macrocyst formation. Moreover, dephosphorylation of the phosphorylated form of sclerotium actin began within 5 min after addition of water. Dephosphorylation was not affected by sucrose and sorbitol sugars, but was inhibited by ammonium bicarbonate, ammonium phosphate, sodium phosphate, NaCl, and KCl in a dose-dependent manner. On the other hand, in germination of the sclerotium there was measurable sensitivity to both carbohydrates and salts. Actin dephosphorylation seems to be one of the important processes in the early phase of sclerotium germination.
The Dynamic Effects of Aggregate Demand, Supply and Oil Price Shocks—A Comparative Study

This paper analyses the dynamic effects of aggregate demand, supply and oil price shocks on GDP and unemployment in Germany, Norway, the UK and the USA, and establishes the role of the different shocks in explaining output fluctuations over time. Symmetries of economic fluctuations across countries are also examined. The different shocks are identified by imposing dynamic restrictions on a structural vector autoregression model. For all countries except Norway, oil price shocks have significant negative effects on output. However, whereas the oil price shock in 1973–74 triggered off a global recession, the recession in the early 1980s was largely caused by other disturbances.
Hyaluronic acid and the cumulus extracellular matrix induce increases in intracellular calcium in macaque sperm via the plasma membrane protein PH-20

The hyaluronic acid (HA)-rich extracellular matrix (ECM) of the cumulus oophorus is known to facilitate fertilisation. It has been suggested that HA may enhance fertilisation in a number of species, and in macaque sperm, HA has been shown to increase the number of acrosome reactions that follow sperm binding to the zona pellucida. In this study, we investigated the effects of HA on intracellular Ca2+ in capacitated cynomolgus macaque sperm. Fluorometry studies using the intracellular Ca2+ indicator Fluo-3 showed that addition of 100 μg/ml of HA induced a rapid increase in intracellular Ca2+. This Ca2+ increase (approximately 2–3 times above basal levels) was inhibited by preincubation of sperm with Fab fragments of anti-recombinant PH-20 IgG. The frequency of acrosome reactions in sperm exposed to HA was not above control levels. A synthetic gel was prepared with similar viscosity to the cumulus and with HA trapped in its matrix. Video imaging of individual sperm was used to demonstrate that capacitated sperm swimming into the HA gel had increased intracellular Ca2+ levels. Preincubation of sperm with Fab fragments of anti-PH-20 IgG inhibited the increased intracellular Ca2+ levels induced by the HA gel. Sperm in control gel (no HA) did not show increased intracellular Ca2+, while sperm in gel containing anti-PH-20 IgG showed increased Ca2+ (positive control). Sperm loaded with Fluo-3 were allowed to interact with cynomologus macaque cumulus masses, and sperm within the cumulus ECM clearly showed increased intracellular Ca2+ that was inhibited when sperm were preincubated in anti-PH-20 Fab. Fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)-HA was found to bind to sperm over the acrosomal region, corresponding to PH-20 localisation, and this binding could be inhibited by preincubation of sperm with anti-PH-20 fragments. The results of this study show that HA increases intracellular Ca2+ in macaque sperm through interaction with plasma membrane PH-20. We propose that HA binding to plasma membrane PH-20 induces an aggregation of receptors that in turn results in intracellular signalling. As a result, sperm have higher basal CA2+ levels and are more responsive to induction of the acrosome reaction after binding to the zona pellucida.
Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment

Preface 1. How the Conservative Media Attack the Democratic Opposition 2. How the Conservative Opinion Media Defend Conservatism 3. Conservative Opinion Media: The Players 4. The Conservative Opinion Media as Opponents of Liberalism and Custodians of the Reagan Narrative 5. Effects of an Echo Chamber 6. Speaking to the Republican Base: An Analysis of Conservative Media's Audience 7. Vetting Candidates for Office 8. Stirring Emotion to Mobilize Engagement 9. Framing and Reframing the Mainstream Media 10. Engendering and Reinforcing Distrust of Mainstream Media 11. Defining and Defending an Insular Interpretive Community 12. Balkanization of Knowledge and Interpretation 13. Distortion and Polarization 14. Conclusion: Echo Chamber: Cause for Concern or Celebration? Afterward Notes Index
O modelo e-Score de previsão de falências para empresas de internet

Este estudo propoe um modelo de regressao logistica que estime a probabilidade do evento de falencia em empresas de Internet, isto e, as que sejam dependentes do e-business. Foram selecionadas 61 empresas norte-americanas e divididas em duas amostras: 25 empresas falidas, entre 1999 e 2001, e 36 nao-falidas, no mesmo periodo. Uma amostra de treinamento foi aleatoriamente selecionada para a determinacao das variaveis e dos parâmetros do modelo. A amostra de teste confirmou a alta acuracia do modelo, classificando corretamente 95,1% da amostra de 61 empresas, utilizando as demonstracoes financeiras anuais do ano anterior a falencia; e 88,1%, para demonstracoes de 2 anos antes do mesmo evento. Portanto, o Modelo e-Score demonstra ser bastante significante utilizando apenas tres variaveis, de 63 analisadas: (i) INT/TL: Interest Expense (Income) / Total Liabilities; (ii) RD e (iii) OCF/CL: Operating Cash Flow / Current Liabilities. As variaveis (i) e (iii) sao obtidas nas demonstracoes convencionais, enquanto (ii) e inovadora, indicando que uma empresa de Internet que investe em R&D por empregado possui maiores chances de sobreviver. Ja as que possuem Resultados Financeiros negativos altos e Fluxos de Caixa Operacionais baixos possuem menos chances de sobrevivencia.
Leveraged Buyouts and Insider Nontrading

This paper examines trading by corporate officers and directors ("insiders") in the 12 months prior to management buyouts (MBOs) and third-party leveraged buyouts (LBOs). The investigation is motivated by the widely held belief that, in a management buyout, the firm's managers exploit shareholders by acting on inside information not possessed by the shareholders. Specifically, insiders may increase their purchases of shares prior to a buyout either to subsequently sell at the higher post-announcement price or to reduce the number of shares that must be purchased at the buyout price to complete the transaction.