Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
.China’s Climate-Change Policy 1988-2011: From Zero to Hero?

This report describes the evolution of China’s domestic climate-change policy over the period 1988-2011, using the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) to explore the policy change. Policy development has been gradual, with the most notable change occurring in 2007, when the National Climate Change Programme elevated climate change to a national policy issue.The ACF points to socioeconomic development and the Climate Change Advocacy Coalition’s policy-oriented learning as explanations for the development of climate-change policy in China.
Propagation velocity kinetics and repolarization alternans in a free-behaving sheep model of pacing-induced atrial fibrillation.

AIMS Experimental models have reported conflicting results regarding the role of dispersion of repolarization in promoting atrial fibrillation (AF). Repolarization alternans, a beat-to-beat alternation in action potential duration, enhances dispersion of repolarization when propagation velocity is involved. METHODS AND RESULTS In this work, original electrophysiological parameters were analysed to study AF susceptibility in a chronic sheep model of pacing-induced AF. Two pacemakers were implanted, each with a single right atrial lead. Right atrial depolarization and repolarization waves were documented at 2-week intervals. A significant and gradual decrease in the propagation velocity at all pacing rates and in the right atrial effective refractory period (ERP) was observed during the weeks of burst pacing before sustained AF developed when compared with baseline conditions. Right atrial repolarization alternans was observed, but because of the development of 2/1 atrioventricular block with far-field ventricular interference, its threshold could not be precisely measured. Non-sustained AF was not observed at baseline, but appeared during the electrical remodelling in association with a decrease in both ERP and propagation velocity. CONCLUSION We report here on the feasibility of measuring ERP, atrial repolarization alternans, and propagation velocity kinetics and their potential in predicting susceptibility to AF in a free-behaving model of pacing-induced AF using the standard pacemaker technology.
Mentally disordered prisoners: reports but no improvements

years, but no group was available for comparison at this stage. Real life treatments are more expensive and difficult to organise than office based procedures, but the cost effectiveness of such brief courses may be high. Because more people are flying-overseas flights by British residents rose from 5 9 million in 1971 to 16-5 million in 1986'0-the demand for treatment of flying phobia is certain to increase. General practitioners faced with patients wanting treatment for flying phobia should refer them to clinical psychologists, who are likely to be familiar with the strategies of behavioural management. As a flight will probably be taken during treatment the patient (or his or her employer) should expect some expense. Nevertheless, this may be a small price to pay for relief from a problem that may cause such inconvenience. In some parts of Britain private treatment may be obtained through the medical officers of the major airlines. ANDREW STEPTOE
Alteration in ultrastructure and germination of Clostridium perfringens type A spores following extraction of spore coats.

Ultrastructural changes in Clostridium perfringens type A strain FD-1 spores treated with alkali, mercaptoethanol–urea, or dithiothreitol (DTT) were observed by electron microscopy of thin sections. Two prominent coat layers were differentially removed or altered by extraction with 0.1 N NaOH at 4 °C or 50 mM DTT, pH8.5, at 37 °C. Alkali disrupted or completely solubilized an inner, narrow, electron-dense coat without appreciably altering the ultrastructural appearance of the outer, wide, less electron-dense coat. A decrease in electron density of the subcoat region occurred with either an alkali or DTT treatment of the spores. DTT treatment at pH 8.5 substantially removed the outer coat and partially disrupted the inner coat. Germination of alkali-treated spores was completely lysozyme-dependent. DTT-treated spores at pH 8.5 germinated without added lysozyme. The germination system of these DTT-treated spores became heat-sensitive, with lysozyme dependence occurring after heating at 75 °C for 20 min. DTT.
Optimal time switching and power splitting in SWIPT

Simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT)hasdrawnsignificant researchinterest in recent years. This paper investigates the data outage and energy shortage probability of SWIPT system for a generalized On-off power splitting architecture. All links are subject to Weibullfading. We also derive a closed-form expression for optimal value of time switching parameter and power splitting factor to balance the rate-energy trade-off at the receiver. Numerical and simulation results are provided to validate the derived results.
Global Rare Earth In‐Use Stocks in NdFeB Permanent Magnets

The rare earth elements are indispensible in modern technology, especially in the applications of permanent magnets. Very little quantitative information is available on rare earth elements used in permanent magnets, however. This study looks back to 1983, when neodymium‐iron‐boron (NdFeB) permanent magnets were first manufactured, and reaches to 2007, when the market of permanent magnets was well developed. We draw on the historical data on permanent magnets from China, Japan, the United States, and Europe to provide the first estimates of global in‐use stocks for four rare earth elements—praseodymium (Pr), neodymium (Nd), terbium (Tb), and dysprosium (Dy)—in NdFeB permanent magnets. In‐use stocks amount to 62.6 gigagrams (Gg) Nd, 15.7 Gg Pr, 15.7 Gg Dy, and 3.1 Gg Tb; these stocks, if efficiently recycled, could provide a valuable supplement to geological stocks as they are almost four times the 2007 annual extraction rate of the individual elements.
Costs and regulation in the U.K. telecommunications industry

Abstract This article is written in the belief that it is important to encourage research into accounting for regulated industries. It seeks to illustrate this by considering as an exemplar the use of Accounting Separation (using regulated industry nomenclature) and hierarchical costing systems in the U.K. telecommunications industry concentrating on their use by BT and the telecommunications regulator. Accounting Separation seeks to use accounting means to partition the organization into elements as independent as possible from other parts of the organization. The published output of this system is meant to inform competitors of BT's costs for the regulated network components they use. These costs are also used in setting interconnection charges. These are charges that other operators pay for connecting with and using the BT system. This is not the accounting system used in decision making by BT. Nor does it represent the only accounting information obtained by the regulator. The focus of this article is upon how far the BT accounting system satisfies the accounting conditions required to allow the incremental costs and stand alone costs of the partitioned elements of the organization to be determined in a setting using a hierarchical accounting system. Methods of overcoming some of the identified problems are suggested. The importance of correct approaches to joint costs is highlighted concentrating on the treatment of joint costs in regulation. The accounting ideas discussed here would seem to have application well beyond regulated firms but seem neglected generally in management accounting.
ANALISIS FAKTOR-FAKTOR YANG BERPENGARUH TERHADAP TINGKAT UNDERPRICED PADA PENAWARAN PERDANA Di Bursa Efek Jakarta

Penelitian ini menguji hipotesis yang dikembangkan dalam konteks asimetri informasi di antara para pelaku pasar modal di pasar modal Indonesia. Hipotesis yang diajukan dalam penelitian adalah adanya pengaruh auditor, underwiter, persentase saham yang ditahan oleh pemegang saham lama, umur perusahaan dan ukuran perusahaan terhadap tingkat underpriced. Hasil dari penelitian terhadap perusahaan-perusahaan yang melakukan IPO dalam periode 1995-1996 tidak berhasil menunjukkan adanya pengaruh yang signifikan faktor-faktor di atas terhadap tingkat underpriced.
"Mending Fences on the Immigrant Frontier": A Call for Better Integration of Demographic Information in Human Resource Management Practice and Theory

The authors argue that human resource management practitioners and researchers do not adequately take national origin into account when devising policies and theories. It is further asserted that this failure puts companies at risk for both lesser achievement of organizational objectives and potential legal liability (e.g., disparate impact). The background of the legal concept of a "reasonable man " is discussed in order to provide a possible explanation for why insufficient attention is paid to demographic factors such as race and national origin, and implications for theory and practice.
Video scene text frames categorization for text detection and recognition

Developing a unified text detection and recognition method is hard for different video types due to varying characteristics in video. This paper proposes a new method for categorizing different types of video text frames, namely, videos containing advertisement, signboard, license plate, front page of book or magazine, street view, and video of general items, for better text detection and recognition rate. We propose symmetry features using gradient vector flow for Canny and Sobel edge images of each input frame to identify candidate edge components. Then for a candidate edge component image, we extract both global and local features using colors from different channels in a new way. Besides, the proposed method extracts statistical and structural features from the spatial distribution of candidate pixels in a multi-scale environment. Lastly, the extracted features are fed to a logistic classifier for categorization. The features extracted locally and globally are tested both separately and altogether in terms of confusion matrix. The performance of the proposed categorization method is evaluated through several text detection and recognition experiments before and after categorization. We noted that the proposed categorization method is very useful in improving text detection and recognition performance.
Multiscale Models for Target Detection and Background Discrimination in Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery

Abstract Multiscale models can be used to capture the scale-dependent behavior of the statistics in radar imagery. This behavior is expected to be different for natural background compared to objects of interest such as vehicles. We demonstrate that multiscale autoregressive models can discriminate between samples of these two major classes extracted from 1.5-m-resolution radar imagery. We also show that it is possible to discriminate between two types of natural background in SAR imagery, “grassland” and “woodland,” using multiscale models. This latter result could be exploited in adaptive algorithms for automated target detection.
Product Market Imperfections and Loan Commitments

The author shows, in a model of competitive banks, that the characteristics of loan contracts are affected by product market imperfections in the borrower's industry. A bank loan commitment increases the value of a borrower firm operating in an imperfectly competitive industry and, thus, dominates a simple loan even in the absence of risk sharing considerations and informational asymmetries between the borrower and the bank. While it is individually rational for a firm to obtain a loan commitment, all the firms in that industry taken together are made worse off by the existence of loan commitments. Copyright 1990 by American Finance Association.
Socially Responsible Distribution: Distribution Strategies for Reaching the Bottom of the Pyramid

While management scholars and development economists have provided a compelling case for greater attention to the bottom of the pyramid, few contributions have examined specific strategies for reaching the bottom of the pyramid. The majority comprising the bottom of the pyramid resides in hundreds of thousands of villages located beyond most multinationals' distribution networks. Its access to essential goods is limited not just by high prices, but also by inadequate rural distribution, which also restricts the poor in distributing its produce. We use the term socially responsible distribution to describe initiatives that provide poor producers and consumers with market access for goods and services that they can benefit from buying or selling, by helping neutralize the disadvantages they suffer from inadequate physical links to markets, information asymmetries, and weak bargaining power. This paper examines three socially responsible distribution case studies of multinational company, government and NGO initiatives. It identifies how socially responsible distribution can be achieved by strategies that take cost out, reinvent the distribution channel or take a long-term perspective that invests for the future. It summarizes procedures and precautions for setting up distribution into the rural bottom of the pyramid, and the payoffs from socially responsible distribution strategies.
IPO lockups, founder power, and executive compensation

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between IPO lockups and founder-CEOs’ compensation and incentives in newly public firms. The paper argues that existence and length of lockup agreements are affected by bargaining power of founders, which will consequently influence the determination of their compensation contracts. Design/methodology/approach - – Multivariate tests are constructed to examine the relationship between IPO lockups and executive compensation. OLS, fixed-effect panel data model, and the Heckman two-stage model are all utilized to conduct the tests. Findings - – The study finds that lockup existence and lockup length are negatively related to founder-CEOs’ total compensation and positively related to founder-CEOs’ equity incentives. The results hold after controlling for the endogenous decision to sign a lockup agreement at the IPO. Research limitation/implications - – The paper's results suggest that the power of founders and other insiders is a crucial factor in the lockup determination process besides economic factors identified in previous studies. The paper's results also echo the political power theory in the management literature which suggests that an organization's decision making is heavily influenced by relative power of organizational members and reflects their preference. Originality/value - – The paper raises a new explanation for the determinant of IPO lockups that supplements the extant theories. The paper argues that existence and length of lockup agreements could be affected by bargaining power of insiders.
Depression of membrane-bound Na+-K+-ATPase activity induced by free radicals and by ischemia of kidney.

A partially purified, membrane-bound Na+-K+-ATPase fraction, prepared from the outer medulla of porcine kidney, was incubated in the presence of 0.1 mM FeCl3, 1 mM ADP, and 0.1-100 mM H2O2 for either 15 or 30 min at 37 degrees C. The activity of ouabain-sensitive Na+-K+-ATPase was reduced proportionally to the concentration of H2O2 and the duration of incubation. There were decreases in SH contents and turnover rates of the Na+-K+-ATPase preparation, while malondialdehyde (MDA) and conjugated dienes were generated from the membrane lipids in the course of the incubation. The concentrations of ethanolamine (E) plasmalogen and of arachidonic acid in the E glycerophospholipid molecules were reduced by the free radical reaction. Similarly, a reduction in Na+-K+-ATPase activity and the formation of MDA and conjugated dienes, together with a decrease in E glycerophospholipids, were observed when the membrane fraction was exposed to ultraviolet irradiation (254 nm) for 30 min at 4 degrees C. Administration of 10 mM dithiothreitol alleviated the reductions in enzyme activity, in turnover rate, and in SH content without suppressing MDA formation. Addition of 2 mM butylated hydroxytoluene to the incubation mixture prevented the lipid peroxidation without totally normalizing the enzyme activity in the H2O2 experiment, whereas this antioxidant restored the ATPase activity to normal in the ultraviolet experiment. Microsomal fractions, prepared from the outer medulla of canine kidney after 1 h of unilateral ischemia and 1 h of reperfusion, showed a decreased Na+-K+-ATPase activity, a reduced amount of SH groups, and an increased MDA. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Church attendance in Great Britain: an ordered logit approach

The church attendance decision of individual economic agents is analysed within a Becker-style allocation of time framework. Using an ordered logit model with data derived from the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) separate attendance equations are estimated for males and females. The empirical results, in line with previous North American studies, suggest that labour income variables do account for some of the variation in attendance. In addition, attendance is found to be correlated with factors such as denominational affiliation, educational attainment and intensity of belief.
Federal Reserve Transcript Publication and Regional Representation

" This article looks at disagreement within the Federal Reserve's monetary policy committee, the Federal Open Market Committee or FOMC, following a change in transparency practices taken in 1993 to publish verbatim transcripts of FOMC meetings. Other literature has examined the effects of opening the FOMC's deliberations to public view and provided empirical evidence that the publication of transcripts made policymakers less willing to voice disagreement with the chairman's policy proposal. This article adds to that work by examining whether regional variables are important to the analysis and whether the transcription effects are robust to the inclusion of regional variables. The results indicate that transcription effects are indeed robust, regardless of the regional indicator used, and that larger Federal Reserve districts may be more likely to voice agreement with a given policy proposal. " (JEL E42, E58, E65, F33) Copyright (c) 2009 Western Economic Association International.
Recent approaches on no- reference image quality assessment for contrast distortion images with multiscale geometric analysis transforms: A survey

The study of Image Quality Assessment (IQA) in digital image and video processing is challenging due to the existences of numerous types of distortions such as blur, noise, blocking, contrast change, etc. Nevertheless, it is interesting to devise a metric system in order to determine the quality of an image quantitatively. Currently, most of the existing No Reference(NR)-IQA metrics focus on the quality evaluation of distorted images due to compression, noise and blurring. The related work performed in the area of NR-IQA for Contrast Distortion Images (CDI) is quite limited unfortunately. Also, most of the existing NR-IQA metrics are designed in spatial domain and very little of them are devised based on Multiscale Geometric Analysis (MGA) Transforms. Therefore, in this paper, NR-IQA metrics are classified into two groups, i.e. NR-IQA Metrics for general purpose and NR-IQA Metrics for CDI. Due to the fact that our main focus is contrast distortion, NR IQA metrics have been overviewed in both spatial and transform domains. We classify the transform domain into traditional transform and MGA transform then focusing on MGA Transforms. Subsequently, the MGA transform which is suitable for the design of NRIQA metric used to predict the quality of CDI is proposed. The presented survey will to keep up-to-date the researchers in the field of image quality assessment especially for CDI. Also, this survey provides an outlook for future work using many combinations among MGA Transforms to access to new IQA metric for CDI.
Septins at a glance

The pioneering cell division cycle screens carried out by Hartwell in 1971 first identified septins as genes that are essential for yeast cytokinesis ([Hartwell, 1971][1]). However, significant characterization of the evolutionarily conserved proteins they encode did not begin until the late 1980s.
Investigational C-C chemokine receptor 2 antagonists for the treatment of autoimmune diseases

Background: C-C chemokine receptor 2 (CCR2) antagonists belong to a group of chemokine blockers, which represent a new strategy for inflammatory diseases treatment by interfering with the complex system of chemokines and their receptors. A number of CCR2 antagonists are being developed for treatment of autoimmune diseases by different pharmaceutical and biotechnological companies. Objective: In this article the dark and the bright side of therapeutic CCR2 antagonism is discussed, with a view to its potential efficacy in various autoimmune diseases, in which clinical trials are already in progress, such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. We describe different modes of possible interactions with CCR2–chemokine CC motif ligand 2 (CCL2) axis, usefulness of experimental animal models, continuing clinical trials and future perspectives of CCR2 antagonists. Methods: Until now only a few peer-reviewed articles providing data on the progress of preclinical and clinical trials with CCR2 antagonists have been published; therefore, we also present data based on preliminary reports, obtained from a number of press releases, conference communications and from the PharmaProjects database. Results/Conclusion: Although there is growing evidence for a great therapeutic potential of CCR2 blockade in autoimmune diseases, especially well documented in experimental animal models, so far clinical trials with CCR2 antagonists in humans have been moderately encouraging or even disappointing, indicating a need to further elucidate the complex system of chemokine interactions.