Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Corporate liquidations in the United Kingdom

141 CHART 1 ILLUSTRATES UK-owned banks' on-balance-sheet exposures to different sectors as a proportion of total regulatory capital. At end-December 2000, exposures of UK-owned banks to the private non-financial corporate (PNFC) sector represented 87 per cent of capital. Given this, the treatment of these exposures from the point of view of provisions and capital cover is clearly important. Provisions have generally tended to be set to cover banks against losses that have crystallised, although there is of course an important debate about the use of anticipatory (ie forward-looking) provisions. To the extent that losses are expected at the time a loan is made, they should be reflected in the margin charged on the loan, with capital set to cover unexpected losses (Jackson and Lodge (2000)). To the extent that conditions affecting creditworthiness subsequently change, both any forward-looking provisions and capital cover against unexpected losses may need to be revised. It is encouraging that in recent years many large banks have made increasing use of internal models that incorporate a variety of indicators of the risk of credit deterioration to determine their economic capital. Such indicators include the probabilities associated with changes in credit ratings (transition matrices, see below), corporate bond spreads, equity price volatilities and measures of corporate gearing (see Nickell et al (2001a, b)). These internal models, which differentiate credit risk more precisely, will become a central feature of regulatory capital determination following the implementation of the proposed new Basel Accord (see Jackson (2001)). Liquidation is an extreme form of credit impairment. In general, the process of credit impairment (or improvement) may be summarised by a transition matrix of ratings. Such a transition matrix may be based on ratings provided by rating agencies or credit grades that result from a bank's internal assessment procedure. A transition matrix gives the probability that a loan of any given rating (or internal grade) will have the same rating in the next period, will be Corporate liquidations in the United Kingdom 1 Understanding the factors determining corporate liquidations is one ingredient of prudent banking. This article investigates these in a UK context. It suggests that the substantial rise in corporate liquidations during the recession in the early 1990s mainly reflected deteriorating company finances, including a marked build-up of indebtedness. In the subsequent recovery, however, rising GDP relative to trend and other macroeconomic factors seem to have had greater explanatory power than changes in …
Occurrence of rating distortions and ratees’ fairness perceptions per raters’ mood and affect

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the occurrence of rating distortions under raters’ different mood conditions and at different levels of interpersonal affect of raters towards ratees, and further its association with ratees’ perceptions of distributive and interpersonal fairness. Design/methodology/approach For the scenario-based experiment, the study recruited 110 undergraduate students as participants. Of them, 22 raters appraised the video-taped buyer-seller negotiation performance of 88 ratees. Repeated measures analysis was employed to analyse data. Findings Results revealed that under different mood conditions (pleasant and sad) and at different levels of interpersonal affect towards ratees (high and low), raters distorted ratings (inflated and deflated, respectively). These rating distortions shaped ratees fairness perceptions in such a way that ratees who received inflated ratings due to raters’ pleasant mood and high interpersonal affect perceived more distributive and interpersonal fairness than ratees who received deflated ratings due to raters’ sad mood and low interpersonal affect. Originality/value The paper is a step towards integrating the affect infusion model with distributive and interpersonal fairness theory. This integration can be of value for enhancing our understanding of how rater-centric rating errors take place, which subsequently shape ratees’ fairness perceptions.
Coaxial Anisotropy of Cortical Point Spread in Human Visual Areas

A focal stimulus triggers neural activity that spreads to cortical regions far beyond the stimulation site, creating a so-called “cortical point spread” (CPS). Animal studies found that V1 neurons possess lateral connections with neighboring neurons that prefer similar orientations and to neurons representing visuotopic regions that are constrained by their preferred orientation axis. Although various roles in visual processing are proposed for this anatomical anisotropy of lateral connections, evidence for a corresponding “functional” anisotropy in CPS is lacking or inconsistent in animal studies and absent in humans. To explore functional anisotropy, we inspected axial constraints on CPS in human visual cortex using functional magnetic resonance imaging. We defined receptive fields (RFs) of unit gray matter volumes and delineated the spatial extents of CPS in visuotopic space. The CPS triggered by foveal stimuli exhibited coaxial anisotropy with larger spatial extents along the axis of stimulus orientation. Furthermore, the spatial extents of CPS along the coaxial direction increased with an increasing similarity of local sites to the CPS-inducing stimulus in orientation preference. From CPS driven by multifocal stimuli, the coaxially biased spread was also found in cortical regions in the periphery, albeit reduced in degree, and was invariant to a varying degree of radial relationship between stimuli and RF positions of local sites, rejecting radial bias as an origin of coaxial anisotropy. Our findings provide a bridge between the anatomical anisotropy seen in animal visual cortex and a possible network property supporting spatial contextual effects in human visual perception.
[Neuropsychological tests in a group of patients with ischaemic heart disease].

AIM Ischaemic heart disease (IHD) tops the list of sick and death rates all over the world. IHD brings the risk of central nervous system disturbances. On the other hand lower neuropsychological tests results enable to predict cardiac relapse. We assess the neuropsychological function such as working memory and executive functions, associated with prefrontal cortex activity, as well as direct and delayed verbal memory in patients with ischemic heart disease vs. healthy subjects. METHODS The following neuropsychological tests were applied in the study for evaluation of cognitive functions: the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) and the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT). RESULTS In the patients with IHD a significant intensification of cognitive dysfunctions (working memory and executive dysfunctions also immediate and delayed memory) was observed in comparison with the control group of healthy subjects. CONCLUSIONS Cognitive dysfunctions are widespread effect among IHD patients. Working memory and executive functions disturbances are especially dangerous in this group because they can result in problems with understanding, learning new information and difficulties in following medical recommendations which may cause consecutive hospitalisations. The seriousness of cognitive disturbances consequences motivate to evaluate all patients and initiate neurocognitive rehabilitation programs when needed.
Evaluating Child-Custody Recommendations of Israeli Arab Social Workers

Objectives: To evaluate Israeli Arab social workers’ custody recommendations, given the unique cultural context in which they operate. Methods: The current study used an experimental-design embedded within a survey. Data regarding custody recommendations were collected from 137 Israeli Arab social workers. Results: Israeli Arab social workers tend to adhere to traditional norms and prefer mother’s custody (odds ratio [OR] = 3.74; effect size [ES] = 0.73) over father’s (OR = 0.05; ES = −1.65) and joint custody (OR = 0.19; ES = −0.91). Contrary to the hypothesis, males were not associated with father’s custody, but female gender increased the chances for mother’s custody (OR = 1.27; ES = 0.13). Parents’ education level increased the chances for joint-custody recommendation (OR = 1.69; ES = 0.29). Conclusion: Traditional social norms have an impact on the social worker’s decision. The relationships between social workers’ decision-making processes and their perception societal expectations and norms can be viewed from the perspectives of tacit knowledge, worker’s reflexivity, and evidence-based practice. We emphasize the importance of developing and assimilating relevant organizational mechanisms, supervision, and teaching curricula.
Text Categorization by Unsupervised Learning

The project implemented a generalized bootstrapping algorithm for text categorization by unsupervised learning in which categories are described only by their relevant seed features. Our method uses two steps, the last one improving on the results obtained by the initial bootstrapping step of the scheme. This is a standard technique followed in unsupervised TC to enhance the results obtained by the pure unsupervised step. Within this framework, a great variation in performance can be obtained by choosing various tools for the above two steps and matching them well. Our principal objective was to investigate the performance of this specific combination of tools: Step1) Latent Semantic Analysis is used to obtain the initial classification of the a portion of the dataset (that is to form the training dataset for the next stage). Step2) The Support Vector Machines were trained on the above machine labeled training dataset, and we obtained significantly better results on the test dataset.
Detangling the Effects of Environmental Filtering and Dispersal Limitation on Aggregated Distributions of Tree and Shrub Species: Life Stage Matters

The pervasive pattern of aggregated tree distributions in natural communities is commonly explained by the joint effect of two clustering processes: environmental filtering and dispersal limitation, yet little consensus remains on the relative importance of the two clustering processes on tree aggregations. Different life stages of examined species were thought to be one possible explanation of this disagreement, because the effect of environmental filtering and dispersal limitation are expected to increase and decrease with tree life stages, respectively. However, few studies have explicitly tested these expectations. In this study, we evaluated these expectations by three different methods (species-habitat association test based on Poisson Clustering model and spatial point pattern analyses based on Heterogeneous Poisson model and the jointly modeling approach) using 36 species in a 20-ha subtropical forest plot. Our results showed that the percentage of species with significant habitat association increased with life stages, and there were fewer species affected by dispersal limitation in later life stages compared with those in earlier stages. Percentage of variance explained by the environmental filtering and dispersal limitation also increases and decreases with life stages. These results provided a promising alternative explanation on the existing mixed results about the relative importance of the two clustering processes. These findings also highlighted the importance of plant life stages for fully understanding species distributions and species coexistence.
Equal or individual treatment: contesting storylines in needs assessment conversations within Swedish eldercare

ABSTRACT This article examines the role of care managers and their work in putting policy into practice in micro-interactions with older people in Swedish eldercare. The care managers assess the individual needs of older people, and decide what type of social care and services will be given. Dilemmas in care management are often related to the gap between needs and resources. The aim was to study the positioning of care managers within different storylines advanced in needs assessment conversations. Positioning theory was applied to study discursive practices and discursive strategies within Swedish eldercare. Audio-recorded needs assessment conversations among care managers, older people and their relatives at care planning meetings in connection with hospital discharge were analyzed. Two overall positions were identified for care managers—as ‘professional experts’ and as ‘organizational representatives’—allowing the care managers to maneuver within two contesting storylines: ‘distribution of scarce eldercare resources based on the principles of eligibility and equal treatment’ and ‘older people entitled to eldercare according to their own perceived individual needs’. For social work, the results showed the importance of discussing how care managers might move towards exercising greater professional autonomy, becoming less dependent on their position in the organization.
Overtime Labor, Employment Frictions, and the New Keynesian Phillips Curve

Abstract This paper presents a New Keynesian (NK) model that is extended to differentiate between straight time and overtime work. The model proposes that the New Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) should be estimated with marginal cost measured in terms of overtime labor; the resulting coefficient estimates are in accordance with theory and statistically significant for the hybrid NKPC (which allows for backward-looking price setters) but not for the purely forward-looking NKPC. In the hybrid model, backward-looking behavior is found to be predominant. The paper also shows that the incorporation of employment frictions (predetermined employment and convex adjustment costs) in NK models helps reconcile the frequent price changes found in the microdata with the degree of sluggishness in inflation adjustment to output changes at the macro level.
A Tale of Two Turnouts in 2004: Effects of News Frame Valence and Substance on College Students' Levels of Trust, Cynicism, and Political Information Efficacy

Following the 2004 U.S. presidential election, articles from the Associated Press and major news organizations came to very different conclusions regarding the impact of young voters on the election outcome. While some outlets framed the youth turnout as a success, others framed it as a failure. This experimental study (N=237) utilized a pretest/post-test design to build upon research on framing theory and political information efficacy theory. Articles about youth voter turnout in the 2004 election served as the stimuli to test the effects of news frame valence and frame substance on college student respondents’ levels of trust, cynicism, and political information efficacy. Results indicated that while valence and level of substance of a news article may affect political attitudes, changes between experimental groups were not significant. Cynicism was negatively correlated with political information efficacy and trust. Attitudinal measures accounted for a significant amount of variance in respondents’ interest in the 2006 campaign as well as perceived importance of both political engagement and youth voter turnout in past and future campaigns.
International System and Technologies of Rebellion: How the End of the Cold War Shaped Internal Conflict

Because they are chiefly domestic conflicts, civil wars have been studied primarily from a perspective stressing domestic factors. We ask, instead, whether (and how) the international system shapes civil wars; we find that it does shape the way in which they are fought—their “technology of rebellion. ” After disaggregating civil wars into irregular wars (or insurgencies), conventional wars, and symmetric nonconventional wars, we report a striking decline of irregular wars following the end of the Cold War, a remarkable transformation of internal conflict. Our analysis brings the international system back into the study of internal conflict. It specifies the connection between system polarity and the Cold War on the one hand and domestic warfare on the other hand. It also demonstrates that irregular war is not the paradigmatic mode of civil war as widely believed, but rather is closely associated with the structural characteristics of the Cold War.
Buffering the Associations between Negative Mood States and the Incentive Salience of Alcohol: A Brief Mindfulness Induction

Buffering the Associations between Negative Mood States and the Incentive Salience of Alcohol: A Brief Mindfulness Induction Adrian J. Bravo Old Dominion University, 2016 Director: Dr. James M. Henson The present study examined drinking to cope (DTC) motives and state mindfulness (via a brief mindfulness induction) as two distinct factors that may enhance (DTC) and reduce (state mindfulness) the association between negative mood states (i.e., sadness and anxiety) and the incentive salience of alcohol (i.e., subjective alcohol craving and attentional bias for alcoholrelated cues) among college student drinkers. Participants were 207 undergraduate students from a large, southeastern university in the United States that consumed at least one drink per typical week in the previous month. The majority of participants identified as being either White, nonHispanic (n = 81; 39.1%), or African-American (n = 86; 41.6%), were female (n = 170; 82.1%), and reported a mean age of 20.94 (SD = 5.48) years. Results indicated that at both pre and postmindfulness induction assessments, higher levels of both DTC-depression and DTC-anxiety motives were related to higher subjective alcohol craving. Further, collapsing across mood groups (i.e., sadness vs mood control) and at average levels of both DTC-depression and DTCanxiety motives, individuals in the mindfulness condition reported a significant change score (i.e., reduction) in subjective alcohol craving scores at post-mindfulness induction compared to individuals in the no-mindfulness condition. Albeit preliminary, the present study offers support for mindfulness as a beneficial alternative coping strategy to drinking to cope among college student drinkers. Future work is needed to replicate these findings and examine how DTC motives, emotional mood states, and state mindfulness interrelate among college student drinkers within an ecological momentary framework.
Spliced segments at the 5′ terminus of adenovirus 2 late mRNA*

An mRNA fraction coding for hexon polypeptide, the major virion structural protein, was purified by gel electrophoresis from extracts of adenovirus 2-infected cells late in the lytic cycle. The mRNA sequences in this fraction were mapped between 51.7 and 61.3 units on the genome by visualizing RNA⋅DNA hybrids in the electron microscope. When hybrids of hexon mRNA and single-stranded restriction endonuclease cleavage fragments of viral DNA were visualized in the electron microscope, branched forms were observed in which 160 nucleotides of RNA from the 5′ terminus were not hydrogen bonded to the single-stranded DNA. DNA sequences complementary to the RNA sequences in each 5′ tail were found by electron microscopy to be located at 17, 20, and 27 units on the same strand as that coding for the body of the hexon mRNA. Thus, four segments of viral RNA may be joined together during the synthesis of mature hexon mRNA. A model is presented for adenovirus late mRNA synthesis that involves multiple splicing during maturation of a larger precursor nuclear RNA.
Deletion of aquaporin‐4 renders retinal glial cells more susceptible to osmotic stress

The glial water channel aquaporin‐4 (AQP4) is implicated in the control of ion and osmohomeostasis in the sensory retina. Using retinal slices from AQP4‐deficient and wild‐type mice, we investigated whether AQP4 is involved in the regulation of glial cell volume under altered osmotic conditions. Superfusion of retinal slices with a hypoosmolar solution induced a rapid swelling of glial somata in tissues from AQP4 null mice but not from wild‐type mice. The swelling was mediated by oxidative stress, inflammatory lipid mediators, and sodium influx into the cells and was prevented by activation of glutamatergic and purinergic receptors. Distinct inflammatory proteins, including interleukin‐1β, interleukin‐6, and inducible nitric oxide synthase, were up‐regulated in the retina of AQP4 null mice compared with control, whereas cyclooxygenase‐2 was down‐regulated. The data suggest that water flux through AQP4 is involved in the rapid volume regulation of retinal glial (Müller) cells in response to osmotic stress and that deletion of AQP4 results in an inflammatory response of the retinal tissue. Possible implications of the data for understanding the pathophysiology of neuromyelitis optica, a human disease that has been suggested to involve serum antibodies to AQP4, are discussed. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Variability of DOC and nitrate responses to storms in a small Mediterranean forested catchment

Abstract. Severe drought periods followed by intense rainfall often leads to major floods in Mediterranean catchments. The resulting hydrology is complex and the response of solutes in the streams is often unpredictable. This study aimed to identify the most relevant factors controlling the hydrological responses to storms of an intermittent Mediterranean stream and to link those factors with dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and nitrate during storm events. Measurements of climate, hydrology, DOC and nitrate concentrations during 26 storm events over three hydrological years were analysed. The contribution of the storm events to the total DOC and nitrate annual export was also calculated. Nitrate was mainly mobilised during high flow, while most of the DOC export occurred during baseflow. Solute concentrations peaked after drought periods and the solute export was maximal during the largest rainfalls (i.e. > 100 L m-2). One single large storm contributed some 22% of the total annual export of DOC, and about 80% of that of nitrate. Discharge was a good predictor of neither DOC nor nitrate responses, so variables other than discharge were considered. Factor Analysis was used to identify the main factors controlling the biogeochemical responses. Antecedent moisture conditions and the magnitude of the storm event were the most relevant factors and accounted for 63% of the total variance. Solute responses during high flow were highly variable. However, solute concentration changes showed a significant and moderate relationship with the factors controlling the hydrological responses (i.e. Δ DOC v. the antecedent moisture conditions and Δ NO3-N v. the magnitude of the storm event). Keywords: dissolved organic carbon, nitrate, Mediterranean, drought, Fuirosos catchment, storms
Increased expression of high affinity ige (FcεRI) receptor-α chain mRNA and protein-bearing eosinophils in human allergen-induced atopic asthma

Fc ɛ RI receptors play an important role in allergen-induced mediator release and antigen presentation by mast cells, basophils, and monocyte / macrophages in atopic disorders. The expression of Fc ɛ RI by tissue eosinophils in atopic asthma after allergen challenge has not been established. For this reason we attempted to identify mRNA and protein product + Fc ɛ RI α eosinophils in cytospins made from bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) from atopic asthmatics (n = 9) and nonatopic normal subjects (n = 4) 24 h after segmental challenge with allergen or diluent. Messenger RNA for Fc ɛ RI α was determined using in situ hybridization and Fc ɛ RI α protein expression by immunocytochemistry using a mouse monoclonal antibody 22E7. Colocalization of Fc ɛ RI α receptors to eosinophils was performed using chromotrope 2R. When compared with a control challenge, segmental challenge with Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus induced significant BAL eosinophilia (p = 0.007). The total number of BAL Fc ɛ RI α mRNA and protein-positi.