Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Earnings Management Surrounding Seasoned Bond Offerings: Do Managers Mislead Ratings Agencies and the Bond Market?

We study earnings management (EM) efforts surrounding seasoned bond offerings using discretionary current accruals. We find that issuers tend to inflate earnings performance prior to an offering. In order for EM efforts to effectively mislead ratings agencies and the bond market, they must lead to inflated bond ratings and decreased offering yields. Regression results indicate the opposite; aggressive EM efforts are associated with lower initial ratings and higher offering yields. We also find a statistically lower proportion of subsequent downgrades for firms with the most aggressive EM efforts, which is inconsistent with these firms’ inflated initial ratings. While some firms may attempt to mislead ratings agencies and market participants by window-dressing earnings, these efforts appear to be counterproductive.
Trends in Incidence of Late-Onset Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Infection in Neonatal Intensive Care Units: Data From the National Nosocomial Infections Surveillance System, 1995–2004

Background: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is increasingly being reported to cause outbreaks in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). We assessed the scope and magnitude of MRSA infections with disease onset after 3 days of age (late-onset MRSA infections) in NICUs. Methods: We analyzed data reported by NICUs participating in the National Nosocomial Infections Surveillance system from 1995 through 2004. For each surveillance month, all healthcare-associated infections as defined by National Nosocomial Infections Surveillance criteria were reported, along with antimicrobial susceptibility patterns of the isolates. We pooled the data from all NICUs by birth weight category and calendar year. Poisson regression was used to assess changes in incidence of late-onset MRSA infections per 10,000 patient-days. Results: Overall, 149 NICUs reported 4831 S. aureus infections and 5,878,139 patient-days. Methicillin testing data were available for 4302 S. aureus isolates, of which 975 (23%) were MRSA. Incidence of late-onset MRSA infection per 10,000 patient-days, combining all birthweight categories, increased 308% from 0.7 in 1995 to 3.1 in 2004 (P < 0.001). A significant increase in incidence of MRSA infections was observed among all 4 birthweight categories analyzed separately (≤1000 g, 1001–1500 g, 1501–2500 g, and >2500 g). The distribution of MRSA infection by type of infection did not vary during the study period; 299 (31%) of MRSA infections were bloodstream infections, 174 (18%) were pneumonia, and 161 (17%) were conjunctivitis. Conclusion: The incidence of late-onset MRSA infections increased substantially between 1995 and 2004, indicating a need to reinforce infection control recommendations and to explore potential sources and routes of transmission.
Membrane Association and Kinase-Like Motifs of the RamC Protein of Streptomyces coelicolor

ABSTRACT The protein RamC is required for the production of the spore-forming cells called aerial hyphae by the filamentous bacterium Streptomyces coelicolor. We showed that RamC, which contains several weakly predicted membrane-spanning sequences, is located exclusively in the S. coelicolor membrane. By constructing site-directed mutants in the cloned ramC gene and complementing a ramC null mutant, we showed that protein kinase-like sequence motifs in the amino-terminal half of the protein are required for function in vivo. These data suggest that RamC is a membrane-associated receptor kinase.
Effectiveness of price discounts and premium promotions

Although price discounts are by far the most common form of sales promotions employed by firms, the increasing use of premiums as a promotional strategy may imply that they are occupying a more important place in the promotional strategy. Since price discounts are quite costly and can reduce consumers’ reference prices, undermine perception of quality, and hurt brand equity, it is crucial to know what type of promotion is the most preferred and valued by consumers. As the most recent works in the field have argued that the promotional benefit level is an important determinant of promotional effectiveness, this research reports the results of two experimental studies that investigated the interaction effect between promotional benefit level and promotion type across three levels of benefit (low, moderate, high). The results obtained suggest that at high benefit levels price discounts are more effective than premiums, while the opposite occurs at low levels. However, a similar evaluation of promotional tools was found at moderate benefit levels. The findings offer guidance to managers who might benefit from knowing what is the best strategy to promote their products and services. Our work also extends prior related research because, to this date, the effectiveness of price discounts and premiums across promotional benefit levels is an under-researched issue. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Realising competitive advantage through HRM in New Zealand service industries

An emerging source of competitive advantage for service industries is the knowledge, skills and attitudes of their employees. Indeed, achievement of a ‘service quality’ culture, considered imperative for competitive advantage in service organisations, supposedly results from the use of best practice human resource management (HRM), and from a strategic approach to their implementation. This paper empirically explores the use of these dimensions of HRM as a source of competitive advantage. It finds high-performing service organisations actively engage best practices across the areas of recruitment and selection, training and development, communication and team working. Evidence of a strategic approach to the implementation of these practices is also found.
Cooperative Bank Strategies for Social‐Economic Problem Solving: Supporting Social Enterprise and Local Development

The strategies cooperative banks use to address local socio‐economic challenges through the financing and promotion of cooperatives, socially oriented enterprises and local development initiatives are investigated. Two paradigmatic regions with strong cooperative bank sectors are compared, illustrating strategic differences in their approach to cooperative and social enterprise promotion and local development. The cooperative bank sector in the first region, Almeria, Spain, has followed an aggressive growth strategy, both in terms of size and territory, resulting in a large and nationally present cooperative bank. In contrast, the cooperative bank sector in the province of Trentino, the most important region for cooperative banks in Italy, is comprised of many small scale cooperative banks, organized by consortium and tightly tied to territory. Related lines of inquiry include the trend of focusing on corporate social responsibility as opposed to local development and the relationship among different types of complementary actors in order to understand the process of promoting sustainable community development. As well, we comment on the relevance of other types of ‘alternative finance‘ in supporting such goals. These issues are particularly relevant given limited government resources to deal with pressing social and economic issues.
Teaching for Understanding in Science: Constructivist/Conceptual Change Teaching Approaches.

This two-paper set has arisen from a concern within the Victorian Science in Schools Research Project, to help teachers support student learning of science content. In the first paper, the research on student learning of science conceptions was reviewed, and the major findings presented. It traced the changing ways we have viewed science teaching and learning, over the last two decades. This second paper looks at a variety of teaching schemes that aim to support meaningful learning in science, some based on the metaphor of conceptual change, and draws out principles from these for how we might best support student learning of major science ideas.
Declared Use of Medication in Sports

Objective:To assess and compare the prevalence of declared medication, such as corticosteroids, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), β2-agonists, narcotic analgesics, anaesthetics, and antidepressant drugs, in time and between different sports among athletes tested for doping control in a 4-year period. Design:Survey study. Setting:Belgium. Participants:This paper reviews the data obtained from 18,645 doping control forms gathered between 2002 and 2005 from national doping organisations in Belgium and The Netherlands, the International Cycling Union (UCI), and the Belgian Cycling Federation. Intervention:All athletes were asked by doping control officers to declare the medication taken in the last 3 days before competition after which the doping control forms were double blinded and handed over to the laboratory. Main Outcome Measurements:Classification of declared medication according to the active ingredient. Results:The overall declared use of medication belonging to one of the monitored categories increased from 19.8% in 2002 to 24.67% in 2005. Differences in use of medication were observed between sports with a higher prevalence of use of NSAIDs in ball sports compared to other sports and a higher use of beta-agonists and corticosteroids in cycling with percentages of declared corticosteroid use in samples from the UCI exceeding 36% in 2005. Conclusion:These results indicate that the current granting of therapeutic use exemption for corticosteroids and beta-agonists needs to be revised and that threshold levels for beta-agonists should be implemented.
Action dataset — A survey

Human action understanding and recognition have various demands for different applications in the field of computer vision and human-machine interaction. Due to these issues, more than a decade, extensive researches are going on in this arena — to recognize various actions and activities. Researchers have been exploiting various action datasets and some of them become prominent. Though there are some good datasets, unfortunately, to have a strong survey on these datasets has been a long due. This paper attempts this and presents the key datasets and analyzes them in different perspectives.
How do the values in new South African policy manifest in a disadvantaged school setting

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The Impact of Affirmative Action Bans in Graduate Education.

Foreward by Gary Orfield: This study by Dr. Liliana Garces raises an issue of great importance for both the nation’s future and the national debate over the necessity of affirmative action. America’s future depends on effectively competing in a global market and maintaining the world’s strong research capability. That capability is developed in graduate training at leading universities. As the nation passes through an historic demographic transformation and members of traditionally excluded racial and ethnic minorities make up a far larger proportion of the next generation, we are failing to train these students with the skills needed to sustain and expand our technology and research capacity. The most important tools for recruiting traditionally excluded students include a variety of affirmative action programs that identify and nurture talent among groups often denied equal opportunity to prepare for such training. All of our leading research universities and professional associations adopted such policies.As affirmative action has been banned in several states and the U.S. Supreme Court is set to consider the issue for the third time this fall in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (2011), it is vital to understand what impact the loss of affirmative action has had in particular states and to consider whether these states have found alternatives that maintain diversity without affirmative action. It is particularly important to consider graduate education since the major alternatives proposed for undergraduate access—the percent plan and admission by social and economic status—cannot be applied to graduate admissions where decisions are not made among students from a single state, undergraduate programs vary widely in terms of adequate preparation for graduate work, and students are admitted as adults, not on the basis of their family circumstances.If the need is truly urgent and the programs in states prohibiting affirmative action don’t work, the country’s ability to prepare its changing population to sustain and expand these critical capacities will be severely damaged. Dr. Garces’ important work suggests that this is a likely outcome. Also available at: http://civilrightsproject.ucla. edu/
Big Business, Strong State: Collusion and Conflict in South Korean Development, 1960–1990. By Eun Mee Kim · Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. xvii + 280 pp. Bibliographic references and index. Cloth, $59.50. ISBN 0791432092

Eun Mee Kim has won recognition in Korean Studies for her work on business-state relations during the years of South Korea s rapid growth, 1960-1990. On the basis of four earlier articles, the author builds on C. Johnson s seminal distinction between the developmental, plan-rational state with priority on industrial policy, and the regulatory, market-rational state with priority on foreign policy. Extending Johnsons planrational alternative with her own concept of a "comprehensive developmental state" or CDS, the author devotes chapters four and five to Park Chung-hee s regimes from 1961 to 1979, followed by a chapter tracing the transition to a limited developmental state in the 1980s. Emphasis on the internal contradictions of the CDS such as economic success, fading state capabilities due to growing complexity of markets, and interpenetration of business and state interests help explain Koreas transition from 1980 to a "limited developmental" state. Kim identifies this intermediate form in Korea with plan-rational and interventionist, or market-rational and regulatory policies according to the needs of specific economic sectors, and an effort to strike a balance between investment in growth with industrial development, versus stability with extension of welfare nets.
Gloves and socks syndrome: early and late histopathologic features.

BACKGROUND Gloves and socks syndrome (GSS) is a recently described exanthem, most commonly caused by parvovirus B19. OBJECTIVE Our purpose was to describe both early and late histopathologic features of GSS. METHODS We performed histopathologic examination of biopsy specimens from a case of GSS and reviewed all the English-language literature reports of GSS to compare the reported histologic descriptions. RESULTS A total of 46 cases of GSS have been reported in the English-language literature. In 18 of those, the pathologic features were described. The histologic features of the current case evolved from a nonspecific superficial perivascular lymphocytic infiltrate to a vacuolar interface dermatitis with necrotic keratinocytes, erythrocyte extravasation, and a superficial perivascular and interstitial lymphocytic infiltrate. CONCLUSION Early lesions of GSS show nonspecific features common to viral exanthems. The late features, of a fully evolved exanthem, demonstrate a vacuolar interface dermatitis with necrotic keratinocytes, a superficial perivascular and interstitial infiltrate, and dermal hemorrhage. These late pathologic features, together with the clinical appearance of GSS, may help distinguish it from other entities.
Financial instruments, financial reporting, and financial stability

I review new empirical evidence from the recent financial crisis on the relation between financial reporting and financial stability. I draw the following conclusions: First, there is still no evidence that fair value accounting caused widespread fire sales of asset or contagion. Second, the empirical evidence suggests that accounting and regulation might have contributed to the crisis by allowing several banks to delay actions. Third, even if share prices reacted positively to the relaxation of fair value accounting rules during the crisis, the origin of the problem might be lax rules that allowed banks to run into financial and regulatory problems. Fourth, fair values can be relevant for assets that a bank intends to hold until maturity if that bank strongly relies on short-term financing. Fifth, the recognition of fair values is no substitute for information that allows investors to judge a bank's risk exposure and the validity of reported fair values.
Long-term risk of second malignancy after treatment of Hodgkin's disease: the influence of treatment, age and follow-up time.

BACKGROUND To quantify the long-term risk of second cancers (SCs) up to 30 years after primary treatment for Hodgkin's disease (HD) Material and methods In the period 1968 to 1985, an unselected population of 1024 patients started treatment for HD at the Norwegian Radium Hospital (NRH) and were followed for SC from 1969 through 1998 by The Norwegian Cancer Registry. The median age at diagnosis of HD was 40 years, and the median time at follow-up was 14 years. RESULTS Of 197 SCs, 14 were acute non-lymphocytic leukemia (ANLL), 31 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) and 152 solid cancers. The standardized incidence ratio (SIR) was significantly increased for SCs as a group, and for the subgroups ANLL, NHL, lung cancer, breast cancer, stomach cancer and melanoma. ANLL was related to heavy treatment with chemotherapy (CT) and combined CT and radiotherapy (RT), NHL was not treatment related, and solid tumors were related to radiotherapy only or combined RT and CT. The SIR of ANLL and NHL reached a peak between 5 and 10 years after treatment. Solid and non-solid tumors increased with young age at diagnosis of HD and solid tumors increased with follow-up time up to 28 years CONCLUSION In a long-term follow-up study of HD patients of all ages, the SIR of solid tumors was high in patients treated at young age and decreased with increasing age. Most solid tumors had started within or at the edge of the irradiated field, and SIR of solid tumors increased even 20-30 years after diagnosis.
Prostitution and Trafficking in Nine Countries

ABSTRACT We interviewed 854 people currently or recently in prostitution in 9 countries (Canada, Colombia, Germany, Mexico, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, United States, and Zambia), inquiring about current and lifetime history of sexual and physical violence. We found that prostitution was multitraumatic: 71% were physically assaulted in prostitution; 63% were raped; 89% of these respondents wanted to escape prostitution, but did not have other options for survival. A total of 75% had been homeless at some point in their lives; 68% met criteria for PTSD. Severity of PTSD symptoms was strongly associated with the number of different types of lifetime sexual and physical violence. Our findings contradict common myths about prostitution: the assumption that street prostitution is the worst type of prostitution, that prostitution of men and boys is different from prostitution of women and girls, that most of those in prostitution freely consent to it, that most people are in prostitution because of drug addiction, that prostitution is qualitatively different from trafficking, and that legalizing or decriminalizing prostitution would decrease its harm.
Massive outbreak of viral gastroenteritis associated with consumption of municipal drinking water in a European capital city

SUMMARY On 24 August 2008, an outbreak alert regarding cases of acute gastroenteritis in Podgorica triggered investigations to guide control measures. From 23 August to 7 September, 1699 cases were reported in Podgorica (population 136 000) and we estimated the total size of the outbreak to be 10 000–15 000 corresponding to an attack rate of ~10%. We conducted an age- and neighbourhood-matched case-control study, microbiologically analysed faecal and municipal water samples and assessed the water distribution system. All cases (83/83) and 90% (89/90) of controls drank unboiled chlorinated municipal water [matched odds ratio (mOR) 11·2, 95% confidence interval (CI), 1·6–∞]. Consumption of bottled water was inversely associated with illness (mOR 0·3, 95% CI 0·1–0·8). Analyses of faecal samples identified six norovirus genotypes (21/38 samples) and occasionally other viruses. Multiple defects in the water distribution system were noted. These results suggest that the outbreak was caused by faecally contaminated municipal water. It is unusual to have such a large outbreak in a European city especially when the municipal water supply is chlorinated. Therefore, it is important to establish effective multiple-barrier water-treatment systems whenever possible, but even with an established chlorinated supply, sustained vigilance is central to public health.
Sleep timing is associated with diet and physical activity levels in 9–11‐year‐old children from Dunedin, New Zealand: the PEDALS study

It is well documented that short sleep duration is associated with excess body weight and poor food intake in children. It has been suggested that sleep timing behaviour may also be an important predictor of weight and other related behaviours, independent of sleep duration; however, there is a lack of research investigating these relationships. The present study investigated sleep timing in association with diet and physical activity levels in 439 children aged 9–11 years old from New Zealand. Sleep and physical activity data were collected using accelerometry, and food choice using a short food‐frequency questionnaire. Participants were classified into one of four sleep timing behaviour categories using the median split for sleep‐onset and ‐offset times. Differences between sleep timing groups for weekly consumption frequency of selected food groups, dietary pattern scores and minutes of moderate‐to‐vigorous physical activity were examined. Children in the late sleep/late wake category had a lower ‘Fruit & Vegetables’ pattern score [mean difference (95% CI): −0.3 (−0.5, −0.1)], a lower consumption frequency of fruit and vegetables [mean weekly difference (95% CI): −2.9 (−4.9, −0.9)] and a higher consumption frequency of sweetened beverages [mean weekly difference (95% CI): 1.8 (0.2, 3.3)] compared with those in the early sleep/early wake category. Additionally, children in the late sleep/late wake category accumulated fewer minutes of moderate‐to‐vigorous physical activity per day compared with those in the early sleep/early wake category [mean difference (95% CI): −9.4 (−15.3, −3.5)]. These findings indicate that sleep timing, even after controlling for sleep duration, was associated with both food consumption and physical activity.
Skilled immigrants' contribution to innovation and entrepreneurship in the United States

This chapter describes the link between skilled immigration to the United States and innovation and entrepreneurship. Skilled immigrants to the United States, defined as those with a college degree, outperform college-educated natives in terms of wages, patenting, commercialising or licensing patents, and publishing. This success is due to immigrants who originally entered the United States on a student/trainee visa or a temporary work visa and is explained by their different fields of study and higher level of education. Skilled immigrants are also more likely to start successful companies than their native counterparts, apparently owing to higher unmeasured entrepreneurial ability. The effect of skilled immigration on per-capita patenting results to be larger than implied by immigrants' individual success, as immigrants have positive spill-overs on natives.