Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Debt Structure and Financial Flexibility 1

I study the relation between firm debt structure and future financial flexibility. I consider how the total level of debt, maturity, security, and priority may potentially impact a firm’s ability to raise new financing and undertake profitable investments. I find that firms with lower total debt (high debt capacity) are more financially flexible. Lower leverage increases future new debt issues and investment, and firms do not fully rebalance by reducing the use of external financing sources such as equity. Furthermore, in contrast to previous empirical results, I find that greater reliance on long-term debt may be associated with higher ex-post flexibility, in particular a significantly higher amount of investment. This is consistent with theoretical predictions on rollover risk. Finally, my results support the view that greater reliance on unsecured debt can increase future debt financing. Overall, my paper offers new insights into how aspects of debt structure are related to financial flexibility. Department of Finance, Arizona State University, P.O. Box 873906, Tempe, AZ 85287-3906; sjflynn1@asu.edu, 605-999-5170. I thank Yuri Tserlukevich, Andra Ghent, Mike Hertzel, Luke Stein, and Ilona Babenko for helpful comments and discussions thus far. The most recent version of this paper can be found at https://sites.google. com/site/seanjflynnjr/research
Neural Correlates of Vibrotactile Working Memory in the Human Brain

Recent neurophysiological studies in macaques identified a network of brain regions related to vibrotactile working memory (WM), including somatosensory, motor, premotor, and prefrontal cortex. In these studies, monkeys decided which of two vibrotactile stimuli that were sequentially applied to their fingertips and separated by a short delay had the higher vibration frequency. Using the same task, the objective of the present study was to identify the neural correlates related to the different task periods (encoding, maintenance, and decision making) of vibrotactile WM in the human brain. For this purpose, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging and contrasted WM trials with a control condition of vibrotactile stimulation that did not require maintenance and decision making. We found that vibrotactile WM has a similar but not identical neural organization in humans and monkeys. Consistent with neurophysiological data in monkeys and behavioral studies in humans, the primary somatosensory and the ventral premotor cortex exhibited increased activity during encoding. Maintenance of a vibrotactile memory trace evoked activity in the premotor and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. Decision making caused activation in the somatosensory, premotor, and lateral prefrontal cortex. However, human vibrotactile WM recruited additional areas. Decision making activated a broader network than that studied thus far in monkeys. Maintenance and decision making additionally activated the inferior parietal lobe. Although the different task components evoked activity in distinctive neural networks, there was considerable overlap of activity, especially regarding maintenance and decision making, indicating that similar neural mechanisms are required for the subprocesses related to these task components.
The Arecibo Methanol Maser Galactic Plane Survey. II. Statistical and Multiwavelength Counterpart Analysis

We present an analysis of the properties of the 6.7 GHz methanol maser sample detected in the Arecibo Methanol Maser Galactic Plane Survey. The distribution of the masers in the Galaxy, and statistics of their multiwavelength counterparts is consistent with the hypothesis of 6.7 GHz maser emission being associated with massive young stellar objects. Using the detection statistics of our survey, we estimate the minimum number of methanol masers in the Galaxy to be 1275. The l-v diagram of the sample shows the tangent point of the Carina-Sagittarius spiral arm to be around 49.6°, and suggests the occurrence of massive star formation along the extension of the Crux-Scutum arm. A Gaussian component analysis of the maser spectra shows the mean line width to be 0.38 km s-1, which is more than a factor of 2 larger than what has been reported in the literature. We also find no evidence that faint methanol masers have different properties than their bright counterparts.
Does ACCEL Excel as a Model of Giftedness? A Reply to Commentators

In this essay, I respond to commentators on my article on the Active Concerned Citizenship and Ethical Leadership (ACCEL) model for understanding giftedness. I cover a number of topics that arose in or out of the commentaries, in particular, systems inertia; toxic leadership; teaching for creativity; flight from reality; the role of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in teaching for wisdom; the developmental nature of giftedness; making a positive, meaningful, and enduring difference; IQ as a diagnostic tool rather than as a gatekeeper; meeting the needs of marginalized young people; teacher education; and retrospective studies. I conclude that the differences among all of us in this symposium are small and that we all agree that a model like ACCEL—whatever its exact terms—is needed to move the field of giftedness beyond a preoccupation with abilities, narrowly defined.
Explosive morphological diversification of spiny-finned teleost fishes in the aftermath of the end-Cretaceous extinction

The spiny-finned teleost fishes (Acanthomorpha) include nearly one-third of all living vertebrate species and assume a bewildering array of bodyplans, but the macroevolutionary assembly of modern acanthomorph biodiversity remains largely unexplored. Here, I reconstruct the trajectory of morphological diversification in this major radiation from its first appearance in the Late Cretaceous to the Miocene using a geometric morphometric database comprising more than 600 extinct species known from complete body fossils. The anatomical diversity (disparity) of acanthomorphs is low throughout the Cretaceous, increases sharply and significantly in the wake of the Cretaceous–Palaeogene (K–P) extinction, and shows little change throughout subsequent Cenozoic intervals. This pattern of morphological diversification appears robust to two potential biasing factors: the ‘Lagerstätten effect’, and the non-random segregation of rare and common taxa along phenotypic axes. Dissecting the trajectory of acanthomorph radiation along phylogenetic lines reveals that the abrupt post-extinction increase in disparity is driven largely by the proliferation of trophically diverse modern groups within Percomorpha, a spiny-fin subclade containing more than 15 000 living species and identified as showing a substantially elevated diversification rate relative to background vertebrate levels. A major component of the Palaeogene acanthomorph radiation reflects colonization of morphospace previously occupied by non-acanthomorph victims of the K–P. However, other aspects of morphological diversification cannot be explained by this simple ecological release model, suggesting that multiple factors contributed to the prolific anatomical radiation of acanthomorphs.
Nicotine modulates dopamine synthesis rate as determined by L‐[β‐11C]DOPA: PET studies compared with [11C]raclopride binding in the conscious monkey brain

Dopaminergic neuronal transmission is regulated by several neurochemical steps including biosynthesis, vesicular transport and storage, release, receptor binding and second messenger modulations, degradation, and reuptake through membrane transporters. Like other abused substances, nicotine increases extracellular dopamine levels in nucleus accumbens (Imperato et al., 1986; Di Chiara and Imperato, 1988; Damsma et al., 1989; Nisell et al., 1994, 1995). Both tobacco smoke and nicotine increase dopamine utilization in nucleus accumbens (Fuxe et al., 1998). The firing and bursting rate of dopaminergic neurons in the ventral tegmental nucleus is enhanced by nicotine (Grenhoff et al., 1986; Grenhoff and Svensson, 1988; Mereu et al., 1987; Nisell et al., 1995). To image the effects of nicotine on dopaminergic neuronal system with positron emission tomography (PET), [C]raclopride, a dopamine D2 receptor ligand with moderate affinity, has been applied (for review see Laruelle 2000). Dewey et al. (1999) reported that nicotine in a small dose of about 20 mg/kg i.v. reduced the striatal distribution volume of [C]raclopride in anesthetized baboons. Cummings and Gjedde (2001) reported that a large dose (500 mg/kg), but not a low dose (50 mg/kg), of nicotine reduced [C]raclopride in the striatum of anesthetized pigs. However, our previous findings revealed that anesthetics significantly affect the actions of various pharmacological agents on receptor binding in vivo (Tsukada et al., 1999b, 2000b, 2001a). As a result, in contrast to these results obtained using anesthetized animals, we demonstrated that nicotine infusion at tobacco smoking– related doses did not displace [C]raclopride binding in the striatum under the conscious awake condition (Tsukada et al., 2002). This was consistent with the result that human tobacco users after overnight tobacco abstinence did not show any displacement of [C]raclopride binding (Barrett et al., 2001). These results might suggest that nicotine does not release sufficient brain dopamine to displace [C]raclopride in the striatum in the conscious state. The aim of the present study was to evaluate L-[b-C]DOPA as a PET ligand for clarification of the interaction between the nicotine and dopaminergic neuronal system in the same experimental paradigm in the conscious monkey brain. Four young-adult male rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) weighing from 6.5 to 8.0 kg were used for the PET measurements. Monkeys were maintained and handled in accordance with recommendations of the US National Institutes of Health and also the guidelines of the Central Research Laboratory, Hamamatsu Photonics. [C]raclopride was labeled with C by O-methylation of its nor-compounds with [C]methyl iodide synthesized from [C]CO2. The radiochemical and chemical purities were greater than 98 and 99%, respectively, and the specific radioactivity ranged from 55.5 to 70.2 GBq/mmol. L-[b-C]DOPA was synthesized using a combination
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF A SHORT TERM, DIDACTIC, GROUP PSYCHOTHERAPY IN ELIMINATING SELF DEFEATING BEHAVIOR, INCREASING INTERNAL LOCUS OF CONTROL AND INCREASING SELF ESTEEM

The Effectiveness of a Short Term, Didactic, Group Psychotherapy in Eliminating Self Defeating Behavior, Increasing Internal Locus of Control, and Increasing Self Esteem (February 1982) John Barbaro, B.A. , University of Massachusetts M.Ed., Ed.D. , University of Massachusetts Directed by: Professor Allen E. Ivey The purpose was to determine how effective the Elimination of Self Defeating Behavior group process was in decreasing the frequency and severity of self-selected selfdefeating behaviors (SDB's) on the Participant SDB Questionnaire and on participant SDB's selected by associates on the Associate SDB Questionnaire, decreasing the score on the Internal Versus External Locus of Control Scale, and increasing the Global Self Esteem score on the Self Report Inventory. Group I (treatment and follow-up group) had the ESDB treatment during five weeks, two nights weekly (equaling 30 hours); while Group II (control and treatment group) acted as a control. Group II then replicated Group I's treatment
A novel approach to fetal ECG extraction and enhancement using blind source separation (BSS-ICA) and adaptive fetal ECG enhancer (AFE)

Eight out of one thousand born live infants have some form of heart defect, making it the single most common class of congenital abnormalities. Identification of these cases during early pregnancy reduces risks by timely treatment or planned delivery. The non-invasive fetal ECG (FECG) monitoring by means of abdominal surface electrodes provides valuable information about the cardiac electrical activity of fetus. In this paper, analysis and comparative study of four channel adaptive maternal ECG canceller-adaptive fetal ECG enhancer (FAMC-AFE) and blind source separation (BSS-ICA) methods are presented. These methods have been applied to real multichannel ECG recordings obtained from a pregnant woman's skin and synthetic biomedical signals. After investigation of the results the BSS-ICA AFE approach, proposed by us, has been shown to be superior for extraction and enhancement of fetal ECG compared to other BSS scheme.
Structured discriminative models using deep neural-network features

State-of-the-art speech recognisers employ neural networks in various configurations. A standard (hybrid) speech recogniser computes the likelihood for one time frame and state, using only one out of thousands of possible neural-network outputs. However, the whole output vector carries information. In this paper, features from state-of-the-art speech recognisers are collected per phone given a particular context, and input to a discriminative log-linear model. The log-linear model is trained with conditional maximum likelihood or a large-margin criterion. A key element is the prior on the parameters of the log-linear model. The mean of the prior is set to the point where the performance of the original systems is attained. The log-linear model then provides an additional increase over the state-of-the-art performance of the individual systems.
Road Edge Recognition Using the Stripe Hough Transform From Millimeter-Wave Radar Images

Millimeter-wave (MMW) radar, which is used for road feature recognition, has performance that is superior to optical cameras in terms of robustness in different weather and lighting conditions, as well as providing ranging capabilities. However, the signatures of road features in MMW radar images are quite different from that of optical images, and even physically continuous features, such as road edges, will be presented as a set of bright points or spots distributed along the roadside. Therefore, discrimination of the radar features is of paramount importance in automotive imaging systems. To tackle this problem, an approach called the stripe Hough transform (HT) is introduced in this paper, allowing enhanced extraction of the geometry of the road path. The performance of the approach is demonstrated by comparison of extracted features from MMW images with the real geometry of the road and with the results of processing by classical HT.
Linking Plant Nutritional Status to Plant-Microbe Interactions

Plants have developed a wide-range of adaptations to overcome nutrient limitation, including changes to the quantity and composition of carbon-containing compounds released by roots. Root-associated bacteria are largely influenced by these compounds which can be perceived as signals or substrates. Here, we evaluate the effect of root exudates collected from maize plants grown under nitrogen (N), phosphate (P), iron (Fe) and potassium (K) deficiencies on the transcriptome of the plant growth promoting rhizobacterium (PGPR) Bacillus amyloliquefaciens FZB42. The largest shifts in gene expression patterns were observed in cells exposed to exudates from N-, followed by P-deficient plants. Exudates from N-deprived maize triggered a general stress response in FZB42 in the exponential growth phase, which was evidenced by the suppression of numerous genes involved in protein synthesis. Exudates from P-deficient plants induced bacterial genes involved in chemotaxis and motility whilst exudates released by Fe and K deficient plants did not cause dramatic changes in the bacterial transcriptome during exponential growth phase. Global transcriptional changes in bacteria elicited by nutrient deficient maize exudates were significantly correlated with concentrations of the amino acids aspartate, valine and glutamate in root exudates suggesting that transcriptional profiling of FZB42 associated with metabolomics of N, P, Fe and K-deficient maize root exudates is a powerful approach to better understand plant-microbe interactions under conditions of nutritional stress.
Fixed-Width Sequential Stopping Rules for a Class of Stochastic Programs

Monte Carlo sampling-based methods are frequently used in stochastic programming when exact solution is not possible. A critical component of Monte Carlo sampling-based methods is determining when to stop sampling to ensure the desired quality of the solutions. In this paper, we develop stopping rules for sequential sampling procedures that depend on the width of an optimality gap confidence interval estimator. The procedures solve a sequence of sampling approximations with increasing sample size to generate solutions and stop when the width of the confidence interval on the current solution's optimality gap plus an inflation factor fall below a prespecified value, $\epsilon$. We first present a method that takes the schedule of sample sizes as an input and provide guidelines on the growth of sample sizes. Then, we present a method that increases the sample sizes according to the current estimates of the optimality gap. The larger the estimates, the larger the increases in sample sizes. We provide conditi.
Niches and Interspecific Competitive Relationships of the Parasitoids, Microplitis prodeniae and Campoletis chlorldeae, of the Oriental Leafworm Moth, Spodoptera litura, in Tobacco

Abstract Both Microplitis prodeniae Rao and Chandry (Hymenoptera: Bracondidae) and Campoletis chlorideae Uchida (Hymenoptera: Ichnumonidae) are major parasitoids of Spodoptera litura (Fabricious) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) in tobacco, Nicotiana tabacum L. (Solanales: Solanaceae) at Nanxiong, Guangdong Province, South China. The niches and interspecific competition relationships of the two species were studied. The results show that the competition between the two species for spatial and food resources was very intense, and C. chlorideae was always dominant when the two species compete for spatial and food resources in different periods. Thus C. chlorideae may drive M. prodeniae away when they occupy the same spatial or food resource. The adaptability of C. chlorideae to the environment in the tobacco fields may be greater than that of M. prodeniae, so C. chlorideae can maintain a higher population compared to that of M. prodeniae.
South China Sea isopycnal surface circulation

This paper investigates the seasonal variabilities of the South China Sea isopycnal-surface circulations and of the Kuroshio intrusion through the Luzon Strait using the U.S. Navy’s climatological temperature and salinity dataset (public domain) with ‰ 83 ‰8 resolution by the P-vector method. The representative pattern is a persistent basin-scale cyclonic circulation away from the surface, and a seasonally varying circulation with a weak anticylonic gyre in the summer and a strong cyclonic gyre in the winter near the surface. This pattern is consistent with a classical view of mean cyclonic circulation in large stratified lakes and semienclosed marginal seas by Emery and Csanady and with a recent numerical simulation using the navy’s Layered Ocean Model by Metzger and Hurlburt. The computed monthly volume transport through the Luzon Strait is negative (inflow) all year round with a minimum value of 213.7 Sv in February (strongest intrusion) and a maximum value of 21.4 Sv in September (weakest intrusion). The annual mean transport is 26.5 Sv (intrusion).
Competition Between Outcomes

In both Pavlovian conditioning and human causal judgment, competition between cues is well known to occur when multiple cues are presented in compound and followed by an outcome. More questionable is the occurrence of competition between outcomes when a single cue is followed by multiple outcomes presented in compound. In the experiment reported here, we demonstrated blocking (a type of stimulus competition) between outcomes. When the cue predicted one outcome, its ability to predict a second outcome that was presented in compound with the first outcome was reduced. The procedure minimized the likelihood that the observed competition between outcomes arose from selective attention. The competition between outcomes that we observed is problematic for contemporary theories of learning.
Control of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Pneumonia Utilizing TLR2 Agonist Pam3CSK4

The spread of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a critical health issue that has drawn greater attention to the potential use of immunotherapy. Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2), a pattern recognition receptor, is an essential component in host innate defense system against S. aureus infection. However, little is known about the innate immune response, specifically TLR2 activation, against MRSA infection. Here, we evaluate the protective effect and the mechanism of MRSA murine pneumonia after pretreatment with Pam3CSK4, a TLR2 agonist. We found that the MRSA-pneumonia mouse model, pretreated with Pam3CSK4, had reduced bacteria and mortality in comparison to control mice. As well, lower protein and mRNA levels of TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-6 were observed in lungs and bronchus of the Pam3CSK4 pretreatment group. Conversely, expression of anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10, but not TGF-β, increased in Pam3CSK4-pretreated mice. Our additional studies showed that CXCL-2 and CXCL1, which are necessary for neutrophil recruitment, were less evident in the Pam3CSK4-pretreated group compared to control group, whereas the expression of Fcγ receptors (FcγⅠ/Ⅲ) and complement receptors (CR1/3) increased in murine lungs. Furthermore, we found that increased survival and improved bacterial clearance were not a result of higher levels of neutrophil infiltration, but rather a result of enhanced phagocytosis and bactericidal activity of neutrophils in vitro and in vivo as well as increased robust oxidative activity and release of lactoferrin. Our cumulative findings suggest that Pam3CSK4 could be a novel immunotherapeutic candidate against MRSA pneumonia.
Tipping and the Dynamics of Segregation in Neighborhoods and Schools

In a classic paper, Schelling (1971) showed that extreme segregation can arise from social interactions in preferences: once the minority share in a neighborhood exceeds a "tipping point", all the whites leave. We use regression discontinuity methods and Census tract data from the past four decades to test for the presence of discrete nonlinearities in the dynamics of neighborhood racial composition. White mobility patterns in most cities exhibit tipping-like behavior, with a range of tipping points centered around a 13% minority share. These patterns are very pronounced during the 1970s and 1980s, and diminish but do not disappear in the 1990s. We find similar dynamic patterns in neighborhoods and in schools. A variety of specification checks rule out the possibility that the discontinuity in the initial minority share is driven by income stratification or other factors, and underscore the importance of white preferences over neighbors' race and ethnicity in the dynamic process of segregation. Finally, we relate the location of the estimated tipping points in different cities to measures of the racial attitudes of whites, and find that cities with more racially tolerant whites have higher tipping points.
Profile Classes and Partial Well-Order for Permutations

It is known that the set of permutations, under the pattern containment ordering, is not a partial well-order. Characterizing the partially well-ordered closed sets (equivalently: down sets or ideals) in this poset remains a wide-open problem. Given a 0/+-1 matrix M, we define a closed set of permutations called the profile class of M. These sets are generalizations of sets considered by Atkinson, Murphy, and Ruskuc. We show that the profile class of M is partially well-ordered if and only if a related graph is a forest. Related to the antichains we construct to prove one of the directions of this result, we construct exotic fundamental antichains, which lack the periodicity exhibited by all previously known fundamental antichains of permutations.