Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quantifying social distancing arising from pandemic influenza

Local epidemic curves during the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic were often characterized by multiple epidemic waves. Identifying the underlying cause(s) of such waves may help manage future pandemics. We investigate the hypothesis that these waves were caused by people avoiding potentially infectious contacts—a behaviour termed ‘social distancing’. We estimate the effective disease reproduction number and from it infer the maximum degree of social distancing that occurred during the course of the multiple-wave epidemic in Sydney, Australia. We estimate that, on average across the city, people reduced their infectious contact rate by as much as 38%, and that this was sufficient to explain the multiple waves of this epidemic. The basic reproduction number, R0, was estimated to be in the range of 1.6–2.0 with a preferred estimate of 1.8, in line with other recent estimates for the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic. The data are also consistent with a high proportion (more than 90%) of the population being initially susceptible to clinical infection, and the proportion of infections that were asymptomatic (if this occurs) being no higher than approximately 9%. The observed clinical attack rate of 36.6% was substantially lower than the 59% expected based on the estimated value of R0, implying that approximately 22% of the population were spared from clinical infection. This reduction in the clinical attack rate translates to an estimated 260 per 100 000 lives having been saved, and suggests that social distancing interventions could play a major role in mitigating the public health impact of future influenza pandemics.
The Impact of Oil Price Changes on Spanish and Euro Area Consumer Price Inflation

This paper assesses the impact of oil price changes on Spanish and euro area consumer price inflation. We find, consistently with recent international evidence, that the inflationary effect of oil price changes is limited, even though crude oil price fluctuations are a major driver of inflation variability. The impact on Spanish inflation is found to be somewhat higher than in the euro area. Direct effects are increasing over time, reflecting the higher spending of households on refined oil products, whereas indirect ones, defined in broad terms, are losing importance.
Corruption clubs: empirical evidence from kernel density estimates

A common finding of many analytical models is the existence of multiple equilibria of corruption. Countries characterized by the same economic, social and cultural background do not necessarily experience the same levels of corruption. In this article, we use Kernel Density Estimation techniques to analyse the cross-country distribution of corruption. Particular emphasis will be given to the question whether the distribution of corruption shows more than one peak. We find that most of the estimated densities exhibit twin peaks. We also provide some evidence on the intra-distribution dynamics and the persistence of corruption. We find the group of countries classified within the two ‘clubs’ to be very stable. Corruption is a highly persistent phenomenon. Substantial changes in the economic, political and cultural environment of countries within the ‘corruption club’ are required before a significant decline of corruption is to be expected.
Managing Tourism in Nigeria: the Security Option

The World Tourism Conference which was held at Manila,Philippines in October 1980, considered the nature of tourism in all its aspects and the role tourism is bound to play in a dynamic and vastly changing world. The Manila Declaration on World Tourism argues that there are many constraint on the development of tourism, and groups of Nations should determine and study these constraints, and adopt measures aimed at removing their negative influence. It has been observed that violent crimes, civil unrest, kidnapping for ransom and terrorism to mention some, are enemies of tourism in Nigeria. Regrettably, the security warnings declared by Nation States and International Organizations against the danger posed by these constraints on tourism have been misconstrued as negative propaganda in Nigeria. This study seeks to identify some of these security hazards and attempt to proffer measures aimed at removing their negative influences. In the process, the empirical research methodology is applied and recommendations offered. The paper concludes that the very existence and development of tourism in Nigeria, depends entirely on the state of lasting peace. All stakeholders in the tourism industry must adopt all available means to counter these security risks so as to guarantee its sustainability in Nigeria. Key words: Managing; Tourism; Industry; Nigeria; Security, Option
Auditor Resignation and Risk Factors

SYNOPSIS: Although auditor litigation risk is considered as a leading explanation for auditor resignations, audit risk and business risk might also trigger resignations. Auditor litigation risk is defined as the risk of the auditor being involved in a lawsuit, audit risk is defined as the risk that the auditor expresses an inappropriate audit opinion when the financial statements are materially misstated and, finally, business risk is defined as the risk associated with the client's survival and profitability. Because the three risk factors are not mutually exclusive, we examine their relevance and incremental importance using measures from the pre- and post-resignation periods. Using summary indices from the pre-resignation period, we find that all of the three ex ante risk indices are incrementally important for resignations, especially when the predecessor auditor is a Big 4 firm. Because the ex ante risk factors are prone to measurement errors and are less likely to capture the auditor's proprietary .
Meeting the environmental challenge: a case of win–win or lose–win? A study of the UK baking and refrigeration industries

The idea that what is good for the environment is good for business has come to dominate environmental thinking and provides one of the cornerstones of ecological modernization. Studies of this win–win philosophy have tended to concentrate on large companies. This study considers how the UK refrigeration and baking industries have responded to the main drivers for change. By eliciting managers' views of environmental issues through semi-structured interviews, the problems and opportunities facing these two industries are explored. The responses were remarkably similar, given the different characteristics of the two industries. The interviews revealed that legislation maintains its pre-eminence as a motivation for change. Win–win situations arising out of environmental legislation were found in some SMEs; however, for most the perception was one of lose–win. The demand for environmental products and processes, necessary for win–win, has yet to materialize. Companies, therefore, remain driven by the commercial, rather than the environmental, imperative. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
Managing and measuring the intangibles to tangibles value flows and conversion process: Romanian Space Agency case study

Purpose – Converting knowledge or competency into long‐term business value is, in practice, a far more difficult process than in theory. While developing and implementing knowledge or competence management solutions, companies experience difficulties in measuring the contribution of their intangibles to business results and, what is more critical, companies fail in their efforts to reproduce the conditions and the processes that have unlocked the value creation potential of their intangibles. Building and maintaining large skills inventories, designing complex intranets, keeping large terabytes of knowledge or implementing performing document‐management systems and other technology solutions, do not necessarily lead to an improved cash flow stream. It simply brings inefficiency and leads to limited value creation as most of these solutions fail to identify the value‐creation patterns or prove the link with organizational performance. What value‐contributions bring these terabytes of information to the pro.
Accountability in organizational life: Problem or opportunity for nonprofits?

This article reviews the notion of accountability as an intrinsic experience in daily organizational life and contrasts it with the more traditional construct of accountability as an external control or monitoring device. The concept of “felt responsibility” can provide an opportunity to enhance the effectiveness of nonprofit organizations. Both research and the author's field experiences in nonprofit settings suggest how nonprofit leaders and managers can use felt responsibility to help individuals act with accountability to themselves and to others. The concept of “conversation for accountability” poses a pragmatic opportunity for nonprofits in particular to turn the current environment of finger pointing and aggressive monitoring into an enabling organizational practice that benefits both nonprofit members and their clients or constituencies.
Improving Robustness in DTN Networks that Carries Large Medical Files in Amazonia

This paper presents a proposal for improving robustness and reliability in Delay Tolerant Networks (DTN), used to transmit large data files for healthcare applications. The scenario is the Marajó archipelago in the Brazilian Amazon, where communication infrastructure is almost non-existent and there is a special need for medical services. The use of Fountain codes, network coding and proximity layering to messages acknowledgments were investigated. Four Store-Carry-Forward protocols were analyzed by simulation and results show that the Spray and Wait protocol is the better option for the scenario.
Oxygen-Dependent Vasomotor Responses Are Conducted Upstream in the Mouse Cremaster Microcirculation

Background: A new method was evaluated where local changes in oxygen tension were induced in a tissue while being studied under a microscope in vivo. We tested whether hypoxic vasodilation and hyperoxic vasoconstriction in arterioles in striated muscle are being propagated upstream, and whether the endothelium and smooth muscle cell layers are necessary components in the signaling pathway. Methods: The study was performed in mouse cremaster muscle superfused with Krebs buffer. A section of the capillary bed was then superfused with human red blood cell suspension equilibrated with either 95% nitrogen or 95% oxygen, and 5% carbon dioxide. Results: The superfusions caused a 12.9 ± 2.4% (p < 0.01) dilation and a 12.3 ± 2.7% (p < 0.01) constriction of the supplying non-exposed arteriole. Vasomotor responses could be detected 1 mm upstream of the stimulation site. The responses to hypoxia and hyperoxia were not affected by inhibition of nitric oxide (NO) synthases by L-NAME. Damage to the wall of an intervening segment of the arteriole abolished upstream changes. Conclusions: The method is capable of changing the oxygen tension locally in a membranous tissue and elicits NO-independent local and upstream vasomotor responses. Upstream responses were transmitted by a conducted vascular response.
Forecast Error Monetary Policy Shocks

Much research on the impact of monetary policy on the broader economy has focused on identifying exogenous monetary policy shocks. Different approaches to addressing the inherent endogeneity of monetary policy have resulted in widely different estimates of the impact of Federal Reserve actions on the U.S. economy. This paper presents a new way of constructing monetary policy shocks by interpreting the Federal Reserve’s own forecast errors as policy shocks. Making use of a forward looking Taylor rule, we first construct a measure of the impact on the federal funds rate of the Fed’s errors in forecasting GDP and inflation. We then follow Romer and Romer (2004) and investigate the effect of the shock on output and price movements. On the one hand, we would hope that forecast errors would not have a large impact on the economy, particularly given their size and prevalence as documented in the forecast evaluation literature. On the other hand, we argue that the policy forecast error should be a high quality measure of a monetary policy shock given the effort the Fed puts towards producing forecasts that do not have an endogenous error component. Our results suggest that the impact of our shock on the macroeconomy is quite small which lead us to conclude that monetary policy shocks of this type have little effect on the U.S. economy.
Collars and Renegotiation in Mergers and Acquisitions

I examine the motivation for, and effect of, including a collar in a merger agreement. The most important cross-sectional determinants of the bid structure (cash vs. stock, and whether to include a collar) are the market-related stock return standard deviations for the bidder and target. This evidence supports the hypothesis that the method of payment is dependent on the sensitivities of the bidder and target to market-related risk because either has the incentive to demand renegotiation of the merger terms if the value of the bidder's offer changes materially relative to the value of the target during the bid period.
Integration in the Public Workplace: Determinants of Minority and Female Employment in Federal Agencies

Equal employment opportunity (EEO) and affirmative action efforts in the public sector, designed to make government workforces more reflective of people being served, are defended not only on grounds of basic social justice but also for the impact a more representative bureaucracy may have on bureaucratic or administrative responsibility (Krislov, 1967; Thompson, 1976; Saltzstein, 1979; and Krislov and Rosenbloom, 1981). In the federal civil service, programs to achieve EEO were initiated as early as the 1940s. Over the years, those programs and the strategies they encompassed were expanded, and since the 1970s considerable resources and energy have been directed toward correcting problems of minority and female employment underrepresentation in federal agencies.
Exploring the nature of the relationships between service quality and customer loyalty: an attribute-level analysis

Customer loyalty has emerged as a strategic imperative for most firms. Many studies conducted in different industries have empirically proven that the overall perception of service quality is one of the essential factors to establish customer loyalty. The value of these empirical findings per se has been questioned because of the derivative information for lack of specificity and diagnostic usefulness to managers. Moreover, extant literature has signified the nature of the relationship between service quality and customer behavior to be disparate. These purported disparities may result from prior research on the basis of global-level analysis. Thus, this study is intended to examine the nature (including main, curvilinear and moderation) of the relationships between service quality and customer loyalty at the service-attribute level. Service quality is conceptualised in terms of four service attributes: personnel, operational, physical and merchandise. Customer loyalty consists of two behavioural indicators: visiting frequency and amount spent per visiting. The research sample was drawn from the customer database of a large wholesalers located at the metropolitan area of Kaohsiung in Taiwan. Regression analyses were performed to analyse the hypotheses under study. Most empirical results have confirmed evidence available in the extant literature and highlighted the complex nature of the quality–loyalty relationship. By implication, these disparate relationships identified in prior global-level studies may coexist when the basis of research analysis was on the attribute level. The research findings derived from the attribute-level analysis, we believe, may provide important information to both academics and practitioners.
Why do member states empower the European Parliament?

This is the first study which provides a strategic view on the empowering of the EP by the member states. Compared to the consultation procedure, in which the Council adopts Commission proposals, the EP has become a co-legislator in the codecision procedure, in which it usually promotes an integrationist position favouring policy change. According to this supranational scenario, most scholars conclude that member states intend to increase the legitimacy of the EU rather than their benefits from legislative outcomes. For some authors the empowering of the EP is even a significant example of the limits and deficits of rational choice theory. From a strategic perspective, however, this study clarifies that member states can benefit from introducing the codecision procedure in the supranational scenario. When the parliament can hardly figure out the complex configuration in the Council, member states can strategically misrepresent their pivotal member's ‘true’ position and present a minority proposal in the conciliation bargains that is more closely located to the status quo. Under these conditions, the introduction of the codecision procedure has several advantages for the member states; in particular it improves the benefits of member states vis-à-vis solutions under the consultation procedure, in which a better informed Commission makes a proposal that must find the support only of a qualified majority of member states.
The Unbearable Instability of Structural Funds' Distribution

In order to promote “cohesion, competitiveness and cooperation” across Europe, the EU has established a common regional policy to support underdeveloped territories. This EU regional policy required to set up a very complex mechanism to implement such a huge effort to coordinate many interventions across highly differentiated territories. However, those territories are provided with very different institutional settings, and then the mechanism to coordinate all of them becomes particularly complex. The aim of this paper is to discuss the EU multi-level governance for structural funds (SFs), revising the origin, rationale and evolution of this policy in order to identify the limits of the institutional mechanism for the implementation of this policy. These limits will show their effects on the unstable distribution of SFs across the EU regions on a long-term perspective. Results show that the intervention of the EU is neither constant nor stable across regions, independently from their development paths. This instability should provide further arguments on the discussion about the SF policy and governance in order to take into considerations also institutional limits of the EU.
Linkages between Investment Flows and Financial Development: Causality Evidence from Selected African Countries

Purpose - This paper introduces previously missing financial components(efficiency, activity and size) in the assessment of the finance-investment nexus. Design/methodology/approach - VAR models in the perspectives of VECM and short-run Granger causality are employed. Usage of optimally specified econometric methods in contradiction to purely discretionary model specifications in mainstream literature. Findings - Three main findings are established: (1) while finance led investment elasticities are positive, investment elasticities of finance are negative; (2)but for Guinea Bissau, Mozambique and Togo, finance does not seem to engender portfolio investment; (3)contrary to mainstream literature, financial efficiency appears to impact investment more than financial depth. Practical implications - Four policy implications result: (1)extreme caution is needed in the use of single equation analysis for economic forecasts; (2)financial development leads more to investment flows than the other way round; (3) financial allocation efficiency is more relevant as means to attracting investment flows than financial depth; (4) the somewhat heterogeneous character of the findings also point to shortcomings in blanket policies that are not contingent on country-specific trends in the finance-investment nexus. Originality/value - (1) Contrary to the mainstream approach we use four measures of financial intermediary development(depth, efficiency, activity and size) as well as four types of investment flows(domestic, foreign, portfolio and total). (2) The chosen investment and financial indicators are derived upon preliminary correlation analysis from the broadest macroeconomic dataset available on investment and financial intermediary flows.
The Costs of Recession

The paper measures the cost of business cycles by asking what proportion of consumption representative households, whose head is currently employed, would be prepared to give up to avoid the risk of unemployment. Previous estimates by Lucas suggested that the costs of macroeconomic fluctuations measured in this way are surprisingly small. The first part of the paper presents a critique of the Lucas aggregate method showing that his estimates are not robust. An alternative disaggregated framework is then developed and shows that the costs of macroeconomic fluctuations are significantly higher than those obtained by Lucas. Consequently, the view that inflation 'matters' whereas business cycles are unimportant events is questioned. Copyright 1994 by Royal Economic Society.
Statistical mechanics of cracks: Fluctuations, breakdown, and asymptotics of elastic theory

We study a class of models for brittle fracture: elastic theory models that allow for cracks but not for plastic flow. We show that these models exhibit, at all finite temperatures, a transition to fracture under applied load similar to the first-order liquid-gas transition. We study this transition at low temperature for small tension. Using the complex variable method in a two-dimensional elastic theory, we prove that the energy release in an isotropically stretched material due to the creation of an arbitrary curvy cut is the same to cubic order as the energy release for the straight cut with the same end points. We find the energy spectrum for crack shape fluctuations and for crack surface phonons, under a uniform isotropic tension. For small uniform isotropic tension in two dimensions, we calculate the essential singularity associated with fracturing the material in a saddle point approximation including quadratic fluctuations. This singularity determines the lifetime of the material ~half-life for fracture! , and also determines the asymptotic divergence of the high-order corrections to the zero temperature elastic coefficients. We calculate the asymptotic ratio of the high-order elastic coefficients of the inverse bulk modulus, and argue that the result is unchanged by nonlinearities—the ratio of the highorder nonlinear terms are determined solely by the linear theory. @S1063-651X~97! 02706-2#
Virginia Technology Education Teachers' Implementation of Standards for Technological Literacy

The International Technology Education Association published Standards for Technological Literacy (STL) to assist technology educators in establishing curriculum to reflect technological literacy. Presently, the extent to which STL and the individual Standards are being used is not known. The problem of this study was to determine the extent to which Virginia secondary technology education teachers are implementing STL. A questionnaire was sent to 285 randomly selected Virginia secondary technology education teachers seeking information concerning their use of STL, their use of the individual Standards within STL, and their perceptions with regard to Rogers’ five attributes of innovation. Frequencies and percentages were calculated to describe the population and the respondents’ perception of implementation of the individual Standards with regard to Rogers’ attributes of and innovation. A two way contingency table was used to evaluate the relationship between Rogers’ attributes of innovation and the implementation of individual Standards. Twenty percent of the respondents use STL with varying percentages for each individual Standard. These identified relationships may be used to assist change agents in understanding respondents’ perceptions and assisting them in further implementing STL in Virginia.