Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
After Neo-Liberalism?

Although the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank are often (rightly) associated with the diffusion of ideas and practices underpinning neo-liberal globalization, a closer examination of their policy discourses over the last decade suggests that they have clearly gone beyond the brute neo-liberal prescription of welfare cuts and structural adjustment. This shift is particularly evident in their advocacy of public investment in childcare/child development programs, as ‘investing in children’ has come to be seen as a critical component of the paradigm. Different versions of this discourse, however, reflect a greater or lesser break from neo-liberal canons. This article explores such differences as they appear in the way the OECD and the World Bank have framed the need for early childhood education and care/development (ECEC). Après le Néo-libéralisme? L’OECD, la Banque Mondiale et l’enfant Sauf que l’organisation de coopération et de développement économiques (OECD) et la banque mondiale sont souvent lié à la diffusion des idées et des pratiques de la mondialisation néo-libéral, un examen plus étroit de ses discours de politique pendant la dernière décennie, indique qu’ils ont vraiment dépassé la politique brute de néo-libéral pour les réductions des prestations d’aide sociale et de l’ajustement structurel. Ce bouleversement est particulièrement marqué dans ses recommandations des investissements public pour les programmes de garderie d’enfants et pour les programmes pour le développement de l’enfant. “Investir dans les enfants” est venu pour étre vu comme une part essentielle du paradigme. Les différentes versions du discours, cependant, indique d’une rupture générale des principes fondamentaux de néo-libéral. Cet article examine la variation dans les principes structuraux du OECD et la banque mondiale, comme discours sur les bénéfices sociaux de l’éducation et de l’accueil des jeunes enfants (anglais: ECEC). ¿Después del Neoliberalismo? La OCDE, el Banco Mundial y el Niño Aunque la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económico (la OCDE) y el Banco Mundial son asociados muchas veces (y con razón) con la difusión de ideas y prácticas que sostienen la globalización neoliberal, un examen riguroso de sus discursos de política durante la última década indica que se han distanciado de la fórmula bruta neoliberal de recortes de asistencia social y modificación estructural. Este cam-bio se ve especialmente en su defensa de la inversión pública en los programas de desarrollo infantil, y el concepto de “invertir en los niños” forma un componente muy importante del paradigma. Sin embargo, distintas versiones de este discurso reflejan una mayor o menor ruptura con los cánones neoliberales. El presente documento examina estas diferencias como aparecen en la manera en que la OCDE y el Banco Mundial han formulado la necesidad de la educación y el cuidado/desarrollo de la primera infancia (ECEC).
Interaction between the Spinal Melanocortin and Opioid Systems in a Rat Model of Neuropathic Pain

Background The authors recently demonstrated that administration of the melanocortin-4 receptor antagonist SHU9119 decreased neuropathic pain symptoms in rats with a sciatic chronic constriction injury. The authors hypothesised that there is a balance between tonic pronociceptive effects of the spinal melanocortin system and tonic antinociceptive effects of the spinal opioid system. Therefore, they investigated a possible interaction between these two systems and tested whether opioid effectiveness could be increased through modulation of the spinal melanocortin system activity. Methods In chronic constriction injury rats, melanocortin and opioid receptor ligands were administered through a lumbar spinal catheter, and their effects on mechanical allodynia were assessed by von Frey probing. Results Naloxone (10–100 &mgr;g) dose-dependently increased allodynia (percent of maximum possible effect of −67 ± 9%), which is in agreement with a tonic antinociceptive effect of the opioid system. SHU9119 decreased allodynia (percent of maximum possible effect of 60 ± 13%), and this effect could be blocked by a low dose of naloxone (0.1 &mgr;g), which by itself had no effect on withdrawal thresholds. Morphine (1–10 &mgr;g) dose-dependently decreased allodynia (percent of maximum possible effect of 73 ± 14% with the highest dose tested). When 0.5 &mgr;g SHU9119 (percent of maximum possible effect of 47 ± 14%) was given 15 min before morphine, there was an additive antiallodynic effect of both compounds. Conclusions Together, these data confirm that there is an interaction between the spinal melanocortin and opioid systems and that combined treatment with melanocortin-4 receptor antagonists and opioids might possibly contribute to the treatment of neuropathic pain.
The natural history of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis: A follow‐up study of forty‐two patients for up to 21 years

Forty‐two patients with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis were followed for a median of 4.5 yr (range = 1.5 to 21.5 yr). Except for two patients with lipodystrophy, all were obeser; 35 o f42 were women, 26 of 32 were hyperlipidemic and 15 were hyperglycemic. Upper abdominal pain was the most common reason for presentation. Inital liver biopsy specimens showed the presence of macrovesicular fatty infiltration, lobular (acinar) inflammation, apoptosis, Mallory bodies (in four cases) and fibrosis (in 18 cases). Cirrhosis was present at initial diagnosis in one subject and in another two subjects liver biopsy showed marked and in another two subjects liver biopsy showed marked fibrosis with distured architecture. Serial liver biopsy specimens revealed minimal or no apparent progression of the disorder in most of the patients, in keeping with their benign clinical course. However, one patient showed progression from fibrosis to cirrhosis during the 5‐yr observation period, and in the patients with extensive fibrosis the the liver disease evolved from one of active inflammation to one of inactive cirrhosis without fat or inflammation. The patient with cirrhosis later died of hepatocellular carcinoma. The severity or type of hepatic change did not correlate with the degree of obesity, hyperlipidemia or hyperglycemia. However, in individual patients, poorly controlled diabetes and rapid weight loss preceded the onset of steatohepatitis.
The costs and benefits of early-stage business tax credits: a case study of two US states

Tax credits for investment in early stage business are a common policy measure aimed at fostering innovation and entrepreneurship. Although credits can theoretically play an important role in offsetting risk and boosting early-stage investment, there are few empirical findings to back the theory. This paper adds to the debate by looking at two US tax credit programs: those of Maryland and Wisconsin. The net economic impact of these states' programs is estimated using the regional input–output modeling system (RIMS II).
Market Integration of Fish in Europe

"This paper examines market integration between fish species in Europe, taking international market integration into account. Based on Juselius (2006), market integration is found both on the fresh and frozen markets. The Law of One Price is in force on the fresh market within the segments of flatfish and pelagic fish. Assuming transitivity, a loose form of market integration is identified between 13 fresh and seven frozen fish species, and the relative prices are found fairly stable. The policy implication is that catch limitation measures implemented through the Common Fisheries Policy have limited and conditional effects on prices, because of the large size of the market and varying market integration. Therefore, many fishermen are not 'compensated' by price increases as a result of catch limitation measures. " Copyright (c) 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation (c) 2009 The Agricultural Economics Society.
Sodium Reduction in Processed Foods in Brazil: Analysis of Food Categories and Voluntary Targets from 2011 to 2017

Non-communicable diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, are responsible for over 70% of deaths in Brazil. Currently, over 25% of Brazilian adults are diagnosed as hypertensive; overall, current dietary sodium intake in Brazil (4700 mg/person) is over twice the international recommendations, and 70–90% of adolescents and adults consume excessive sodium. National sodium reduction strategies consider the main dietary sources of sodium to be added salt to foods, foods consumed outside of the household, and sodium in processed foods. The national voluntary strategy for sodium reduction in priority food categories has been continuously monitored over a 6-year period (2011–2017) and there was a significant 8–34% reduction in the average sodium content of over half food categories. Different food categories have undergone differing reductions in sodium over time, aiding gradual biannual targets to allow industries to develop new technologies and consumers to adapt to foods with less salt. By 2017, most products of all food categories had met the regional targets proposed by the Pan American Health Organization, showing that voluntary sodium reduction strategies can potentially contribute to food reformulation. Nevertheless, regulatory approaches may still be necessary in the future in order to reach all food producers and to allow stronger enforcement to meet more stringent regional targets.
Robust Visual Tracking via Sparse Representation Under Subclass Discriminant Constraint

In this paper, we propose a method for visual tracking based on local sparse representation. Image patches from the object and the background are split into image blocks to construct local representations. Within the subclass discriminant framework, a discriminative subspace is learned to distinguish the object image blocks from the background image blocks while preserving their multimodal structure. A dictionary is constructed using the centers of the object subclasses. With this dictionary, sparse coding is implemented on the projected vectors corresponding to the image blocks, and the sparse coefficients are concatenated to obtain a local sparse code as the feature that represents the image patch. Considering the subclass discriminant constraint and the sparsity constraint imposed on the sparse coding, the subspace learning and sparse representation problems are converted into a joint optimization problem with respect to a transformation matrix and sparse coefficients. To enhance the tracking accuracy, two dictionaries are devised, one to incorporate the original observations of the target and the other to incorporate the latest observations, thereby providing two templates to characterize the appearance of the target. Histogram intersection over the local sparse codes provides an evaluation of the confidence. Finally, the candidate with the maximal confidence is selected as the object image patch. Compared with several state-of-the-art algorithms, our method demonstrates a superior performance when applied to challenging sequences.
Factor Models Under Firm Characteristics in Emerging Markets: A Study of Taiwan Stock Returns

Fama and French (1993) propose a three-factor model to describe the stock return behavior. However, it is challenged that stock returns are determined by firm characteristics rather than certain common factors. We are curious if a factor-based model with more factors can mitigate the effects of firm characteristics on stock returns. Our results show that the factor-based models are significant but not sufficient for the stock returns in Taiwan. Size or book-to-market ratio alone cannot influence the stock returns under a factor-based model. However, size along with book-to-market is significant under a factor-based model. Furthermore, the risk characteristics are more influential than the factor loading in the behaviors of stock returns. We conclude that either factor-based models or firm characteristics alone cannot fully explain the stock return behaviors in Taiwan Stock Exchange. Employing only factor-based model or only risk characteristics will lose some important contents in the stock returns.
Fine structural morphology of identified X- and Y-cells in the cat's lateral geniculate nucleus

Four physiologically identified neurons in the A laminae of the cat’s dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus were filled with horseradish peroxidase and studied using the electron microscope. Two were X-cells and two were Y-cells. Each had electrophysiological properties appropriate for its X- or Y-cell class, and each also had an axon that projected into the optic radiation, indicative of a geniculocortical relay cell. Representative samples from about 10% of each neuron’s entire dendritic arbor (proximal and distal) were taken to obtain an estimate of the types and distributions of synapses contacting these arbors. One X-cell had a cytoplasmic laminar body, but there were no other significant cytological differences seen among the neurons. Common to each of the neurons were the following synaptic features: (i) retinal terminals (r. l. p.) were mostly or entirely restricted to proximal dendrites or dendritic appendages (< 100 μm from the soma). These terminals constituted about 15-25% of the synapses on the proximal dendrites, (ii) Terminals with flattened or pleomorphic synaptic vesicles (f. terminals) were predominant on the proximal dendrites (30-55% of the total synapses for that region) and were mainly located near the retinal terminals. A smaller percentage (10-20%) were also distributed onto the distal dendrites, (iii) Small terminals with round synaptic vesicles (r. s. d.), many presumably having a cortical origin, predominated (60-80%) on distal dendrites (> 100 μm), but also formed a large proportion (40-70%) of the synapses on the intermediate (50-150 μm) dendrites. Total synaptic contacts for one X-cell and one Y-cell were estimated at about 4000 and 5000, respectively. The major fine structural differences observed between X- and Y-cells were almost entirely related to the retinal afferents. First, the retinal synapses for X-cells were mostly made on to dendritic appendages (spines, etc.), whereas Y-cells had most of their retinal synapses onto the shafts of primary and proximal secondary dendrites (that is, near branch points). Second, the retinal terminals that contacted X-cell dendrites nearly always formed triadic arrangements that included nearby f. terminals, but those on Y-cells rarely did so. Finally, the main type of f. terminals associated with X-cells were morphologically different from most of those associated with the Y-cells, and this also related directly to the triadic arrangements; that is, f. terminals in the triadic arrangements were morphologically distinguishable from f. terminals that did not participate in triadic arrangements. Even though the present sample is quite small, these morphological differences between X- and Y-cells indicate that they might be the synaptic basis for some of the differential processing of information occurring for the two cell types in the lateral geniculate nucleus.
The transmission of shocks among S&P indexes

Financial market participants pay particular attention to the behaviour of equity indexes due, in part, to the popularity of index investing and the reliance on market and sector indexes to evaluate managed portfolios. Five major S&P stock indexes are examined to determine their interrelationships and how shocks to one index are transmitted to the others. The paper employs the newly developed technique of generalized forecast error variance decomposition [Koop et al. (1996); Pesaran and Shin (1998)]. Unlike the traditional orthogonalized decomposition, the generalized version is invariant to the ordering of the variables in the underlying vector autoregression. The results provide important information about the transmission of shocks among these indexes.
International diversification among the capital markets of the EEC

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the economic rationality of international diversification in stock markets. The VAR methodology is used to detect significant interrelations among stock markets, as well as the transmission mechanism of information flows among markets. The results show a high degree of correlation among markets and a similar pattern in the transmission of information, specially among EEC markets. Therefore, international diversification does not allow for the reduction of risk without sacrificing expected profitability. Having said that, it makes more sense to take advantage of information provided by the New York market, which is the leader market and to take stock positions before this information is incorporated into the price of the stock.
An Analysis of Competing Agricultural Land Uses

Several alternative government programs have been used in the past to achieve policy objectives related to the levels of crop acreage and net farm income. Important questions remain relating to the effectiveness of past programs in achieving selected policy objectives. In particular, what is the relative effectiveness of long-term versus short-term acreage diversion programs? One of the major impacts of government diversion programs is in the allocation of land among competing uses. Several studies (Brandow and Learn; Christensen and Aines; Hathaway) indicate that the use of acreage control on single crops rather than on all crops results in less than proportionate reduction in output from a given reduction in acreage. However, only limited information is available on the interrelationships among major competing uses of crop, pasture, and privately owned forest acreage. Studies of these interrelationships (e.g. Dideriksen et al. and Zeimetz et al.) did not consider the influence of government programs. In particular, how do government programs affect these competing uses?
Production and Distribution in the Short Run

Рассматриваются проблемы, возникающие при анализе производства и распределения в кратком периоде из-за того, что в его рамках экономическая теория производства взяла на вооружение исключительно гипотезу о переменных коэффициентах производства, полностью отвергая рассмотрение их в качестве постоянных.
The Geometry of Bursting in the Dual Oscillator Model of Pancreatic Β-cells

We describe an extended fast-slow analysis for the dual oscillator model (DOM) for bursting oscillations in pancreatic $\beta$-cells, which occur on a wide range of time scales, from seconds to minutes. This wide dynamic range has been suggested to result from the interactions of a very slow metabolic, possibly glycolytic, oscillator and a faster electrical oscillator, itself containing several negative feedback mechanisms with a range of time scales. Although the high dimensionality of the slow subsystem would defeat a straightforward fast-slow analysis, we show that an approximate geometrical analysis that exploits particular features of the DOM and is based on superimposing the bifurcation diagrams of the component oscillators leads to new insights into the functioning of the system.
Predicting Financial Volatility: High-Frequency Time-Series Forecasts Vis-a-Vis Implied Volatility

Recent evidence suggests option implied volatilities provide better forecasts of financial volatility than time‐series models based on historical daily returns. In this study both the measurement and the forecasting of financial volatility is improved using high‐frequency data and long memory modeling, the latest proposed method to model volatility. This is the first study to extract results for three separate asset classes, equity, foreign exchange, and commodities. The results for the S&P 500, YEN/USD, and Light, Sweet Crude Oil provide a robust indication that volatility forecasts based on historical intraday returns do provide good volatility forecasts that can compete with and even outperform implied volatility. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 24:1005–1028, 2004
Beeinflusst Ästhetik die Performanz bei Suchaufgaben im Web?

Kann eine asthetische Gestaltung einer Website unter bestimmten Bedingungen eine positive, kompensatorische Wirkung auf Usability-Probleme haben? Dies vermuten in einer experimentellen Studie Moshagen Musch und Goritz (in press), was in dem vorliegenden Beitrag gezielt repliziert werden soll. Hierbei zeigt sich erwartungsgemas die Akkuratheit der Suchergebnisse von der Asthetik unbeeinflusst. Der erwartete kompensatorische Effekt hinsichtlich der zeitlichen Performanz erreicht aber nicht das Signifikanzniveau; als mogliche Grunde werden Effektgrose und Intensitat der gestalterischen Variation diskutiert.
High blood pressure during pregnancy is associated with future cardiovascular disease: an observational cohort study

Objectives The study aimed to determine if having a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy (HDP) is a risk factor for future cardiovascular disease (CVD), independent of age and body mass index (BMI). Design Data were sourced from the baseline questionnaire of the 45 and Up Study, Australia, an observational cohort study. Setting Participants were randomly selected from the Australian Medicare Database within New South Wales. Participants A total of 84 619 women were eligible for this study, of which 71 819 were included. These women had given birth between the ages of 18 and 45 years, had an intact uterus and ovaries, and had not been diagnosed with high blood pressure prior to their first pregnancy. Results HDP was associated with higher odds of having high blood pressure (<58 years: adjusted OR 3.79, 99% CI 3.38 to 4.24; p<0.001 and ≥58 years: 2.83, 2.58 to 3.12; p<0.001) and stroke (<58 years: 1.69, 1.02 to 2.82; p=0.008 and ≥58 years: 1.46, 1.13 to 1.88; p<0.001) in later life. Women with HDP had a younger age of onset of high blood pressure (45.6 vs 54.8 years, p<0.001) and stroke (58 vs 62.5 years, p<0.001). Women who had HDP and whose present day BMI was <25 had significantly higher odds of having high blood pressure, compared with women who were normotensive during pregnancy (<58 years: 4.55, 3.63 to 5.71; p<0.001 and ≥58 years, 2.94, 2.49 to 3.47; p<0.001). Women who had HDP and a present day BMI≥25 had significantly increased odds of high blood pressure (<58 years: 12.48, 10.63 to 14.66; p<0.001 and ≥58 years, 5.16, 4.54 to 5.86; p<0.001), compared with healthy weight women with a normotensive pregnancy. Conclusions HDP is an independent risk factor for future CVD, and this risk is further exacerbated by the presence of overweight or obesity in later life.