Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
– Tuomas Takalo LAW OR FINANCE : IDENCE FROM FINLAND *

Although it is widely acknowledged that the benefits of corporate governance reform could be substantial, systematic evidence on such reforms is scant. We both document and evaluate a contemporary corporate governance reform by constructing 18 measures of shareholder and creditor protection for Finland for the period 1980–2000. The measures reveal that shareholder protection has been strengthened whereas creditor protection has been weakened. We also demonstrate how the reform is consistent with a reorganisation of the Finnish financial market in which a bank-centred financial system shifted from relationship-based debt finance towards increasing dominance by the stock market. We find evidence that the development of shareholder protection has been a driver of the reorganisation, whereas the changes in creditor protection have mirrored market developments.
Doctoral production in South Africa : statistics, challenges and responses

The past few years have witnessed new interest in doctoral production in South Africa. In the first section of the article, it is argued that this new interest has its roots in various higher education policy documents over the past decade. The second part of the article presents some of the most recent statistics on various aspects of doctoral production: trends in enrolments and graduations, completion and attrition rates as well as the supervisory capacity in the system. In the final section it is argued that the policy discourse, together with the analysis of the statistical data, gave rise to four challenges. These are the goals to expand the volume of doctoral graduates being produced as well as the supervisory capacity in the system and the demands to improve the efficiency and quality of doctoral production. In the ensuing discussion of these challenges, it is argued that various factors mitigate against the easy attainment of the first three goals. Although it remains important that these goals are pursued, it is argued that more emphasis should be afforded to considerations about the quality of doctoral training.
Endocannabinoid regulation of β‐cell functions: implications for glycaemic control and diabetes

Visceral obesity is a major risk factor for the development of insulin resistance which can progress to overt type 2 diabetes (T2D) with loss of β‐cell function and, ultimately, loss of β‐cells. Insulin secretion by β‐cells of the pancreatic islets is tightly coupled to blood glucose concentration and modulated by a large number of blood‐borne or locally released mediators, including endocannabinoids. Obesity and its complications, including T2D, are associated with increased activity of the endocannabinoid/CB1 receptor (CB1R) system, as indicated by the therapeutic effects of CB1R antagonists. Similar beneficial effects of CB1R antagonists with limited brain penetrance indicate the important role of CB1R in peripheral tissues, including the endocrine pancreas. Pancreatic β‐cells express all of the components of the endocannabinoid system, and endocannabinoids modulate their function via both autocrine and paracrine mechanisms, which influence basal and glucose‐induced insulin secretion and also affect β‐cell proliferation and survival. The present brief review will survey available information on the modulation of these processes by endocannabinoids and their receptors, with an attempt to assess the contribution of such effects to glycaemic control in T2D and insulin resistance.
I never knew that! Why do people from Black and Asian Minority Ethnic groups in Leicester access hospice services less than other groups? A discussion with community groups

In the UK, Black and AsianMinority Ethnic (BAME) patients are less likely to access palliative care services than their White counterparts. An increasingly diverse population makes this a cause for concern. This paper describes a project in Leicester to discover what members of the BAME communities knew about palliative care and the providers of hospice services; what they thought the barriers were to their use of these services; and how they would like to find out about them.Informal discussion groups were used as the vehicle for information gathering; accessing communities to develop such groups posed specific problems. Two project workers made notes during and immediately after the discussion groups. These were thematically analysed. Findings suggested that knowledge about palliative care was scant, though much valued when understood. Cultural and religious strictures on using palliative care services or a palliative care approachwere not demonstrated, though others, including considerable concerns about food when an inpatient, were deemed of importance. The need to know what is locally available, and how to access those services, was uniformly agreed, and the information given warmly welcomed, even by those with reservations.
Gender variation in PTH sensitivity and rhythmicity following growth hormone replacement in adult growth hormone‐deficient patients

background Adult GH deficiency (AGHD) is associated with osteoporosis and reduced bone turnover; factors improved by GH replacement (GHR), with men gaining greater benefit than women. Reduction in sensitivity of bone and kidney to the effects of PTH may underlie AGHD changes in bone turnover. We determined the gender difference in PTH target‐organ sensitivity following GHR in AGHD patients.
Engagement of cognitive control and down-regulation of negative affect

Cognitive strategies can be used to regulate emotion. For example, thinking about the specific details of an emotional situation (i.e., specific thinking strategy) decreases negative affect (Philippot et al., 2006). However, exactly how and why this cognitive strategy is effective is still unclear. There is also indirect evidence for an inverse relationship between cognitive control and emotion. This study examined whether (a) engagement of cognitive control (CC) results in decreased negative affect (NA); (b) whether CC is involved in the specific thinking strategy; and (c) whether negative mood also results in poorer CC performance. In this study, NA was elicited by a public speaking task. This study involved four groups: (1) a specific thinking group, expected to exhibit a decrease in negative affect; (2) a cognitive control group (performance of the OSPAN task); (3) an overgeneralized thinking group, which has not been found to decrease NA; and (4) a non-emotional control group. Subsequently, all groups performed the Stroop task. Performance of a second in a series of CC tasks has been found to produce poorer performance (possibly due to resource depletion). The cognitive control group did not decrease in NA after engaging CC. Further, there was suggestive evidence that the specific thinking group engaged CC, but no evidence to support that engaging CC decreased NA. Finally, NA was not found to decrease performance on CC tasks. These findings support that CC may not directly decrease NA and NA may not decrease CC.
Effectiveness of rotavirus vaccination in prevention of hospital admissions for rotavirus gastroenteritis among young children in Belgium: case-control study

Objective To evaluate the effectiveness of rotavirus vaccination among young children in Belgium. Design Prospective case-control study. Setting Random sample of 39 Belgian hospitals, February 2008 to June 2010. Participants 215 children admitted to hospital with rotavirus gastroenteritis confirmed by polymerase chain reaction and 276 age and hospital matched controls. All children were of an eligible age to have received rotavirus vaccination (that is, born after 1 October 2006 and aged ≥14 weeks). Main outcome measure Vaccination status of children admitted to hospital with rotavirus gastroenteritis and matched controls. Results 99 children (48%) admitted with rotavirus gastroenteritis and 244 (91%) controls had received at least one dose of any rotavirus vaccine (P<0.001). The monovalent rotavirus vaccine accounted for 92% (n=594) of all rotavirus vaccine doses. With hospital admission as the outcome, the unadjusted effectiveness of two doses of the monovalent rotavirus vaccine was 90% (95% confidence interval 81% to 95%) overall, 91% (75% to 97%) in children aged 3-11 months, and 90% (76% to 96%) in those aged ≥12 months. The G2P[4] genotype accounted for 52% of cases confirmed by polymerase chain reaction with eligible matched controls. Vaccine effectiveness was 85% (64% to 94%) against G2P[4] and 95% (78% to 99%) against G1P[8]. In 25% of cases confirmed by polymerase chain reaction with eligible matched controls, there was reported co-infection with adenovirus, astrovirus and/or norovirus. Vaccine effectiveness against co-infected cases was 86% (52% to 96%). Effectiveness of at least one dose of any rotavirus vaccine (intention to vaccinate analysis) was 91% (82% to 95%). Conclusions Rotavirus vaccination is effective for the prevention of admission to hospital for rotavirus gastroenteritis among young children in Belgium, despite the high prevalence of G2P[4] and viral co-infection.
The impact of eye gaze on communication using humanoid avatars

In this paper we describe an experiment designed to investigate the importance of eye gaze in humanoid avatar's representing people engaged in conversation. We compare responses to dyadic conversations in four mediated conditions: video, audio-only, and two avatar conditions. The avatar conditions differed only in their treatment of eye gaze. In the random-gaze condition the avatars head and eye animations were unrelated to conversational flow. In the informed-gaze condition, they were related to turn-taking during the conversation. The head animations were tracked and the eye animations were inferred from the audio stream. Our comparative analysis of 100 post-experiment questionnaires showed that the random-gaze avatar did not improve on audio-only communication. The informed-gaze avatar significantly outperformed the random-gaze model and also outperformed audio-only on several response measures. We conclude that an avatar whose gaze behaviour is related to the conversation provides a marked improvement on an avatar that merely exhibits liveliness.
Evaluation of ALOS PALSAR Imagery for Burned Area Mapping in Greece Using Object-Based Classification

In this work, the potential of Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) imagery to map burned areas was evaluated in two study areas in Greece. For this purpose, we developed an object-based classification scheme to map the fire-disturbed areas using the PALSAR imagery acquired before and shortly after fire events. The advantage of employing an object-based approach was not only the use of the temporal variation of the backscatter coefficient, but also the incorporation in the classification of topological features, such as neighbor objects, and class related features, such as objects classified as burned. The classification scheme resulted in mapping the burned areas with satisfactory results: 0.71 and 0.82 probabilities of detection for the two study areas. Our investigation revealed that the pre-fire vegetation conditions and fire severity should be taken in consideration when mapping burned areas using PALSAR in Mediterranean regions. Overall, findings suggest that the developed scheme could be applied for rapid burned area assessment, especially to areas where cloud cover and fire smoke inhibit accurate mapping of burned areas when optical data are used.
detection, fine discrimination, and coarse discrimination Individual differences in attention strategies during

You might find this additional info useful.This article cites€48 articles, 16 of which you can access for free at: http://jn.physiology. org/content/110/3/784.full#ref-list-1Updated information and services including high resolution figures, can be found at: http://jn.physiology. org/content/110/3/784.fullAdditional material and information about Journal of Neurophysiology can be found at: http://www.the-aps.org/publications/jnThis information is current as of August 15, 2013.
The extended language network: A meta‐analysis of neuroimaging studies on text comprehension

Language processing in context requires more than merely comprehending words and sentences. Important subprocesses are inferences for bridging successive utterances, the use of background knowledge and discourse context, and pragmatic interpretations. The functional neuroanatomy of these text comprehension processes has only recently been investigated. Although there is evidence for right‐hemisphere contributions, reviews have implicated the left lateral prefrontal cortex, left temporal regions beyond Wernicke's area, and the left dorso‐medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) for text comprehension. To objectively confirm this extended language network and to evaluate the respective contribution of right hemisphere regions, meta‐analyses of 23 neuroimaging studies are reported here. The analyses used replicator dynamics based on activation likelihood estimates. Independent of the baseline, the anterior temporal lobes (aTL) were active bilaterally. In addition, processing of coherent compared with incoherent text engaged the dmPFC and the posterior cingulate cortex. Right hemisphere activations were seen most notably in the analysis of contrasts testing specific subprocesses, such as metaphor comprehension. These results suggest task dependent contributions for the lateral PFC and the right hemisphere. Most importantly, they confirm the role of the aTL and the fronto‐medial cortex for language processing in context. Hum Brain Mapp 2008. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Judgement Swapping and Aggregation

We present the results of an initial experiment that indi- cates that people are less overconﬁdent and better calibrated when they assign conﬁdence levels to someone else’s interval judgements (evaluator conﬁdences) compared to assigning conﬁdence levels to their own inter- val judgements (judge conﬁdences). We studied what impact this had on a number of judgement aggregation methods, including linear aggregation and maximum conﬁdence slating (MCS). Using evaluator conﬁdences as inputs to the aggregation methods improved calibration, and it improved hit rate in the case of MCS.
Effects of increased isopycnal diffusivity mimicking the unresolved equatorial intermediate current system in an earth system climate model

Earth system climate models generally underestimate dissolved oxygen concentrations in the deep eastern equatorial Pacific. This problem is associated with the “nutrient trapping” problem, described by Najjar et al. [1992], and is, at least partially, caused by a deficient representation of the Equatorial Intermediate Current System (EICS). Here we emulate the unresolved EICS in the UVic earth system climate model by locally increasing the zonal isopycnal diffusivity. An anisotropic diffusivity of ∼50,000 m2 s−1 yields an improved global representation of temperature, salinity and oxygen. In addition, it (1) resolves most of the local “nutrient trapping” and associated oxygen deficit in the eastern equatorial Pacific and (2) reduces spurious zonal temperature gradients on isopycnals without affecting other physical metrics such as meridional overturning or air‐sea heat fluxes. Finally, climate projections of low‐oxygenated waters and associated denitrification change sign and apparently become more plausible.
Rearing a second generation of cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus oedipus) in captivity

The average age at first parturition in captive-born female cotton-top tamarins was 31 months. Only 18% of full-term young born were successfully reared by primiparous females, but success increased with parity and 71% of babies born at 4th and 5th pregnancies were raised. 15% of litters were single births, 61% were twins and 24% were triplets. There was a seasonal distribution of births, with a clear peak in the spring months. The average interbirth interval was 294 days.
Une influence probable du crole louisianais sur le franais cadien

L'A. s'interesse dans cet article a la comparaison entre francais cadien et creoles louisianais, le but etant de montrer que la deuxieme langue citee connait une influence probable sur la premiere, notamment au niveau de quelques constructions syntaxiques similaires (constructions du type laisse/fais/quitte + pas li + verbe). L'A. emet l'hypothese que dans ce ce genre de constructions, l'independance du pronom objet par rapport au verbe serait un trait qui tire son origine du creole louisianais. L'analyse repose sur des donnees recueillies a la suite d'une enquete linguistique menee en 2003, a l'aide de questionnaires adresses a des locuteurs cadiens et creoles âges entre 40 et 70 ans.
A perception-aware low-power software audio decoder for portable devices

We propose a new software audio decoder for processors supporting multiple discrete voltage-frequency operating points. The proposed decoding scheme allows the user to switch between multiple output quality levels, where each level is associated with a different rate at which the processor consumes energy. This is an attractive feature in battery-powered portable audio players and mobile phones, where battery-life is often more crucial than the output quality, especially in noisy environments. Towards this, the frequency range of the decoder is partitioned into multiple groups, in accordance with their perceptual relevance. When a longer battery life is desired, only the most relevant frequency components are decoded, which allows the processor to be run at a lower voltage and frequency. We have implemented this scheme using the MP3 decoder and obtained up to 95% savings in the energy consumed by the processor for AM quality output (in contrast to CD quality output, which is associated with the maximum energy consumption). This scheme is easy to implement, has no runtime overhead and does not involve any runtime voltage or frequency scaling.
Conduction and Low-Frequency Noise Analysis in $ \hbox{Al}/\alpha\hbox{-TiO}_{X}/\hbox{Al}$ Bipolar Switching Resistance Random Access Memory Devices

We investigated the low-frequency noise (LFN) properties of the bipolar switching resistance random access memories (RRAMs) for the first time with amorphous TiOx -based RRAM devices. The LFNs are proportional to 1/f for both high-resistance (HRS) and low-resistance states (LRS). The normalized noise in HRS is around an order of magnitude higher than that in LRS. The random telegraph noise (RTN) is observed only in HRS, which represents that the dominant trap causing the RTN becomes electrically inactive by being filled with electrons in LRS. The voltage dependence Si/I2 of shows that the noise can be used to elucidate the operation mechanism of RRAM devices.
An efficient and accurate solution for the extraction of non-directional ocean wave spectra from second-order high-frequency radar Doppler spectra

Based on the change-of-coordinates that was previously proposed in [1], in this paper, the wave spectrum inversion problem is solved with very high accuracy for the case when there is little or no noise in the second-order Doppler spectrum. The new solution is based on the form of the forward problem, which is a sum of spatially-dependent linear convolution and cross-correlations. This sum can be solved precisely by solving for the wave spectrum power spectral densities iteratively from larger to smaller frequencies, and it is shown here on synthetic data that the solution is exact up to numerical error in the absence of noise. This exact solution is found to be sensitive to noise in the Doppler spectrum, and thus a second algorithm is derived which reduces this sensitivity and still arrives at a sensible solution for the nondirectional ocean wave spectrum.
Design and Management of Complex Technical Processes and Systems by means of Computational Intelligence Methods Efficient Case Based Feature Construction for Heterogeneous Learning Tasks

Feature construction is essential for solving many complex learning problems. Unfortunately, the construction of features usually implies searching a very large space of possibilities and is often computationally demanding. In this work, we propose a case based approach to feature construction. Learning tasks are stored together with a corresponding set of constructed features in a case base and can be retrieved to speed up feature construction for new tasks. The essential part of our method is a new representation model for learning tasks and a corresponding distance measure. Learning tasks are compared using relevance weights on a common set of base features only. Therefore, the case base can be built and queried very efficiently. In this respect, our approach is unique and enables us to apply case based feature construction not only on a large scale, but also in distributed learning scenarios in which communication costs play an important role. We derive a distance measure for heterogenious learning tasks by stating a set of necessary conditions. Although the conditions are quite basic, they constraint the set of applicable methods to a surprisingly small number. We also provide some experimental evidence for the utility of our method. ∗This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) as a part of the Collaborative Research Center ”Computational Intelligence” (SFB 531)
Unsupervised analysis of leukemia and normal hematopoiesis by joint clustering of gene expression data

Leukemia is a very heterogeneous cancer of the hematopoietic system. Since its main cause consists of genomic defects in the hematopoietic stem or progenitor cells and given the high complexity of the hematopoietic system, it may seem an important task to investigate the transcriptomic similarities and differences between leukemia subtypes and hematopoietic cells (stem cells, progenitors and differentiated cells). In this paper, we integrate the largest publicly available gene expression datasets of leukemia and normal hematopoiesis with the aim of uncovering the main gene modules involved in normal hematopoiesis as well as in the various leukemia subtypes. Using a joint consensus clustering algorithm, we have been able to relate the major leukemia types to their putative cells of origin in an unsupervised manner. While the normal hematopoietic cell modules are also active in leukemias of the corresponding cell type, our approach has determined leukemia-specific modules comprising genes with a known involvement in leukemogenesis. The expression modules uncovered implicate an unusually large number of transcription factors. This speaks against very simple models of normal hematopoiesis and leukemogenesis that involve just a handful of critical TFs, arguing for the interplay of complex transcription factor networks, in line with the findings of the FANTOM consortium for leukemia and Novershtern et al. for normal hematopoiesis.
Volume, Volatility, and Leverage: A Dynamic Analysis

This paper uses dynamic impulse response analysis to investigate the interrelationships among stock price volatility, trading volume, and the leverage effect. Dynamic impulse response analysis is a technique for analyzing the multistep ahead characteristics of a nonparametric estimate of the one-step conditional density of a strictly stationary process. The technique is the generalization to a nonlinear process of Sims-style impulse response analysis for lienar models. In this paper, we refine the technique and apply it to a long panel of daily observations on the price and trading volume of four stocks actively traded on the NYSE: Boeing, Coca Cola, IBM, and MMM.