Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS IN SOUTH DAKOTA: A SLOW GROWTH STATE

This dissertation asks the question, “What are the challenges of developing a leadership program in community banks in South Dakota, a slow growth environment? ” The research looks at the intersection of leadership development, transformational leadership, and context—against a backdrop of community banking, corporate social responsibility, and demographic trends in South Dakota. The objective of the study is to provide theoretical and practical understanding of leadership development activities in South Dakota community banks. Using quantitative methods, seven hypotheses were created and tested using insights gained from reviewed literature and informational interviews that framed the study. The hypotheses were built looking to understand the drivers that shaped leadership development at community banks in the state and the relative importance of leadership programs in these organizations. In development of the study, a survey instrument was designed and administered via telephone to 80 community banks in South Dakota. Findings fall into three broad categories that form the thinking of community bankers in the state. First, data suggest that the topic of leadership development is growing in importance to community bank executives, boards of directors, and human resource managers in these organizations. Second, the need for succession planning and the challenges of finding new leadership for rural locations appear to be catalysts for creating leadership development programs in community banks in the state. Third, South Dakota banks characterize themselves, their culture, and their leadership by being defined as community banks. Many community banks in South Dakota are in need of renewal and recognize they cannot continue operating as they have in the past. Facing demographic challenges and having to own up to new regulations and increased competition has left them struggling to develop new leadership. Conversely, from survey data collected, it would appear that there is recognition that leadership development is
Financial Crises, Financialization of Commodity Markets and Correlation of Agricultural Commodity Index with Precious Metal Index and S&P500

This paper tests and models time varying correlations among agricultural commodity, precious metal and S&P500 indices to uncover whether rising trend among these markets is a result of financialization of commodity markets and/or financial crisis. We particularly investigate the roles of market news, global and market volatility on the nature and dynamics of the correlation. Empirical results show that high volatility during financial crisis is the main source of high correlation of agricultural commodity index with S&P500 and precious metal index, and plays crucial role in correlation between precious metal index and S&P500, possibly due to increasing engagement of financial market investors in commodity markets during financial crisis. Hence, heterogeneous structure of commodity markets delivers better portfolio diversification opportunities during calm periods compared to turmoil periods of financial crisis.
Leadership Effect and Work Motivation to Employee's Performance with Work Satisfaction as a Mediation Variable (Study in the Denpasar City Regional Agency)

This study aims to analyze the influence of leadership, work motivation, on performance mediated job satisfaction. The increase in job satisfaction for employees certainly has an impact on the performance shown. There are differences between employees who have satisfaction with those who don't. Employees who feel satisfaction in their work tend to have a better record of attendance and adherence to regulations. These employees also usually have better achievements than employees who do not have satisfaction in their jobs. Employees who feel satisfied with their work have a greater chance to talk about positive things about their organization, help others and make their performance exceed normal estimates. The sample in this study were 58 employees of the Denpasar City Revenue Agency. Testing of model suitability through validation testing on PLS. Research results show leadership has a positive and significant effect on employee job satisfaction. Work motivation has a positive and significant effect on employee job satisfaction. Leadership has a positive and insignificant effect on employee performance. Work motivation has a positive and significant effect on employee performance. Job satisfaction has a significant positive effect on employee performance.
Decoding in Joshua: Open Source, Parsing-Based Machine Translation

Decoding in Joshua: Open Source, Parsing-Based Machine Translation We describe a scalable decoder for parsing-based machine translation. The decoder is written in Java and implements all the essential algorithms described in (Chiang, 2007) and (Li and Khudanpur, 2008b): chart-parsing, n-gram language model integration, beam- and cube-pruning, and k-best extraction. Additionally, parallel and distributed computing techniques are exploited to make it scalable. We demonstrate experimentally that our decoder is more than 30 times faster than a baseline decoder written in Python.
Risky Mortgages in a DSGE Model

This paper develops a DSGE model with housing, risky mortgages, and endogenous default. Housing investment is subject to idiosyncratic risk, and some mortgages are defaulted in equilibrium. An unanticipated increase in the standard deviation of housing investment risk produces a credit crunch where delinquencies and mortgage interest rates increase, lending is curtailed, and aggregate demand for non-durable goods falls. The economy experiences a recession as a consequence of the credit crunch. The paper compares economies that differ only in the riskiness of housing investment. Economies with lower risk are characterized by lower steady-state mortgage default rates and higher loan-to-value and leverage ratios. The macroeconomic effects of an unanticipated increase in housing investment risk are amplified in high-leverage economies. Monetary policy plays an important role in the transmission of housing investment risk, as inertial interest rate rules generate deeper output contractions.
African Immigrants in Higher Education: Racial and Ethnic Identity Development, Maintenance, and Support.

This study, part of a larger investigation of African immigrants to the United States, focused on the issues of the African immigrant's racial and ethnic identity in relation to African American counterparts and the struggle against Americanization for some of these immigrant students. Also studied were African immigrants' perceptions of themselves in the realm of education. Participants were a small sample of black African college students, who were voluntary immigrants. Personal interviews were conducted, and each participant completed a 20-question Likert-type scale. Many participants drew a clear distinction between themselves and African Americans, some because of attitudes of their parents. Immigrants generally believed there is a lack of unification among African Americans. Many immigrants expressed feelings of frustration and alienation because of a perceived lack of interest in African culture on the part of African Americans. Immigrants also often expressed disappointment at not being acknowledged as African by the African American community, but only being seen as "black. " Many immigrants perceived that whites were more welcoming, showing more interest in African cultures than did African Americans. Interview reports provide many insights into the viewpoints of African immigrants. (Contains 16 references.) (SLD) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. African Immigrants in Higher Education Racial and Ethnic Identity Development, Maintenance, and Support Chidimma Offoh University of California Santa Barbara Gevirtz Graduate School of Education PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY
Evaluation of miR-9 and miR-143 expression in urine specimens of sulfur mustard exposed patients

Abstract Sulfur mustard (SM) or mustard gas is a chemical alkylating agent that causes blisters in the skin (blister gas), burns the eyes and causes lung injury. Some major cellular pathways are involved in the damage caused by mustard gas such as NF-κb signaling, TGF-β signaling, WNT pathway, inflammation, DNA repair and apoptosis. MicroRNAs are non-coding small RNAs (19–25 nucleotides) that are involved in the regulation of gene expression and are found in two forms, extracellular and intracellular. Changes in the levels of extracellular microRNAs are directly associated with many diseases, it is thus common to study the level of extracellular microRNAs as a biomarker to determine the pathophysiologic status. In this study, 32 mustard gas injured patients and 32 healthy subjects participated. Comparative evaluation of miR-9 and miR-143 expression in urine samples was performed by Real Time PCR and Graph Pad software. The Mann Whitney t-test analysis of data showed that the expression level of miR-143 and miR-9 had a significant decrease in sulfur mustard individuals with the respective p-value of 0.0480 and 0.0272 compared to normal samples, with an imbalance of several above mentioned pathways. It seems that reducing the expression level of these genes has a very important role in the pathogenicity of mustard gas injured patients.
Timed consistency for shared distributed objects

Ordering and time are two different aspects of consistency of shared objects in a distributed system. One avoids conflicts between operations, the other addresses how quickly the effects of an operation are perceived by the rest of the system. Consistency models such as sequential consistency and causal consistency do not consider the particular time at which an operation is executed to establish a valid order among all the operations of a computation. Timed consistency models require that if a write operation is executed at time t, it must be visible to all nodes by time t +Δ. Timed consistency generalizes several existing consistency criteria and it is well suited for interactive and collaborative applications, where the action of one user must be seen by others in a timely fashion.
Compact Radio Sources and Jet-driven AGN Feedback in the Early Universe: Constraints from Integral-Field Spectroscopy

To investigate the impact of radio jets during the formation epoch of their massive host galaxies, we present an analysis of two massive, log M{sub stellar}/M{sub {circle_dot}} {approx} 10.6 and 11.3, compact radio galaxies at z = 3.5, TNJ0205+2242 and TNJ0121+1320. Their small radio sizes (R {le} 10 kpc) are most likely a sign of youth. In particular, we compare their radio properties and gas dynamics with those in well extended radio galaxies at high redshift, which show strong evidence for powerful, jet-driven outflows of significant gas masses (M {approx} 10{sup 9-10} M{sub {circle_dot}}). Our analysis combines rest-frame optical integral-field spectroscopy obtained with SINFONI on the VLT with existing radio imaging, CO(4-3) emission line spectra, and rest-frame UV longslit spectroscopy. [OIII]{lambda}5007 line emission is compact in both galaxies and lies within the region defined by the radio lobes. For TNJ0205+2242, the Ly{alpha} profile narrows significantly outside the jet radius, indicating the presence of a quiescent halo. TNJ0121+1320 has two components at a projected relative distance of {approx}10 kpc and a velocity offset of {approx}300 km s{sup -1}, measured from the [OIII]{lambda}5007 velocity map. This suggests that the fainter component is orbiting around the more massive, radio-loud galaxy. If motions aremore » gravitational, this implies a dynamical mass of 2 x 10{sup 11} M{sub {circle_dot}} for the radio-loud component. The dynamical mass, molecular gas mass measured from the CO line emission, and radio luminosity of these two compact radio galaxies imply that compact radio sources may well develop large-scale, energetic outflows as observed in extended radio galaxies, with the potential of removing significant fractions of the ISM from the host galaxy. The absence of luminous emission line gas extending beyond the radio emission in these sources agrees with the observed timescales and outflow rates in extended radio galaxies, and adds further evidence that the energetic, large-scale outflows observed in extended radio sources (Nesvadba et al. 2006) are indeed the result of influence of the radio jet. « less
Effect of Antimicrobial Use in Agricultural Animals on Drug-resistant Foodborne Campylobacteriosis in Humans: A Systematic Literature Review

Controversy continues concerning antimicrobial use in food animals and its relationship to drug-resistant infections in humans. We systematically reviewed published literature for evidence of a relationship between antimicrobial use in agricultural animals and drug-resistant foodborne campylobacteriosis in humans. Based on publications from the United States (U.S.), Canada and Denmark from 2010 to July 2014, 195 articles were retained for abstract review, 50 met study criteria for full article review with 36 retained for which data are presented. Two publications reported increase in macrolide resistance of Campylobacter coli isolated from feces of swine receiving macrolides in feed, and one of these described similar findings for tetracyclines and fluoroquinolones. A study in growing turkeys demonstrated increased macrolide resistance associated with therapeutic dosing with Tylan® in drinking water. One publication linked tetracycline-resistant C. jejuni clone SA in raw cow's milk to a foodborne outbreak in humans. No studies that identified farm antimicrobial use also traced antimicrobial-resistant Campylobacter from farm to fork. Recent literature confirms that on farm antibiotic selection pressure can increase colonization of animals with drug-resistant Campylobacter spp. but is inadequately detailed to establish a causal relationship between use of antimicrobials in agricultural animals and prevalence of drug-resistant foodborne campylobacteriosis in humans.
The Effect of Method Discovery Learning and Learning Motivation on Text Writing Skill Report on Observation Results

This study aims to describe the comparison of writing skills in the observational reports of VII grade students of 5 Kerinci Junior High School which are taught by discovery learning methods and lecture methods in general, and describe the comparison of students with high learning motivation and low learning motivated students who are taught by discovery methods learning and lecture methods, in class VII students of 5 Kerinci Junior High School, and describe the interaction between discovery learning methods and motivation in the skills of writing observation reports for seventh grade students of 5 Kerinci Junior High School. This study uses a quantitative research design that is a 2x2 factorial experiment. The population of this study was seventh grade students of 5 Kerinci Junior High School. The population of the study was 165 people. Data collected through questionnaires and tests writing text reports on observations. The results of the study stated that the discovery learning method can influence the skill of writing observation report text, and the skill of writing observational report texts of students taught with discovery learning methods of students who are highly motivated is better than low motivated students. However, after testing the hypothesis data, it turns out that there is no interaction between the discovery learning method and learning motivation in influencing writing skills. observation report text of grade VII students of State Middle School 5 Kerinci. This finding shows that between discovery learning methods and motivation is not interdependence between each other in influencing the writing of texts from observation reports.
SARLock: SAT attack resistant logic locking

Logic locking is an Intellectual Property (IP) protection technique that thwarts IP piracy, hardware Trojans, reverse engineering, and IC overproduction. Researchers have taken multiple attempts in breaking logic locking techniques and recovering its secret key. A Boolean Satisfiability (SAT) based attack has been recently presented that breaks all the existing combinational logic locking techniques. In this paper, we develop a lightweight countermeasure against this and other attacks that aim at gradually pruning the key search space. Our proposed logic locking technique, referred to as SARLock, maximizes the required number of distinguishing input patterns to recover the secret key. SARLock thwarts the SAT attack by rendering the attack effort exponential in the number of bits in the secret key, while its overhead grows only linearly.
Cysteine Modifications in the Pathogenesis of ALS

Several proteins are found misfolded and aggregated in sporadic and genetic forms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). These include superoxide dismutase (SOD1), transactive response DNA-binding protein (TDP-43), fused in sarcoma/translocated in liposarcoma protein (FUS/TLS), p62, vasolin-containing protein (VCP), Ubiquilin-2 and dipeptide repeats produced by unconventional RAN-translation of the GGGGCC expansion in C9ORF72. Up to date, functional studies have not yet revealed a common mechanism for the formation of such diverse protein inclusions. Consolidated studies have demonstrated a fundamental role of cysteine residues in the aggregation process of SOD1 and TDP43, but disturbance of protein thiols homeostatic factors such as protein disulfide isomerases (PDI), glutathione, cysteine oxidation or palmitoylation might contribute to a general aberration of cysteine residues proteostasis in ALS. In this article we review the evidence that cysteine modifications may have a central role in many, if not all, forms of this disease.
Teacher Pay and Teacher Aptitude

Can changes in teacher pay encourage more able individuals to enter the teaching profession? So far, studies of the impact of pay on the aptitude distribution of teachers have provided mixed evidence on the extent to which altering teacher salaries represents a feasible solution to the teacher quality problem. One possible reason is that these studies have been unable to separate labor supply effects from labor demand effects. To address this, I model the relationship between current salaries and the academic aptitude of future teachers (those entering teacher education courses). Using a unique dataset of test scores for every individual admitted into an Australian university between 1989 and 2003, I explore how interstate variation in average pay or pay dispersion affects the decision to enter teacher education courses. A 1 percent rise in the salary of a starting teacher boosts the average aptitude of students entering teacher education courses by 0.6 percentile ranks, with the effect being strongest for those at the median. This result is robust to instrumenting for teacher pay using uniform salary schedules for public schools. I also find some evidence that more pay dispersion in the non-teaching sector lowers the aptitude of potential teachers.
Factors associated with difficult neuraxial blockade

Spinal and epidural blocks are common practice in anesthesia and are usually used for various surgical or endoscopic procedures. Correct identification and puncture of the epidural or subarachnoid space determine the success or failure of the technique. Multiple attempts and difficult access to the epidural or subarachnoid space is a frequent problem in operating theaters and may be hazardous due to a number of possible acute or long-term complications. In addition, multiple punctures are associated with increased pain and patient discomfort. The aim of this study was to determine the factors associated with a difficult spinal or epidural block, dependent on the patient (age, gender, height, weight, body mass index, and quality of anatomical landmarks), the technique (type of blockade, needle gauge, and patient positioning), and the provider (level of experience). The study was conducted at the Department of Anesthesiology, Resuscitation, and Intensive Care Unit of University Hospital Osijek (Osijek, Croatia) and it included 316 patients who underwent a range of different surgical procedures in neuraxial blocks. There were 219 cases of first puncture success, while the overall success of neuraxial blocks was 97.5%. Five patients (1.6%) were submitted to the alternative technique, ie, general anesthesia. In three patients (0.9%), neuraxial block was partial so they required supplementation of intravenous anesthetics and analgesics. Furthermore, it was found that first puncture success was associated with younger age (P=0.007), lower weight (P=0.032), and body mass index (P=0.020). Spine deformity (P=0.015), poor identification of interspinous space (P=0.005), recumbent patient position during the puncture (P=0.001), and use of a paramedian approach were associated with first puncture failure. Adequate preoperative prediction of difficulties can help to reduce the incidence of multiple attempts, rendering the technique more acceptable and less risky to the patient, and consequently leading to improvement of medical care quality. The attending anesthesiologist should consider an alternative technique (general anesthesia or peripheral nerve block) for a patient if certain difficulties can be predicted.
Essays on crime and search frictions

In this dissertation, I investigate how government policies influence an individual’s decision to search for and accept a job or crime opportunity. Chapter 1 looks at how long it takes for released inmates to find a job, and when they find a job, how their incarceration rate changes. The purpose is to predict the effects of a successful job placement program. An on-the-job search model with crime is used to model criminal behavior, derive the estimates and analyze different types of policies. The results show the unemployed are incarcerated twice as fast as the employed and take on average four and a half months to find a job. Combining these results, it is demonstrated that reducing the average unemployment spell of criminals by two months reduces crime and recidivism by more than five percent. Chapter 2 incorporates crime into a search and matching model of the labor market. All workers, irrespective of their labor force status, can commit crimes and the employment contract is determined optimally. The model is used to study, analytically and quantitatively, the effects of various labor market and crime policies such as unemployment insurance, hiring subsidies and the duration of jail sentences. For example, wage subsidies reduce unemployment, the crime rates of employed and unemployed workers, and improve society’s welfare. Chapter 3 investigates a market where wholesalers search for retailers and retailers search for consumers. I show how the timing, targets and types of anti-drug policies matter. For instance, supply falls if the likelihood of apprehension rises when a network is established. Alternatively, if the cost of apprehension rises for wholesale