Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Source of finance, growth and firm size: evidence from China

Using a comprehensive firm-level dataset spanning the period 1998-2005, this paper provides a thorough investigation of the relationship between firm size, total factor productivity growth and financial structure in China, controlling for the endogeneity of the latter. Generally, it finds financing source matters for firms of different size, and the extent to which financing source matters for firm growth is greater for small firms than big firms. Self-raised finance appears to be most effective in promoting small firms to grow, and bank loan seems to be more supportive to big firms. The relationship between size, finance and growth also depends on ownership. In addition, there exist strong complementarities between formal and informal finance, as well as between indigenous and foreign finance.
A Link Analysis Extension of Correspondence Analysis for Mining Relational Databases

This work introduces a link analysis procedure for discovering relationships in a relational database or a graph, generalizing both simple and multiple correspondence analysis. It is based on a random walk model through the database defining a Markov chain having as many states as elements in the database. Suppose we are interested in analyzing the relationships between some elements (or records) contained in two different tables of the relational database. To this end, in a first step, a reduced, much smaller, Markov chain containing only the elements of interest and preserving the main characteristics of the initial chain, is extracted by stochastic complementation. This reduced chain is then analyzed by projecting jointly the elements of interest in the diffusion map subspace and visualizing the results. This two-step procedure reduces to simple correspondence analysis when only two tables are defined, and to multiple correspondence analysis when the database takes the form of a simple star-schema. On the other hand, a kernel version of the diffusion map distance, generalizing the basic diffusion map distance to directed graphs, is also introduced and the links with spectral clustering are discussed. Several data sets are analyzed by using the proposed methodology, showing the usefulness of the technique for extracting relationships in relational databases or graphs.
Delinquent Peer Relationships as a Mediator of the Differential Effects of Social Withdrawal and Behavioral Inhibition on Delinquency

iii DEDICATION.v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.vi LIST OF FIGURES.viii LIST OF TABLES.ix INTRODUCTION.1 METHODS.12 RESULTS.16 DISCUSSION.22 REFERENCES.32 APPENDICES.41 A. Youth Characteristics Questionnaire.41 B. Child Behavior Checklist Externalizing Behavior Sample Items.45 C. Behavior of Friends Questionnaire.46 D. Youth Self-Report: Delinquency Subscale Sample Items.47
A Theory-based Model for the Study of Executive Information Systems Adoption by the Top-level Managers

In recent years, a number of organisations have invested heavily in executive information systems (EIS) in order to improve the performance gains of their executives’ roles. Although executives presided over and authorised investment in EIS projects to support their roles, the majority of executives are unenthusiastic about using EIS because of the design flaws and failures of these systems. Studies by Nandhakumar and Jones (1997), McBride (1997) and recently Ditsa (2003) have suggested that the root of the success or failure of EIS can be attributed to social, cultural and organisational factors rather than technical factors alone. To address the problem of the low use of EIS by executives, we use social factors, habits and facilitation conditions from Triandis’(1979) framework to extend the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The model hypothesises that executives’ behaviour positively relates to facilitating conditions, habits and social factors. This paper is a significant contribution to management practice and academic literature.
Computation of unsteady incompressible flows with the stabilized finite element methods: Space-time formulations, iterative strategies and massively parallel implementations

We discuss the stabilized finite element computation of unsteady incompressible flows, with emphasis on the space-time formulations, iterative solution techniques and implementations on the massively parallel architectures such as the Connection Machines. The stabilization technique employed in this paper is the Galerkin/least-squares (GLS) method. The Deformable-Spatial-Domain/Stabilized-Space-Time (DSD/SST) formulation was developed for computation of unsteady viscous incompressible flows which involve moving boundaries and interfaces. In this approach, the stabilized finite element formulations of the governing equations are written over the space-time domain of the problem, and therefore the deformation of the spatial domain with respect to time is taken into account automatically. This approach gives us the capability to solve a large class of problems with free surfaces, moving interfaces, and fluid-structure and fluid-particle interactions. In the DSD/SST approach the frequency of remeshing is minimized to minimize the projection errors involved in remeshing and also to increase the parallelization potential of the computations. We present a new mesh moving scheme that minimizes the need for remeshing; in this scheme the motion of the mesh is governed by the modified equations of linear homogeneous elasticity. The implicit equation systems arising from the finite element discretizations are solved iteratively by using the GMRES search technique with the clustered element-by-element, diagonal and nodal-block-diagonal preconditioners. Formulations with diagonal and nodal-block-diagonal preconditioners have been implemented on the Connection Machines CM-200 and CM-5. We also describe a new mixed preconditioning method we developed recently, and discuss the extension of this method to totally unstructured meshes. This mixed preconditioning method is similar, in philosophy, to multi-grid methods, but does not need any intermediate grid levels, and therefore is applicable to unstructured meshes and is simple to implement. The application problems considered include various free-surface flows and simple fluid-structure interaction problems such as vortex-induced oscillations of a cylinder and flow past a pitching airfoil.
Factors Affecting Successful Adoption of Management Information Systems in Organizations towards Enhancing Organizational Performance

Management information systems one of the most important achievements in the area of administrative work, which aims to provide reliable, accurate, relevant and complete information to managers toward enhancing of organizational performance in organizations. This paper reviews other researches in the area of MIS adoption in organizations. Synthesizing from the literature and interviews with some of the employees of telecommunications companies in Yemen, this paper proposes a theoretical framework that takes into consideration the technological, organizational and people dimensions that might affect MIS adoption in organizations.
Moderating effects of recreation specialization on the quality-value-loyalty chain: a case of the Taroko Gorge Marathon

Abstract This study tests an integrated quality–value–loyalty model concerning a range of causal relationships of sports event service quality and perceived value on runners’ loyalty, including the moderating effects of recreational specialization on the quality–value–loyalty chain. Self-administered data were collected using convenience sampling from a total of 1045 participants in the Tarako Gorge Marathon – one of the premier international sporting events, held in Taiwan’s Taroko National Park. The results identified significant positive roles played in the chain, indicating that runners’ loyalty to the Marathon focuses primarily on event service quality and perceived value. The moderating effects of recreation specialization (full-marathon and half-marathon groups) on the quality–value–loyalty chain were partially significant. Managerial implications and recommendations of the findings were discussed.
A log buffer-based flash translation layer using fully-associative sector translation

Flash memory is being rapidly deployed as data storage for mobile devices such as PDAs, MP3 players, mobile phones, and digital cameras, mainly because of its low electronic power, nonvolatile storage, high performance, physical stability, and portability. One disadvantage of flash memory is that prewritten data cannot be dynamically overwritten. Before overwriting prewritten data, a time-consuming erase operation on the used blocks must precede, which significantly degrades the overall write performance of flash memory. In order to solve this “erase-before-write” problem, the flash memory controller can be integrated with a software module, called “flash translation layer (FTL). ” Among many FTL schemes available, the log block buffer scheme is considered to be optimum. With this scheme, a small number of log blocks, a kind of write buffer, can improve the performance of write operations by reducing the number of erase operations. However, this scheme can suffer from low space utilization of log blocks. In this paper, we show that there is much room for performance improvement in the log buffer block scheme, and propose an enhanced log block buffer scheme, called FAST (full associative sector translation). Our FAST scheme improves the space utilization of log blocks using fully-associative sector translations for the log block sectors. We also show empirically that our FAST scheme outperforms the pure log block buffer scheme.
Mozet Li Masina Myslit'? Universal Turing Machine

The deployment of A* search is an essential challenge [114, 188, 62, 70, 179, 188, 68, 62, 95, 54, 152, 191, 59, 168, 148, 99, 148, 58, 188, 148]. After years of theoretical research into thin clients, we disprove the emulation of Smalltalk, which embodies the typical principles of electrical engineering. Dear, our new system for IPv4, is the solution to all of these issues.
Anaerobic Dechlorination of Perchloroethylene and Factors Influence under Iron Reducing Condition

The Anaerobic degradation of perchloroethylene under iron reducing condition was studied by batch experiments in the microcosm with the temperature of 20°C. It showed that PCE could be sequentially dechlorinated to TCE and then to DCEs. TCE appeared at the second day of degradation experiment and a few μg/L of DCEs appeared about 10 days later. But the decrease of the concentration of TCE was not observed. The carbon balance in the reaction system is between 89.00~100.0%, which shows that PCE volatilization was controlled relatively well. The dechlorination rate of PCE is 0.2489d-1 and its half life is 2.78 d under the experiment condition. The influence of temperature and pH to the PCE dechlorination were also investigated. When the temperature is 12°C, the dechlorination rate is 0.1233d-1. The optimum pH for dechlorination microbe is about 7.
Writing, Reading, and Speaking Memory Spans and the Importance of Resource Flexibility

Two complex working memory measures, reading span and writing span, were each found to account for significant variance in reading comprehension ability, especially for skilled readers. Speaking span, and two measures of writing span, word memory and sentence length, also predicted writing fluency and organizational quality. Resource flexibility during writing span was more successful for participants with high reading comprehension skill than low. Skilled comprehenders remembered more words when focusing on storage and wrote longer sentences when focusing on processing. Participants with low skill showed no such resource flexibility. These results support the idea that working memory aids the suppression of less advantageous strategies, especially for successful readers and writers. Complex span measures predict language skill because they are a good measure of resource flexibility in working memory.
Questions and Answers about BSP

Bulk Synchronous Parallelism (BSP) is a parallel programming model that abstracts from low-level program structures in favour of supersteps. A superstep consists of a set of independent local computations, followed by a global communication phase and a barrier synchronisation. Structuring programs in this way enables their costs to be accurately determined from a few simple architectural parameters, namely the permeability of the communication network to uniformly-random traffic and the time to synchronise. Although permutation routing and barrier synch ronisations are widely regarded as inherently expensive, this is not the case. As a result, the structure imposed by BSP does not reduce performance, while bringing considerable benefits for application building. This paper answers the most common questions we are asked about BSP and justifies its claim to be a major step forward in parallel programming.
Mitochondrial Neurogastrointestinal Encephalomyopathy Caused by Thymidine Phosphorylase Enzyme Deficiency: From Pathogenesis to Emerging Therapeutic Options

Mitochondrial neurogastrointestinal encephalomyopathy (MNGIE) is a progressive metabolic disorder caused by thymidine phosphorylase (TP) enzyme deficiency. The lack of TP results in systemic accumulation of deoxyribonucleosides thymidine (dThd) and deoxyuridine (dUrd). In these patients, clinical features include mental regression, ophthalmoplegia, and fatal gastrointestinal complications. The accumulation of nucleosides also causes imbalances in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) deoxyribonucleoside triphosphates (dNTPs), which may play a direct or indirect role in the mtDNA depletion/deletion abnormalities, although the exact underlying mechanism remains unknown. The available therapeutic approaches include dialysis and enzyme replacement therapy, both can only transiently reverse the biochemical imbalance. Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is shown to be able to restore normal enzyme activity and improve clinical manifestations in MNGIE patients. However, transplant related complications and disease progression result in a high mortality rate. New therapeutic approaches, such as adeno-associated viral vector and hematopoietic stem cell gene therapy have been tested in Tymp-/-Upp1-/- mice, a murine model for MNGIE. This review provides background information on disease manifestations of MNGIE with a focus on current management and treatment options. It also outlines the pre-clinical approaches toward future treatment of the disease.
Another Look at the Physics of Large Deviations With Application to Rate-Distortion Theory

We revisit and extend the physical interpretation recently given to a certain identity between large--deviations rate--functions (as well as applications of this identity to Information Theory), as an instance of thermal equilibrium between several physical systems that are brought into contact. Our new interpretation, of mechanical equilibrium between these systems, is shown to have several advantages relative to that of thermal equilibrium. This physical point of view also provides a trigger to the development of certain alternative representations of the rate--distortion function and channel capacity, which are new to the best knowledge of the author.
WFID: Passive Device-free Human Identification Using WiFi Signal

We present WFID, a passive device-free indoor human identification system with one pair of WiFi signal transmitter and receiver. WFID design is motivated by the observation that PHY layer Channel State Information (CSI) is capable of capturing the frequency diversity of wideband channel, such that the human body curve may be uniquely identified by learning the feature pattern of CSI. Different from many CSI-based techniques focusing on phase shift, we propose a novel feature of subcarrier-amplitude frequency (SAF). Based on this feature, WFID realizes human identification through a linear-kernel SVM. We have implemented a prototype of WFID with a commercial AP and a computer equipped with one Intel 5300 NIC. WFID is evaluated in two typical indoor scenarios. The results confirm that WFID achieves high classification accuracy which is permanent over several days under two typical indoor scenarios, with low computation cost. This reveals the potential for WFID to realize real-time indoor human identification.
Max-min convolutional neural networks for image classification

Convolutional neural networks (CNN) are widely used in computer vision, especially in image classification. However, the way in which information and invariance properties are encoded through in deep CNN architectures is still an open question. In this paper, we propose to modify the standard convolutional block of CNN in order to transfer more information layer after layer while keeping some invariance within the network. Our main idea is to exploit both positive and negative high scores obtained in the convolution maps. This behavior is obtained by modifying the traditional activation function step before pooling. We are doubling the maps with specific activations functions, called MaxMin strategy, in order to achieve our pipeline. Extensive experiments on two classical datasets, MNIST and CIFAR-10, show that our deep MaxMin convolutional net outperforms standard CNN.
Oceanographic connectivity and environmental correlates of genetic structuring in Atlantic herring in the Baltic Sea

Marine fish often show little genetic structuring in neutral marker genes, and Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus) in the Baltic Sea are no exception; historically, very low levels of population differentiation (FST ≈ 0.002) have been found, despite a high degree of interpopulation environmental heterogeneity in salinity and temperature. Recent exome sequencing and SNP studies have however shown that many loci are under selection in this system. Here, we combined population genetic analyses of a large number of transcriptome‐derived microsatellite markers with oceanographic modelling to investigate genetic differentiation and connectivity in Atlantic herring at a relatively fine scale within the Baltic Sea. We found evidence for weak but robust and significant genetic structuring (FST = 0.008) explainable by oceanographic connectivity. Genetic differentiation was also associated with site differences in temperature and salinity, with the result driven by the locus Her14 which appears to be under directional selection (FST = 0.08). The results show that Baltic herring are genetically structured within the Baltic Sea, and highlight the role of oceanography and environmental factors in explaining this structuring. The results also have implications for the management of herring fisheries, the most economically important fishery in the Baltic Sea, suggesting that the current fisheries management units may be in need of revision.
Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism Cortical Impedance and Extracellular Volume Changes following Middle Cerebral Artery Occlusion in Cats

In 30 adult cats, anesthetized with nitrous oxide and halothane, the middle cerebral artery was occluded using a transorbital approach. Extracel­ lular volume changes were assessed by recording cortical impedance, and cor­ related with blood flow, tissue osmolality, and water and electrolyte content of brain tissue. Following middle cerebral artery occlusion, cortical impedance, after a free interval of about 1 min, sharply increased and after 30 to 60 min gradually stabilized between 180 and 200% of control. Calculated extracellular fluid volume decreased from 23. 1.0% after 2 h of ischemia. Shortly after middle cerebral artery occlusion, extracellular volume shifts correlated with blood flow over a range from 3 to 50 ml/100 g/min. Two hours later, a threshold-like dependency existed: below 25 ml/l00 g/min extracellular space was reduced to about 50% of control; above 32 mlllOO g/min extracellular space was normal. Non-threshold correlations existed between extracellular space, tissue osmolality, and the electroenceph­ alogram. Final water content of brain tissue correlated with the size of the extracellular space after 15 min, but not after 2 h of ischemia. This indicates that the narrowing of the extracellular compartment and ischemic brain edema are relatively independent consequences of cerebral ischemia. Keys Words: Blood flow-Brain edema-Cats-Extracellular space-Impedance-Middle cere­ bral artery occlusion. Regulation of cerebral cell volume is an active process, the efficacy of which depends on the maintenance of osmotic and ionic homeostasis be­ tween intra-and extracellular compartments (Pol­ lock and Arieff, 1980). During ischemia, this homeostatic equilibrium is severely disturbed. Stimulation of anaerobic glycolysis and, at a later stage, generation of idiogenic catalytic products cause an intracellular accumulation of osmotically active particles, and the breakdown of the energy­ dependent ion exchange pumps leads to the equili­ bration of extracellular-intracellular ion concen­ tration gradients. The result is a release of intracel­ lular potassium from, and a massive influx of Address correspondence and reprint requests to Dr. 466 sodium and water into, the intracellular compart­ ment (Rossmann, 1976). When blood flow is com­ pletely interrupted, the main source of water and electrolytes is that contained in the extracellular space. The intracellular compartment, in conse­ quence, swells at the expense of the extracellular fluid volume. It is possible to monitor these changes by recording the electrical impedance of the brain because the ohmic component of impedance de­ pends mainly on the volume fraction of the ex­ tracellular compartment equations, these changes can be described quan­ titatively (Cole …
Current Algebra of the Pure Spinor Superstring in AdS(5) x S(5)

We perform a Hamiltonian analysis of the classical type IIB superstring on AdS5 ? S5 in the pure spinor approach. Taking the spatial components of the left-invariant (super)currents and the pure spinor ghosts as canonical variables, we compute the classical graded Poisson brackets of the currents and ghosts and identify the first class constraints associated to the local SO(4,1) ? SO(5) symmetry and the pure spinor condition. We then study the properties of the BRST generators and the Hamiltonian along the constraints. For a natural choice of the the Lagrange multipliers, we show equivalence of the canonical equations of motion with the covariant ones. Finally we briefly discuss the (non) local currents, including the ghost contribution, that generate the global PSU(2,2|4) symmetry and its Yangian extension in the present framework.
Adaptive Digital Watermarking Integrating Fuzzy Inference HVS Perceptual Model

— An adaptive Fuzzy Inference Perceptual model has been proposed for watermarking of digital images. The model depends on the human visual characteristics of image sub-regions in the frequency multi-resolution wavelet domain. In the proposed model, a multi-variable fuzzy based architecture has been designed to produce a perceptual membership degree for both candidate embedding sub-regions and strength watermark embedding factor. Different sizes of benchmark images with different sizes of watermarks have been applied on the model. Several experimental attacks have been applied such as JPEG compression, noises and rotation, to ensure the robustness of the scheme. In addition, the model has been compared with different watermarking schemes. The proposed model showed its robustness to attacks and at the same time achieved a high level of imperceptibility.