Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The value-relevance of accounting information in Nigeria: analysts’ perception in the IFRS regime

This study investigates the effect of IFRS adoption on the value-relevance of accounting information in Nigeria. The study builds on the explanation of extant finance theories on the value and timing of information. IFRS was measured with more disclosure of economic events as well as the fair valuation of economic events under IFRS. The opinions of a number of financial analysts with the aid of e-mail questionnaire were sourced. A log-linear test was run to test the interaction of the variables and the significance of such interaction. A significant relationship was found between the each of the independent variables and the dependent variable at 5% level of significance. The study therefore offers explanations regarding the IFRS adoption as a bridge of the gap between accounting and finance measurement of information. Hence, concludes that IFRS adoption has enhanced the value relevance of accounting information in Nigeria. However, recommendation was made that more measures should be put in place to ensure full compliance of IFRS by all affected Nigerian entities
Weber, Marx, and Work Values: Evidence from Transition Economies

Are work values a cause (Weber) or consequence (Marx) of the economic environment? The collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 provides a unique opportunity to investigate this link. Using data collected from an employee survey conducted in over 340 workplaces in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia, we investigate generational differences in adherence to the Protestant work ethic (PWE). Our results indicate that Marx was ‘right’ about the link between work values and economic environment. That is, despite economic and cultural differences emerging during the transformation process, in all three countries, participating workers born after 1981 adhere more strongly to PWE than workers born before 1977. Moreover, the estimate magnitudes are very similar across these economically and culturally diverse countries. More generally, PWE adherence is stronger among participating workers with an internal locus of control and among supervisors. PWE adherence also tends to be stronger among participants with high relative earnings, as well as among those working in organizations that reward hard work with the chance to develop new skills or learn new things.
The complexity of many faces in arrangements of lines of segments

We show that the total number of edges of <italic>m</italic> faces of an arrangement of <italic>n</italic> lines in the plane is &Ogr;(<italic>m</italic><supscrpt>2/3-δ</supscrpt> <italic>n</italic><supscrpt>2/3+2δ</supscrpt> + <italic>n</italic>), for any δ > 0. The proof takes an algorithmic approach, that is, we describe an algorithm for the calculation of these <italic>m</italic> faces and derive the upper bound from the analysis of the algorithm. The algorithm uses randomization and, with high probability, its time complexity is within a log<supscrpt>2</supscrpt><italic>n</italic> factor of the above bound. If instead of lines we have an arrangement of <italic>n</italic> line segments, then the maximum number of edges of <italic>m</italic> faces is Ogr;(<italic>m</italic><supscrpt>2/3-δ</supscrpt><italic>n</italic><supscrpt>2/3+2δ</supscrpt> + <italic>n</italic>α(<italic>n</italic>)log<italic>m</italic>), for any δ > 0, where α(<italic>n</italic>) is the functional inverse of Ackermann's function. We give a (randomized) algorithm that produces these faces and, with high probability, takes time that is within a log<supscrpt>2</supscrpt><italic>n</italic> factor of the combinatorial bound.
Gun culture or gun control : firearms, violence and society

1. Introduction: Why guns? 2. The Spectre of the Gun: Historical and cultural perspectives 3. The Making of the American 'Gun Culture' 4. Discovery and Construction: Media coverage of the 'gun question' 5. Tragedy, Aftermath and Politics 6. Taking Stock of the Gun Control Arguments 7. Conclusion: Culture and ricochets
Negative relationships between growth in height and levels of cholesterol in puberty: a 3-year follow-up study.

BACKGROUND Previously, there were only a few reports on the negative relationship between pubertal growth in height and levels of serum lipid in boys. Detailed information on both genders is needed. METHODS We investigated the relationship between pubertal growth in height and serum lipid. Subjects were 1442 boys and 1350 girls followed up from age 10-11 years (the fifth grade level of elementary school) to age 13-14 years (the second year of junior high school). Anthropometric variables and serum lipids were measured by the same protocol at both ages. RESULTS From cross-sectional analysis, at both ages negative relationships between total cholesterol levels and height were found in both genders. On longitudinal analysis, height at age 10-11 years was one of the factors predicting the level of total cholesterol at age 13-14 years. In addition, negative relationships between increase in height and change in serum lipids (total cholesterol and high density lipoprotein cholesterol) over the 3-year period were obtained in both genders. Thus, pubertal children who experience a large increase in height tended to show a decrease in serum lipids, and children who experience a small increase in height tended to show an increase in serum lipids. CONCLUSION In both genders, total cholesterol level in pubertal children is negatively associated with height. Height velocity is inversely associated with dynamic changes in serum lipids during puberty.
Epidemiology of Head Lice Infestation in Primary School Pupils, in Khajeh City, East Azerbaijan Province, Iran

Background: Pediculus capitis (Anoplura: Pediculidae) or head louse is an obligate ectoparasite transmitted mainly through physical contact. This study was conducted to survey the prevalence of head lice infestation rate and some risk factors in Primary School pupils, in Khajeh City East Azerbaijan Province, Iran Methods: We selected 20 primary schools of Khajeh City during 2008 and 2009. Totally 500 pupils including 200 boys and 300 girls from all grade 1–5 were selected by multistage, systematic random sampling in rural areas of Khajeh City and were examined for lice. In addition, a standard questionnaire recorded information about demographic features of each pupil. Results were analyzed by SPSS software. Results: The total prevalence of head lice infestation in this study was 4.8%. and the prevalence rate was significantly higher in girls (6.66%) than in boys (2%). Epidemiological factors such as: sex, school grade, family size, parent's education, type of house, hair washing (per week), number of using comb per day, were evaluated and results showed significant difference in head lice infestation and sex, school grade, family size, father education, and type of house (P< 0.05). Conclusion: Pediculosis is a public health problem in many parts of the world, and due to the higher prevalence of pediculosis in crowded families, family by lower levels of father's education and socioeconomic status in our study and rural area, it is necessary to give health education for families to prevent of pediculosis in this area.
Linear structures in SAR coherence data

The extraction of thin linear structures like roads, rivers and railway lines from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) scenes has been shown to be a difficult task owing to the speckle effects of coherent imaging (e.g. Hendri et al., 1988), Therefore, for line extraction it is reasonable to use all information that SAR scenes offer, and not only the amplitude data. One source of additional information is the coherence data computed by interferometric processing of two SAR scenes. The visibility of linear structures in SAR coherence data has been investigated. Scene pairs from the ERS-1 and the ERS-2 SAR sensors, the X-SAR experiment and a scene from a two-antenna airborne SAR system were evaluated The time difference between the acquisitions of the spaceborne scenes forming interferometric scene pairs was one to 35 days. An optimal size of the correlation window used to derive coherence maps for linear structure extraction was determined by visual inspection. The correlation between the intensity and the coherence data was used to infer how much information the coherence adds to the information of the amplitude of both scenes.
Molecular gas and star formation in the SAURON early-type galaxies

We present the results of a survey of CO emission in 43 of the 48 representative E/S0 galaxies observed in the optical with the SAURON integral-field spectrograph. The CO detection rate is 12/43 or 28 per cent. This is lower than previous studies of early-types but can probably be attributed to different sample selection criteria. As expected, earlier type, more luminous and massive galaxies have a relatively lower molecular gas content. We find that CO-rich galaxies tend to have higher Hβ but lower Fe5015 and Mgb absorption indices than CO-poor galaxies. Those trends appear primarily driven by the age of the stars, a hypothesis supported by the fact that the galaxies with the strongest evidence of star formation are also the most CO-rich. In fact, the early-type galaxies from the current sample appear to extend the well-known correlations between far-infrared (FIR) luminosity, dust mass and molecular mass of other galaxy types. The star formation interpretation is also consistent with the SAURON galaxies' radio continuum and FIR flux ratios, and their inferred star formation efficiencies are similar to those in spiral galaxies. It thus appears that we have identified the material fueling (residual) star formation in early-type galaxies, and have demonstrated that it is actively being transformed. Nevertheless, the lack of strong correlations between the CO content and most stellar parameters is compatible with the idea that, in a significant number of sample galaxies, the molecular gas has been accreted from the outside and has properties rather independent from the old, pre-existing stellar component.
Not All University Degrees Yield the Same Return: Private and Social Returns to Higher Education for Males in Spain

In this paper we use micro data from the Spanish Family Expenditure Survey for 1990 to estimate, for the first time, the private and social rates of return of different university degrees in Spain. We compute internal rates of return and include investment on higher education financed by the public purse to estimate social rates of return. Our main finding is that, as presumed, there is large heterogeneity in rates of return amongst different university degrees.
A High Connectivity Pre-Distribution Key Management Scheme in Grid-Based Wireless Sensor Networks

Key management is a decisive part for security in wireless sensor networks. Pre-distribution of secret keys for all pairs of nodes is not viable due to the large amount of memory used when the number of sensor node is huge. Recently, a random key pre-distribution scheme is proposed as an efficient solution for sharing keys among sensor nodes to reduce the length of shared key and avoid unnecessary key assignments. By studying the range of the communication signal in sensor nodes, we can improve the pre-distribution key mechanism, thus get a higher connectivity possibility between sensor nodes in the whole network. In this paper, we present a grid-based scheme with novel approach for key-distribution mechanism based on the communication range of sensor nodes that guarantees a high probability of sharing keys between sensor nodes. Our evaluation and simulation show that our approach outperforms the existing schemes in both high connectivity probability and low memory usage.
Analyzing Dependent Placements of Small Cells in a Two-Layer Heterogeneous Network With a Rate Coverage Constraint

We consider the downlink of a two-layer heterogeneous network, comprising macrocells (MCs) and small cells (SCs). The existing literature generally assumes independent placements of the access points (APs) in different layers; in contrast, we analyze a dependent placement where SC APs are placed at locations with poor service from the MC layer. Our goal is to obtain an estimate of the number of SCs required to maintain a target outage rate. Such an analysis is trivial if the MCs are located according to a Poisson point process (PPP), which provides a lower bound on performance. Here, we consider MCs placed on a hexagonal grid, which complements the PPP model by providing an upper bound on performance. We first provide accurate bounds for the average interference within an MC when SCs are not used. Then, by obtaining the outage areas, we estimate the number of SCs required within an MC to overcome outage. If resource allocation among SCs is not used, we show that the problem of outage is not solved completely and that the residual outage area depends on whether cochannel or orthogonal SCs are used. Simulations show that a much smaller residual outage area is obtained with orthogonal SCs.
Moods in Clinical Depression Are More Unstable than Severe Normal Sadness

Objective Current descriptions in psychiatry and psychology suggest that depressed mood in clinical depression is similar to mild sadness experienced in everyday life, but more intense and persistent. We evaluated this concept using measures of average mood and mood instability (MI). Method We prospectively measured low and high moods using separate visual analog scales twice a day for seven consecutive days in 137 participants from four published studies. Participants were divided into a non-depressed group with a Beck Depression Inventory score of ≤10 (n = 59) and a depressed group with a Beck Depression Inventory score of ≥18 (n = 78). MI was determined by the mean square successive difference statistic. Results Mean low and high moods were not correlated in the non-depressed group but were strongly positively correlated in the depressed group. This difference between correlations was significant. Low MI and high MI were weakly positively correlated in the non-depressed group and strongly positively correlated in the depressed group. This difference in correlations was also significant. Conclusion The results show that low and high moods, and low and high MI, are highly correlated in people with depression compared with those who are not depressed. Current psychiatric practice does not assess or treat MI or brief high mood episodes in patients with depression. New models of mood that also focus on MI will need to be developed to address the pattern of mood disturbance in people with depression.
Board Structure, Process and Performance: Evidence from Public-Listed Companies in Singapore

Past literature in board research has centred on board structure and company performance. Over the years, empirical studies do not reveal a conclusive relationship between these two variables (Dalton and Daily, 1999. "Across the Board", March, 28-32). Until recently, the literature on board processes has been sparse. The reason for insufficient empirical work on board processes possibly is due to the difficulty of gaining access to boards. In this paper, we propose a conceptual model and tested the model on publicly listed companies in Singapore. Based on a sample of 212 company responses and 299 directors, we conclude that board structure does not affect board process while board process is related to board performance. In terms of individual parameters, effort norms, cognitive conflict and the presence and usage of skills are positively related to board roles and board transparency. Also, affective and process conflicts are negatively related to board roles and board transparency. Finally, board process does not mediate the relationship between board structure and board performance. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005.
Adaptivity and optimality of the monotone least-squares estimator

In this paper we will consider the estimation of a monotone regression (or density) function in a fixed point by the least squares (Grenander) estimator. We will show that this estimator is fully adaptive, in the sense that the attained rate is given by a functional relation using the underlying function $f_0$, and not by some smoothness parameter, and that this rate is optimal when considering the class of all monotone functions, in the sense that there exists a sequence of alternative monotone functions $f_1$, such that no other estimator can attain a better rate for both $f_0$ and $f_1$. We also show that under mild conditions the estimator attains the same rate in $L^q$ sense, and we give general conditions for which we can calculate a (non-standard) limiting distribution for the estimator.
A post-processing system to yield reduced word error rates: Recognizer Output Voting Error Reduction (ROVER)

Describes a system developed at NIST to produce a composite automatic speech recognition (ASR) system output when the outputs of multiple ASR systems are available, and for which, in many cases, the composite ASR output has a lower error rate than any of the individual systems. The system implements a "voting" or rescoring process to reconcile differences in ASR system outputs. We refer to this system as the NIST Recognizer Output Voting Error Reduction (ROVER) system. As additional knowledge sources are added to an ASR system (e.g. acoustic and language models), error rates are typically decreased. This paper describes a post-recognition process which models the output generated by multiple ASR systems as independent knowledge sources that can be combined and used to generate an output with reduced error rate. To accomplish this, the outputs of multiple of ASR systems are combined into a single, minimal-cost word transition network (WTN) via iterative applications of dynamic programming (DP) alignments. The resulting network is searched by an automatic rescoring or "voting" process that selects the output sequence with the lowest score.
On the von Neumann and Frank-Wolfe Algorithms with Away Steps

The von Neumann algorithm is a simple coordinate-descent algorithm to determine whether the origin belongs to a polytope generated by a finite set of points. When the origin is in the of the polytope, the algorithm generates a sequence of points in the polytope that converges linearly to zero. The algorithm's rate of convergence depends on the radius of the largest ball around the origin contained in the polytope. We show that under the weaker condition that the origin is in the polytope, possibly on its boundary, a variant of the von Neumann algorithm that includes generates a sequence of points in the polytope that converges linearly to zero. The new algorithm's rate of convergence depends on a certain geometric parameter of the polytope that extends the above radius but is always positive. Our linear convergence result and geometric insights also extend to a variant of the Frank-Wolfe algorithm with away steps for minimizing a strongly convex function over a polytope.
Variance regularization of RNNLM for speech recognition

Recurrent neural network language models (RNNLMs) have been proved superior to many other competitive language modeling techniques in terms of perplexity and word error rate. The remaining problem is the great computational complexity of RNNLMs in the output layer, resulting in long time for evaluation. Typically, a class-based RNNLM with the output layer factorized was proposed for speedup, which was still not fast enough for real-time systems. In this paper, a novel variance regularization algorithm is proposed for RNNLMs to address this problem. All the softmax-normalizing factors in the output layers are penalized to make them converge to one during the training phase, so that the output probability can be estimated efficiently via one dot-product of vectors in the output layer. The computational complexity of the output layer is reduced significantly from O(|V|H) to O(H). We further use this model for rescoring in an advanced CD-HMM-DNN system. Experimental results show that our proposed variance regularization algorithm works quite well, and the word prediction of the model is about 300 times faster than that of RNNLM without any obvious deteriorations in word error rate.
Internal audit in Italian organizations: A multiple case study

Purpose – To describe the main characteristics of Internal Audit Departments in six Italian companies and investigate the influence of enacted regulations on their development.Design/methodology/approach – The research has been carried out through a multiple case study, which compared the Internal Audit Departments of six Italian companies, gathering evidence by interviews with chief internal auditors, by obtaining examples of internal audit reports, policy documents and corporate briefing notes.Findings – The range of situations considered highlighted the diversity in Internal Audit Department characteristics, confirming the relevance of institutional pressures, but also providing evidence of the influence of additional elements in their development.Research limitations/implications – Results provided by this research cannot be regarded as generally applicable or generalizable, although this study should contribute to the development of a deeper understanding of the characteristics of Internal Audit Depa.
Tobacco addiction: implications for treatment and cancer prevention.

The American Society of Clinical Oncology and the National Cancer Institute convened a symposium in June 1996 on tobacco addiction. Additional support for the symposium was provided by the American Medical Women's Association and the American Society of Preventive Oncology. The goals of this conference were to describe the burden and public health consequences of tobacco addiction, to describe the state of science for the treatment of nicotine dependence, and to explore new strategies to increase quit rates and to prevent the uptake of tobacco use. This article summarizes and integrates the meeting presentations on tobacco addiction and includes the topics of smoking prevalence; psychobiologic aspects of nicotine dependence; and implications for disease, treatment, and prevention. Comments on regulatory approaches and national strategies for reducing dependence are also summarized in presentations by Dr. David Kessler, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, and Dr. C. Everett Koop, former U.S. Surgeon General.
Involvement of Human Amygdala and Orbitofrontal Cortex in Hunger-Enhanced Memory for Food Stimuli

We used positron emission tomography to measure regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in 10 healthy volunteers performing a recognition memory task with food and non-food items. The biological salience of the food stimuli was manipulated by requiring subjects to fast before the experiment and eat to satiation at fixed time points during scanning. All subjects showed enhanced recognition of food stimuli (relative to non-food) in the fasting state. Satiation significantly reduced the memory advantage for food. Left amygdala rCBF covaried positively with recognition memory for food items, whereas rCBF in right anterior orbitofrontal cortex covaried with overall memory performance. Right posterior orbitofrontal rCBF covaried positively with hunger ratings during presentation of food items. Regression analysis of the neuroimaging data revealed that left amygdala and right lateral orbitofrontal rCBF covaried as a function of stimulus category (i.e., food vs non-food). These results indicate the involvement of amygdala and discrete regions of orbitofrontal cortex in the integration of perceptual (food), motivational (hunger), and cognitive (memory) processes in the human brain.