Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Understanding Black Male Athlete Social Responsibility (BMASR): A Case Study of an NBA Franchise

Understanding Black Male Athlete Social Responsibility (BMASR): A Case Study of an NBA Franchise. (May 2011) Kwame Jesse Asamoah Agyemang, B.A; M.Ed., The University of Oklahoma Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. John N. Singer While there is voluminous research on the Black male athlete, the literature does not touch on the notion of social responsibility. Thus, the purpose of this study was to garner perceptions of Black male athlete social responsibility (BMASR) from an NBA franchise, with the ultimate goal of moving toward a framework for better understanding this concept. A qualitative case study design was employed, utilizing in person interviews, telephone interviews, as well as observations and document analysis. To garner initial themes, open coding was employed after which axial coding was used to configure more defined themes. Five central themes emanated from the analysis. The most significant theme was related to how participants defined Black male athlete social responsibility in comparison to how Archie Carroll defined corporate social responsibility (CSR). Second, the participants asserted that issues of race and racism continue to play an integral part today‘s society. For instance, participants gave examples of how racism permeates in the sport industry. Third, given many Black male athletes are in the public eye (e.g., media), participants felt Black male athletes should be role models. The role of
Upstream mononucleotide A-repeats play a cis-regulatory role in mammals through the DICER1 and Ago proteins

A-repeats are the simplest form of tandem repeats and are found ubiquitously throughout genomes. These mononucleotide repeats have been widely believed to be non-functional ‘junk’ DNA. However, studies in yeasts suggest that A-repeats play crucial biological functions, and their role in humans remains largely unknown. Here, we showed a non-random pattern of distribution of sense A- and T-repeats within 20 kb around transcription start sites (TSSs) in the human genome. Different distributions of these repeats are observed upstream and downstream of TSSs. Sense A-repeats are enriched upstream, whereas sense T-repeats are enriched downstream of TSSs. This enrichment directly correlates with repeat size. Genes with different functions contain different lengths of repeats. In humans, tissue-specific genes are enriched for short repeats of <10 bp, whereas housekeeping genes are enriched for long repeats of ≥10 bp. We demonstrated that DICER1 and Argonaute proteins are required for the cis-regulatory role of A-repeats. Moreover, in the presence of a synthetic polymer that mimics an A-repeat, protein binding to A-repeats was blocked, resulting in a dramatic change in the expression of genes containing upstream A-repeats. Our findings suggest a length-dependent cis-regulatory function of A-repeats and that Argonaute proteins serve as trans-acting factors, binding to A-repeats.
On Sturmian and episturmian words, and related topics

Combinatorics on words plays a fundamental role in various fields of mathematics, not to mention its relevance in theoretical computer science and physics. Most renowned among its branches is the theory of infinite binary sequences called Sturmian words, which are fascinating in many respects, having been studied from combinatorial, algebraic, and geometric points of view. The most well-known example of a Sturmian word is the ubiquitous Fibonacci word, the importance of which lies in combinatorial pattern matching and the theory of words. Properties of the Fibonacci word and, more generally, Sturmian words have been extensively studied, not only because of their significance in discrete mathematics, but also due to their practical applications in computer imagery (digital straightness), theoretical physics (quasicrystal modelling) and molecular biology.
National Governance Bundles and Corporate Agency Costs: A Cross‐Country Analysis

Manuscript Type. Conceptual and empirical. Research Question/Issue. Comparative corporate governance performance across countries cannot be captured adequately by ranking of single or a few national governance factors (NGFs). But it is also intractable to undertake separate comparative analyses of the large number of NGFs that potentially impact corporate governance mechanisms. How can NGFs be combined into national governance bundles (NGBs) that are informative of the level of agency costs at the firm level and are also convenient to use in comparative analyses? Research Findings/Insights. We theoretically motivate and empirically identify the components of two NGBs that, at the firm level, have especially significant impact on controlling shareholder agency costs and the agency costs of debt financing, respectively. These NGBs (1) allow consolidation of the effects of various individual NGFs that have been considered separately in the literature, (2) reveal the complementarity and substitutability effects among NGFs and between NGFs and firm governance mechanisms, and (3) are convenient to apply through aggregate bundle scores.Theoretical/Academic Implications. Forming NGBs by combining NGFs that have especially significant impact on specific agency costs is useful both theoretically and empirically. The theoretical analysis guides the identification of NGFs that may be especially influential on specific agency costs and these predictions can be verified empirically. Examining the effects of NGFs on the relation of firm‐level governance mechanisms and agency costs is useful in understanding the links between national‐ and firm‐level governance variables. Practitioner/Policy Implications. The parsimony and tractability afforded by the NGBs in understanding various aspects of corporate governance performance should prove useful to policymakers, international business managers, and investors. By providing readily available indicators of different agency costs at the firm level, these bundles can guide policymakers in setting the legal and regulatory framework for corporate governance at the national level.
Index and Index-Futures Returns

A stock index futures contract is a standardized agreement to buy (on the long side of the contract) or sell (on the short side) a specified portfolio of stocks at a specified deferred date. The transaction is mandatory, and its detailed terms are established by the futures exchange where the contract is traded. The stock index futures contract is a derivative security, meaning that its value is a function of the value of another security (or portfolio of securities), the index. Although investors could invest directly in the stock portfolio which constitutes the index, stock index futures are viable due to their trading and liquidity advantages, which account for the outstanding growth in their trading volume in the last decade (see Figlewski (1987)). While one would expect the returns on the stock index and its derivative security, the stock-index futures contract, to exhibit exactly the same behavior, they in fact do not. The differences in the behavior patterns of these returns is the subject of this paper. A number of recent papers studied the price behavior of stock indices and stock index futures. Edwards (1987), Ng (1987), Junkus (1986), and MacKinlay and Ramaswamy (1988) found systematic differences between the price behavior of stock-index futures and the corresponding index. In this paper, we present a model of price-adjustment which explains these differences. We generalize the price-adjustment model in Amihud and Mendelson (1987) to the multi-security case, derive the variance and serial autocovariance of stock-index returns, compare them to those of the corresponding index futures, and test the predictions of the model. We also show that the positive autocorrelations of stock index-returns, which are higher and often opposite in sign compared to those of individual stocks, can be explained by our model. ' In what follows, we derive a price-adjustment model for a stock portfolio and for the corresponding futures contract. We compare the return behavior of the index and the index-futures and analyze the data presented in Mac-
Are Women More Likely to Seek Advice than Men? Evidence from the Boardroom

It is commonly believed that women are more likely to seek advice than men; for example, on aspects of health or asking for directions when lost. This paper investigates whether women’s relatively greater propensity for advice seeking extends to important business decisions, specifically those involving corporate takeovers. Consistent with the evidence from other contexts, we show that the presence of female directors on target boards is positively and significantly associated with target boards seeking advice from top-ranked financial advisors. In contrast, we do not observe any significant association between the presence of female directors on bidder boards and their engagement of top-ranked financial advisors. We argue that the presence of a gender effect for target boards but not for bidder boards is consistent with less overconfident female versus male directors on bidder boards initiating fewer bids, higher litigation risk facing target boards for accepting too little, and the different type of advice sought by bidders and target firms.
Compositional Recurrent Neural Networks for Chinese Short Text Classification

Word segmentation is the first step in Chinese natural language processing, and the error caused by word segmentation can be transmitted to the whole system. In order to reduce the impact of word segmentation and improve the overall performance of Chinese short text classification system, we propose a hybrid model of character-level and word-level features based on recurrent neural network (RNN) with long short-term memory (LSTM). By integrating character-level feature into word-level feature, the missing semantic information by the error of word segmentation will be constructed, meanwhile the wrong semantic relevance will be reduced. The final feature representation is that it suppressed the error of word segmentation in the case of maintaining most of the semantic features of the sentence. The whole model is finally trained end-to-end with supervised Chinese short text classification task. Results demonstrate that the proposed model in this paper is able to represent Chinese short text effectively, and the performances of 32-class and 5-class categorization outperform some remarkable methods.
Asymptotic Theory for the Garch(1,1) Quasi-Maximum Likelihood Estimator

This paper investigates the sampling behavior of the quasi-maximum likelihood estimator of the Gaussian GARCH(1,1) model. The rescaled variable (the ratio of the disturbance to the conditional standard deviation) is not required to be Gaussian nor independent over time, in contrast to the current literature. The GARCH process may be integrated (α + β = 1), or even mildly explosive (α + β > 1). A bounded conditional fourth moment of the rescaled variable is sufficient for the results. Consistent estimation and asymptotic normality are demonstrated, as well as consistent estimation of the asymptotic covariance matrix.
Adaptation and development: Livelihoods and climate change in Subarnabad, Bangladesh

This paper explores the relationship between environmental change and development through a vulnerability study of a rural village in southwest Bangladesh. Villagers deal with a variety of pressing stresses, and climate change is not considered separately, if at all. Environmental, political and economic conditions and adjustments in resource use systems, particularly shrimp farming, have changed livelihood opportunities and increased the vulnerabilities of poor villagers to future environmental changes, including climate change. Practical adaptation strategies to reduce vulnerabilities to climate-related stresses reflect the dynamics of people's livelihoods and address the conditions they currently face. In this case, planned adaptations were mainstreamed in the sense that they contributed to the livelihoods of people and made some improvement in their capacity to deal with changes in climate, and they were undertaken via established non-government institutions.
Physical Features of Visual Images Affect Macaque Monkey’s Preference for These Images

Animals exhibit different degrees of preference toward various visual stimuli. In addition, it has been shown that strongly preferred stimuli can often act as a reward. The aim of the present study was to determine what features determine the strength of the preference for visual stimuli in order to examine neural mechanisms of preference judgment. We used 50 color photographs obtained from the Flickr Material Database (FMD) as original stimuli. Four macaque monkeys performed a simple choice task, in which two stimuli selected randomly from among the 50 stimuli were simultaneously presented on a monitor and monkeys were required to choose either stimulus by eye movements. We considered that the monkeys preferred the chosen stimulus if it continued to look at the stimulus for an additional 6 s and calculated a choice ratio for each stimulus. Each monkey exhibited a different choice ratio for each of the original 50 stimuli. They tended to select clear, colorful and in-focus stimuli. Complexity and clarity were stronger determinants of preference than colorfulness. Images that included greater amounts of spatial frequency components were selected more frequently. These results indicate that particular physical features of the stimulus can affect the strength of a monkey’s preference and that the complexity, clarity and colorfulness of the stimulus are important determinants of this preference. Neurophysiological studies would be needed to examine whether these features of visual stimuli produce more activation in neurons that participate in this preference judgment.
The effect of income on demand for micronutrients in poor rural Mexico

We estimate income elasticities for a variety of macro- and micro-nutrients using a sample of poor rural households in Mexico. The nutrient-income elasticity is estimated using a linear regression model controlling both for the clustered nature of our data and for the bias due to measurement error in nutrient consumption at the household level. Our preferred estimates (instrumental variable-fixed effect specification for the sample of all households) show a sizeable positive elasticity for some nutrients (especially vitamin A 0.8, vitamin C 0.69 and calcium 0.45). For other nutrients the effect of income on the consumption is still significant but very small (elasticity for fiber is only 0.09 and for iron 0.08). We also test for the robustness of our estimates using a semi-parametric estimator (partially linear model) and whether the presence of zero consumption for specific micronutrients in our sample, such as cholesterol and heme iron, can be a source of bias for our estimates.
Increased dry-season length over southern Amazonia in recent decades and its implication for future climate projection

Significance Whether the dry-season length will increase is a central question in determining the fate of the rainforests over Amazonia and the future global atmospheric CO2 concentration. We show observationally that the dry-season length over southern Amazonia has increased significantly since 1979. We do not know what has caused this change, although it resembles the effects of anthropogenic climate change. The global climate models that were presented in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report seem to substantially underestimate the variability of the dry-season length. Such a bias implies that the future change of the dry-season length, and hence the risk of rainforest die-back, may be underestimated by the projections of these models. We have observed that the dry-season length (DSL) has increased over southern Amazonia since 1979, primarily owing to a delay of its ending dates (dry-season end, DSE), and is accompanied by a prolonged fire season. A poleward shift of the subtropical jet over South America and an increase of local convective inhibition energy in austral winter (June–August) seem to cause the delay of the DSE in austral spring (September–November). These changes cannot be simply linked to the variability of the tropical Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Although they show some resemblance to the effects of anthropogenic forcings reported in the literature, we cannot attribute them to this cause because of inadequate representation of these processes in the global climate models that were presented in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report. These models significantly underestimate the variability of the DSE and DSL and their controlling processes. Such biases imply that the future change of the DSE and DSL may be underestimated by the climate projections provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report models. Although it is not clear whether the observed increase of the DSL will continue in the future, were it to continue at half the rate of that observed, the long DSL and fire season that contributed to the 2005 drought would become the new norm by the late 21st century. The large uncertainty shown in this study highlights the need for a focused effort to better understand and simulate these changes over southern Amazonia.
The Chandra view of the 3C/FR I sample of low luminosity radio-galaxies

We present results from Chandra observations of the 3C/FR I sample of low luminosity radio-galaxies. We detected a power-law nuclear component in 12 objects out of the 18 with available data. In 4 galaxies we detected nuclear X-ray absorption at a level of N H ∼ (0.2-6) x 10 22 cm -2 . X-ray absorbed sources are associated with the presence of highly inclined dusty disks (or dust filaments projected onto the nuclei) seen in the HST images. This suggests the existence of a flattened X-ray absorber, but of much lower optical depth than in classical obscuring tori. We thus have an unobstructed view toward most FR I nuclei, while absorption plays only a marginal role in the remaining objects. Three pieces of evidence support a jet origin for the X-ray cores: i) the presence of strong correlations between the nuclear luminosities in the radio, optical, and X-ray bands, extending over 4 orders of magnitude and having a much smaller dispersion (∼0.3 dex) when compared to similar trends found for other classes of AGNs, all of which points to a common origin for the emission in the three bands; ii) the close similarity of the broad-band spectral indices with the sub-class of BL Lac objects sharing the same range of extended radio-luminosity, in accord with the FR I/BL Lacs unified model; iii) the presence of a common luminosity evolution of spectral indices in both FR I and BL Lacs. The low luminosities of the X-ray nuclei, regardless of their origin, strengthens the interpretation of low efficiency accretion in low luminosity radio-galaxies.
Mutants of Escherichia coli K-12 defective in DNA repair and in genetic recombination.

BACTERIA are readily killed by exposure to ultraviolet light (UV) , presumably as the result of the formation of UV photoproducts in the bacterial DNA. It is also known that pyrimidine dimers are among the photoproducts formed with a high yield, and that bacteria normally contain an efficient mechanism for the repair of DNA containing these products. Pyrimidine dimers are excised from DNA during incubation and can be recovered, still contained within a short oligonucleotide. This excision appears to involve the interruption of single DNA strands, and to be followed by local DNA breakdown and repair synthesis (SETLOW and CARRIER 1964; BOYCE and HOWARD-FLANDERS 1964; PETTIJOHN and HANAWALT 1964). These observations are of interest not only because they reveal the mechanism of an effective and possibly widespread process for the repair of injured DNA, but also because they suggest that local repair can occur in one strand of a double helix. This mechanism for DNA repair may be related to the mechanism of genetic exchange. An insight into the mechanisms of genetic recombination was gained through the discovery that h bacteriophage recombinants can be formed by joining fragments of preexisting phage DNA molecules (MESELSON and WEIGLE 1961). As continuity in the base sequence of the phage genome must be preserved, base pairing between overlapping single strands from each parentel molecule is presumably required as a prelude to the formation of a recombinant ( LEVINTHAL 1959). It has been suggested that the process of recombination may be completed by local DNA repair synthesis on either side of the overlap (MESELSON 1964) and that certain of the enzymes involved may serve in both genetic recombination and in repair after irradiation ( HOWARD-FLANDERS and BOYCE 1964). Further evidence in support of these concepts has been obtained through the isolation of mutants of E. coZi K-12 that have lost the ability to form recombinants when mated with suitable donor strains. As these mutants are able to accept genetic material normafly, it appears that they may be defective in the process of integrating the donor DNA into the recipient chromosome (phenotype symbol Kec-) . Because of the suggested relationship between repair and recombination, the strains were tested for ability to survive exposure to UV, and were found to be highly radiosensitive (CLARK and MARGULIES 1965). After exposure to UV, these mutants degrade their DNA excessively and fail to incorporate labeled thymidine ( CLARK, CHAMBERLIN, BOYCE, and HOWARD-FLANDERS 1966).
Using Gait to Recognize People

In modern society, the need for the establishment of defense and prevention mechanisms has encouraged the development of automatic human recognition systems based on biometrics, i.e. the analysis of a person's psychological and behavioral features. Gait, or the peculiar manner of walking, allows the recognition process to be made at a distance since it is possible to extract the gait information from a video sequence of a distant person walking. This paper proposes a gait recognition algorithm based on the averaged silhouette of a person over a gait cycle. A binary silhouette of the walking person is obtained by background subtraction; the binary silhouettes are then aligned and averaged over each gait period. The Euclidean distance between the averaged silhouettes of a number of persons is used for recognition purposes. Experimental results, using both lateral and oblique views, show very promising recognition rates
Employment relations in SMEs: market-driven or customer-shaped?

The changing environment within which SMEs are operating is examined by reference to detailed case studies of three medium‐sized firms (one in the pharmaceutical sector and two in engineering). Following the development of a framework for analysis the cases are discussed to illustrate the direct and indirect ways in which pressures in the network of business relationships affect the management of employment relations. Particular attention is given to the effects of these pressures on management structure, work organisation and human resources policies and practices. Far from enjoying greater discretion following the decline in institutional arrangements and labour market deregulation, managers in SMEs find themselves constrained in new ways. It is argued that employment relations in these firms is shaped strongly by specific customer requirements exercised through the supply chain rather than being driven by broad market forces.