Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effect of Subjective Survival Probabilities on Retirement and Wealth in the United States

We explore the proposition that expected longevity affects retirement decisions and accumulated wealth using micro data drawn from the Health and Retirement Study for the United States. We use data on a person's subjective probability of survival to age 75 as a proxy for their prospective lifespan. In order to control for the presence of measurement error and focal points in responses, as well as reverse causality, we instrument subjective survival probabilities using information on current age, or age at death, of the respondent's parents. Our estimates indicate that increased subjective probabilities of survival result in increased household wealth among couples, with no effect on the length of the working life. These findings are consistent with the view that retirement decisions are driven by institutional constraints and incentives and that a longer expected lifespan leads to increased wealth accumulation.
Adoption of E-Communication Applications in U.S. Municipalities: The Role of Political Environment, Bureaucratic Structure, and the Nature of Applications

E-government has been touted by many as a technological answer to improve citizen participation, government accountability, and transparency by facilitating a greater level of communication and flow of public information between citizens and the government. This article examines how political environment, government structure, and the nature of individual e-government applications influence the likelihood of adoption. Using data obtained from multiple sources, logistic regressions are conducted on a sample of six e-government applications that possess varying degrees of communicative and organizational impacts on the government to observe how different factors influence their adoption. Findings include a general disinclination for adopting e-government applications with high communicative impact; however, such disinclination dissipated when there was a high level of political competition in the area and perceived demand for online communication; active traditional channels of political communication, such as political parties and accessibility to local council members, reduced the likelihood of adoption; the preferences of the elected mayors coincided with the perceptions of nonelected officials who favor e-government applications that would reduce the workload while disfavoring applications that would increase it.
The Dynamics of Going Public

This paper develops a real options model in which firms may use the timing of their initial public offerings (IPOs) to signal the quality of their investment prospects to outside investors. When adverse selection is more relevant (cold markets), firms with better investment prospects accelerate their IPO relative to their perfect information benchmark to reveal their type to outside investors. When adverse selection is less relevant (hot markets), all firms issue simultaneously, issuers are younger on average, and IPO timing is uninformative. An extension with multiple signals and the empirical evidence show that better ranked firms are younger, issue a lower fraction of shares, and underprice more during cold markets, and that issuers are younger on average during hot markets. Copyright 2011, Oxford University Press.
Gandhi on Trusteeship : A Transforming Ethic

Godric Bader is Life President of Scutt Buder Company, Wellingbovough, England. He is the son of Ernest Bader, who fowzded Scott Buder Cu. Ltd. in hna072 in 1920. In 1952 it became one of the few business examples of Gandhi’s Trusteeship principle in action. Godvic worked fur Scott Bader since 2945, co-founding the Commonwealth that holds in trustee’ship this unique corporation. He is a Quaker, edticuted at the Friends School, Suffron Walden and Queen Mary College, Iandon [evacuated to Kings College, Cambridge, 1943). This a~title is udupted from a chapter in Gandhi and the Contemporary World, to be published by The Indo-British Historical Society, London, 1996. [Editor’s note: Scott Buder Ltd. wus described in Perspectives, VOL. 7 Ah. 3.1
The Effect of Pravastatin on Coronary Events after Myocardial Infarction in Patients with Average Cholesterol Levels

F RANK M. S ACKS , M.D., M ARC A. P FEFFER , M.D., P H . D. , L EMUEL A. M OYE , M.D., P H . D. , J EAN L. R OULEAU , M.D., J OHN D. R UTHERFORD , M.D., T HOMAS G. C OLE , P H . D. , L ISA B ROWN , M.P.H. , J. W AYNE W ARNICA , M.D., J. M ALCOLM O. A RNOLD , M.D., C HUAN -C HUAN W UN , P H . D. , B ARRY R. D AVIS , M.D., P H . D. , AND E UGENE B RAUNWALD , M.D., FOR THE C HOLESTEROL AND R ECURRENT E VENTS T RIAL I NVESTIGATORS *
Susceptibility to coccidiosis: contrasting course of primary infections with Eimeria vermiformis in BALB/c and C57/BL/6 mice is based on immune responses

Summary The effects of three immunosuppressive treatments‐whole body irradiation and injections of cortisone acetate or cyclophosphamide, on the course of primary infections with Eirneria verniformis were investigated in ‘resistant’ BALB/c and ‘susceptible’ CS7BL/6 mice. Immunosuppression (and the nude athymic mutation in BALB/c mice) resulted in increased reproduction of the parasite in both strains of mice, indicating some immunological control of primary infections. The effect was, however, very much more marked in the BALB/c mice, resulting in an alteration in the relative susceptibilities of the two strains. The findings are discussed and it is suggested that the basis for the differences observed in the course of infection in normal BALB/c and C57BL/6 mice lies in their immune responses to this parasite.
Turning ideas into innovations – introducing demand-driven collaborative ideation

Web-enabled tools for ideation are becoming increasingly diffused in companies, but their true impact on innovation performance has been questioned. A factor that can explain some of the so far missing performance of these firm-internal systems for ideation is a lack of attention to the demand-side of ideation. Frequently, the focus of ideation is put more or less unilaterally on the supply-side, with the aim to generate as many or as good ideas as possible, instead of focusing on innovation needs. The aim of this article is to describe and analyse demand-driven collaborative ideation, with a particular emphasis on its management aspects. In order to empirically investigate how to manage this new approach to ideation, a case study of Ericsson, a Swedish multi-national corporation, has been performed. The results highlight that incentives, visibility and resources are three main components of demand-driven collaborative ideation and outline key challenges with this new approach to ideation.
Profiling Asian and Western family independent travelers (FITS): An exploratory study

This study explored perceptual and behavioral differences in service quality, satisfaction, and intention to revisit between Asian and Western family independent travelers (FITs) and to profile each group by its demographic and vacation characteristics as well as its family vacation decision‐making modes. Qualified FITs (n = 183) from seven major source markets were interviewed in the departure lounge at the Hong Kong International Airport. Results indicated that, compared to Asian FITs, Western respondents were more likely to favorably evaluate service quality, be first time visitors, and be younger. However, they were less likely to return to Hong Kong for leisure. Most Western travelers shared all decisions together between spouses, whereas their Asian counterparts were more likely to report individual dominant decisions, especially for those trip specific decisions. Marketing implications and future research directions are discussed.
Technological Choice in Voluntary Standards Committees: An Empirical Analysis.

Vendors frequently compete to have their technology adopted as part of a voluntary consensus standard. In this paper we report the results of an empirical study of the factors that influence the choice of technologies in voluntary technical standards committees. Participation in standards committees is viewed as an aspect of the product development process of corporations involved in markets where network externalities are present. The factors hypothesized to affect the technology decision are: the market power of the coalition sponsoring the technology, the installed base of the products containing the technology, the size of the firms that make up the coalition, the promotional activities of the sponsors (such as technical contributions submitted), the perceived superiority of the technology, and the political skills of the coalition. These hypotheses were tested by collecting data concerning specific technical decisions that were made in several standards committees in the area of computer communicatio.
Processing of the intron‐encoded U16 and U18 snoRNAs: the conserved C and D boxes control both the processing reaction and the stability of the mature snoRNA.

A novel class of small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs), encoded in introns of protein coding genes and originating from processing of their precursor molecules, has recently been described. The L1 ribosomal protein (r‐protein) gene of Xenopus laevis and its human homologue contain two snoRNAs, U16 and U18. It has been shown that these snoRNAs are excised from their intron precursors by endonucleolytic cleavage and that their processing is alternative to splicing. Two sequences, internal to the snoRNA coding region, have been identified as indispensable for processing the conserved boxes C and D. Competition experiments have shown that these sequences interact with diffusible factors which can bind both the pre‐mRNA and the mature U16 snoRNA. Fibrillarin, which is known to associate with complexes formed on C and D boxes of other snoRNAs, is found in association with mature U16 RNA, as well as with its precursor molecules. This fact suggests that the complex formed on the pre‐mRNA remains bound to U16 throughout all the processing steps. We also show that the complex formed on the C and D boxes is necessary to stabilize mature snoRNA.
[The cSNPs analysis in whole extron-wide of PGC-1alpha gene in Chinese population and the domain MEF2C bioinformatics study].

OBJECTIVE To analyze distribution characteristics of PGC-1alpha gene coding single nucleotide polymorphisms (cSNPs), and to investigate the association between cSNPs and type 2 diabetes mellitus, and to study biological information about PGC-1alpha domain muscle enhancer factor 2C (MEF2C) in Chinese Han population. METHODS These cSNPs were identified by means of polymerase chain reaction-single strand conformation polymorphism (PCR-SSCP), polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) and DNA direct sequencing technology in a total of 263 type 2 diabetic patients and 282 normal glucose tolerant controls. The possible association was analyzed between type 2 diabetes mellitus and the specific cSNPs and their haplotypes by case-control method. The tertiary structure of PGC-1alpha domain MEF2C was predicated and analyzed for possible biological information by a series of bioinformatics soft wares. RESULTS Four variants were found in whole extron-wide of PGC-1alpha gene in Chinese Han diabetic population. They were 394G/A, 482G/A, 528A/G and 612C/T. The 482G/A polymorphism was remarkably associated with type 2 diabetes (chi2 = 14.2025, P= 0.0002). Haplotypes analysis shown that distribution frequency of haplotypes had a statistical difference between type 2 diabetes mellitus and normal glucose tolerance control groups (chi2 = 59.9, P< 0.01) and haplotype 394A-482A-528A had a linkage disequilibrium with type 2 diabetes (t= 2.361, P< 0.05). The tertiary simulant structure of PGC-1alpha domain MEF2C was established successfully by computer. The 482G/A variant accompanied with hydrogen bonds breaking might decrease hydrophobicity and lead to an incompact space configuration which was very critical to function. CONCLUSION The 482G/A variant could decrease binding force between PGC-1alpha and MEF2C and increase the risk of type 2 diabetes in Chinese Han population by PGC-1alpha -MEF2C-GLUT-4 pathway.
The Productive Value of Human Time in U.S. Agriculture

The quantity and marginal productivity of farm husband and wife labor services allocated to their own farm work are assessed. A behavioral model of the farm firm is developed and implemented empirically by fitting a production function to county average per farm data for 1964 for Iowa, North Carolina, and Oklahoma counties. A comparison of marginal products of husband's and wife's labor inputs with opportunity costs yields the implication that net rural-to-urban human migration and reallocation of working time between own-farm and off-farm work by the remaining farm population had succeeded in getting rid of excess labor services in U.S. agricultural production in 1964.
Segmenting indigenous tourists from a serious leisure perspective

Cultural resources are the essence of indigenous tourism. Tourist’s sincere attitudes toward indigenous culture are critical to successfully manage and develop indigenous tourism. This study proposes examining the seriousness of tourists toward indigenous tourism to better explore the distinguishing and meaningful subgroups of indigenous tourists. Based on the ‘serious leisure perspectives’ (SLPs), this study first developed a measurement of seriousness toward indigenous tourism and applied it to further segmentation analysis. Study results indicate that indigenous tourists can be divided into three segments: ‘expert’, who are driven by a serious leisure interest (indigenous culture); ‘interested’, who are curious about indigenous appeals; and ‘apathetic’ type, who are not interested in aboriginal culture at all. These three segments differ significantly in terms of marital status, travel motives, and preferences for culture-based tourism product. Managerial implications are drawn based on the nature of SIT and their differences among segments. Finally, this study discusses the application of SLP to indigenous tourism.
Effects of acute and chronic L-arginine treatment in experimental hyperuricemia.

Experimental hyperuricemia (HU) results in preglomerular arteriolopathy, cortical vasoconstriction, and glomerular hypertension. Recently, uric acid has been shown to induce endothelial dysfunction. We therefore studied the effect of acute and chronic administration of l-arginine (a substrate for endothelial nitric oxide synthase) on the renal hemodynamic and vascular structural alterations induced by HU. To induce HU, oxonic acid (OA; 750 mg.kg(-1). day(-1)) was administered in male Sprague-Dawley rats. To study the acute effect of arginine, nine rats received l-arginine (l-Arg; 15 mg.kg(-1). min(-1)) during micropuncture. To elucidate the chronic effect of l-Arg, OA + 1% l-Arg (n = 8) and OA + 2.5% l-Arg (n = 6; drinking water) were evaluated throughout the 5-wk period. Eight normal control (N), and eight OA, rats were also studied. Kidneys were fixed by perfusion and afferent arteriole morphology was evaluated. HU rats developed the renal functional and structural alterations described and had suppressed urinary excretion of NO(2)(-)/NO(3)(-). Acute stimulation of nitric oxide (NO) synthesis markedly increased urinary NO(2)(-)/NO(3)(-), lowered systemic blood pressure, and relieved cortical vasoconstriction despite a significant increment of glomerular hypertension and afferent arteriole damage. Increasing doses of chronic l-Arg were associated with increasing excretion of urinary NO(2)(-)/NO(3)(-), reduction of systemic hypertension, and prevention of cortical vasoconstriction (2.5% l-Arg). In addition, both doses prevented glomerular hypertension and preglomerular arteriolopathy. Thus an acute relief of renal vasoconstriction in the setting of afferent arteriole damage cannot reverse glomerular hypertension, likely due to impairment in preglomerular autoregulation. On the other hand, chronic l-Arg preserved arteriolar structures probably mediated by the antiproliferative effect of NO on vascular smooth muscle cells.
Att lära av Liberal Education

I svensk hogskolepedagogisk debatt har det pa senare tid blivit allt vanligare att lyfta fram den anglosaxiska Liberal Education-traditionen som forebildlig. Vid hogskolorna i Sodertorn och Malmo har man alltsedan starten for drygt ett decennium sedan tagit starka intryck av denna tradition, och nu forsoker Hogskolan pa Gotland etablera sig som ett komplett Liberal Arts College, det forsta i Sverige.1 Sedan nagra ar tillbaka finns det ocksa ett sarskilt stipendium, STINT Programme for Excellence in Teaching, som arligen gor det mojligt for ett tiotal svenska hogskolelarare att tillbringa en termin vid ett amerikanskt college eller universitet med inriktning mot Liberal Education, for att inspireras och ta till sig nya ideer som sedan kan komma de svenska larosatena – och i forlangningen studenterna – till godo.2 Som en belysande bakgrund till dagens svenska diskussioner om medborgerlig bildning syftar denna artikel till att ge dels en grundlaggande orientering i det samtida amerikanska Liberal Education-systemet, dels en fordjupad bild av det omtolkningsforsok av denna tradition som gjorts av Chicagoprofessorn Martha Nussbaum. Hennes 1997 publicerade studie Cultivating Humanity ar utan tvekan en av de senaste decenniernas mest omdebatterade bocker om det hogre utbildningsvasendet i USA. Boken har vackt viss uppmarksamhet ocksa i Sverige. Sa skrev till exempel Ronny Ambjornsson en positiv recension av den i Dagens Nyheter, och senare har Nussbaum varit huvudtalare vid konferenser om medborgerlig bildning vid bade Sodertorns hogskola och Orebro universitet.3 Till skillnad fran ett par
Ballistic and diffusive corrections to front propagation in the presence of multiplicative noise

We study the dynamics of reaction-diffusion fronts under the influence of multiplicative noise. An approximate theoretical scheme is introduced to compute the velocity of the front and its diffusive wandering due to the presence of noise. The theoretical approach is based on a multiple scale analysis rather than on a small noise expansion and is confirmed with numerical simulations for a wide range of the noise intensity. We report on the possibility of noise sustained solutions with a continuum of possible velocities, in situations where only a single velocity is allowed without noise. @S1063-651X~98! 03611-3#
'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Prevails in Boy Scouts

The U. S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision held that the Application of New Jersey's public accommodation law to the Boy Scouts of America violated the first amendment right of expressive association (Boy Scouts of America and Monmouth Council v. James Dale, 2000). This commentary discusses the ruling.
Success Traps, Dynamic Capabilities and Firm Performance

Dynamic capabilities (DCs) are fundamental to the understanding of differential firm performance. However, the question remains why some firms are better at developing and applying DCs than others. In particular, successful firms have been warned against the tendency to fall into a success or competence trap, where success reinforces exploitation of existing competences and crowds out exploration of new competences, hindering the development of DCs. Therefore, this study examines the effects of success traps on DCs and consequently firm performance, taking into account firm strategy and market dynamism. To facilitate this, our study also identifies the commonalities of DCs across firms. Drawing on survey data from 113 UK high-tech small and medium-sized firms, we find that success traps have a significant, strong negative effect on DCs, which in turn have a weak positive effect on firm performance; DCs are manifested through absorptive and transformative capabilities as two common features across firms. We also find that the development and application of DCs is related to internal factors (such as success traps) rather than external factors (such as market dynamism).
‘Znakomstva I Svyazi’ (Acquaintances and connections) – Blat, the Soviet Union, and mundane entrepreneurship

The discussion regarding entrepreneurship and society has often presupposed that this society by necessity will be one that embraces the market economy as a guiding principle. This paper questions this assumption by discussing a command economy, namely the Soviet Union, as a fundamentally entrepreneurial society. By introducing the case of the blat, ‘Russia’s economy of favours’, the paper illustrates how mundane individual economies can be a part of entrepreneurship, and how flexible opportunity networks can support the rigidity of a command economy. Continuing from this, the exclusion of such irregular economies is discussed from an ideological rather than an analytic standpoint. The paper further presents some inferences that can be drawn from the case of the blat and which problematizes common assumptions in entrepreneurship studies.
Dollarization in Transition Economies: Evidence and Policy Implications

After most restrictions on foreign currency holdings were relaxed in the early 1990s, foreign currency deposits in transition economies have been increasing rapidly. This paper takes a first look at the evidence on dollarization for 15 transition economies, and then discusses some key conceptual and policy implications. Depending on the institutional constraints, foreign currency deposits as a proportion of broad money reached a peak of between 30 and 60 percent in 1992-93. Unlike what has been observed in Latin America, however, dollarization has fallen substantially in the aftermath of successful stabilization plans in Estonia, Lithuania, Mongolia, and Poland. Since foreign currency deposits reflect mainly a portfolio choice, the fall in dollarization can be primarily attributed to higher real returns on domestic-currency assets, as a result of lower inflation and more market-determined interest rates.
Regulation Theory and the Political Economy of the European Union

European integration theory considers to what extent the EU can realize a telos where American pluralism is the template. Not without merits, but considering the financial and eurozone crises fatally, such perspectives elide power relations and attendant contradictions and irrationalities that are constitutive of transatlantic integration itself. Regulation theory, which synthesizes the reformist ethos of Europe's postwar statist tradition and Marxism, and which has produced a considerable body of analysis of the EU published at the margins of EU scholarship, offers a compelling alternative that potentially overcomes these shortcomings. This article critically assesses how regulation theory has interpreted the single market, financial liberalization and EMU as a suppression of alternatives to neoliberal post-Fordism, or finance-led accumulation, in Europe. It argues that understanding the EU's current conjuncture of eurozone crisis management requires a neo-Gramscian extension of regulation theory, stressing transnational patterns of capitalist accumulation and power relations.