Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
DISPERSAL AND FLIGHT RANGE OF SUBARCTIC MOSQUITOES MARKED WITH RADIOPHOSPHORUS

The dispersal and flight range of the mosquito Aedes communis, a species characteristic of the northern coniferous forest, were studied at timberline at Churchill, Man. , during the summer of 1950. Four million larvae were collected and reared in wooden tanks containing 0.05 μc. of P32 per larva. About 3,000,000 adults with an average radioactivity of 775 c.p.m. emerged and dispersed in the Warkworth area. One hundred and forty-one radioactive mosquitoes were recovered, of which 63 had dispersed from 150 ft. to 5000 ft. , the average dispersal being 500 ft. The effective dispersal was determined to be about 0.25 miles. This study indicates that A. communis is a relatively sedentary mosquito and has a limited flight range in the northern coniferous forest in comparison with arctic tundra species. This mosquito rests in vegetation and does not attack human beings during the daytime. Additional data are presented on the habits of this and other northern species of mosquitoes.
Just Surviving - Poor Relief in the Dutch Town of Schiedam in the First Half of the 19th Century: Incidence, Duration and Level of Support

The paper analyses poor relief in the town of Schiedam in the first half of the 19th century. Figures about the total number of people receiving poor relief in Schiedam are only available between 1823 and 1831 indicating that about 15 per cent of the population was supported. This is somewhat higher than the national average, but lower than for instance in Amsterdam where 25 per cent of the population was supported. A considerable number of people was only in poor relief during the winter period. Probably, many of the latter people were confronted with seasonal unemployment. In terms of ‘full-time recipients’ of poor relief approximately 10 per cent of the Schiedam population received support. Not every poor family was supported. The incidence of poverty according to 19th century standards was at least twice as high as the number of people in poor relief. Although the labour market was highly ‘flexible’ and poor relief was very low compared to wages, the level of unemployment was probably of similar size as it is, on average, in recent decades. It appears that even in a highly flexible labour market with strong incentives to accept work, a considerable group of people was unable to participate in the labour market or did so only marginally. Making the labour market highly flexible does not seem to provide a solution for high unemployment among vulnerable groups, although it is a recipe that can still be heard today. The Schiedam archive contains books with data on individual recipients, which enabled us to construct a longitudinal database. Only individual data about people who were supported during the whole year is available. Both the level of the weekly support as well as the duration of the support are included in the database. Furthermore, information about several characteristics of the recipient is available like age, gender, family composition, physical disability and mental disability. Econometric models have been used to relate both and the duration the level of the support to these characteristics. For the analysis of individuals spells of poor relief duration models are used. Several characteristics of recipients have a significant effect on the duration of the support given. This is also true for the level of support, which has been analysed with the help of panel data models. Particularly, a mental handicap has a large upward effect on both duration and level of support. Contrary to what is sometimes suggested, people were usually not supported during their whole life. Mean duration in poor relief is approximately seven years. Repeated spells of poor relief were hardly found, although this might have been different for people who were only supported during the winter period.
Diversification Benefits of Cat Bonds: An In-Depth Examination

We investigate whether the inclusion of Cat Bonds in portfolios composed of traditional assets and common factors is beneficial to investors. Various mean-variance spanning tests performed for the period of 2002 to 2017 show that under different market conditions, the addition of Cat Bonds gives rise to previously unattainable portfolios. <br><br>Using the Engle (2002) Dynamic Conditional Correlation (DCC) model, we find that including Cat bonds increases significantly the time-varying Sharpe ratio and the Choueifaty and Coignard (2008) diversification ratio. Cat Bonds provide needed diversification during critical times particularly during episodes of crisis and of high volatility. <br><br>Under the second-order stochastic dominance efficiency (SDE) tests, the null hypothesis that portfolios without Cat Bonds are efficient cannot be rejected. Out-of-sample analyses indicate that the performance of portfolios with Cat Bonds included varies depending on the performance measures employed, the portfolio construction techniques used and the assets or factors considered. <br>
220 STEROID-REGULATED mRNA EXPRESSION IN OVIDUCT EPITHELIAL CELLS IN THE MARE

It is well known that oviducal physiology undergoes cyclical changes under the influence of steroid hormones associated with the establishment of an optimal microenvironment for fertilization and early embryonic development. Genes associated with the preovulatory phase are likely to be involved in modulation of gamete function and sperm storage, whereas those in the post-ovulatory phase are involved in embryonic development. So far, in the horse, no genes that change activity during the oestrous cycle, which may be important in fertilization, gamete and embryo passage, and early embryonic development, have been identified. Therefore, to identify steroid-regulated genes, we compared the mRNA expression of PAI-1, uPA, TGFA, TIMP-1, MMP-1, CSF, PTGER2, and PTGER4 in oviducal explants from mares in the pre- and the post-ovulatory early luteal stages. The cycle stage of healthy warmblood mares was determined in the slaughterhouse by assessment of ovarian morphology and uterine oedema. Oviducal explants were isolated by scraping the epithelium of oviducts ipsilateral to a preovulatory follicle or a recent corpus luteum and frozen in lysis buffer at –80°C until RNA extraction. The genes were quantified by RT-qPCR and normalized against the geometric mean of 6 validated reference genes (UBB, SDHA, 18S, TUB, ACTB, HPRT) according to the MIQE-guidelines (Bustin et al., 2009). Data were analysed using the independent samples t-test or the Mann–Whitney U-test. The mRNA expression of PAI-1, MMP-1, TGFA (0.01 < P < 0.05), and uPA (P = 0.007) was downregulated in the post-ovulatory phase, whereas no significant change in TIMP-1, CSF, PTGER2, and PTGER4 expression was observed. The results show that mRNA of components of the extracellular matrix turnover, such as PAI-1, uPA, MMP-1, and TIMP-1 as well as growth factors, such as TFGA and CSF and prostaglandin E2 receptors (PTGER2 and PTGER4), are produced. Moreover, down-regulation of PAI-1, MMP-1, TGFA, and uPA in the early luteal stage indicates that mRNA expression of these genes is steroid regulated. In other species, all these components are likely to protect gametes and the early embryo against proteolytic degradation and to stimulate embryonic development. Further transcriptome and proteome analyses are necessary to unravel changes in the oviducal epithelium during the oestrous cycle and early pregnancy in the mare.
Does R&D-Infrastructure Attract High-Tech Start-Ups?

Our research, based on the ZEW-Foundation Panel East, examines whether high-tech start-ups are mainly founded in scientific and infrastructural well suited regions or not. Estimation results on the level of postcode areas confirm the hypothesis that specific human capital, knowledge spillovers at higher-education institutions are more important for founding a firm in one of the high-tech sectors compared with the effects of other publicly financed institutions. The existence of large companies in the manufacturing sector has a considerable effect for start-up activities in this region in general. Moreover, high-tech start-ups are more concentrated within or near technology and foundation centres.
Online Financial Inclusion and Its Implications for Borrowers: Evidence From Peer-to-Peer Lending

This paper investigates the extent to which the structure of the local credit market, in terms of the presence and lending capacity of traditional banks, shapes the growth and local outreach of peer-to-peer lending. Our study reveals that areas that are financially undeserved by the traditional banking system experience higher growth of peer-to-peer lending. The growth of peer-to-peer lending is more pronounced in areas with lower presence of small banks. Furthermore, we show that the local growth of peer-to-peer lending is associated with lower risk of borrower default. Our findings show that online marketplaces benefit borrowers through improving their credit scores.
Decision-making Institutions and Votersâ€™ Preferences for Fiscal Policies

This paper examines the effect of local political decision-making institutions (i.e., direct democracy vs. representative democracy) on citizensâ€™ preferences toward public spending. Exogenous variation in institutions comes from a regression discontinuity design, which exploits a discrete change in the probability that a municipality has representative democracy based on a legally stipulated population threshold in the Swiss canton (state) of Vaud. Fiscal policy preferences by municipality are measured by vote shares on Swiss national referendums and initiatives that, if approved, would have increased public spending. Relative to direct democracy, representative democracy reduces vote shares in favor of spending by around 5 percentage points. The effect is not due to sorting on other observables or to feedback from changes in local policies. These findings demonstrate the importance of preferences as a channel through which political decision-making institutions can affect public policies.
Crowdsourcing Last-Mile Deliveries

Problem definition: Because of the emergence and development of e-commerce, customers demand faster and cheaper delivery services. However, many retailers find it challenging to efficiently provide fast and on-time delivery services to their customers. Academic/practical relevance: Amazon and Walmart are among the retailers that are relying on independent crowd drivers to cope with on-demand delivery expectations. Methodology: We propose a novel robust crowdsourcing optimization model to study labor planning and pricing for crowdsourced last-mile delivery systems that are utilized for satisfying on-demand orders with guaranteed delivery time windows. We develop our model by combining crowdsourcing, robust queueing, and robust routing theories. We show the value of the robust optimization approach by analytically studying how to provide fast and guaranteed delivery services utilizing independent crowd drivers under uncertainties in customer demands, crowd availability, service times, and traffic patterns; we also allow for trend and seasonality in these uncertainties. Results: For a given delivery time window and an on-time delivery guarantee level, our model allows us to analytically derive the optimal delivery assignments to available independent crowd drivers and their optimal hourly wage. Our results show that crowdsourcing can help firms decrease their delivery costs significantly while keeping the promise of on-time delivery to their customers. Managerial implications: We provide extensive managerial insights and guidelines for how such a system should be implemented in practice.
Testing the Structural Empirical Dynamics of the Economic Growth Path of Egypt, 1950-1997

The objective of this research is to model and test aggregate production functions on the Egyptian economy and to analyze the effect of physical and human capital formation on the economic growth path of Egypt, using a vector-autoregressive (VAR) structural econometric approach. Economic data from 1950 to 1997 have been tested for unit roots, orders of integration, auto-regressive distributed lags, growth causation, weak &amp; strong exogeneity, and co-integration, using a general to specific modeling technique. An error correction model utilizing all growth causation factors was estimated and tested using a model typology of simple dynamic systems. Factor inputs (physical capital, labor, human capital, and technological progress) and structural macroeconomic factors (inflation shifts and exchange rate adjustments) have been analyzed within a dynamic distributed lag system (ADL). Three inter-dependent models resulted in a nested VAR system describing the economy's balanced growth path: a conditional ADL model for long-run growth, a short-run co-integration model describing marginal rates of substitution, and a marginal model describing learning by doing effects in technology. The dynamics of the nested system show that the economy behaves with a relatively constant marginal rate of substitution between factor inputs and with production isoquants correlated with inflation, but these behavioral conditions are neither necessary nor sufficient for balanced sustainable growth. The solved long-run solution shows decreasing returns to scale in production, with quasiconcave output with respect to physical capital accumulation and strict concavity of output with respect to human capital formation, significant but weak learning-by-doing effects, positive output returns for primary-school educational attainment and expenditures, and negative returns for post-primary educational attainment, and the aggregate savings rate shown to follow a random walk process with no drift. Human capital was found to be a weakly exogenous factor to short-run output while maintaining a causal effect to long-run income. The allocative efficiency of physical capital accumulation along with marginal learning-by-doing effects in technology were shown to be the two significant driving forces to the growth of real income. Speeds of adjustments towards equilibrium levels show relatively high speeds of adjustment for physical capital with human capital shown to cyclically diverge from its equilibrium path. Among the different policy recommendations discussed, one policy target proposed has been to foster local competitiveness for capital-intensive technological innovations which can shift the economy’s resource capacity constraint onto a higher welfare-enhancing production-possibilities frontier, for a more sustainable growth path for the economy.
Searching for foldable protein structures using optimized energy functions

During evolution, the effective interactions between residues in a protein can be adjusted through mutations to allow the protein to fold to its native structure on an adequate time scale. We seek to address the question: Are there some structures that can be better optimized than others? Using exhaustive enumeration of the compact conformations of short proteins confined to simple lattices, we find that the best structures are those that contain contacts rare in random structures, indicating the importance of nonlocal contacts for assisting the folding process. Certain structural motifs such as long β‐hairpins, Greek‐key motifs, and jelly rolls, commonly found in proteins of known structure, have a high degree of optimizability. Contrary to what might be expected, positive correlations between the various interactions reduce optimizability. The optimization procedure produces a correlated energy landscape, which might assist folding. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Accounting for Leases and Corporate Investment

We examine the real effects of lease capitalization rules (i.e., standards that require firms to capitalize finance leases) on corporate investment. We show that the introduction of these rules leads to a decrease in investment, which is more pronounced for firms with high reliance on leases. We posit and find that lease capitalization affects investment via a learning channel and a contracting channel. Regarding the first channel, we argue that managers identify areas of overinvestment and activities that should be discontinued or downsized because of the information they collect and analyze to comply with lease capitalization rules. Accordingly, we find that the effect of lease capitalization is stronger when learning opportunities are higher. Regarding the second channel, we argue that lease capitalization affects investment via its effect on contracts. Accordingly, we document an increase in the likelihood of covenant breaches and a stronger decline in investment for financially constrained firms.
Bicarbonate‐dependent depolarizing potentials in pyramidal cells and interneurons during epileptiform activity

Experimental and theoretical evidence indicates that GABAergic neurotransmission is fundamental for the synchronization of neuronal activity. In particular, the role of GABA in epileptiform activity has received increased attention due to, among others, the fact that the GABA-mediated potentials can be depolarizing, and hence excitatory, in some circumstances. Evidence is presented here that bicarbonate efflux via GABAA receptors in interneurons and pyramidal cells of the CA1 hippocampal area contribute to depolarizing GABAA-mediated potentials in an in vitro nonpharmacological seizure-like model of status epilepticus. Seizure-like and interictal activity was evoked in rat horizontal hippocampal slices using a superfusing solution with low magnesium concentration (0.5-0.9 mm). Whole-cell recordings from stratum oriens-alveus interneurons and CA1 pyramidal cells revealed that, during epileptiform activity, some GABAA-mediated potentials were depolarizing, and were suppressed by the carbonic anhydrase inhibitor ethoxyzolamide as well as by the GABAA-receptor antagonist bicuculline. These observations indicate that the depolarizing potentials observed during epileptiform activity reflect both glutamatergic and GABAA-receptor-mediated activity, and adds further support for the important role of GABAergic interneurons in promoting long-range synchronization.
The Effects of Alcohol Not Inherited in Hydatina Senta

1. Four strains of parthenogenetic rotifers originally descended from the same female were observed throughout twenty-eight successive generations. One strain was kept as a control and the other three strains were kept in a per cent. , a 1/2 per cent and a 1 per cent. solution of alcohol. The rate of reproduction was lower in the alcoholic strains than in the control and it was proportionally lowered according to the amount of alcohol used. 2. The individuals of the 1 per cent. alcoholic strain in the XI-XV generations showed a decidedly increased susceptibility to copper sulphate. 3. When the alcohol was removed in generations XIX-XII, the rate of reproduction increased noticeably in the first generation and in the second generation the reproduction rate equaled that of the control. 4. Individuals of the second generation after the alcohol had been removed were no more susceptible to copper sulphate than individuals which had never been subjected to alcohol. 5. The general conclusion is that alcohol in 1/4 per cent. , per cent. , and I per cent. solutions is detrimental to this race of rotifers when it is subjected to it continuously for many generations. The weaknesses developed by the parental use of alcohol are partially eliminated in the first generation after the alcohol has been removed, and practically completely eliminated at the end of the second generation after the alcohol has been removed. In other words, the grandchildren possess none of the defects caused by alcohol in the grandparents. 6. These results in general show that alcohol in the percentages used affects only the somatic tissues of the animal, and if they are subjected to its influences indefinitely, generation after generation, the race would probably become extinct because of its "lowered resistance power" to unfavorable conditions. However, if the alcohol is removed it is possible for the race to recover and to regain its normal condition in two generations, thus showing that the germ substance is not permanently affected by the alcohol.
Factors affecting the periphytic diatom community in Mediterranean coastal wetlands (Empordà wetlands, NE Spain)

Species composition and ecological preferences of the most important periphytic diatom taxa were studied in lentic ecosystems in the salt marshes of Emporda wetlands (NE Spain). Correspondence analysis with the diatom communities suggested that water confinement/flooding gradient and productivity of the system were the principal factors affecting diatom distribution in the salt marshes of Emporda wetlands. Hierarchical analysis clusters allowed 5 diatom assemblages be distinguished, each one characteristic of different degrees of confinement and productivity. Bacillaria paradoxa appeared as the most characteristic species in low confinement and high productivity conditions. Navicula perminuta and N. salinarum were representative of flooding and low productivity conditions. During maximum confinement and low productivity situations Cocconeis placentula dominated the diatom community. When maximum confinement was attained in the waterbodies with higher productivity, this dominance was shared with Nitzschia archibaldii. The 39 species considered proved to be tolerant to salinity and nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus and organic matter) variability. This seems to be a prerequisite for survival in salt marshes where the very dynamic nature of the system results in a large variability of the physical and chemical water composition.
Strategic Entrepreneurship and Dynamic Flexibility: Towards an Integrative Framework

Strategic entrepreneurship is a growing field within both Entrepreneurship and Management Science. Dynamic flexibility is a concept originally developed to resolve general business issues (Apter, 1985) and later enhanced to address specific strategic management challenges. Strategic Entrepreneurship deals with a singular strategic management response which is to achieve superior performance via simultaneous opportunity-seeking and advantage-seeking activities (Ireland, Hitt, &amp; Simon, 2003). The process of maintaining superior performance is certainly a longitudinal one and requires capabilities on both those dimensions (Ireland &amp; Webb, 2007). In this paper, we propose the use of dynamic flexibility as a useful capability to address strategic entrepreneurship longitudinal issue. By exploring the modulation time response model and different other references from both strategic management and strategic entrepreneurship literature, we aim to establish an integrative framework for dynamic strategic entrepreneurship.
Determinants of Confidence in the Civil Service: An International Comparison

We use data from the World Values Survey to describe and compare levels of confidence in the civil service in a series of countries, and study determinants of this confidence. Instead of focusing on citizen satisfaction with specific public services in a specific country, we analyze citizens’ general attitudes towards the public administration or civil service, and compare these attitudes internationally. We fit 60 identical regression models, to test for the impact of a series of socio-demographic and socio-economic variables in each of the countries. We finish by comparing the determinants in each of the countries, and test whether cultural or regional patterns emerge.