Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analytical comparison of optical code-division multiple-access systems with and without a successive interference cancellation scheme using modified prime-sequence codes

We analyzed direct-sequence code-division multiple-access system using a successive interference cancellation (SIC) scheme. Modified prime-sequence codes are utilized as signature sequences, and the performance measure studied in this paper takes into account the the effect of imperfect interference cancellation. The basic principle of the SIC scheme is to subtract the strongest received signals from the original signal one by one till all users have been detected and demodulated. In this analysis we have compared optical code-division multiple-access systems with and without the cancellation scheme, and it is shown that the SIC scheme with −20-dBm effective power can suppress multiple-access interference better than the system without cancellation.
An Intertemporal Analysis of Audit Fees and Section 404 Material Weaknesses

SUMMARY: The objective of this study is to perform an intertemporal examination of audit fees paid to public accounting firms in association with the presence and subsequent remediation of a Section 404 material weakness. We examine a large sample of Section 404 audit opinions and audit fees over a four-year period (2004–2007) and find that audit fees decline for companies that remediate a material weakness, but show that the corresponding fee reductions do not occur instantaneously. Further, despite these observed fee reductions for remediating companies, we find that audit fees are 19 percent higher three years after the initial remediation as compared to a sample of companies who never report an adverse 404 opinion. We also find that fee premiums are nearly double for companies reporting consecutive adverse 404 opinions. Finally, we note that companies with a more severe company-level weakness pay a premium that is more than twice that of companies with an account-level weakness.
ESPAnet/JESP Doctoral Researcher Prize Essay

Childcare services have experienced a sudden surge in the level of public provision since the late 1990s. There is a rising awareness of the benefits of childcare services, not least in terms of the human capital they generate. These recent changes — and especially the country variation therein — are vaguely covered by existing literature, which tends to focus on effects rather than the causes of policies. In this article, three competing hypotheses on the institutional conditions of change are derived and tested. The article shows that change is determined by curriculum traditions and not by the size of vested interests or ceiling effects. Countries belonging to the readiness-for-school-curriculum tradition have expanded their provision considerably more than countries belonging to the social-pedagogical-curriculum tradition; the reason is argued to be that the former conceptually matches the political preference for generation of human capital much better than the latter.
Obstacles to Transnational Trade Union Cooperation in Europe - Results from a European Survey

This article analyses obstacles to transnational union cooperation within Europe. It is based on a survey of unions in 14 European countries and all members of the European Trade Union Confederation. The result shows that ‘hard’ industrial relations factors are generally more important obstacles to transnational cooperation than ‘softer’ factors such as cultural, linguistic, ideological and religious differences and that there are sectoral differences in experiences of obstacles to transnational union cooperation: unions in the manufacturing sector tend to emphasise differences in industrial relations and a lack of organisational resources for transnational union cooperation, whereas low organisational priorities are held to be of more importance in the services sector and for unions for professional workers.
The Financial Statement Effects of Eliminating the Pooling‐of‐Interests Method of Acquisition Accounting

Accounting standard setters have become increasingly concerned with the perceived manipulation of financial statements afforded by the pooling‐of‐interests (pooling) method of accounting for corporate acquisitions. While different restrictions have been discussed, in September 1999 the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) issued an Exposure Draft to eliminate the pooling method. This study provides a basis for evaluating restrictions on the pooling method by analyzing the financial statement effects on pooling acquisitions made by public corporations over the period 1992 through 1997. Using these acquisitions we (1) quantify the scope of the “pooling problem,” (2) estimate the financial statement repercussions of eliminating the pooling method, and (3) examine the effects of restricting pooling accounting to business combinations meeting various “merger of equals” restrictions. While our analysis does not address whether restrictions on the pooling method will influence the nature or level of acqui.
Responses by Australian Auditors to the Global Financial Crisis

type="main" xml:lang="en"> We examine the impact of the global financial crisis (GFC) on auditor behaviour in Australia. Using a sample of listed companies, we examine whether the GFC impacted the propensity of auditors to issue going concern modifications and increased audit effort as reflected in audit fees and audit reporting lag. Controlling for client characteristics, we find an increase in the propensity to issue going concern opinions during the period 2008–2009 compared with the period 2005–2007 and that Big N auditors responded to the GFC earlier than non-Big N auditors. In relation to audit effort, we find evidence of increased audit fees during the period 2008–2009 compared with the period 2005–2007. There is, however, no evidence of increased audit reporting lags during the GFC.
CCR6+ B lymphocytes responding to tumor cell-derived CCL20 support hepatocellular carcinoma progression via enhancing angiogenesis.

BACKGROUND & AIMS Different immune cells in tumor microenvironment shape tumor progression. CCL20 over-expression was reported as one of the "stemness" trait in TP53 mutated hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). We aimed to understand the effect of CCL20 on HCC progression. METHODS In two HCC cohort patients (n=95, n=85 respectively), serum CCL20 concentration was quantified by using ELISA. Expressions of CCL20 and CCR6 in 41 paired HCC tumor and adjacent non-tumor tissues were determined by quantitative Real-Time PCR, confirmed by immunohistochemistry (CCL20) or by flow cytometry analysis (CCR6). Chemotaxis of splenocytes or purified CD19+ B cells to tumor cell-derived CCL20, and angiogenesis of different CD19+ B subtypes responding to tumor cell-derived CCL20 were measured in vitro. H22 murine hepatoma cells were inoculated into immunocompetent or immunodeficient SCID mice, tumor growth and metastasis were monitored after the mice were treated with anti-CCL20 neutralizing antibody or depleted B cells by anti-CD20. RESULTS Elevation of pretherapy serum CCL20 in HCC patients and increase of CCR6 expression in HCC tissues were closely associated with tumor metastasis and disease poor prognosis. In HCC tissues, CCL20 expression was positively correlated with CCR6 (R2 =0.3134, P=0.0002), and CCR6 was exclusively identified in tumor infiltrated immune cells. CD19+CD5+ B lymphocytes expressed higher CCR6, responded to tumor cell-derived CCL20 and enhanced angiogenesis in vitro. Neutralizing CCL20 activity in immunocompetent mice, not in SCID mice, attenuated tumor incidence, restrained tumor growth and distal metastasis. Tumor angiogenesis was significantly inhibited after CCL20 activity was blockade. In addition, inhibiting B lymphocyte infiltration into tumor mileum also attenuated tumor growth. CONCLUSIONS Tumor cell-derived CCL20 interacts with CCR6 highly expressed CD19+CD5+ B cells, to promote HCC progression, which might be via enhancing angiogenesis.
Direct Foreign Investment in Nigeria: An Empirical Analysis

Although the presence of foreign capital has been quite evident in most sectors of the Nigerian economy, only a handful of studies have attempted to analyze some aspects of direct foreign investment in the country. Even then, these studies (Hakam, 1966; May, 1965; Edozien, 1968; Langley, 1968; Central Bank of Nigeria, 1964-79) have tended to be descriptive, especially with respect to analyzing trends, incentives, motivations, linkage aspects, and distribution of foreign investment. Thus, there has been virtually no empirical work aimed at statistically evaluating the determinants of direct foreign investment in Nigeria. Consequently, this study has the object of going beyond intuitive and descriptive analysis by providing a comprehensive empirical estimate of determinants of direct foreign investment, using the least squares regression approach. In order to provide the theoretical framework, a number of direct investment hypotheses proposed or considered in the literature are first reviewed. The analysis focuses on direct foreign investment in all industries combined. Apart from possible specification problems connected with separate models for different industries which a disaggregated approach entails, such an attempt is further complicated by the absence or the poor quality of data relating to the larger number of variables which would have to be considered. Taking cognizance of this kind of problem in a developing country such as Nigeria, the only disaggregation to be done is in respect to sources of foreign investment. In this direction, the study analyzes total direct investment as well as direct foreign investment from the United Kingdom and the United States of America. These two countries accounted for over 62 percent of direct foreign investment in Nigeria in 1974.
Transferring management knowledge to Russia: A culturally based approach

Executive Overview Russian managers entered the decade of the 1990s ill-prepared to manage their companies in the country's chaotic transition to a market economy. This article draws lessons for transferring Western management knowledge to Russian managers from programs conducted over a ten-year period by the Rayter Group, a cross-cultural training organization. The group's experience underscores the transitional nature of business values among Russian managers, including the need to recognize the barriers and potential opportunities that traditional culture and values can create, as well as the potential for newly developing ones to support the transfer of Western knowledge. These two sets of values must be understood and appreciated by those transferring knowledge through the design and execution of management education programs, as well as in other situations like joint ventures and parent-subsidiary operations. The lessons presented in this article are grounded in the context of a culturally based app.
A Measure of Competition Based on 10-K Filings

In this paper we develop a measure of competition based on management’s disclosures in their 10-K filing and find that firms’ rates of diminishing marginal returns on new and existing investment vary significantly with our measure. We show that these firm-level disclosures are related to existing industry-level measures of disclosure (e.g. Herfindahl index), but capture something distinctly new. In particular, we show that the measure is associated with the rates of diminishing marginal returns within industry, something that traditional industry-level measures of competition cannot do by construction. We find limited and indirect evidence that management strategically makes misleading statements about their competitive landscape. However, on the whole, we find that the disclosures about competition in the 10-K are useful, and relate to firm performance in ways that suggest they meaningfully measure firm-level competition.
Japanese B encephalitis in an American soldier returning from Korea.

TO the best of our knowledge, no case of Japanese B encephalitis has previously been reported as occurring in personnel among Far East troops after evacuation to the United States. That this possibility is not far fetched is illustrated by the case reported below. Rapid evacuation by air from an endemic or epidemic zone of Japanese B encephalitis may result in recognition of other cases of this type in the continental United States. Case Report A 25-year-old sergeant was admitted to Murphy Army Hospital on September 13, 1952, while on leave. His chief complaints were headache, beginning 4 days before .
Genetic mutations in accordance with a low malignant potential tumour are not demonstrated in clear cell papillary renal cell carcinoma

Clear cell papillary renal cell carcinoma (CCPRCC) cases were evaluated for mutations on the following genes: KRAS, NRAS, BRAF, PIK3CA, ALK, ERBB2, DDR2, MAP2K1, RET and EGFR. Four male and three female patients of age 42–74 years were evaluated. All cases were incidentally detected by ultrasound and ranged 1.8–3.5 cm. Microscopic examination showed variably tubulopapillary, tubular acinar, cystic architecture and the characteristic linear arrangement of nuclei. The cells were reactive with CK7 (strong), CA IX (cup-shape) and 34 β E12. CD10, AMACR/RACEMASE and GATA3 were negative. There were no mutations on any of the investigated genes. This preliminary observation supports the concept that CCPRCC might be indeed an indolent tumour worth it to be named as clear cell papillary neoplasm of low potential.
Monetary Expansion, International Trade and Capital Accumulation

This paper considers the long-run domestic and foreign effects of a domestic monetary expansion in a two-country model in which the processes of capital accumulation at home and abroad interact with each other via international trade. The author investigates the global stability conditions and their relationship with the comparative dynamic effects of a monetary expansion in the model. In particular, he shows that, under plausible global stability conditions, the early analytical results obtained by W. W. Roberts (1978) and Y. N. Shieh (1984) may be reversed in the two-country model. Copyright 1988 by The Economic Society of Australia.
Generic stocks

with four astonishing and seemingly independent market phenomena, all related to unexplained, persistent, high abnormal return: 0 the superb investment return of stocks of small firms, 0 the outstanding performance of neglected companies, not widely followed by analysts and ignored by financial institutions, 0 the better performance of low-P/E stocks, and 0 the seasonality in overall market performance by which the market consistently performs extremely well during the turn-of-the-year period. Academicians first dismissed these ob,, CTervations as ’market folklore’ not worthy of their attention. Then, some of them bothered to step down from their ivory towers and rigorously checked the legends and frighteningly (but courageously) reported b x k to their colleagues via well-documented articles in top academic journals that this time the practitioners seem to be right: The myth is indeed a fact. They now labeled these newly proven findings: ’The Small-Firm Effect,’ ‘The Neglected-Firm Effect,’ ’The P/E Anomaly,’ and the ‘January Effect. ’ Once published, debated, checked, and rechecked, these investigations created a lot of confusion in academic circles. How in the world could these abnormal returns persist? The magnitude of the abnormal return is not the only thing that puzzles the market efficiency breed: Mainly they are puzzled that it l las l prevailed even after the usual adjustments for risk, using the widely accepted Capital Asset Pricing h4odel. Above all, they are amazed that these significant excess returns have persisted consistently for many years almost without exception. Indeed, how could it be? How could the outstanding performance survive the unavoicla.ble, selfcorrecting process? If everybody knows about it, shouldn’t it disappear once exposed a i d followed? What about market efficiency? The whcde thing sounds like an everlasting free lunch getting something for nothing, which makes no sense! Consequently, the term ’market anomalies’ emerged, widely used in academia to describe these phenomena. The purpose of this article is to present results of an empirical evaluation of the relationship among these four anomalies. I show that they ar’e all related to a common informational variable that affects the investor’s perceived risk level. I will sholw that this variable, to be labeled information deficiency, is not
Learning Local Responses of Facial Landmarks with Conditional Variational Auto-Encoder for Face Alignment

This work proposes a novel convolutional neural network architecture which can locate landmarks accurately by learning local responses of facial landmarks. The network consists of a Conditional Variational Auto-Encoder(CVAE) and a Deep Convolutional Neural Network(DCNN). The CVAE is used to learn the response maps of facial landmarks from face images and the DCNN is used to learn accurate landmark locations from the response maps and facial textures. The CVAE consists of a face encoder, which extracts high-level information from raw pixels, and a decoder which outputs local response maps from high-level coding. We derive the CVAE used for catching local responses as an optimization problem, which can be solved through back-propagation. Extensive experiments show that the proposed CVAE can learn better local response maps than Fully Convolutional Network(FCN). Our method outperforms state-of-the-art methods on AFLW(5 points) and the challenging subset of 300-W(68 points), which means our method shows advantages in the condition of complex poses and expressions.
Earnings Smoothness, Average Returns, and Implied Cost of Equity Capital

ABSTRACT: Despite a belief among corporate executives that smooth earnings paths lead to a lower cost of equity capital, I find no relation between earnings smoothness and average stock returns over the last 30 years. In other words, owners of firms with volatile earnings are not compensated with higher returns, as one would expect if volatile earnings lead to greater risk exposure. Although prior empirical work links smoother earnings to a lower implied cost of capital, I offer evidence that this link is driven primarily by optimism in analysts' long‐term earnings forecasts. This optimism yields target prices and implied cost of capital estimates that are systematically too high for firms with volatile earnings. Overall, the evidence is inconsistent with the notion that attempts to smooth earnings can lead to a lower cost of equity capital.
Learning About Match Quality and the Use of Referrals

The firm's decision to use referrals as a hiring method is studied in a theoretical model of the labor market. The labor market is characterized by search frictions and uncertain quality of the match between a worker and a job. Using referrals increases the arrival rate of applicants and provides more accurate signals regarding a worker's suitability for the job. Consistent with the data, referred workers are predicted to have higher wage, higher productivity and lower separation rates and these differentials decline with tenure. The model is extended by introducing heterogeneity in firm productivity and allowing the endogenous determination of signal accuracy. High productivity firms are predicted to invest more in increasing signal accuracy and use referrals to a lesser extent. (Copyright: Elsevier)
Timeliness and conservatism: Changes over time in the properties of accounting income in France

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the changes in the properties of accounting income published by French listed companies during the 1990s. It also analyzes the impact of certain corporate characteristics such as size, international financing, and audit firm, on such changes. Design/methodology/approach – Multivariate regression is used. Findings – In French companies, good news has a delayed impact on earnings, as accountants only allow the effect of such news to be recognized gradually in the earnings measure. Conversely, bad news is reflected rapidly in earnings. The results confirm a general upward trend in the degree of conservatism of accounting earnings over the period as a whole. However, except for firm size, none of the corporate characteristics examined can predict a company's accounting earnings properties. Research limitations/implications – In future studies, it will be interesting to develop and test other possible corporate and/or institutional factors relating to accounting earnings properties. Practical implications – The paper provides an insight analysis on the evolution of institutional environment in France and its impact on accounting. Originality/value – First study on properties of accounting income in France.
On the efficiency of channel coding in uncoordinated sensor networks

We investigate the effect of channel coding on throughput and energy consumption in uncoordinated distributed (and) wireless networks, e.g. sensor networks. Although the redundancy associated with channel coding causes additional interference in this type of networks, we show that coding can decrease the frame error rate and increase the throughput. Furthermore, we introduce a new measure, which we call the energy based system efficiency. It relates the average throughput to the required transmission energy and allows prediction of the performance of certain coding schemes.
Does Common Analyst Coverage Explain Excess Comovement?

This article shows that correlated errors in news about fundamentals are an important, rational determinant of excess comovement. Individual analysts’ forecast errors tend to be correlated across stocks. Using a proxy for correlated forecast errors based on analyst coverage, I find that stocks with similar sets of analysts exhibit more excess comovement, controlling for industry and other variables. Exogenous changes in commonality in analyst coverage around i) brokerage firm mergers and ii) additions to an index lead to changes in excess comovement. This information channel explains 10% to 25% of the increase in comovement around additions to the S&P 500 index.
Differential Expression of Leukocyte Receptor Complex-Encoded Ig-Like Receptors Correlates with the Transition from Effector to Memory CTL1

The human leukocyte receptor complex (LRC) on chromosome 19q13.4 encodes Ig superfamily receptors expressed on hemopoietic cells. Killer Ig-like receptors (KIR) are expressed in cytotoxic lymphocytes but other LRC molecules (Ig-like transcript(ILT)/leukocyte Ig-like receptor (LIR)) are more ubiquitous. We investigated expression of the ILT2/LIR1 inhibitory receptor compared with the related KIR. Both ILT2/LIR1 and KIR were expressed by peripheral CD8+ T cells with a memory/effector phenotype. ILT2/LIR1+ T cells demonstrated diverse TCRBV repertoires in contrast to KIR+ T cells, while numbers of peripheral ILT2/LIR1+ T cells were greater than KIR+ T cells and the majority of ILT2/LIR1+ T cells did not coexpress KIR. Analysis of CD8+ T cells with specific HLA class I tetramers confirmed this pattern of expression, indicating differential regulation of LRC gene expression in T lymphocytes. Only a minor proportion of ILT2/LIR1+ KIR− clones survived in vitro cloning, were more susceptible to anti-CD3 or cognate peptide induced cell death than KIR+ T cells and exhibited lower levels of the Bcl-2 survival molecule. Our results indicate a sequential program of LRC-encoded receptor expression with initial ILT2/LIR1 expression in effector T cells and KIR gene transcription in the minor proportion of expanded clones which survives activation-induced cell death to become long term memory T cells.