Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Making accounting policy : the quest for credibility in financial reporting

The accounting policies that companies follow in preparing their financial statements have assumed critical importance in recent years. The way that expenditures and income are treated can make an enormous difference in the way a firm's performance is judged by stockholders, the financial community, regulatory agencies, and other interested parties. One set of policies can make a company's performance seem better or worse than another set of policies. This book offers a clear and practical guide to understanding the crucial significance of accounting policy. It discusses the basic objectives of financial reporting, what is reported and when it is reported, how profits are measured, the way policies are regulated, and how accounting practices differ in the international arena. Explaining the process by which accounting standards are set and how they have evolved, it also recommends directions that should be taken in setting those standards during the years ahead. About the Author: David Solomons, Arthur Young Professor of Accounting Emeritus at the Wharton School, was a member of the committee that brought the Financial Accounting Standards Board into existence and has been involved with the Board's activities for several years.
Tai Chi and fall reductions in older adults: a randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND The authors' objective was to evaluate the efficacy of a 6-month Tai Chi intervention for decreasing the number of falls and the risk for falling in older persons. METHODS This randomized controlled trial involved a sample of 256 physically inactive, community-dwelling adults aged 70 to 92 (mean age, 77.48 years; standard deviation, 4.95 years) who were recruited through a patient database in Portland, Oregon. Participants were randomized to participate in a three-times-per-week Tai Chi group or to a stretching control group for 6 months. The primary outcome measure was the number of falls; the secondary outcome measures included functional balance (Berg Balance Scale, Dynamic Gait Index, Functional Reach, and single-leg standing), physical performance (50-foot speed walk, Up&Go), and fear of falling, assessed at baseline, 3 months, 6 months (intervention termination), and at a 6-month postintervention follow-up. RESULTS At the end of the 6-month intervention, significantly fewer falls (n=38 vs 73; p=.007), lower proportions of fallers (28% vs 46%; p=.01), and fewer injurious falls (7% vs 18%; p=.03) were observed in the Tai Chi group compared with the stretching control group. After adjusting for baseline covariates, the risk for multiple falls in the Tai Chi group was 55% lower than that of the stretching control group (risk ratio,.45; 95% confidence interval, 0.30 to 0.70). Compared with the stretching control participants, the Tai Chi participants showed significant improvements (p<.001) in all measures of functional balance, physical performance, and reduced fear of falling. Intervention gains in these measures were maintained at a 6-month postintervention follow-up in the Tai Chi group. CONCLUSIONS A three-times-per-week, 6-month Tai Chi program is effective in decreasing the number of falls, the risk for falling, and the fear of falling, and it improves functional balance and physical performance in physically inactive persons aged 70 years or older.
New Methods for Estimating Ocean Eddy Heat Transport Using Satellite Altimetry

AbstractAttempts to monitor ocean eddy heat transport are strongly limited by the sparseness of available observations and the fact that heat transport is a quadratic, sign-indefinite quantity that is particularly sensitive to unresolved scales. In this article, a suite of stochastic filtering strategies for estimating eddy heat transport are tested in idealized two-layer simulations of mesoscale oceanic turbulence at high and low latitudes under a range of observation scenarios. A novel feature of these filtering strategies is the use of computationally inexpensive stochastic models to forecast the underlying nonlinear dynamics. The stochastic model parameters can be estimated by regression fitting to climatological energy spectra and correlation times or by adaptively learning these parameters “on-the-fly” from the observations themselves.The authors show that, by extracting high-wavenumber information that has been aliased into the low wavenumber band, “stochastically super-resolved” velocity fields wi.
A new incremental method for function approximation using feed-forward neural networks

A sequential method for approximating vectors in Hilbert spaces, called sequential approximation with optimal coefficients and interacting frequencies (SAOCIF), is presented. SAOCIF combines two key ideas. The first one is the optimization of the coefficients. The second one is the flexibility to choose the frequencies. The approximations defined by SAOCIF maintain orthogonal-like properties. The theoretical results obtained prove that, under reasonable conditions, the residue of the approximation obtained with SAOCIF (in the limit) is the best one that can be obtained with any subset of the given set of vectors. In the particular case of L/sup 2/, it can be applied to approximations by algebraic polynomials, Fourier series, wavelets and feed-forward neural networks, among others. Also, a particular algorithm with feed-forward neural networks is presented. The method combines the locality of sequential approximations, where only one frequency is found at every step, with the globality of non-sequential ones, where every frequency interacts with the others. Experimental results show a very satisfactory performance.
Higher-order Alexander invariants of plane algebraic curves

We define new higher-order Alexander modules An(C) and higher-order degrees δn(C) which are invariants of the algebraic planar curve C. These come from analyzing the module structure of the homology of certain solvable covers of the complement of the curve C. These invariants are in the spirit of those developed by T. Cochran in [2] and S. Harvey in [8] and [9], which were used to study knots, 3-manifolds, and finitely presented groups, respectively. We show that for curves in general position at infinity, the higherorder degrees are finite. This provides new obstructions on the type of groups that can arise as fundamental groups of complements to affine curves in general position at infinity.
In Vitro Synthesized RNA Generated from cDNA Clones of Both Genomic Components of Cucurbit yellow stunting disorder virus Replicates in Cucumber Protoplasts

Cucurbit yellow stunting disorder virus (CYSDV), a bipartite whitefly-transmitted virus, constitutes a major threat to commercial cucurbit production worldwide. Here, construction of full-length CYSDV RNA1 and RNA2 cDNA clones allowed the in vitro synthesis of RNA transcripts able to replicate in cucumber protoplasts. CYSDV RNA1 proved competent for replication; transcription of both polarities of the genomic RNA was detectable 24 h post inoculation. Hybridization of total RNA extracted from transfected protoplasts or from naturally CYSDV-infected cucurbits revealed high-level transcription of the p22 subgenomic RNA species. Replication of CYSDV RNA2 following co-transfection with RNA1 was also observed, with similar transcription kinetics. A CYSDV RNA2 cDNA clone (T3CM8Δ) comprising the 5′- and 3′-UTRs plus the 3′-terminal gene, generated a 2.8 kb RNA able to replicate to high levels in protoplasts in the presence of CYSDV RNA1. The clone T3CM8Δ will facilitate reverse genetics studies of CYSDV gene function and RNA replication determinants.
Impact of Scrambler Therapy on Pain Management and Quality of Life in Cancer Patients: A Study of Twenty Cases

Aim of the Study: To study the effect of scrambler therapy on patients with chronic cancer pain. Materials and Methods: This is a prospective, observational study conducted on patients with chronic pain due to malignancy which is not responding to oral analgesics. A total of twenty patients were included in the study (ten males, ten females) with a visual analog scale score of >4 on oral analgesics. Patients aged 18–70 years with a life expectancy of >3 months having bony, neuropathic, or mixed type of pain were included in the study. A total of 12 sessions of scrambler therapy were planned, ten sessions on consecutive days and one session each on two follow-up visits after 1 week each. Each session lasted for 40 min. Pain relief and quality of life according to the World Health Organization Quality of Life were recorded as primary outcome variables. Results: All patients had good pain relief and improvement in all four domains of quality of life. Pain scores decreased significantly (P < 0.01) after each session and at each follow-up. Patients showed significant improvement in physical, psychological, social, and environmental health (P < 0.01) after the therapy. Conclusion: Scrambler therapy offers a promising role in the pain physician's armamentarium as an adjunct to pharmacological therapy for the treatment of chronic drug-resistant cancer pain; it may bring down analgesic drug requirements significantly and improve quality of life in cancer patients. Larger prospective, randomized multicenter studies are needed to validate the findings of the small pilot studies published in literature so far.
Phytoplankton control by grazing zooplankton: A study on the spring clear‐water phase1

We tested the hypothesis that a clear-water period, regularly observed in many meso- and eutrophic lakes, is caused by grazing herbivorous zooplankton. Such a clear-water phase occurs during mid-May in the moderately eutrophic Schiihsee and involves a rapid increase in Secchi transparency, and a drop in chlorophyll and particulate organic carbon in size fractions ~35 Nm. Maxima of zooplankton biomass and community grazing rates (170% of volume cleared per day) coincided with the greatest transparency. The algal decline was not related to nutrient depletion or climatic events. Before the clear-water phase small phytoplankton contributed up to 88% of the primary production, but the contribution of large particles was more important after the zooplankton maximum. The effects of herbivory by zooplankton were examined in a series of time-overlapping enclosure experiments. Concentrations of small ( 35 pm) algae. A distinct period of clear water is typical of the spring algal succession in many mesotrophic and eutrophic lakes of temperate zones (Sommer et al. 1986). An early peak of small, rapidly growing algae (flagellates, small diatoms), which often represents the highest biomass concentration of the annual cycle, is followed by a short period of very clear water and high Secchi transparency. A summer community dominated by large algae and blue-greens develops after the clearwater phase. The period of high Secchi transparency sometimes lasts only 2 weeks or less. The increase in water clarity can be spectacular. In Lake Constance for example transparency may increase from 1 to 10 m in a few days (Lampert
Satya: a reputation-based approach for service discovery and selection in service oriented architectures

We present SATYA, a system that computes a reputation value for Web service providers in order to enhance the service discovery and selection process increasing reliability in SOA transactions. In this work, objective values of service evaluations supplied by monitoring entities are used along with subjective evaluations supplied by service consumers. The objective and subjective values are compared in order to: (i) validate subjective evaluations; (ii) minimize the degree of subjectivity of computed reputation values; and (iii) discover consumers' preferences in terms of QoS metrics. By assigning Web services a trustable reputation value, SATYA enhances the service descriptions provided by registries with additional information to be used during the service discovery phase.
Good research questions

An important decision that a researcher should always make is whether the study is worth doing. Second language research is a vast area with many questions. However, not all questions are good questions. Therefore, it is essential to know what good research questions are and what they involve. A research question is not any question we ask. Instead, it is a clear, specific, and goal-oriented query related to a problem that needs to be addressed. It is the soundness and appropriateness of the research question that determine the quality of the research. One characteristic of good research questions is that they are empirically testable. That is, they are stated in ways that can be observed and measured. Such features increase the likelihood of accurately gathering and evaluating relevant data regarding the issue under investigation. Of course, although a research question may be testable, there are other reasons why a research question cannot be answered, including practical restrictions. Thus, a good research question is also one that is feasible given the time constraints, the facilities required, and the expertise of the researcher. A good research question is also interesting, not only to the researcher but also to others in the field. The latter necessitates that the researcher knows what is currently going on in the field and where the field is moving. There are other features of good research questions. Good questions are also theoretically, pedagogically, or empirically motivated and hence worthy of research. A research question is theoretically worthy of investigation to the same extent that it contributes to the development, refinement, or testing a theory, hypothesis, or key constructs in the field. Its investigation would fill a gap in the research literature and add to the current understanding of the phenomenon. Questions are pedagogically motivated if they are driven by a desire to address issues of practical importance to language teaching. Thus, their investigation helps improve teaching practice. Given all these, it is crucial to pay special attention to developing effective research questions before embarking on any studies. The research questions examined in the five studies reported in this issue of Language Teaching Research meet all or most of the criteria mentioned above. The first study by Jung et al. investigated an important issue related to learners’ perception of synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) in second language (L2) classrooms. The study
Finite‐element wavelets on manifolds

We construct locally supported, continuous wavelets on manifolds Γ that are given as the closure of a disjoint union of general smooth parametric images of an n-simplex. The wavelets are proven to generate Riesz bases for Sobolev spaces H s (Γ) when s ∈ (-1, 3/2), if not limited by the global smoothness of F. These results generalize the findings from Dahmen & Stevenson (1999) SIAM J. Numer. Anal. , 37, 319-352, where it was assumed that each parametrization has a constant Jacobian determinant. The wavelets can be arranged to satisfy the cancellation property of, in principle, any order, except for wavelets with supports that extend to different patches, which generally satisfy the cancellation property of only order 1.
(−)-Epicatechin-3-O-β-D-allopyranoside from Davallia formosana prevents diabetes and dyslipidemia in streptozotocin-induced diabetic mice

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects and molecular mechanism of (−)-epicatechin-3-O-β-D-allopyranoside from Davallia formosana (BB) (also known as Gu-Sui-Bu) on type 1 diabetes mellitus and dyslipidemia in streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic mice. This plant was demonstrated to display antioxidant activities and possess polyphenol contents. Diabetic mice were randomly divided into six groups and were given daily oral gavage doses of either BB (at three dosage levels), metformin (Metf) (at 0.3 g/kg body weight), fenofibrate (Feno) (at 0.25 g/kg body weight) or vehicle (distilled water) and a group of control (CON) mice were gavaged with vehicle over a period of 4 weeks. Treatment with BB led to reduced levels of blood glucose, HbA1C, triglycerides and leptin and to increased levels of insulin and adiponectin compared with the vehicle-treated STZ group. The diabetic islets showed retraction from their classic round-shaped as compared with the control islets. The BB-treated groups (at middle and high dosages) showed improvement in islets size and number of Langerhans islet cells. The membrane levels of skeletal muscular glucose transporter 4 (GLUT4) were significantly higher in BB-treated mice. This resulted in a net glucose lowering effect among BB-treated mice. Moreover, BB enhanced the expression of skeletal muscle phospho-AMPK in treated mice. BB-treated mice increased expression of fatty acid oxidation enzymes, including peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor α (PPARα) and mRNA levels of carnitine palmitoyl transferase Ia (CPT1a). These mice also expressed lower levels of lipogenic genes such as fatty acid synthase (FAS), as well as lower mRNA levels of sterol regulatory element binding protein 1c (SREBP1c) and liver adipocyte fatty acid binding protein 2 (aP2). This resulted in a reduction in plasma triglyceride levels. BB-treated mice also expressed lower levels of PPARγ and FAS protein. This led to reduced adipogenesis, fatty acid synthesis and lipid accumulation within adipose tissue, and consequently, to lower triglyceride levels in liver, blood, and adipose tissue. Moreover, BB treatment not only displayed the activation Akt in liver tissue and skeletal muscle, but also in C2C12 myotube to cause an increase in phosphorylation of Akt in the absence of insulin. These results demonstrated that BB act as an activator of AMPK and /or regulation of insulin pathway (Akt), and the antioxidant activity within the pancreas. Therefore, BB treatment ameliorated the diabetic and dyslipidemic state in STZ-induced diabetic mice.
The Role of Exposure to Phthalates from Polyvinyl Chloride Products in the Development of Asthma and Allergies: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Background Phthalates from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastics may have adverse effects on airways and immunologic systems, but the evidence has not been reviewed systematically. Objective We reviewed the evidence for the role of exposure to phthalates from PVC products in the development of asthma and allergies. Methods We conducted a Medline database search (1950 through May 2007) for relevant studies on the respiratory and allergic effects of exposure to phthalates from PVC products. Results We based this review on 27 human and 14 laboratory toxicology studies. Two mouse inhalation experiments indicated that mono-2-ethylhexyl phthalate (MEHP) has the ability to modulate the immune response to exposure to a coallergen. The data suggested a no observed effect level of 30 μg MEHP/m3, calculated to be below the estimated level of human exposure in common environments. Case reports and series (n = 9) identified and verified cases of asthma that were very likely caused by fumes emitted from PVC film. Epidemiologic studies in adults (n = 10), mostly small studies in occupational settings, showed associations between heated PVC fumes and asthma and respiratory symptoms; studies in children (n = 5) showed an association between PVC surface materials in the home and the risk of asthma [fixed-effects model: summary odds ratio (OR), 1.55; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.18–2.05; four studies] and allergies (OR, 1.32; 95% CI, 1.09–1.60; three studies). Conclusions High levels of phthalates from PVC products can modulate the murine immune response to a coallergen. Heated PVC fumes possibly contribute to development of asthma in adults. Epidemiologic studies in children show associations between indicators of phthalate exposure in the home and risk of asthma and allergies. The lack of objective exposure information limits the epidemiologic data.
Simulating markov-reward processes with rare events

Simulating continuous-time Markov reward processes containing rarely visited, but economically important states requires long simulation times unless special measures are taken. In this article, we consider Markov reward processes in equilibrium, and we use the equilibrium equations to reallocate rewards. The effect of this reallocation is determined analytically for a number of small examples. In these examples, significant savings in run lengths were possible, especially in the case where the expected rewards are strongly influenced by low-probability boundary states. The emphasis of the article is on exploration; no large simulation problems have been considered.
Cultures of Legality: Judicialization and Political Activism in Latin America

Legal practices and ideas about law are undergoing dramatic change in Latin America. Today, a turn-of-the-century crop of constitutions grants higher courts greater powers; provides long lists of social, economic, and cultural rights; and assigns international treaties constitutional status "or better" within the hierarchy of laws. High courts, in turn, have begun to cast themselves as defenders of rights and to intervene in significant political controversies. And, correspondingly, political claims more often take legal forms. The growing importance of law, legal discourse and legal institutions in the political arena has led scholars to report that a "judicialization of politics" is underway in the region. Our volume explores this landscape of changing legal cultures. Starting with the assumption that formalism is no longer a useful concept for describing Latin American legal cultures "and was in any case always an oversimplification" we explore the repertoires of legal ideas and practices that accompany, cause, and are a consequence of the judicialization of politics.
Statistical Regular Pavings to Analyze Massive Data of Aircraft Trajectories

A variety of tasks conducted by aviation system decision makers and researchers requires analyzing aircraft trajectory data. Datasets containing high-frequency aircraft position information collected over large geographic areas and long periods of time are too large to store in the primary memory of personal computers. This paper introduces the use of statistical regular pavings as data structures capable of summarizing very large aircraft trajectory datasets. Recursively computable statistics can be stored for variable-sized regions of airspace. The regions themselves can be created automatically to reflect the varying density of aircraft observations, dedicating morecomputationalresourcesandprovidingmoredetailedinformation inareaswithmoreairtraffic.Inparticular, statistical regular pavings are able to very quickly aggregate or separate data with different characteristics so that data describing individual aircraft or collected using different technologies (reflecting different levels of precision) can be stored separately, and yet also very quickly combined using standard arithmetic operations.
Behavior of Extreme Dependence between Stock Markets when the Regime Shifts

We propose a methodology based on multivariate extreme value theory, to analyze the dependence between markets during the financial crisis. We argue that extreme dependence based on block maximum is a more appropriate measure to study dependence between stock markets, when a regime shifts, than other alternatives. With this methodology, we are able to detect the increase in the extreme dependences between US and other markets during the 2008 financial crisis where traditional approaches fail to do so. In addition, the estimated dependent function allows one to quantify maximum impact of the crisis on each individual market. We then propose the use of a conditional loss distribution as a constructive tool for a stress test analysis in risk management study. Stress test levels with respect to 2008 financial data calculated from the conditional loss distribution are given.