Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Financial reporting changes and the internal information environment: Evidence from SFAS 142

Using the adoption of SFAS 142 as an exogenous shock, we examine the effect of changes in financial reporting on firms’ internal information environment. We argue that complying with SFAS 142 induces managers to acquire new information and therefore improves their information sets. Interviews with executives and auditors confirm this argument. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that firms affected by SFAS 142 (i.e., treatment firms) experience an improvement in management forecast accuracy in the post-SFAS 142 period. The increase is smaller for those with stronger monitoring in the pre-SFAS 142 period and greater for those with a higher likelihood of goodwill impairment. Furthermore, treatment firms with improvements in management forecast accuracy have higher M&A quality, internal capital allocation efficiency, and performance in the post-SFAS142 period. Overall, our findings indicate that changes in external financial reporting can lead to better corporate decisions via their impact on the internal information environment.
NCBI BLAST: a better web interface

Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) is a sequence similarity search program. The public interface of BLAST, http://www.ncbi. nlm.nih. gov/blast, at the NCBI website has recently been reengineered to improve usability and performance. Key new features include simplified search forms, improved navigation, a list of recent BLAST results, saved search strategies and a documentation directory. Here, we describe the BLAST web application's new features, explain design decisions and outline plans for future improvement.
Effects of open drainage ditch design on bacterial and fungal communities of cold waterlogged paddy soils

A field experiment established in 1980 was conducted to evaluate the effects of open drainage ditch applied for water removal on bacterial and fungal communities of cold waterlogged paddy soils in 2011. In this experiment, traditional plate counting and temperature gradient gel electrophoresis were employed to characterize the abundance and diversity of soil bacterial and fungal communities. Four different distances from the open drainage ditch, 5, 15, 25 and 75 m with different degrees of drainage were designed for this study. Maximum populations of culturable aerobic bacteria and fungi were at 15-m distance while minimum populations were at 75-m distance. Significant differences (p < 0.05) in fungal populations were observed at all distances from open drainage ditch. The highest diversity of the bacterial community was found at a distance of 25 m, while that of the fungal community was observed at a distance of 5 m. Sequencing of excised TGGE bands indicated that the dominant bacteria at 75-m distance belonged to anaerobic or microaerobic bacteria. Relationships between microbial characteristics and soil physicochemical properties indicated that soil pH and available nitrogen contents were key factors controlling the abundance of culturable aerobic bacteria and fungi, while soil water capacity also affected the diversity of fungal community. These findings can provide the references for better design and advanced management of the drainage ditches in cold waterlogged paddy soils.
Cost-effectiveness of family-based group treatment for child and parental obesity.

BACKGROUND Obesity runs in families, and family-based behavioral treatment (FBT) is associated with weight loss in overweight/obese children and their overweight/obese parents. This study was designed to estimate the costs and cost-effectiveness of FBT compared to separate group treatments of the overweight/obese parent and child (PC). METHODS Fifty overweight/obese 8- to 12-year-old children with overweight/obese parents were randomly assigned to 12 months of either FBT or PC treatment program. Assessment of societal costs (payer plus opportunity costs) were completed based on two assumptions: (1) programs for parent and child were available on separate days (PC-1) or (2) interventions for parent and child were available in the same location at sequential times on the same day (PC-2). Cost-effectiveness was calculated based on societal cost per unit of change using percent overBMI for children and weight for parents. RESULTS The average societal cost per family was $1,448 for FBT and $2,260 for PC-1 (p < 0.001) and $2,124 for PC-2 (p < 0.001). Child cost-effectiveness for FBT was $209.17/percent overBMI, compared to $1,036.50/percent overBMI for PC-1 and $973.98/percent overBMI for PC-2. Parent cost-effectiveness was $132.97/pound (lb) for FBT and $373.53/lb (PC-1) or $351.00/lb (PC-2). CONCLUSIONS For families with overweight/obese children and parents, FBT presents a lower cost per unit of weight loss for parents and children than treating the parent and child separately. Given the high rates of pediatric and adult obesity, FBT may provide a unique cost-effective platform for obesity intervention that alters weight in overweight/obese parents and their overweight/obese children.
The Active Corona of HD 35850 (F8 V)

We present Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) spectroscopy and photometry of the nearby F8 V star HD 35850 (HR 1817). The EUVE short-wavelength 75-175 Å and medium-wavelength 160-365 Å spectra reveal 28 emission lines from Fe IX and Fe XV to Fe XXIV. The Fe XXI λλ102, 129 ratio yields an upper limit for the coronal electron density, logne<11.6 cm−3. The EUVE short-wavelength spectrum shows a small but clearly detectable continuum. The 75-150 Å line-to-continuum ratio indicates approximately solar Fe abundances, with 0.8<Z<1.6 (90% confidence interval). Upper limits have been derived for a dozen high-emissivity Fe X through Fe XIV lines. The resulting emission measure distribution is characterized by two broad temperature components at logT of 6.8 and 7.4. Over the course of the 1 week observation, large-amplitude, long-duration flares were not seen in the EUVE Deep Survey light curve, although the light curve does show signs of persistent, low-level flaring and possible rotational modulation. The EUVE spectra have been compared with nonsimultaneous ASCA SIS spectra of HD 35850 obtained in 1995. The SPEX DEM analysis of the SIS spectrum indicates the same temperature distribution as the EUVE DEM analysis. However, the SIS spectra suggest subsolar abundances, 0.34<Z<0.81. Although some of the discrepancy may be the result of incomplete X-ray line lists, we cannot explain the disagreement between the EUVE line-to-continuum ratio and the ASCA-derived Fe abundance. The X-ray surface flux on HD 35850 is comparable to that of cooler dwarfs of comparable age and rotation like EK Draconis (G0 V) and AB Doradus (K1 V). Given its youth (t≈100 Myr), its rapid rotation (vsini≈50 km s−1), and its high X-ray activity (LX≈1.5×1030 ergs s−1), HD 35850 may represent an activity extremum for single, main-sequence F-type stars. The variability and emission measure distribution can be reconstructed using the continuous flaring model of Güdel provided that the flare distribution has a power-law index α≈1.8. Similar results obtained for other young solar analogs suggest that continuous flaring is a viable coronal heating mechanism on rapidly rotating, late-type, main-sequence stars.
Association of CYP1A1 A4889G and T6235C polymorphisms with the risk of sporadic breast cancer in Brazilian women

OBJECTIVES: We examined the influence of CYP1A1 A4889G and T6235C polymorphisms on the risk of sporadic breast cancer. METHOD: DNA from 742 sporadic breast cancer patients and 742 controls was analyzed using the polymerase chain reaction, followed by the restriction fragment length polymorphism technique. RESULTS: More patients had the CYP1A1 4889AG+GG genotype compared to controls (29.0% versus 23.2%, p=0.004). The G allele carriers had a 1.50-fold increased risk (95% CI: 1.14–1.97) of sporadic breast cancer compared to the other study participants. The frequency of the 4889AG+GG genotype among the Caucasian patients was higher than in the non-Caucasian patients (30.4% versus 20.2%, p=0.03) and controls (30.4% versus 23.2%, p=0.002). Caucasians and G allele carriers had a 1.61-fold increased risk (95% CI: 1.20–2.15) of sporadic breast cancer compared to other subjects. The CYP1A1 4889AG+GG genotype was more common among patients with a younger median age at first full-term pregnancy than among controls (33.8% versus 23.2%, p=0.001) and subjects whose first full-term pregnancies occurred at an older age (33.8% versus 26.1%, p=0.03). Women with the CYP1A1 4889AG+GG genotype and earlier first full-term pregnancies had a 1.87-fold (95% CI: 1.32–2.67) increased risk of sporadic breast cancer compared to the other study participants. Excess CYP1A1 4889AG+GG (39.8% versus 27.1%, p=0.01) and 6235TC+CC (48.4% versus 35.9%, p=0.02) genotypes were also observed in patients with grade I and II tumors compared to patients with grade III tumors and controls (39.8% versus 23.2%, p=0.04; 48.4% versus 38.6%, p=0.04). The G and C allele carriers had a 2.44-fold (95% CI: 1.48–4.02) and 1.67-fold (95% CI: 1.03–2.69) increased risk, respectively, of developing grade I and II tumors compared to other subjects. CONCLUSIONS: The CYP1A1 A4889G and T6235C polymorphisms may alter the risk of sporadic breast cancer in Brazilian women.
Clustering by means of unsupervised decision trees or hierarchical and K-means-like algorithm

A classical information retrieval system returns a list of documents to a user query. The answer list is often so long that users cannot explore all the documents retrieved. A classification of the retrieved documents allows to thematically organize them and to improve precision. In this paper, we present and compare two text classification algorithms. The first one is a clustering algorithm (K-Means-like) initialized with a partial hierarchical classification. The second one is a new algorithm that relies on unsupervised decision trees (UDTs). The indexing methods we use (TF-IDF weighting scheme, cosine similarity in the vector space model) prevent from really considering all the subjects dealt with in the texts. A better way to take all the themes into account is to cluster sentences from documents instead of documents as a whole. This is achieved the second method we propose. The effectiveness of these methods is evaluated over Amaryllis'99 corpora and queries. Since these methods are applied during a post-processing phase, they can be used with any IR-system which returns a list of documents. The methods presented here allow to obtain significant results and improvement compared with a search without classification In order to verify that improvement is due to the methods and not to the sharing out of items into classes, the results obtained are compared with those of a random classification.
Biologically plausible visual homing methods based on optical flow techniques

Insects are able to return to important places in their environment by storing an image of the surroundings while at the goal, and later computing a home direction from a matching between this 'snapshot' image and the currently perceived image. Very similar ideas are pursued for the visual navigation of mobile robots. A wide range of different solutions for the matching between the two images have been suggested. This paper explores the application of optical flow techniques for visual homing. The performance of five different flow techniques and a reference method is analysed based on image collections from three different indoor environments. We show that block matching, two simple variants of block matching and two even simpler differential techniques produce robust homing behaviour, despite the simplicity of the matched features. Our analysis reveals that visual homing can succeed even in the presence of many incorrect feature correspondences, and that low-frequency features are sufficient for homing. In particular, the successful application of differential methods opens new vistas on the visual homing problem, both as plausible and parsimonious models of visual insect navigation, and as a starting point for novel robot navigation methods.
Research on Service Positioning of Supply Chain Enterprises

This paper describes diverse supply chain enterprises from a different point of view-service positioning. Supply chain covers from transportation, storage, produce, distribution processing, information management, service plan and integration, to consultation. On basis of that, it's necessary for every supply chain enterprise to identify self-positioning in market competition, which, for example, includes selection on targeting area, operational commodity category and service program together with its level of difficulty. The factors affecting service positioning of supply chain enterprises and its possible trends are discussed in this article. In addition, the article reveals the fact that the precise positioning is the crucial issue needed to be considered by our domestic supply chain enterprises, the result of which may exert great impact on the competitive advantages and sustainable development of supply chain enterprises.
Working Memory Load Modulates Distractor Competition in Primary Visual Cortex

When stimuli compete for sensory processing and response selection, coherent goal-guided behavior requires cognitive control so that task-relevant “targets” rather than irrelevant distractors are selected. It has been shown that reduced cognitive control under high working memory load increases distractor competition for selection. It remains unknown, though, whether cognitive control by working memory has an effect on the earliest levels of sensory processing in primary visual cortex. The present study addressed this question by having subjects perform a selective attention task involving classification of meaningful target objects while also ignoring congruent and incongruent distractor images. The level of cognitive control over distractor competition was varied through a concurrent working memory task of either low (1 digit) or high (6 digits) load. Functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed greater distractor competition effects not only on behavior but also on the sensory correlates in primary visual cortex (areas V1–V2) in conditions of high (vs. low) working memory load. In addition, high working memory load resulted in increased congruency-related functional connectivity between anterior cingulate cortex and V1. These results are the first to establish the neural correlates of distractor competition effects in primary visual cortex and the critical role of working memory in their cognitive control.
GenSVM: A Generalized Multiclass Support Vector Machine

Traditional extensions of the binary support vector machine (SVM) to multiclass problems are either heuristics or require solving a large dual optimization problem. Here, a generalized multiclass SVM is proposed called GenSVM. In this method classification boundaries for a K-class problem are constructed in a (K - 1)-dimensional space using a simplex encoding. Additionally, several different weightings of the misclassification errors are incorporated in the loss function, such that it generalizes three existing multiclass SVMs through a single optimization problem. An iterative majorization algorithm is derived that solves the optimization problem without the need of a dual formulation. This algorithm has the advantage that it can use warm starts during cross validation and during a grid search, which significantly speeds up the training phase. Rigorous numerical experiments compare linear GenSVM with seven existing multiclass SVMs on both small and large data sets. These comparisons show that the proposed method is competitive with existing methods in both predictive accuracy and training time, and that it significantly outperforms several existing methods on these criteria.
Mode-matching design of substrate-integrated waveguide couplers

A mode-matching based full-wave analysis method is deployed to design H-plane substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) couplers. In order to apply simple and straightforward mode-matching techniques, commonly used circular vias are replaced by proper square ones. K-band and W-band SIW directional couplers are designed with square vias, and then analyzed and validated by commercially available full-wave field solvers using circular vias. Comparisons with measurements on a Ka-band SIW coupler with circular vias verify the analysis and design procedure.
Large Differences in Terrestrial Vegetation Production Derived from Satellite-Based Light Use Efficiency Models

Terrestrial gross primary production (GPP) is the largest global CO2 flux and determines other ecosystem carbon cycle variables. Light use efficiency (LUE) models may have the most potential to adequately address the spatial and temporal dynamics of GPP, but recent studies have shown large model differences in GPP simulations. In this study, we investigated the GPP differences in the spatial and temporal patterns derived from seven widely used LUE models at the global scale. The result shows that the global annual GPP estimates over the period 2000–2010 varied from 95.10 to 139.71 Pg C∙yr−1 among models. The spatial and temporal variation of global GPP differs substantially between models, due to different model structures and dominant environmental drivers. In almost all models, water availability dominates the interannual variability of GPP over large vegetated areas. Solar radiation and air temperature are not the primary controlling factors for interannual variability of global GPP estimates for most models. The disagreement among the current LUE models highlights the need for further model improvement to quantify the global carbon cycle.
Nitrogen and phosphorus excretion by detritivorous gizzard shad in a reservoir ecosystem

The detritivorous fish, gizzard shad (Dorosoma cepedianum), provides nutrients to phytoplankton in reservoirs by ingesting organic detritus associated with sediments and excreting substantial quantities of nutrients such as N and P in soluble forms that are highly available to phytoplankton. We estimated nutrient excretion by gizzard shad in a eutrophic reservoir (Acton Lake, Ohio) during April–October 1994 by measuring N and P excretion of field‐caught fish (n = 135). Excretion rates were then extrapolated to nutrient release by the gizzard shad population using quadrat rotenone biomass estimates, electrofishing surveys, and historic seasonal trends. N and P excretion were positively correlated with fish wet mass and temperature, but mass‐specific excretion declined with increasing fish mass. Lakewide gizzard shad biomass in July 1994 was 417 kg ha−1. Our estimates of nutrient excretion by the gizzard shad population ranged from 0.487 to 0.769 µmol NH3‐N liter−1 d−1 and 0.022 to 0.057 µmol soluble reactive phosphorus liter−1 d−1, with the highest excretion occurring during mid‐summer through early fall. The low N : P ratio at which gizzard shad excrete [mean molar N : P= 16.75 (±0.89 SE)] may alter phytoplankton community composition, favoring cyanobacteria. Our results indicate that nutrient excretion by detritivorous fish can be an important source of nutrients to open waters, especially when other sources of nutrients are reduced.
The Wide Brown Dwarf Binary Oph 1622–2405 and Discovery of a Wide, Low-Mass Binary in Ophiuchus (Oph 1623–2402): A New Class of Young Evaporating Wide Binaries?

We imaged five objects near the star-forming clouds of Ophiuchus with the Keck Laser Guide Star AO system. We resolved sources 11 (Oph 16222-2405) and 16 (Oph 16233-2402) from Allers and coworkers into binary systems. Source 11 is resolved into a 243 AU binary, the widest known for a very low mass (VLM) binary. The binary nature of source 11 was discovered first by Allers and independently here, during which we obtained the first spatially resolved R ~ 2000 near-infrared (J and K) spectra, mid-IR photometry, and orbital motion estimates. We estimate for 11A and 11B gravities (log g > 3.75), ages (5 ± 2 Myr), luminosities [log(L/L☉) = -2.77 ± 0.10 and -2.96 ± 0.10], and temperatures (Teff = 2375 ± 175 K and 2175 ± 175 K). We find self-consistent DUSTY evolutionary model (Chabrier and coworkers) masses of 17 MJ and 14 MJ, for 11A and 11B, respectively. Our masses are higher than those previously reported (13-15 MJ and 7-8 MJ) by Jayawardhana & Ivanov. Hence, we find that the system is unlikely a "planetary mass binary," as do Luhman and coworkers, but it has the second lowest mass and lowest binding energy of any known binary. Oph 11 and Oph 16 belong to a newly recognized population of wide (≳100 AU), young (<10 Myr), roughly equal mass, VLM stellar and brown dwarf binaries. We deduce that ~6% ± 3% of young (<10 Myr) VLM objects are in such wide systems. However, only 0.3% ± 0.1% of old field VLM objects are found in such wide systems. Thus, young, wide, VLM binary populations may be evaporating, due to stellar encounters in their natal clusters, leading to a field population depleted in wide VLM systems.
Maximum and Comparison Principles for Convex Functions on the Heisenberg Group

Abstract We prove estimates, similar in form to the classical Aleksandrov estimates, for a Monge–Ampère type operator on the Heisenberg group. A notion of normal mapping does not seem to be available in this context and the method of proof uses integration by parts and oscillation estimates that lead to the construction of an analogue of Monge–Ampère measures for convex functions in the Heisenberg group.
Voice Onset Time in German-Italian Simultaneous Bilinguals : Evidence on Cross-Language Influence and Markedness

This paper examines Voice Onset Time (VOT) in the two languages of adult bilingual speakers of Italian and German with exposure to both languages from birth, i.e. simultaneous bilinguals (henceforth 2L1s). More specifically, we compare German-Italian 2L1s, who grew up in Italy with German as their minority language, to German-Italian 2L1s, who grew up in Germany with Italian as their minority language. Our main purpose is to investigate potential effects of dual language exposure. We assume that early simultaneous bilinguals are a subgroup of heritage speakers. This entails that those early bilinguals who grew up in Italy are heritage speakers of German, whereas those who grew up in Germany are heritage speakers of Italian.