Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Declining market share of Pakistan in football industry.

Pakistan Football Industry is the one of the promising secondary industries of the country. Millions of lives and considerable portion of Pakistan’s GDP is directly or indirectly dependent on this sector. For a long period, industry enjoyed leadership status in international market, but, during last decade, it not only lost its leadership statusthere is also considerable decline in the market share. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to identify the challenges and issues faced by this sector and provide some suggestion to improve its performance. The research was conducted by using secondary data, as well as, making some interviews with football producers of Sialkot. The research found that social compliance issues, lack of technology, lower productivity, old production techniques, poor management and non-extent marketing skills and uncertain political and business environment are the major reasons behind the poor performance of this industry. This paper contributes by highlighting the importance of football industry for Pakistan economy, which has, so far, been neglected by the policy makers resulting in grave consequences for overall economy. The limitation of this paper is the heavy dependence on secondary data and its focus on football producers’ prospective. Future research can look at this problem from the prospective of other stakeholders, as well as, conduct an empirical investigation to explore these issues and challenges more deeply.
Essays on the Dynamics of Capital Structure

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Society in India

A two day (19-20 lh March 2004) natIonal level students paper presentatIOn on Earth System SCIences was orgamzed by the Department of Earth SCiences, lIT Roorkee and was held as a part of the annual fest of the InstItute ·Cogmzance' Some of the pa;tlclpants In thIS conventlOn were from other engIneermg fields allIed to earth sCIences' and hence the nature of theIr talks were InterdIscIplInary A Sharma (Maulana Azad NatIOnal Institute of Technology, Bhopal) narrated the cost optImIzatIOn trends In contourmg usmg hand held GPS and stressed the usage of GPS along wIth conventIonal Instruments ltke Dumpy Level to do contourIng accurately In the fIeld A A GandhI (Maharashtra InstItute of Technology, Pune) dIscussed the usefulness and advantages of combustIble blOethanol as cost-effective, renewable and enVIronment frIendly fuel A Uppal (G B Pant UnIversIty of Agnculture and Technology, Pantnagar) dlscusscd the harmful consequences of automobIle pollutIOn and dIscussed the preventIve measUles along WIth the ImplIcatIon ofEuro norms whIch mIght act as a yardstick Narratmg the role of flUIds m the evolutlon of metabasltes of the Tso-1vlO1an crystaJJmes (NW HlmaJaya), and Its ImphcatlOns to the HImalayan orogeny, A SaikIa (DeIhl UniversIty) concJuded that the area had undergone fast ~ubductLOn and was stablltzcd under eclogIte faCIes metamorphIsm dUring the MIOcene PerIod Ashlsh (lIT, Root kee) dIscussed a comparatIve study between the BussJan and Berg models for pal tlal saturatIOn In estlmatmg water &aturatlon 111 shaly sandstone reserVOlr, and concluded that the second model was accurate and stable Takmg mto account the reductlontst concept of water surplus rIver baSInS, D MukheIjee (Maulana Azad NatIOnal InstItute of Technology, Bhopal) warned the pOSSIble envIronmental dIsasters 111 the mterhnkmg of Ind1an fIvers project and stressed the need for alternatIve strategIes In another presentatIon, he reVIewed aspects of stratosphenc ozone ItS uses, causes, consequences and mechanism of ItS depletlOn and a case hIstory of the Antarctlca ozone hole D Mohanty (lIT, RoO! kee) reViewed mtegl atlon of coal bed methane (CBM) extractlOn and underground (lIlS1tU) gaslflCatlOn techmques wIth an mm to I ecover the nonrenewdble and apparently um ecoverable resources of coal as much as pOSSible
Stratified epithelial sheets engineered from a single adult murine corneal/limbal progenitor cell

The limbal region of the adult cornea contains stem cells which are ultimately responsible for regeneration of the corneal epithelium during wound repair. However, primarily‐isolated murine corneal/limbal epithelial cells rapidly senesce on plastic in a serum‐free low [Ca2+] medium, suggesting only transit amplifying cells are promoted. We developed a novel expansion method by seeding at a low cell density (<500 cells/cm2) and prolonging each culture time beyond the lifespan of transit amplifying cells (4 weeks). Expanded cells were uniformly small, negative to K12 keratin, but positive for p63 nuclear staining, and could be subcultured beyond 100 passages. After limiting dilution, one clone (TKE2) was selected that exhibited single cell clonal expansion with a doubling time of 34.2 hrs, and had normal karyotyping, but no anchorage‐independent growth. A single cell could be continually expanded to a confluent monolayer on denuded amniotic membrane and became stratified by exposing to the air‐medium interface. The resultant stratified epithelium expressed K14 keratin, involucrin, connexin 43 and p63, but not K12 keratin or Pax 6. However, expression of K12 could be up‐regulated by increasing extracellular calcium concentration and addition of foetal bovine serum (FBS) at P12, but less so at P85. Therefore, this murine lim‐bal/corneal epithelium‐derived progenitor cell line still retained the plasticity for adopting corneal lineage differentiation, could be useful for investigating limbal niche cues that may promote corneal epithelial fate decision.
Kernel-based Conditional Independence Test and Application in Causal Discovery

Conditional independence testing is an important problem, especially in Bayesian network learning and causal discovery. Due to the curse of dimensionality, testing for conditional independence of continuous variables is particularly challenging. We propose a Kernel-based Conditional Independence test (KCI-test), by constructing an appropriate test statistic and deriving its asymptotic distribution under the null hypothesis of conditional independence. The proposed method is computationally efficient and easy to implement. Experimental results show that it outperforms other methods, especially when the conditioning set is large or the sample size is not very large, in which case other methods encounter difficulties.
Representing the hardware design process by a common data schema

An open, extensible, administrative data schema that is based on electronic design interchange format (EDIF) is presented. The schema closely reflects the hardware design process. Thus, it enables the realization of central design management services. The use of a common schema implemented with the help of an object management system allows the integrated tools to share the data covered by this schema during runtime. Hence, online consistency management is supported. <<ETX>>
Inducible gene deletion in astroglia and radial glia—A valuable tool for functional and lineage analysis

Astrocytes are thought to play a variety of key roles in the adult brain, such as their participation in synaptic transmission, in wound healing upon brain injury, and adult neurogenesis. However, to elucidate these functions in vivo has been difficult because of the lack of astrocyte‐specific gene targeting. Here we show that the inducible form of Cre (CreERT2) expressed in the locus of the astrocyte‐specific glutamate transporter (GLAST) allows precisely timed gene deletion in adult astrocytes as well as radial glial cells at earlier developmental stages. Moreover, postnatal and adult neurogenesis can be targeted at different stages with high efficiency as it originates from astroglial cells. Taken together, this mouse line will allow dissecting the molecular pathways regulating the diverse functions of astrocytes as precursors, support cells, repair cells, and cells involved in neuronal information processing. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Popularity analysis of a video-on-demand service with a great variety of content types: influence of the subject and video characteristics

This paper presents the popularity analysis performed on the www.lne. es video-on-demand service, which is part of the digital version of one of the most important newspapers in Spain. Its most special characteristics are the wide range of subjects (events, music, culture, tourism, nature, sports, etc) and the type of contents offered (long life, seasonal, etc), which make it an interesting case study. The analysis pays attention to the influence of the subject and the video characteristics on the popularity. Moreover, the results are checked for short and long periods of time. This study has been performed thanks to a log database with more than 170,000 requests of almost 1000 videos stored over a period of 4 years.
Entorhinal verrucae correlate with surface geometry

Entorhinal verrucae are unique, small elevations on the surface of entorhinal cortex, formed due to distinctive clustering of large neurons in entorhinal layer II. In Alzheimer’s disease, the verrucae atrophy as a result of neurofibrillary tangle formation and concomitant neuronal loss. Previously, we found significant decreases in verrucae height, width, surface area, and volume even in the mildest stage of Alzheimer’s disease. In this report, we introduce a new method for analyzing verrucae prominence using measures of their curvature. Smoothed surfaces and curvatures were generated using FreeSurfer (http://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu) from 100 μm3ex vivo MRI isosurfaces. We examined the positive and negative components of mean curvature AreaNorm(H+/-) and Gaussian curvature AreaNorm(K+/−) in entorhinal cortex. A significant difference was found between entorhinal (n=10) and non-entorhinal cortices (n=9) for both AreaNorm(H+/-) and AreaNorm(K+/−). We also validated our curvature analysis through a comparison with previously published verrucae measures derived from manual labels of individual verrucae. A significant positive correlation was found between mean verrucae height and AreaNorm(H+/-). Both mean verrucae height and volume were significantly positively correlated with AreaNorm(K+/−). These results demonstrate that K and H are accurate metrics for detecting the presence or absence of entorhinal verrucae. Curvature analysis may be a useful and sensitive technique for detecting local surface changes in entorhinal cortex.
The Pharmacology of l-DOPA-Induced Dyskinesia in Parkinson’s Disease

l-3,4-Dihydroxyphenylalanine (l-DOPA) remains the most effective symptomatic treatment of Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, long-term administration of l-DOPA is marred by the emergence of abnormal involuntary movements, i.e., l-DOPA-induced dyskinesia (LID). Years of intensive research have yielded significant progress in the quest to elucidate the mechanisms leading to the development and expression of dyskinesia and maintenance of the dyskinetic state, but the search for a complete understanding is still ongoing. Herein, we summarize the current knowledge of the pharmacology of LID in PD. Specifically, we review evidence gathered from postmortem and pharmacological studies, both preclinical and clinical, and discuss the involvement of dopaminergic and nondopaminergic systems, including glutamatergic, opioid, serotonergic, γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA)-ergic, adenosine, cannabinoid, adrenergic, histaminergic, and cholinergic systems. Moreover, we discuss changes occurring in transcription factors, intracellular signaling, and gene expression in the dyskinetic phenotype. Inasmuch as a multitude of neurotransmitters and receptors play a role in the etiology of dyskinesia, we propose that to optimally alleviate this motor complication, it may be necessary to develop combined treatment approaches that will target simultaneously more than one neurotransmitter system. This could be achieved via three ways as follows: 1) by developing compounds that will interact simultaneously to a multitude of receptors with the required agonist/antagonist effect at each target, 2) by targeting intracellular signaling cascades where the signals mediated by multiple receptors converge, and/or 3) to regulate gene expression in a manner that has effects on signaling by multiple pathways
On the modelling and forecasting multivariate realized volatility: Generalized Heterogeneous Autoregressive (GHAR) model

We introduce a methodology for dynamic modelling and forecasting of realized covariance matrices based on generalization of the heterogeneous autoregressive model (HAR) for realized volatility. Multivariate extensions of popular HAR framework leave substantial information unmodeled in residuals. We propose to employ a system of seemingly unrelated regressions to capture the information. The newly proposed generalized heterogeneous autoregressive (GHAR) model is tested against natural competing models. In order to show the economic and statistical gains of the GHAR model, portfolio of various sizes is used. We find that our modeling strategy outperforms competing approaches in terms of statistical precision, and provides economic gains in terms of mean-variance trade-o. Additionally, our results provide a comprehensive comparison of the performance when realized covariance and more efficient, noise-robust multivariate realized kernel estimator, is used. We study the contribution of both estimators across different sampling frequencies, and we show that the multivariate realized kernel estimator delivers further gains compared to realized covariance estimated on higher frequencies.
How Does Corruption Influence the Effect of Foreign Direct Investment on Economic Growth?

Abstract We investigate the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth in 130 countries from 1995 to 2008, considering the role of corruption in each country as an absorptive factor. The estimation results indicate that although FDI alone does not promote economic growth, it has a significant effect on economic growth if the interaction term between FDI and corruption is considered. Specifically, FDI has a positive impact on economic growth when corruption is severe, but a negative impact if corruption is below a certain threshold.
Design of low-complexity vector perturbation precoding technique for multiuser MIMO systems

Block diagonalization (BD) is a famous conditional precoding algorithm in multi-input multi-output (MIMO) broadcast systems, vector perturbation (VP) and BD are combined which named as BD-VP for short and the receivers' complexity can be reduced by VP at the transmmiter. Furthermore, the performance of BD-VP in diversity is comparable because the maximum likehood (ML) method is involved. However, in order to overcome the shortcoming that multiuser interference (MUI) will be suppressed completely by BD-VP becauce it do not considering the noise, generalized MMSE channel inversion VP (GMI-VP) algorithms are proposed, which much superior to BD-VP algorithm. When increasing the number of users, sphere decoding's complexity used in VP increases with exponential trend and limit VP's practical application. In this paper, low-complexity BD/GMI-VP precoding algorithms using lattice reduction (LR-BD/GMI-VP) are proposed. Analysis and Monte Carlo simulation data reveal that the proposed algorithms help to decrease the computational complexity remarkably, especially when there are a great many users, this advantage is obtained with merely a bit SER loss which can be neglected in high SNR.
CrossTalk proposal: Metabolic syndrome causes sleep apnoea

Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is a prevalent sleep disorder characterized by upper airway obstruction during sleep, resulting in intermittent breathing pauses despite effort, reduced blood oxygen saturation, hypoxia and arousals. With prevalence in the general population estimated at 17–24% of men and 5–9% of women (Young et al. 1993; Bixler et al. 1998, 2001), OSA has been linked to the key components of the metabolic syndrome: central obesity, insulin resistance (Vgontzas et al. 2000; Coughlin et al. 2004), elevated triglycerides, reduced HDL cholesterol (Coughlin et al. 2004), and elevated blood pressure (Bixler et al. 2000; Coughlin et al. 2004). While many have proposed that inflammation resulting from intermittent hypoxia is the culprit behind the development of metabolic aberrations in those with OSA, obesity and the metabolic syndrome in fact appear to precede the development of the disorder. Rather, considerable evidence suggests that OSA is
Faculty Perceptions of the Effects of Student Evaluations of Teaching on Higher Education Instructional Practices and Instructor Morale

FACULTY PERCEPTIONS OF THE EFFECTS OF STUDENT EVALUATIONS OF TEACHING ON HIGHER EDUCATION INSTRUCTIONAL PRACTICES AND ISNTRUCTOR MORALE by Annette Rashid Gall The perceived consequences of student evaluations of teaching (SET) on higher education instructional practices and instructor morale were investigated. Participants were randomly selected from the 2002-2003 faculty of West Virginia’s eight public colleges, n= 274. The researcher developed self-report survey, the Gall Faculty Response to Evaluations of Teaching (FRET), was inspired by research literature. Research questions investigating the relationship between four independent variables and perception of changes in instructional practices were significant indicating that faculty consider information from student evaluations when changing teaching strategies. Research questions investigating the relationship between four independent variables and perception of changes in instructor morale were not significant indicating that the SET process has been institutionalized. Further research is needed to determine whether changes made to instructional practices increase or decrease learning and if the lack of effect on morale is positively or negatively related to learning.
SME policy in Thailand : vision and Challenges

The aim of this preliminary study is to develop a better understanding of the background and objectives of the recently formulated SME policy of the Thai government. A total of 27 respondents representing industry associations, government agencies and political parties were interviewed to obtain a sense of the “fit” between the proposed government policy and the actual situation on the ground. The research was approached from the point of view of assessing the relevance of applying the “industrial cluster” paradigm to SME development in the case of Bangkok. It is too early to tell whether the SME Promotion Law will prove successful since it was only approved by parliament last January 12, 2000 while the SME Master Development Plan was approved by the Cabinet last April 11, 2000. However, we identified important problematic issues in the SME promotion law in its present formulation that needs to be clarified and resolved. We conclude with a few tentative observations and recommendations for clarifying SME objectives and stress the need to encourage closer public-private coordination in SME policy formulation and implementation. iv SME Policy in Thailand : Vision and Challenges
The Effectiveness of Corporate Governance in Constraining Earnings Management in Pakistan

Although firms’ annual reports are supposed to provide an unbiased and accurate picture of their financial position, managers may be induced to engage in earnings management in order to circumvent expectations. Such incentives can take the shape of stock prices, management incentives, or debt covenants. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of three attributes of corporate governance in constraining earnings management practices. These include board characteristics, audit committee characteristics, and ownership structure. Based on a sample of 120 nonfinancial firms listed on the Karachi Stock Exchange during 2003–12, we find that audit committee independence is negatively associated with earnings management, while CEO duality and institutional shareholding is positively associated with earnings management. Moreover, the effectiveness of governance mechanisms in constraining earnings management practices differs across high- and low-growth firms.
The State of the Molecular Gas in a Luminous Starburst/Seyfert 2 Galaxy: NGC 1068 Revisited

We present fully sampled 12CO, 13CO J=2-1, 3-2 maps of the inner ~1′ × 1′ region of NGC 1068. We combine these measurements with an existing interferometric map of 12CO J=1-0 that includes single dish data and thus contains all the flux present. This allows a reliable estimate of the 12CO (J=3-2)/(J=1-0) ratio at the highest angular resolution currently possible and the use of this sensitive line ratio to probe the physical condition of the molecular gas. We also present two measurements of the faint C18O J=2-1 emission that confirm earlier measurements of a high C18O/13CO intensity ratio in this galaxy. The ratios of the 12CO, 13CO isotopes can only be reproduced for small to moderate optical depths of 12CO J=1-0 (τ ~1-2), which is incompatible with the high C18O/13CO ratios observed. A simple two-phase model for the gas can account for all the observed line ratios if the C18O emission and part of the 13CO emission arise in a dense spatially concentrated component, where C18O J=1-0 has optical depths of τ ≳ 1. The 12CO emission originates from a warmer, diffuse gas phase with τ ~1-2 for J=1-0. The dense gas phase contains the bulk of the molecular gas mass, whereas the diffuse phase may not be virialized, leading to an overestimate of molecular gas mass when deduced from the luminosity of the 12CO J=1-0 line and a standard galactic conversion factor. This suggests that, since type 2 Seyferts harbor a central starburst more often than type 1, the higher average 12CO J=1-0 luminosity of type 2 hinted by earlier studies may simply reflect a difference in molecular gas excitation rather than in gas mass.