Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Current and shot noise at spin-dependent hopping through magnetic tunnel junctions

Upcoming mass production of energy efficient spin-transfer torque magnetoresistive random access memory will revolutionize modern microelectronics by introducing non-volatility not only for memory but also for logic. However, the pressing issue is to boost the sensing margin by improving the tunneling magnetoresistance ratio. We demonstrate that spin-dependent trap-assisted tunneling in magnetic tunnel junctions can increase the TMR. The influence of spin decoherence and relaxation on the current and shot noise at trap-assisted hopping is investigated.
Indoor air climate requirements for Russian churches and cathedrals.

UNLABELLED In the article a verification of indoor climate requirements for Russian churches and cathedrals and recommendations on maintenance are given. From the point of view of building physics and longevity of building materials, frescos, icons, wood, paper, leather, parchment and natural textiles are regarded as capillary-porous physical bodies partly filled with moisture which includes dissolved salts. Porosity can be divided into three groups: large, moderate and small. What happens with these physical bodies when the indoor temperature and humidity changes is that deformation occurs and this may lead to breakage. Research to determine the dependence of deformation on the humidity of the surrounding structural materials of the cathedrals was carried out by a holographic interferometer. Diagrams of humidity and temperature deformation show the following results: the graphics of humidity and temperature are alike, the temperature deformations are not extensive, deformation due to humidity is more serious than deformation caused by temperature. The investigations of temperature and humidity deformation made it possible to give recommendations for the level of indoor air temperature and humidity in cathedrals. On the basis of these investigations, the Russian standard "Orthodox temples. Heating, ventilation, air conditioning" was developed (ABOK, 2002). PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS Temperature and humidity changes can affect building materials and the building structure. In the case of Russian cathedrals and churches, traditional artefacts are also affected.
Economic Impact of Korea’s Outward FDIs into Developed and Developing Economies across Industries

Along with the growth of Korea’s outward foreign direct investments (FDI), the concern for the so-called ‘'hollowing-out’ effect has grown as well. This paper aims to empirically assess the impacts of Korea’s FDI on Korea’s exports and employment by using time-series and panel analyses. Particularly, the paper compares the impact of Korea’s FDI into developed countries with the impact of Korea’s FDI into developing countries. The manufacturing sector is categorized into 11 sub-industries to account for the possible industry-specific effects. According to the time series analysis, the FDI in China caused exports in several capital-intensive industries. According to the panel analysis, FDI induced more exports, and this effect is particularly strong among Korea’s FDIs in developing economies. In particular, Korea’s FDI in China has induced more exports, but Korean domestic employment has suffered. Employment problems like this are more severe in labor-intensive industries.
O atrito nas pesquisas longitudinais: o caso da pesquisa mensal de emprego (PME/IBGE)

This article aims to estimate the determinants of attrition/permanence of people in the panel of the Brazilian Monthly Employment Survey (PME/IBGE) and also to test the bias emerged from ignorability of attrition selection in regression analyses. Results point out a strong correlation between attrition rate and characteristics closely related to geographic mobility. In addition, both survey design aspects and socioeconomic events are significantly related to the probability of attrition. In selection correction models, we find that all selection mechanisms are endogenous, even though they are not directly correlated with the equation of interest. Finally, we show that ignoring the endogeneity of sample selection, such as attrition, may imply to a biased analysis. However, controlling for only some selection mechanism, not controlling for all, may provide estimators even more biased than no controlling.
Corporate governance mechanisms and financial performance in China: panel data evidence on listed non financial companies

The objective of this paper is to provide empirical evidence on the influence of corporate governance characteristics and corporate ownership concentrations on the financial performance of Chinese companies. This is based on analysis of a panel data set covering the years 2001 to 2005. The characteristics considered are the ratios of independent directors and professional supervisors on the companies' two boards, and the level of concentration in and type of ownership of the companies. Our chosen performance metric is Tobin's Q. We find that ownership concentration in general is a significant factor in determining firm performance. The degree of board independence is significant, but it only appears to have a positive impact on performance in larger companies. The expertise of the supervisory board is not a significant determinant of corporate financial performance in China. Our findings support a continued focus on making improvements to the operation and effectiveness of China's institutions of corporate governance.
Oil palm expansion without enclosure: smallholders and environmental narratives

Recent debates on land grabbing and biofuels tend to link oil palm expansion to rural dispossession, environmental degradation and rural resistance. In this paper, we examine to what extent ‘enclosure’, a central concept in two critiques – ‘environmentalism of the poor’ and ‘green grabbing’ – is intrinsically linked to oil palm expansion. We argue that where enclosure is absent, poor peasants may seek greater market integration over resistance to modernisation processes. We analyse how and why peasants engage in oil palm cultivation and how their involvement undermines green efforts to curb its expansion in Chiapas, Mexico. Our analysis suggests that an exclusive focus on enclosure as the main driving force behind contestation and agrarian social relationships is unable to explain agrarian dynamics and the multiple uses to which environmental narratives are put.
Monetary Policy and the Uncovered Interest Rate Parity Puzzle: Theory and Empirical Results for Oceania

type="main" xml:id="ecor12097-abs-0001"> This article offers a theory-based explanation for why high- interest-rate countries see their currencies appreciate, the so-called UIP puzzle. The central bank bases its target rule on the lag of the policy instrument and the CPI inflation rate. When combined with a stylised model of an open economy, the endogenous target rule can account for the systematic negative relation between the change in the exchange rate and the lagged interest rate differential. Foreign inflation and the foreign interest rate also affect nominal exchange rate changes. The model-based behaviour of the exchange rate is tested on New Zealand and Australian data with mixed results.
Improving Cost-Effectiveness and Mitigating Risks of Renewable Energy Requirements

this work. This electronic representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for non-commercial use only. Unauthorized posting of RAND PDFs to a non-RAND Web site is prohibited. RAND PDFs are protected under copyright law. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of our research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please see RAND Permissions. Limited Electronic Distribution Rights This PDF document was made available from www.rand. org as a public service of the RAND Corporation.
IncepText: A New Inception-Text Module with Deformable PSROI Pooling for Multi-Oriented Scene Text Detection

Incidental scene text detection, especially for multi-oriented text regions, is one of the most challenging tasks in many computer vision applications.Different from the common object detection task, scene text often suffers from a large variance of aspect ratio, scale, and orientation. To solve this problem, we propose a novel end-to-end scene text detector IncepText from an instance-aware segmentation perspective. We design a novel Inception-Text module and introduce deformable PSROI pooling to deal with multi-oriented text detection. Extensive experiments on ICDAR2015, RCTW-17, and MSRA-TD500 datasets demonstrate our method's superiority in terms of both effectiveness and efficiency. Our proposed method achieves 1st place result on ICDAR2015 challenge and the state-of-the-art performance on other datasets. Moreover, we have released our implementation as an OCR product which is available for public access.
Improving customer website involvement through experiential marketing

This study outlines some of the important positive outcomes of enhancing e-retailing services through adding experiential benefits. It investigates how provision of experiential values by an online store improves involvement of customers in the e-retailer's website. This paper also looks at the impacts of experiential values on the recently developed construct of perceived e-retailer's assistive intent and investigates whether this variable contributes to the enhancement of website involvement. Collecting data from 431 North American students through a survey on actual shopping experiences supports the overall model and the majority of the hypotheses. Findings confirm that esthetics, service excellence, and customer return on investment are effective experiential values in terms of improving e-retailer's assistive image and enhancing customers' involvement in the website.
Urban literacy: communication, identity and learning in development contexts

Views on development have for many years focused on the status of the rural poor living in villages dominated by traditional economic, political and social patterns. Recent discussions of poverty reduction, however, have succeeded in drawing attention to the important role played by the inhabitants of cities and towns in the dynamics of development. This volume significantly advances these discussions by thematizing the relation of urbanization and literacy, literacy practices in urban settings, and literacy and livelihoods. The fruit of a two-year research project, this collection presents case studies from development contexts complemented by analyses which aim at a more refined understanding of what literacy can mean in urban settings. This work should command the attention of researchers, policy-makers and practitioners worldwide concerned with adult literacy and adult education and their manifold and subtle interconnections with pressing issues of economic, political and social development.
Treatment-resistant Depression in Late Life

ABSTRACT Treatment resistance is reported in up to 40% of older patients with major depression. Before labeling an episode of depression as treatment resistant, it is important to ensure that the diagnosis is correct and that the patient has received and adhered to an adequate dose of treatment for an appropriate length of time. It is also important to assess the patient for comorbid physical and psychiatric conditions that can contribute to treatment resistance. In patients who do not experience remission of symptoms with an adequate trial of medication, the following options can be considered: augmenting the antidepressant with a drug that is not primarily an antidepressant, adding a second antidepressant to the first, switching to a different antidepressant medication, or switching to electroconvulsive therapy. This paper reviews the concept of treatment-resistant depression and discusses its assessment and management in the elderly. The author concludes that when a systematic stepped-care approach to treatment is followed, most older patients with major depression will experience remission of symptoms.
The Relative Role of Imports and Exports in Explaining Productivity of Indian Bio-Pharmaceutical Firms: Evidence from Non Parametric Data Envelopment Analysis

This article estimates total factor productivity growth of eighteen Indian bio-pharmaceutical firms for the period 2000–2009, using Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) and non-parametric, Data-Envelopment-Approach. The measured MPI is decomposed to separate the contributions of technical change, technical efficiency change and scale efficiency change of each of the firm. The article also explains for determinants of productivity taking into account the role of net exports, Research and Development, Advertisement and Marketing intensity, age and size of the firm. Estimation results suggest that most of the firms show improved performance of productivity growth rate during this post liberalization period. A second stage panel regression reveals that net exports have positive role in explaining MPI of the firms, assigning greater role to exports as compared to imports in fostering productivity. The other positive and significant determinants of MPI are Research and Development intensity, Advertisement intensity, the age and the size of the firm.
Are Negative Perceptions of the Accounting Profession Perpetuated by the Introductory Accounting Course? — an Australian Study

This study investigates perceptions of the work of accountants held by first‐year accounting students as part of a national survey of accounting students. First‐year commerce students from five tertiary institutions were surveyed about their perceptions of the accounting profession as well as their intention to complete a major study of accounting at tertiary level. Influences on the formation of their perceptions formed an important part of the study. The results reported in this paper serve to illustrate that the majority of students surveyed had negative perceptions of accounting. The source of influences on perceptions indicated that perceptions were mainly derived from tertiary education experiences. As perceptions influence choice of major and career choice, the findings have important implications for accounting educators and professional accounting bodies.
THE DEMAND FOR MONEY DURING HYPERINFLATIONS UNDER RATIONAL EXPECTATIONS: I*

paradox that emerged when Cagan used his estimates of x to calculate the sustained rates of inflation associated with the maximum flow of real resources that the creators of money could command by printing money. This "optimal" rate of inflation turns out to be -l/oc. For each of the seven hyperinflations, the reciprocal of Cagan's estimate of -a turned out to be less, and often very much less, than the actual average rate of inflation. The data are shown in
Subconstituency Reactions to Elite Depolarization in the Netherlands: An Analysis of the Dutch Public's Policy Beliefs and Partisan Loyalties, 1986–98

During the 1980s and the 1990s, the elites of the two largest Dutch parties converged dramatically in debates on income redistribution, nuclear power and the overall Left–Right dimension, paving the way for the Dutch party system's polarization on immigration and cultural issues. Did the Dutch mass public depolarize along with party elites, and, if so, was this mass-level depolarization confined to affluent, educated, politically engaged citizens? Analysis of Dutch Parliamentary Election Study respondents’ policy beliefs and partisan loyalties in 1986–98 shows that the mass public depolarized during this period, and that this extended equally throughout the electorate. These conclusions mirror previous findings on Britain, but differ from those on the United States, and have important implications for political representation and for parties’ election strategies.
An fMRI examination of developmental differences in the neural correlates of uncertainty and decision-making.

BACKGROUND Maturation of prefrontal circuits during adolescence contributes to the development of cognitive processes such as decision-making. Recent theories suggest that these neural changes also play a role in the shift from generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) to depression that often occurs during this developmental period. Cognitive models of the development of GAD highlight the role of intolerance of uncertainty (IU), which can be characterized behaviorally by impairments in decision-making. The present study examines potential developmental differences in frontal regions associated with uncertain decision-making, and tests the impact of IU on these circuits. METHODS Twelve healthy adults (ages 19-36) and 12 healthy adolescents (ages 13-17) completed a decision-making task with conditions of varied uncertainty while fMRI scans were acquired. They also completed measures of worry and IU, and a questionnaire about their levels of anxiety and certainty during the task. RESULTS Combined group analyses demonstrated significant linear effects of uncertainty on activity within anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Region of interest (ROI)-based analysis found a significant interaction of group and IU ratings in ACC. Increased IU was associated with robust linear increases in ACC activity only in adolescents. An ROI analysis of feedback-related processing found that adolescents demonstrated greater activation during incorrect trials relative to correct trials, while the adults showed no difference in neural activity associated with incorrect and correct feedback. CONCLUSIONS This decision-making task was shown to be effective at eliciting uncertainty-related ACC activity in adults and adolescents. Further, IU impacts ACC activity in adolescents during uncertain decision-making, providing preliminary support for a developmental model of GAD.
Functional characterisation of the chromatically antagonistic photosensitive mechanism of erythrophores in the tilapia Oreochromis niloticus

ABSTRACT Non-visual photoreceptors with diverse photopigments allow organisms to adapt to changing light conditions. Whereas visual photoreceptors are involved in image formation, non-visual photoreceptors mainly undertake various non-image-forming tasks. They form specialised photosensory systems that measure the quality and quantity of light and enable appropriate behavioural and physiological responses. Chromatophores are dermal non-visual photoreceptors directly exposed to light and they not only receive ambient photic input but also respond to it. These specialised photosensitive pigment cells enable animals to adjust body coloration to fit environments, and play an important role in mate choice, camouflage and ultraviolet (UV) protection. However, the signalling pathway underlying chromatophore photoresponses and the physiological importance of chromatophore colour change remain under-investigated. Here, we characterised the intrinsic photosensitive system of red chromatophores (erythrophores) in tilapia. Like some non-visual photoreceptors, tilapia erythrophores showed wavelength-dependent photoresponses in two spectral regions: aggregations of inner pigment granules under UV and short-wavelengths and dispersions under middle- and long-wavelengths. The action spectra curve suggested that two primary photopigments exert opposite effects on these light-driven processes: SWS1 (short-wavelength sensitive 1) for aggregations and RH2b (rhodopsin-like) for dispersions. Both western blot and immunohistochemistry showed SWS1 expression in integumentary tissues and erythrophores. The membrane potential of erythrophores depolarised under UV illumination, suggesting that changes in membrane potential are required for photoresponses. These results suggest that SWS1 and RH2b play key roles in mediating intrinsic erythrophore photoresponses in different spectral ranges and this chromatically dependent antagonistic photosensitive mechanism may provide an advantage to detect subtle environmental photic change. Summary: Aggregation of tilapia erythrophores in UV and short wavelengths and their dispersal in middle and long wavelengths is mediated by two antagonistic primary photopigments.
Dietary acid load and bone turnover during long-duration spaceflight and bed rest.

Background Bed rest studies document that a lower dietary acid load is associated with lower bone resorption. Objective We tested the effect of dietary acid load on bone metabolism during spaceflight. Design Controlled 4-d diets with a high or low animal protein-to-potassium (APro:K) ratio (High and Low diets, respectively) were given to 17 astronauts before and during spaceflight. Each astronaut had 1 High and 1 Low diet session before flight and 2 High and 2 Low sessions during flight, in addition to a 4-d session around flight day 30 (FD30), when crew members were to consume their typical in-flight intake. At the end of each session, blood and urine samples were collected. Calcium, total protein, energy, and sodium were maintained in each crew member's preflight and in-flight controlled diets. Results Relative to preflight values, N-telopeptide (NTX) and urinary calcium were higher during flight, and bone-specific alkaline phosphatase (BSAP) was higher toward the end of flight. The High and Low diets did not affect NTX, BSAP, or urinary calcium. Dietary sulfur and age were significantly associated with changes in NTX. Dietary sodium and flight day were significantly associated with urinary calcium during flight. The net endogenous acid production (NEAP) estimated from the typical dietary intake at FD30 was associated with loss of bone mineral content in the lumbar spine after the mission. The results were compared with data from a 70-d bed rest study, in which control (but not exercising) subjects' APro:K was associated with higher NTX during bed rest. Conclusions Long-term lowering of NEAP by increasing vegetable and fruit intake may protect against changes in loss of bone mineral content during spaceflight when adequate calcium is consumed, particularly if resistive exercise is not being performed. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT01713634.
Understanding the determinant factors of Internet business solutions adoption: the case of Portuguese firms

The purpose of our article is to identify the determinants of Internet Business Solutions (IBS), using a representative sample of Portuguese business sector in 2006. This article is based on a theoretical framework in which the adoption of IBS is done in two stages. At the first stage, the firm decides to adopt or not a website; at the second stage, those who adopted a website decide on the level of IBS adoption. We considered that the determinants of the adoption decisions can be internal or external and that their effect may be different at the two adoption stages. Based on these assumptions, we develop and test an integrated model of IBS adoption allowing for sample selection. Our results show that the two adoption decisions are taken sequentially and that selectivity bias is not present in our sample. Our findings also suggest that the relevant drivers of website and the level of IBS adoption are not necessarily the same.