Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Portfolio Selection with a Systematic Skewness Constraint

This paper investigates portfolio selection within a mean-variance-systematic skewness framework. We derive the composition of efficient portfolios in our model, and analyze the properties of these efficient portfolios. We show that the required systematic skewness is achieved at the expense of traditional mean-variance efficiency, and that a more stringent systematic skewness constraint induces a greater loss in mean-variance efficiency. Our numerical analysis demonstrates that the presence of the systematic skewness constraint helps improve the skewness of efficient portfolios in our model over the skewness of traditional efficient portfolios.
Pushing budgets down the line: ascribing financial responsibility in the UK social services

Budgets are too aggregated, they hold too high a level in the organizational hierarchy, and they are not owned by individuals; therefore they cannot track the consequences of individual actions ‐ these are criticisms of public sector budgets as financial mechanisms of control and accountability. Pushing budgets down the line ‐ devolving budgetary responsibilities to front‐line operational staff ‐ in short, delegation, is current governmental thinking on making budgets more effective instruments in control and accountability. This paper explores the issue of the extent to which budgets have been devolved in the context of empirical data from eight UK social services departments and finds that the devolution of budgets stops short of the front line of service delivery. This research also demonstrates that although individual responsibility for budgets has been ascribed to individuals these individualized responsibilities are being dissipated through organizational processes. First, levels of authorization for spend are not aligned with budget responsibilities. Second, there are multiple sources of access to the budgets “owned” by individuals. Third, organizational rules prescribe spending patterns and constrain the authority of budget holders. Should these results be seen as a residual control problem or are there more fundamental concerns at stake here? The paper theorizes these social and organizational issues in the social services through the notions of individualism and collectivism ‐ focusing particularly on the concept of responsibility.
Physiological Relaxing Effects of Counselling in HIV Positive Patients

The present study examined the physiological effects of counselling in HIV positive patients. The subjects were assigned randomly to two conditions namely, control (N=50, 25 males and 25 females) and experimental (N=50, 25 males and 25 females). The subjects in the experimental group were exposed to counselling sessions one hour daily for one month. A 2 x 2 between subject’s factorial design involving two gender levels (male and female) and two treatment conditions (no counselling and counselling) with 25 replications was used in the present study. The counselling was found to reduce blood pressure, pulse rate, muscle action potential and enhance alpha EEG scores, thereby, producing its soothing and relaxing effects.
Futures Trading and Market Microstructure of the Underlying Security: A High Frequency Experiment at the Single Stock Future Level

This paper examines the differences in volume, volatility and liquidity in the underlying market between intervals when futures trade and intervals when there is no futures trading using high frequency proprietary data. We find that although the bid-ask spreads decrease, this is not due to a fall in information asymmetries and a fall in the adverse selection costs. We find supporting evidence that the fall in the spread could be due to lower inventory holding costs as a result of lower depth when futures trade. We also find volatility to increase when futures trade accompanied by increases in trading volume supporting the scenario that institutional investors take large positions in both derivative and the underlying markets creating price pressures. This paper has indicated that market quality might not necessarily improve with futures trading, in contrast to the results of previous studies, which applied a pre-post futures listing analysis and used lower frequency data.
Baclofen treatment in Tourette syndrome

Objective: To investigate the effectiveness of baclofen for the treatment of tics in children with Tourette syndrome (TS). Background: Baclofen, which contains both γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and phenylethylamine moieties, was suggested in an open-label protocol to be an effective treatment for TS. This is a double-blind, placebo-controlled study to investigate this medication in children with TS. Methods: Subjects received, in a randomized sequence, 4-week medication cycles of baclofen (20 mg three times daily) and placebo with a 2-week intervening washout period between the cycles. Outcome measures included the Clinical Global Impression (CGI) scale, and the Yale Global Tic Severity Scale (YGTSS), the latter including subscales for total tics and overall impairment. Measures were assessed at baseline and on days 28, 42, and 70 of the study. Results: Ten children (seven boys and three girls, aged 8 to 14) with TS participated. Nine subjects completed the protocol; one dropped out for psychosocial reasons. No major side effects were reported. The mean change in CGI score (−0.9) after 4 weeks of baclofen treatment as compared with placebo treatment showed a significant improvement (95% CI, −1.7 to −0.1; p = 0.04). All subjects showed some amelioration in total YGTSS score during baclofen treatment. The mean change in total YGTSS score (−14.7) approached significance (95% CI, −30.3 to 0.9; p = 0.06). Examination of differences between baclofen and placebo treatment groups expressed as a percent change from baseline showed that baclofen had a statistically significant effect on both outcome measures. Subscales of the YGTSS showed that the reduction in total tic scores was primarily due to a reduction in the impairment score rather than a decrease in tics. Conclusions: Children with TS may benefit from treatment with baclofen, although improvements may be related to factors other than tics. Larger studies directly comparing baclofen against other tic-suppressing agents are recommended.
Using a piecewise Weibull mixed model in the genetic evaluation for longevity

One of these culling risk variables is stage of lactation * parity of the cow. This variable accounts for the changing risk for a dairy cow of being culled during her lactation. In the old Dutch genetic evaluation, the stage of lactation effect has been modelled as a time dependent fixed effect with 8 classes within each lactation, changing at 30, 60, 180, 250, 270, 290 and 330 days after calving.
Very Long-Stepping in the Spot Measure of the LIBOR Market Model

It is widely believed that when evolving rates in the LIBOR market model to step over tenor dates the terminal measure must be used. We explain why this is not the case, and show that by very long stepping in the spot measure it is possible to obtain significant accuracy and standard error improvements, leading to substantial improvements in efficiency. In particular, we demonstrate that speed-ups of a factor in the thousands are possible when pricing auto-caps if the same drift approximation is used in both measures.
Nuclear Strategy: the Case for a Theory of Victory

Arguments over Salt II will avoid some needed discussion of basic strategies. The author questions the value of arms control negotiations and weapons systems evaluations when there is no firm strategic force posture. He points out that failure to deter attack will leave the country in an acute crisis and the president with the options of surrender or proceeding without a clear strategy. The evolution of pre-war deterrence as a policy of assured destruction is outlined and examined in terms of whether the concept is rational or likely to be effective in the long run. Arguments of the two schools of thought - military equivalency and counter-military targeting - are summarized and, while some advances are noted in recent years, there is still a need to establish stability criteria in US defense planning.
Assimilation, Immigration, and the Welfare State

This study analyzes the effect of immigration on the pay-as-you-go social security system by incorporating the costs of assimilation. Owing to the costs, the net benefit for the natives by admitting immigrants is not always positive; it increases with the number of immigrants and decreases with increasing costs of assimilation. When the assimilation costs are low, there is a parameter range in the number of immigrants where both the net benefits for the natives and immigrants can be positive. This implies that the number of immigrants and their abilities play an important role when immigrants are admitted.
Strategic Inventory and Supply Chain Behavior

Based on a serial supply chain model with two periods and price‐sensitive demand, we present the first experimental test of the effect of strategic inventories on supply chain performance. In theory, if holding costs are sufficiently low, the buyer builds up a strategic inventory (even if no operational reasons for stock‐holding exist) to limit the supplier's market power, and to increase the own profit share. As it turns out, this enhances the overall supply chain performance. The supplier anticipates the effect of the strategic inventory and differentiates prices to capture a part of the increased supply chain profits. Our results show that the positive effects of strategic inventories are even more pronounced than theoretically predicted, because strategic inventories empower buyers by shifting the perception of the fair split. Overall, strategic inventories have a double positive effect, a strategic and a behavioral, both reducing the average wholesale prices and dampening the double marginalization effect. The latter effect leads to more equitable payoffs.
Does Macro-Prudential Regulation Leak? Evidence from a UK Policy Experiment

The regulation of bank capital as a means of smoothing the credit cycle is a central element of forthcoming macro‐prudential regimes internationally. For such regulation to be effective in controlling the aggregate supply of credit it must be the case that: (i) changes in capital requirements affect loan supply by regulated banks, and (ii) unregulated substitute sources of credit are unable to offset changes in credit supply by affected banks. This paper examines micro evidence—lacking to date—on both questions, using a unique data set. In the UK, regulators have imposed time‐varying, bank‐specific minimum capital requirements since Basel I. It is found that regulated banks (UK‐owned banks and resident foreign subsidiaries) reduce lending in response to tighter capital requirements. But unregulated banks (resident foreign branches) increase lending in response to tighter capital requirements on a relevant reference group of regulated banks. This “leakage” is substantial, amounting to about one‐third of the initial impulse from the regulatory change.
An Examination of Different Performance Outcomes in an Analytical Procedures Task

In order to improve auditor judgments, it is first necessary to understand and evaluate what successful auditors do differently than those who are less successful. This study uses a computerized research instrument to examine in a single experiment the hypothesis generation, information search, hypothesis evaluation, and final judgment stages of the analytical procedures process. The inclusion of a criterion variable and the ability to search for additional evidence allows the study to examine in which of the various stages of analytical procedures auditors make less‐than‐optimal judgments. Of the 82 participants, 24 selected the correct cause, 19 never generated the correct cause as a hypothesis, and 39 generated the correct cause as a hypothesis but ended up not selecting it. The incorrect participants were divided into two categories: those who incorrectly selected the inherited hypothesis and those who incorrectly selected another self‐generated non‐error as the cause. The former group showed deficien.
Explaining the macro-economy and retail real estate sector dynamic interaction between prime and suburban retail real estate sectors

Purpose – From the perspective of the macro‐economy and real estate sector interaction, this paper aims to examine the maturing prime retail real estate sector versus the developing suburban retail real estate sector.Design/methodology/approach – This paper adopts a highly specific dynamic computable general equilibrium model under system dynamics programming to structure the resulting system complexity within the context of Singapore.Findings – Ex post and ex ante model estimations find that the suburban retail real estate sector is on the whole more susceptible to gross domestic product (GDP) growth policy that affects both GDP expansion and retail rents in actual and expectation terms as well as returns.Research limitations/implications – The DCGE model ex ante estimations for the planned scenarios, under low or high GDP growth for the prime and suburban retail real estate sectors, enhances understanding of structural factors and dynamic interaction in the maturation phase of the prime retail real esta.
The characteristics approach to the measurement of population aging

Conventional measures of population aging, such as proportions over age 65, can present a misleading picture of the aging process by not taking account of changes in people's characteristics beyond their chronological age—for example, changes in remaining life expectancy, health and morbidity, disability rates, and cognitive functioning. The “characteristics approach” set out in this article encompasses multiple features of population aging, yielding new measures that can better inform both demographic analysis and public policy debate. We relate the brief history of this approach, examine its basic mathematical structure, and give empirical examples of the insights it offers, drawing on data from West Germany, Japan, Russia, and the United States.
Collective Identity Framing in a Digital Grassroots Movement An Affordance Perspective

A fair share of today’s activism is taking place on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, which have made scholars call for a re-conceptualization of the definition and understanding of political struggle. Traditionally, social sciences have viewed collective identity framing alongside political opportunities and mobilizing structures as equally influential factors for engaging in protest. Since many movements have moved online it is important to understand how the digital environment affects these factors. Therefore, we conducted an interpretive case study to explore how social media affects the collective identity of a grassroots movement. By turning to collective identity frames, we viewed the goals and means of a Swedish political grassroots movement as indicators of a collective identity. We set out to investigate the following research question: How do social media affordances affect collective identity framing in a digital political grassroots movement? The key finding indicates that social media affordances were in favor of diagnostic framing, but hindered prognostic framing. The social media affordance of visibility seemed to overrule the affordance of persistence, which created an overexposure of an emotive frame that hurt the credibility of the grassroots movement. To handle this loss of credibility when facing opponents, the affordances of editability and association sustained a fact-based frame.
Fitness valleys constrain HIV‐1's adaptation to its secondary chemokine coreceptor

Fitness valleys, in which mutations at different loci are singly deleterious but jointly beneficial, arise because of reciprocal sign epistasis. Recent theoretical work provides analytical approximations of times to cross fitness valleys via three mechanisms: sequential fixation, stochastic tunnelling and recombination. These times depend critically on the effective population size (Ne). Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV‐1) encounters fitness valleys in adapting to its secondary cell‐surface chemokine coreceptor, CXCR4. Adaptation to CXCR4 tends to occur late in infection and only in about 50% of patients and is associated with disease progression. It has been hypothesized that the need to cross fitness valleys may explain the delayed and inconsistent adaptation to CXCR4. We have identified four fitness valleys from a previous study of fitness epistasis in adaptation to CXCR4 and use estimates of the within‐patient variance Ne for different patient treatment statuses and infection stages (conditions) to estimate times to cross the valleys. These valleys may be crossed predominantly by stochastic tunnelling, although mean crossing times are consistently longer than the durations of the conditions for which they are calculated. These results were confirmed with stochastic simulation. Simulations show that crossing times for a given condition are highly variable and that for each condition there is a low probability of crossing each valley. These findings support the hypothesis that fitness valleys constrain the adaptation of HIV‐1 to CXCR4. This study provides the first detailed analysis of the evolutionary dynamics associated with empirical fitness valleys.
A Tight Lower Bound for Counting Hamiltonian Cycles via Matrix Rank

For even $k$, the matchings connectivity matrix $\mathbf{M}_k$ encodes which pairs of perfect matchings on $k$ vertices form a single cycle. Cygan et al. (STOC 2013) showed that the rank of $\mathbf{M}_k$ over $\mathbb{Z}_2$ is $\Theta(\sqrt 2^k)$ and used this to give an $O^*((2+\sqrt{2})^{\mathsf{pw}})$ time algorithm for counting Hamiltonian cycles modulo $2$ on graphs of pathwidth $\mathsf{pw}$. The same authors complemented their algorithm by an essentially tight lower bound under the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH). This bound crucially relied on a large permutation submatrix within $\mathbf{M}_k$, which enabled a "pattern propagation" commonly used in previous related lower bounds, as initiated by Lokshtanov et al. (SODA 2011). We present a new technique for a similar pattern propagation when only a black-box lower bound on the asymptotic rank of $\mathbf{M}_k$ is given; no stronger structural insights such as the existence of large permutation submatrices in $\mathbf{M}_k$ are needed. Given appropriate rank bounds, our technique yields lower bounds for counting Hamiltonian cycles (also modulo fixed primes $p$) parameterized by pathwidth. To apply this technique, we prove that the rank of $\mathbf{M}_k$ over the rationals is $4^k / \mathrm{poly}(k)$. We also show that the rank of $\mathbf{M}_k$ over $\mathbb{Z}_p$ is $\Omega(1.97^k)$ for any prime $p\neq 2$ and even $\Omega(2.15^k)$ for some primes. As a consequence, we obtain that Hamiltonian cycles cannot be counted in time $O^*((6-\epsilon)^{\mathsf{pw}})$ for any $\epsilon>0$ unless SETH fails. This bound is tight due to a $O^*(6^{\mathsf{pw}})$ time algorithm by Bodlaender et al. (ICALP 2013). Under SETH, we also obtain that Hamiltonian cycles cannot be counted modulo primes $p\neq 2$ in time $O^*(3.97^\mathsf{pw})$, indicating that the modulus can affect the complexity in intricate ways.
Accounting for SGARAs: A Stocktake of Accounting Practice Before Compliance With AASB 141 Agriculture

This paper reports the results of an investigation of the impacts of compliance with AASB 1037 Self-Generating and Regenerating Assets for all listed Australian companies with material holdings of SGARAs. This investigation is useful for at least two reasons. First, the controversy and debate surrounding the standard raises the question of whether the consequences of application were as serious as predicted. Second, AASB 1037 was the first formal prescription on how to account for biological assets. As such, its consequences for reporting entities provide potential insights into the impact of AASB 141 Agriculture, which is applicable to reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2005.
CT-guided radiofrequency ablation of osteoid osteoma using a multi-tined expandable electrode system

Background and aim of the work: Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is the gold standard for the treatment of symptomatic osteoid osteoma (OO) as RFA yields both a high success and low complication rate. It has been widely utilized over the years, but recurrences of OO after this treatment have been documented. These recurrences may be the result of various factors, including incomplete tumor ablation, and are significantly higher in lesions greater than 10 mm. Thus, the need to induce thermal ablation in a wider area led us to use a Multi-Tined Expandable Electrode System (MTEES). In this study we examined the efficacy and safety of RFA using a MTEES in symptomatic OO. Methods: Between January 2005 and June 2007, 16 patients with symptomatic OO were treated by CT-guided percutaneous RFA using a MTEES. The diameter of OO ranged from 6 to 15 mm (mean 10±2.6 mm). Patients were evaluated for clinical outcomes, complications and recurrence. Pain evaluation was assessed preoperatively, 2 weeks postoperatively and at last follow-up. Results: Clinical follow-up was available for all patients at a mean of 84.3 months (range 73-96 months). Mean preoperative VAS score was 7.4 (range 5-9), two weeks after the procedure mean VAS score was 0.3 (range 0-1) with a mean change of -7.06 points (p<0.0001). At the last follow-up a complete relief from pain has been observed in all patients. No major and minor complications were observed nor recurrences. Conclusions: RFA using a MTEES has been effective, safe and reliable for the treatment of OOs. This system, by increasing the size of the necrosis, could be a viable alternative to the single needle electrode in lesions larger than 10 mm, reducing the risk of recurrence. (www.actabiomedica.it)
Leucocyte and eosinophil counts predict progression‐free survival in relapsed or refractory classical Hodgkin Lymphoma patients treated with PD1 inhibition

imab can be safely administered without the need for any pre-medication. In our data, the apparent rate of reactions was higher for those subcutaneous doses where premedication was given than for those given without; although this may be explained by increased patient surveillance as the ‘covered’ doses were given in the context of clinical trials. It has already been shown that subcutaneous administration of Rituximab improves cost effectiveness and patient experience when compared with the intravenous route (Rule et al, 2014). Administering subcutaneous Rituximab without premedication further reduces administration time, improving efficiency and patient experience; and means that patients are not exposed to the potential sedative effects of antihistamines. This reduces the burden on patients and families as patients can drive themselves to appointments, and return to work immediately after treatment. The extremely good side effect profile that we have observed means that the drug could be safely given closer to home and even within the home environment. Furthermore, given that there is growing evidence that giving Alemtuzumab subcutaneously as a first dose is associated with a favourable side effect profile compared to the intravenous route (Lundin et al, 2002; Patel et al, 2016), we suggest that the same may be true with Rituximab, and it may be possible to give the first dose subcutaneously rather than intravenously, further improving safety and efficiency.