Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Product Market Relationships and Cost of Bank Loans: Evidence from Strategic Alliances

This paper examines the effects of strategic alliances on non-financial firms’ bank loan financing. We construct several measures to capture firms’ alliance activities using the frequency of alliance activities, the prominence of the alliance partner and the relative networking position in the overall alliance network. We find that firms with active alliance involvement experience a lower cost of debt from banks. We also document that allying with a prestigious partner (ie S&P 500 firms) can provide an endorsement effect and benefit the borrowers by reducing the price of bank loans. Moreover, a borrowing firm positioned at the centre of an alliance network enjoys a lower cost of bank loans. Finally, we find that borrowing firms with alliance experience are less likely to use collateral and covenants in their loan contracts.
Discovery of a tight correlation among the prompt emission properties of long gamma-ray bursts

We report the discovery of a correlation among three prompt emission properties of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). These are the isotropic peak luminosity L iso , the peak energy (in vL v ) of the time-integrated prompt emission spectrum E pk , and the 'high signal' time-scale T 0.45 , previously used to characterize the variability behaviour of bursts. In the rest frame of the source, the discovered correlation reads L iso ∝ E 1.62 pk T -0.49 0.45 . We find other strong correlations, but at the cost of increasing the number of variables, involving the variability and the isotropic energy of the prompt emission. With respect to the other tight correlations found in GRBs (i.e. between the collimation corrected energy Ey and E pk , the so-called Ghirlanda correlation, and the phenomenological correlation among the isotropic emitted energy E iso , E pk and the jet break time t break ), the newly found correlation does not require any information from the afterglow phase of the bursts, nor any model-dependent assumption. In the popular scenario in which we are receiving beamed radiation originating in a fireball pointing at us, the discovered correlation preserves its form in the comoving frame. This helps to explain the small scatter of the correlation and underlines the role of the local brightness (i.e. the brightness of the visible fraction of the fireball surface). This correlation has been found with a relatively small number of objects and it is hard to establish if any selection bias affects it. Its connection with the prompt local brightness is promising, but a solid physical understanding is still to be found. Despite all that, we find that some properties of the correlation, which we discuss, support its true existence, and this has important implications for the GRB physics. Furthermore, it is possible to use such correlation as an accurate redshift estimator, and, more importantly, its tightness will allow us to use it as a tool to constrain the cosmological parameters.
Photoinhibition in shallow‐water colonies of the coral Stylophora pistillata as measured in situ

Continuous pulse amplitudeߚmodulated (PAM) fluorescence measurements were performed in situ under natural irradiances for colonies of the coral Stylophora pistillata growing in shallow (2 m) and deeper (11 m) waters of the Red Sea. The effective quantum yield (ΔF/F′m ) showed a diurnal pattern inversely related to that of the incident downwelling photosynthetically available radiation (PAR), but this pattern was skewed for the shallow colonies such that the values were always lower in the afternoon than during morning hours when measured at similar irradiances. Accordingly, the relative photosynthetic electron transport rate (rETR, = ΔF/F′m × incident PAR) for those colonies also showed lower values in the afternoons than in the mornings at equal irradiances. The rETRs also saturated well before maximal midday irradiances occurred. At the same time, nonphotochemical quenching (NPQ, measured as [Fm ‐ F′m ]/F′m ) was higher in the afternoons than during the mornings under similar incident PAR values. These results indicate an afternoon loss in photosynthetic capacity from photoinhibition. Such photoinhibition was not apparent during the course of the day in the corals growing in deeper water. The latter also showed no saturation of photosynthesis at the highest incident PAR values at noon (which were approximately a third of those at the shallower site). In addition, the shallow‐growing corals showed significantly lower maximum quantum yields (ΔF/F′m measured during nighttime, equivalent to Fv/Fm) than the deeper growing ones. This is most likely caused by an additional, more chronic, photoinhibition in the shallow‐growing corals but could also be due to some form of photoacclimation or to factors other than light.
Governance structure choice in strategic alliances The roles of alliance objectives , alliance management experience , and international partners

Purpose – Strategic alliances have a variety of governance structures that can be broadly classified as joint ventures, minority equity alliances, and contractual alliances. This paper seeks to empirically examine the roles of four key determinants of governance structure choice, namely, joint R&D and joint marketing objectives, alliance management experience, and international partners. Design/methodology/approach – Several hypotheses are developed regarding governance structure choice and are tested with data from 765 alliances. A multinomial logistic regression (logit) model is used for statistical analysis, with five control variables. Findings – All hypotheses are supported, so that the roles of alliance objectives, alliance management experience, and international partners are demonstrated as being significant as determinants of governance structure choice in alliances. Research limitations/implications – Limitations stem from the data being from a single source, one that also relies on press announcements that may be biased toward larger alliances. Practical implications – Briefly, alliance managers should find it useful to assess the relative presence of the four determinants of structural choice studied in this investigation in order to make an informed selection of the appropriate governance structure. Originality/value – The study contributes to the knowledge of the key determinants of governance structure choice in strategic alliances by examining empirically, with a large sample of alliances from various industries, the significant roles of four factors, namely, joint R&D and joint marketing objectives, alliance management experience, and international partners.
Kindergarten Teachers' Perceptions of Student Readiness for School

The design method for this study was non-experimental quantitative. The survey was distributed via email to Kindergarten teachers in two Northeastern Tennessee school districts. There were 69 Kindergarten teachers who responded to the survey. The study revealed that Kindergarten teachers perceive that gender, socioeconomic status, and preschool experience have a significant impact on student readiness for school. Chronological age was not perceived to have an impact on student readiness for school to a significant extent. Kindergarten teachers perceived that preschool experience has the greatest impact on student readiness for school when asked to rank the order of impact from greatest to least. Chronological age was perceived to have a greater impact on student readiness for school than either socioeconomic status or gender.
A transforming growth factor beta-like immunosuppressive factor in immunoglobulin G-binding factor

Immunoglobulin G-binding factors (IgG-BF), which are produced by cells of the immune system, inhibit antibody production. In this paper, we show that transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta) suppresses secondary in vitro anti-sheep red blood cell responses of mouse splenocytes and lipopolysaccharide- or anti-IgM-stimulated mouse B cell responses in a way similar to, and with the same kinetics as, rodent IgG-BF. Moreover, the immunosuppressive activity of IgG-BF was totally neutralized by polyclonal and monoclonal anti-TGF-beta antibodies and it eluted with TGF-beta by gel exclusion chromatography, suggesting that a TGF-beta-like immunosuppressive factor is present in IgG-BF. We also show that TGF-beta behaves as an IgG-BF since it binds to insolubilized IgG, but not to insolubilized F(ab')2 or bovine serum albumin. Altogether, the data support the concept of a biological role for TGF-beta in the IgG-mediated negative feedback of antibody responses.
MWGen: A Mini World Generator

Moving objects representing movement in all real world environments (e.g., road network, bus network, indoor) should be managed in a database system, for the reason that a person's trip can cover several environments rather than one. GMOD (Generic Moving Objects Database) is a database system to manage moving objects that (1) travel through different environments; (2) contain multiple transportation modes such as Car → Walk → Indoor. To evaluate the performance of GMOD, one needs a comprehensive and scalable dataset consisting of all available environments and moving objects. Due to the difficulty of gaining real datasets, in this paper we present a tool called MWGen that creates the overall space for moving objects, composed of the following environments: road network, bus network, metro network, pavement areas and indoor. Based on roads, all outdoor environments are created. The indoor environment consisting of a set of buildings is established from public floor plans. Moving objects are generated based on trip planning where a navigation algorithm through different environments is developed. We are able to produce moving objects integrated with multiple transportation modes. In addition, trip planning in a single environment is also available, e.g., shortest path for pedestrians, indoor navigation. The generated data, including all infrastructures and moving objects, are managed by GMOD. We conduct an extensive performance study to evaluate MWGen on two real road datasets and a set of public floor plans.
Delimitation of functional transport regions: understanding the transport flows patterns at the micro-regional level

ABSTRACT The main purpose of the article is the delimitation of functional regions in the Czech Republic based on the car transport flows. We argue that the traditionally used criteria for delimitation of functional regions (especially based on commuting to work flows) gradually losing their value. Therefore, we delimited functional regions as newly defined transport regions. Spatially expressed transport flows are unique indicators of complex spatial relations. We work with the daily intensities of car transport, which tend to create apparent nodal structures. Nodal structures are evident in particular at the micro-regional level, since transport flows reflect polarization between cities and their hinterlands. We use the concept of local minimum of transport intensities to delimit the boundaries of transport regions. As a result, we defined 235 functional transport regions (FTR) in the Czech Republic, which reflect the core-hinterland polarization. The delimited FTR represent logically arranged functional units, which we have subsequently compared with other types of functional regions. During these comparisons with various types of regions, we concluded that the greatest correlations are achieved with the regions of commuting to services.
Perceived mastery climate, felt trust, and knowledge sharing

Interpersonal trust is associated with a range of adaptive outcomes, including knowledge sharing. However, to date, our knowledge of antecedents and consequences of employees feeling trusted by supervisors in organizations remains limited. On the basis of a multisource, multiwave field study among 956 employees from 5 Norwegian organizations, we examined the predictive roles of perceived mastery climate and employee felt trust for employees' knowledge sharing. Drawing on the achievement goal theory, we develop and test a model to demonstrate that when employees perceive a mastery climate, they are more likely to feel trusted by their supervisors at both the individual and group levels. Moreover, the relationship between employees' perceptions of a mastery climate and supervisor-rated knowledge sharing is mediated by perceptions of being trusted by the supervisor. Theoretical contributions and practical implications of our findings are discussed.
One-Time Cookies: Preventing Session Hijacking Attacks with Disposable Credentials

Many web applications are vulnerable to session hijacking attacks due to the insecure use of cookies for session management. The most recommended defense against this threat is to completely replace HTTP with HTTPS. However, this approach presents several challenges (e.g., performance and compatibility concerns) and therefore, has not been widely adopted. In this paper, we propose “One-Time Cookies” (OTC), an HTTP session authentication protocol that is efficient, easy to deploy and resistant to session hijacking. OTC’s security relies on the use of disposable credentials based on a modified hash chain construction. We implemented OTC as a plug-in for the popular WordPress platform and conducted extensive performance analysis using extensions developed for both Firefox and Firefox for mobile browsers. Our experiments demonstrate the ability to maintain session integrity with a throughput improvement of 51% over HTTPS and a performance approximately similar to a cookie-based approach. In so doing, we demonstrate that one-time cookies can significantly improve the security of web sessions with minimal changes to current infrastructure.
Heterochromatin variation among the populations of Mus terricolor Blyth, 1851 (Rodentia, Muridae) chromosome type I

Abstract Twenty five to thirty specimens each from ten populations of Mus terricolor of the Terai and the Dooars regions of the Darjeeling foothills of West Bengal were cytogenetically analyzed using C-banding. Results showed intra- and inter- population variation of C-band positive heterochromatin ranging from very large blocks to minute amounts or even complete absence of heterochromatin. Large blocks of centromeric C-bands were found in Bidhan Nagar, Garidhura, Malbazar, Nagrakata and Maynaguri populations in most of the autosomes, while the rest of the populations had large blocks of C-bands on a few autosomes only. Such intra- and inter- population variation may be due to accumulation of C-positive heterochromatin, which has not got fixed homogeneously in all autosome pairs. X-chromosomes invariably possess a C-banded short arm a telomeric C-band at the distal end of the long arm in all populations. The entire Y-chromosome was C-band positive with slight population differences in staining intensity. The results suggest quantitative as well as qualitative variation of C-positive heterochromatin.
Unseasonal Seasonals?

In any seasonal adjustment filter, some cyclical variation will be misattributed to seasonal factors and vice versa. The issue has long been well understood but it has resurfaced as a problem of special concern because the timing of the sharp downturn during the Great Recession appears to have distorted seasonals. In this paper, I find that initially this effect pushed reported seasonally adjusted nonfarm payrolls up in the first half of the year and down in the second half of the year, by slightly more than 100,000 in both cases. But the effect declined in later years and is quite small at the time of writing. Going beyond the special case of the Great Recession, I argue for using filters that constrain the seasonal factors to be more stable than the default filters used by U.S. statistical agencies, and also for using filters that are based on estimation of a state-space model. Finally, I report some evidence of predictability in revisions to seasonal factors.
‘It’s a big ask when your job is to teach children to read, write and to count’: the experiences of school staff in early help and child protection

Abstract Considers the experiences of designated safeguarding staff in primary aged schools (4–11 years). The study used semi-structured interviews to explore with professionals their experiences of multi-agency working to safeguard children, of factors in making decisions around reporting concerns to statutory social work services and their role in delivering early help services in one region of the U.K. Professionals raised concerns about their understanding of decisions made by social workers, but nevertheless said that these decisions affected their future reporting of safeguarding concerns. Professionals raised concern about how current safeguarding processes triage concerns around neglect, and as the effect was cumulative, felt that it could be minimised or overlooked.
A novel clinical test of respiratory muscle endurance

Impaired respiratory muscle endurance (RME) could reduce exercise tolerance and contribute to ventilatory failure. The aim of the present study was to develop a clinically-feasible method to measure RME using negative-pressure inspiratory-threshold loading. It was hypothesized that endurance time (tlim) could be predicted by normalizing oesophageal pressure-time product (PTP) per total breath cycle (PTPoes) for maximum oesophageal pressure (Poes,max); the load/capacity ratio. The corresponding mouth pressures, PTPmouth and Pmouth,max were also measured. The RME test was performed on 30 healthy subjects exposed to the same target pressure (70% of Poes,max). Eight patients with systemic sclerosis/interstitial lung disease were studied to assess the validity and acceptability of the technique. Normal subjects showed a wide intersubject variation in tlim (coefficient of variation, 69%), with a linear relationship demonstrated between log tlim and PTPoes/Poes,max (r=0.88). All patients with systemic sclerosis/interstitial lung disease had normal respiratory muscle strength, but six out of eight had a reduction in RME. In conclusion, endurance time can be predicted from the load/capacity ratio, over a range of breathing strategies; this relationship allows abnormal respiratory muscle endurance to be detected in patients. Oesophageal and mouth pressure showed a close correlation, thus suggesting that the test could be applied noninvasively.
Identification and inference in linear stochastic discount factor models with excess returns

When excess returns are used to estimate linear stochastic discount factor (SDF) models, researchers often adopt a normalization of the SDF that sets its mean to 1, or one that sets its intercept to 1. These normalizations are often treated as equivalent, but they are subtly different both in population, and in finite samples. Standard asymptotic inference relies on rank conditions that differ across the two normalizations, and which can fail to differing degrees. I first establish that failure of the rank conditions is a genuine concern for many well-known SDF models in the literature. I also describe how failure of the rank conditions can affect inference, both in population and in finite samples. I propose using tests of the rank conditions not only as a diagnostic device, but also for model reduction. I show that this model reduction procedure has desirable properties in a Monte-Carlo experiment with a calibrated model.
Supporting Oral Narrative Development of Kindergarten English Language LearnersUsing Multimedia Stories

Narrative ability comes before literacy for bilingual students and helps narrow down the gap in text-level literacy between English language learners (ELLs) and native English speakers. Kindergarten ELLs are the best age group to receive intervention to improve their oral narrative skills. Multimedia stories have potential to assist kindergarten ELLs in developing oral narrative skills, but in previous studies, children viewed them without any support or interaction with adults, and few studies address how to use multimedia stories as a part of kindergarten programs to support oral narrative development of ELLs. Grounded in Kim, Hannafin, and Bryan’s (2007) pedagogical framework of technology integration and Plass and Jones’ (2005) model of multimedia-supported cognitive processing in second-language acquisition, this paper discusses how to utilize multimedia stories effectively in kindergarten programs to support oral narrative development of ELLs. Special focus is placed on how to teach story vocabulary words and implement dialogic reading with the support of multimedia stories to improve oral narrative skills of ELLs. Finally, future research directions are suggested.
Overloaded Endoplasmic Reticulum–Golgi Compartments, a Possible Pathomechanism of Peripheral Neuropathies Caused by Mutations of the Peripheral Myelin Protein PMP22

Nonconservative point mutations of the peripheral myelin protein 22 (PMP22) are associated with Charcot-Marie-Tooth type 1A disease, the most common inherited peripheral neuropathy in humans, and with the Trembler J (TrJ) and Trembler (Tr) alleles in mice. We investigated the intracellular transport of wild-type PMP22 and its TrJ and Tr mutant forms in Schwann cells and in a non-neuronal cell line. In contrast to wild type, mutant proteins were not inserted into the plasma membrane and accumulated in the endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi compartments. Coexpression of each mutant with wild-type PMP22 confirmed the different intracellular distribution of the mutant forms, indicating that neither the TrJ nor Tr protein has a dominant-negative effect on the cellular distribution of wild-type PMP22. Accumulation of PMP22 immunoreactivity in the cell body of myelinating Schwann cells was also observed in nerve biopsies obtained from CMT1A patients carrying the TrJ point mutation. We propose that impaired trafficking of mutated PMP22 affects Schwann cell physiology leading to myelin instability and loss.
The Effect of Teacher Mindset on Low-Tracked Students

THE EFFECT OF TEACHER MINDSET ON LOW TRACKED STUDENTS Tawnia St.Amant, EdD University of Pittsburgh, 2017 It is found that students in low tracked classes do not achieve as much academic growth as those placed in high tracked levels. Although educational psychologists have extensively studied the effect of “teacher expectations” on achievement, more recently, the concept of Mindset has been introduced. Teachers who are unaware of the advances in neuroscience regarding malleability of intelligence often believe students’ intelligence is fixed, and they view struggles as failures instead of struggling as a critical part of learning. To explore this problem, a study of instruction in low tracked classrooms was conducted. A regional sample of teachers (n=36) participated in the initial survey. The survey has its roots from Carol Dweck’s Mindset Assessment Profile Tool (Dweck, 2006) as well as consultation from experts in the field. Findings indicate that 76% of the teachers score in the growth mindset range. The study included observations of twelve classes to determine the rigor of classroom activities based upon Webb’s Depth of Knowledge and interviews with six teachers who teach low tracked students regarding lesson planning, assessment creation, and instruction in low tracked classrooms. According to the literature and the information found in this study, although many schools are touting the idea of detracking, tracking is still thriving in America’s schools. Expectations that lower track students are unlikely to achieve academically could potentially set these students up for failure from the start. Supporters of this viewpoint argue that teachers generally hold limiting expectations for students in lower educational tracks (Wheelock, 1992). This study aimed to look at teachers with differing mindset scores and their approach to and perception of teaching students in low academic tracks. While survey responses indicated that study respondents generally adopt a growth mindset, observational data reveal some growth mindset techniques such as student-centered learning are used infrequently.