Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Have changes in pension accounting changed pension provision? A review of the evidence

Abstract The present paper reviews the research evidence on the impact of changes in pension accounting methods on pension provision. We show that decisions to freeze, terminate or convert defined benefit (DB) plans have been driven primarily by a desire to limit contributions, though financial reporting has played a part as well. The introduction of accrual accounting requirements for post‐retirement health care benefits in the US similar in character to those required for DB pension liabilities appear to have motivated some firms to curtail health care provision. Changes in accounting for DB schemes have affected how firms allocate pension plan assets. We conclude that accounting matters, though perhaps not as much as is sometimes claimed. Increased costs of providing DB pensions, coupled with the greater volatility of employers’ cash contributions, have undoubtedly played the major part in the decline of DB schemes.
Application of electrochemical methods in the physico-chemical characterization of atmospheric precipitation

Electrochemical methods play an important role in the environmenal analysis. This study demonstrates that electrochemical (voltammetric) methods are a valuable tool with good selectivity and sensitivity for physico-chemical analysis of atmospheric precipitation. Studies have been done with daily bulk samples collected in the city of Zagreb (Croatia) in the period of 2009/2010. Heavy metal (HM) content and reduced sulfur species (RSS) were investigated in the precipitation samples by using cathodic striping voltammetry (CSV) and differential pulse striping voltammetry: anodic, DPASV (Zn, Cd, Pb and Cu) and adsorptive cathodic modes, DPAdCSV (Ni), respectively, at the hanging mercury drop electrode. In average, the highest concentrations were found for Zn and the lowest for Cd (Cd < Ni < Pb < Cu < Zn). Although generaly low correlations between metals was found (statistically significant was only between Zn and Cu), the same pattern of concentration changes relative to precipitation events were observed for Zn, Cd, Pb, Cu and DOC, whereas an oposite pattern was noticed for Ni and pH. Analyses of bulk samples by CSV tecnique revealed an existance of different sulfur species, providing an exelent tool for study of organic and inorganic RSS in the atmospheric precipitation at nano-levels.
Large Utility Sorting on FPGAs

This paper presents a merge sorter able of merging thousands of streams in a single run where the logic cost scales logarithmic with the number of streams merged. Moreover, we apply several performance tuning techniques, including speculative execution, deep pipelining and optimized communication schemes between processing elements. An end-to-end case study utilizing a Xilinx VC709 board merges 2048 sequences of the Graysort benchmark between two DRAMs at 9.5GB/s or 1024 sequences at 10.3GB/s effective throughput.
Mercury Accumulation in Body Tissues of Yellowfin Seabream ( Acanthopagrus Latus ) under Sublethal Concentrations

In the present study, Mercury (Hg) accumulation in different tissues of Yellowfin seabream under different Hg concentrations in the medium were investigated. For this, PurPuse 45 fish specimen of the same size (19.2±1.8cm and 134.0±36.1 g) were caught from Musa Estuary, in northwest of the Persian Gulf and transferred to the laboratory. Fish were divided into five different groups of 9 fish each. Each group was exposed to nominal Hg concentrations of 10, 20, 40 and 80 μg L of HgCl2. Control fish were not exposed to Hg. After 21 days, fish were captured and their tissues (scale, fin, bone, skin, muscle, gill and liver) dissected. Tissue samples were digested and Hg concentration determined using cold vapor atomic absorption spectrophotometer. The results showed that different tissues accumulated different amounts of Hg. The order of Hg accumulation in Hg-treated fish was as follows: liver> gills> muscle≥ skin≥ bones≥ fins and scales, which was differeed than that in control fish tissues. Hg accumulations in all tissues strongly and positively correlated with Hg concentrations in the medium.
Estimation of Long Memory in Volatility

We discuss some of the issues pertaining to modelling and estimating long memory in volatility. Themain focus is on semi parametric estimation of the memory parameter in the long memory stochasticvolatility model. We present the asymptotic properties of the log periodogram regression estimator ofthe memory parameter in this model. A modest simulation study of the estimator is also presented tostudy its behaviour when the volatility possesses only short memory. We conclude with a discussionof the appropriate choice of transformation of returns to measure persistence in volatility.
Equilibria in two-stage sequential second-price auctions with multi-unit demands

We characterize the set of symmetric pure strategy equilibria in sequential secondprice auctions with multi-unit demands when two units of an homogenous good are put for sale and when valuations are drawn independently from a general bivariate density. There is a unique equilibrium when there are at least three bidders while a continuum of equilibria prevails with only two bidders. Equilibrium behavior produces efficient outcomes and an expectation of increasing prices. More generally, we consider also perturbations of the model where some extra bidders may enter the auction game at the second stage, which provides a selection criterium when equilibrium multiplicity prevails. Sequential English auctions are also considered. Our results have important implications for empirical studies.
Corpus-Based Analysis on Code-Mixing Features in Mandarin-English Bilingual Children in Singapore C

This paper investigated the code-mixing features in Mandarin-English bilingual children in Singapore. First, it examined whether the code-mixing rate was different in Mandarin Chinese and English contexts. Second, it explored the syntactic categories of code-mixing in Singapore bilingual children. Moreover, this study investigated whether morphological information was preserved when inserting syntactic components into the matrix language. Data are derived from the Singapore Bilingual Corpus, in which the recordings and transcriptions of sixty English-Mandarin 5-to-6-year-old children were preserved for analysis. Results indicated that the rate of code-mixing was asymmetrical in the two language contexts, with the rate being significantly higher in the Mandarin context than that in the English context. The asymmetry is related to language dominance in that children are more likely to code-mix when using their nondominant language. Concerning the syntactic categories of code-mixing words in the Singaporean bilingual children, we found that noun-mixing, verb-mixing, and adjective-mixing are the three most frequently used categories in code-mixing in the Mandarin context. This pattern mirrors the syntactic categories of code-mixing in the Cantonese context in Cantonese-English bilingual children, and the general trend observed in lexical borrowing. Third, our results also indicated that English vocabularies that carry morphological information are embedded in bare forms in the Mandarin context. These findings shed light upon how bilingual children take advantage of the two languages in mixed utterances in a bilingual environment. Keywords—Code-mixing, Mandarin Chinese, English, bilingual children.
Monetary Transmission Mechanism in India: A Quarterly Model

This paper examines monetary transmission mechanism for India in the context of a small macro model using quarterly data. Given the volatility emanating from the agricultural sector, the paper models both overall growth and overall inflation as well as non-agricultural growth and non-food manufactured products inflation, i.e., components stripped of the influence from the agricultural sector and which are more amenable to monetary actions. Model simulations for a one-quarter 100 bps increase in the nominal effective policy rate show that the peak effect on non-agricultural growth is almost 40 bps with a lag of 2 quarters and that on non-food manufactured products inflation is 25 bps with a lag of 5 quarters. Therefore, the interest rate channel is effective in the Indian context and the magnitude of the impact on growth and inflation is comparable to that in major advanced and emerging economies; however, the evidence for both India and other countries suggest that the impact of monetary policy actions on inflation is modest and subject to lags. The results are sensitive to alternative measures of real interest rate. Despite the monetary tightening by Reserve Bank of India during 2010 and 2011, inflation remained high and this could be attributed to the structural component of food inflation as well as the surge in international commodity prices beginning the second half of 2010 and continuing into the first half of 2011.
Sparse Spikes Super-resolution on Thin Grids I: the LASSO

This article analyzes the recovery performance in the presence of noise of sparse L1 regularization, which is often referred to as the Lasso or Basis-Pursuit. We study the behavior of the method for inverse problems regularization when the discretization step size tends to zero. We assume that the sought after sparse sum of Diracs is recovered when there is no noise (a condition which has been thoroughly studied in the literature) and we study what is the support (in particular the number of Dirac masses) estimated by the Lasso when noise is added to the observation. We identify a precise non-degeneracy condition that guarantees that the recovered support is close to the initial one. More precisely, we show that, in the small noise regime, when the non-degeneracy condition holds, this method estimates twice the number of spikes as the number of original spikes. Indeed, we prove that the Lasso detects two neighboring spikes around each location of an original spike. While this paper is focussed on cases where the observations vary smoothly with the spikes locations (e.g. the deconvolution problem with a smooth kernel), an interesting by-product is an abstract analysis of the support stability of discrete L1 regularization, which is of an independent interest. We illustrate the usefulness of this abstract analysis to analyze for the first time the support instability of compressed sensing recovery.
Demographic consequences of an ontogenetic shift by a sea urchin in response to host plant chemistry

Habitat selection that maximizes both larval settlement success and subse- quent juvenile and adult performance is a fundamental challenge for marine benthic or- ganisms with complex life histories (e.g., planktonic larvae). For benthic herbivores, chem- ical cues from macroalgae can strongly influence both larval settlement/metamorphosis and subsequent performance. We compared the effects of chemical cues from host algae on different life history stages of the ''arboreal'' sea urchin Holopneustes purpurascens . I n sublittoral habitats near Sydney, Australia, H. purpurascensoccurred primarily on two algal hosts: red alga (Delisea pulchra) and kelp (Ecklonia radiata). Urchins on E. radiata were significantly larger than those on D. pulchra, but no recruits occurred on E. radiata . I n experiments, larvae rapidly metamorphosed in the presence of D. pulchra, but metamor- phosis was delayed or nonexistent in the presence of E. radiata. D. pulchra produces a polar chemical inducer of metamorphosis not found in E. radiata. In contrast to larval metamorphosis, feeding and performance of juvenile and adult urchins were considerably worse on D. pulchra than on E. radiata. Feeding experiments confirmed that nonpolar metabolites (halogenated furanones) in D. pulchra deter feeding. Adding natural concen- trations of the most abundant furanone to otherwise palatable diets completely inhibited feeding. Urchins fed D. pulchra had reduced survival, growth, and reproduction compared to those fed E. radiata. H. purpurascens did not thrive on the alga on which they prefer- entially settled; therefore, postrecruitment movement from D. pulchra to E. radiata was crucial to fitness. Urchins in D. pulchra beds moved between plants at night and preferred E. radiata in habitat preference experiments. Movement was constrained by diurnal pred- ators, particularly damselfish Parma microlepis. When H. purpurascenswas removed from their algal hosts during the day (but not at night), P. microlepis ''clipped'' their spines and tube feet. Removal of 10% of an urchin's spines and tube feet was fatal. H. purpurascens recruits onto a host that does not support persistence of the benthic phase and then shifts host plants, incurring a predation risk. Though chemically mediated, ontogenetic shifts in host plant use are known for insect herbivores, this is the first known example in a marine herbivore.
Proximate Analysis, Mineral Contents and Functional Properties of Moringa Oleifera Leaf Protein Concentrate.

Freshly harvested Moringa oleifera was authenticated and processed for its vegetable leaf protein concentrates and analysed for proximate composition, functional properties and mineral composition. The proximate analysis was evaluated using standard analytical procedures. The proximate analysis reveal the moisture content to be 9.00mg/100g, ash content 6.00mg/100g, crude fat 2.43mg/100g, crude fibre 5.43mg/100g, crude protein 39.13mg/100g and carbohydrate content is 38.21 mg/100g. The mineral content of the leaves indicated that Ca, Mg, Zn, Mn, and Na are the most abundant. The water absorption capacity, fat absorption capacity, emulsion capacity, foaming stability revealed good functional properties.
PERAN PELATIH OLAHRAGA EKSTRAKURIKULER DALAM MENGEMBANGKAN BAKAT DAN MINAT OLAHRAGA PADA PESERTA DIDIK

Tulisan ini membahas peran pelatih olahraga pada kegiatan ekstrakurikuler dalam mengembangkan bakat dan minat peserta didik. Tujuan penulisan ini untuk memberikan informasi, bahwa peran pelatih olahraga sangat berarti dalam mengembangkan bakat dan minat olahraga pada pelajar. Dalam memajukan pembinaan olahraga pada kalangan pelajar, peranan pelatih sangatlah strategis dalam membina mengembangkan olahraga dan karakter yang positif terhadap pelajar melalui kegiatan ekstrakurikuler olahraga. Profesi pelatih pada kegiatan ekstrakurikuler olahraga sangat dibutuhkan guna menggelorakan semangat olahraga pada kalangan pelajar dan sekaligus pembentukan dasar pembinaan olahraga yang berjenjang. Tentu dengan hadirnya seorang pelatih ekstrakurikuler olahraga disekolah-sekolah diharapkan dapat memberikan contoh teladan yang baik dan sekaligus membuka lapangan pekerjaan yang baru bagi lulusan SDM pada perguruan tinggi program studi Pendidikan Kepelatihan Olahraga.
In Search for a Robust Method for Estimating Dynamic Panel Data Models of Capital Structure

Existing studies have used the dynamic, partial adjustment models of leverage to test the trade-off theory against alternative theories. The challenge of this approach is to consistently estimate both the speed of leverage adjustment and the long-run relationship underlying target leverage in short panels with firm fixed effects. This paper conducts empirical and Monte Carlo simulation analysis to evaluate the performance of all existing methods for estimating such a complex model. Results show that traditional least-squares estimators are fundamentally flawed while instrumental variable and GMM approaches are unreliable in several important settings. The paper considers alternative methods based on analytical or bootstrap bias corrections. It shows that the latter estimator obtains the most plausible and robust results and outperforms the other estimators in terms of accuracy and efficiency. Importantly, this method can appropriately estimate target leverage, toward which adjustment is found to take place at a moderate speed, a finding generally consistent with the dynamic trade-off theory.
Effects of Vasodilation and Arterial Resistance on Cardiac Output

Heart is one of the most important organs present in human body which pumps blood throughout the body using blood vessels. With each heartbeat, blood is sent throughout the body, carrying oxygen and nutrients to all the cells in body. The cardiac cycle is the sequence of events that occurs when the heart beats. Blood pressure is maximum during systole, when the heart is pushing and minimum during diastole, when the heart is relaxed. Vasodilation caused by relaxation of smooth muscle cells in arteries causes an increase in blood flow. When blood vessels dilate, the blood flow is increased due to a decrease in vascular resistance. Therefore, dilation of arteries and arterioles leads to an immediate decrease in arterial blood pressure and heart rate. Cardiac output is the amount of blood ejected by the left ventricle in one minute. Cardiac output (CO) is the volume of blood being pumped by the heart, by left ventricle in the time interval of one minute. The effects of vasodilation, how the blood quantity increases and decreases along with the blood flow and the arterial blood flow and resistance on cardiac output is discussed in this review Article.
OR 5752 inglés Independent factors associated with the impact of gastroesophageal reflux disease on health-related quality of life

Background: although a number of factors have been associated with a deterioration in quality of life in gastroesophageal reflux disease, it is not known which has an independent influence. Objective: to evaluate factors independently associated with the impact of gastroesophageal reflux disease on health-related quality of life. Methods: a post-hoc analysis of a prospective cohort of patients diagnosed with gastroesophageal reflux disease was performed. The patients completed validated questionnaires to evaluate health-related quality of life (SF 36), gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERQ) and psychological factors (STAI and SCL 90R) Results: the study included 98 patients. The univariate analysis showed that a deterioration in the physical component of the SF36 was significantly associated with female gender, educational level, age, weight loss, severity of typical symptoms, supraesophageal symptoms and monthly income. The mental component was significantly associated with alcohol consumption, epigastric pain and lower scores on the STAI and SCL90 questionnaires. The multivariate analysis showed an independent association between the physical component of the SF36 and educational level (β = 0.29; p < 0.01), severity of symptoms (β = -0.38; p < 0.001), body mass index (β = -0.30; p < 0.005), state anxiety (β = 0.28; p < 0.01), female gender (β = -0.23; p < 0.05) and dyspepsia (β = -0.21; p<0.05). Associated variables within the mental component included state anxiety (β = -0.39; p < 0.01) and depression (β = -0.32; p < 0.05). Conclusions: the principal factors independently associated with a deterioration in health-related quality of life in patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease included the severity of typical symptoms and the presence of dyspepsia. There is also an additional impact of body mass index and the psychological component.
Magnetohydrodynamic waves in a compressible magnetic flux tube with elliptical cross-section

Aims. The propagation of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves in a finite, compressible magnetic flux tube with an elliptical crosssection embedded in a magnetic environment is investigated. Methods. We present the derivation of the general dispersion relation of linear magneto-acoustic wave propagation for a compressible magnetic flux tube with elliptical cross-section in a plasma with finite beta. The wave modes of propagation for the n = 0 (symmetric) sausage and n = 1 (anti-symmetric) kink oscillations are then examined within the limit of the thin flux tube approximation. Results. It is shown that a compressible magnetic tube with elliptical cross-section supports slow and fast magneto-acoustic waves. In the thin tube approximation, the slow sausage mode and the slow and fast kink modes are found in analogue to a circular crosssection. However, the kink modes propagate with different phase speeds depending on whether the axial displacement takes place along the major or minor axis of the ellipse. This feature is present in both the slow and the fast bands, providing two infinite sets of slow kink modes and two infinite sets of fast kink modes, i.e. each corresponding cylindrical mode splits into two sets of modes due to the ellipticity. The difference between the phase speeds along the different axis is dependent on the ratio of the lengths of the two axes. Analytical expressions for the phase speeds are found. We show that the sausage modes do not split due to the introduced ellipticity and only the phase speed is modified when compared to the appropriate cylindrical counterpart. The percentage difference between the periods of the circular and elliptical cross-sections is also calculated, which reaches up to 21% for oscillations along the major axis. The level of difference in period could be very important in magneto-seismological applications, when observed periods are inverted into diagnostic properties (e.g. magnetic field strength, gravitational scale height, tube expansion parameter). Also shown is the perturbation of focal points of the elliptical cross-section for different modes. It is found that the focal points are unperturbed for the sausage mode, but are perturbed for all higher modes.
The active ingredient in EMDR: is it traditional exposure or dual focus of attention?

Very little is known about the mechanisms that underlie the therapeutic effectiveness of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). This study tested whether the content of participants' responses during EMDR is similar to that thought to be effective for traditional exposure treatments (reliving), or is more consistent with distancing, which would be expected given Shapiro's proposal of dual process of attention. The responses made by 44 participants with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were examined during their first EMDR treatment session. An independent rater coded these responses according to whether they were consistent with reliving, distancing or focusing on material other than the primary trauma. The coding system was found to have satisfactory inter-rater reliability. Greatest improvement on a measure of PTSD symptoms occurred when the participant processed the trauma in a more detached manner. Cross-lagged panel correlations suggest that processing in a more detached manner was a consequence of the EMDR procedure rather than a measure that covaried with improvement.
Athens Institute for Education and Research ATINER ATINER ' s Conference Paper Series MED 2017-2358

This study examines the use of local and Arab news websites among young adults in Bahrain. It identifies the patterns of use, the reasons of choices, and the factors that influence these choices and highlights the potential difficulties, if any, preventing users from finding gratifications in their news practices. A survey was administered to a random sample of 522 Bahraini young adults aged 18 to 29 years to achieve the objectives of the study. The study found that online news consumption by young adults in Bahrain is on the increase, is accessed in particular by the mobile phone at all times and in all places, however, only a short time is allocated for this use, and is focused more on local news. The study also showed that young Bahrainis have become active users, relying on multiple patterns of use, and that their activity is not confined to reading the news but have a feeling of belonging to a community of users (Breton and Proulx, 2002). They also engage in parallel interactive activities that support their position through employing Internet technology from the perspective of uses and gratifications theory (Ruggiero, 2000).