Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Economic Conditions and the Congressional Vote: A Review of the Macrolevel Evidence

It is widely believed that variation in the national congressional vote is largely determined by the health of the national economy. However, scholars have yet to agree on a satisfactory microlevel explanation of the macrolevel relationship. The present study suggests the solution that there may not exist any macrolevel relationship to explain. With the proper specifications, per capita income growth is not significantly related to the congressional vote. This result varies sharply with the evidence at the presidential level.
Projecting EU Referendums

This study tests competing hypotheses about public support for European integration and projects referendum voting behaviour. It emphasizes anti-immigration sentiments as a key variable for understanding reluctance about integration. Drawing on survey data, it is shown that anti-immigration sentiments, economic considerations and the evaluation of domestic governments are the strongest predictors of both attitudinal support for integration and individuals’ propensity to vote ‘yes’ in a referendum on the enlargement of the European Union (EU).
Pravastatin reduces radiation-induced damage in normal tissues

Pravastatin is an inhibitor of 3-hydroxy-3-methyl- glutaryl-coenzyme A reductase that has been reported to have therapeutic applications in a range of inflammatory conditions. The aim of the present study was to assess the radioprotective effects of pravastatin in an experimental animal model. Mice were divided into two groups: The control group received ionizing radiation with no prior medication, while the pravastatin group received pravastatin prior to ionizing radiation. Pravastatin was administered orally at 30 mg/kg body weight in drinking water at 24 and 4 h before irradiation. Intestinal crypt epithelial cell survival and the incidence of apoptosis in the intestine and lung were measured post-irradiation. The effect of pravastatin on intestinal DNA damage was determined by immunohistochemistry. Finally, the effect of pravastatin on tumor response to radiotherapy was examined in a mouse mesothelioma xenograft model. Pravastatin increased the number of viable intestinal crypts and this effect was statistically significant in the ileum (P<0.0001). The pravastatin group showed significantly lower apoptotic indices in all examined parts of the intestine (P<0.0001) and tended to show reduced apoptosis in the lung. Pravastatin reduced the intestinal expression of ataxia-telangiectasia mutated and gamma-H2AX after irradiation. No apparent pravastatin-related differences were observed in the response of xenograft tumors to irradiation. In conclusion, pravastatin had radioprotective effects on the intestine and lung and reduced radiation-induced DNA double-strand breaks. Pravastatin may increase the therapeutic index of radiotherapy.
De Novo Aneurysm: Case Reports and Literature Review

BACKGROUND AND IMPORTANCE:Formation of cerebral de novo aneurysms (CDNAs) is rare, and the pathogenesis remains obscure. We analyzed factors involved in formation of CDNAs and suggest guidelines for follow-up of patients. CLINICAL PRESENTATION:We retrospectively reviewed intracranial aneurysms at our institute and published reports from 1964 to 2008. Eleven patients were found with CDNAs, and 138 patients were collected from the published literature. We assessed the clinical characteristics, such as sex, size, and site of CDNA, past history, and time to occurrence of CDNAs. Of 11 patients, 10 were female and 1 was male; the mean age of the first onset was 53 years (range, 25-69 years). The mean time between first aneurysms and CDNAs was 10.6 years (range, 3-29 years). The most common site of occurrence was anterior circulation. One patient experienced contralateral occurrence, and 2 patients changed from anterior to posterior circulation CDNAs. Six (54.5%) patients had a history of arterial hypertension. Results from analysis of the whole series from the literature revealed that the risk of rupture increased with a previous history of hemorrhage. Contralateral occurrence of CDNAs was related to previous location, and multiplicity, whereas the occurrence of anterior to posterior changes of CDNAs and shorter interval only correlated with an older age group. CONCLUSION:Although the formation of CDNAs is rare, several factors may contribute to its occurrence. Female patients with a history of arterial hypertension were at a higher risk for CDNA occurrence. We recommend follow-up imaging studies within 10 years after the initial aneurysms; therefore, at least 50% of CDNAs can be found before rupture.
Sex and Politics: Do Female Legislators Aect State Spending?

Between 1970 and 2000 women more than quintupled their presence in US state legisla- tures. It is widely believed that women's presence in public o¢ ce aects policy outcomes. However, economic theories provide con‡icting predictions about the eects of the gen- der of democratically elected politicians on policy outcomes. This paper provides causal estimates of the eect of democratically elected o¢ cials'genders on government spend- ing priorities in the United States. I exploit the quasi-random variation in the number of female state legislators created by the outcomes of extremely close elections. I …nd that the dramatic movement of women into US state houses over the past quarter cen- tury was responsible for a modest but robustly sign…ciant 15% share of the rise in state health spending and slowed the growth of corrections institution spending. There is no indication of an eect on other spending areas widely associated with women, such as education. These results are con…rmed by an analysis of roll-call voting on over 20,000 bills: closely-elected women deviate from their parties on health and prison related legis- lation more than closely-elected men or other legislators, but their votes on other issues are similar. Women elected in close races have a larger eect on spending priorities than the average female o¢ ce holder, a …nding in con‡ict with the predictions of classic median voter theory, but broadly consistent with the Citizen Candidate Model. These …ndings are also supported by survey data.
Flow meters: Part 1

This tutorial has focused on the importance of accurate measurement by flow meters in industrial applications and what is necessary to provide accuracy. The properties of fluid flow are discussed in relation to how these properties affect the measurement by flow meters. The diagrams, formulas and graphs illustrate the important factors in the use of volumetric, mass and smart flow meters.
Management accounting in Europe: a view from Canada

On the basis of a reading of Management Accounting: European Perspectives edited by Al Bhimani (1996), while there appears to be no historical pan-European perspective on management accounting earlier in this century groupings of countries -- Mediteranian, Western Europe, Scandinavian, and British -- did exhibit distinctive perspectives. However, following the advent of the relevance lost and strategic cost management movements, and especially activity-based costing, there does seem to be emerging a certain homogeneity in European management accounting practices. This commentary questions the intellectual and practical bases for these movements and activity-based costing. It also identifies some of the particular achievements of European management accounting researchers which are not covered in the book.
Exploring international work: types and dimensions of global careers

Contemporary global work comprises a wide and growing array of different modes of international work configurations. In this article, we offer a multidimensional framework for conceptual (theoretical and practical) underpinning of these different modes. Building on the extant literature and the Delphi approach, seven dimensions emerged: (i) time of exposure; (ii) intensity of international contact through work; (iii) breadth of interaction; (iv) legal context; (v) international work instigator; (vi) extent of cultural gap between an individual's country-of-origin and the context in which the international work takes place; and (vii) key cultural-related requirements of one's job/role. To these dimensions, we add individual and organizational contextual variables, e.g. diversity and occupational patterns, as well as career systems with a particular focus on the importance of globally orientated work. Furthermore, we list the major modes of global careers and draw a global career glossary. Both the multidimensional framework and the glossary should facilitate scholars and managers to systematize, analyse, manage and further develop their expatriation and repatriation career strategies, policies and practices.
Message-driven dynamics

Fine-grained message-driven parallel computers offer the promise of massive computational power with relatively low costs of logic and memory. The first such computer, the J-Machine, was constructed at MIT. This research critically examines this machine and finds that global flow control and load balancing were neglected in the J-Machine design and that these features must be considered for successor designs. The fact that the J-Machine is unable to run effectively a heavy fine-grained synthetic workload demonstrates the importance of this issue. Queues overflow and divert the processors from performing useful computation. Instead, the processors spend most of their time servicing costly overflow traps. This thesis analyzes the queueing dynamics of large heavy closed message-driven workloads and derives expressions for overflow rate as a function of the number of processors, the number of messages, and queue size. A threshold of tolerable imbalance is derived, beyond which no queue size will suffice. To model the J-Machine's routers, a mean value model is constructed and it shows that the router arbitration logic chosen for the J-Machine shapes the qualitative observed overflow behavior. Simply making the J-Machine queues larger is not a useful solution to preventing overflows: at saturation, the network imparts sufficient imbalance so that even balanced applied workloads exceed the tolerable threshold. Active global flow control and load balancing mechanisms are needed. Using simulation, the thesis compares one mechanism that returns overflowed messages to the sending processor to a mechanism using a high-water-mark and a priority alternate network. The conclusion is that the high-water-mark based scheme is more effective in preventing overflows. (Copies available exclusively from MIT Libraries, Rm. 14-0551, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307. Ph. 617-253-5668; Fax 617-253-1690.)
The Effect of Levodopa and Dopamine Agonists on Optic Nerve Head in Parkinson Disease

Purpose To evaluate the effects of levodopa and dopamine agonists on retinal nerve fiber layer using scanning laser ophthalmoscope. Methods Forty-four patients with the diagnosis of Parkinson disease and receiving levodopa or dopamine agonist monotherapy were included in this prospective study. The control group consisted of 21 normal cases. The optic nerve head images were taken with Heidelberg Retina Tomograph; rim area, rim volume, mean retinal nerve fiber layer thickness, and the results of Moorfields regression analysis were calculated. The measurement results were evaluated with Kruskal Wallis test and Mann-Whitney U-test. Results There was no significant difference in mean age among groups (p=0.093). Retinal nerve fiber layer was measured to be significantly decreased in cases with Parkinson disease (p=0.004) while rim area and rim volume did not show a significant change (p=0.224, p=0.804 respectively). Rim area, rim volume, and retinal nerve fiber layer were significantly greater in the group treated with levodopa while it was the thinnest in the group receiving dopamine agonists. Conclusions Levodopa can have a protective affect to retinal nerve fiber layer in Parkinson disease compared to dopamine agonists.
Genones: optimizing the degree of mixture tying in a large vocabulary hidden Markov model based speech recognizer

We propose a scheme that improves the robustness of continuous HMM systems that use mixture observation densities by sharing the same mixture components among different HMM states. The sets of HMM states that share the same mixture components are determined automatically using agglomerative clustering techniques. Experimental results on the Wall-Street Journal Corpus show that our new form of output distributions achieves a 25% reduction in error rate over typical tied-mixture systems. <<ETX>>
[Prevalence and associated factors to hepatitis C in hemodialysis patients in Brazil].

OBJECTIVE The prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) is higher in patients on hemodialysis than in the general population, probably due to greater exposure to risk situations. The purposes of the study were to determine anti-HCV antibodies prevalence among hemodialysis patients and dialysis clinics and patients factors associated with HCV transmission. METHODS A cross-sectional study was conducted in 752 hemodialysis patients in all 12 dialysis clinics of Fortaleza, Brazil, and were screened using third generation ELISA. Sociodemographic, clinical, and epidemiological data of 663 patients were collected through interviews. Nosocomial factors were assessed using a specific questionnaire tool. Statistical analysis was conducted using Student's t test, odds ratio and multivariate analysis. RESULTS The prevalence of anti-HCV was 52% (390/746; ranged from 6% to 72%). The anti-HCV positivity was higher in patients who had previous peritoneal dialysis (OR=1.76; 95% CI 1.12-2.76) and blood transfusion (OR=2.75; 95% CI 1.25-6.03). Dialysis age has been associated with anti-HCV positivity (OR=1.47; 95% CI 1.35-1.61). Clinics practices associated with anti-HCV positivity were: previous preparing of heparin (OR=2.92; 95% CI 1.23-6.92), failure in gloves use or change (OR=5.73; 95% CI 1.75-18.72), unsatisfactory dialysis machine disinfection (OR=2.79; 95% CI 1.57-4.96), and patient isolation in dialysis room (OR=0.18; 95% CI 0.05-0.61). CONCLUSIONS The results show high anti-HCV prevalence among hemodialysis patients and the association of nosocomial factors with new HCV infection cases.
Multiple-superquadrics based object surface estimation for grasping in service robotics

A method for approximating an object's surface defined by 2.5D data is presented. The goal is to determine a compact volume which may be subjected to manipulation actions under a proper grasp planning. The object volume is obtained based on a union of parameterized geometric shapes, also known as superquadrics. In order to reduce over-segmentations and also the number of fitting combinations, the object space is defined as a 3D bounding Region of Interest (ROI). Further, via voxel decomposition, the ROI is decomposed in more meaningful smaller ROIs that can capture a large number of features from the object of interest. By using a fixed size voxel grid, the process can be slowed down for the cases of large objects. A boosting speedup of the process is proposed through dynamically adjusting the sides of the voxels for each object. Finally, a method for voxels merging is proposed. Each of the newly created ROIs, related to a particular region of the object, will be hosting a superquadric model which optimally estimates the considered surface.
Importance of donor ethnicity/race matching in unrelated adult and cord blood allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplant

Abstract Donor race matching (both recipient and donor belonging to the same race) might be a factor in outcomes of donor allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplant (alloHCT). A total of 858 patients who underwent umbilical cord blood (UCB) (475 patients: 202 double UCB and 273 single UCB) or unrelated donor (URD) (383 patients) alloHCT between January 1995 and December 2010 were studied. Most patients were Caucasian (87%), followed by Asians (4%), African Americans (3%), Hispanics (3%), mixed race (3%) and American Indians (< 1%). Caucasians constituted 88% of the donor grafts; Caucasians were the most common race of the donor grafts among all races except for Asians. As a result, Caucasians were much more likely to have a race-matched donor than ethnic minorities (91% vs. 33%, p < 0.01). Donor race matching did not affect non-relapse mortality, relapse, acute or chronic graft-versus-host disease or overall survival. Acknowledging the limitations of this study (mainly, self-reported race information and small number of ethnic minorities), at present there are no data supporting that donor race should be considered a factor in donor selection.
Novel vectorization method for high resolution images

In the report, we address a problem of high resolution image representation by the sets of primitive structures (geometric models) in a wide range of scales for the aims of effective image processing and patterns manipulation. While various methods of vectorization of high resolution images have been reported in the literature, professional computer-graphics tools implement geometric models that allow representation of only synthetic images like cartoons. Processing and animation of high resolution real-world images requires novel geometric models, which allow representation of complex patterns with arbitrary visual structures. The major problem in this field is a geometric representation of the images in the fine scale without loss of visual quality. In the report, we present a novel vectorization method, which completely solves the indicated problem.
A Linearizing Digitizer for Differential Sensors With Polynomial Characteristics

This paper presents a new linearizing digital converter (LDC) that accepts output from differential type sensors with third-order polynomial transfer characteristics and provides a linear digital output proportional to the measurand. The LDC is realized using a modified dual-slope converter. Detailed operation of the proposed LDC, design procedure, and analysis of the effect of various circuit parameters on performance of the LDC are presented in this paper. The proposed methodology of LDC is also extended for sensors with second-order polynomial characteristics. The functionality of the LDC has been verified with the help of simulation studies. A prototype LDC has been developed and interfaced with a novel reluctance-Hall effect-based angle sensor (having a third-order characteristic) and tested. Test results show that the output of the overall transducer is linear across a wide range of angles, and thus underline the efficacy of the proposed scheme for differential type sensors with third-order transfer characteristics.
Business Students' Interests in Entrepreneurship and Social Entrepreneurship at a Historically Black Institution

Entrepreneurship has long been the catalyst for economic growth and change. More recently, social entrepreneurship has become an area that has globally garnered attention. In the current economic environment where jobs are difficult to find, many students are opting for more entrepreneurial career options rather than choosing traditional employment paths. This is especially true for minority students where the challenge of finding suitable employment is often more difficult for many of them than their white counterparts. Consequently, increasing numbers of students have expressed interest in entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. The objective of this research study was to investigate the level of interest towards entrepreneurship or social entrepreneurship among students attending a Historically African American College or University. Approximately 1,005 students within the College of Business at Bowie State University were asked to participate in the study. The results of the study indicated that 23.9 percent of the respondents expressed interest in becoming business entrepreneurs, while 22.8 percent indicated they wanted to be social entrepreneurs. An implication of the study is that U.S. educational institutions are well advised to consider offering new (or additional) courses and/or programs designed to address dynamic student interests in both fields of entrepreneurship.
The story of Bernard F. Shields: the first professor of accountancy in the UK

It is commonly believed that the first (full-time) professors of accounting/accountancy in the British Isles were William Baxter at the London School of Economics and Donald Cousins at the University of Birmingham, both of whom were appointed in 1947. However, this paper argues that the distinction of being the first professor of accounting/accountancy belongs to Bernard (Barney) Francis Shields. He was appointed as Professor of Commerce and Accountancy in 1914 at University College, Galway, when Ireland was politically part of the United Kingdom. This paper details the life of the late Professor Bernard Shields.
Wage Differentials in the Lodging Industry

ABSTRACT Salary compensation programs are widely used as a tool to attract, retain, and motivate employees in the hotel industry. The development of a sound compensation plan is a critical component of any successful business. This study investigated the pay differential from different perspectives by using the data collected by the California Hotel and Lodging Association (CHLA), the largest state level hotel association in the United States. The results indicated that full service hotels offer higher base pay in positions such as General Manager, Resident Manager, and Executive Housekeeper as compared with limited service hotels. When accounting for hotel size only, hotels with more than 300 rooms offered higher base pay than their counterparts in several but not all managerial positions. The findings serve as a reference for human resources administrators in the state of California to develop their pay system. Pay differential rates were calculated to see the wage gap between different managerial positions. The results also provide a base salary reference to those looking for a job in the lodging industry.
Market Price and Income Elasticities of New Vehicles Demand

Recent evidence from aggregate models of automobile demand indicates that, when not corrected for quality differences, market price elasticity of demand is substantially biased downwards. This note presents new information on market price and income elasticities derived from a disaggregate demand model that controls for cost, household income, vehicle attributes and perceived quality, consumer search, and manufacturer. Based on an extensive household survey of new vehicle purchasers in 1989, market price and income elasticities are estimated to be -0.87 and 1.70, respectively. Moreover, excluding vehicle quality from a well-specified model is found to have little effect upon the estimated market elasticities. Copyright 1996 by MIT Press.
Social capital in Gellerup

This paper examines the characteristics of two types of social capital; bridging and bonding social capital among the residents inside and outside a marginalized local community in relation to five demographic features of age, gender, geographical origin and years of residence in the community and in Denmark. The data were collected through a questionnaire, conducted in the largest marginalized high-rise community in Denmark, Gellerup, which is about to undergo an extensive community renewal plan. The study showed that residents in Gellerup had access to bonding and bridging social capital inside and outside Gellerup. Nevertheless, the character of the social capital varied considerably depending on age, geographical origin and years lived in Gellerup. Young residents and people who had lived for many years in Gellerup had more social capital than their counterparts. Furthermore, residents from Arab countries had more bonding relations inside Gellerup, while residents from Northern Europe had more bonding relations outside Gellerup.