Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Combining Life Cycle Assessment with Data Science to Inform Portfolio‐Level Value‐Chain Engineering

Life cycle assessment (LCA)‐based analyses of company value chains can inspire profound modifications to products’ design, material procurement, manufacturing, energy/water use, distribution, use, and disposal. However, such modifications often create trade‐offs, improving some aspects while worsening others. How can firms decide whether or not to carry out such modifications? Or prioritize between different options to choose the one delivering the most competitive advantage? Typically, firms’ metrics fall into two groups: (1) product‐level metrics across the life cycle, including up‐ and downstream of facilities (e.g., product carbon footprints); and (2) facility‐level metrics (e.g., plants’ annual energy cost). Neither is sufficient for firm‐wide cost‐benefit analyses of modifications that affect multiple products and value‐chain stages. Whereas facility‐level metrics do not capture up‐ and downstream effects—where often most cost and environmental impacts originate—life cycle methodologies are currently not mature enough to be applied at the scale of entire product portfolios. We present a pilot system of key performance indicators (KPIs) that evaluate 3,337 products across 211 brands and five countries of PepsiCo, Inc. KPIs are firm‐wide, annual figures (environmental, operational, and financial) across the value chain (cradle to grave) and can be determined at any level (single product, brands, or regions). Uncertainty analysis is included. In addition to KPIs for base cases, the system characterizes KPI impacts for any considered modifications (what‐if scenarios). In a detailed case study, we present background about how and why PepsiCo used the system to evaluate all aspects of a strategic value‐chain modification. For 7 of the 211 brands, this resulted in avoiding an 8% increase in greenhouse gas emissions and a 7% to 10% increase in procurement costs. It also saved PepsiCo an estimated ∼200 years full‐time equivalent employee time (or alternatively ∼US$30 million in LCA consultant fees) had the LCAs of the 3,337 SKUs been carried out by traditional methods. This cost efficiency of the KPI system enables considering environmental impacts with more‐traditional business metrics side by side. As a result, environmental impacts can be considered on a routine basis as part of integrated strategy and business planning. We discuss implementation considerations of the KPI methodology and future improvements.
Locally Recurrent Probabilistic Neural Networks with Application to Speaker Verification

To improve speaker verification performance, we extend the well- known Probabilistic Neural Networks (PNN) to Locally Recurrent Probabilistic Neural Networks (LRPNN). In contrast to PNNs that possess no feedbacks, LRPNNs incorporate internal connections to the past outputs of all recurrent neurons, which render them sensitive to the context in which events occur. Thus, LRPNNs are capable of identifying time and spatial correlations. A fast three-step method is proposed for training an LRPNN. The first two steps are identical to the training of traditional PNNs, whil e the third step is based on the Differential Evolution optimization method. The per formance of the proposed LRPNNs is compared with that of the PNNs on the task of text-independent speaker verification.
Quality and Cost in Early Childhood Education

This paper uses a unique survey of 205 child care centers conducted by the U.S. General Accounting Office to estimate flexible-form cost functions for child care. Our model allows us to estimate the tradeoff between cost and such quality factors as the child/staff ratio, child group size, and staff characteristics. The coefficient on the child/staff ratio indicates that decreasing the average child/staff ratio from, for instance, an 11 to 1 ratio to a 10 to 1 ratio, would lead to an increase in costs of roughly 3.4 percent. Staff turnover, education, and experience also had statistically significant effects on cost.
Bank Bailouts and Competition - Did TARP Distort Competition Among Sound Banks?

This study investigates if the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) distorted price competition in U.S. banking. Political indicators reveal bailout expectations after 2009, manifested as beliefs about the predicted probability of receiving equity support relative to failing during the TARP disbursement period. In addition, the TARP affected the competitive conduct of unsupported banks after the program stopped in the fourth quarter of 2009. Loan rates were higher, and the risk premium required by depositors was lower for banks with higher bailout expectations. The interest margins of unsupported banks increased in the immediate aftermath of the TARP disbursement but not after 2010. No effects emerged for loan or deposit growth, which suggests that protected banks did not increase their market shares at the expense of less protected banks.
Do metrics help to identify refactoring?

Many iterative software development methodologies, such as for example eXtreme Programming, state that refactoring is one of the key activities to be undertaken in order to keep the code-base of a project well-structured and consistent. In such a context, poorly structured code may become a significant obstacle in adding new or in enhancing existing functionality. However, there is some anecdotal evidence that in many software projects, the underlying code-base is not necessarily refactored post-release, often due to time constraints or the misconception that refactoring does not add any apparent value. In order to get further insights into this problem area, we propose to investigate the usage frequency of refactorings in the context of open-source, object-oriented software systems. In this work, we will outline our approach to detecting refactoring and present results obtained from an initial pilot study.
Value-at-Risk Based Risk Management: Optimal Policies and Asset Prices

This paper analyzes optimal, dynamic portfolio and wealth/consumption policies of utility maximizing investors who must also manage market-risk exposure using a given risk-management model. We focus on the industry standard, the Value-at-Risk (VaR) based risk management, and find that VaR risk managers often optimally choose a larger exposure to risky assets than non risk managers, and consequently incur larger losses, when losses occur. We suggest an alternative risk management model, based on the expectation of a loss, to remedy the shortcomings of VaR. A general-equilibrium analysis reveals that the presence of VaR risk managers in a pure-exchange economy amplifies the stock-market volatility at times of down markets (and low output) and attenuates the volatility at times of up markets.
Capital structure and debt maturity: Evidence from listed companies in Saudi arabia

This study examines the determinants of capital structure in general and the determinants of corporate debt- maturity in particular for 56 listed companies in Saudi Arabia. To achieve this objective the study was set to test a number of hypotheses regarding the determinants of capital structure and debt maturity. These hypotheses were related to the effects of profitability, growth opportunities, asset maturity, size, liquidity and age. Total debt ratio was found to be positively and significantly related to the percentage growth in total assets and negatively and significantly related to liquidity and asset structure. Growth opportunities variable was found to be positively and significantly related to long - term debt and was negatively and significantly related to short term debt. The relationship between asset maturity and long term debt was found to be negative and significant. Therefore, there is no support of the hypothesis that debt maturity decreases as the proportion of growth potentials increase. Size was found to be positively and significantly related to long term debt and negatively and significantly related to short term debt implying that larger firms borrow on long term and small ones borrow on short term. Profitability, age liquidity appeared to have no statistical significance on the different types of debt. The implications of these results have been examined and future research directions have been suggested.
Determinants of Post Implementation Success of ERP In Tunisian Companies: An Empirical Study of The Moderating Role of The Technical Fit

Studies on Enterprise Resource Planning system (ERP) are many, but few of them dealt with the postimplementation stage. The aim of this paper is to identify the determinants that affect the post implementation success (PIS) of ERP and check for the moderating effect of the variable technical fit on this relationship. Data are collected through a questionnaire of 47 Tunisian companies that have already implemented an ERP system for at least two years. The collected data are processed using SPSS 18 software. Given the nature of the variables, we chose the simple linear regression to test our research hypotheses. The results of the survey indicate a significant relationship between PIS of ERP and the following critical success factors (CSFs): Top management support, organizational fit, and external support. However user involvement has no statistically significant effect on the PIS of ERP. On the other hand, we were able to point to the effect of the mediator variable technical fit.
Who is unbanked, and why: results from a large, new survey of low- and moderate-income individuals

This paper uses data from a new, large survey to estimate the demand for financial services of low-and-moderate income households. We show that socio-economic characteristics have significant and importantly different effects on the choices about which bank accounts to have. In particular, racial and ethnic minorities were less likely to have checking accounts than whites were, but were more likely to have savings accounts. Our estimates could be used to support Caskey’s recommendation that efforts to reach LMI individuals should focus on savings accounts. Caskey’s view that managing a checking account is particularly difficult (and likely very costly) for the very poor is consonant with our findings that those with less income, education, and wealth are more likely to own a savings account than a checking account. We also provide evidence that, in addition to individuals’ characteristics, neighborhood characteristics significantly affected whether individuals were unbanked. Our estimates showed that everyone living in neighborhoods with higher proportions of racial or ethnic minorities was less likely to have any bank account and that the likelihood of owning a checking account was particularly reduced by neighborhood effects.
Domestic and foreign announcements on unconventional monetary policy and exchange rates

This brief studies the effects that announcements about unconventional monetary policies (large-scale asset purchases, refinancing operations, and forward guidance) have on nominal exchange rates. To this end, the authors use high-frequency intra-daily data and look at the variations in government future yields and in nominal exchange rates over a narrow window around the time of the announcements. They find that expansionary monetary policy shocks embedded in announcements made by the Federal Reserve depreciate the U. S. dollar. In contrast, the authors also find that similar unexpected expansionary announcements by foreign central banks result in an appreciation of the U. S. dollar.
Inhaled drugs as risk factors for community-acquired pneumonia

The effect of inhaled drugs in community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is unclear. This case–control study was designed to determine whether inhaled drugs were risk factors for CAP. All incident cases of confirmed CAP that occurred over 1 yr in patients with chronic bronchitis (CB), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or asthma were included, as well as CB, COPD and asthma controls. Risk factors for CAP and inhaled treatment were recorded during a personal interview. An effect of inhaled drugs on the risk of CAP was observed in COPD and asthma patients after adjusting for the effect of other respiratory diseases and their concomitant treatments. In COPD patients, inhaled steroids had a risk OR of 3.26 (95% CI 1.07–9.98) and in asthma patients inhaled anticholinergics had a risk OR of 8.80 (95% CI 1.02–75.7). In CB patients, no association with CAP was observed for any inhaler. These effects were independent of adjusting variables related to severity and other respiratory and non-respiratory risk factors for CAP, including vaccines. Inhaled &bgr;2-adrenergic agonists did not show a significant effect on the risk of CAP in any of the respiratory diseases. Inhaled steroids may favour CAP in COPD patients, whereas anticholinergics may favour CAP in asthma patients. It is difficult to differentiate the effect of inhaled therapy from the effect of COPD or asthma severity on the risk of CAP, and these relationships may not be causal, but could call attention to inhaled therapy in COPD and asthma patients.
Nas transgenic mouse line allows visualization of Notch pathway activity in vivo

The Notch signaling pathway plays multiple and important roles in mammals. However, several aspects of its action, in particular, the precise mapping of its sites of activity, remain unclear. To address this issue, we generated a transgenic line carrying a construct consisting of a nls‐lacZ reporter gene under the control of a minimal promoter and multiple RBP‐Jκ binding sites. Here we show that this transgenic line, which we termed NAS (for Notch Activity Sensor), displays an expression profile that is consistent with current knowledge on Notch activity sites in mice, even though it may not report on all these sites. Moreover, we observe that NAS transgene expression is abolished in a RBP‐Jκ‐deficient background, indicating that it indeed requires Notch/RBP‐Jκ signaling pathway activity. Thus, the NAS transgenic line constitutes a valuable and versatile tool to gain further insights into the complex and various functions of the Notch signaling pathway. genesis 44: 277–286, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Exploiting parallelism in I/O scheduling for access conflict minimization in flash-based solid state drives

Solid state drives (SSDs) have been widely deployed in personal computers, data centers, and cloud storages. In order to improve performance, SSDs are usually constructed with a number of channels with each channel connecting to a number of NAND flash chips. Despite the rich parallelism offered by multiple channels and multiple chips per channel, recent studies show that the utilization of flash chips (i.e. the number of flash chips being accessed simultaneously) is seriously low. Our study shows that the low chip utilization is caused by the access conflict among I/O requests. In this work, we propose Parallel Issue Queuing (PIQ), a novel I/O scheduler at the host system, to minimize the access conflicts between I/O requests. The proposed PIQ schedules I/O requests without conflicts into the same batch and I/O requests with conflicts into different batches. Hence the multiple I/O requests in one batch can be fulfilled simultaneously by exploiting the rich parallelism of SSD. And because PIQ is implemented at the host side, it can take advantage of rich resource at host system such as main memory and CPU, which makes the overhead negligible. Extensive experimental results show that PIQ delivers significant performance improvement to the applications that have heavy access conflicts.
Assessing the returns to studying abroad

The market for higher education increasingly becomes an international market. Nowadays, the number of students studying abroad is substantial and increasing. Many governments stimulate students to study abroad by offering a wide range of grants. However, little is known on the returns to studying abroad. This paper explores the feasibility of a new approach for finding credible evidence on the returns to studying abroad. We use a sample of graduates who applied for a specific grant for studying abroad and compare the outcomes of graduates who received the grant with the outcomes of graduates who did not receive the grant. The ranking of the applicants by the selection committee has been used to create credible control groups. We find that the grant has increased the probability of studying abroad with 23 to 42%-points and the duration of the study with 7 to 9 months. An extension of the study with 7 to 9 months increases the probability of living abroad with 30 to 39%-points. Studying abroad is associated with higher wages. However, it is not clear whether these higher wages are caused by studying abroad.
Predicting the Remaining Lifespan and Cultivation-Related Loss of Osteogenic Capacity of Bone Marrow Multipotential Stromal Cells Applicable across a Broad Donor Age Range

Background and Objectives. Culture expanded multipotential stromal cells (MSCs) have considerable potential for bone regeneration therapy but their wider use is constrained by the lack of simple and predictive assays of functional potency. Extended passaging leads to loss of multipotency but speed of decline depends on MSC donor age. The aim of this study was to develop an assay predictive of MSC culture longevity applicable to a broad donor age range. Materials and Methods. Bone marrow (BM, n = 7) was obtained from a diverse range (2–72 years) of healthy donors. MSCs were culture expanded to senescence and their osteoprogenitor content, gene expression profiles, epigenetic signature, and telomere behaviour were measured throughout. Output data was combined for modelling purposes. Results. Regardless of donor age, cultures' osteoprogenitor content correlated better with remaining lifespan (population doublings before senescence, PD-BS) than proliferative history (accrued PDs). Individual gene's expression or telomere length did not predict PD-BS but methylation of individual CpG islands did, PRAMEF2 in particular (r = 0.775). Coupling the steep relationship of relative SPARC expression with PD-BS (r = −0.753) the formula SPARC × 1/PREMEF2 gave an improved correlation (r = −0.893). Conclusion. A formula based on SPARC mRNA and PRAMEF2 methylation may be used to predict remaining BM-MSC longevity and related loss of multipotentiality independent of donor age.
What Drives Stock Price Movement?

A central issue in finance is whether stock prices move because of revisions in expected cash flows or discount rates, and by how much of each. Using direct cash flow forecasts, we show that stock returns have a significant cash flow news component whose importance increases with the investment horizon. For horizons over two years, cash flow news is more important. These conclusions hold at both the firm and aggregate levels, and diversification plays a secondary role in affecting the relative importance of cash flow and discount rate news. Our findings highlight the importance of cash flows in asset pricing. The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com. , Oxford University Press.
Rules Versus Discretion: The Productivity Consequences of Flexible Regulation

Using data from electric utilities, this study shows that spending on well-designed regulations has a positive productivity impact but that spending on less well-designed regulations has a negative effect. Better-designed regulations are flexible and grant firms latitude on how to meet goals, allow them time to deploy new means to meet goals, and set ambitious goals that stretch them beyond current practices.
Can you learn to teach programming in two days?

Between 2011 and 2013, an updated set of national standards for secondary school computer science education was introduced in New Zealand. This change caused great difficulties for many existing "computing" teachers. After many years of teaching primarily word processing, they were suddenly tasked with teaching programming, even though they were themselves unable to program. In this paper we describe the structure and results of two in-service professional development workshops for these teachers. The workshop structure places emphasis not only on improving a teacher's programming skill, but on exposing him or her to validated pedagogical techniques in programming education. Preliminary results are positive, with most teachers being able to transfer the training into their own classrooms. After the workshops, teachers continue to request support, especially additional classroom-ready materials. We maintain that effective in-service training must include this ongoing support.
Structure and Evolution of Starburst and Normal Galaxies

A comparative study of the rest-frame morphology and structural properties of optically selected starburst galaxies at redshift z ≲ 1 is carried out using multi-wave-band (BViz) high-resolution images taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys as part of the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey. We classify galaxies into starburst, early, and late types by comparing their observed spectral energy distributions with local templates. We find that early-type systems have significantly higher rest-frame B-band concentration indices and active galacic nucleus (AGN) fraction (>25 %) than late-type spirals and optically selected starbursts. These results are consistent with the scenario that early-epoch (z ≫ 1) gas-rich dissipative processes (e.g., major mergers) have played an important role in developing large central concentrations in early-type E/Sa galaxies and that a concurrent growth of central black holes and bulges occurs in some of these early merger events. The lower AGN fraction and concentration indices in the majority of the optically selected starbursts at z ≲ 1 suggest that either the starbursts and early types are different in nature (being, respectively, disk and bulge dominated) and/or they are in different evolutionary phases, such that some of the starbursts in major mergers evolve into early types as the dynamical phase of the merger evolves and the spectral signature of the starburst fades out. The starbursts have, on average, larger asymmetries than our control sample of normal galaxies in both rest-frame B and R bands, suggesting that a significant fraction of the starburst activity is tidally triggered.
Recursive calculation of effective resistances in distance-regular networks based on Bose–Mesner algebra and Christoffel–Darboux identity

Recently, Jafarizadeh et al. [ J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 40, 4949 (2007)] have given a method for calculation of effective resistance (two-point resistance) on distance-regular networks, where the calculation was based on stratification introduced by Jafarizadeh and Salimi [J. Phys. A 39, 1 (2006)] and Stieltjes transform of the spectral distribution (Stieltjes function) associated with the network. Also,Jafarizadeh et al. [ J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 40, 4949 (2007)] have shown that effective resistances between a node α and all nodes β belonging to the same stratum with respect to α (Rαβ(i), β belonging to the ith stratum with respect to α) are the same. In this work, an algorithm for recursive calculation of the effective resistances in an arbitrary distance-regular resistor network is provided, where the derivation of the algorithm is based on the Bose–Mesner algebra, stratification of the network, spectral techniques, and Christoffel–Darboux identity. It is shown that the effective resistance on a dista.