Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Application of accrual accounting in the Australian public sector - rhetoric or reality?

This paper presents a contextual. historical analysis of recent accrual accounting developments in the Australian Public Sector (APS). It takes a critical stance in that it questions the accrual accounting developments on a number of grounds. The paper examines changes in public sector financial management and accountability in four distinct settings, being: accrual financial reporting, accrual management systems, whole of government reporting, and accrual based budgeting. The findings show that already in Australia accrual accounting has made significant encroachments into some areas of annual financial and budget reporting. This influx has meant that terms such as ‘deficit’, ‘debt’, ‘liabilities’, ‘operating results’, ‘assets’, etc. have begun to change in meaning, which it is argued has important implications for the current process of transformation of aspects of the APS.
Object-based land use and land cover mapping from LiDAR data and orthophoto application of decision tree-based data selection for SVM classification

The major disadvantage of Support Vector Machine (SVM) happens in its training phase as it requires to solve a quadratic programming problem, making computation very costly. With the integration of LiDAR data and high spatial resolution orthophoto, more input data layers are available for object-based Support Vector Machine classification. Initially, confusion among classes arises because of the presence of irrelevant and redundant data layers. Hence, this study applies Decision Tree (DT), a popular data mining technique, as a pre-classification process in SVM to select the relevant features from the input variables. We assessed the effectiveness of seven vegetation indices, two vegetation index combinations and 14 LiDAR height metrics for mapping agricultural resources in Calatagan, Batangas. We were able to filter the input variables and subsequently achieve at least 73% reduction of training features. With the DT-based feature selection, we were able to reduce the number of input features as well as make the SVM training and classification time shorter by more than 90%. Importantly, the overall accuracy and kappa index of agreement both increased when DT-based SVM was used in contrast with using all the variables for SVM classification.
Phenotyping methods for determining HIV tropism and applications in clinical settings

Purpose of reviewHIV-1 enters CD4-expressing cells via one or both of the chemokine receptors CCR5 and CXCR4. Specific CCR5 antagonists are now in clinical use, but only for CCR5-tropic viruses. Hence, several methods have been developed for assessing HIV-1 tropism in patients who are candidates for CCR5 antagonists. This article reviews current data on phenotypic assays of tropism. Recent findingsPhenotypic assays are still used as reference, although genotypic methods have improved. The main advantages of phenotypic assays are their great sensitivity for detecting minor CXCR4-using variants and their capacity to assess non-B subtypes of HIV-1. Clinical trials of maraviroc have, thus, relied on the phenotypic determination of HIV-1 tropism. However, new genotypic approaches that are more sensitive for minor CXCR4-using variants, notably ultra-deep pyrosequencing, are now challenging phenotypic assays. Nevertheless, phenotypic assays are essential for improving genotypic algorithms for determining HIV-1 tropism as well as for assessing the resistance of R5-tropic viruses to CCR5 antagonists. SummaryHIV-1 tropism should be determined before using CCR5 antagonists. Phenotypic recombinant assays are still the benchmark tests for characterizing HIV-1 tropism as their great sensitivity enables them to detect minor CXCR4-using variants of both B and non-B HIV-1 subtypes.
Livelihood recovery in the wake of the tsunami in Aceh

Abstract This article provides a brief overview of issues relating to livelihood recovery assistance and achievements in Aceh since the December 2004 tsunami. ‘Livelihood’ programs were intended to help tsunami-affected households quickly resume productive activities and return to ‘normal’ life. They formed an important component of the tsunami recovery portfolios of the Indonesian government and many international donors, distributing millions of dollars worth of equipment, cash and other forms of support to tsunami victims. This article queries the effectiveness and impact of some of these programs in Acehnese villages, particularly during the early phases of recovery. It is unlikely that an international response on the scale witnessed in Aceh over the last four years will occur again with future disasters. Nonetheless, the ‘livelihoods’ approach is probably here to stay, and many important lessons can be drawn from the Aceh experience.
Investigating International Anti-corruption

On 13 January 2004 Associated Press reported 'Bush signs proclamation against corruption'. It barred entry into the USA of public officials from Latin America who had been accused of corruption and it was concerned primarily with corruption which had a 'serious adverse' effect on US interests. A few days later, the US Attorney General, John Ashcroft, described official corruption as a 'contagion that cannot be contained by borders' and urged that it be combated through strong political leadership, co-operation and transparency. '1 There is an ironic quality to a campaign against official corruption elsewhere mounted by officials of one of the most corrupt political systems in the Western world. What interests me here, however, is its selective focus, which suggests that anti-corruption campaigns may well be bound up with other governmental agendas. The US campaign also displays two central features of the international anti-corruption movement: the suggestion that, while corruption is universal, the problem is especially serious in developing countries; and the tendency to focus primarily on the impact of corruption in the public sector. Examination of the TI Source Book leaves a similar impression.2 Transparency International (TI) is an international NGO with headquarters in Berlin, affiliated National Chapters in over 70 countries and more in process of formation. It is dedicated to combating corruption by raising awareness about its damaging effects, advocating policy reform and the implementation of multilateral conventions, and monitoring compliance by governments, corporations and banks. In these respects at least, TI has been an undeniable success. Alongside the Source Book, which is now available in more than 20 languages, and the Anti-Corruption Handbook, which builds upon it, TI also publishes the annual Corruption Perceptions Index (cPi) (which ranks countries in order of their perceived level of corruption) and Global Corruption Report, the bi-annual Bribe Payers Index and the Global Corruption Barometer (which examines popular perceptions of corruption within individual countries). All of these receive extensive media coverage.
Changing fit and fat bias using an implicit retraining task

Objective: To change implicit and explicit bias so that active obese people are regarded as more fit and normal weight sedentary people as less fit. Design: Study one created a questionnaire that measured perceptions of active obese persons and sedentary normal weight persons on fitness-related items. Study two used a modified visual probe task to retrain perceptions regarding active obese persons and sedentary normal weight persons. Main outcome measures: Self-reported explicit bias was measured with a questionnaire and implicit bias was measured with response times collected during a visual probe task. Results: The questionnaire reliably measured ‘fitness and fatness’ perceptions. In study two, pairing images of active obese persons with positive activity-related words resulted in active obese persons being explicitly rated more fit; pairing images of normal weight sedentary persons with negative words associated with sedentary lifestyles increased endorsement of normal weight people as unfit. There were no changes in implicit bias. Conclusions: Bias regarding how body weight is thought of relative to fitness can be altered by pairing images of obese persons being active with words such as ‘health’ and ‘fit’. This is evidence that representations of persons of all body weight should be used when promoting physical activity.
Transdisciplinarity in Corporate Sustainability: Mapping the Field

Sustainability challenges are complex. So are the challenges that business firms encounter in their corresponding quest for corporate sustainability. Given this complexity, there is a need for new approaches to corporate sustainability management research. We discuss transdisciplinarity as such a novel approach in three steps. After showing that specialization is the primary conventional response to increasing complexity, we first briefly compare how inter-, multi-, and trans-disciplinarity reintegrate decentral, specialized knowledge. The second step describes how the emerging sustainability science has recently advanced the transdisciplinary methodology. Based on the two dimensions of interdisciplinarity and academia-practice collaboration, we thirdly, generate a framework for mapping existing research approaches in terms of their transdisciplinary qualities. We use this framework to identify room for novel methodologies in sustainability management research.
Adaptive Commutation Error Compensation Strategy Based on a Flux Linkage Function for Sensorless Brushless DC Motor Drives in a Wide Speed Range

This paper presents a novel adaptive commutation error compensation strategy for the sensorless brushless DC (BLDC) motor based on the flux linkage function. It addresses the two key challenge problems on the sensorless control of the BLDC motor. The one is presenting a novel detection method for the BLDC motor rotor position signal to filter out the interference and the noise by the high frequency. The other one is proposing a commutation error compensation strategy to improve the system efficiency. In traditional sensorless control strategy, a deep low-pass filter is usually used to obtain the BLDC motor rotor position signal from the high-frequency interference. However, the delayed angle caused by the low-pass filter may be more than 90 electrical degrees in the high speed range. Therefore, a novel sensorless control strategy based on the speed-independent flux linkage function was proposed in this paper. The interference of the diode freewheeling was filtered by the software filter, and a closed-loop compensation algorithm based on the deviation of line-to-line voltages was illustrated to correct the commutation error in the high speed range. The stability and accuracy of the method was confirmed by a series of experiments.
Governing municipal waste: Towards a new analytical framework

Abstract Recent years have seen a rapid rise in the political saliency of the ever growing volumes of municipal waste produced in the UK. In this paper, we outline the preliminary findings of a research project that is examining the nature and development of municipal waste policy (MWP) in north-east England. We provide an overview of the changing national, regional and local policy framework for sustainable municipal waste policy, arguing that the European Landfill Directive has had a profound impact on policy priorities and goals at all levels. Nonetheless, commentators and policy makers alike have identified significant ‘barriers’ to progress, including institutional fragmentation, instability and uncertainty, financial constraints, and public participation. While the ‘barriers’ metaphor has served to identify some of the key challenges, we suggest that it offers only a partial view of the issues at hand and can serve to perpetuate an unhelpful division between the ‘technical’ and ‘social’, and between policy making and practice. In this paper, we develop a new conceptual framework for analysing MWP based on an understanding of the multiple modes of governing through which policy is constructed and contested. We argue that this approach is also relevant for other areas of environmental policy and planning which have, to date, only partially engaged with broader debates about the changing nature of the state and governance. Bringing these concerns into the analysis of environmental policy and planning is, we believe, a key challenge for future research.
Microarray resources for genetic and genomic studies in chicken: A review

Advent of microarray technologies revolutionized the nature and scope of genetic and genomic research in human and other species by allowing massively parallel analysis of thousands of genomic sites. They have been used for diverse purposes such as for transcriptome analysis, CNV detection, SNP and CNV genotyping, studying DNA‐protein interaction, and detection of genome methylation. Microarrays have also made invaluable contributions to research in chicken which is an important model organism for studying embryology, immunology, oncology, virology, evolution, genetics, and genomics and also for other avian species. Despite their huge contributions in life science research, the future of microarrays is now being questioned with the advent of massively parallel next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies, which promise to overcome some of the limitations of microarray platforms. In this article we review the various microarray resources developed for chicken and their past and potential future applications. We also discuss about the future of microarrays in the NGS era particularly in the context of livestock genetics. We argue that even though NGS promises some major advantages—in particular, offers the opportunity to discover novel elements in the genome—microarrays will continue to be major tools for research and practice in the field of livestock genetics/genomics due to their affordability, high throughput nature, mature established technologies and ease of application. Moreover, with advent of new microarray technologies like capture arrays, the NGS and microarrays are expected to complement each other in future research in life science. genesis 51:337–356. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Alpha-enolase: a novel autoantigen in patients with premature ovarian failure.

OBJECTIVE Although controversial, the presence of circulating antiovarian antibodies (AOA) may be considered a marker of autoimmune premature ovarian failure (POF). The purpose of the present work was to evaluate the presence of AOA in POF patients, and to identify a possible autoantigen in order to develop a reliable diagnostic tool that might help to determine the real prevalence of autoimmune POF. DESIGN Non-randomised study. Blood sampling for determination of circulating AOA. PATIENTS One hundred and ten patients with POF and 60 normally menstruating women with no record of autoimmune diseases (controls). MEASUREMENTS Presence of circulating AOA was assessed by Western-blot, using cytosolic fraction from human ovarian homogenate as antigen. RESULTS Twenty-one of 110 women with POF presented circulating antibodies directed toward an antigen of approximately 50 kD. Sixty control subjects proved negative. After purification and analysis by mass spectrometry, the antigen was identified as alpha-enolase. CONCLUSION Determination of the presence of circulating antialpha-enolase antibodies might be instrumental in identifying those patients who may present a putative defect in immunoregulation and therefore a possible autoimmune aetiolgy for POF.
Automation of quantitative muscle cell analysis by image segmentation

In this paper we describe a new approach to quantitative measurements on muscle cell images. Our algorithm processes gray scaled images obtained from electron microscopy (12000× magnification). By means of discrete Fourier transform we detect the orientation of muscle fibers. Afterwards, applying our thresholding method, we detect boundaries between constituents of myofibrils (A band, I band and Z line). From these boundaries we estimate lengths of each myofibril constituent, since these lengths define the type of a muscle cell. Finally, we compare data measured by our algorithm, with data estimated manually.
Ovarian atypical endometriosis: its close association with malignant epithelial tumours

The incidence of ovarian atypical endometriosis and its association with malignant epithelial tumours in a consecutive series of cases during the period 1987 to 1995 were studied. Atypical glandular changes were observed in four (1.7%) of 255 ovarian endometriosis cases and one patient with ovarian atypical endometriosis developed subsequent endometrioid carcinoma in the abdominal wall. Fifty‐four (24.1%) of the 224 ovarian cancers were associated with ovarian endometriosis; 21 with typical and 33 with atypical endometriosis. Clear cell carcinomas and endometrioid carcinomas were most frequently associated with endometriosis, with 54% (27 of 50 cases) and 41.9% (13 of 31), respectively. Atypical endometriosis was found in 18 clear cell carcinomas, in seven endometrioid carcinomas, in four serous carcinomas, in three mucinous borderline tumours, and in one serous borderline tumour. In 13 cases, the atypical endometriosis was in contiguity with malignant epithelial tumours. We consider that atypical endometriosis possesses a precancerous potential or is most frequently associated with clear cell and endometrioid carcinomas. Close screening of cellular atypia or hyperplasia in ovarian endometriosis and careful long‐term follow‐up of patients with atypical endometriosis is required.
Impacts of future energy price and biofuel producti on scenarios on international crop prices, production and trade

In this article we discuss the impacts of future energy prices and biofuel production levels on agricultural market prices, production and trade and present the results of a partial equilibrium model of international agricultural trade with interconnected markets. The results of the model suggest that the long term trend of declining real agricultural commodity prices has been reversed. A key result in this regard is that the price of energy has become a major driving force of agricultural world market prices. For instance, in the period of analysis until 2016/18 the price of wheat can be expected to increase by about 16 percent, 35 percent and 91 percent depending on an oil price of US$ 45, US$ 70 and US$ 102 per barrel, respectively. The 2016/18 baseline projection shows an increase in total world production from 10 percent for wheat to 30 percent for oilseeds. Variations in energy cost have the biggest impact on sugar production in the EU, corn production in North America, other grains production in Brazil, sugar production in China, other grains production in Australia and corn production in CIS. Increasing bioenergy demand has the biggest impact on corn production followed by sugar and oilseeds production. The impacts and importance of energy prices and biofuel production for agricultural trade varies between commodities and regions. Future medium to long term biofuel scenarios might change considerably depending on the breakthrough of different technologies and the support for different types of bioenergy production pathways.
Partial purification and molecular characterization of a lymphokine (costimulator) required for the mitogenic response of mouse thymocytes in vitro.

We have partially purified a lymphokine, costimulator, which is necessary to induce mitogenesis in mouse thymocytes in vitro. Costimulator is released from mouse leukocytes exposed to Con A for 12 to 18 hr. It has been purified more than 100 X by gel exclusion chromatography and isoelectric focusing. Thymocytes from CBA/J mice respond to the mitogenic lectin Con A only if the costimulator concentration is above a certain level. Culturing such cells with Con A at a density below 1 X 10(6) cells/ml produces costimulator concentrations too low for mitogenesis. This system has been developed into a quantitative assay for costimulator, to monitor purification, recovery, and biologic activity in various methods of molecular characterization. The activity is trypsin sensitive, and has a buoyant density characteristic of protein or glycoprotein. However, for a protein, it is relatively heat stable. Its m.w. , established by carrying out sedimentation, gel filtration, and buoyant density measurements, is 30,500, and its frictional coefficient is 1.45. Costimulator purified by isoelectric focusing is active at 10(-10) M or lower in tissue culture.
Competitive Pricing Decisions in Uncertain Times

This article examines the pricing, demand (occupancy), and revenue dynamics in the U.S. hotel industry for the period 2001 to 2007. The results of this seven-year study, which compares hotels' rates to the pricing behavior of competing hotels, reveal that in both bad times (2001—2003) and good times (2004—2007), hotels that offered average daily rates above those of their direct competitors had lower comparative occupancies but higher relative revenue per available rooms (RevPAR). Based on 67,008 hotel observations, this pattern of demand and revenue behavior was consistent for hotels in all market segments (resorts and extended-stay properties were excluded from the study). Overall, the results suggest that the best way for a hotel to have higher revenue performance than its competitive set is to maintain higher rates. This finding suggests that lodging demand may be inelastic in local markets. The results of this study confirm the stance of hotel operators who resist the pressure to undercut competitors' prices.
Images of academic leadership in large New Zealand polytechnics

As accountability stakes continue to be raised in all education sectors, leadership as a factor that can have an impact on improved student outcomes is being studied with heightened interest. This study was conducted from 2011 to 2012 in New Zealand's large urban polytechnics with the aim of investigating the nature and expectations of academic leadership. The conceptualisation of academic leadership in the theory base is fraught with both complexity and paradox and is often presented in contradictory terms. The study identifies images of academic leadership practised by directors of an academic front line, by actors in the front line and supporters on the side line. In relation to polytechnic settings it is concluded that new and varied forms of academic leadership are provided by spreading the role that encompasses both leadership and management.
Rural Development, Privatization and Public Choice: Substance Depends upon Process

Abstract Whether or not privatization facilitates rural development depends upon what rural development means. In practice, rural development often is the result of a struggle between rent defenders and rent seekers. A positivist concept of rural development is proposed, and the institutions of public choice are examined to determine how they might influence privatization decisions. The conclusion is that whether or not privatization improves efficiency of adjustment in rural economies depends upon the specifics of political deals required to achieve a particular act of privatization.