Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stereotyping of citizens in an expatriate‐dominated labour market

Purpose – Even though initiatives to increase the participation of citizens in the workforce have been in place for more than a decade in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the results are not impressive. Citizens' workforce participation – it is argued in the literature – is hindered by structural as well as attitudinal concerns. A key concern of this paper is to explore stereotypes which – as anecdotal evidence in the literature suggests – are a key hindrance to successful localisation.Design/methodology/approach – A survey was completed by 310 expatriates and citizens. Exploratory factor analysis was used to understand the key factors describing how UAE citizens are perceived and stereotyped and ANOVA analyses were used to understand the determinants of such perceptions.Findings – Findings confirm the general belief that Emiratis are negatively stereotyped by expatriates in the UAE labour market. Four themes or factors regarding perceptions of citizens were identified: generally negative perceptions with .
Integrated effects of slope aspect and land use on soil nutrients in a small catchment in a hilly loess area, China

This study addressed the integrated effect of slope aspect and land use on soil nutrients in a loess hilly catchment in the western Loess Plateau of China. Soil samples were collected from five land-use types: wasteland, cropland, woodland, shrubland and abandoned cropland, at two depths (0–20 and 20–40 cm) in the middle slope position of both north-facing and south-facing slopes. Soil nutrient changes and the relationships between soil nutrients and slope aspect were investigated, based on statistical analysis and expert knowledge. Soil organic matter, total N, total P, nitrate nitrogen and available K of the 0–20 cm soil layer differed significantly between land uses and slope aspects. Soil nutrients in the north-facing slope were better than in the south-facing slope. Revegetation has an enrichment effect, especially on soil organic matter, total N, total P, nitrate nitrogen and available K. Planting of trees, shrubs and grasses could improve soil fertility and favours a policy of revegetation and sustainable land use in the hilly loess area of China. Conversion of slope farmlands into more sustainable land uses, such as shrubland or grassland is a cost-efficient way to achieve soil conservation and ecological restoration. Terracing and the use of agro-techniques for soil conservation, such as furrow-ridging tillage and leaving crop residues on fields, can increase the input of C to soils. Growing crops in rotation with alfalfa and beans could be a promising choice for the sustainability of agriculture and the environment.
Implicit Variational Inference with Kernel Density Ratio Fitting

Recent progress in variational inference has paid much attention to the flexibility of variational posteriors. Work has been done to use implicit distributions, i.e., distributions without tractable likelihoods as the variational posterior. However, existing methods on implicit posteriors still face challenges of noisy estimation and can hardly scale to high-dimensional latent variable models. In this paper, we present an implicit variational inference approach with kernel density ratio fitting that addresses these challenges. As far as we know, for the first time implicit variational inference is successfully applied to Bayesian neural networks, which shows promising results on both regression and classification tasks.
The increasing cost of corporate governance: decision speed‐bumps for managers

Purpose – Decision speed, flexibility, and innovation have often been cited as key ingredients to business success on the turbulent twenty‐first century business landscape. Sets out to argue that the increasing emphasis on legal and regulatory compliance, the push for which can be attributed to the spectacular collapses of WorldCom and Enron, will burden management with decision‐making speed‐bumps as opposed to protecting shareholders' interests.Design/methodology/approach – The impact of legal and regulatory compliance is discussed within the business decision‐making context. Businesses succeed or fail in a dynamic environment where the smallest advantage can push one competitor ahead of another. Arguments in favour of increasing legal compliance are debated and the impacts of proposed regulatory compliance issues are discussed within the context of the competing business firm and its need for speed and flexibility.Findings – The issue of increasing and stricter compliance for business is far‐reaching. A.
Mechanical behaviour of the in vivo paediatric and adult trunk during respiratory physiotherapy

The load–deflection response of the human trunk has been studied using various methods. The different shapes observed may be due to the methodology and the population. The purpose of this study is to quantify and explain the in vivo mechanical response of paediatric and adult trunks during respiratory physiotherapy. Eight children aged 5–15 months and eight healthy adult volunteers aged 30–87 years participated in this study. The force applied by the physiotherapist and the displacement of the targets on his hands were recorded. Parameters were also measured and calculated to compare against other studies. Time lags between force time histories and displacement time histories were observed on both children and adults. Different time lags resulted in different shapes of the force–displacement curves. Factors including respiration, muscle contraction and loading pattern are part of the assumptions used to explain this phenomenon. The maximum displacements of the paediatric and adult trunks were 18 and 44 mm, respectively, with a maximum load of 208 and 250 N, respectively. This study provides a better explanation of the peculiar force–displacement characteristics of both living and active children and adults under a non-injurious, low-rate compression condition. Complementary data (e.g. muscle activity and breathing) should be collected in the future to go towards in vivo human trunk modelling.
Molecular systematics of the Philippine malaria vector Anopheles flavirostris

Abstract. Allozyme and molecular sequence data from the malaria vector Anopheles flavirostris (Ludlow) (Diptera: Culicidae) were analysed from 34 sites throughout the Philippines, including the type locality, to test the hypothesis that this taxon is a single panmictic species. A finer‐scaled allozyme study, of mainly Luzon samples, revealed no fixed genetic differences in sympatric sites and only low levels of variation. We obtained data from partial sequences for the internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) (483 bp), the third domain (D3) (330 bp) of the 28S ribosomal DNA subunit and cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) of mitochondrial DNA (261 bp). No sequence variation was observed for ITS2, only a one base pair difference was observed between Philippine and Indonesian D3 sequences and An. flavirostris sequences were unique, confirming their diagnostic value for this taxon. Sixteen COI haplotypes were identified, giving 25 parsimony informative sites. Neighbour‐Joining, Maximum Parsimony, Maximum Likelihood and Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of COI sequences for An. flavirostris and outgroup taxa revealed strong branch support for the monophyly of An. flavirostris, thus confirming that Philippine populations of this taxon comprise a single separate species within the Minimus Subgroup of the Funestus Group. Variation in the behaviour of An. flavirostris is likely to be intraspecific rather than interspecific in origin.
Recognizing bioethical issues and ethical qualification in nursing students and faculty in South Korea

The role of nursing faculty members in charge of ethics education is important. Although all nursing students receive the same bioethics education, their experiences differ, related to ethical qualification, which depends on the personal socialization process. This Korean study aimed to provide nursing faculty members with the basic data to help them develop as bioethics experts and provide nursing students with knowledge to improve their ethical decision-making abilities. We used a survey design to assess recognition of bioethical issues and ethical qualification in nursing students and faculty members. A total of 1225 undergraduate students and 140 faculty members participated in this study. The results revealed that nursing students and nursing faculty members generally understood the seriousness of various bioethical issues and both considered the most serious issue to concern abortion. Ethical behavior can be improved by education, and accordingly, nursing ethics should be a mandatory subject, rather than an elective one.
Derivation of a Formula for Inductance Gradient Using Intelligent Estimation Method

The efficiency of a railgun can be defined as the exchanged transferred electrical energy to the kinetic energy of the armature. According to the good relation between the applied force to the armature and the inductance gradient (L'), the importance of this parameter calculation is obviously clear. There are several researchers who calculated L' using different numerical and analytical methods in these years. The analytical method to solve the simple problems is suitable, and numerical methods include sufficient coding time and programmer performance time. A method will be introduced in this paper to extract a formula or formulas of L' using structural railgun parameters which can cause the results similar to the results of the numerical methods. This method has not any time problem, and so, there is a good accuracy of data analysis. In this technique, which is called intelligent estimation method, according to the behavior of the railgun magnetism and its geometrical structure, an equation with unknown multiplications for L' formula is defined. Then, by applying the reported data in different studies for L', these equations can be found. Finally, the proposed method introduces a closed formula for a given structure of railgun. A rectangular configuration is investigated as a case study in this paper.
Staggered Boards, Accounting Discretion, and Firm Value

Motivated by agency theory, this study investigates how staggered boards influence accounting discretion. The results indicate that staggered boards do affect accounting discretion. In fact, the impact of staggered boards on accounting discretion is substantially larger (about seven times stronger) than the effect of all other corporate governance provisions combined. Firms with a staggered board exercise less income inflating accounting discretion. Further evidence reveals that accounting discretion has a benign effect on subsequent firm value. Yet, the presence of staggered boards reduces significantly the favourable effect of accounting discretion on subsequent firm performance. The evidence is robust to a large number of control variables including other governance provisions. The evidence is in line with the notion that staggered boards improve managers' job security, reduce managerial myopia, and thus induce managers to exercise less short-term transitory accounting discretion.
Market Linkage for Dual-Listed Chinese Stocks

Only Chinese firms with the best financial integrity and corporate governance can be dually listed on the Hong Kong Exchange as H-shares or red chips and listed in the United States in the form of American Depository Receipts (ADRs). Dual listing for People's Republic of China (PRC) firms indicates their ability to attract international investors and to become international securities market participants. Using a bivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model, we examine patterns of information flows related to both pricing and volatility spillover across markets. Results indicate a significant mutual feedback of information between Hong Kong-listed stocks and ADRs. The Hong Kong market appears to play a more important role in influencing the pricing of corresponding companies in the U.S. market, whereas both markets are similarly influential to the volatility spillover. This finding is useful for foreign investment banking and financial services firms operating in China that need to understand the dual market performance of top PRC stocks.
Loss of Glycogen Debranching Enzyme AGL Drives Bladder Tumor Growth via Induction of Hyaluronic Acid Synthesis

Purpose: We demonstrated that amylo-alpha-1-6-glucosidase-4-alpha-glucanotransferase (AGL) is a tumor growth suppressor and prognostic marker in human bladder cancer. Here we determine how AGL loss enhances tumor growth, hoping to find therapeutically tractable targets/pathways that could be used in patients with low AGL–expressing tumors. Experimental Design: We transcriptionally profiled bladder cell lines with different AGL expression. By focusing on transcripts overexpressed as a function of low AGL and associated with adverse clinicopathologic variables in human bladder tumors, we sought to increase the chances of discovering novel therapeutic opportunities. Results: One such transcript was hyaluronic acid synthase 2 (HAS2), an enzyme responsible for hyaluronic acid (HA) synthesis. HAS2 expression was inversely proportional to that of AGL in bladder cancer cells and immortalized and normal urothelium. HAS2-driven HA synthesis was enhanced in bladder cancer cells with low AGL, and this drove anchorage-dependent and independent growth. siRNA-mediated depletion of HAS2 or inhibition of HA synthesis by 4-methylumbelliferone (4MU) abrogated in vitro and xenograft growth of bladder cancer cells with low AGL. AGL and HAS2 mRNA expression in human tumors was inversely correlated in patient datasets. Patients with high HAS2 and low AGL tumor mRNA expression had poor survival, lending clinical support to xenograft findings that HAS2 drives growth of tumors with low AGL. Conclusions: Our study establishes HAS2-mediated HA synthesis as a driver of growth of bladder cancer with low AGL and provides preclinical rationale for personalized targeting of HAS2/HA signaling in patients with low AGL–expressing tumors. Clin Cancer Res; 22(5); 1274–83. ©2015 AACR.
Comment On 'On Estimating Conditional Conservatism' by Ball, Kothari, and Nikolaev

Ball, Kothari, and Nikolaev (2011) make two major claims in their recent working paper titled “On estimating conditional conservatism. ” While they agree that the effect documented in Patatoukas and Thomas (2011) biases the conditional conservatism estimate proposed in Basu (1997), they claim that the source of bias is not scale effects but a non-linear relation between expected returns and expected earnings. Second, they propose revised measures of conditional conservatism, which they claim are unbiased. Our evidence contradicts both claims.
Equity on Access of Low SES Group in the Massification of Higher Education in Indonesia

This paper discussed the e_ect of recent trend in higher education such as massification, the emergence role of private sector and cost sharing in higher education in Indonesia to the access of low SES group. Some evidence particularly from developing countries is reported to get a bigger picture about the problem of access in higher education in Indonesia.
Day of the Week Effects and Asset Returns

The number of empirical studies using daily stock returns is rapidly increasing. ' Researchers generally assume that the distribution of stock returns is identical for all days of the week-a convenient statistical assumption but not a necessary condition of market equilibrium. Nevertheless, there are reasons to suspect that the distribution of returns may vary according to the day of the week; the most obvious is the impact of weekends on Monday's return. Since Monday's return is calculated over three instead of one calender day, the mean and variance may well be higher on Monday compared with any other daily return (perhaps three times as large). Previous research has examined the daily distribution of stock returns for a Monday effect. While Fama (1965) does not compare daily mean returns, he does report that Monday's variance is about 20o greater than other daily returns. With A traditional distributional assumption regarding the returns on a financial asset specifies that the expected returns are identical for all days of the week. Contrary to this plausible assumption, this paper discovers that the expected returns on common stocks and treasury bills are not constant across days of the week. The most notable evidence is for Monday's returns where the mean is unusually low or even negative. Several explanations of the results are investigated, but none proves satisfactory. Aside from documenting significant day of the week effects, the implications of the results for tests of market efficiency are examined. While market-adjusted returns continue to exhibit day of the week effects, these effects are no longer concentrated on Monday. * During the last year we have had many conversations with our colleagues throughout the professions. We are particularly thankful to the participants at sessions of the Western and American Finance Associations where preliminary versions of this paper were presented. Special thanks are due to Gene Fama, Gailen Hite, Jon Ingersoll, Robert Jarrow, Merton Miller, Clifford Smith and Rex Thompson. The expert research assistance of Frank Rabinovitch and YoungSup Yun is gratefully acknowledged. 1. The list of papers using daily stock returns is too long to name. Recent examples include Charest (1978), Dodd (1980), Banz (1981), and Reinganum (1981).
Policy Gatekeepers in Latin American Legislatures

Abstract Legislators who control the congressional agenda have a significant advantage over the membership at large. Policy gatekeepers can restrict change to outcomes they prefer over the status quo and can use this prerogative to keep a legislative party or coalition unified. This article examines agenda-setting rules in 26 Latin American chambers, shows why the institutional structure is theoretically relevant, and reveals some implications for policymaking with evidence from Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. Majority leaders in the Argentine and Chilean lower chambers have successfully blocked passage of legislation opposed by most of their fellow partisans despite the lack of codified gatekeeping rights. Since 1997, none of the major Mexican parties has benefited from the gatekeeping rights established in the rules. Instead, the benefits have come from the parties' advantageous position with respect to the other parties on the steering committee setting the plenary agenda.
Outliers and conditional autoregressive heteroscedasticity in time series

This paper reviews the literature on GARCH-type models proposed to represent the dynamic evolution of conditional variances. Effects of level outliers on the diagnostic and estimation of GARCH models are also studied. Both outliers and conditional heteroscedasticity can generate time series with excess kurtosis and autocorrelated squared observations. Consequently, both phenomena can be confused. However, since outliers are generated by unexpected events and the conditional variances are predictable, it is important to identify which one is producing the observed features in the data. We compare two alternative procedures for dealing with the simultaneous presence of outliers and conditional heteroscedasticity in time series. The first one is to clean the series of outliers before fitting a GARCH model. The second is to estimate first the GARCH model and then to clean of outliers by using the residuals adjusted by its conditional variance. It is shown that both approaches may result in different estimated conditional variances.
Rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder in parkinsonism with parkin mutations

Rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (RBD) in the setting of parkinsonism or dementia often reflects an underlying synucleinopathy. Lewy bodies, intraneuronal aggregates containing abnormal α‐synuclein, are absent in most cases of parkinsonism with parkin mutations (Park2). We performed clinical history and video‐polysomnography in 10 Park2 patients (seven men; age, 51.2 ± 11.6 years; parkinsonism duration, 18.3 ± 11.2 years) and found RBD in 6. In all instances, RBD followed the onset of motor symptoms by several years. Our study shows that RBD is frequent in Park2, suggesting that mechanisms other than synuclein deposition can cause RBD in neurodegenerative disorders. Ann Neurol 2004;56:599–603
The Generalized Linear Production Model: Solvability, Nonsubstitution and Productivity Measurement

This paper presents a very general linear production model which nevertheless shows an extremely regular behaviour. We can ensure the solvability of the associated equilibrium systems for quantities and prices and the nonsubstitution property, allowing for joint production and non-square systems. We also discuss the application of this model to the measurement of productivity differences. The assumptions we use are intuitive and very mild (e.g. they are necessary for the type of solvability we require). Proofs are simple and rely on geometrical arguments (the separation theorems), rather than on the use of the theory of determinants.
New Venture Teams and the Quality of Business Opportunities Identified: Faultlines between Subgroups of Founders and Investors

New venture teams (NVT) often comprise idea–conceiving founders and equity–based investors. These subgroups represent a faultline whose magnitude influences the quality of business opportunities. We propose that the faultline strength formed between founders and investors is influenced by structural factors (ownership equity, membership change, preexisting tie strength) and cognitive factor (mental models of the venture). Finally, we address how the faultline strength impacts interaction processes (relationship conflict, task conflict, knowledge exchange) and their subsequent impact on the quality of entrepreneurial opportunities. Our theoretical model provides insight into how informational resources inherent in new venture teams can be more effectively leveraged.
More than Black? : multiracial identity and the new racial order

Preface Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: White Over Black 1. Eurocentrism: The Origin of the Master Racial Project 2. Either Black or White: The United State and the Binary Racial Project Part II: Black No More 3. White by Definition: Multiracial Identity and the Binary Racial Project 4. Black by Law: Multiracial Identity and the Ternary Racial Project Part III: More than Black 5. The New Multiracial Identity: Both Black and White 6. The New Multiracial Identity: Neither Black nor White 7. Black by Popular Demand: Multiracial Identity and the Decennial Census Part IV: Black No More or More than Black? 8. The Illusion of Inclusion : From White Domination to White Hegemony 9. The New Millennium: Toward a New Master Racial Project Epilogue: Beyond Black or White: A New United States Racial Project Notes Index