Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Good and Bad Banks? Governance, Human Capital of Top Managers and Performance

Spanish savings banks (Cajas) and commercial banks have experienced very different destinies. Before the crisis both types of banks shared, almost equally, most of the financial Spanish market. Cajas were performing well. Nowadays, the soundest Cajas have been forced to transform themselves into commercial banks, while the poor-performing ones have been either absorbed by rivals or rescued by the Government. Meanwhile Spanish commercial banks have overcome the crisis reasonably well. Our goal is to assess if such different outcomes are related to governance practices and the human capital of banks’ top managers. Some authors have pointed out that neither the formal governance institutions (i.e. the composition of the different governance bodies), nor the real governance (i.e. the role played by politicians) can explain these differences. We make use of an extended period data, covering both a boom period and a period of crisis, and we collect further information on chairmen’s human capital (previous banking experience, formal education, and political background) to get a better grasp of these important issues. History seems to matter and the use of a better organizational capital of the former chairmen, and the stakeholder composition can help us to get clearer results.
Organizational Commitment of Teachers and Role of Their Employment Traits in the Context of Higher Education Institutions of Pakistan

Employment traits have been studied having an impact over the organization commitment of the teachers. However, the scholars have inconsistent views regarding the relative strength of different traits groups such as Experience, Education, Type of Organizations, Chairpersonship, Salary and Designation over the commitment. In existing study, Meyer and Allen (1984-1997) “Three Component Model” was employed for collection of commitment profile of 312 both Public and Private faculty members of Institute of Management Sciences of Pakistan. Test of significance both t and ANOVA was applied and results of the statistical test divulge that most of the demographic variable like (experience, education, Salary etc.) causes a variation in the mean of commitment of the faculty members of Higher Education Institutions of Pakistan.
Abnormal haemorheology, endothelial function and thrombogenesis in relation to hypertension in acute (ictus < 12 h) stroke patients: the West Birmingham Stroke Project

While the blood vessels are exposed to high pressures in hypertension, the main complications of hypertension (stroke and myocardial infarction) are paradoxically thrombotic rather than haemorrhagic. To investigate abnormalities of haemorheology (plasma viscosity, fibrinogen), endothelial dysfunction (von Willebrand factor), platelet activation (soluble P-selectin) and thrombogenesis (plasminogen activator inhibitor and fibrin D-dimer) in stroke and the effects of concurrent hypertension, we studied 86 consecutive patients (58 male, 28 female) aged < 75 years (mean age ± SD, 64.2 ± 9.2 years) with acute stroke (ictus < 12 h). Baseline blood tests on admission were compared with 46 ‘hospital controls’ (patients with uncomplicated essential hypertension; mean age ± SD, 65.9 ± 3.8 years) and 24 healthy normotensive controls (mean age ± SD, 65 ± 14.0 years). Further comparisons were made between stroke patients with hypertension (systolic blood pressure > 160 mmHg and/or diastolic > 90 mmHg) on admission and those without hypertension. Mean plasma viscosity (one-way analysis of variance, P = 0.026) and fibrinogen levels (P = 0.016) were significantly higher in stroke patients and hospital controls, when compared with healthy controls. The von Willebrand factor, plasminogen activator inhibitor soluble P-selectin and fibrin D-dimer levels were highest in the acute stroke patients, intermediate in hospital controls and lowest in healthy controls (all P ⩽ 0.001). There were no significant differences in measured indices of haemorheology, endothelial dysfunction and thrombogenesis between the three stroke pathological subtypes (ischaemic/thrombotic, haemorrhagic or transient ischaemic attack). There were also no significant differences in the measured parameters for stroke patients with or without systolic blood pressure > 160 mmHg or diastolic blood pressures > 90 mmHg using clinical (manual) readings or mean daytime or night-time ambulatory blood pressure monitoring recordings. There were no statistically significant differences between the measured parameters on admission and at 3 months follow-up in 26 patients (all P = not significant). Plasma viscosity was significantly correlated with mean daytime systolic blood pressure (r = 0.314, P = 0.021) and mean night-time systolic blood pressure (r = 0.309, P = 0.025). This study of hypertension and haemostasis in acute stroke has demonstrated clear abnormalities of haemorheology, endothelial dysfunction, platelet activation and thrombogenesis, which do not appear to be affected by the height of the blood pressure or the presence of hypertension. This is despite the known hypercoagulable state found in hypertension and the relationship of haemostatic abnormalities to vascular complications.
Lumpy Consumer Durables, Market Power, and Endogenous Business Cycles

This paper examines the role of lumpy consumer durables and market power in generating endogenous cycles which seem to be consistent with the facts. When goods are durable, past consumption choices determine the current market size which consists of consumers who have not purchased the good previously, and who have the income to make their potential demand effective. Larger past sales, ceteris paribus, thus naturally result in a smaller current market size and income. In this manner, the seeds of a downturn are sown in an upturn.
Sustainable Growth under Inflation

pany is unable or unwilling to raise new equity, there exists only one growth rate in sales which is consistent with the maintenance of certain operating and financial ratios. This is the company's sustainable growth rate. When sales increase at a rate different from the sustainable growth rate, one ratio, or a combination of them, must change. Frequently, this means that companies must increase leverage to finance rapid growth. Nominal sales growth can come from two sources: increasing physical volume, and increasing prices. The earlier paper considered a case in which current assets increase in proportion to nominal increases in sales, concluding that inflation can exacerbate a company's sustainable growth problems. When the objective is to maintain a stable capital structure, as defined by the ratio of the total book value of liabilities to the book value of equity, inflationary growth substitutes in large part for real growth. So, if in the absence of inflation a company's real sustainable growth rate is 15%, the comparable figure in the presence of 10% inf tion might be only 8%. This s a sobering conclusion, for it implies that inflation may have a substantial depressing effect on economic growth. Companies experiencing difficulty financing growth in the absence of inflation will find that inflation forces them to choose between increased leverage or reduced real growth. To the extent that companies reduce real growth in response to falling sustainable growth rates, economic growth will suffer. This is essentially Lintner's message in [5]. Johnson [4] extends my early work by distinguishing between the behavior of current liabilities and long-term liabilities under inflation. Johnson looks at a case where current liabilities vary with nominal sales, but where management constrains long-term liabilities to be a constant fraction of the book value of equity. She finds that in general the real sustainable growth rate under these conditions exceeds the one I found, and that in certain cases the real sustainable growth rate can be independent of the rate of inflation, or even vary inversely with it. The Johnson paper suffers from three problems. Just as I did, Johnson ignores the impact of inflation
Nonlinearities in real exchange rate determination: do African exchange rates follow a random walk?

In this article, we aim at modelling the long-run behaviour of the Real Effective Exchange Rates (REER) for a pool of African countries. Not much attention has been paid to this group of countries, in particular, to the existence of nonlinearities in the long-run path of such a variable. Controlling for two sources of nonlinearities, i.e. asymmetric adjustment to equilibrium and nonlinear deterministic trends allows us to gain some insight about the behaviour of the African REER. We find that these sources of nonlinearities help us to explain the apparent unit root behaviour found applying linear unit root tests for most of the countries.
Exchange rate misalignments: a comparison of China today against recent historical experiences of Japan, Germany, Singapore and Taiwan

The familiar claim of Chinese currency manipulation is generally asserted without reference to empirical evidence. To investigate the legitimacy of the claim, we ask if the undervalued misalignment found in the real effective exchange rate (REER) of the Chinese renminbi (RMB) over the past decade has any recent historical precedents. Four cases are examined: the Japanese yen, the Deutschmark (DM), the Singapore dollar and the new Taiwan dollar. Panel-based misalignment estimates of the REER of the four currencies are obtained using quarterly data from the late 1970s to the early 2000s. Our estimates suggest that there are precedents to the recent misalignment of the RMB in terms of magnitude, duration or breadth of currency coverage, and that a net build-up in foreign assets does not necessarily result in currency misalignment. In addition to finding little empirical justification for the claim of Chinese currency manipulation, we note that REER misalignment runs a risk of propagating inflation in the home economy.
On the nature and use of randomly amplified DNA from Staphylococcus aureus

Various DNA-based methods have been introduced to genetically type Staphylococcus aureus strains but not a single technique is universally applicable. In order to search for DNA probes suitable for differentiating strains, randomly amplified polymorphic DNA patterns were generated for 243 S. aureus strains and a single isolate of Staphylococcus intermedius. All fingerprints were examined for unique amplicons, and the nature of 42 of these DNA fragments was investigated. Partial DNA sequences were determined, and several homologies were discovered with known S. aureus sequences (plasmid pSH6 DNA with insertion sequences, agrA and agrB sequences, hld genes, the gene for 23S rRNA, the lysyl tRNA synthetase gene, and the threonyl tRNA synthetase gene) and with genes from other species (Haemophilus influenzae bexA and Bacillus subtilis spoF and ctrA). Thirty fragments were of previously unknown origin. In Southern blots containing Eco RI-digested DNA from S. aureus strains and the S. intermedius strain, nine probes demonstrated the capacity to differentiate strains on the basis of the presence or absence of the sequence element in the staphylococcal genome involved. The remainder of the probes displayed restriction fragment length polymorphisms (n = 12), hybridized in a homogeneously positive fashion (n = 13) or hybridized only with their source strains (n = 8) (four of the latter were specific to S. intermedius). Three of the nine strain-specific probes were overlapping, and two of the others were found to display a high level of inconsistency among epidemiologically related strains. Thus, five strain-specific probes remained that, in a 5-digit typing system, accurately distinguished epidemiologically related and unrelated strains of S. aureus. We conclude that application of strain-specific DNA probes, selected on the basis of differing randomly amplified polymorphic DNA patterns, promises to become a technically simple, robust, and reproducible tool that may significantly facilitate the study of the epidemiology of S. aureus infections.
No evidence for astrogliosis in brains of schizophrenic patients. A post‐mortem study

Schizophrenia is clinically and neuropsychologically characterized by severe cognitive and functional impairment suggesting the presence of a neurodegenerative process in the brains of affected individuals. A variety of neuroanatomical changes have been described such as loss and disorientation of neurons in grey and white matter and cortical atrophy. However, the neuropathological basis for schizophrenia is still unclear. In the present study we monitored the density of GFAP‐positive astrocytes in brains of 33 schizophrenic patients and 26 healthy controls. Both grey matter (entorhinal cortex and subiculum) and white matter (premotor cortex, subventricular zone of the third ventricle and next to inferior horn) structures were measured bilaterally. The overall finding was that there is no evidence for increased astrogliosis in brains of schizophrenic patients vs healthy controls. Therefore, degeneration is unlikely to be the main neuropathological mechanism in schizophrenic brains.
Using Monthly Indicators to Predict Quarterly GDP

The authors build a model for predicting current-quarter real gross domestic product (GDP) growth using anywhere from zero to three months of indicators from that quarter. Their equation links quarterly Canadian GDP growth with monthly data on retail sales, housing starts, consumer confidence, total hours worked, and U.S. industrial production. The authors use time-series methods to forecast missing observations of the monthy indicators; this allows them to assess the performance of the method under various amounts of monthly information. The authors' model forecasts GDP growth as early as the first month of the reference quarter, and its accuracy generally improves with incremental monthly data releases. The final forecast from the model, available five to six weeks before the release of the National Income and Expenditure Accounts, delivers improved accuracy relative to those of several macroeconomic models used for short-term forecasting of Canadian output. The implications of real-time versus pseudo-real-time forecasting are investigated, and the authors find that the choice between real-time and latestavailable data affects the performance ranking among alternative models.
The E5 oncoprotein of human papillomavirus type 16 inhibits the acidification of endosomes in human keratinocytes

The human papillomavirus type 16 E5 oncoprotein possesses mitogenic activity that acts synergistically with epidermal growth factor (EGF) in human keratinocytes and inhibits the degradation of the EGF receptor in endosomal compartments after ligand-stimulated endocytosis. One potential explanation for these observations is that E5 inhibits the acidification of endosomes. This may be mediated through the 16-kDa component of the vacuolar proton-ATPase, since animal and human papillomavirus E5 proteins bind this subunit protein. Using a ratio-imaging technique to determine endosomal pH, we found that the acidification of endosomes in E5-expressing keratinocytes was delayed at least fourfold compared with normal human keratinocytes and endosomes in some cells never completely acidified. Furthermore, E5 expression increased the resistance of keratinocytes to protein synthesis inhibition by diphtheria toxin, a process dependent on efficient endosomal acidification. Finally, artificially inhibiting endosomal acidification with chloroquine during the endocytosis of EGF receptors in keratinocytes demonstrated many of the same effects as the expression of human papillomavirus type 16 E5, including prolonged retention of undegraded EGF receptors in intracellular vesicles.
The triangular supply chain relationship: labour dispatch agencies, hospitality sector, and flexible workers: the Taiwan experience

Much has been written on the nature of labour flexibility in the Western context and the extent to which it benefits employers in terms securing them cost-effective operations and flexible workers by offering them contingent work arrangements. Absent in this debate has been any examination of the nature and extent of labour flexibility in the non-Western context. This article aims to broaden the debate and examines the current application of labour flexibility practices and its resultant implications in the novel context of Taiwan – with a particular focus on the hospitality industry. The choice of hospitality industry is in line with the recent CEPD's1 call for labour dispatch agencies to be considered as a promotional service industry among 12 categories of services. Data derived from focus group studies and individual in-depth interviews at four hotels and their partner labour dispatch agencies elicited the triangular relationship among labour dispatch agencies, client hotels, and agency workers. In contrast to previous similar research of the Western context where labour flexibility was primarily seen to secure lower labour costs, it was found that tight managerial control over the flexible workforce plays a crucial role in adopting contingent work arrangements. Moreover, the results indicate that flexible workers are regarded as a cost rather than being considered as the rhetoric of human capital.
Structural Damage Detection with Automatic Feature‐Extraction through Deep Learning

Structural damage detection is still a challenging problem owing to the difficulty of extracting damage‐sensitive and noise‐robust features from structure response. This article presents a novel damage detection approach to automatically extract features from low‐level sensor data through deep learning. A deep convolutional neural network is designed to learn features and identify damage locations, leading to an excellent localization accuracy on both noise‐free and noisy data set, in contrast to another detector using wavelet packet component energy as the input feature. Visualization of the features learned by hidden layers in the network is implemented to get a physical insight into how the network works. It is found the learned features evolve with the depth from rough filters to the concept of vibration mode, implying the good performance results from its ability to learn essential characteristics behind the data.
Effects of varying hematocrit on intestinal oxygen uptake in neonatal lambs.

We chronically catheterized 15 newborn lambs (9.5 +/- 2.8 days) and measured intestinal blood flow (Qi) by the radionuclide microsphere technique at hematocrit levels ranging from 10 to 55%. Seven animals were made progressively anemic and eight polycythemic by means of exchange transfusions. Using the Fick principle, we calculated intestinal oxygen delivery (Di o2), oxygen consumption (Vi o2), and oxygen extraction. Initial base-line values were Qi = 195.5 ml . min-1 . 100 g intestine-1, Di o2 = 22.1 ml . min-1 . 100 g-1, Vi o2 = 4.8 ml . min-1 . 100 g-1, and O2 extraction = 22.5%. As the hematocrit was lowered, Di o2 decreased and O2 extraction increased and vice versa when the hematocrit was raised. Vi o2 remained constant, but Qi did not correlate with changes in hematocrit. However, intestinal blood flow, as a percent distribution of total blood flow, decreased with lower hematocrit levels. At no time was there any evidence of anaerobic metabolism as measured by excess lactate production. Our data indicate that the intestines of neonatal lambs are capable of maintaining their metabolic needs over a wide range of oxygen availability induced by a changing hematocrit. The primary mechanism is through alteration of oxygen extraction. Within the range of our experiments, no critically low oxygen availability was attained at which anaerobic metabolism became significant.
Predictors of Heavy Episodic Drinking and Weekly Drunkenness Among Immigrant Latinos in North Carolina

Few studies have examined correlates of heavy drinking among rural immigrant Latino men. This analysis identified correlates of typical week drunkenness and past 30-day heavy episodic drinking, within a sample of immigrant Latino men in rural North Carolina (n = 258). In the bivariate analyses, Mexican birth, entering the United States as an adult, and year-round employment were associated with increased odds of typical week drunkenness, and higher acculturation and affiliation with a religion with strict prohibitions against drinking alcohol were associated with lower odds of typical week drunkenness. Being older, Mexican birth, entering the United States as an adult, and lower acculturation were associated with increased odds of heavy episodic drinking, and affiliation with a religion with strict prohibitions against drinking alcohol and completing high school were associated with decreased odds of heavy episodic drinking. In multivariable modeling, only religious affiliation was associated with typical week drunkenness. Mexican birth, entering the United States as an adult, and lower acculturation were associated with increased odds of heavy episodic drinking, and affiliation with a religion with strict prohibitions against drinking alcohol and completing high school were associated with lower odds of heavy episodic drinking. The health of minority men in the United States has been neglected, and immigrant Latino men comprise a particularly vulnerable population. This analysis provides initial data on some factors associated with heavy drinking within a population about which little is known. Future studies should examine moderating or mediating factors between age, acculturation, religiosity, and heavy drinking that might be targets for behavioral interventions.
Generation of Bessel Beams by Two-Dimensional Antenna Arrays Using Sub-Sampled Distributions

Bessel beams are proposed as a practical way to generate well collimated and confined beams at mm-waves or THz for quasi-optical applications. To achieve that, we propose the use of two-dimensional antenna arrays as realizable launchers. Truncated Bessel beams with a main lobe width of few wavelengths (λ) can propagate over several hundreds of λ if the antenna aperture is electrically large. Because such a large aperture would require a large number of antenna elements, sub-sampling distributions are proposed in this work. It is found that arrays with spacings of approximately 4λ generate high quality beams with very low amplitude oscillations over distances of about 300λ in vacuum. The optimal excitation function for such arrays greatly departs from the Bessel one. It is synthesized with an analytical method based on a least mean square error minimization. The synthesis method is scalar, but the pseudo-Bessel beams obtained are vectorial and linearly polarized. Theoretical predictions are confirmed by full-wave simulations using Ansoft Designer.