Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Public Works and Employment Programmes: Towards a Long-Term Development Approach

Public works and employment programmes have long been considered a staple of social assistance. For the most part, though, they have been designed as short-term ? safety nets? While, in some cases, the focus has also been on reducing poverty or addressing structural unemployment challenges, their implementation has seldom been on a scale that would make a dent in structural poverty. The fact that large scale programmes such as India? s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which was initiated prior to the recent economic crisis, could also be effective in responding speedily to and mitigating the effects of the crisis has elicited interest in such policies as a component of inclusive growth paths. In making the case for a longer-term development approach, the paper points out that such an approach would not only allow these programmes to act as shock absorbers without being ? too little, too late? but would also enable the state to strengthen its capacities to provide support to livelihood strategies of the poor through addressing critical public goods and service deficits while creating jobs. In this context, the paper assesses the desirability and feasibility of adopting a universal or a partial Employment Guarantee (EG) to make such programmes a more stable complement to market-driven employment creation in situations where levels of poverty, in particular, working poverty, and underemployment are high. The paper also explores the complementarities and interactions with various social assistance and cash transfer programmes with a view to fostering a more comprehensive approach to social protection for the poor. The paper concludes with a section on implementation issues with a view to strengthening learning on how to plan, design and implement long-term and Employment Guarantee types of public employment programmes. (? )
Gross Worker Flows and the Great Recession in the United Kingdom: Examining the Theory and Evidence

This thesis provides a detailed analysis of the gross worker flows data in the United Kingdom between 1997 and 2010, with particular emphasis on the 2008-09 recession and its aftermath. Utilising flows data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS), the dominant macroeconomic factors driving unemployment in the United Kingdom before, during, and after the recessionary period are identified. The findings of the thesis are then reconciled with other theoretical and empirical literature in the field. Amongst the salient findings of this thesis is a striking decline in job-to-job movements throughout and beyond the recent recession. This discovery adds a new dimension to the existing literature in the field. Other contributions include the use of detrended Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the cyclical indicator (as opposed to another labour market indicator) and a split-sample analysis, which flags some interesting trend changes in labour market flow movements and transition rates, even prior to the Great Recession.
Strategies to prevent infections associated with cardiovascular implantable electronic devices

ABSTRACT Introduction: Infections involving cardiovascular implantable electronic devices (CIED) are associated with high morbidity and mortality and substantial financial cost. In the past two decades, the rate of CIED infections has increased disproportionate to the number of devices implanted, likely due to aging patient population with multiple comorbidities. Microbial contamination of the generator pocket and or leads by skin flora at the time of implantation is a major mechanism for early CIED infections. Due to resistance to host immune cells and antibiotics caused by biofilm formation, complete removal of the device generator and leads is required to achieve cure. Areas covered: In this manuscript, we review the published literature regarding epidemiology, risk factors, and pathogenesis of CIED infections with primary focus on the preventative strategies to reduce the incidence of device infections. Expert commentary: Strict adherence to infection control measures at the time of CIED implantation is critical in reducing the risk of device infection while adjunctive strategies such as use of antimicrobial envelopes might help in certain high-risk individuals. Technological advances in device manufacturing with availability of subcutaneous devices without transvenous leads and self-contained intracardiac devices without leads and generator show promise with lower risk of infection.
Gene Trees in Species Trees

Exploration of the relationship between gene trees and their containing species trees leads to consideration of how to reconstruct species trees from gene trees and of the concept of phylogeny as a cloud of gene histories. When gene copies are sampled from various species, the gene tree relating these copies might disagree with the species phylogeny. This discord can arise from horizontal transfer (including hybridization), lineage sorting, and gene duplication and ex- tinction. Lineage sorting could also be called deep coalescence, the failure of ancestral copies to coalesce (looking backwards in time) into a common ancestral copy until deeper than previous speciation events. These events depend on various factors; for instance, deep coalescence is more likely if the branches of the species tree are short (in generations) and wide (in population size). A similar dependence on process is found in historical biogeography and host-parasite relation- ships. Each of the processes of discord could yield a different parsimony criterion for reconstruct- ing the species tree from a set of gene trees: with horizontal transfer, choose the species tree that minimizes the number of transfer events; with deep coalescence, choose the tree minimizing the number of extra gene lineages that had to coexist along species lineages; with gene duplication, choose the tree minimizing duplication and/or extinction events. Maximum likelihood methods for reconstructing the species tree are also possible because coalescence theory provides the prob- ability that a particular gene tree would occur given a species tree (with branch lengths and widths specified). In considering these issues, one is provoked to reconsider precisely what is phylogeny. Perhaps it is misleading to view some gene trees as agreeing and other gene trees as disagreeing with the species tree; rather, all of the gene trees are part of the species tree, which can be visualized like a fuzzy statistical distribution, a cloud of gene histories. Alternatively, phylogeny might be (and has been) viewed not as a history of what happened, genetically, but as a history of what could have happened, i.e., a history of changes in the probabilities of inter- breeding. (Biogeography; coalescence; coevolution; evolution; gene duplication; gene genealogy; gene trees; horizontal transfer; hybridization; lineage sorting; parsimony; phylogeny; species con- cepts; species trees; tree reconciliation.)
Paths to Development through Trade: EU-Led Trade Liberalization vs South–South Cooperation

Since its inception in 1957, the member states of the European Economic Community (EEC) have been actively expanding their trade with the more dependent states in the Global South through consecutive treaties. The signing of the Cariforum–European Community Economic Partnership Agreement between the EU and the Caribbean States in 2007, is the latest in a long list of treaties promoted by the European Community as a means of securing market access for its goods and services within the growing markets of the developing world. In April 1976 the Lomé Convention came into force and set the new foundations on which the European Community would conduct its development and aid assistance policies with countries of the African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) regions. Lomé replaced the Yaoundé agreement of 1963, which was the first official accord between the newly established European Economic Community
Discounting the Clean Development Mechanism

This Note proposes discounting the value of emission credits generated from the Kyoto Protocol's flexibility mechanisms - the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI) - to promote more efficient, equitable, sustainable, and carbon-negative projects abroad. The paper begins by exploring the economics, flaws, and inefficiencies of these two mechanisms, finding them to be an inadequate solution to global climate change as they lead to insufficient and inefficient greenhouse gas reductions. The CDM and JI promote insufficient emissions reductions by allowing industrialized nations to swap domestic emissions for corresponding reductions in the developing world without any net global greenhouse gas reductions. Secondly, the two mechanisms award emissions reduction credits based off the global warming potential of the greenhouse gases reduced, rather than the costs of abatement, which can lead to gross market distortions. More critically, it allows industrialized nations to satisfy a large share of their Kyoto obligations by investing in a few isolated super-pollutant projects, thereby depriving the developing world of the necessary low-carbon technology transfer and improvements in sustainable development promised under the Kyoto Protocol. In response to these flaws, the author proposes "discounting" or reducing the number of emissions credits issued for a project, while maintaining the same level of actual emission reductions, thereby promoting net greenhouse gas reductions. Specifically he proposes discounting the value of credits generated by CDM and JI projects to more closely reflect the project's marginal cost of abatement and transactional costs. The Note proposes creating an expert panel to the CDM and JI, tasked with the duty of discounting the value of emissions credits to more closely reflect the marginal costs of abatement for various pollutants, projects, and host countries. The author concludes that so long as an international discounting scheme provides sufficient certainty, flexibility, and profits for foreign investment, dramatic emissions reductions will likely result.
Average Idiosyncratic Volatility in G7 Countries

The paper analyzes average idiosyncratic volatility in G7 countries. We find that idiosyncratic volatility is highly correlated across countries and there is a significant Granger causality from the U.S. to the other countries and vice versa. Consistent with U.S. data, when combined with stock market volatility, idiosyncratic volatility has significant predictive power for stock market returns and the value premium in many other G7 countries. Moreover, in U.S. data, idiosyncratic volatility has explanatory power for stock returns very similar to that of value premium volatility in both time-series and cross-sectional regressions. Our results suggest that idiosyncratic volatility proxies for systematic risk omitted from CAPM.
An Explanation of Efficient Market Hypothesis and Unbiasedness Using Markov Switching Framework

This paper uses Indian stock futures data to explore efficient market hypothesis and unbiasedness. Having experienced voluminous transactions within a short time span after its establishment, the Indian stock futures market provides an unparalleled case for exploring these issues involving expectation and efficiency. Besides analyzing efficiency hypothesis and unbiasedness of stock futures market using cointegration and error correction model, the degree of efficiency is further investigated after explicitly modeling the underlying state of the market (expansion or contraction) through the first-order Markov switching set-up. The results based on Markov switching analysis show that relatively longer time horizon is more effective in eliminating arbitrage opportunities than the short run.
In-Work Poverty in Poland: Diagnosis and Possible Remedies

In this paper the authors analyze the evolution and the determinants of in-work poverty in Poland, according to three poverty lines: relative, absolute, and the 1998-adjusted poverty line. The authors find that behind moderately high in-work poverty incidence in Poland there is very high in-work poverty in agriculture and modest in-work poverty in all other sectors. Workers are much less likely to be poor than jobless individuals, especially the unemployed. In fact, the share of adults out of employment is a much stronger predictor of households' risk of poverty than the level of wages at which they work. Moreover, the share of jobless adults or of agricultural workers has become an increasing determinant of in-work poverty over time. The risk of in-work poverty is also inversely related to the educational attainment and the stability of employment of an individual, which is especially important considering that the incidence of temporary contracts in Poland is the highest across both European Union (EU) and Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. Existing fiscal and benefit policies have not been sufficient to address in-work poverty and some of its underlying causes in the labor market: the author presents four policy recommendations aimed at tackling in-work and total poverty, and at increasing labor market participation and employment.
Excitatory synaptic transmission in cultures of rat olfactory bulb.

1. Olfactory bulb neurons were dissociated from neonatal rats and plated at low density on a confluent layer of olfactory bulb astrocytes. Intracellular stimulation of presumptive mitral/tufted (M/T) cells evoked monosynaptic excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSPs) in adjacent neurons. Whole-cell recording techniques and a flow-pipe drug delivery system were used to compare EPSPs with voltage-clamp recordings of currents evoked by excitatory amino acids (EAA) including N-acetylaspartylglutamate (NAAG), a putative mitral cell transmitter. 2. Cultured olfactory bulb neurons were morphologically and physiologically distinct. Large pyramidal-shaped neurons were present, which were NAAG immunoreactive; stimulation of these neurons invariably evoked EPSPs, suggesting that they were M/T cells. The majority of small bipolar neurons were glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD) immunoreactive consistent with granule or periglomerular gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)ergic interneurons. 3. Monosynaptic EPSPs between M/T cells could be separated into fast and slow components by the use of EAA receptor antagonists. A fast component with a time-to-peak of 7.7 +/- 1.0 (SE) ms and half-width of 31.8 +/- 7.4 ms was blocked by the non-NMDA receptor antagonist 6-cyano-2,3-dihydroxy-7-nitro-quinoxaline (CNQX, 2.5 microM). The slow component (time-to-peak = 41.4 +/- 7.2 ms; half-width = 218.9 +/- 40.4 ms) was blocked by the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist DL-2-amino-5-phosphonovaleric acid (AP5, 100 microM). 4. Under voltage clamp, flow-pipe applications of NAAG (10-1,000 microM) evoked inward currents at a holding potential of -60 mV in Mg-free solutions. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Nödvändighetens pris - Konsumtion och knapphet bland barnfamiljer

The object of this thesis has been to study the relationship between consumption and economic scarcity from a theoretical perspective. I have used families with children as an empirical example to illustrate the theoretical framework. There are two main questions: The first focuses on the structures that create specific conditions for low-income consumers. The second relates to how the households cope with the fact that they live with scarce financial resources in comparison to other groups of households in a consumer society. My theoretical framework is mostly a combination of three theoretical fields. The first field deals with how low-income consumers in a structural meaning are discriminated against in different ways. I have adopted these research results, which have mainly come from the US, and used them in a Swedish context. The second field consists of theories that have been developed in disciplines such as sociology, anthropology and cultural theory. These theories discuss consumption from several perspectives but I have mainly concentrated on two issues. The first issue deals with the increased significance of consumption in society. The second issue is that of the symbolic meaning of consumption. The third theoretical field is dealing with welfare which involves concepts such as exclusion, inclusion and marginalization. In my opinion, research into consumption has not paid enough attention to groups that tend to be marginalized in society and do not have the financial resources to be part of the consumer society to the same degree as others. The study has primarily been a contribution to the understanding of the relationships that link consumption and financial scarcity from a theoretical perspective. However I am also interested in the appearance of these mechanisms in the everyday life of the households. I have therefore chosen to examine the theoretical framework through the empirical material. The empirical material includes four qualitative studies. Three of the studies are based on interviews and one on questionnaires. The studies indicate that that the position which the households have in relation to the labour market and the welfare security system is crucial to the household’s possibilities as consumers. A marginalized or excluded position in these fields also tends to hinder and raise barriers in the consumer field. The mechanisms in the field of consumption can therefore be understood as interrelated to those which create processes of inclusion or exclusion in other fields. The consumer field has also its own mechanisms that create different possibilities for different groups. Households with scarce financial resources mainly face three different mechanisms that in different ways restrict their possibilities as consumers. The families in my studies developed different strategies or ways of managing the feeling of being trapped. In their struggle to meet the needs of basic necessities and at the same time attempting to keep up with social necessities they acted and reasoned for the most part in five different ways.
The Phonological Organization of Sign Languages

Visually perceivable and movable parts of the body - the hands, facial features, head, and upper body - are the articulators of sign language. It is through these articulators that that words are formed, constrained, and contrasted with one another, and that prosody is conveyed. This article provides an overview of the way in which phonology is organized in the alternative modality of sign language.
Canonical valuation of options in the presence of stochastic volatility

Proposed by M. Stutzer (1996), canonical valuation is a new method for valuing derivative securities under the risk‐neutral framework. It is nonparametric, simple to apply, and, unlike many alternative approaches, does not require any option data. Although canonical valuation has great potential, its applicability in realistic scenarios has not yet been widely tested. This article documents the ability of canonical valuation to price derivatives in a number of settings. In a constant‐volatility world, canonical estimates of option prices struggle to match a Black‐Scholes estimate based on historical volatility. However, in a more realistic stochastic‐volatility setting, canonical valuation outperforms the Black‐Scholes model. As the volatility generating process becomes further removed from the constant‐volatility world, the relative performance edge of canonical valuation is more evident. In general, the results are encouraging that canonical valuation is a useful technique for valuing derivatives. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 25:1–19, 2005
Case based teaching at the bed side versus in classroom for undergraduates and residents of pediatrics

Introduction: Bedside teaching is defined as teaching in the presence of a patient, it is a vital component of medical education. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of two methods of case based teaching (at the bedside and in the classroom) in the teaching hospitals (for both undergraduates and residents of pediatrics). Methods: Thirty undergraduates and twenty pediatric residents were asked to study a topic of their curriculum from their text then pretest was taken from learners in the two levels; then either lecture with power point or case presentation or bed side discussion were conducted. One week later post- test was taken, and then evaluation of these three methods was done by a questionnaire from learners. Results: The majority of under-graduates and all of pediatric residents had evaluated case based teaching superior to bedside teaching and these two methods superior to lecture method. Conclusions: They believed that in the case based teaching they are more relaxed and have more self-esteem than at the bedside of the patients. Clinician teacher must involve participants and learners in the process of bedside teaching, by preparing a comfortable situation and by using available technology.
Research Note: Economic Values in the Swedish Nature-Based Recreation Sector — A Synthesis

This research synthesis reports the main findings from a review of economic values associated with nature-based recreation in Sweden. The purpose of the work was to support policy and to identify areas for future research. Data came from over 150 scientific publications and other public sources. The authors find inter alia a lack of systematic data for several recreation activities (including nature-based tourism), a significant growth in the outdoor equipment industry and a relatively modest economic involvement by the public sector. The information is structured under different categories to illustrate the significance and range of different economic values. The authors conclude that there is a need for more comprehensive and systematically collected data, methodological development and interdisciplinary research.
Entrepreneurial attitudes to venture capital investment realization: evidence from the UK and France

This paper discusses the comparative influences on attitudes of entrepreneurs towards exit from venture capital backed investments in the UK and France and presents survey evidence relating to the attitudes towards exit of a sample of venture-backed entrepreneurs in the two countries. The study identifies statistically significant differences in attitudes to realization both within and between the two countries, both in relation to preferences for different options and the reasons for preferring one rather than another.
A Rate-Compatible Puncturing Scheme for Finite-Length LDPC Codes

In this paper, we propose a rate-compatible puncturing scheme for finite-length low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes over the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. The proposed method is applicable to any LDPC mother code, both regular and irregular, and constructs punctured codes which perform well in both the waterfall and the error floor regions for a wide range of code rates. The scheme selects code bits to be punctured one at a time and based on a sequence of criteria. An important selection criterion is the number of short cycles with low approximate cycle extrinsic message degree (ACE) in which a candidate bit node participates. Simulation results demonstrate that the ACE measure, which is most often the determining criterion in the final selection of the puncturing candidates, plays an important role in improving the performance of the codes in both the waterfall and the error-floor regions. These results also demonstrate that the proposed scheme is superior to the existing puncturing methods, particularly when a wide range of code rates is desirable.