Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
THE EFFECT OF BANK ACQUISITION ON STOCKHOLDER WEALTH

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether trends in banking mergers between January 1994 and October 1995 are different from previous periods. Specifically, the study focused on greatly increased acquisition prices and interstate consolidations. Abnormal returns and cumulative abnormal returns for a sample of 30 mergers were determined for each situation. The results of the study showed negative effects for shareholders of acquiring banks around the announcement period. Medium-to-small (under $1 billion) acquisitions caused insignificant negative abnormal returns, but large acquisitions, caused significant negative abnormal returns. At the same time, shareholders in acquired banks of both sizes earned significant positive abnormal returns. The analysis of interstate mergers showed similar results. The analysis documented significant positive abnormal returns for target banks and insignificant negative abnormal returns for acquiring banks during the announcement.
The “sharing” economy: labor, inequality, and social connection on for‐profit platforms

For social analysts, what has come to be called the “sharing economy” raises important questions. After a discussion of history and definitions, we focus on 3 areas of research in the for-profit segment, also called the platform economy: social connection, conditions for laborers, and inequalities. Although we find that some parts of the platform economy, particularly Airbnb, do foster social connection, there are also ways in which even shared hospitality is becoming more like conventional exchange. With respect to labor conditions, we find they vary across platforms and the degree to which workers are dependent on the platform to meet their basic needs. On inequality, there is mounting evidence that platforms are facilitating person-to-person discrimination by race. In addition, platforms are advantaging those who already have human capital or physical assets, in contrast to claims that they provide widespread opportunity or even advantage less privileged individuals.
Two Fixations Suffice in Face Recognition

It is well known that there exist preferred landing positions for eye fixations in visual word recognition. However, the existence of preferred landing positions in face recognition is less well established. It is also unknown how many fixations are required to recognize a face. To investigate these questions, we recorded eye movements during face recognition. During an otherwise standard face-recognition task, subjects were allowed a variable number of fixations before the stimulus was masked. We found that optimal recognition performance is achieved with two fixations; performance does not improve with additional fixations. The distribution of the first fixation is just to the left of the center of the nose, and that of the second fixation is around the center of the nose. Thus, these appear to be the preferred landing positions for face recognition. Furthermore, the fixations made during face learning differ in location from those made during face recognition and are also more variable in duration; this suggests that different strategies are used for face learning and face recognition.
Aggregated Community Question Answering

The objective of this paper is two-fold objective. First, it introduces ACQUA, a conceptual prototype for an Aggregated Community QUestion Answering site, which provides question clustering and answer prediction functionalities across an aggregation of multiple CQAs. Second, using a combination of questionnaires and group interviews, it conducts an evaluation of users' behavioral intention to adopt ACQUA based on four parameters, namely, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, competence, and usability. Results indicate that the behavioral intention to adopt ACQUA was generally promising. In particular, ACQUA received favorable responses from most participants in terms of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and competence. In terms of usability however, the consensus was not completely in favor of ACQUA. Three implications arising from the findings are discussed. Finally, the paper concludes with notes on limitations and future work.
Exploration of Psychological Distress in Gay, Bisexual, and Heterosexual Roman Catholic Priests

An online survey (N = 103) of secular/diocesan and religious Roman Catholic priests was conducted to assess contributions to psychological distress from sexual identity, stress, social support, and fear of compassion from others. Differences in psychological distress across sexual identity and role (religious, secular/diocesan) were also assessed. Results indicated psychological distress was predicted by stress, fear of compassion from others, and gay identity as compared with heterosexual identity. Gay-identified priests were significantly more distressed when compared with those heterosexually identified. Qualitative analyses revealed gay priests’ stress was related to the cognitive dissonance of current social acceptance of sexual minority identity juxtaposed with negative Church teaching, and perceived constraints to receiving compassion from others. Heterosexual and gay/bisexual priests all expressed profound satisfaction in their vocations, but with additional themes of loneliness, negative relationships with Church hierarchy, workload demands, unrealistic expectations, concern about the future, and ageing. Counseling and policy implications are discussed.
A Unique Model for Adolescent Addiction Treatment: A Description of the Alberta Adolescent Recovery Centre

Objectives: Substance use disorders among adolescents are a serious concern in both the United States and Canada. In recent years, strides have been made in our understanding of how to effectively treat these disorders. However, there remains a need to understand how successful treatment approaches for adolescents can be integrated into comprehensive treatment models. This article presents a case study of a comprehensive, multidimensional adolescent treatment program, the Alberta Adolescent Recovery Centre (AARC). Materials and Methods: Data on treatment completion were obtained by reviewing the records for the 297 adolescents who completed a preintake assessment or who entered treatment at AARC between 2008 and 2012. Results: AARC is a comprehensive, long-term, semiresidential treatment program for adolescents with a substance use disorder that integrates 12-step-based individual and group therapy, family-based therapy, the use of peer counselors and family-run recovery homes, and continuing care. During this 5-year period, 149 adolescents entered treatment at AARC, and 120 (80.5%) completed the program. The median length of stay among graduates was 277 days. The most common reasons for leaving before treatment completion were parents choosing to end treatment and the client displaying a level of substance use problems that was not severe enough to warrant treatment at AARC. Conclusions: The AARC program is a unique model for comprehensive, long-term adolescent substance use treatment with a high rate of treatment completion. Further research is needed to evaluate the long-term effectiveness of AARC and if successful, how this treatment model can be transferred and adapted to other settings.
Persistence of the planetary wave type oscillations in fo F2 over Europe

Abstract. Planetary waves are oscillations of very predominantly tropospheric origin with typical periods of about 2–30 days. Their dominant zonal wave numbers are 1, 2 and 3, i.e. the waves are of large-scale (global) character. The planetary wave type oscillations have been observed in the lower and middle atmosphere but also in the ionosphere, including the ionospheric F2-layer. Here, we deal only with the oscillations analyzed for four European stations over a solar cycle with the use of the Meyer and Morlet wavelet transforms. Waves with periods near 5, 10 and 16 days are studied. Only events with a duration of three wave-cycles and more are considered. The 5-day period wave events display a typical duration of 4 cycles, while 10- and 16-day wave events are less persistent, with a typical duration of about 3.5 cycles and 3 cycles, respectively. The persistence pattern in terms of number of cycles and in terms of number of days is different. In terms of number of cycles, the typical persistence of oscillations decreases with increasing period. On the other hand, in terms of number of days the typical persistence evidently increases with increasing period. The spectral distribution of event duration is too broad to allow for a reasonable prediction of event duration. Thus, the predictability of the planetary wave type oscillations in foF2 seems to be very questionable. Key words. Ionosphere (ionosphere-atmosphere interaction, mid-latitude ionosphere, ionospheric disturbances) – Meteorology and atmospheric dynamics (waves and tides)
Pretreatment microRNA Expression Impacting on Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition Predicts Intrinsic Radiosensitivity in Head and Neck Cancer Cell Lines and Patients

Purpose: Predominant causes of head and neck cancer recurrence after radiotherapy are rapid repopulation, hypoxia, fraction of cancer stem cells, and intrinsic radioresistance. Currently, intrinsic radioresistance can only be assessed by ex vivo colony assays. Besides being time-consuming, colony assays do not identify causes of intrinsic resistance. We aimed to identify a biomarker for intrinsic radioresistance to be used before start of treatment and to reveal biologic processes that could be targeted to overcome intrinsic resistance. Experimental Design: We analyzed both microRNA and mRNA expression in a large panel of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) cell lines. Expression was measured on both irradiated and unirradiated samples. Results were validated using modified cell lines and a series of patients with laryngeal cancer. Results: miRs, mRNAs, and gene sets that correlated with resistance could be identified from expression data of unirradiated cells. The presence of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and low expression of miRs involved in the inhibition of EMT were important radioresistance determinants. This finding was validated in two independent cell line pairs, in which the induction of EMT reduced radiosensitivity. Moreover, low expression of the most important miR (miR-203) was shown to correlate with local disease recurrence after radiotherapy in a series of patients with laryngeal cancer. Conclusions: These findings indicate that EMT and low expression of EMT-inhibiting miRs, especially miR-203, measured in pretreatment material, causes intrinsic radioresistance of HNSCC, which could enable identification and treatment modification of radioresistant tumors. Clin Cancer Res; 21(24); 5630–8. ©2015 AACR.
Thick de Sitter 3-branes, dynamic black holes, and localization of gravity

The embedding of a thick de Sitter 3-brane into a five-dimensional bulk is studied, assuming a scalar field with a potential is present in the bulk. A class of solutions is found in closed form that can represent a thick de Sitter 3-brane interpolating either between two dynamical black holes with an $R\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{S}_{4}$ topology or between two Rindler-like spacetimes with an ${R}_{2}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{S}_{3}$ topology. The gravitational field is localized in a small region near the center of the 3-brane. The analysis of graviton fluctuations shows that a zero mode exists and separates itself from a set of continuous modes by a mass gap. The existence of such a mass gap is shown to be universal. The scalar perturbations are also studied and shown to be stable.
A Logics-based Scheduling Method for Hard Real-Time Embedded Systems with Multiple Processors

The cyclic scheduling problem is known to be NP-Complete and thus coding a procedure to solve it is difficult and error-prone. This is particularly dangerous for hard real-time systems since they have critical timing requirements. It is necessary a formal strategy to abstract unnecessary details and assure correctness. Furthermore, time-to-market for this kind of systems is continuously decreasing, demanding development processes even more agile. This work proposes a declarative strategy where the user keeps the focus on what is to be computed and not how to implement it. This strategy consists in formally declaring the properties of the system with multiple processors using first-order logics. All the job of finding a feasible schedule is done by Prolog inference engine which carries the scheduling process out. Thus the lack of formality and agility is overcome. In spite of simplicity, this solution is very powerful and expressive.
Spatial distribution of tumor-specific monoclonal antibodies in human melanoma xenografts.

The time-dependent (1-72-h) spatial distribution of three biotinylated anti-melanoma monoclonal antibodies (MAbs), a control MAb, and several macromolecular tracers was studied in two small (4-12-mg), well-characterized human melanoma xenografts (SK-MEL-2, M21) growing in the s.c. space of athymic nude mice. The specific MAbs (436, IND1, and 9.2.27) recognize two different melanoma cell surface antigens (Mr 125,000 glycoprotein melanoma-associated antigen and high molecular weight melanoma-associated antigen) and have equilibrium association constants differing by two orders of magnitude (10(8)-10(10) M-1). SK-MEL-2 tumors were poorly vascularized and were composed of one or several collections of tumor cells with few intratumor blood vessels. In contrast, M21 tumors induced a strong angiogenic response and were organized into multiple small tumor cell nests separated from each other by fine blood vessels. Neither tumor developed extensive connective tissue stroma. In both tumors, hyperpermeable blood vessels were concentrated at the tumor-host interface but some intratumor vessels in M21 tumors were also leaky. Macromolecular tracers extravasated extensively from leaky vessels into tumor stroma but penetrated poorly into tumor parenchyma. All three tumor-specific MAbs stained tumor cell surfaces in a time-dependent fashion such that one-half or more of all tumor cells were stained by 24-48 h. Tumor cell staining was favored by increased density of tumor cell antigens but, at the doses studied, was little affected by differences in affinity among tumor-specific antibodies. The distribution of MAb staining was nonuniform in two respects: (a) peripherally situated tumor cells were more likely to be stained than centrally placed cells, and only in the smallest tumors did MAb reach centrally placed tumor cells; and (b) staining was nonuniform in different parts of the same tumor. The inhomogeneity of tumor cell staining by tumor-specific MAb was attributable to several factors, including: tumor blood vessel number, distribution, perfusion and permeability; distribution of tumor connective tissue stroma; small volume of the parenchymal interstitial space and relatively impaired diffusion of macromolecules in that space (low effective diffusivity of MAb); and interactions between specific MAbs and tumor cells. Of these factors, those associated with the parenchymal compartment apparently were rate limiting, and strategies that enhance parenchymal penetration are likely to improve solid tumor therapy with MAbs.
XMM-Newton Spectroscopy of the Accretion-driven Millisecond X-Ray Pulsar XTE J1751–305 in Outburst

We present an analysis of the first high-resolution spectra measured from an accretion-driven millisecond X-ray pulsar in outburst. We observed XTE J1751-305 with XMM-Newton on 2002 April 7 for approximately 35 ks. Using a simple absorbed blackbody plus power-law model, we measure an unabsorbed flux of (6.6 ± 0.1) × 10-10 ergs cm-2 s-1 (0.5-10.0 keV). A hard power-law component (Γ = 1.44 ± 0.01) contributes 83% of the unabsorbed flux in the 0.5-10.0 keV band, but a blackbody component (kT = 1.05 ± 0.01 keV) is required. We find no clear evidence for narrow or broad emission or absorption lines in the time-averaged spectra, and the sensitivity of this observation has allowed us to set constraining upper limits on the strength of important features. The lack of line features is at odds with spectra measured from some other X-ray binaries that share some similarities with XTE J1751-305. We discuss the implications of these findings on the accretion flow geometry in XTE J1751-305.
Well-being, dual commitment and job insecurity of Italian agency workers. Some Evidence from a National Study on the Temporary Work Agency Industry

Although the use of agency contracts has become the norm in all public and private organizations, existing studies are mostly cross-sectional in nature, generally comparing behavioral differences between permanent full time workers with the plethora of all contingent workers, making difficult to generalize results. Few empirical investigations have so far studied attitudes and behaviors of agency workers and how the peculiar type of contract influences their work-related attitudes. In particular, there is no consensus about how agency contract affects individual behavioral and psychological variables as affective dual commitment, job insecurity, satisfaction, turnover intention. In order to fill this gap, the main goal of the study we present in this paper is to analyze well-being of Italian temporary and permanent agency workers, according to a perspective that emphasize positive aspects. We aim to understand how workers experience to be agencies, enhancing also critical implications against well-being.
Teaching Grammar to EFL Learners through Focusing on Form and Meaning

The current study investigated the impacts of focus on form and focus on meaning on the learning of Wh-questions among senior high schools in Abadan, Iran. The participants were 60 male students who were selected among 100 learners non-randomly. They were studying English at a senior high school. They were aged between 15 and 17. In order to have homogeneous groups, the learners were given a grammatical test to determine their proficiency level. The teacher- made Wh-questions test based on the book one of high school was given to them as the pre-test. Then, they were assigned into two equal groups of experimental and control groups. The experimental group received instruction on focus on form and meaning but the control group was taught in the traditional way of teaching grammar including the use of examples and sentence exercises. Both groups received eight sessions of treatment, each 45 minutes with the same materials; and then they took a post-test at the end of the course. Data were analyzed through Independent and Paired samples grammar of Wh-questions post-test. The results showed that the experimental group outperformed the control one (p<0.05). Implications of the study for English teachers suggest that they should focus on form and meaning simultaneously to provide their learners with effective instruction. This study is expected to have theoretical and practical importance to get an insight in to the effect of focus on form and meaning simultaneously on student’ ability to understand English as used by native speakers.
Behavioral / Systems / Cognitive Hippocampal Dynamics Predict Interindividual Cognitive Differences in Rats

There are important and sustained interindividual differences in cognition during aging. Here, we investigated hippocampal spatial representations in a rat model of cognitive aging characterized by individual differences in a mnemonic task. Individual cognitive capabilities in old rats were assessed in a delayed non-matching-to-position task. We recorded hippocampal CA1 place cells as the rats explored a familiar environment. Unlike the usual place cells commonly described in the literature, we found that a significant fraction of pyramidal neurons recorded in our study showed a substantial delayed onset of their place field activity. We established that this firing onset delay naturally occurs under basal conditions in old rats and is positively correlated with the remapping status of the animals. The lack of firing during the first few hundred seconds after the animals were introduced into a familiar environment was also associated with an increased locomotion in the remapping rats. This delayed activity is central to understanding the individual basis of age-related cognitive impairment and to resolving numerous discrepancies in the literature on the place cell contribution to the etiology of agedrelated decline. Finally, we also found a positive correlation between the degree of firing variability of place cells (“overdispersion”) and performance during the long delays in the delayed non-matching-to-position task. Place cell overdispersion might provide the functional basis for interindividual differences in behavior and cognition.
THE DENSITY OF A QUADRATIC FORM IN A VECTOR UNIFORMLY DISTRIBUTED ON THE n-SPHERE

There are many instances in the statistical literature in which inference is based on a normalized quadratic form in a standard normal vector, normalized by the squared length of that vector. Examples include both test statistics (the Durbin–Watson statistic) and estimators (serial correlation coefficients). Although much studied, no general closed-form expression for the density function of such a statistic is known. This paper gives general formulae for the density in each open interval between the characteristic roots of the matrix involved. Results are given for the case of distinct roots, which need not be assumed positive, and when the roots occur with multiplicities greater than one. Starting from a representation of the density as a surface integral over an (n − 2)-dimensional hyperplane, the density is expressed in terms of top-order zonal polynomials involving difference quotients of the characteristic roots of the matrix in the numerator quadratic form.
Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology Open Access Local versus Systemic Effect of Ovulation-inducing Factor in the Seminal Plasma of Alpacas

Background: Camelids are induced (reflex) ovulators. We have recently documented the presence of an ovulation-inducing factor (OIF) in the seminal plasma of alpacas and llamas. The objective was to test the hypothesis that OIF exerts its effect via a systemic rather than a local route and that endometrial curettage will enhance the ovulatory response to intrauterine deposition of seminal plasma in alpacas.