Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Operation of Modular Multilevel Converters under grid asymmetries

The Modular Multilevel Converter is very likely to operate in a grid-connected mode under asymmetric conditions. Such a converter features several unique characteristics, which make its analysis different from other types of power converters in similar cases. The existence of three independent capacitive phase legs rather than a common DC-link capacitor requires special attention, in terms of stability and component dimensioning. This paper investigates the impact of unbalanced grid conditions on the operation of the Modular Multilevel Converter. The expressions for the branch energy variation are derived assuming that the grid-related quantities can be modeled by means of symmetrical components. Moreover, the effect of circulating current control for capacitive storage reduction as well as DC-link oscillation elimination is also studied. Finally, a control system is proposed and simulation results verify its discrete-time implementation.
Implementing Civic Engagement Activities in the Rio Grande Valley

A perception of decreased interest in public affairs by younger people has directed academic attention towards the topics of social capital, civic engagement, and student voting. Service learning has been proposed as a pedagogical technique that fosters civic engagement and thereby builds social capital and increases the likelihood of voting. The efforts of the Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College (UTB-TSC) offers an opportunity to observe implementation of many of the concepts and proposals discussed and recommended in the academic literature at a university which has a predominantly Hispanic student body. The initiatives of the CCE have included encouraging faculty to adopt service learning as a pedagogical technique and leading Project 100%, a coordinated effort among faculty, administration, and staff to increase voter turnout. Examining the implementation of civic engagement programs for UTB-TSC may offer insights into the effectiveness of these techniques for promoting civic engagement and increasing voter turnout.
Public Housing in Australia: Stigma, Home and Opportunity

Our aim in this paper is to stimulate debate about the role of public housing. We have set out to provide an analysis of the causes of its problematic status alongside suggestions to secure substantial improvements, that could create a housing sector better geared to providing opportunity and inclusion, rather than stressing difference and non-participation. At a time when public and political attention is turning towards ways to invest in the future of our communities there are real opportunities to improve the housing system to help a broader range of income groups and, by doing so, to create a more balanced and less crisis-prone sector.
Pyrrolizidine Alkaloids of the Genus Homogyne

The genus Homogyne (Asteraceae), con-sisting of H. alpina (L.) Cass. , H. discolor (Jacq.) Cass. , andH. sylvestris (Scop.) Cass. , is widely distributed in themountain areas of Europe. The main constituent bakken-olide A, a sesquiterpene lactone, shows antitumor prop-erties(l,2). Within the family of Asteraceae, esp. tribusSenecioneae, there is a frequent occurrence of pyrrolizi-dine alkaloids (PAs) with hepatotoxic and mutagenic acti-vities (3, 4). The examination of samples of the genus Ho-mogyne yielded four PAs, whose structures were elucidat-ed by capillary gas chromatography, mass-,
Serological survey of Brucellosis in livestock animals and workers in Ibadan, Nigeria

A serological survey of brucellosis in livestock animals and workers was conducted in Ibadan, Southwestern Nigeria between May and August 2004. A total of 1,210 cattle, 54 sheep, 496 goats, 200 pigs and 21 humans (i.e. butchers and herdsmen) were screened using the Rose Bengal test (RBT). From the results, prevalence in trade cattle was 5.82% while 0.86% was recorded in goats. None of the sheep and pigs was positive to the test. Out of the 11 samples taken from butchers, seven were positive and none of the ten herdsmen were sero-positive. This gives an infection rate of 63.3% in the butchers; and a combined infection rate of 31.82% in humans. This shows that brucellosis is still a major zoonosis in Nigeria; other public health implications are discussed. (Afr. J. Biomed. Res. 9: 163 – 168) Keywords: Serology, Brucellosis, Transmission, Zoonosis, Africa
Union Learning Reps in a high tech industry

This article examines moves towards the creation of a Union Learning Rep (ULR) network within Connect, the union for UK communications sector management and professional staff. Focusing on a large communications company (CommCo), the article argues that ULRs need not be limited to campaigning for basic skills training. They also have a role in a high tech industry with well‐developed training programmes and a highly qualified workforce. As ‘learning signposts’ and advocates, ULRs can assist members in navigating the range of learning options presented by the employer, advise members on opportunities available outside the workplace, raise the profile of training and learning on the union’s bargaining agenda, develop new layers of activists and recruit new members.
Expression Cloning and Periplasmic Orientation of the Francisella novicida Lipid A 4′-Phosphatase LpxF*

Francisella tularensis and related intracellular pathogens synthesize lipid A molecules that differ from their Escherichia coli counterparts. Although a functional orthologue of lpxK, the gene encoding the lipid A 4′-kinase, is present in Francisella, no 4′-phosphate moiety is attached to Francisella lipid A. We now demonstrate that a membrane-bound phosphatase present in Francisella novicida U112 selectively removes the 4′-phosphate residue from tetra- and pentaacylated lipid A molecules. A clone that expresses the F. novicida 4′-phosphatase was identified by assaying lysates of E. coli colonies, harboring members of an F. novicida genomic DNA library, for 4′-phosphatase activity. Sequencing of a 2.5-kb F. novicida DNA insert from an active clone located the structural gene for the 4′-phosphatase, designated lpxF. It encodes a protein of 222 amino acid residues with six predicted membrane-spanning segments. Rhizobium leguminosarum and Rhizobium etli contain functional lpxF orthologues, consistent with their lipid A structures. When F. novicida LpxF is expressed in an E. coli LpxM mutant, a strain that synthesizes pentaacylated lipid A, over 90% of the lipid A molecules are dephosphorylated at the 4′-position. Expression of LpxF in wild-type E. coli has no effect, because wild-type hexaacylated lipid A is not a substrate. However, newly synthesized lipid A is not dephosphorylated in LpxM mutants by LpxF when the MsbA flippase is inactivated, indicating that LpxF faces the outer surface of the inner membrane. The availability of the lpxF gene will facilitate re-engineering lipid A structures in diverse bacteria.
Are There Still Differences Between the Roles of Private and Public Sector Managers?1

Abstract In France, the differences between public and private organizations seem to have been reduced by the ubiquity of some management tools and approaches, and, at the same time, highlighted by the political environment, stereotypes, and negative perceptions of French public management. Given this confusion, systematic empirical studies are needed to determine the degree of convergence, if any, between management in the public and private sectors. The present study analyzed a survey of 908 managers, in order to determine whether differences in managerial practices still exist. Our results show that some differences do persist, although they are relatively small.
The effect of the type and number of internal control weaknesses and their remediation on audit fees

Purpose - The implementation of compliance procedures associated with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 came at a great cost to most publicly-traded firms, largely due to the internal control disclosures required by Section 404 of the Act. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the inquiry on internal control effectiveness by examining the impact of the type (same or different) and number of internal control weaknesses on audit fees. The paper also examines whether firms that remediate continue to incur higher audit fees compared to firms that never disclosed a weakness. Design/methodology/approach - The authors evaluate the impact of internal control weaknesses and their remediation on audit fees using ordinary least squares regression for 9,122 firm year observations (3,096 unique firms) over the time period 2004-2007. Findings - The authors find: an incremental impact on audit fees of additional material weakness disclosures; firms that report the same material weakness pay higher fees than firms reporting a different material weakness in consecutive years; and audit fees remain high one, two, and three years following remediation compared to a firm that never disclosed an internal control weakness. Originality/value - In contrast with prior studies, the sample includes firms that remediated weaknesses, firms that failed to remediate weaknesses, and firms that did not have prior weaknesses. The results suggest that the failure to remediate has greater risk implications than new weaknesses and that material weaknesses are associated with higher audit fees several years after remediation.
Autonomic, hormonal, and local circulatory effects of hemorrhage in conscious rabbits.

Conscious instrumented rabbits were bled at a constant rate of congruent to 3% of the blood volume (BV) per minute. We determined the BV-response relationships for mean arterial pressure (MAP), heart rate (HR), cardiac output (CO), mesenteric and hindlimb blood flows, and for the corresponding conductances. We studied the responses 1) under normal conditions; 2) after pretreatment with captopril, arginine vasopressin (AVP) antagonist, or both; 3) during total autonomic blockade (TAB); and 4) during neurohumoral blockade (NHB, i.e., TAB + captopril + AVP antagonist). We determined the direct local response component from the responses obtained during NHB. The local chronotropic effects congruent to 0, so that the reflex rise in HR was entirely autonomically mediated. The local vascular response consisted of vasodilatation and provided the base line for assessing the estimated constrictor component from the net response from control, with the former ranging from 2 to 16 times the conventional estimates based on the net responses. In normal rabbits, the phase of good maintenance of MAP was entirely governed by autonomic mechanisms, which minimized the fall in CO and offset the local vasodilator component. During the hypotensive phase immediately after hemorrhage, when congruent to 30-35% BV had been removed, the constrictor effects of AVP and angiotensin II (ANG II) became important, whereas the role of autonomic mechanisms diminished. During TAB, the constrictor effects of AVP and ANG II were prominent even with small BV losses.
Globalisation and Outsourcing: Confronting New Human Resource Challenges in India's Business Process Outsourcing Industry

In this article, we argue that the rapid growth of the outsourcing industry has resulted in both high turnover and labour shortages and at the same time provided employment opportunities to a new group of employees: young upwardly mobile college graduates. We argue that this particular demographic profile is prone to high turnover and presents new managerial challenges. We then examine the variety of recruitment and retention strategies that companies in the business process outsourcing industry are experimenting with and show that many novel HR strategies are being crafted to address the needs of this young middle-class workforce. We also examine macro efforts by state and central governments and the industry association to help resolve some of these problems.
Optimal ordering decisions under two returns policies

To avoid stockouts and maintain product availability, retailers typically carry excess units and subsequently incur higher cost. In case of style/fashion goods, demand forecasting is extremely difficult due to short selling cycles. The purpose of this study was to minimise the cost of excess stocking without compromising product availability. To achieve these conflicting objectives, our study includes two ordering instances and two returns policies. The time between orders subsequently helps resolve demand uncertainty. Existing studies consider only one type of returns policy, that is, returns on the entire purchase quantity; whereas our study considers two types of returns policies: returns on the first order size and returns on the entire purchase quantity. This study also includes models for the retailer and the supply chain system. Analytical and numerical insights into our study enable the retailer to select his appropriate returns policies to maximise his as well as system’s expected profits. We also show that perfect coordination of partners will help them improve their profits considerably.
Two New Species of Pristionchus (Rhabditida: Diplogastridae): P. fissidentatus n. sp. from Nepal and La Réunion Island and P. elegans n. sp. from Japan.

Pristionchus fissidentatus n. sp. , isolated from soil in Nepal, and P. elegans n. sp. , isolated from Phelotrupes auratus (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) in Japan, are described. The two new species are recognized as basal within the genus and thus occupy an important position for macroevolutionary studies that center on the model P. pacificus. Pristionchus fissidentatus n. sp. is distinguished by its unique stegostomatal morphology: in the stenostomatous form, the right subventral ridge has three prominent cusps and the left subventral sector has, in addition to a plate with two cusps, a prominent denticle slightly left of ventral; in the eurystomatous form, the right subventral stegostomatal sector shows both a tooth and a ridge with several cusps. Diagnostic of P. elegans n. sp. is the structure of the stenostomatous cheilostom, which bulges medially and is underlain by a large vacuolated ring. No eurystomatous form has been observed in P. elegans n. sp. Reproductive modes of P. fissidentatus n. sp. and P. elegans n. sp. are hermaphroditic and gonochoristic, respectively. The additional isolation of P. fissidentatus n. sp. from soil and two species of scarab beetle on La Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean suggests a broad geographic range for this species.
Insights into the bile acid transportation system: The human ileal lipid‐binding protein‐cholyltaurine complex and its comparison with homologous structures

Bile acids are generated in vivo from cholesterol in the liver, and they undergo an enterohepatic circulation involving the small intestine, liver, and kidney. To understand the molecular mechanism of this transportation, it is essential to gain insight into the three‐dimensional (3D) structures of proteins involved in the bile acid recycling in free and complexed form and to compare them with homologous members of this protein family. Here we report the solution structure of the human ileal lipid‐binding protein (ILBP) in free form and in complex with cholyltaurine. Both structures are compared with a previously published structure of the porcine ILBP‐cholylglycine complex and with related lipid‐binding proteins. Protein structures were determined in solution by using two‐dimensional (2D)‐ and 3D‐homo and heteronuclear NMR techniques, leading to an almost complete resonance assignment and a significant number of distance constraints for distance geometry and restrained molecular dynamics simulations. The identification of several intermolecular distance constraints unambiguously determines the cholyltaurine‐binding site. The bile acid is deeply buried within ILBP with its flexible side‐chain situated close to the fatty acid portal as entry region into the inner ILBP core. This binding mode differs significantly from the orientation of cholylglycine in porcine ILBP. A detailed analysis using the GRID/CPCA strategy reveals differences in favorable interactions between protein‐binding sites and potential ligands. This characterization will allow for the rational design of potential inhibitors for this relevant system. Proteins 2003;50:312–328. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Inflation

A. Neal Geller, Ph.D., is an associate professor instructing courses in accounting and financial management at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration. A 1964 graduate of the School, he holds an M.B.A. from Cornell University and a doctorate in accounting from the Syracuse University Graduate School of Management. Is the disclosure of replacement-cost data a coming requirement for all publicly held firms
Do Japanese Consumers Care About Sustainable Fisheries? Evidence from an Auction of Ecolabelled Seafood

type="main" xml:id="ajar12036-abs-0001"> This paper investigates Japanese consumers' willingness to pay for Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) ecolabelled seafood using a sealed bid, second price auction. Participants in an experiment in Tokyo were provided varying degrees of information about the status of world and Japanese fisheries and the MSC program in sequential rounds of bidding on ecolabelled and nonlabelled salmon products. A random-effects tobit regression shows that there is a statistically significant premium of about 20 per cent for MSC-ecolabelled salmon over nonlabelled salmon when consumers are provided information on both the status of global fish stocks and the purpose of the MSC program. This premium arises from a combination of an increased willingness to pay for labelled products and a decreased willingness to pay for unlabelled products. However, in the absence of experimenter-provided information, or when provided information about the purpose of the MSC program alone without concurrent information about the need for the MSC program, there is no statistically significant premium.
An Examination of Corporate Tax Shelter Participants

ABSTRACT: Recent evidence suggests that corporate tax shelters have become important corporate instruments for reducing tax burden. Based on a sample of identified tax shelter participants, I develop a profile of the type of firm that likely engages in tax sheltering. The model detects tax shelter participants through the use of variables predicted to be either affected by or associated with tax sheltering. I find that firms actively engaged in tax sheltering exhibit larger ex post book‐tax differences and more aggressive financial reporting practices. Using this model of tax shelter firm characteristics, I identify a broad sample of predicted tax shelter firms from the population of firms. I then examine whether tax sheltering is associated with wealth creation for shareholders or with managerial opportunism. I find that active tax shelter firms with strong corporate governance exhibit positive abnormal returns. This finding is consistent with tax sheltering being a tool for wealth creation in well‐gover.
The evaluation of queue and adaptation response models for telerobotic supervisory control in gaming environment

Human supervisory control allows human operators to plan the movement of the remote machine by entering a series of commands as pre-defined positions. There are two possible kinds of response movements from executing this series of commands. This paper describes an experiment to test the performance of the two kinds of response movements under varied visual planning/feedback scenarios. By applying a mixed reality environment as the interface, this experiment made the use of virtual objects to provide additional information for planning and monitoring the process. The highest productivity was achieved using a queue-based model of interaction with additional visual cues. Besides, further analysis had been done in evaluating the impact of the use of the features for the numbers of variable outcomes. The usage of virtual camera also had significant impact statistically into the experiment outcomes.
Plasma Procarboxypeptidase U in Men with Symptomatic Coronary Artery Disease

Summary Procarboxypeptidase U (proCPU) is the plasma precursor of carboxypeptidase U (CPU, carboxypeptidase R, plasma carboxypeptidase B or activated thrombin-activatable fibrinolysis inhibitor, TAFIa). CPU removes C-terminal lysine residues that act as plasminogen binding sites from partially degraded fibrin, thereby down-regulating plasminogen activation and fibrinolysis. The present study was carried out as a pilot study to examine whether the plasma proCPU concentration is related to the presence of coronary artery disease (CAD) and/or to levels of established risk indicators for CAD, in a case-control study of 110 men requiring coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) because of stable angina pectoris. The preoperative plasma proCPU level in the CABG patients was significantly higher than in population-based controls (1029 ± 154 vs. 974 ± 140 U/L, p <0.05). In addition, in a subset of the patients (n = 31) the proCPU concentration, which was significantly lower on the third postoperative day (−17 ± 10%), had increased significantly on the sixth day (+14 ± 12%) after surgery, compared with the preoperative level. In both patients and controls, proCPU concentration was strongly and positively associated with factor VII amidolytic activity and protein C activity, suggesting a common mechanism modulating the plasma levels of these proteins. Otherwise, statistically significant correlations with proCPU were group-specific. In the patients, proCPU correlated significantly with plasma fibrinogen and protein S. In the controls, proCPU correlated significantly with concentrations of cholesterol in plasma, VLDL and LDL. In addition, proCPU correlated significantly with C-reactive protein and haptoglobin levels in the controls only, indicating that also inflammatory mechanisms are involved in the regulation of plasma proCPU. These results suggest that a mechanism exists by which fibrinolytic function is impaired in a manner that is likely to result in more stable fibrin deposits and increase the risk of precocious CAD as well as early occlusion of venous bypass grafts.
INDONESIA'S CHANGING ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

Abstract Indonesia's regional socio-economic data base extends over 30 years, so it is now possible to draw conclusions about regional development dynamics since the 1970s. We examine economic growth, inequality, convergence, structural change, demographic dynamics and social indicators over this period. There continues to be great diversity in economic and social outcomes, but growth and social progress have been remarkably even: the poorest regions, located mainly in Eastern Indonesia, have generally performed about as well as the national average. The better performing regions include those that are the most ‘connected’ to the global economy. In this respect, Jakarta stands out, growing richer than the rest of the country over time. As expected, conflict is harmful to economic development. There is no clear natural resource story: the performance of the resource-rich provinces has varied considerably.
The ex-ante impact of conflict over infrastructure settings on residential property values: The case of Paris’s suburban zones

The presence of nearby public facilities has an impact on real-estate values; for this reason, the market may reasonably anticipate that public infrastructure projects will affect house prices. But undesirable and semi-desirable facility location choices may be contested by nearby residents, as they are a source of negative externalities or expectations. In Paris’s suburban zones, opposition to these infrastructures is frequent, and the official announcement of a project does not automatically mean it will be implemented. Through three case studies, we explore the way in which the expectation mechanism is affected by legal conflicts driven by nearby residents. We suppose that expectations depend on the probability that a given project will be realised. The variation is captured by a hedonic model. As conflicts amplify or reduce the certainty of the new facility’s arrival, market perceptions of the infrastructure vary.