Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
2 Has the Sarbanes-Oxley Act reduced the Adverse Selection Cost of Going Public ?

This paper examines the impact of SOX on the cost of going public. First, we find a statistically significant increase in non-underwriting expenses of 0.8 percentage points. This is almost entirely due to an increase in accounting and legal fees. Moreover, as this cost item turned out to have a fixed-cost character, smaller issues are much more heavily affected than larger ones. Second, we find corroborating evidence for the hypothesis that SOX should cause a decrease in indirect flotation costs because of its mitigating impact on adverse selection costs of equity financing. Actually we find total direct and indirect flotation costs to decrease by about 3 percentage points in the aftermath of SOX. This result is stable even after controlling for selection bias via a Heckman two-step estimation procedure. Although the reduction of adverse selection costs turns out to be independent of issue size, the positive impact of SOX on total flotation costs decreases with offering size due to higher fixed costs associated with the offering.
Al-Doped ZnO Monolayer as a Promising Transparent Electrode Material: A First-Principles Study

Al-doped ZnO has attracted much attention as a transparent electrode. The graphene-like ZnO monolayer as a two-dimensional nanostructure material shows exceptional properties compared to bulk ZnO. Here, through first-principle calculations, we found that the transparency in the visible light region of Al-doped ZnO monolayer is significantly enhanced compared to the bulk counterpart. In particular, the 12.5 at% Al-doped ZnO monolayer exhibits the highest visible transmittance of above 99%. Further, the electrical conductivity of the ZnO monolayer is enhanced as a result of Al doping, which also occurred in the bulk system. Our results suggest that Al-doped ZnO monolayer is a promising transparent conducting electrode for nanoscale optoelectronic device applications.
A Framework for Feature Selection in Clustering

We consider the problem of clustering observations using a potentially large set of features. One might expect that the true underlying clusters present in the data differ only with respect to a small fraction of the features, and will be missed if one clusters the observations using the full set of features. We propose a novel framework for sparse clustering, in which one clusters the observations using an adaptively chosen subset of the features. The method uses a lasso-type penalty to select the features. We use this framework to develop simple methods for sparse K-means and sparse hierarchical clustering. A single criterion governs both the selection of the features and the resulting clusters. These approaches are demonstrated on simulated and genomic data.
Dark halos formed via dissipationless collapse. I: Shapes and alignment of angular momentum

We use N-body simulations on highly parallel supercomputers to study the structure of Galactic dark matter halos. The systems form by gravitational collapse from scale-free and more general Gaussian initial density perturbations in an expanding 400 Mpc 3 spherical slice of an Einstein-deSitter universe. We use N∼10 6 and a force softening e=5 kpc in most of our models. We analyze the structure and kinematics of the ∼10 2 largest relaxed halos in each of 10 separate simulations
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BYSTANDER IN LGBTQ BULLYING AT A PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY

9 Chapter 1: Introduction and Purpose . 11 Measuring Bullying . 12 Legislation and Policy Addressing Bullying . 14 Increased Bullying of LGBT Students . 16 The Consequences of Bullying and Victimization . 18 Intent of Research Regarding Anti-LGBTQ Bullying . 19 Chapter 2: Literature Review and Theory . 21 Understanding Bullying as a Phenomenon . 22 Bullying across the lifespan. 25 Bullying directed toward LGBT individuals. 26 Current Literature on Effectiveness of Bullying Interventions . 28 Effectiveness of LGBTQ specific bullying interventions. 31 Understanding Bystander Intervention. 32 Reasons for unresponsiveness. 35 Indicators for bystander intervention. Conversely, research also reveals some common factors among bystanders who do intervene: . 38
Mirror-Mark Tests Performed on Jackdaws Reveal Potential Methodological Problems in the Use of Stickers in Avian Mark-Test Studies

Some animals are capable of recognizing themselves in a mirror, which is considered to be demonstrated by passing the mark test. Mirror self-recognition capacity has been found in just a few mammals having very large brains and only in one bird, the magpie (Pica pica). The results obtained in magpies have enormous biological and cognitive implications because the fact that magpies were able to pass the mark test meant that this species is at the same cognitive level with great apes, that mirror self-recognition has evolved independently in the magpie and great apes (which diverged 300 million years ago), and that the neocortex (which is not present in the bird's brains) is not a prerequisite for mirror self-recognition as previously believed. Here, we have replicated the experimental design used on magpies to determine whether jackdaws (Corvus monedula) are also capable of mirror self-recognition by passing the mark test. We found that our nine jackdaws showed a very high interest towards the mirror and exhibited self-contingent behavior as soon as mirrors were introduced. However, jackdaws were not able to pass the mark test: both sticker-directed actions and sticker removal were performed with a similar frequency in both the cardboard (control) and the mirror conditions. We conclude that our jackdaws' behaviour raises non-trivial questions about the methodology used in the avian mark test. Our study suggests that the use of self-adhesive stickers on sensitive throat feathers may open the way to artefactual results because birds might perceive the stickers tactilely.
A Bayesian framework for recursive object removal in movie post-production

Some of the most convincing film and video effects are created in digital post-production by removing apparatus that supports or manipulates actors and objects. Wires and people, for instance, can be removed by digitally painting them out of the scene provided some 'clean plate' image is available for pasting in the missing regions. This paper addresses the problem when no such plate is available. Object removal requires the estimation of the motion of the hidden material and then the reconstruction of the missing image data. Using the notion of temporal motion smoothness, this paper articulates the two problems using a Bayesian framework and so develops a unique tool for automated object removal. The tool is currently being tested in the film effects industry and initial feedback is very positive.
The myth of free and barrier-free access: India’s Right to Education Act—private schooling costs and household experiences

Abstract We examine relative household costs and experiences of accessing private and government schooling under India’s Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 in the early implementation phase. The Act deems that no child should incur any fee, charges, or expenses in accessing schooling. Private schools are mandated to allocate 25% of their seats for free via ‘freeships’ for socially and economically disadvantaged children. Furthermore, the Act has a number of provisions attempting to ease barriers to admission and entry to all schools, including private schools. This paper reports household-level data on the schooling patterns, experiences, and perceptions in one Delhi slum accessing schooling based on a survey of 290 households and 40 semi-structured household interviews. We found very low instances of children with private school freeships. Furthermore, children in ‘free’ private school seats incurred the second highest costs of accessing schooling after full-fee-paying students in relatively high-fee private schools. Finally, households accessing freeships and higher-fee schools experienced considerable barriers to securing a seat and admission.
Diagnosing university students’ academic writing in English: Is cognitive diagnostic modelling the way forward?

Abstract The study utilised a fine-grained diagnostic checklist to assess first-year undergraduates in Hong Kong and evaluated its validity and usefulness for diagnosing academic writing in English. Ten English language instructors marked 472 academic essays with the checklist. They also agreed on a Q-matrix, which specified the relationships among the checklist items and five writing subskills. This conceptual Q-matrix was refined iteratively via fitting a psychometric model (i.e. the reduced reparameterised unified model) to empirical data (i.e. the checklist marks) through the computer program Arpeggio Suite. The final Q-matrix was found to be valid and useful; it had far fewer parameters but greater power to discriminate masters and non-masters of academic writing skills. The study found that the cognitive diagnostic model (CDM)-based skill diagnosis could identify the strengths and weaknesses in the five writing subskills for students across three proficiency levels and could provide richer and finer information than the traditional raw-score approach. However, limitations and caveats of the CDM approach were also observed, which warrant future investigations of its application in assessing writing.
Biochemical and cellular characterization of VRX0466617, a novel and selective inhibitor for the checkpoint kinase Chk2

VRX0466617 is a novel selective small-molecule inhibitor for Chk2 discovered through a protein kinase screening program. In this study, we provide a detailed biochemical and cellular characterization of VRX0466617. We show that VRX0466617 blocks the enzymatic activity of recombinant Chk2, as well as the ionizing radiation (IR)–induced activation of Chk2 from cells pretreated with the compound, at doses between 5 and 10 μmol/L. These doses of VRX0466617 inhibited, to some extent, the phosphorylation of Chk2 Ser19 and Ser33–35, but not of Chk2 Thr68, which is phosphorylated by the upstream ataxia-telangiectasia mutated (ATM) kinase. Interestingly, VRX0466617 induced the phosphorylation of Chk2 Thr68 even in the absence of DNA damage, arising from the block of its enzymatic activity. VRX0466617 prevented the IR-induced Chk2-dependent degradation of Hdmx, concordant with the in vivo inhibition of Chk2. Analysis of ATM/ATM and Rad3-related substrates Smc1, p53, and Chk1 excluded a cross-inhibition of these kinases. VRX0466617 did not modify the cell cycle phase distribution, although it caused an increase in multinucleated cells. Whereas VRX0466617 attenuated IR-induced apoptosis, in short-term assays it did not affect the cytotoxicity by the anticancer drugs doxorubicin, Taxol, and cisplatin. These results underscore the specificity of VRX0466617 for Chk2, both in vitro and in vivo, and support the use of this compound as a biological probe to study the Chk2-dependent pathways. [Mol Cancer Ther 2007;6(3):935–44]
Efficient Estimation of Average Treatment Effects Using the Estimated Propensity Score

We are interested in estimating the average effect of a binary treatment on a scalar outcome. If assignment to the treatment is independent of the potential outcomes given pretreatment variables, biases associated with simple treatment-control average comparisons can be removed by adjusting for differences in the pre-treatment variables. Rosenbaum and Rubin (1983, 1984) show that adjusting solely for differences between treated and control units in a scalar function of the pre-treatment, the propensity score, also removes the entire bias associated with differences in pre-treatment variables. Thus it is possible to obtain unbiased estimates of the treatment effect without conditioning on a possibly high-dimensional vector of pre-treatment variables. Although adjusting for the propensity score removes all the bias, this can come at the expense of efficiency. We show that weighting with the inverse of a nonparametric estimate of the propensity score, rather than the true propensity score, leads to efficient estimates of the various average treatment effects. This result holds whether the pre-treatment variables have discrete or continuous distributions. We provide intuition for this result in a number of ways. First we show that with discrete covariates, exact adjustment for the estimated propensity score is identical to adjustment for the pre-treatment variables. Second, we show that weighting by the inverse of the estimated propensity score can be interpreted as an empirical likelihood estimator that efficiently incorporates the information about the propensity score. Finally, we make a connection to results to other results on efficient estimation through weighting in the context of variable probability sampling.
Technological Opportunities, Academic Research, and Innovation Activities in the German Automobile Supply Industry

In this paper the importance and the effects of technological opportunities, stemming from academic research, on the innovation activities of firms in the German automobile supply industry are investigated. We observe that the contribution of academic research to firms' innovation activities is less important than the relevance of industrial sources but yet, the most likely partners for formal R&D co-operations are universities. Using measures of suppliers' innovation input and output, we can outline differences in the effects of academic research on suppliers' innovation behavior. Although the proximity to academic research stimulates suppliers' activities in own R&D, the university knowledge substitutes suppliers' investment in R&D and other innovation activities. University co-operations seem to have a positive impact on the improvement of existing rather than on the development of new products or processes. But we can show that the influence of academic research on suppliers' inhouse innovation activities depend on their absorptive capacities.
Precise Interplanetary Network Localization of the Bursting Pulsar GRO J1744–28

We analyze 426 observations of the bursting pulsar GRO J1744-28 by Ulysses and BATSE. Triangulating each burst and statistically combining the triangulation annuli, we obtain a 3 σ error ellipse whose area is 532 arcsec2. The accuracy of this statistical method has been independently verified with observations of the soft gamma repeater SGR 1900+14. The ellipse is fully contained within the 1' radius ASCA error circle of the soft X-ray counterpart and partially overlaps the 10′′ radius ROSAT error circle of a source which may also be the soft X-ray counterpart. A variable source which has been proposed as a possible IR counterpart lies at the edge of the 3 σ error ellipse, making it unlikely from a purely statistical point of view to be associated with the bursting pulsar.
Transceiver design for fast-convolution multicarrier systems in multipath fading channels

One of the biggest challenges of 5G comes from sporadic traffic generated by millions of devices in highly fragmented spectrum, especially for uplink transmission. Current physical layer based on synchronism and orthogonality become low-efficient and inflexible because of the sophisticated algorithms it used to maintain synchronism. Asynchronous waveform with ultra-low side lobe seems promising, and Fast-Convolution Multicarrier (FCMC) is among the most competitive waveforms. In this paper, we investigate transceiver design for FCMC scheme in multipath fading channels. Firstly, we derive the signal model of FCMC transceiver. Based on the signal model, we develop the low-complexity one-tap minimum mean square error (MMSE) frequency-domain equalizer exploiting the asymptotic behavior of Toeplitz matrices and the nature of fast-convolution. The new proposed FCMC transceiver can be applied in single-carrier frequency-division multiple access transmission. The resulting scheme features low Peak-to-Average-Power-Ratio (PAPR), flexible user bandwidth, and allowing asynchronous transmission. Simulation results confirm the advantages of the proposed scheme.
A detailed insight into drug delivery from PEDOT based on analytical methods: Effects and side effects

The possibility to release drugs from conducting polymers, like polypyrrole or poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT), has been described and investigated for a variety of different substances during the last years, showing a wide interest in these release systems. A point that has not been looked at so far however is the possibility of other substances, next to the intended ones, leaving the polymer film under the high voltage excursions during redox sweeping. In this study we target this weakness of commonly used detection methods by implementing a high precision analytical method (high-performance liquid chromatography) that allows a separation and subsequently a detailed quantification of all possible release products. We could identify a significantly more complex release behavior for a PEDOT:Dex system than has been assumed so far, revealing the active release of the monomer upon redox activation. The released EDOT could thereby be shown to result from the bulk material, causing a considerable loss of polymer (>10% during six release events) that could partly account for the observed degradation or delamination effects of drug-eluting coatings. The monomer leakage was found to be substantially higher for a PEDOT:Dex film compared to a PEDOT:PSS sample. This finding indicates an overestimation of drug release if side products are mistaken for the actual drug mass. Moreover the full picture of released substances implements the need for further studies to reduce the monomer leakage and identify possible adverse effects, especially in the perspective of releasing an anti-inflammatory substance for attenuation of the foreign body reaction toward implanted electrodes. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part A: 103A: 1200–1207, 2015.
On the origin of the kinematical differences between the stellar halo and the old globular cluster system in the Large Magellanic Cloud

We discuss structural and kinematical properties of the stellar halo and the old globular cluster system (GCS) in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) based on numerical simulations of the LMC formation. We particularly discuss the observed possible GCS’s rotational kinematics (V/σ ∼ 2) that appears to be significantly different from the stellar halo’s kinematics with a large velocity dispersion (∼50 km s −1 ). We consider that both halo field stars (FSs) and old GCs can originate from low-mass subhaloes virialized at high redshifts (z > 6). We investigate the final dynamical properties of the two old components in the LMC’s halo formed from merging of low-mass subhaloes with FSs and GCs. We find that the GCS composed of old globular clusters (GCs) formed at high redshifts (z > 6) has little rotation (V/σ ∼ 0.4) and structure and kinematics similar to those of the stellar halo. This inconsistency between the simulated GCS’s kinematics and the observed one is found to be seen in models with different parameters. This inconsistency therefore implies that if old, metal-poor GCs in the LMC have rotational kinematics, they are highly unlikely to originate from the low-mass subhaloes that formed the stellar halo. We thus discuss a scenario in which the stellar halo was formed from low-mass subhaloes with no/few GCs whereas the GCS was formed at the very early epoch of the LMC’s disc formation via dissipative minor and major merging of gas-rich subhaloes and gas infall. We also discuss whether old GCs in the LMC can be slightly younger than the Galactic counterparts. We suggest that there can be a threshold subhalo mass above which GCs can be formed within subhaloes at high redshifts and thus that this threshold causes differences in physical properties between stellar haloes and GCSs in less luminous galaxies like the LMC.
Premalignant and malignant lesions in endometrial polyps in patients undergoing hysteroscopic polypectomy

ABSTRACT Objective: To evaluate the incidence of premalignant lesions and cancer in endometrial polyps, in patients undergoing hysteroscopic polypectomy. Methods: The results of 1,020 pathological examinations of patients submitted to hysteroscopic polypectomy were analyzed, as well as their diagnostic and surgical hysteroscopy findings. As to their menstrual status, 295 (28.9%) patients were in menacme. Of the total, 193 (65.4%) presented abnormal uterine bleeding, and 102 (34.6%) were asymptomatic with altered endometrial echo on transvaginal ultrasound. Out of 725 (71.1%) postmenopausal patients, 171 (23.6%) were symptomatic (abnormal uterine bleeding), and 554 (76.4%) were asymptomatic with endometrial echo >5.0mm. Results: Twenty-one (2.0%) patients presented premalignant lesions in the polyps, 13 had simple glandular hyperplasia, of which 5 had no atypia, and eight presented atypia. Eight polyps presented focal area of complex hyperplasia: 4 with atypia and 4 without lesions. Cancer was diagnosed in 5 (0.5%) polyps. Of the 21 polyps that harbored premalignant lesions, 12 were interpreted as benign in diagnostic and surgical hysteroscopy. Of the polyps with cancer, 4 were also histeroscopically interpreted as normal. Conclusion: Symptomatic polyps in menacme and in all postmenopausal women should be resected and submitted to histopathological examination, since they may have a benign aspect, even when harboring areas of cellular atypia or cancer.
Surface Reconstruction and Image Enhancement via L1-Minimization

A surface reconstruction technique based on minimization of the total variation of the gradient is introduced. Convergence of the method is established, and an interior-point algorithm solving the associated linear programming problem is introduced. The reconstruction algorithm is illustrated on various test cases including natural and urban terrain data, and enhancement of low-resolution or aliased images.
Constraints from Gravitational Recoil on the Growth of Supermassive Black Holes at High Redshift

Recent studies have suggested that during their coalescence, binary supermassive black holes (SMBHs) experience typical gravitational recoil velocities that may be as large as ≳100 km s-1. These velocities exceed the escape velocity vesc from typical dark matter (DM) halos at high redshift (z ≳ 6), and therefore put constraints on scenarios in which early SMBHs grow at the centers of DM halos. Here we quantify these constraints for the most distant known SMBH, with an inferred mass in excess of 109 M☉, powering the bright quasar SDSS J1148+5251 discovered in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey at z = 6.43. We assume that this SMBH grew via a combination of accretion and mergers between preexisting seed BHs in individual progenitor halos, and that mergers between progenitors with vesc < vkick disrupt the BH growth process. Our results suggest that under these assumptions, the z ≈ 6 SMBHs had a phase during which they gained mass vary rapidly. In particular, typical z ≈ 3 quasars with luminosities similar to that of SDSS J1148+5251 have recently been inferred to have an average radiative efficiency of ϵ ≈ 20%. The growth rate of the SMBH in SDSS J1148+5251 must have significantly exceeded the Eddington accretion rate with this efficiency.