Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reelection incentives and political corruption : evidence from Brazil’s municipal audit reports

This paper uses a unique dataset of political corruption, constructed from municipal audit reports obtained from Brazil’s randomized anti-corruption program, to test whether reelection incentives affect the level of rent extraction of incumbent politicians. In order to identify reelection incentives, we use the existence of a term limit in Brazil’s municipal elections. We find that in municipalities where mayors are in their second and final term, there is significantly more corruption compared to similar municipalities where mayors are in their first-term. In particular, in municipalities with second-term mayors there is, on average, R$188,431 more diversion of resources and the incidence of irregularities is 23% higher. We also find more pronounced effects where the costs of rent-extraction are lower (municipalities without media and judicial presence), and the density of pivotal voters is higher (more political competition). Finally, we show that first-term mayors, while less corrupt, have a larger incidence of poor administration suggesting that there may exist a trade-off between corruption and quality in public good provision.
Perceived Benefits and Challenges of Electronic Banking Adoption in Ethiopian Private Commercial Banks

The main objective of this study is to identify Perceived benefits and challenges of e- banking adoption on Ethiopian private commercial banks. Mixed research design was employed and primary data was collected through questionnaires from employees and analyzed using quantitative (statistical) and qualitative methods. The study reveals that e-banking service provides benefit for both customers and banks in improving their public image and retain customers for long. Despite the benefit of e-banking service and investment on adopting; the system is not well strengthen in providing services due to several challenges. From these, low level of infrastructure, lack of legal frame works, security risk which lessen confidence of customer to use those technologies, lack of trust on the use of technological innovation and limited top management support are the major challenges of Ethiopian private commercial banks in respect to technology adoption. This study suggested that the government should issue laws that govern e-banking operation, security technologies should be strengthened. Awareness about e- banking should be created using different approaches. Moreover e- banking technologies should be given in a simple and easy to use way. Keywords: E-Banking, technological adoption, Private Banks in Ethiopia
Switchgrass Establishment and Biomass Yield Responses to Fungicide and Insecticide Seed Treatments

Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) is being evaluated for both forage and bioenergy in the Great Plains of the USA. Management strategies to improve switchgrass seedling vigor and emergence may result in more successful switchgrass stands due to better competitive advantage for switchgrass seedlings over weedy species. The objectives of this field experiment were to determine the effects of seven broad-spectrum fungicide and insecticide seed treatments on the establishment and yield of lowland type ‘EG1101’ switchgrass. The combination of fungicide + insecticide (regardless of formulation) tended to result in taller seedlings and greater seedling densities and stands of switchgrass as compared to untreated control (UTC), fungicide only, and insecticide only. These advantages didn’t result in greater switchgrass dry matter (DM) yield, probably due to adequate stands (>1–2 plants per ft2) that were achieved by all fungicide –insecticide seed treatments including UTC. However, given the relatively small cost per acre of seed treatments, there may be early-season benefits to treating seeds with a broad-spectrum insecticide as an insurance measure to increase switchgrass seedling vigor and reduce the chance of stand failure, especially when used with a proven weed
Quality of Life among Patients with Acute Coronary Syndrome

Objectives: The purposes of this study were to describe the quality of life for patients with acute coronary syndrome in Jordan, identify the mostly affected quality of life domains and if there was an association between quality of life socio-demographic and clinical characteristics. Methods: A non-experimental descriptive cross-sectional correlational design was used with a convenience sample of 372 patients with acute coronary syndrome. Data were collected from six different hospitals in Amman city by a self-reported questionnaire. Results: Overall, the patients’ quality of life mean score for all domains was low (4.06 ± 1.16). The physical domain was the most affected (3.87 ± 1.28), followed by the emotional (4.21 ± 1.18) and lastly is the social domain (4.26 ± 1.25). There were statistically significant differences in quality of life scores according to gender, level of education, employment status, physically activity, history of dyslipidemia and medical diagnosis. Conclusion: The results of this study indicated that Jordanian patients with acute coronary syndrome have poor quality of life especially in the physical domain. Social domain of their quality of life was the least affected indicating that there is a strong family support and relation. Different treatments to improve quality of life for those patients are warranted.
The types and categories of old english recursive compounding

This article deals with the recursive compounding of Old English nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. It addresses the question of the textual occurrences of the compounds of Old English by means of a corpus analysis based on the Dictionary of Old English Corpus. The data of qualitative analysis have been retrieved from the lexical database of Old English Nerthus. The analysis shows that the nominal, adjectival and adverbial compounds of Old English can be recursive. Nominal compounding allows double recursivity, whereas adjectival and adverbial compounding do not. The conclusion is reached that both the type and token frequencies of recursive compounds are very low; and recursive compounds from the adjectival class are more exocentric as regards categorisation.
The Impact of Political Advertising in the 2001 U.K. General Election

This article explores the extent to which advocacy and attack Party Election Broadcasts (PEBs) affected voters’ party preferences during the British general election campaign of 2001. The analysis uses an experimental design that involved conducting “media exposure” tests on a representative sample of Greater London voters (N = 919) during the final weeks of the June 2001 election campaign. Respondents completed a pre-test questionnaire before being exposed to a variety of different media stimuli. Their political attitudes were then measured again in a post-test questionnaire. The empirical findings suggest that, in general, PEBs exerted little direct effect on voters’ images of the main political parties in 2001. However, there were a series of “partial” exposure effects confined to particular sub-groups of voters. For example, for non-partisan voters, “attack” advertising appears to have been less effective than “advocacy” advertising. Indeed, in the U.K. in 2001 there were contexts in which negative campaigning was explicitly counter-productive in the sense that it appears to have actively stimulated sympathy for the target of the attack rather than strengthened the relative position of the sponsor.
Poolcasting: an intelligent technique to customise musical programmes for their audience

Poolcasting es una tecnica inteligente para crear secuencias musicales personalizadas para un grupo de oyentes, Poolcasting actua como un disc jockey, determinando y reproduciendo canciones que satisfacen su audiencia. Satisfacer a todo el publico no es un trabajo sencillo, especialmente cuando los miembros del grupo tienen preferencias heterogeneas y pueden entrar o salir del grupo en cualquier momento. La propuesta de poolcasting consiste en seleccionar las canciones iterativamente, en tiempo real, favorecendo esos miembros que son menos satisfechos por las ultimas canciones reproducidas. Ademas, poolcasting asegura que la secuencia reproducida no repite las mismas canciones o los mismos artistas a corto plazo y que dos canciones consecutivas suenen bien una despues de la otra, en sentido musical. Los buenos disc jockeys conocen por experiencia cuales canciones suenan bien en secuencia; poolcasting obtiene este conocimiento de la analisis de playlists compartidas en la Web. Cuanto mas dos canciones ocorren cerca en estas playlists, cuanto mas poolcasting considera dos canciones como asociadas, de acuerdo con las experiencias humanas expresadas a traves de las playlists. Combinando este conocimiento y los perfiles musicals de los oyentes, poolcasting autonomamente genera secuencias que son variadas, musicalmente fluidas y correctamente adaptadas para una audiencia particular. Una aplicacion natural para poolcasting es automatizar programas de radio. Muchas radios online emiten en cada canal una secuencia casual de canciones que no se ve afectadas por quien esta escuchando. Aplicar poolcasting puede mejorar los programas de radio, reproduciendo en cada canal una secuencia musical variada, fluida y personalizada para un grupo. La integracion de poolcasting en una radio Web ha resultado en un nuevo sistema llamado Poolcasting Web radio. Decenas de personas se han conectado a esta radio online durante un ano ofreciendo evaluacion de primera mano de sus caracteristicas sociales. Un conjunto de experimentos ha sido ejecutado para evaluar como el tamano del grupo y su homogeneidad musical afectan la performance de la tecnica de poolcasting.
Infrared spectroscopy of Wild 2 particle hypervelocity tracks in Stardust aerogel: Evidence for the presence of volatile organics in cometary dust

Abstract— Infrared spectroscopy maps of some tracks made by cometary dust from 81P/Wild 2 impacting Stardust aerogel reveal an interesting distribution of organic material. Out of six examined tracks, three show presence of volatile organic components possibly injected into the aerogel during particle impacts. When particle tracks contained volatile organic material, they were found to be ‐CH2‐rich, while the aerogel is dominated by the ‐CH3‐rich contaminant. It is clear that the population of cometary particles impacting the Stardust aerogel collectors also includes grains that contained little or none of this organic component. This observation is consistent with the highly heterogeneous nature of collected grains, as seen by a multitude of other analytical techniques.
Disadvantaged and Embedded: Arab Women Entrepreneurs in Israel

The aim of this article is to contribute to the endeavor of operationalizing and assessing the research of small firm's embeddedness. We hope to contribute to the existing literature by investigating form and degree of embeddedness of women entrepreneurs belonging to a marginal minority group in the periphery. A comprehensive questionnaire was administered in 2006 to a sample of 372 Arab-Muslim women entrepreneurs in the Northern and Southern "Triangle" of Israel, using a snowball convenient method. The data reveal that the vast majority of Arab women entrepreneurs are "over-embedded" within their minority ethnic milieu in the periphery. Highly embedded businesses are owned by women with an average of nearly 3 young children, with many of their businesses located at home and not registered. The women also reported on many difficulties and complain about lack of counseling opportunities.
Ecological investigation of zooplankton abundance in the river Haraz, northeast Iran: Impact of environmental variables

The influence of physicochemical properties of Haraz river on its zooplankton composition and abundance were investigated at three sites for one year between August 2009 and July 2010. The present study records for the first time the aspects of zooplankton diversity and composition in relation to the physicochemical environment of the Haraz river. Only three groups of zooplankton were found: Rotifera with eighteen genera; Cladocera with nine and Copepoda with six genera. Rotifera was the predominant group (64.89%), followed by Cladocera (19.62%) and Copepoda (15.32%). Upstream, the abundance was 805 individuals/m3, while it varied from 922 to 1126 ind/m3 downstream. Alkaline pH and nutrients were the main environmental factors which affected zooplankton abundance in the river. Site variation in dominance, diversity, evenness and richness were calculated. The study revealed that the presence of certain species, such as Lepadella sp. , Mesocyclops sp. , Polyarthra sp. and Brachionus sp. is considered to be a biological indicator for eutrophication. The calculated Jack1 values of sites 1 to 3 were 7.624, 16.426 and 19.221, respectively. The Shannon-Wiever species diversity index (H’) values were also different for all the three sites viz., site 1 (1.992), site 2 (1.21) and site 3 (2.48). Simpson’s dominance index (H) value was highest at site 1 (0.692), indicating maximum dominance, whereas at site 3 dominance was the lowest (0.227) and diversity was the highest. Overall, our results showed that changes in the water quality of the river Haraz have considerable effects on the composition of zooplankton assemblages that can potentially affect the functioning of these ecosystems.
Transformational Leadership and Empathy: The Impact of Quality in the Health Care Services in Kelantan, Malaysia

The study examined the relationship between transformational leadership, empathy and its impact on quality of health care services provided to the patients. The study used two types of questionnaires: a leadership inventory index (LPI) to measure the employees and the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) to measure the quality of services provided to the patients at Universiti Sains Malaysia Hospital, Malaysia. The results found that there is a significant relationship between transformational leaders and empathy, but there is no significant relationship between leadership effectiveness and service quality. The study found that the patients were satisfied with the quality of the services that they received at Universiti Sains Malaysia’s hospital.
Genotypes of Iranian Zel sheep for Calpastatin (CAST) locus were determined by polymerase chain reac- tion-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) and polymerase chain reaction-single strand conformation polymorphism (PCR-SSCP) methods and for Calpain (CAPN) locus by PCR-SSCP. Blood samp

Today, several DNA polymorphisms have been considered as potential tools for selecting dairy and meat producing ruminants. DNA-based molecular methods have made possible genotyping of animals of any age and sex for meat genes, thus providing a potentially more efficient selection tool. Selection efficiency, however, depends on allelic frequencies in the breeds and on the effect of these polymorphisms on meat traits and technological properties of meat. In case of sheep, research on genetic polymorphism of two candidate genes, calpastatin (CAST) and calpain (CAPN), have been performed (Palmer et al. 1999). The CAPN CAST system (CCS) comprises a family of calcium dependent neutral proteases. Calpastatin is a protein inhibitor that acts specifically on CAPN s and plays a regulatory role in postmortem beef tenderization and muscle proteolysis. Polymorphisms in the Genotypes of Iranian Zel sheep for Calpastatin (CAST) locus were determined by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) and polymerase chain reaction-single strand conformation polymorphism (PCR-SSCP) methods and for Calpain (CAPN) locus by PCR-SSCP. Blood samples were collected from 200 purebred Zel sheep of Zel Breeding Station located in Golestan province in northeast of Iran. Extraction of genomic DNA was based on modified salting out method. The digestion of PCR products of CAST gene by MspI and NcoI restriction enzymes revealed two alleles M and N, with frequencies 85.5 and 14.5%, respectively. Frequencies were 75, 21 and 4% for MM, MN and NN genotypes, respectively. Alternatively, using PCR-SSCP method, four genotypes including AA, AB, BB and AC with frequencies of 71, 21, 4 and 4%, respectively, were observed in this population. Analyzing CAPN gene by the PCR-SSCP method, revealed two different conformational patterns (AA and AB) with frequencies of 69 and 31% for AA and AB, respectively. Average heterozygosity for both loci was low (0.28 and 0.25% for CAST using PCR-SSCP and PCR-RFLP, and 0.26% for CAPN). Yearling weights (YW) were analyzed by a statistical model comprising PCR-SSCP and as a result CAPN genotypes had significant effect (P<0.01) on YW. A Chi-square test confirmed Hardy-Weinberg (H-W) equilibrium for the CAST locus using PCRSSCP method but not for PRC-RFLP method and CAPN locus. Totally, the investigated herd had little genetic diversity and different factors disturb H-W equilibrium and PCR-RFLP and PCR-SSCP might be used successfully in these studies.
Genetic and phenotypic correlations between production traits and adult body condition scores in New Zealand merino ewes

Genetic and phenotypic correlations between adult body condition scores (BCS) throughout the production cycle and eye muscle depth, fat depth, two-year-old greasy fleece weight, fibre diameter, staple length and staple strength were estimated from 2,007 pedigree-recorded merino ewes born between 2013 and 2015. The heritability estimates of BCS at pre-mating, mid-pregnancy, pre-lambing and weaning were 0.66, 0.39, 0.46 and 0.32 respectively. The heritability estimates for yearling greasy fleece weight, fibre diameter and staple length were 0.65, 0.86 and 0.73 respectively, and all these traits were positively genetically correlated with BCS. The genetic correlations among the four BCS measurements ranged from 0.39-0.83, while the phenotypic correlations ranged from 0.22-0.45. Genetic correlations between BCS and fat depth ranged from 0.67 to 0.83. Given the high heritability of BCS and high genetic correlations between BCS measurements, there is clear scope for selection to alter BCS. Mating appears to be the best time to record BCS for genetic selection, as it had the greatest heritability estimate and the greatest genetic correlations with ultrasound measurements of fat depth and eye-muscle depth and all wool traits except fibre diameter coefficient of variation and greasy fleece weight.
Study of Temperature Coefficients for Parameters of Photovoltaic Cells

The temperature is one of the most important factors which affect the performance of the photovoltaic cells and panels along with the irradiance. The current voltage characteristics, I-V, are measured at different temperatures from 25°C to 87°C and at different illumination levels from 400 to 1000 W/m2, because there are locations where the upper limit of the photovoltaic cells working temperature exceeds 80°C. This study reports the influence of the temperature and the irradiance on the important parameters of four commercial photovoltaic cell types: monocrystalline silicon—mSi, polycrystalline silicon—pSi, amorphous silicon—aSi, and multijunction InGaP/InGaAs/Ge (Emcore). The absolute and normalized temperature coefficients are determined and compared with their values from the related literature. The variation of the absolute temperature coefficient function of the irradiance and its significance to accurately determine the important parameters of the photovoltaic cells are also presented. The analysis is made on different types of photovoltaics cells in order to understand the effects of technology on temperature coefficients. The comparison between the open-circuit voltage and short-circuit current was also performed, calculated using the temperature coefficients, determined, and measured, in various conditions. The measurements are realized using the SolarLab system, and the photovoltaic cell parameters are determined and compared using the LabVIEW software created for SolarLab system.
Linear Relationship between CO2 Emissions and Economic Variables: Evidence from a Developed Country and a Developing Country

Multiple linear regressions (MLR) analyses have been used to explain various linear relationships between CO 2 emissions and economic variables. Previous research have suggested that predictors of CO 2 emissions can be vary depending on economic development of a country and also region where a country is located. This paper investigates the linear relationships between CO 2 emissions and its related economic variables using MLR analyses for the UK and Malaysia. Differently from the typical MLR analyses which directly identify the most prevalent predictors, these analysis includes F- test to check linearity property of the relationships, regression equations and also error analysis to validate the robustness of the multiple linear regressions as predictive tool. It is shown that the linear relationships of the UK data outperformed the linear relationship of Malaysian data where agriculture and transport are the most effective predictors for the UK and Malaysia data respectively. The most effective predictor from the linear relationship would provide valuable information for policy holders and environmental management authority on potential causes of CO 2 emissions.
Youth, sports and alcohol consumption. Studying and comparing alcohol rituals in the Littoral Opal Coast

The aim of our paper is to introduce some results concerning a comprehensive and multidisciplinary analysis of the relationship between alcohol consumption, physical activity and health within a population of students of the Littoral Coast (France). This work is part of a wider research called “Universante”, started in 2008. This research includes an observatory to monitor students’ health and aims to promote healthy behaviors in the territory. Our analysis has been carried out on a sample of approximately 3.000 students, both at regional (Nord-Pas de Calais: Universite du Littoral Cote d’Opale and Artois University, University of Lille 2), inter-regional (University of Rouen) and international level (University of Chicoutimi, Canada and University of Balamand, Lebanon). This study is defining a “global health” profile, through the analysis of some usual determinants (biomedical, social, psychological, etc.). In this frame, we identifyed different styles of alcohol consumption in terms of frequency and quantities. Then, we crossed these data with those about the subjects’ physical activities and found whether there was a relation. At the time, our main hypothesis is that physical activity plays a protective role against alcohol consumption. Our secondary hypothesis is that it is possible to identify social indicators that may work as modulators of this phenomenon. In our paper we will focus on the “risky” aspects of alcohol consumption. Namely, we are identifying some “risky groups” that can be associated with specific alcohol consumption styles, and we are analysing the ritual aspect of their behaviour from a sociological perspective. © 2013 European Journal of Research on Education by IASSR.
Transmission and focusing of light in one-dimensional periodically nanostructured metals

In this paper we show how the optical properties of a metallic film can be tailored by one-dimensional periodically nanostructuring it which, in turn modifies the surface plasmon properties. The interaction of light with the surface plasmons can be used for two apparently opposite effects: trapping incident radiation into small volumes (in reflection gratings) and transmitting light very efficiently (in transmission gratings). A physical picture of the mechanisms involved, as well as dependences of the transmission and reflection spectra on wavelength, absorption and geometrical parameters of the grating, are provided.