Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Board Structure Mandates , Monitoring , and the Location of Directors

The structure and composition of U.S. boards of directors changed substantially following the implementation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and exchange-listing board structure rules. In this paper, we study the effects of these mandates on directors’ geographic locations vis-à-vis corporate headquarters. We document a significant increase in the remoteness of directors from headquarters after the implementation of the rules. The increased distance of directors— particularly those serving on monitoring committees—is associated with a greater reliance on equity-based CEO incentives and enlarged discretionary accounting accruals. Thus, the board structure requirements, by increasing the remoteness of directors from headquarters, appear to have had the unintended consequence of impairing the board’s ability to obtain soft information about managerial performance. Our findings therefore suggest that, for some firms, the board structure mandates may have heightened the governance risks that they were intended to mitigate. _____________________________________________________________________________ *Alam is from the College of Business, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL 33431, USA. Tel: +1-561-297­ 3524; Email: zalam@fau.edu. Chen is from the J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA. Tel. : +1-404-413-7339; Email: machen@gsu.edu. Ciccotello is from the J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA Tel. : +1-404-413-7462; Email: cciccotello@gsu.edu. Ryan is from the J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA Tel. : +1-404-413-7337; Email: cryan@gsu.edu. We thank participants at the 2012 European Law and Economics Association (EALE) in Stockholm, Sweden, the 2012 Midwest Law and Economics Association meeting at Washington University, St. Louis, and the 2012 Conference on Empirical Legal Studies at Stanford University. We also thank Alex Butler, Glenn Harrison, Jayant Kale, Omesh Kini, Harold Mulherin, and Daniel Wiberg for helpful comments and discussion. Daniel Greene, Hyun Kim, Huimin Li, Lin Miao, Kevin Mullally and Hui Wang provided excellent research assistance, and we are grateful to Satish Mudduluru for programming assistance. The authors assume responsibility for any errors.
Exploring first‐year academic achievement through structural equation modelling

The purpose of this research was to develop and test a multicausal model of the individual characteristics associated with academic success in first‐year Australian university students. This model comprised the constructs of: previous academic performance, achievement motivation, self‐regulatory learning strategies, and personality traits, with end‐of‐semester grades the dependent variable of interest. The study involved the distribution of a questionnaire, which assessed motivation, self‐regulatory learning strategies and personality traits, to 1193 students at the start of their first year at university. Students' academic records were accessed at the end of their first year of study to ascertain their first and second semester grades. This study established that previous high academic performance, use of self‐regulatory learning strategies, and being introverted and agreeable, were indicators of academic success in the first semester of university study. Achievement motivation and the personality trait of conscientiousness were indirectly related to first semester grades, through the influence they had on the students' use of self‐regulatory learning strategies. First semester grades were predictive of second semester grades. This research provides valuable information for both educators and students about the factors intrinsic to the individual that are associated with successful performance in the first year at university.
Patient Satisfaction and Surgeon Experience: A Follow-Up to the Reduction Mammaplasty Learning Curve Study

Background: While it is known that increasing surgeon experience is correlated with improved efficiency and safety in the reduction mammaplasty procedure, it is unclear whether these improvements lead to an erosion in patient satisfaction. Methods: The authors distributed the Breast-Q questionnaire to all patients who underwent bilateral reduction mammaplasty at their institution between 1995 and 2007. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to assess the relationship between postoperative patient satisfaction scores and surgeon experience, as well as to characterize those patients with particularly high or low satisfaction scores, in general. Results: A total of 279 (26.1%) completed surveys were analyzed. No statistically significant erosion in either Satisfaction with Breasts (SWB) or Satisfaction with Outcomes (SWO) scores were witnessed with increasing surgeon experience or efficiency. Patients older than 40 years demonstrated significantly higher SWB scores than younger patients (P = .004), while patients who suffered postoperative soft tissue necrosis demonstrated significantly lower SWB (P = .003) and SWO (P = .010) scores. Conclusions: Gains in operative efficiency with increasing surgeon experience do not appear to come at the expense of patient satisfaction in the reduction mammaplasty procedure. Younger patients and those who experience postoperative soft tissue necrosis appear to be at higher risk for reporting lower postoperative patient satisfaction scores.
On the robustness of centrality measures against link weight quantization in real weighted social networks

Social network analysis has been actively pursued to provide an understanding of complex social phenomena. However, graphs used for social network analyses generally contain several errors in their nodes, links, and link weights. In recent years, huge amount of data representing human-to-human interactions are available, and their availability enables us to obtain various types of real social networks. In this paper, we investigate the effect of link weight quantization on the centrality measures in five types of real social networks. Consequently, we show that graphs with high skewness in their degree distribution and/or with high correlation between node degrees and link weights are robust against link weight quantization.
Perfusion MR neuroimaging in patients undergoing balloon test occlusion of the internal carotid artery.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE We sought to investigate whether the combination of conventional, diffusion-weighted, and perfusion-weighted MR imaging increases the diagnostic accuracy of balloon test occlusion of the internal carotid artery. We describe perfusion anomalies and patterns of enhancement seen in areas of altered brain perfusion during MR-monitored temporary balloon occlusion of the internal carotid artery. METHODS Nine patients underwent balloon occlusion testing under standard angiographic conditions with continuous clinical and EEG monitoring. One patient who failed the test by clinical criteria underwent an external carotid to internal carotid bypass operation, followed by a repeat balloon test occlusion, thereby bringing the total number of procedures to 10. Patients were further imaged at 1.5 T with perfusion- and diffusion-weighted imaging as well as with conventional noncontrast and contrast-enhanced turbo fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) and T1-weighted sequences. RESULTS Seven of 10 patients who tolerated unilateral carotid test occlusion without adverse clinical neurologic or EEG changes exhibited delayed first-pass transit of contrast material through the affected cerebral hemisphere, indicative of altered perfusion without significant concurrent cerebral blood flow or blood volume changes. Four of these patients and both symptomatic patients showed pial or subarachnoid contrast staining in areas of altered perfusion without abnormalities on diffusion-weighted images. CONCLUSION Our findings indicate that MR perfusion-weighted imaging is safe and easily accomplished in a high-field-strength magnet and that contrast-enhanced turboFLAIR imaging may provide clinically useful MR imaging evidence of abnormal cerebral blood flow and subclinical ischemia.
Multi-task Coupled Attentions for Category-specific Aspect and Opinion Terms Co-extraction

In aspect-based sentiment analysis, most existing methods either focus on aspect/opinion terms extraction or aspect terms categorization. However, each task by itself only provides partial information to end users. To generate more detailed and structured opinion analysis, we propose a finer-grained problem, which we call category-specific aspect and opinion terms extraction. This problem involves the identification of aspect and opinion terms within each sentence, as well as the categorization of the identified terms. To this end, we propose an end-to-end multi-task attention model, where each task corresponds to aspect/opinion terms extraction for a specific category. Our model benefits from exploring the commonalities and relationships among different tasks to address the data sparsity issue. We demonstrate its state-of-the-art performance on three benchmark datasets.
Saline stress on seed germination

Salinity is one of the major abiotic stresses in arid and semi-arid regions and it affects 7% of the world’s land area of about 930 million ha (Munns et al., 2006). Salinity reduces the ability of plants to take up water, leading to metabolic effect that reduces plant growth. It may reduce crop yield by upsetting water and nutritional balance of plant. The deleterious consequences of high salt concentrations in the external solution of plant cells are hyperosmotic shock and ionic imbalance. Although, salt stress affects all growth stages of a plant, seed germination and seedling growth stages are known to be more sensitive for most plant species. Germination failures on saline soils are often the results of high salt concentrations in the seed planting zone. Salinity causes not only differences between the mean yield and the potential yield, but also causes yield reduction from year to year. This review is expected to give valuable information about the effects of salinity on seed germination.
Is liver cirrhosis a risk factor for osteonecrosis of the femoral head in adults? A population-based 3-year follow-up study.

BACKGROUND The relationship between osteonecrosis of the femoral head (OFH) and liver cirrhosis is controversial. The aim of this study was to determine whether liver cirrhosis is associated with the occurrence of OFH. METHODS We used the National Health Insurance Database, derived from the Taiwan National Health Insurance program. The study cohort comprised 40,769 adult patients with liver cirrhosis. The comparison cohort consisted of 40,769 randomly selected age- and sex-matched subjects. RESULTS During the 3-year follow-up period, there were 321 (0.8%) cirrhotic patients with OFH, and 126 (0.3%) non-cirrhotic patients with OFH (p<0.001). Cox's regression analysis, adjusted by the patients' age, sex, and other confounding factors, showed that the cirrhotic patients had a higher risk for occurrence of OFH than non-cirrhotic patients during the 3-year period (hazard ratio=2.38, p<0.001). In this 3-year study, the incidence density of cirrhotic patients hospitalized for OFH was 3 episodes/1,000 person-year. CONCLUSION We conclude that cirrhotic patients have a higher risk for occurrence of OFH than non-cirrhotic patients.
Accounting for the East Asian Crisis: A Quantitative Model of Capital Outflows in Small Open Economies

To what degree can the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the East Asian crisis be accounted for within a dynamic general equilibrium model? This paper investigates that question using a framework in which the crisis itself is modeled as an exogenous shock to the country risk premium. This exercise has empirical discipline because the scale of the shock can be measured by the movement in the reported risk premium. We calibrate a quantitative sticky-price dynamic general equilibrium model of a small open economy to match the features of three East Asian economies: Thailand, Korea, and Malaysia.We identify a shock to the country risk premium using published data from international bond markets, and identify shortrun monetary policy using observed domestic interest rates.We find that the modeled response to the observed increase in external interest rates substantially matches macroeconomic data on prices and quantities at the aggregate and sectoral level. However, the model has more difficulty explaining the large exchange rate devaluations that occurred in those economies.
Bayesian Estimation of the Active Concentration and Affinity Constants Using Surface Plasmon Resonance Technology

Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) has previously been employed to measure the active concentration of analyte in addition to the kinetic rate constants in molecular binding reactions. Those approaches, however, have a few restrictions. In this work, a Bayesian approach is developed to determine both active concentration and affinity constants using SPR technology. With the appropriate prior probabilities on the parameters and a derived likelihood function, a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm is applied to compute the posterior probability densities of both the active concentration and kinetic rate constants based on the collected SPR data. Compared with previous approaches, ours exploits information from the duration of the process in its entirety, including both association and dissociation phases, under partial mass transport conditions; do not depend on calibration data; multiple injections of analyte at varying flow rates are not necessary. Finally the method is validated by analyzing both simulated and experimental datasets. A software package implementing our approach is developed with a user-friendly interface and made freely available.
Lipid Composition of Chlamydia psittaci Growth in Monkey Kidney Cells in Defined Medium

The lipid compositions of (i) monkey kidney (MK-2) cells cultivated in Eagle's minimal essential medium (MEM) with 5% calf serum, (ii) MK-2 cells cultivated in Waymouth medium supplemented with 20 μg of sodium oleate and 2 mg of bovine albumin per ml, (iii) Chlamydia psittaci strain 6BC grown in the latter host system, and (iv) calf serum were compared. Strain 6BC contains 31% phosphatidyl ethanolamine (PE) and 15% phosphatidyl glycerol (PG), whereas the host cell contains almost the same amount of PE (27%) and no PG. A high concentration of total lipid was observed in strain 6BC (29 to 34%), whereas MK-2 cells contain only 9 to 15% and calf serum contains 4.5% total lipid. The fatty acids of the total lipid from strain 6BC contain branched-chain acids. These fatty acids were found mostly in PE (33.0%) and PG (37.0%). No branched-chain fatty acid was found in the MK-2 cells. There was an increase in triglyceride content when MK-2 cells cultivated in MEM (19.2%) were compared with cells cultivated in Waymouth medium (28.0%). A high concentration (62.0%) of octadecenoic acid (C18:1) was found in the triglyceride of MK-2 cells cultivated in Waymouth medium. The level of polyunsaturated fatty acids observed in MK-2 cells cultivated in Waymouth medium (10.8%) and in the chlamydiae grown in these cells (13.3%) was low compared with the level in MK-2 cells (28.8%) cultivated in MEM with 5% calf serum and the level in calf serum itself (50.8%). A higher ratio of sterol ester to free sterol was found in calf serum than in MK-2 cells or in chlamydiae. Host contribution to lipid composition of strain 6BC is discussed.
A photometric study of the light variations of the triple system DG Leo

Multi-site and multi-year differential photometry of the triple star DG Leo reveals a complex frequency spectrum that can be modelled as the combination of at least three δ Scuti type frequencies in the range 11.5-13 c/d (with semi-amplitudes of 2-7 mmag) and a superimposed slow variability of larger amplitude. The period of the slow variation fits very well with half the orbital period of the inner spectroscopic binary indicating the presence of ellipsoidal variations caused by the tidally deformed components in a close configuration. These findings, together with the results of a recent spectroscopic analysis (showing that the system consists of a pair of mild Am stars and one A-type component of normal solar composition), infer that DG Leo is an extremely interesting asteroseismic target. Identification of which component(s) of this multiple system is (or are) pulsating and determination of the excited pulsation modes will both contribute to a much better understanding of the non-trivial link between multiplicity, chemical composition, rotation, and pulsation in the lower part of the classical Cepheid instability strip.
A Generalized Performance Evaluation Framework for Parallel Systems with Output Synchronization

Frameworks, such as MapReduce and Hadoop are abundant nowadays. They seek to reap benefits of parallelization, albeit subject to a synchronization constraint at the output. Fork-Join (FJ) queuing models are used to analyze such systems. Arriving jobs are split into tasks each of which is mapped to exactly one server. A job leaves the system when all of its tasks are executed. As a metric of performance, we consider waiting times for both work-conserving and non-work conserving server systems under a mathematical set-up general enough to take into account possible phase-type behavior of the servers, and as suggested by recent evidences, bursty arrivals. To this end, we present a Markov-additive process framework for an FJ system and provide computable bounds on tail probabilities of steady-state waiting times, for both types of servers separately. We apply our results to three scenarios, namely, non-renewal (Markov-modulated) arrivals, servers showing phase-type behavior, and Markov-modulated arrivals and services. We compare our bounds against estimates obtained through simulations and also provide a theoretical conceptualization of provisions in FJ systems. Finally, we calibrate our model with real data traces, and illustrate how our bounds can be used to devise provisions.
Multiclass cancer classification and biomarker discovery using GA-based algorithms

MOTIVATION The development of microarray-based high-throughput gene profiling has led to the hope that this technology could provide an efficient and accurate means of diagnosing and classifying tumors, as well as predicting prognoses and effective treatments. However, the large amount of data generated by microarrays requires effective reduction of discriminant gene features into reliable sets of tumor biomarkers for such multiclass tumor discrimination. The availability of reliable sets of biomarkers, especially serum biomarkers, should have a major impact on our understanding and treatment of cancer. RESULTS We have combined genetic algorithm (GA) and all paired (AP) support vector machine (SVM) methods for multiclass cancer categorization. Predictive features can be automatically determined through iterative GA/SVM, leading to very compact sets of non-redundant cancer-relevant genes with the best classification performance reported to date. Interestingly, these different classifier sets harbor only modest overlapping gene features but have similar levels of accuracy in leave-one-out cross-validations (LOOCV). Further characterization of these optimal tumor discriminant features, including the use of nearest shrunken centroids (NSC), analysis of annotations and literature text mining, reveals previously unappreciated tumor subclasses and a series of genes that could be used as cancer biomarkers. With this approach, we believe that microarray-based multiclass molecular analysis can be an effective tool for cancer biomarker discovery and subsequent molecular cancer diagnosis.
A single genetic element in H-2K affects mouse T-cell antiviral function in poxvirus infection

Cell transfer experiments using mice with recombinant H-2 haplotypes were used to map the H-2 regions which must be shared by ectromelia- immune T-cell donors and virus-infected recipients for transfer of virus clearance mechanisms in the spleen. K- or D-region genes were necessary and sufficient; I-region genes were not involved. The remainder of the mouse genome could be varied widely without impairing the efficacy of T-cell antiviral function, provided either a K or a D region was shared in the donor-receipient combination. A mutation in a single genetic element of the K region of the H-2 complex abolished the antiviral effect of immune T-cell transfer in a donor-recipient combination which shared the K end.
Single‐fiber EMG study of the flexor carpi radialis H reflex

Late responses were studied in the flexor carpi radialis muscle by surface‐recording and single‐fiber electromyography. By single‐fiber studies we were able to distinguish 2 distinct components. One was an H reflex obtained without a preceding M response and with a stimulus response jitter of about 100 μsec; its latency was shortened and jitter decreased with the Jendrassik maneuver. The other was an F wave always preceded by an M response and with a stimulus response jitter of under 50 μsec; its jitter and latency are unaffected by the Jendrassik maneuver. At the single‐fiber level it was possible to determine the rate of occurrence of individual H reflexes and F responses for a given number of surface‐applied stimuli. The H reflex had a very high rate of occurrence (up to 97%), whereas the F wave occurred very infrequently (less than 2% of the time). Using the H reflex rate of occurrence in conjunction with the maximal surface H/M amplitude ratios allowed us to determine the proportion of alpha motor neurons which participate in the H‐reflex generation. The study of H‐reflex jitter gives an estimate of the central synaptic jitter and effectiveness of the spatial and temporal summation of type 1a fiber inputs on the motor neurons.
Detailed chemical composition of Galactic Cepheids. A determination of the Galactic abundance gradie

Aims. The recent introduction of high-resolution/large spectral-range spectrographs has provided the opportunity to investigate the chemical composition of classical Cepheids in detail. This paper focusses on new abundance determinations for iron and 6 light metals (O, Na, Mg, Al, Si, Ca) in 30 Galactic Cepheids. We also give a new estimate of the Galactic radial abundance gradient. Methods. The stellar effective temperatures were determined using the method of line depth ratios, and the surface gravity and the microturbulent velocity v t by imposing the ionization balance between Fe I and Fe II with the help of curves of growth. Abundances were calculated with classical LTE atmosphere models. Results. Abundances were obtained with rms accuracies of about 0.05–0.10 dex for Fe, and 0.05–0.20 dex for the other elements. Cepheids in our sample have solar-like abundances, and current measurements agree quite well with previous determinations. We computed “single zone” Galactic radial abundance gradients for the 8–12 kpc region and found a slope for iron of –0.061 dex kpc -1 .