Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Statistical inference for multilayer networks in political science

Abstract Interactions between units in political systems often occur across multiple relational contexts. These relational systems feature interdependencies that result in inferential shortcomings and poorly-fitting models when ignored. General advancements in inferential network analysis have improved our ability to understand relational systems featuring interdependence, but developments specific to working with interdependence that cross relational contexts remain sparse. In this paper, I introduce a multilayer network approach to modeling systems comprising multiple relations using the exponential random graph model. In two substantive applications, the first a policy communication network and the second a global conflict network, I demonstrate that the multilayer approach affords inferential leverage and produces models that better fit observed data.
IMPACTS OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ON BUSINESS PERFORMANCE OF SMALL-SIZED AGRIBUSINESS FIRMS

It has been identified that Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Indonesia play an important role in the Indonesia’s economy. Its contribution to the national economy (i.e., GDP and export values), however, is relatively minimal as to compare with its unit numbers and number of labor involved. It is also of considerable lower than those of large-sized enterprises whose unit number and number of labor involved were much lower than those of SMEs. This, to some extent, indicates that SMEs’ productivity is relatively low. Some improvements are required accordingly. Information and communication technology, especially Internet technology application within SMEs is regarded to have the potentials to significantly increase their business performance. This study is aimed at investigating factors that potentially affect internet adoption and analyzing the impact of internet adoption on business performance of small-sized agribusiness firms. Modified Supply Process Model was adopted as an approach model in this study. One hundred and one small-sized agribusiness owners/operators were randomly selected as respondents. Primary data were collected and analyzed using path analysis. Results of the study showed that internet adoption within small-sized agribusiness owners/operators was significantly affected by perceived ease of use, internet self efficacy, internet anxiety, and personal innovativeness. Small-sized agribusiness firms’ business performance was affected by the level of internet adoption (i.e., non-adopter, potential adopter or adopter). This indicates that internet technology has the potentials to increase business performance.
Investigation of Junction-less Tunneling Field Effect Transistor (JL-TFET) with Floating Gate

This work presents a novel structure for junction-less tunneling field effect transistor (JLTFET) with a floating gate over the source region. Introduction of floating gate instead of fixed metal gate removes the limitation of fabrication process suitability. The proposed device is based on a heavily n-type-doped Si-channel junction-less field effect transistor (JLFET). A floating gate over source region and a control-gate with optimized metal workfunction over channel region is used to make device work like a tunnel field effect transistor (TFET). The proposed device has exhibited excellent ID-VGS characteristics, ION/IOFF ratio, a point subthreshold slope (SS), and average SS for optimized device parameters. Electron charge stored in floating gate, isolation oxide layer and body doping concentration are optimized. The proposed JL-TFET can be a promising candidate for switching performances.
The Broch of Burrian, North Ronaldsay, Orkney

HY 763514. The first complete catalogue of the finds also assesses the general significance of the site. Contrary to the excavator's view, all finds must be regarded as unstratified; nonetheless the rich collection of bone and stonework, pottery and metalwork warrants study in its own right. The date range appears to be late 1st century BC to late 8th AD. The bone sample was inadequate for proper assessment of the economy.
MID DAY MEALS: A DETAILED STUDY OF INDIAN STATES

With higher degree of school going children suffering from undernourishment, Mid Day Meal Programme (MDM) was launched in India in 1995. Thus the research paper focuses on MDM Scheme in India. There is existence of under prevailing inequality in availing of Mid Day Meal Programme across states and within states and among income groups and social groups. Therefore, the study aims at addressing these issues with the evidences from unit level data of National Sample Survey Office 64 Round. The research focuses upon relationship between Mid Day Meal and school infrastructure. It even studies inequality in availing of MDM in rural and urban areas, among boys and girls, among income and social group. IndexTerms Mid Day Meal, Social groups, Infrastructure, Elementary Education.
M3TRA: integrating TM and MT for professional translators

Translation memories (TM) and machine translation (MT) both are potentially useful resources for professional translators, but they are often still used independently in translation workflows. As translators tend to have a higher confidence in fuzzy matches than in MT, we investigate how to combine the benefits of TM retrieval with those of MT, by integrating the results of both. We develop a flexible TM-MT integration approach based on various techniques combining the use of TM and MT, such as fuzzy repair, span pretranslation and exploiting multiple matches. Results for ten language pairs using the DGT-TM dataset indicate almost consistently better BLEU, METEOR and TER scores compared to the MT, TM and NMT baselines.
What Happens When Donors Pull Out? Examining Differences in Motivation Between Health Workers Who Recently Had Performance-Based Financing (PBF) Withdrawn With Workers Who Never Received PBF in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Background: A motivated workforce is necessary to ensure the delivery of high quality health services. In developing countries, performance-based financing (PBF) is often employed to increase motivation by providing financial incentives linked to performance. However, given PBF schemes are usually funded by donors, their long-term financing is not always assured, and the effects of withdrawing PBF on motivation are largely unknown. This cross-sectional study aimed to identify differences in motivation between workers who recently had donor-funded PBF withdrawn, with workers who had not received PBF. Methods: Quantitative data were collected from 485 health workers in 5 provinces using a structured survey containing questions on motivation which were based on an established motivation framework. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to verify dimensions of motivation, and multiple regression to assess differences in motivation scores between workers who had previously received PBF and those who never had. Qualitative interviews were also carried out in Kasai Occidental province with 16 nurses who had previously or never received PBF. Results: The results indicated that workers in facilities where PBF had been removed scored significantly lower on most dimensions of motivation compared to workers who had never received PBF. The removal of the PBF scheme was blamed for an exodus of staff due to the dramatic reduction in income, and negatively impacted on relationships between staff and the local community. Conclusion: Donors and governments unable to sustain PBF or other donor-payments should have clear exit strategies and institute measures to mitigate any adverse effects on motivation following withdrawal.
Analysis of the Relationship between World Oil Price and Exchange Rate on Agricultural Commodity Prices in Indonesia

Increasing food prices in the world caused a global food crisis. Some Asian countries are also affected by rising world food prices, including Indonesia. Using Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) method, the researchers intend to analyze the long-term relationship between world oil price and exchange rate to agricultural commodity price (rice, corn and soybean) in Indonesia and test whether there is an existing causality. This analysis is based upon the data set covering the monthly period of January 2010 to June 2017. The empirical results show that there is a longterm equilibrium relationship between world oil prices and exchange rate against three of agricultural commodity prices and there is only unindirectional causality of the world oil price against rice price. Nevertheless, this study confirms the hypothesis from world oil price to agricultural commodity price. While exchange rate did not show the pattern of causality relationship either one or two direction to each agricultural commodity price under study. According to Impulse Response Function (IRF), the study results show that the rice price negatively responds to shock of world oil prices in the short term while responding positively to shock of world oil prices in the long term. But response of corn and soybean prices is not significant. Meanwhile, shock of exchange rate is responded positively by rice and soybean prices. Conversely, shock of exchange rate on corn prices shows relatively weak and negative responses. To controlling surging prices of agricultural commodities (food), it is suggested that government policies directed at stabilizing food prices policies and exchange rate and also anticipate the exogenous impact of changes in world oil prices that could affect rice price.
Trends and controls of terrestrial gross primary productivity of China during 2000–2016

Terrestrial gross primary productivity (GPP) is an important flux that drives the global carbon cycle. However, quantifying the trend and the control factor of GPP from the pixel level to the regional level is still a challenge. We generated monthly GPP dataset using the vegetation photosynthesis model and calculated the interannual linear trend for China during 2000–2016. The Breaks For Additive Seasonal and Trend method was applied to detect the timing of breakpoint and trends shift of monthly GPP, while boosted regression tree analysis was used to identify the most important factor and its relative influence on GPP based on gridded leaf area index (LAI), aerosol optical thickness, and NCEP-DOE Reanalysis II meteorological data. The results show that annual mean GPP was significantly (P < 0.001, R2 = 0.78) increased, especially in the Loess Plateau and South China, from 2000 to 2016. The change rate of annual mean GPP declined from 18.82 g C m−2 yr−1 in 2000–2008 to 3.48 g C m−2 yr−1 in 2008–2016. About 55.4% of the breakpoints occur between 2009 and 2011 and was mainly distributed in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Central China, Southwestern China, and South China, and negative oriented GPP trends variation type still accounts for about 28.76%. LAI and temperature related factors generally had the highest relative influence on GPP in the north part and south part of China, respectively. Our study indicates that the ecological restoration projects and rapid urbanization have respectively induced the most obvious increase and decrease trends of GPP in China. Land cover change and climate change are the main reasons for GPP dynamics in the north and south part of China, respectively.
Modeling Hard and Soft Facts for Smes: Some International Evidence

This paper asks how well the use of quantitative and qualitative variables can improve the assessment of companies' creditworthiness and how this result can be influenced by the economic and financial peculiarities of countries. We harden qualitative variable measures to model soft information aimed at scoring microfirms, small, and medium&#8208;sized firms. The structural survey covers Germany, Italy, and the UK in a sample of about 17 thousand companies observed during the financial crisis. Soft facts are determined within the balanced scorecard framework in order to find out the impact of customers, business processes, learning and growth, and financial perspectives. Our findings show that credit models integrating soft variables optimize the risk estimation, but estimates are country&#8208;specific and should be tailored to the characteristics of each economic system.
Addressing education inequality in sub-Saharan Africa†

This paper examines the impact of wealth inequality on education inequality in the sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, including by decomposing inequality across gender. Specifically, it analyzes the impact of wealth concentration on the distribution of educational attainment using a sample of cross-sectional data from the USAID Demographic Health Survey on 25 countries, and deploying the education inequality Gini, generalized Lorenz curve, and Lorenz concentration curve. Educational attainment and wealth index were estimated to capture education inequality and wealth concentration. The findings confirm that social exclusion has remained chronic in SSA. Apart from Zimbabwe, SSA have not only failed to raise incidence levels of secondary and tertiary education, but also have largely been unable to reduce education inequality. Regardless of oil and gas endowments, investments going to education have remained low in these countries, while gender disparity on educational attainment burdening females has been high in Nigeria, Gambia, Ghana and Guinea. With the exception of Comoros, wealth concentration is the prime cause of education inequality in the remaining countries. The findings call for effective policies for the poor and females to raise their education levels thereby enabling them to earn incomes to break the vicious cycle of education inequality caused by wealth inequality.
TRIM 5 genotypes in cynomolgus monkeys primarily influence inter-individual diversity in susceptibility to monkey-tropic human immunodeficiency virus type 1

IP: 54.70. 40.11 On: Thu, 16 May 2019 17:37:11 Short Communication TRIM5 genotypes in cynomolgus monkeys primarily influence inter-individual diversity in susceptibility to monkey-tropic human immunodeficiency virus type 1 Akatsuki Saito, Masako Nomaguchi, Ken Kono, Yasumasa Iwatani, Masaru Yokoyama, Yasuhiro Yasutomi, Hironori Sato, Tatsuo Shioda, Wataru Sugiura, Tetsuro Matano, Akio Adachi, Emi E. Nakayama and Hirofumi Akari
Compliance of Budgeting Practices to Budgeting Norms by Government Entities in Kenya: A Case of the Legislature

The enactment of Constitution of Kenya in 2010 resulted to far reaching changes on the management of public resources in Kenya. One of the key departures from the past is the enhanced role of the Legislature in public finance oversight. The Constitution empowered the Legislature to provide oversight and accountability over the use of public finances including budget approval for all government entities as well as ensuring all government entities follow laid down procedures on budgeting. Given this power, the question is whether the Legislature is employing budgeting practices which are in conformity with the established norms on budgeting in preparing its own budget as well as adopting best budgeting practices. This is premised on the fact that the Legislature will not be able to authoritatively impose sanctions to government entities for financial malpractices as a result of poor budgeting practices if the Legislature itself is not following budgeting practices put in place. Thus, the objective of the study was to assess the compliance of budgeting practices to established norms on budgeting in the Legislature. The study used descriptive design. The target respondents were the employees of the administrative arm of the Legislature, that is, the Parliamentary Service Commission in the Directorate of Finance and Accounting and the Directorate of Budget based at Parliament Buildings in Nairobi. These two directorates were selected for the study because they conversant with budgeting practices in the public sector and are both involved directly and indirectly with budgeting in the Legislature. The data for the study was collected from primary source through administration of questionnaires. The Study used descriptive statistical technique since the research was intended to describe the existing budgeting practices in the Legislature. The results revealed that generally, the Legislature has adhered to the established norms on budgeting in its budgeting processes (budgeting practices) as well as adopting budget best practices. However, the study revealed a number of issues that need to be addressed by the Legislature to improve on the budgeting practices. Thus, study recommends that certain aspects of budgeting practices within the Legislature be reviewed. The critical recommended aspects of budgeting practices which need to be reviewed include among others having a budget manual in place, aligning the budget with the strategic plan and goals, basing resource allocation to various activities on cost benefit analysis as well as involving the critical stakeholders during budgeting. The study recommends the need to expand the scope of the study to include other government entities with different characteristics compared to the Legislature. The study recommends further research examine whether adherence of budgeting practices to budgeting norms in public budgeting results to prudent utilization of public resources and efficient delivery public goods.
Us Equity Tail Risk and Currency Risk Premia

We find that a US equity tail risk factor constructed from out-of-the-money S&P 500 put option prices explains the cross-sectional variation of currency excess returns. Currencies highly exposed to this factor offer a low currency risk premium because they appreciate when US tail risk increases. In a reduced-form model, we show that country-specific tail risk factors are priced in the cross section of currency returns only if they contain a global risk component. Motivated by the intuition from the model and by our empirical results, we construct a novel proxy for a global tail risk factor by buying currencies with high US equity tail beta and shorting currencies with low US tail beta. This factor, along with the dollar risk factor, explains a large portion of the cross-sectional variation in the currency carry and momentum portfolios and outperforms other models widely used in the literature.
Clusters with unequal size: maximum likelihood versus weighted estimation in large samples

Financial support from the IAP research network #P7/06 of the Belgian Government (Belgian Science Policy) is gratefully acknowledged. The research leading to these results has also received funding from the European Seventh Framework programme FP7 2007–2013 under grant agreement Nr.602552. We gratefully acknowledge support from the IWT-SBO ExaScience grant.
The impact of sub-national institutions on SMEs’ diversification into new businesses: evidence from China

ABSTRACT This study explores how sub-national institutions affect the diversification of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) into new businesses. Using a sample of 3240 SMEs in China, we found that the dominance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the development of market systems in a province were related to local SMEs’ diversification. Specifically, in provinces dominated by SOEs, SMEs were less likely to diversify into new businesses. The development of market systems tended to reduce the odds of diversification for SMEs that primarily served local markets, and lower the likelihood of unrelated diversification. As a rare attempt to examine the impact of sub-national institutions on SMEs’ diversification, this study contributes to the research on diversification, institutions, and SME management.
Development of Meta-subject Competencies of the 7-9 Grades Basic School Students through the Implementation of Interdisciplinary Mathematical Courses

© Authors. The article is aimed at describing one of the possible interdisciplinary courses for students of the 7-9 classes of the basic school connecting mathematics with natural sciences and the study of such courses role in the formation and development of meta-subject competencies of students. The leading method for this is the modeling of interdisciplinary courses, the main tools for the development of meta-subject competence in which are the interdisciplinary character of the content, including open and partially open type tasks in the course structure and the organization of project activities of schoolchildren in the field of studying mathematics and related disciplines. As a result of the research conducted by the authors they worked out several author's interdisciplinary courses, among them a special place is taken by the course "Mathematics in Natural sciences" for the classes of the natural-science profile. It is suggested in it to consider mathematical questions when applying them to the material of related disciplines both through the study of theoretical material and in the process of solving problems, including the open type, and involving schoolchildren in the project of interdisciplinary activity. Practical use of the interdisciplinary courses allows to see the achievements of meta-subject results by schoolchildren and the successes of students both in mathematical preparation, expressed by high marks on the subject, and related disciplines, which indicates the improvement of mathematical education quality of students who received training using the proposed methodology.
The Influence of Religiosity on Consumer’s Green Purchase Intention Towards Green Hotel Selection in China

ABSTRACT Prior studies have mostly focused on examining consumer’s green purchase attitude-behaviour gap by utilising the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) models. However, the relevant literature has revealed controversial results, further emphasising the need to integrate novel theories or theoretical perspectives in this particular research field. The scarcity of scholars who pays attention to the influence of religiosity upon consumer’s green hotel decision-making process in non-western countries, such as China, is especially evident. Therefore, this study examined the relationship between the religiosity of both intrinsic and extrinsic types, green purchase attitude (GPA), and green purchase intention (GPI) towards green hotel selection. A conceptual research model based on the TRA and TPB has been proposed. A total of 426 valid questionnaires were collected from domestic tourists that currently stay and were staying at green hotels to empirically test the generated hypotheses using SPSS and Structural Equation Modelling. The results indicated that GPA significantly and positively influenced GPI, extrinsic religiosity positively and significantly influenced GPA. Furthermore, GPA displayed full mediation effects on the relationship between extrinsic religiosity and GPI. The practical and theoretical implications were discussed accordingly, as well as the limitations associated in this work.