Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Financial Development and Economic Growth: Views and Agenda

The author argues that the preponderance of theoretical reasoning and empirical evidence suggests a positive first order relationship between financial development and economic growth. There is evidence that the financial development level is a good predictor of future rates of economic growth, capital accumulation, and technological change. Moreover, cross-country, case-style, industry level and firm-level analysis document extensive periods when financial development crucially affects the speed and pattern of economic development. The author explains what the financial system does and how it affects, and is affected by, economic growth. Theory suggests that financial instruments, markets and institutions arise to mitigate the effects of information and transaction costs. A growing literature shows that differences in how well financial systems reduce information and transaction costs influence savings rates, investment decisions, technological innovation, and long-run growth rates. A less developed theoretical literature shows how changes in economic activity can influence financial systems. The author advocates a functional approach to understanding the role of financial systems in economic growth. This approach focuses on the ties between growth and the quality of the functions provided by the financial systems. The author discourages a narrow focus on one financial instrument, or a particular institution. Instead, the author addresses the more comprehensive question: What is the relationship between financial structure and the functioning of the financial system?
Strong Evolution in the Luminosity-Velocity Relation at z ≳ 1?

We present a method for constraining the evolution of the galaxy luminosity-velocity (LV) relation in hierarchical scenarios of structure formation. The comoving number density of dark matter halos with circular velocities of 200 km s-1 is predicted in observationally favored cold dark matter (CDM) cosmologies to be nearly constant over the redshift range 0 ≲ z ≲ 5. Any observed evolution in the density of bright galaxies implies in turn a corresponding evolution in the LV relation. We consider several possible forms of evolution for the zero point of the LV relation and predict the corresponding evolution in galaxy number density. The Hubble Deep Field suggests a large deficit of bright (MV < -19) galaxies at 1.4 ≲ z ≲ 2. If taken at face value, this implies a dimming of the LV zero point by roughly 2 mag. Deep, wide-field, near-IR selected surveys will provide more secure measurements to compare with our predictions.
Gadonanotubes as new high-performance MRI contrast agents

Gadolinium-based carbon nanostructures are poised to make a significant impact as advanced contrast agents (CAs) for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in medicine. This paper reviews and forecasts gadonanotubes as synthons for the design of high-performance MRI CA probes with efficacies up to 100 times greater than current clinical CAs. This level of performance is vital for achieving the goal of cellular and molecular imaging with MRI. These new materials will be useful for in vivo MRI applications as circulating drug nanocapsules because of their low toxicities, extremely high relaxivities, and potential for cellular targeting and induced cell death by magnetic hyperthermia.
Chemopreventive efficacy of arylalkyl isothiocyanates and N-acetylcysteine for lung tumorigenesis in Fischer rats.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of three promising sulfur-containing compounds, 6-phenylhexyl isothiocyanate (PHITC), phenethyl isothiocyanate (PEITC), and N-acetylcysteine (NAC), as chemopreventive agents in a long-term bioassay for lung tumorigenesis in F344 rats. PEITC occurs as a constituent of certain cruciferous vegetables, PHITC is a synthetic homologue, and NAC is an endogenous substance. Male F344 rats were treated with the tobacco-specific nitrosamine 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone (NNK) by s.c. injection at a dose of 1.5 mg/kg body weight three times weekly for 20 weeks. This dose regimen induced a 67% tumor incidence in the lung, a major target organ of NNK. PHITC or PEITC administered in the diet for 22 weeks, a period covering from 1 week before to 1 week after the NNK treatment, exhibited significant inhibition of lung tumorigenesis induced by NNK. The lung tumor incidences in the NNK-treated groups, fed a diet containing 4 mmol/kg (876 ppm) or 2 mmol/kg (438 ppm) PHITC, were 24 and 19% and were 9 and 17% in groups fed PEITC at concentrations of 8 mmol/kg (1304 ppm) or 4 mmol/kg (652 ppm), respectively. In contrast to isothiocyanates, NAC given in the diet at 80 mmol/kg (13056 ppm) or 40 mmol/kg (6528 ppm) exerted no inhibitory effects on the NNK-induced lung tumorigenesis. At the dose studied, NNK did not induce liver and pancreatic tumors in the treated animals, but a significant increase of nasal cavity tumor incidence was observed in the NNK-treated group. However, none of the test compounds showed any effect on the tumorigenesis in this tissue. This study demonstrated that PHITC and PEITC were potent chemopreventive agents for the NNK-induced lung tumorigenesis in F344 rats, whereas NAC was not active at all. These results support further evaluation of these compounds in chemoprevention studies.
The evaluation of principals and the improvement of public elementary schools

THE EVALUATION OF PRINCIPALS AND THE IMPROVEMENT OF PUBLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS SEPTEMBER 2003 CAROL ANN JOHNSON WILLIS, B.S., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST M.S.Ed., BANK STREET COLLEGE Ed.D. , UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Robert L. Sinclair The purpose of this study is to determine how elementary principals are evaluated and the extent to which evaluation is considered a means for assisting elementary school principals to improve student learning. The four major research questions guiding this study are: What evaluation procedures do selected public schools use to evaluate the effectiveness of elementary school principals? What similarities and differences in procedures do selected school systems use to evaluate the effectiveness of elementary school principals? What ways do teachers in selected public schools use to evaluate elementary school principals? How are evaluations of elementary school principals in selected public schools used to improve student learning? The review of research and literature undertaken for this study described contemporary principal evaluation procedures and examined the role of parents, students, and teachers in the evaluation of elementary school principals. Data were gathered about principal evaluation procedures in interviews with fourteen public elementary school principals in demographically diverse schools in the state of Massachusetts. A content analysis of the principal evaluation procedures found
Multi-Family Businesses — An Exploratory Study of Trust and Intergroup Relations

Multi-family businesses represent a rare phenomenon in the family business environment. With limited research to draw upon and intergroup theory suggesting multiple families that are in business together should be in constant conflict, this dissertation sets out to examine why some multi-family businesses are able to avoid or manage intergroup conflicts, and how multi-family businesses can work harmoniously. Utilizing a qualitative, grounded theory-influenced approach, the thesis develops a theoretical understanding that started with the data and then intertwined the empirically derived observations with the extant literature to formulate a model focusing on trust within and between families. The dissertation is structured as follows. First, the introduction will define multi-family businesses and explain the reason for this dissertation as well as highlighting the contributions of the dissertation. Second, a review of the literature will examine family business literature, intergroup related literature and trust literature. Third, a detailed explanation is given for the methodology that was used and also how it was used. Fourth, the results are presented by means of a model that emerged from the data with quotations from the data supporting the model presented. Fifth, a discussion is presented comparing and contrasting the results of this dissertation to extant research in the areas of family business, intergroup relations and trust. Limitations of this thesis, future research implications as well as some practical applications of this dissertation are also discussed. Lastly, a concluding section briefly recaps this dissertation and its contributions to the areas of family business, intergroup relations and trust.
Is it all about the self? The effect of self-control depletion on ultimatum game proposers

In the ultimatum-game, as in many real-life social exchange situations, the selfish motive to maximize own gains conflicts with fairness preferences. In the present study we manipulated the availability of cognitive-control resources for ultimatum-game proposers to test whether preference for fairness is a deliberative cognitive-controlled act or an automatic act. In two experiments we found that a shortage of cognitive control (ego depletion) led proposers in the ultimatum game (UG) to propose significantly more equal split offers than non-depleted proposers. These results can be interpreted as resulting from an automatic concern for fairness, or from a greater fear of rejection, which would be in line with a purely self-interested response. To separate these competing explanations, in Experiment 2 we conducted a dictator-game in which the responder cannot reject the offer. In contrast to the increased fairness behavior demonstrated by depleted ultimatum-game proposers, we found that depleted dictator-game allocators chose the equal split significantly less often than non-depleted allocators. These results indicate that fairness preferences are automatically driven among UG proposers. The automatic fair behavior, however, at least partially reflects concern about self-interest gain. We discuss different explanations for these results.
Signaling and Inhibits Human Tumor Growth Growth Factor I Receptor Blocks Ligand-Dependent A Fully Human Monoclonal Antibody to the Insulin-Like Updated

The insulin-like growth factor I receptor (IGF-IR) is overexpressed in many diverse tumor types and is a critical signaling molecule for tumor cell proliferation and survival. Therapeutic strategies targeting the IGF-IR may therefore be effective broad-spectrum anticancer agents. Through screening of a Fab phage display library, we have generated a fully human antibody (A12) that binds to the IGF-IR with high affinity (4.11 10 11 M) and inhibits ligand binding with an IC50 of 0.6–1 nM. Antibody-mediated blockade of ligand binding to the IGF-IR inhibited downstream signaling of the two major insulin-like growth factor (IGF) pathways, mitogen-activated protein kinase and phosphatidylinositol 3 kinase/Akt, in MCF7 human breast cancer cells. As a result, the mitogenic and proliferative potential of IGF-I and IGF-II were significantly reduced. A12 did not block insulin binding to the insulin receptor but could block binding to atypical IGF-IR in MCF7 cells. In addition, A12 was shown to induce IGF-IR internalization and degradation on specific binding to tumor cells, resulting in a significant reduction in cell surface receptor density. In xenograft tumor models in vivo, IGF-IR blockade by A12 was shown to occur rapidly, resulting in significant growth inhibition of breast, renal, and pancreatic tumors. Histological analysis of tumor sections demonstrated a marked increase in apoptotic tumor cells in antibody-treated animals. These results demonstrate that A12 possesses strong antitumor activity in vitro and in vivo and may therefore be an effective therapeutic candidate for the treatment of cancers that are dependent on IGF-IR signaling for growth and survival.
Crowdfunding Success: A Perspective from Social Media and E-Commerce

Crowdfunding as a new way of financing in the web 2.0 has increased over the last years, but only little is known how project initiators increase their chances of successful fundraising through on-page and off-page communication activities. Using a dataset of 740 projects published on one of the dominant crowdfunding platforms in Switzerland, we test communication-related determinants of fundraising success in terms of (1) number of donations (2) average amount of donations and (3) total campaign success. Our results show that high media richness in the project presentation and a high frequency of project updates leverage fundraising success. In contrast, no beneficial effects of the simple application of social media channels could be observed. The implications for research on crowdfunding and practice are discussed.
E-Commerce Product Recommendation Agents: Use, Characteristics, and Impact

Recommendation agents (RAs) are software agents that elicit the interests or preferences of individual consumers for products, either explicitly or implicitly, and make recommendations accordingly. RAs have the potential to support and improve the quality of the decisions consumers make when searching for and selecting products online. They can reduce the information overload facing consumers, as well as the complexity of online searches. Prior research on RAs has focused mostly on developing and evaluating different underlying algorithms that generate recommendations. This paper instead identifies other important aspects of RAs, namely RA use, RA characteristics, provider credi'r, and user-RA interaction, which influence users' decision-making processes and outcomes, as well as their evaluation of RAs. It goes beyond generalized models, such as TAM, and identifies the RA-specific features, such as RA input, process, and output design characteristics, that affect users' evaluations, including their assessments of the usefulness and ease-of-use of RA applications. Based on a review of existing literature on e-commerce RAs, this paper develops a conceptual model with 28 propositions derived from five theoretical perspectives. The propositions help answer the two research questions: (1) How do RA use, RA characteristics, and other factors influence consumer decision making processes and outcomes? (2) How do RA use, RA characteristics, and other factors influence users' evaluations of RAs? By identifying the critical gaps between what we know and what we need to know, this paper identifies potential areas of future research for scholars. It also provides advice to information systems practitioners concerning the effective design and development of RAs.
Market, Hierarchy, and Trust: The Knowledge Economy and the Future of Capitalism

Recent conceptualizations of trends in the structure of U.S. industry have focused on the relative importance of markets, hierarchies, and hybrid intermediate forms. This paper advances the discussion by distinguishing three ideal-typical forms of organization and their corresponding coordination mechanisms: market/price, hierarchy/authority, and community/trust. Different institutions combine the three forms/mechanisms in different proportions. Economic and organizational theory have shown that, compared to trust, price and authority are relatively ineffective means of dealing with knowledge-based assets. Therefore, as knowledge becomes increasingly important in our economy, we should expect high-trust institutional forms to proliferate.A review of trends in employment relations, interdivisional relations, and interfirm relations finds evidence suggesting that the effect of growing knowledge-intensity may indeed be a trend toward greater reliance on trust. There is also reason to believe that the form of trust most effective in this context is a distinctively modern kind--"reflective trust"--as opposed to traditionalistic, "blind" trust. Such a trend to reflective trust appears to threaten the privileges of currently dominant social actors, and these actors' resistance, in combination with the complex interdependencies between price, authority, and trust mechanisms, imparts a halting character to the trend. But the momentum of this trend nevertheless appears to be self-reinforcing, which suggests that it may ultimately challenge the foundations of our capitalist form of society while simultaneously creating the foundations of a new, postcapitalist form.
Four Tomato FLOWERING LOCUS T-Like Proteins Act Antagonistically to Regulate Floral Initiation

The transition from vegetative growth to floral meristems in higher plants is regulated through the integration of internal cues and environmental signals. We were interested to examine the molecular mechanism of flowering in the day-neutral plant tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) and the effect of environmental conditions on tomato flowering. Analysis of the tomato genome uncovered 13 PEBP (phosphatidylethanolamine-binding protein) genes, and found six of them were FT-like genes which named as SlSP3D, SlSP6A, SlSP5G, SlSP5G1, SlSP5G2, and SlSP5G3. Six FT-like genes were analyzed to clarify their functional roles in flowering using transgenic and expression analyses. We found that SlSP5G, SlSP5G2, and SlSP5G3 proteins were floral inhibitors whereas only SlSP3D/SFT (SINGLE FLOWER TRUSS) was a floral inducer. SlSP5G was expressed at higher levels in long day (LD) conditions compared to short day (SD) conditions while SlSP5G2 and SlSP5G3 showed the opposite expression patterns. The silencing of SlSP5G by VIGS (Virus induced gene silencing) resulted in tomato plants that flowered early under LD conditions and the silencing of SlSP5G2 and SlSP5G3 led to early flowering under SD conditions. The higher expression levels of SlSP5G under LD conditions were not seen in phyB1 mutants, and the expression levels of SlSP5G2 and SlSP5G3 were increased in phyB1 mutants under both SD and LD conditions compared to wild type plants. These data suggest that SlSP5G, SlSP5G2, and SlSP5G3 are controlled by photoperiod, and the different expression patterns of FT-like genes under different photoperiod may contribute to tomato being a day neutral plant. In addition, PHYB1 mediate the expression of SlSP5G, SlSP5G2, and SlSP5G3 to regulate flowering in tomato.
Functional Connectivity Anomalies in Adolescents with Psychotic Symptoms

Background Previous magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) research suggests that, prior to the onset of psychosis, high risk youths already exhibit brain abnormalities similar to those present in patients with schizophrenia. Objectives The goal of the present study was to describe the functional organization of endogenous activation in young adolescents who report auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) in view of the “distributed network” hypothesis of psychosis. We recruited 20 young people aged 13–16 years who reported AVHs and 20 healthy controls matched for age, gender and handedness from local schools. Methods Each participant underwent a semi-structured clinical interview and a resting state (RS) neuroimaging protocol. We explored functional connectivity (FC) involving three different networks: 1) default mode network (DMN) 2) salience network (SN) and 3) central executive network (CEN). In line with previous findings on the role of the auditory cortex in AVHs as reported by young adolescents, we also investigated FC anomalies involving both the primary and secondary auditory cortices (A1 and A2, respectively). Further, we explored between-group inter-hemispheric FC differences (laterality) for both A1 and A2. Compared to the healthy control group, the AVH group exhibited FC differences in all three networks investigated. Moreover, FC anomalies were found in a neural network including both A1 and A2. The laterality analysis revealed no between-group, inter-hemispheric differences. Conclusions The present study suggests that young adolescents with subclinical psychotic symptoms exhibit functional connectivity anomalies directly and indirectly involving the DMN, SN, CEN and also a neural network including both primary and secondary auditory cortical regions.
An Exploratory Chandra Survey of a Well-defined Sample of 35 Large Bright Quasar Survey Broad Absorption Line Quasars

We present 4-7 ks Chandra observations of 35 broad absorption line (BAL) quasars from the Large Bright Quasar Survey, the largest sample of sensitive, 0.5-8.0 keV X-ray observations of this class of quasars to date. The limited ranges in both redshift (z = 1.42-2.90) and ultraviolet luminosity (a factor of ≈12) of the sample also make it relatively uniform. Of 35 targets, 27 are detected for a detection fraction of 77%, and we confirm previous studies that find BAL quasars to be generally X-ray-weak. Five of the eight nondetections are known low-ionization BAL quasars, confirming reports of extreme X-ray weakness in this subset (~10% of optically selected BAL quasars). Those BAL quasars with the hardest X-ray spectra are also the X-ray weakest, consistent with the interpretation that intrinsic absorption is the primary cause of X-ray weakness in this class of quasars as a whole. Furthermore, the observed trend is not consistent with simple neutral absorption, supporting findings from spectroscopic observations of individual targets that BAL quasars typically exhibit complex X-ray absorption (e.g., partially covering or ionized absorbers). Assuming normal quasar X-ray continua and using the hard-band (observed-frame 2-8 keV) X-ray flux to "correct" for the effects of intrinsic absorption at softer energies increases the relative X-ray to optical flux ratios to much closer to the range for normal quasars, further indicating that typically neither are high-ionization BAL quasars intrinsically X-ray-weak, nor do they suffer from Compton-thick absorption. In general, we find no evidence for correlations between X-ray weakness and ultraviolet absorption-line properties, with the exception of a likely correlation between the maximum outflow velocity of C IV absorption and the magnitude of X-ray weakness. We discuss the implications of our results for disk-wind models of BAL outflows in quasars.
Complex Shaped On-Wafer Interconnects Modeling for CMOS RFICs

A model development methodology for complex shaped on-wafer interconnects is presented. The equivalent circuit of the entire interconnect is obtained by cascading basic subsegment models. The extracted parameters are formulated into empirical expressions. Thus, the proposed model can be easily incorporated with commercial electronic design automation (EDA) tools. The accuracy of the model is validated by the on-wafer measurements up to 20 GHz.