Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
of Financial and Strategic Decisions Volume 12 Number 2 Fall 1999 67 INTERNATIONAL EVIDENCE ON THE CO-MOVEMENTS BETWEEN BOND YIELDS AND STOCK RETURNS : 1984-1994

Forecasting stock returns and bond yields is an important goal of investment management. However, if a random walk process describes stock returns and bond yields, then much of the efforts devoted to forecasting stock returns and bond yields are of questionable value. Research by Fama and French (1996) and others support the hypothesis that stock returns do not follow a pure random walk process. Further support for returns not following a pure random walk is offered by Fleming and Remolona (1997), Clare and Thomas (1992), Campbell and Hamao (1989), and Keim and Stambaugh (1986). These researchers document the predictability of both stock returns and bond yields. Another objective of investment management is the asset allocation process which seeks to develop the mix of assets that provides the optimum risk-return combinations. Surprisingly, little research has been devoted to quantifying the co-movements of stock returns and bond yields, a process useful in the allocation process. The objectives of this research are twofold. First, we offer additional support for the view that stock and bond returns do not follow a pure random walk. Secondly, we quantify the relationship between stock returns and bond yields for nine industrial countries during the period 1984-1994.
Relationship Marketing: Bringing Quality, Customer Service and Marketing Together

Part 1 Relationship marketing: developing a relationship strategy quality as a competitive strategy monitoring service quality performance the transition to quality leadership managing relationship marketing. Part 2 Case studies on quality leadership: just another Cambridge hi-tech company? the shift to "customer orientation" in retail banking involving senior managers in the quality improvement process at Johnson Matthey achieving real culture change at Ilford from "crisis" to quality leadership at Rank Xerox.
Navier-Stokes, flight, and wind tunnel flow analysis for the F/A-18 aircraft

Computational analysis of flow over the F/A-18 aircraft is presented along with complementary data from both flight and wind tunnel experiments. The computational results are based on the three-dimensional thin-layer Navier-Stokes formulation and are obtained from an accurate surface representation of the fuselage, leading-edge extension (LEX), and the wing geometry. However, the constraints imposed by either the flow solver and/or the complexity associated with the flow-field grid generation required certain geometrical approximations to be implemented in the present numerical model. In particular, such constraints inspired the removal of the empennage and the blocking (fairing) of the inlet face. The results are computed for three different free-stream flow conditions and compared with flight test data of surface pressure coefficients, surface tuft flow, and off-surface vortical flow characteristics that included breakdown phenomena. Excellent surface pressure coefficient correlations, both in terms of magnitude and overall trend, are obtained on the forebody throughout the range of flow conditions. Reasonable pressure agreement was obtained over the LEX; the general correlation tends to improve at higher angles of attack. The surface tuft flow and the off-surface vortex flow structures compared qualitatively well with the flight test results. To evaluate the computational results, a wind tunnel investigation was conducted to determine the effects of existing configurational differences between the flight vehicle and the numerical model on aerodynamic characteristics. In most cases, the geometrical approximations made to the numerical model had very little effect on overall aerodynamic characteristics.
Civic Hackathons: Innovation, Procurement, or Civic Engagement?

At all levels, governments around the world are moving toward the provision of open data, that is, the direct provision to citizens, the private sector, and other third parties, of raw government datasets, controlled by a relatively permissible license. In tandem with this distribution of open data is the promotion of civic hackathons, or “app contests” by government. The civic hackathon is designed to offer prize money to developers as a way to spur innovative use of open data, more specifically the creation of commercial software applications that deliver services to citizens. Within this context, we propose that the civic hackathon has the potential to act in multiple ways, possibly as a backdoor to the traditional government procurement process, and as a form of civic engagement. We move beyond much of the hype of civic hackathons, critically framing an approach to understanding civic hackathons through these two lenses. Key questions for future research emphasize the emerging, and important, nature of this research path.
Decentralization and accountability of the public sector

As the world's economy marches toward globalization, people are debating globalization's effect on the poor in developing countries. Will the developing countries be left behind? How can they be helped? What does globalization have to offer them? Since most of the countries in the Latin America and Caribbean region are considered developing countries, the issue of these effects is especially pertinent and it formed the focus of the discussions at this conference. This publication presents some of the papers submitted at this annual conference, the fifth one focusing on developing economies in the region. The 1999 Proceedings talks about decentralization and the need to bring government closer to the people in a rapidly changing global economic environment. For developing countries to realize the power of globalization, they need to concentrate on the power of decentralization, that is, getting their citizens involved in their own development and defining their own future. The aim of these discussions and this publication is to impart the knowledge needed to turn globalization into an asset rather than a liability. To accomplish this goal, the publication focuses on three subject areas: a framework for fiscal federalism; sectoral issues; and local financing and management capacity. This publication will be of interest to academics, policymakers, and decentralization experts.
Community-based development planning.

D is commonly taken to be the responsibility of national governments. After the ex-colonial powers let go, it is the planning offices in the national governments, always located in the capital cities, which prepare and publish the formal National Development Plans. Even where there is extensive participation from 'below'from individuals, communities, and possibly regional planning offices-the function of development planning is understood to belong to the national government. The others are helpers. But why? Why should local people be the beneficiaries, but not the producers of their own development? Planning by ordinary people can be a major instrument not only for their community's development, but also for their personal development and for the development of their nation. Ultimately it can serve the development of the overall global system. The purpose of this essay is to explore the potentials and the methods ofcommunity-based development planning. Community-based here refers to face-to-face groups within communities working essentially at their own initiative. Platminq means deliberate analytic efforts deSigned to guide future decisions and action. The distinction between planning for action and the action itself is important here. Some community-based development activity is based on plans formulated elsewhere. Some activity is unplanned. The focus here is to be on planning itself, on the process of reflection which precedes and guides action. The meaning of development here, as in the current development literature, is amorphous. It derives from traditional interpretations concerned with increasing levels of industrialisation and from modem conceptions centred on fulfilment of basic needs, but the meaning here looks more toward the transcendent interpretations based on ideas of human dignity and fulfilment. The formulation that'development is the process ofpeople taking charge of their lives' captures the meaning to be used here. 1 To develop is to gain increasing power to define, to analyse and to solve one's own problems. In these terms, community-based planning can be seen as a direct means of development, not for the product it yields, but in its process. It is this direct developmental value of planning that motivates this inquiry.
Adaptive estimation of signals of opportunity

To exploit unknown ambient radio frequency signals of opportunity (SOPs) for positioning and navigation, one must estimate their states along with a set of parameters that characterize the stability of their oscillators. SOPs can be modeled as stochastic dynamical systems driven by process noise. The statistics of such process noise is typically unknown to the receiver wanting to exploit the SOPs for positioning and navigation. Incorrect statistical models jeopardize the estimation optimality and may cause filter divergence. This necessitates the development of adaptive filters, which provide a significant improvement over fixed filters through the filter learning process. This paper develops two such adaptive filters: an innovationbased maximum likelihood filter and an interacting multiple model filter and compares their performance and complexity. Numerical and experimental results are presented demonstrating the superiority of these filters over fixed, mismatched filters.
GALAXY NUMBER COUNTS IN THE SUBARU DEEP FIELD: MULTI-BAND ANALYSIS IN A HIERARCHICAL GALAXY FORMATION MODEL

Number counts of galaxies are re-analyzed using a semi-anal ytic model (SAM) of galaxy formation based on the hierarchical clustering scenario. Faint galaxies in th e Subaru Deep Field (SDF, near-infrared J andK) and the Hubble Deep Field (HDF, ultraviolet/optical U , B, V, andI ) are compared with our model galaxies. We have determined the astrophysical parameters in the SAM that rep roduce observations of nearby galaxies, and used them to predict the number counts and redshifts of faint gala xies for three cosmological models, the standard cold dark matter (CDM) universe, a low-density flat universe with nonzero cosmological constant, and a lowdensity open universe with zero cosmological constant. The novelty of our SAM analysis is the inclusion of selection effects arising from the cosmological dimming of surface brightness of high-redshift galaxies, and from the absorption of visible light by internal dust and interga lactic H I clouds. As was found in our previous work, in which the ultraviolet/optical HDF galaxies were compare d with our model galaxies, we find that our SAM reproduces counts of near-infrared SDF galaxies in a low-de nsity universe either with or without a cosmological constant, and that the standard CDM universe is not preferred, as suggested by other recent studies. Moreover, we find that simple prescriptions for (1) the timescale of sta r formation being proportional to the dynamical time scale of the formation of galactic disks, (2) the size of gala ctic disks being rotationally supported with the same specific angular momentum as that of surrounding dark halo, a nd (3) the dust optical depth being proportional to the metallicity of cold gas, cannot completely explain all o f observed data. Improved prescriptions incorporating mild redshift-dependence for those are suggested from our S AM analysis. Subject headings: cosmology: theory – galaxies: evolution – galaxies: format ion – large-scale structure of universe
The Impact of International Environmental Agreements: The Case of the Montreal Protocol

There has been a recent economic literature arguing that international environmental agreements (IEAs) can have no real effect, on account of their voluntary and self-enforcing nature. This literature concludes that the terms of IEAs are the codification of the noncooperative equilibrium, and recent empirical work has supported this conclusion in the context of the Montreal Protocol. This paper reaches the opposite conclusion, by means of the comparison of the CFC emissions implicit within the cooperative and noncooperative management paths. The cooperative path is implicit within the terms of the Montreal Protocol. The noncooperative path is implicit in countries' behaviour during the period of unilateral management of CFC emissions. This study estimates the relationship between countries' propensities to produce CFCs and income per capita over the period 1976-1988 (prior to the entry into force of the Montreal Protocol). It then extrapolates this path of unilateral management beyond 1988, and compares it to the obligations adopted under the cooperative regime. This comparison of the projected noncooperative path with the obligations adopted under the Montreal Protocol allows a qualitative test of theories on the economic foundations of self-enforcing IEAs. We find that, in the absence of the Protocol, CFC production (and hence emissions) would have increased by a factor of three over the next fifty years. This study also supplements existing environmental Kuznets curve analyses by providing estimates for the unilateral management for a global externality. In this manner we are able to assess the distributive impacts of the Protocol, in addition to its effectiveness. Using dynamic estimation methods on a panel of around 30 countries over 13 years, the turning point in the relationship between CFC production and income is found to lie around (1986) US$16,000. This implies that developing countries bear the greatest costs in the implementation of the Montreal Protocol.
Relaxed selective pressure on an essential component of pheromone transduction in primate evolution

The vomeronasal organ (VNO) detects pheromones in many vertebrate species but is likely to be vestigial in humans. TRPC2(TRP2), a gene that is essential for VNO function in the mouse, is a pseudogene in humans. Because TRPC2 is expressed only in the VNO, the loss of selective pressure on this gene can serve as a molecular marker for the time at which the VNO became vestigial. By analyzing sequence data from the TRPC2 gene of 15 extant primate species, we provide evidence that the VNO was most likely functional in the common ancestor of New World monkeys and Old World monkeys and apes, but then became vestigial in the common ancestor of Old World monkeys and apes. We propose that, at this point in evolution, other modalities, notably the development of color vision, may have largely replaced signaling by pheromones.
Application of the Global Optimization Approaches to Planar Near-Field Antenna Phaseless Measurements

This paper deals with a method of the radiation pattern determination of the directional antennas. The method combining both the functional minimization method and the Fourier iterative algorithm is based on the phaseless near-field measurement on two plane surfaces. The method is used for a reconstruction of the phase dis- tribution on the aperture of the measured antenna, and for the determination of the antenna radiation pattern, conse- quently. The binary genetic algorithm (BGA), the real- valued genetic algorithm (RVGA), the particle swarm op- timization (PSO), and differential evolutionary algorithm (DEA) were chosen for the global functional minimization. The paper is aimed to analyze the performance of the global optimizations (GOs) when solving the described problem, and to compare the GOs. GOs were examined through data achieved by measurement of a horn antenna and a parabola.
Influence of applied electric field on crystalline structure and thermo-optical effect of oriented PVDF thin films

The α phase oriented PVDF thin films were deposited using vacuum evaporation technology with a DC electric field applied on substrate holder during deposition process. X-ray Diffraction was used to examine the structural variations as a function of applied electric fields. DSC data allowed measurement of the melting temperatures and enthalpies of the PVDF granules and films deposited at various bias voltages, providing information on the changes in the crystallinity of the films. The thermo-optical (t.o) coefficient of α phase oriented PVDF thin films with different degree of crystallinity, which obtained by regulating the applied electric voltages varying from 0 to 5KV, were determined by using spectroscopic ellipsometer (SE) equipped with a heating stage. At temperatures ranging from 20 to 100°C the refractive index of all the PVDF films was negatively correlated with the temperature between 600 and 1600nm. The value of the t.o coefficient of PVDF films was calculated at all temperatures. During the deposition process, a decrease in the degree of crystallinity was observed with the increase of applied electric voltage. Furthermore, the absolute value of t.o. coefficient for film deposited at 5kV was slightly higher and decreased with increase in the degree of its crystallinity.
Read and reply behaviors in a BBS social network

Understanding user' read and reply behaviors are important both for the study of online social network properties and the modeling of information dissemination and trend prediction. Our dataset is crawled from a famous Chinese BBS social network. By analyzing the read and reply datas of users, we observe that distributions of discussion size and user participation level follow the power-law distribution, agreeing with former empirical and analytical investigations. But the distribution of user interest does not exhibit a power-law property. Statistics from hot posts show that read and reply behaviors vary among different topic categories. For every 100 users interested in a post, one or two of them in average would join the discussion. In addition, investigation concerning time property of replies shows that decay functions with periodical fluctuations are suitable to describe the short-term evolution.
Congestion and Cascades in Interdependent Payment Systems

This paper analyses liquidity and credit risks in the context of interdependent interbank payment systems. We develop a simple model to investigate the operation of two real time gross settlement systems interlinked through foreign exchange transactions conducted by a set of global banks. Further interdependence is created by a Payment versus Payment (PvP) constraint that links the two legs of the foreign exchange transactions. The model illustrates under which conditions settlement of payments in the two systems becomes correlated and how large credit exposures can be generated as the result of liquidity pressures in one of the two systems. PvP can eliminate this credit risk but will create a new interdependence by making settlement of payments in both systems dependent on the level of liquidity available in the other system.
Fibromyalgia: Anti-Inflammatory and Stress Responses after Acute Moderate Exercise

Fibromyalgia (FM) is characterized in part by an elevated inflammatory status, and “modified exercise” is currently proposed as being a good therapeutic help for these patients. However, the mechanisms involved in the exercise-induced benefits are still poorly understood. The objective was to evaluate the effect of a single bout of moderate cycling (45 min at 55% VO2 max) on the inflammatory (serum IL-8; chemotaxis and O2 − production by neutrophils; and IL-1β, TNF-α, IL-6, IL-10, and IL-18 release by monocytes) and stress (cortisol; NA; and eHsp72) responses in women diagnosed with FM compared with an aged-matched control group of healthy women (HW). IL-8, NA, and eHsp72 were determined by ELISA. Cytokines released by monocytes were determined by Bio-Plex® system (LUMINEX). Cortisol was determined by electrochemoluminiscence, chemotaxis was evaluated in Boyden chambers and O2 − production by NBT reduction. In the FM patients, the exercise induced a decrease in the systemic concentration of IL-8, cortisol, NA, and eHsp72; as well as in the neutrophil’s chemotaxis and O2 − production and in the inflammatory cytokine release by monocytes. This was contrary to the completely expected exercise-induced increase in all those biomarkers in HW. In conclusion, single sessions of moderate cycling can improve the inflammatory status in FM patients, reaching values close to the situation of aged-matched HW at their basal status. The neuroendocrine mechanism seems to be an exercise-induced decrease in the stress response of these patients.
Discovering the Ecosystem of an Electronic Financial Market with a Dynamic Machine-Learning Method

Not long ago securities were traded by human traders in face-to-face markets. The ecosystem of an open outcry market was well-known, visible to a human eye, and rigidly prescribed. Now trading is increasingly done in anonymous electronic markets where traders do not have designated functions or mandatory roles. In fact, the traders themselves have been replaced by algorithms (machines) operating with little or no human oversight. While the process of electronic trading is not visible to a human eye, machine-learning methods have been developed to recognize persistent patterns in the data. In this study, we develop a dynamic machine-learning method that designates traders in an anonymous electronic market into five persistent categories: high frequency traders, market makers, opportunistic traders, fundamental traders, and small traders. Our method extends a plaid clustering technique with a smoothing framework that filters out transient patterns. The method is fast, robust, and suitable for a discovering trading ecosystems in a large number of electronic markets
Australian Coal Company Risk Factors: Coal and Oil Prices

Examination of panel data on listed coal companies on the Australian exchange over January 1999 to February 2010 suggests that market return, interest rate premium, foreign exchange rate risk, and coal price returns are statistically significant in determining the excess return on coal companiesâ€™ stock. Coal price return and oil price return increases have statistically significant positive effects on coal company stock returns. A one per cent rise in coal price raises coal company returns by between 0.15% and 0.17%. A one per cent rise in oil price raises coal company returns by between 0.06% and 0.08%. The sensitivity of stock prices to oil price shocks suggest a role for investment in stocks that rise when energy prices increase in a well balanced portfolio and in pursuing profitable investment strategies.
Comments On a Paper by Posner

The paper by Posner is interesting both for what it says and for the way it says it. He has written a good old-fashioned polemic disguised as a reasonable man's survey of today's consensus position. Posner proposes that "the Chicago school" no longer should be viewed as one of the competing schools of thinking about industrial organizations. In his opinion, it has become by now the only really respectable school of thinking, even though a couple of old fuddie duddies from an older school fail to understand this. Posner con-