Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Investment Price Rigidities and Business Cycles

I incorporate investment price rigidity in a two-sector monetary model of business cycles. Fit to quarterly U.S. time series, the model suggests that price sluggishness in the investment sector is the single most empirically relevant friction to match the data. Sticky investment prices constitute an important propagation mechanism to understand the sources of aggregate fluctuations, the dynamic effects of technology shocks, and the properties of the relative price of investment goods.
Expression of CD44 and L-Selectin in the Innate Immune System Is Required for Severe Joint Inflammation in the Proteoglycan-Induced Murine Model of Rheumatoid Arthritis1

Proteoglycan (PG)-induced arthritis, a murine model of rheumatoid arthritis, is characterized by autoimmunity against mouse cartilage PG and chronic joint inflammation. L-selectin (CD62L) and CD44 are major adhesion molecules on leukocytes that regulate their homing to lymph nodes and entry into inflamed tissues. In the present study, we studied the requirement for CD44 and CD62L expression for mediating lymphocyte homing, thus permitting the development of autoimmunity vs mediating the entry of leukocytes into the joints, thus allowing inflammation in PG-induced arthritis. We immunized wild-type, CD44 knockout (KO), CD62L KO, and double (CD44/CD62L) KO BALB/c mice with PG and monitored the effects of gene deficiencies on PG-specific immunity, arthritis severity, leukocyte trafficking, and the ability of lymphocytes to adoptively transfer disease to syngeneic SCID mice. Single and double KO mice demonstrated reduced PG-specific spleen cell proliferation, but the production of Th cytokines and autoantibodies was comparable in KO and wild-type mice. KO leukocytes had reduced ability to adhere tightly to the synovial endothelium in arthritic joints. This diminished leukocyte adhesion correlated with the magnitude of granulocyte (neutrophil) influx and the severity of inflammation, which were both reduced in the joints of KO mice. However, transfer of spleen cells from mildly arthritic KO donors to SCID hosts resulted in development of severe arthritis. Our results indicate that CD44 and CD62L expression in the cells of the innate immune system (granulocytes) is important for their efficient influx into the joints and also suggest that granulocytes play a crucial role in arthritis progression.
Non-Financial Performance Metrics for Corporate Responsibility Reporting Revised.

Rapidly growing interest in Corporate Responsibility (CR) has led to a large increase in firms reporting their CR activities and the inevitable comparisons of performance that follow. Along with growth in CR performance reporting has been an increase in standards and benchmarking, and the financial community has shown interest in whether there is any evidence of association between CR performance and Corporate Financial performance. This paper summarises academic and practitioner literature relating to the use of non-financial metrics for the monitoring and recording of corporate social and environmental responsibility performance. Significant themes are reviewed and current standards are identified, along with benchmarking initiatives. The paper also includes some literature related to CR leaders, who have pioneered CR activities in major corporations, identifying their philosophies to ensure chosen CR programmes deliver value to multiple stakeholders as well as shareholders. The paper concludes that, in spite of the considerable amount of literature defining CR standards, benchmarking initiatives and academic studies of CR performance, there are still several gaps in our knowledge. These gaps include how the CR information is used by stakeholders and investors, how CR agendas impact on corporate value and risk, and the basis of how competing CR projects may best be evaluated through appraisal techniques and criteria, and subsequent progress monitoring. Answers to these missing or incomplete strands will have a significant influence on the future development of nonfinancial CR metrics.
THE EFFECT OF DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS OF SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTREPRENEURS ON TAX COMPLIANCE IN THE TAMALE METROPOLIS, GHANA

In spite of its branding as the engine of growth in many developing countries, the informal sector also regarded as the small and medium scale industry still remain fluid as there is no concrete regulatory policy in place to monitor its activities thereby making it almost difficult to tax if not difficult to tax. Many researchers have attempted to help unravel the puzzle yet the incidence still exists. This study examines the effects of demographic characteristics (gender, age, educational level of entrepreneur, marital status along with venture-type) of small and medium scale entrepreneurs in the Tamale Metropolis on their tax compliance. Questionnaires were administered with 80 small and medium entrepreneurs within the Metropolis. The study reveals that, women entrepreneurs in the metropolis tend to be more non-compliant to tax laws and rules, whiles younger entrepreneurs were also seen to be less compliant compared to their older counterparts. Entrepreneurs with higher education tend to have lower non compliance rate. Marital status and venture-type of entrepreneurs were all discovered to have relations with entrepreneurs’ non compliance behaviour. It is recommended that an intensive tax awareness creation for business owners and individuals is embarked upon by the tax authorities.
RISK PREFERENCES AND THE INVESTMENT DECISIONS OF OLDER AMERICANS

Jules H. Lichtenstein, Ph.D. Project Manager The Public Policy Institute, formed in 1985, is part of Public Affairs at AARP. One of the missions of the Institute is to foster research and analysis on public policy issues of interest to older Americans. This paper represents part of that effort. The views expressed herein are for information, debate, and discussion, and do not necessarily represent formal policies of AARP.  2001, AARP Reprinting with Permission Only.
Dopamine regulates termite soldier differentiation through trophallactic behaviours

Caste polyphenism in social insects is regulated by social interactions among colony members. Trophallaxis is one of the most frequently observed interactions, but no studies have been conducted identifying the intrinsic factors involved in this behaviour and caste differentiation. Dopamine (DA) has multiple roles in the modulation of behaviours and physiology, and it produces species-specific behaviours in animals. Here, to verify the role of DA in termite soldier differentiation, we focused on the first soldier in an incipient colony of Zootermopsis nevadensis, which always differentiates from the oldest 3rd instar (No. 1 larva) via a presoldier. First, brain DA levels of the No. 1 larva at day 3 after its appearance were significantly higher than day 0. Second, DA synthesis gene expression levels were extraordinarily high in the No. 1 larva at day 0–1 after appearance. Finally, injection of a DA receptor antagonist into the No. 1 larva resulted in the inhibition of presoldier differentiation. Behavioural observations of the antagonist or control-injected larvae suggested that brain DA and signalling activity regulate the frequencies of trophallaxis from reproductives and presoldier differentiation. Because trophallaxis is a social behaviour frequently observed in natural conditions, the role of DA should be investigated in other social insects with frequent trophallactic and allogrooming behaviour.
Deep Learning for Chinese Word Segmentation and POS Tagging

This study explores the feasibility of performing Chinese word segmentation (CWS) and POS tagging by deep learning. We try to avoid task-specific feature engineering, and use deep layers of neural networks to discover relevant features to the tasks. We leverage large-scale unlabeled data to improve internal representation of Chinese characters, and use these improved representations to enhance supervised word segmentation and POS tagging models. Our networks achieved close to state-of-theart performance with minimal computational cost. We also describe a perceptron-style algorithm for training the neural networks, as an alternative to maximum-likelihood method, to speed up the training process and make the learning algorithm easier to be implemented.
Are obesity risk genes associated with binge eating in adolescence?

Cognitions and behaviors characteristic of binge eating are associated with a polymorphism in the FTO gene, robustly related to body mass index (BMI) and obesity risk. We investigated the association between binge eating and the individual and combined effect of 32 SNPs robustly associated with BMI in a population‐based sample. We hypothesized that higher BMI and binge eating might share a common genetic etiology.
IQ in late adolescence/early adulthood, risk factors in middle age and later all-cause mortality in men: the Vietnam Experience Study

Objective: To examine the role of potential mediating factors in explaining the IQ–mortality relation. Design, setting and participants: A total of 4316 male former Vietnam-era US army personnel with IQ test results at entry into the service in late adolescence/early adulthood in the 1960/1970s (mean age at entry 20.4 years) participated in a telephone survey and medical examination in middle age (mean age 38.3 years) in 1985–6. They were then followed up for mortality experience for 15 years. Main results: In age-adjusted analyses, higher IQ scores were associated with reduced rates of total mortality (hazard ratio (HR)per SD increase in IQ 0.71; 95% CI 0.63 to 0.81). This relation did not appear to be heavily confounded by early socioeconomic position or ethnicity. The impact of adjusting for some potentially mediating risk indices measured in middle age on the IQ–mortality relation (marital status, alcohol consumption, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, pulse rate, blood glucose, body mass index, psychiatric and somatic illness at medical examination) was negligible (<10% attenuation in risk). Controlling for others (cigarette smoking, lung function) had a modest impact (10–17%). Education (0.79; 0.69 to 0.92), occupational prestige (0.77; 0.68 to 0.88) and income (0.86; 0.75 to 0.98) yielded the greatest attenuation in the IQ–mortality gradient (21–52%); after their collective adjustment, the IQ–mortality link was effectively eliminated (0.92; 0.79 to 1.07). Conclusions: In this cohort, socioeconomic position in middle age might lie on the pathway linking earlier IQ with later mortality risk but might also partly act as a surrogate for cognitive ability.
Immunohistochemical and Ultrastructural Studies of 2,6-Dimethylaniline-induced Nasal Proliferative Lesions in a Rat Two-stage Nasal Carcinogenesis Model Initiated with N-bis(2-hydroxypropyl)nitrosamine

Proliferative lesions induced by 2,6-dimethylaniline (DMA) in a two-stage rat nasal carcinogenesis model were immunohistochemically and ultrastructurally investigated. Male F344 rats received diet containing 3,000 ppm DMA for 52 weeks after initiation with a single subcutaneous injection of 2400 mg/kg of N-bis(2-hydroxypropyl)nitrosamine (DHPN). Histopathologically, proliferation of Bowman's glands, glandular hyperplasias, dysplastic foci, adenomas, and carcinomas were observed in treated rats. These nasal lesions mostly arose in the olfactory mucosa of the nasal cavity. Immunohistochemically, they were positive for cytokeratin and/or collagen type IV antibodies. Ultrastructurally, intracytoplasmic dense secretory granules (200—850 nm in diameter), identical to those in normal Bowman's glands, were observed in all the lesions, providing further support from an origin from these glands. Based on their cellular characterization, growth pattern and/or proliferative activity, two morphological continua were evident, one from dysplastic foci to carcinomas and the other from proliferation of Bowman's glands to glandular hyperplasias and adenomas. These results suggest that dysplastic foci arise from Bowman's glands and progress to carcinomas, while proliferation of Bowman's glands result in glandular hyperplasias and adenomas.
Update in pulmonary hypertension 2008.

PAH is a disease of the small pulmonary arteries, characterized by intense remodeling resulting in a progressive increase in pulmonary vascular resistance (2). PAH is a condition that can occur in an idiopathic form or in association with other disease states or exposures and is believed to result from environmental or disease-inciting factors coupled with genetically determined susceptibilities (1, 2). By definition, patients with PAH do not have significant left heart disease, lung disease, or chronic thrombo-embolic disease (1, 2). A diagnosis of PAH requires invasive hemodynamic criteria, including a mean pulmonary artery pressure greater than 25 mm Hg at rest and a normal pulmonary capillary wedge or left ventricular end-diastolic pressure less than 15 mm Hg (2). Multiple risk factors and associated conditions that trigger and/or worsen the progression of the disease have been recognized (1, 2).
Performance evaluation of heuristic algorithms in floor planning for ASIC design

A study on physical design of VLSI Floor planning is discussed using optimization techniques for betterment in performance of VLSI chip. Floor planning in VLSI is considered to be a Non Polynomial problem. Such problems can be solved using computations. The initial step in floor plan is the representation of floor plan design. The floor plan representations show greater impact on the search space and the complexity of the floor plan design. The objective of this paper is to study different algorithms that addressees the problem of handling alignment constraints such as good placement, optimum area and short run time. Different heuristic and meta-heuristic algorithms are proposed and suggested by many researchers for solving the VLSI Floor plan problem. In this paper Simulated Annealing algorithm, Ant Colony Algorithm, Tabu search and Genetic algorithms are discussed.
The Relationship of Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behavioral Intentions of Sustainable Waste Management on Primary School Students in City of Padang, Indonesia

This study examined the intention of sustainable waste management behavior in elementary school student by using the framework of the Theory of Planned Behavior. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship of knowledge, attitudes, and behavioral intentions of sustainable waste management. Population and sample in this study is elementary school students in the city of Padang, West Sumatra. The data collected for this study were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results of this study stated that the knowledge about sustainable waste management has a significant relationship with attitudes towards sustainable waste management. Knowledge and attitudes towards sustainable waste management has a significant relationship with the intention of sustainable waste management behavior. These findings have important implications for the school as well as for policy makers.
Chronological Changes of CD 4 + and CD 8 + T Cell Subsets in the Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis , a Mouse Model of Multiple Sclerosis

Received September 4, 2007; revision accepted for publication November 1, 2007. Correspondence: Akio Suzumura, Department of Neuroimmunology, Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464-8601, Japan. e-mail: suzumura@riem.nagoya-u.ac. jp Chronological Changes of CD4 and CD8 T Cell Subsets in the Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis, a Mouse Model of Multiple Sclerosis
Influence of School Farm on Teaching of Agricultural Science in Senior Secondary Schools in Ikwuano Local Government Area, Abia State

This work examined the influence of school farm on the teaching of Agricultural Science in senior secondary schools in Ikwuano Local Government Area of Abia State. The study utilized a descriptive survey research design with random sampling techniques. The twelve public senior secondary schools in Ikwuano Local Government Area of Abia State were purposively selected and used for the study. There was no sampling carried out for the study because of the small population rather all the 12 agricultural science teachers drawn from the 12 schools were used (one agricultural science teacher from each of the twelve schools selected). Two research questions and one null hypothesis guided the study. Instruments for data collection were a 10-item structured questionnaire built on a 4-point response format. The validity of the instrument was determined by three experts: one in agricultural education, one in educational administration and one in measurement and evaluation. Cronbach alpha was used to determine the internal consistency reliability index value of the items to be 0.86. Mean, pool mean and standard deviation were used in answering the two research questions. t-test statistic tool was used to test the null hypothesis at 0.005. The findings of the study reveal that school farm has a positive influence on the teaching of agricultural science in senior secondary schools in Ikwuano Local Government Area of Abia State. Based on these findings, it was recommended among others that government and even the school management should always ensure the establishment of a functional school farm in schools and both the agricultural science teachers and the students on their own should always ensure proper management and utilization of the school farm.
Deep ConvNet Conv Layers FC Layers RoI Pooling Proposals Softmax Loss Regression Loss Regression Loss Softmax

Faster R-CNN is one of the most representative and successful methods for object detection, and has been becoming increasingly popular in various objection detection applications. In this report, we propose a robust deep face detection approach based on Faster R-CNN. In our approach, we exploit several new techniques including new multi-task loss function design, online hard example mining, and multi-scale training strategy to improve Faster R-CNN in multiple aspects. The proposed approach is well suited for face detection, so we call it Face R-CNN. Extensive experiments are conducted on two most popular and challenging face detection benchmarks, FDDB and WIDER FACE, to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approach over state-of-the-arts.
Dynamic Adjustment Of Information Technology, Corporate Governance, And Firm Profitability

How do managers make their decisions with regard to adjustment and deployment of information technology (IT) over time? Motivated by this complex dynamics, we draw on behavioral theory of the firm and theorize a bounded rational process of managerial decision making for IT investment. In particular, we explain the dynamic adjustment of IT investment by bounded rational managers’ pursuing of satisfaction. When performance feedback of prior profitability is below their aspiration, they become unsatisfied and adjust IT investment to facilitate problemistic search directed toward innovative solutions to performance problems. As a result, performance problems will be solved and future profitability can be improved. We also deepen our understanding by theorizing the contingency of above dynamics based on the possibility of agency problems and the appropriateness of corporate governance mechanisms, which is largely omitted in behavioral theory. We further draw on agency theory and examine the moderating roles of different corporate governance mechanisms (i.e., incentive alignment versus monitoring) in the effects of IT investment on problemistic search and rent generation. By using a recent, large-scale panel data set, we find that managers are indeed bounded rational and dynamically adjust IT investment over time based on performance feedback. We also find that incentive alignment outgoes monitoring in directing managerial decision making toward innovating with and generating rent with IT investment. Novel theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
The Effect of Board Independence on the Earnings Quality: Evidence from Portuguese Listed Companies

Agency theory suggests that independent outside board members may have an important monitoring function of the financial reporting process. As a result, boards with more independent directors have a tendency for increased monitoring and are therefore expected to insist on better earnings quality. This study examines whether board independence improves earnings quality by reducing earnings management in Portugal, a country with significantly different institutional and legal characteristics from the Anglo-Saxon countries. Using ordinary least square (OLS) and two stage least squares (2SLS) techniques to control potential simultaneity problems between board independence and earnings quality, we find evidence that independent board members improve earnings quality by reducing earnings management for a sample of Portuguese listed firms. This result suggests that strengthening the independence of boards by appointing more independent board members is a positive step toward improving earnings quality.
Category 1 CME Autism in Adulthood 14 From the AAAP

P sychiatry continues to evolve rapidly, advancing our understanding of the complex etiology of mental disorders with each year and bringing advances in psychiatric treatments; 2018 was no exception. Here is a selection of eight research developments that may impact psychiatric clinical practice in the coming years. This list is neither comprehensive nor definitive, but a brief assortment expected to be of interest to a clinical audience. These preliminary findings add to the armamentarium of treatments for a range of psychiatric disorders. » Caleb Rans, PharmD
Nudging insurance customers to go digital: Evidence from a field experiment with Länsförsäkringar Skåne.

By performing a field experiment within behavioural economics with focus on creating a nudge, this study enables to investigate whether a nudge that create better awareness have ability to influence individuals to make a more environmental friendly decision. By performing a field experiment in cooperation with Lansforsakringar Skane, the study shows that the nudges have a significant impact of raising awareness and making more vehicle-insurance customers more willing to switch to receive their information through digital services. The experiment is performed by sending out three different types of letters by email to three randomly selected groups consisting of 13500 insurance customers. All the letters show significant effect of influencing the recipients compared to a control group. The study includes variables such as gender and age in the models to investigate whether these variables can explain the outcome. The gender variables show significant results of influencing the recipients’ decision. However, when it comes to the age variable the study could not show any significant results, which indicates that it cannot be concluded whether the age variable has any affect or not. (Less)
Production and Sensory Evaluation of Biscuits Using the Composite Flours of African Yam Bean and Wheat Flour Obi

Biscuits were produced from blends of African yam bean flour and wheat flour. The African yam bean was sorted, soaked, dehulled, dried, milled and sieved into fine flour and used at various ratios (proportions). The sensory evaluation was carried out by ten (10) panelists using the sensory attributes such as taste, colour, aroma and general acceptability on a nine (9) point Hedonic scale. The sample coded 202 which contained wheat and African yam bean flour 90:10 was preferred very much because of taste, colour and aroma.