bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Can Tests Based on Option Hedging Errors Correctly Identify Volatility Risk Premia?
Authors: Branger Nicole , Schlag Christian 
Published: April 2009

AbstractTests for the existence and the sign of the volatility risk premium are often based on expected option hedging errors. When the hedge is performed under the ideal conditions of continuous trading and correct model specification, the sign of the premium is the same as the sign of the mean hedging error for a large class of models. We show that discrete trading and model misspecification may cause the standard test to yield unreliable results. In particular, ignoring jump risk premia can lead to incorrect conclusions. We also show that delta-gamma hedges do not increase the reliability of the test.
Initial staging examinations for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma: are they appropriate?
Authors: Andrle J , Schartinger V H , Schwentner I , Deibl M , Sprinzl G M 
Published: April 2009

AbstractObjectives:The presence of distant metastases affects the therapeutic regime in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. This study evaluated the necessity to undertake bone scanning, chest computed tomography and abdominal ultrasonography in patients presenting with primary advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.Study design:Retrospective analysis, university setting.Methods:One hundred and sixty-three patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma who were scheduled for major surgery underwent screening for distant metastases. Chest, head and neck computed tomography, abdominal ultrasonography and bone scanning were performed in all patients.Results:Distant metastases were detected in 5.52 per cent of the 163 patients. All of these patients had locoregional advanced (stage IV) tumours. Computed tomography scanning of the lungs revealed metastases in six patients. Bone metastases were found in three patients. Only one patient with primary liver metastases was detected by abdominal ultrasonography; this patient also had pulmonary metastases.Conclusions:Computed tomography of the thorax is the most important technique for screening patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.
Temporal bone osteomyelitis and temporoparietal abscess secondary to malignant otitis externa
Authors: Alva B , Prasad K Chandra , Prasad S Chandra , Pallavi S 
Published: April 2009

AbstractObjective:We report an advanced presentation of osteomyelitis of the temporal bone secondary to malignant otitis externa.Method:We present a case report and a review of the world literature concerning osteomyelitis of the temporal bone secondary to malignant otitis externa.Results:A 60-year-old diabetic man developed osteomyelitis of the temporal bone and a temporoparietal abscess as advanced complications of malignant otitis externa. He was successfully treated in our institution using a post aural incision after draining the abscess and excising the fistula, a modified radical mastoidectomy with canal wall down procedure with sequesterectomy and debridement of surrounding area done.Conclusion:The terms ‘osteomyelitis of the temporal bone’, ‘skull base osteomyelitis’ and ‘malignant otitis externa’ have not been clearly defined, and have in the past often been used interchangeably in the literature. Osteomyelitis of the temporal bone can occur secondary to malignant otitis externa, acute otitis media, chronic suppurative otitis media or trauma. Here, we present the management of an advanced case of osteomyelitis of the temporal bone.
Particle acceleration in a reconnecting current sheet: PIC simulation
Authors: SIVERSKY TARAS V. , ZHARKOVA VALENTINA V. 
Published: April 2009

AbstractThe acceleration of protons and electrons in a reconnecting current sheet (RCS) is simulated with a particle-in-cell (PIC) 2D3V (two-dimensional in space and three-dimensional in velocity space) code for the proton-to-electron mass ratio of 100. The electromagnetic configuration forming the RCS incorporates all three components of the magnetic field (including the guiding field) and a drifted electric field. PIC simulations reveal that there is a polarization electric field that appears during acceleration owing to a separation of electrons from protons towards the midplane of the RCS. If the plasma density is low, the polarization field is weak and the particle trajectories in the PIC simulations are similar to those in the test particle (TP) approach. For the higher plasma density the polarization field is stronger and it affects the trajectories of protons by increasing their orbits during acceleration. This field also leads to a less asymmetrical abundance of ejected protons towards the midplane in comparison with the TP approach. For a given magnetic topology electrons in PIC simulations are ejected to the same semispace as protons, in contrast to the TP results. This happens because the polarization field extends far beyond the thickness of a current sheet. This field decelerates the electrons, which are initially ejected into the semispace opposite to the protons, returns them back to the RCS, and, eventually, leads to the electron ejection into the same semispace as protons. The energy distribution of the ejected electrons is rather wide and single-peaked, in contrast to the two-peak narrow-energy distribution obtained in the TP approach. In the case of a strong guiding field, the mean energy of the ejected electrons is found to be smaller than it is predicted analytically and by the TP simulations. The beam of accelerated electrons is also found to generate turbulent electric field in the form of Langmuir waves.
What is the Impact of Public Care on Children's Welfare? A Review of Research Findings from England and Wales and their Policy Implications
Authors: FORRESTER DONALD , GOODMAN KEITH , COCKER CHRISTINE , BINNIE CHARLOTTE , JENSCH GRAHAM 
Published: April 2009

AbstractThe outcomes for children in public care are generally considered to be poor. This has contributed to a focus on reducing the number of children in care: a goal that is made explicit in the provisions of the current Children and Young Persons Bill. Yet while children in care do less well than most children on a range of measures, such comparisons do not disentangle the extent to which these difficulties pre-dated care and the specific impact of care on child welfare. This article explores the specific impact of care through a review of British research since 1991 that provides data on changes in child welfare over time for children in care. Only 12 studies were identified, indicating a lack of research in this important area. The studies consistently found that children entering care tended to have serious problems but that in general their welfare improved over time. This finding is consistent with the international literature. It has important policy implications. Most significantly it suggests that attempts to reduce the use of public care are misguided, and may place more children at risk of serious harm. Instead, it is argued that England and Wales should move toward a Scandinavian system of public care, in which care is seen as a form of family support and is provided for more rather than fewer children and families.
Rethinking a Socialist Foreign Policy: The British Labour Party and International Relations Experts, 1918 to 1931
Authors: Ashworth Lucian M. 
Published: April 2009

AbstractBetween 1918 and 1929 the British Labour Party, working in conjunction with many of the top names in International Relations (IR), developed a coherent foreign policy centered around reforming the international system. This was a major policy change for a political party that, up until then, had concentrated on domestic social and political issues. The construction of Labour's interwar foreign policy was part of a wider intellectual revolution that produced the separate discipline of IR after the First World War, and the splits in Labour over foreign policy mirrored similar splits in the wider IR literature. Particularly important here were the differences of opinion over the relationship between arbitration, sanctions, and disarmament in a system of League of Nations pooled security. Labour's close association with IR experts and intellectuals resulted in the construction of an international policy that, while addressing socialist themes, drew on an older liberal tradition. The ultimate goal of this policy was to create pacific international conditions favorable to the development of democratic socialism. While events after 1931 forced a major rethinking in the Party, Labour's IR experts continued to provide policy-relevant advice that shaped the Party's responses to the rise of fascism.
The Beginning of Labor's End? Britain's “Winter of Discontent” and Working-Class Women's Activism
Authors: Martin Tara 
Published: April 2009

AbstractIn the midst of the freezing winter of 1978 and 1979, strikes erupted across Britain. In what became infamously known as the “Winter of Discontent,” workers struck against the Labour Government's attempts to curtail wage increases. The defeat of this “incomes policy” and Labour's subsequent electoral defeat ushered in an era of unprecedented political, economic, and social change for Britain. Conservative victory, under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, not only seemed to signal the dissolution of “traditional” working-class ties to the Labour Party, it also suggested that British working-class politics might finally be on its last leg. Furthermore, a potent social myth developed around the Winter of Discontent, one where “bloody-minded” workers brought down a sympathetic government and “invited” the ravages of Thatcherism upon the British labor movement.Absent from these various narratives are the experiences of rank-and-file activists, in particular, the growing number of female trade unionists active in these strikes. This article examines the experiences of a group of women trade unionists from the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) who participated in the strikes of the Winter of Discontent. Based on oral histories and corresponding archival material, it argues that the Winter of Discontent provided a crucial “rite of passage” for these women, one which exposed them to an unprecedented level of involvement in grassroots labor activism and leadership. Thereafter, these working-class women began to make significant inroads into NUPE and the Labour Party, which helped to make working women's issues more central to the British labor movement for decades to come. Therefore, rather than being the death knell of British working-class politics, this study of women involved in the Winter of Discontent strikes reveals that while one form of working-class politics was in decline, a reconfigured one was in the process of being born.
“Side by Side With Our Men?” Women's Activism, Community, and Gender in the 1984–1985 British Miners’ Strike
Authors: Spence Jean , Stephenson Carol 
Published: April 2009

AbstractThis paper explores the gendered concept of community with reference to the activism of women during the UK 1984–1985 miners’ strike. Drawing on texts from the period and reflective discussions twenty years later with women associated with the strike, it interrogates the ways in which the idea of community was used to accommodate the activism of women. We argue that the apparently gender-neutral ideal of mining community carried meanings that had ambiguous political implications for the women and that the strike highlighted paradoxes that question established understanding of female strike activism.
From data to knowledge mining
Authors: Bicharra Garcia Ana Cristina , Ferraz Inhauma , Vivacqua Adriana S. 
Published: April 2009

AbstractMost past approaches to data mining have been based on association rules. However, the simple application of association rules usually only changes the user's problem from dealing with millions of data points to dealing with thousands of rules. Although this may somewhat reduce the scale of the problem, it is not a completely satisfactory solution. This paper presents a new data mining technique, called knowledge cohesion (KC), which takes into account a domain ontology and the user's interest in exploring certain data sets to extract knowledge, in the form of semantic nets, from large data sets. The KC method has been successfully applied to mine causal relations from oil platform accident reports. In a comparison with association rule techniques for the same domain, KC has shown a significant improvement in the extraction of relevant knowledge, using processing complexity and knowledge manageability as the evaluation criteria.
A re-evaluation of the impact of temperature and climate change on foodborne illness
Authors: LAKE I. R. , GILLESPIE I. A. , BENTHAM G. , NICHOLS G. L. , LANE C. , ADAK G. K. , THRELFALL E. J. 
Published: April 2009

SUMMARYThe effects of temperature on reported cases of a number of foodborne illnesses in England and Wales were investigated. We also explored whether the impact of temperature had changed over time. Food poisoning, campylobacteriosis, salmonellosis, Salmonella Typhimurium infections and Salmonella Enteritidis infections were positively associated (P<0·01) with temperature in the current and previous week. Only food poisoning, salmonellosis and S. Typhimurium infections were associated with temperature 2–5 weeks previously (P<0·01). There were significant reductions also in the impact of temperature on foodborne illnesses over time. This applies to temperature in the current and previous week for all illness types (P<0·01) except S. Enteritidis infection (P=0·079). Temperature 2–5 weeks previously diminished in importance for food poisoning and S. Typhimurium infection (P<0·001). The results are consistent with reduced pathogen concentrations in food and improved food hygiene over time. These adaptations to temperature imply that current estimates of how climate change may alter foodborne illness burden are overly pessimistic.
Diel migration and swimbladder resonance of small fish: some implications for analyses of multifrequency echo data
Authors: Godø Olav Rune , Patel Ruben , Pedersen Geir 
Published: April 2009

Abstract
Godø, O. R., Patel, R., and Pedersen, G. 2009. Diel migration and swimbladder resonance of small fish: some implications for analyses of multifrequency echo data. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 66: 1143–1148. Many fish with swimbladders exhibit diel vertical migrations (DVM). Ascents and descents of hundreds of metres occur, and altered swimbladder volume and buoyancy can result from incomplete secretion and resorption of gas. When acoustic observations are made near the resonance frequency of the swimbladder, the estimated fish biomass can be positively biased. When multiple-frequency echosounders are used, the frequency response of the backscatter might vary temporally and spatially and compromise the effectiveness of conventional target-identification methods. In this paper, variations in backscatter from mesopelagic fish are studied using data collected west of the British Isles with a five-frequency echosounder (Simrad EK60). Two acoustic layers, one dominated by pearlsides (Maurolicus muelleri) and the other by myctophids (Myctophidae), were monitored during their DVM. The frequency responses of the layers changed systematically, mainly characterized by increases in the nautical-area-backscattering coefficient (sA) values at 18 kHz relative to those at 38 kHz. This could have been caused by changes in the resonance frequencies of fish swimbladders, as they expanded and contracted during ascent and descent. Two sA maxima in the myctophids layer suggest the presence of two types of target with different scattering characteristics. Models of sound scatter from myctophid swimbladders suggest that these peaks have resulted from resonance scattering. The sA at 18 kHz attributed to M. muelleri also peaked, but at the maximum depth of their distribution. Spatial and temporal changes in the frequency responses of fish should be taken into account when pelagic fish communities are surveyed with multiple-frequency echosounders.
Sustained virological responses following standard anti‐viral therapy in decompensated HCV‐infected cirrhotic patients
Authors: IACOBELLIS A. , SICILIANO M. , ANNICCHIARICO B. E. , VALVANO M. R. , NIRO G. A. , ACCADIA L. , CARUSO N. , BOMBARDIERI G. , ANDRIULLI A. 
Published: April 2009

SummaryBackground  Little data is available about predictors of sustained virological response (SVR) during anti‐viral therapy of patients with decompensated HCV cirrhosis.Aims  To determine whether rapid and early virological responses (RVR and EVR) could predict SVR and help optimize treatment in these patients.Methods  A total of 94 cirrhotics underwent treatment with peg‐interferon alfa‐2b (1.5 μg/kg weekly) and ribavirin (800/1200 mg daily) for 48 or 24 weeks for genotypes 1/4 or genotypes 2/3, respectively.Results  Overall, SVR was achieved in 33 patients (35.1%), 16% with genotype 1/4 and 56.8% with genotype 2/3 (P < 0.01). At treatment week 4, 34 patients had undetectable HCV‐RNA, 10 with genotype 1/4 and 24 with genotype 2/3. Of RVR patients, 24 achieved SVR (70.5%), 6 and 18 with genotypes 1 and non‐1. At the multivariate analysis, only EVR, genotypes 2 and 3, and adherence to full course and dosage of therapy retained their independent predictive power, with corresponding ORs of 25.5 (95% CI 3.0–217.3), 4.2 (95% CI 1.2–15.3) and 9.1 (95% CI 2.2–38.0), respectively.Conclusion  In decompensated cirrhotic patients, anti‐viral therapy with current regimens is feasible and associated with an overall SVR rate of 35.1%. Treatment ought to be pursued among patients who attain an EVR, and maintain a full course and dosage of therapy.
Stratigraphic evolution of the upper slope and shelf edge in the Karoo Basin, South Africa
Authors: Wild R. , Flint S. S. , Hodgson D. M. 
Published: April 2009

ABSTRACTThe Permian Ecca Group of the Karoo Basin, South Africa preserves an extensive well‐exposed siliciclastic basin floor, slope and shelf‐edge delta succession. The Kookfontein Formation includes multiple sedimentary cycles that display clinoform geometries and are interpreted to represent the deposits of a slope to shelf succession. The succession exhibits progradational followed by aggradational stacking of deltaic cycles that is related to a change in shelf‐edge trajectory, and lies within two depositional sequences. Sediment was transferred to the slope via overextension of deltas onto and over the shelf edge, resulting in failure and re‐adjustment of local slope gradients. The depositional facies and architecture of the Kookfontein Formation record the change from a bypass‐ to accretion‐dominated margin, which is interpreted to reflect a decrease in sediment transport efficiency as the slope gradient decreased, slope length increased and shelf‐edge trajectory rose. During this time the delivery system changed from point‐sourced basin‐floor fans fed by slope channels to starved basin‐floor with sand‐rich slope clinoforms. This is an example of a progradational margin in which the younger slope system is interpreted to be of a different style to the older slope system that fed the underlying sand‐rich basin floor fans.
Chitinases and chitinase‐like proteins: potential therapeutic targets for the treatment of T‐helper type 2 allergies
Authors: Sutherland T. E. , Maizels R. M. , Allen J. E. 
Published: April 2009

SummaryMammalian chitinase and chitinase‐like proteins (CLPs) are a family of mediators increasingly associated with infection, T cell‐mediated inflammation, wound healing, allergy and asthma. Although our current knowledge of the function of mammalian chitinases and CLPs is very limited, important information can be deduced from research carried out in lower organisms, and in different immunopathological conditions. Enzymatically active mammalian chitinase proteins may have evolved to degrade the copious amounts of chitin mammals are exposed to on a daily basis, and to form an innate barrier to chitin‐containing organisms. CLPs are homologous to chitinases but lack the ability to degrade chitin. It is most striking that both chitinases and CLPs are up‐regulated in T‐helper type 2 (Th2)‐driven conditions, and the first evidence is now emerging that these proteins may accentuate Th2 reactivity, and possibly contribute to the repair process that follows inflammation. Following studies demonstrating that chitinase inhibition leads to an attenuated allergic response, several strategies are being used to develop enzyme inhibitors for therapeutic use in human diseases. In this review, we will summarize recent insights into the effects of chitinases and CLPs in the context of Th2‐dominated pathology with particular focus on allergy and asthma, discussing whether chitinase enzyme inhibitors may be of therapeutic value.
Establishing the incidence and prevalence of clinician‐diagnosed allergic conditions in children and adolescents using routinely collected data from general practices
Authors: Punekar Y. S. , Sheikh A. 
Published: April 2009

SummaryBackground
There remains a need to better characterize the epidemiology of allergic disorders, particularly in relation to describing the incidence, natural history and co‐morbidity of allergic conditions.Objectives
To estimate the incidence and prevalence of clinician‐diagnosed eczema, asthma and rhinitis, alone and in combination, in children and adolescents in the United Kingdom.Methods
Using the national General Practice Research Database (GPRD) – one of the largest validated databases of routinely collected healthcare data in the world aggregating 3.6 million individuals – we constructed a retrospective birth cohort of 43 473 children born in the year 1990 and registered with a UK general practice within a year of birth. The cohort was followed until 2008 or the longest available follow‐up period to determine the cumulative and age‐specific incidence and prevalence rates of clinician‐diagnosed eczema, asthma and rhinitis, and an 18‐year prevalence of these conditions, alone and in combination.Results
Eczema had the highest incidence density of 226.9 per 10 000 person‐years [95% confidence interval (CI): 225.8–228.0] followed by asthma [136.6;(95% CI: 135.7–137.5)] and rhinitis [61.4;(95% CI: 60.8–62.0)], by the age of 18 years. The incidence densities of suffering from one, two or all three allergic conditions were 323.2 (95% CI: 322.0–324.4), 206.4 (95% CI: 205.7–207.1) and 141.9 (95% CI: 141.4–142.4) per 10 000 person‐years, respectively. Among the 24 112 children with a complete 18‐year follow‐up, eczema had the highest 18‐year prevalence of clinician‐diagnosed condition at 36.5% (95% CI: 35.9–37.2%) followed by asthma [22.9;(95% CI: 22.3–23.4%)] and rhinitis[11.4;(95% CI: 11.0–11.8%)]. The 18‐year prevalence of more than one and all three conditions was 16.1% (95% CI: 15.6–16.6%) and 2.5% (95% CI: 2.4–2.8%), respectively.Conclusions
This is one of the first studies to provide national estimates on the age‐specific incidence and age‐specific prevalence of the major allergic disorders showing clinician‐diagnosed eczema, asthma and rhinitis to have high incidence rates in early childhood. A significant proportion of children experience and are diagnosed with multiple allergic conditions in early childhood.