Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
WACC: Definition, Misconceptions, and Errors

Abstract The WACC is just the rate at which the Free Cash Flows must be discounted to obtain the same result as in the valuation using Equity Cash Flows discounted at the required return to equity (Ke) The WACC is neither a cost nor a required return: it is a weighted average of a cost and a required return. To refer to the WACC as the “cost of capital” may be misleading because it is not a cost. The paper includes 7 errors due to not remembering the definition of WACC and shows the relationship between the WACC and the value of the tax shields (VTS).
Diminished antibiotic sensitivity of Neisseria gonorrhoeae in urban and rural areas in Kenya.

A total of 1730 cases of suspected gonorrhea were investigated in 8 urban and rural clinics in Kenya; sensitivity tests were performed in 736 cases. A majority of the strains had relative resistance to 2 drugs in common use--penicillin and streptomycin. For tetracycline, a slightly decreased sensitivity was often found and resistance to these antibiotics was usually linked. It was found that relative resistance to antibiotics is already common in rural areas in which the majority of the African population live, and that resistance to penicillin is even more common in rural areas than towns. Evidence that this may result from the continuation of inadequate treatment, especially in developing tropical countries was obtained. Such countries are becoming an immense reservoir of strains with a high level of resistance to penicillin. Ways of remedying this situation are discussed. (author's modified)
The Effects of Personality Traits on Wages: A Matching Approach

I use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 to estimate the effects of adolescent measurements of self‐esteem and locus of control on adult wages using propensity score matching. An adolescent possessing high self‐esteem will experience between 8.5 and 9.2 per cent higher wages as an adult. This result is statistically significant and robust to the addition of cognitive skill and family background characteristics. When cognitive skill and family background characteristics are controlled for, locus of control as an adolescent is insignificant in explaining adult wages. This result is contrary to findings in the literature.
Quantitation of simulated short echo time 1H human brain spectra by LCModel and AMARES

LCModel and AMARES, two widely used quantitation tools for magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) data, were employed to analyze simulated spectra similar to those typically obtained at short echo times (TEs) in the human brain at 1.5 T. The study focused mainly on the influence of signal‐to‐noise ratios (SNRs) and different linewidths on the accuracy and precision of the quantification results, and their effectiveness in accounting for the broad signal contribution of macromolecules and lipids (often called the baseline in in vivo MRS). When applied in their standard configuration (i.e., fitting a spline as a baseline for LCModel, and weighting the first data points for AMARES), both methods performed comparably but with their own characteristics. LCModel and AMARES quantitation benefited considerably from the incorporation of baseline information into the prior knowledge. However, the more accurate quantitation of the sum of glutamate and glutamine (Glx) favored the use of LCModel. Metabolite‐to‐creatine ratios estimated by LCModel with extended prior knowledge are more accurate than absolute concentrations, and are nearly independent of SNR and line broadening. Magn Reson Med 51:904–912, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Open Source Software, Competition and Innovation

The entry and success of open source software (OSS), for example, Linux's entry into the operating systems market, has fundamentally changed industry structures in the software business. In this paper we explore the process of OSS innovation and highlight the impact of increased competition and different cost structures on innovative activity in the industry, which has been neglected in the literature thus far. In a simple model, we formalize the innovation impact of OSS entry by examining a change in market structure from monopoly to duopoly under the assumption that software producers compete in technology rather than price or quantities. The model takes into account development costs and total cost of ownership, whereby the latter captures items such as network externalities. The paper identifies a pro‐innovative effect of both intra‐OSS and extra‐OSS competition.
Chronotype and Improved Sleep Efficiency Independently Predict Depressive Symptom Reduction after Group Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia.

STUDY OBJECTIVES Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) has been shown to improve both sleep and depressive symptoms, but predictors of depression outcome following CBT-I have not been well examined. This study investigated how chronotype (i.e., morningness-eveningness trait) and changes in sleep efficiency (SE) were related to changes in depressive symptoms among recipients of CBT-I. METHODS Included were 419 adult insomnia outpatients from a sleep disorders clinic (43.20% males, age mean ± standard deviation = 48.14 ± 14.02). All participants completed the Composite Scale of Morningness and attended at least 4 sessions of a 6-session group CBT-I. SE was extracted from sleep diary; depressive symptoms were assessed using the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) prior to (Baseline), and at the end (End) of intervention. RESULTS Multilevel structural equation modeling revealed that from Baseline to End, SE increased and BDI decreased significantly. Controlling for age, sex, BDI, and SE at Baseline, stronger evening chronotype and less improvement in SE significantly and uniquely predicted less reduction in BDI from Baseline to End. Chronotype did not predict improvement in SE. CONCLUSIONS In an insomnia outpatient sample, SE and depressive symptoms improved significantly after a CBT-I group intervention. All chronotypes benefited from sleep improvement, but those with greater eveningness and/or less sleep improvement experienced less reduction in depressive symptom severity. This suggests that evening preference and insomnia symptoms may have distinct relationships with mood, raising the possibility that the effect of CBT-I on depressive symptoms could be enhanced by assessing and addressing circadian factors.
Liquidity in asset pricing: New Australian evidence using low-frequency data

Employing a new proxy for liquidity, this paper examines its impact on stock returns in the context of the Fama-French framework. We augment the Carhart four-factor model with a liquidity factor in our asset pricing tests. Using an extensive dataset drawn from the Australian equities market, we find that liquidity explains a portion of the common variation in stock returns even after controlling for size, book-to-market and momentum. However, our findings suggest that the liquidity factor only adds marginal explanatory power to contemporary asset pricing models.
Trends in U.S. Wage Inequality: Re-Assessing the Revisionists

A recent "revisionist " literature characterizes the pronounced rise in U.S. wage inequality since 1980 as an "episodic " event of the first-half of the 1980s driven by non-market factors (particularly a falling real minimum wage) and concludes that continued increases in wage inequality since the late 1980s substantially reflect the mechanical confounding effects of changes in labor force composition. Analyzing data from the Current Population Survey for 1963 to 2005, we find limited support for these claims. The slowing of the growth of overall wage inequality in the 1990s hides a divergence in the paths of upper-tail (90/50) inequality -- which has increased steadily since 1980, even adjusting for changes in labor force composition -- and lower tail (50/10) inequality, which rose sharply in the first-half of the 1980s and plateaued or contracted thereafter. Fluctuations in the real minimum wage are not a plausible explanation for these trends since the bulk of inequality growth occurs above the median of the wage distribution. Models emphasizing rapid secular growth in the relative demand for skills -- attributable to skill-biased technical change -- and a sharp deceleration in the relative supply of college workers in the 1980s do an excellent job of capturing the evolution of the college/high-school wage premium over four decades. But these models also imply a puzzling deceleration in relative demand growth for college workers in the early 1990s, also visible in a recent "polarization" of skill demands in which employment has expanded in high-wage and low-wage work at the expense of middle-wage jobs. These patterns are potentially reconciled by a modified version of the skill-biased technical change hypothesis that emphasizes the role of information technology in complementing abstract (high-education) tasks and substituting for routine (middle-education) tasks.
The Urgent Need for Skilled Transformational Leaders: Integrating Transformational Leadership and Organization Development

There is an urgent need in organizations of all types and sizes for transformational leaders who have the courage and skills to reinvent and build organizations capable of succeeding in today’s times of dynamic change and scarce resources. And yet, while the idea of transformational leadership has a rich and well researched history, few leaders are familiar with the term, few organizations are developing transformational leaders, and very few leaders have any idea how to be a transformational leader. One of the challenges with theories on transformational leadership is that while they are strong on the characteristics needed to be a transformational leader, they are not as clear on the actual skills needed to change and transform organizations. By integrating concepts from transformational leadership and from the field of organization development that specializes in organization change and transformation, both fields are strengthened. Transformational leadership is made more clear and practical and organization development benefits from a greater emphasis on the need for transformational leaders in leading change. The article also presents an operational definition of transformational leadership so organizations can purposefully and systematically develop transformational leaders and interested leaders can learn the fundamental thinking and skills needed to be a skilled transformational leader.
Biomarkers of bone remodeling in children with mucopolysaccharidosis types I, II, and VI.

PURPOSE Skeletal disease causes significant morbidity in mucopolysaccharidoses (MPS), and bone remodeling processes in MPS have not been well characterized. The objective of this study was to determine if biomarkers of bone turnover are abnormal in children with specific MPS disorders (i.e. MSP-I, MPS-II, and MPS-VI) compared to healthy children. METHODS A cross-sectional study was performed of serum biomarkers of bone formation (bone-specific alkaline phosphatase [BSAP], osteocalcin) and urine biomarkers of bone resorption (pyridinoline, deoxypyridinoline) in MPS and healthy controls. Measures of physical function and pain were obtained using the Children's Health Questionnaire (CHQ). RESULTS The cohort consisted of 39 children with MPS (MPS-I=26; MPS-II=11; MPS-VI=4) and 51 healthy children. Adjusting for sex and Tanner stage group, MPS individuals had statistically significant increases for osteocalcin (p< 0.001), with trends toward higher BSAP (p=0.054) and urinary pyridinoline (p=0.084). These biomarkers were not significantly associated with CHQ bodily pain and physical-function scores. CONCLUSION Osteocalcin was increased in children with MPS disorders, with trends for increases in BSAP and urinary pyridinoline, suggesting that bone remodeling is altered in children with MPS. Future studies to assess the ability of these biomarkers to quantify and monitor MPS skeletal disease in response to therapy are needed.
The Crisis of Minorities in Ethnic States: The Case of Palestinian Citizens in Israel

The vast majority of states in the international system, democratic and non-democratic, are multi-ethnic (Gurr 1993). A liberal-democratic multi-ethnic state serves the collective needs of all its citizens regardless of their ethnic affiliation, and citizenship—legally recognized membership in the political structure called a state—is the single criterion for belonging to the state and for granting equal opportunity to all members of the system. Whether a multi-ethnic democratic state should provide group rights above and beyond individual legal equality is an ongoing debate (Gurr & Harff 1994).
FK506 and sildenafil promote erectile function recovery after cavernous nerve injury through antioxidative mechanisms.

INTRODUCTION Immunophilin ligands and phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE5) inhibitors are touted to promote erectile function recovery after cavernous nerve (CN) injury. However, the mechanisms for their effects remain unclear. AIM To compare the erection recovery effects of the immunophilin ligand FK506 and the PDE5 inhibitor sildenafil after CN injury and determine whether they involve antioxidative and/or antiapoptotic mechanisms. METHODS Initial experiments established conditions of our CN injury model in adult male Sprague-Dawley rats. Subsequently, we evaluated treatment effects 14 days after: (i) unilateral CN injury (UNI) + saline (vehicle control); (ii) UNI + FK506 (5 mg/kg once daily, subcutaneous x 5 days); (iii) UNI + sildenafil (20 mg/kg every 8 hours, subcutaneous x 7 days); (iv) UNI + FK506/sildenafil; and (v) sham surgery. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Intracavernous pressure (ICP) measurement after CN electrical stimulation to assess erectile function and Western blot analysis of expressions of glutathione peroxidase (GPX; antioxidant enzyme), nitrotyrosine (NT; oxidative stress marker), and phosphorylated and total Akt (antiapoptotic factor) in penes. RESULTS In the UNI model, GPX expression was increased at Days 1 and 7, while p-Akt expression decreased at Day 1 and returned to baseline at Day 7. GPX expression was significantly higher in the UNI + FK506 group compared with the saline-treated group (P < 0.05). ICP increased in all treatment groups compared with that of the saline-treated group (P < 0.05). NT levels were increased after saline treatment (P < 0.05) but not after FK506 and sildenafil treatment, alone or in combination. GPX was localized to nerves coursing through the penis and to smooth muscle and endothelium of the dorsal vein and arteries. CONCLUSIONS Both FK506 and sildenafil protect erectile function after CN injury by decreasing oxidative stress-associated tissue damage. FK506 may act through increased GPX activity. Further research is required to elucidate mechanisms associated with the beneficial effect of sildenafil.
Taking Its Toll: The Influence of Paid and Unpaid Work on Women's Well-Being

This paper examines gender differences in the impact of paid and unpaid productive activities on well-being. Using recent Canadian data, we examine the time spent by prime-age women and men (25 – 54) on paid work, childcare, eldercare, household work, volunteering, and education, and then assess its impact on stress and work-life balance. Using multivariate analyses, we show that women's greater hours of unpaid work contribute to women experiencing more stress than men, and of that work, hours spent on eldercare and housework are more stressful than those spent on childcare. We also examine the influence of job characteristics and spouses' paid and unpaid work time on stress. Neither spouse's unpaid work nor most job characteristics alleviate stress, once work hours are controlled. However, the evidence suggests that women, more so than men, use strategies such as self-employment to improve work-life balance.
Moving Target

As known, to finish this book, you may not need to get it at once in a day. Doing the activities along the day may make you feel so bored. If you try to force reading, you may prefer to do other entertaining activities. But, one of concepts we want you to have this book is that it will not make you feel bored. Feeling bored when reading will be only unless you don't like the book. moving target really offers what everybody wants.
Interventions and negotiation in the Council of Ministers of the European Union

Making interventions during negotiations within the Council of Ministers is the primary way in which member states make their policy positions known to one another and attempt to influence negotiations. In spite of this, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to the factors that influence a member state’s decision to intervene. This paper seeks to address this gap in our understanding by analysing a new data set that specifies which member states are intervening and at what level of negotiation within the Council they are doing so. Significant differences between member state intervention behaviour are observed, and these differences can be explained to some degree by structural characteristics of the policy space within which member states negotiate.
Sticky Price Models of the Business Cycle: Can the Contract Multiplier Solve the Persistence Problem?

The purpose of this paper is to construct a quantitative equilibrium model with price setting and use it to ask whether staggered price setting can generate persistent output fluctuations following monetary shocks. We construct a business cycle version of a standard sticky price model in which imperfectly competitive firms set nominal prices in a staggered fashion. We assume that prices are exogenously sticky for a short period of time. Persistent output fluctuations require endogenous price stickiness in the sense that firms choose not to change prices very much when they can do so. We find the amount of endogenous stickiness to be small. As a result, we find that such a model cannot generate persistent movements in output following monetary shocks.
Moral hazard contracting and credit rationing in opaque credit markets

We make a first step in the literature to analyse a hybrid model of credit rationing with simultaneous presence of adverse selection and moral hazard. Motivated by the observation that credit markets in less-developed countries are rather opaque owing to the lack of necessary institutions to facilitate information sharing among lenders, we re-examine the issue of credit rationing in such an environment. For a range of different parameter values, we fully characterise the subgame perfect equilibria (SPE) of the loan contracting game. Under certain parameter values, there is type-II credit rationing for some borrowers and credit forcing for others. Credit forcing is shown to be efficient in a constrained sense. The results are contrasted with those in DeMeza and Webb (1992).
Cultural Supremacy: Internal and External Evaluators' Role in EFL Programs

Debate in the ESL/EFL evaluation literature about the role of internal and external evaluators has never lost its momentum and prominence. This study focuses on the role different evaluators can play in evaluating EFL programs, a task that has been neglected for a long time within the realm of ESL program evaluation. A new modified model of the participatory evaluation approach is suggested based on the type of evaluators who would be most suitable to conduct evaluation in an EFL context. Special attention is given to the negative cross-cultural consequences that have emerged as a result of one-sided external evaluation process of EFL programs, which Anderson and Scott (1992) candidly referred to as JIJOE (JetIn-Jet-Out-Evaluators).  Dr. Abdallah H. Al-Kahtany  10 Vol. 16 No. 1 Zul-Qa’da 1424 H. – January 2004 אאאאא  אאא   
Short- and long-term effects of an LHRH antagonist given during the prepubertal period on follicle dynamics in the rat.

The effects of the suppression of the high gonadotrophin concentrations normally present by the end of the second week of life on ovarian follicle dynamics were studied in immature rats. Gonadotrophins were suppressed by treatment with an LHRH antagonist (LHRH-A; Org. 30276) on days 6, 9, 12 and 15, and the total population of ovarian follicles was studied at 15 and 28 days, on the day of first oestrus and on the day of oestrus at or following 90 and 300 days of age. Primordial follicles were counted and growing follicles were counted and measured. In rats treated with LHRH-A, follicle recruitment into the growing pool was clearly diminished; the number of growing follicles was significantly (P less than 0.01) lower up to the day of first oestrus and the pool of primordial follicles was significantly (P less than 0.05) larger at 15 and 28 days. Ovarian weights were significantly lower in rats treated with LHRH-A until at least 90 days of age. However, on the day of oestrus at or after 90 and 300 days of age, there were no differences in either the pool of primordial follicles or the pool of growing follicles between rats treated with LHRH-A and control rats. There was also no difference between groups in the number of fresh corpora lutea at these ages. It was concluded that the early peak in gonadotrophin concentrations in immature rats causes substantial recruitment of follicles into the growing pool. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Information Sources and Farmers' Attitudes Toward Switchgrass Production as a Biofuel Feedstock

Farmers' use of information sources about switchgrass, a potential cellulosic ethanol feedstock, and interest in growing switchgrass are examined. Data are from a 2009 survey of farmers in 12 southern states. Farmers familiar with switchgrass production for energy tend to be younger, more highly educated, have larger farms, have higher farm incomes, and attend more Extension workshops than farmers unfamiliar with switchgrass. Farmers familiar with switchgrass tend to use multiple sources of information and use certain types of sources to formulate various opinions about switchgrass. Familiarity with switchgrass and using multiple information sources may build farmer interest in growing switchgrass.
Developing a model for the influence of perceived organizational climate on organizational citizenship behaviour and organizational performance based on balanced score card

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of employees’ perception of organizational climate on organizational citizenship behaviour outbreak and the impact of both of them on organizational performance. Design/methodology/approach - – This survey has been performed using structural equation modelling (SEM). The statistical population composed of the managers of Mazandaran small- to medium-sized enterprises. The analysis of the data obtained from distributed survey questionnaire has been performed by SPSS18 and AMOS18 software. Findings - – Findings imply that positive perception of organizational climate influences on increasing organizational citizenship behaviour outbreak and performance of enterprise, and organizational citizenship behaviour in turn has positive and significant impact on organizational performance. Results of this survey also indicate that organizational citizenship behaviour impacts on sub-criteria of enterprise performance (i.e. financial, customer, learning and growth, internal processes). Moreover, the influence of organizational climate on all sub-criteria of performance except internal processes has been confirmed. Research limitations/implications - – Lack of sufficient information concerning organizational climate in internal resources, and in some external ones, and low number of surveys performed in this field, limits the possibility of comparing the results of this survey with other similar surveys. Originality/value - – This survey can be considered as an innovative survey, since there is no similar survey conducted in which three variables of organizational climate, performance, and citizenship behaviour studied, considering their specified sub-criteria.