Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tax-Induced Trading and the Turn-of-the-Year Anomaly: An Intraday Study

This study tests the tax-induced trading hypothesis as an explanation of the turn-of-the-year anomaly using Canadian and U.S. intraday data. Since the Canadian tax year-end precedes the calendar year-end by five business days, tax effects may be isolated. The authors find the anomaly is related to the degree of seller- and buyer-initiated trading and depends upon the incidence of the taxation year-end. Seller-initiated transactions (at bid prices) dominate until the tax year-end after which buyer-initiated trades (at ask prices) dominate. The anomaly is a function of bid-ask prices. Copyright 1993 by American Finance Association.
Closed Reduction and Percutaneous Pinning for Type III Displaced Supracondylar Fractures of the Humerus in Children

Summary: From 1985 to 1991, 623 cases of supracondylar fracture of the humerus in children were admitted to one center, of which 403 were analyzed in detail. Of these, 180 cases were classified as Gartland type III extension fractures, and 111 were treated via primary closed reduction and percutaneous smooth Kirschner wire pinning, of which 82 were followed up for an average of 3.5 years and were studied in detail clinically and radiologically. There were two cases of superficial pin tract infection and one of ulnar nerve palsy associated with the pinning. Nineteen fractures (10.5%) had an initial nerve palsy related to the injury. All recovered completely from 4 weeks to 40 weeks postinjury. Only one of nine cases (5%) with absent radial pulse required exploration. Eighty percent of all cases had excellent or good function according to the Flynn criteria of elbow assessment. The most important factor correlating with the final varus deformity was found to be the difference in Baumann's angle between the injured and the normal side after closed reduction and pin fixation. The results of cross pinning in eight cases were not found to be different from those of the lateral pinning group (74 cases). Ipsilateral fracture of the same limb occurred in 4.4% of the cases, the majority being a fracture of the distal radius. The average anesthetic time for the procedure was 54 min, and the average hospital stay was 2.9 days. Our study shows that cross or lateral percutaneous pinning was found to be effective in the treatment of Gartland type III extension fractures with a high success rate and minimal complications
A multiple-item inventory model for a non-stationary demand

Inventory decisions in supply chain are crucial for its success. These decisions become more important for the high-margin products with spiky random fluctuations in demand. As on one side the shortage costs are significant, on the other side, to maintain appropriate service levels and avoid shortages necessitates excessive inventory, which in turn affects the liquidity by blocking working capital. The problem gets compounded when the executives are required to deal with variety, randomness with respect to a particular product/SKU and to maintain rhythm in production set-up in line with fluctuations in supply chain. The other factors like constrained production capacity and obsolescence amplify the problems further. This article proposes a model that can be used for the cyclic replenishment-based dispatch system following rhythm in the non-dedicated production lines and using forecasts for the planning. The model presents a new scheme to arrive at the inventory replenishment levels and tries to improve the pull in the system. For validation, the model is simulated and the results are compared. This article offers an approach for optimisation considering organisational constraints of maintaining low inventory, rhythm, statistics and empirical understanding, and thus has business significance.
Effects of Ankaferd on Anastomotic Healing of Colon

ABSTRACT Background: Ankaferd (Ankaferd blood stopper®, ABS) is a recently developed topical hemostatic agent. ABS is a standardized mixture of the plants Thymus vulgaris, Glycyrrhiza glabra, Vitis vinifera, Alpinia officinarum, and Urtica dioica. Through its effects on the endothelium, blood cells, angiogenesis, cellular proliferation, vascular dynamics, and cell mediators; Ankaferd plays a part in inflammation and hemostasis processes. The aim of this experimental study is to assess the effects of ABS on the left colonic anastomoses under normal, septic, and ischemic conditions. Methods: Forty-eight Wistar Albino male rats were divided into six weight-matched equal groups: A, anastomosis in normal condition (n = 8); AA, anastomosis with ABS in normal condition (n = 8); AS, anastomosis in septic condition (n = 8); AAS, anastomosis with ABS in septic condition (n = 8); AI, anastomosis in ischemic condition (n = 8); and AAI, anastomosis with ABS in ischemic condition (n = 8). Blood and tissue samples were taken for the histopathological and biochemical studies after the anastomotic bursting pressures were measured. Results: Higher hydroxyproline levels (p = .048) and angiogenesis (p = .038) were observed in the sepsis-induced rats compared to the control group. The inflammatory activity, fibrosis, and granulation were comparable in all experimental groups. Ankaferd improved the angiogenesis under septic conditions (AAS) when compared to the control group (AI; p = .038). Conclusions: ABS may support anastomotic healing in septic conditions. Topical ABS application controlling the mucosal bleeding at the cut ends of the colon may also improve the anastomotic wound healing by means of increasing mechanical strength and positively affecting angiogenesis. Further studies shall focus on the clinical importance of those findings.
Bile acid transport and regulating functions in the human biliary epithelium

Whether bile acids regulate biliary epithelial cell (BEC) secretory functions in human is poorly known. The purpose of the study was to determine if human gallbladder‐derived BEC exhibit bile acid transport activity that affect their secretory functions and to evaluate the influence of bile acid hydrophobicity in this response by comparing the effects of tauroursodeoxycholate (TUDC) and of taurochenodeoxycholate (TCDC). Expression of the apical sodium‐dependent bile acid transporter (ASBT) and of the organic anion transporting polypeptide (OATP‐A) was detected and associated with sodium‐dependent and sodium‐independent [3H]taurocholate uptake in BEC. Sodium‐dependent uptake (Km, 66 ± 2.5 μmol/L; Vmax, 39.4 ± 4.6 pmol/mg protein/min) was significantly higher than sodium‐independent uptake. TCDC stimulated Cl− efflux and mucin secretion in cultured cells, and both effects were sodium‐dependent. Both TCDC and TUDC were efficiently transported in BEC, as assessed by competitive uptake experiments. However, as compared with TCDC, TUDC induced significantly lower mucin secretion whereas there was no significant difference between TCDC‐ and TUDC‐induced chloride efflux. Protein kinase C down‐regulation caused a 70% reduction in TUDC‐induced mucin secretion, but did not affect TCDC‐induced secretion, which was mediated predominantly by Ca2+/calmodulin‐dependent protein kinase II activation. These results provide evidence that bile acids may be transported mainly via ASBT in human gallbladder BEC and stimulate hydroelectrolytic and mucin secretion in these cells. Individual bile acids activate different signaling pathways leading to a different balance between mucin and chloride secretion. The differential effect of TUDC may cause a reduction in bile inspissation and provide a benefit in biliary disorders.
Efficiency of Different Dose of Zinc on Growth, Productivity and Economic Returns of Mustard in AEZ 11 of Bangladesh

An experiment was carried out in the farmer’s field at the MLT site Tularampur, Narail (AEZ-11) during the rabi season of 2011-12 to evaluate the performance of newly released mustard varieties to Zn fertilization. Three levels of zinc 2, 3 and 4 kg/ha from zinc sulphate was used in BARI Sharisha-14. The experiment was carried out in a tree with 6 dispersed replications. Response of mustard to zinc fertilizer was significantly evident for yield. The highest yield (1.42 t/ha) was obtained from T 1 (3 kg Zn/ha) which was statistically higher than T 2 (4 kg Zn/ha) yielding 1.37 t/ha. Both the treatments gave higher yields over the control. From the economic analysis, the highest gross margin was observed (Tk. 47695/ha and Tk. 44595/ha) and highest benefit cost ratio (BCR) (1.57 and 1.45) obtained from T 2 treatment followed by T 3 treatment, respectively. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.3329/jesnr.v6i1. 22037 J. Environ. Sci. & Natural Resources, 6(1): 37-40 2013
Rethinking the Theory of Discounting and Revealed Time Preference

Benartzi and Thaler (1995) suggest that direct preferences regarding investment gains and losses strongly affect people’s behavior in financial markets. The present paper shows that this hypothesis has striking implications for the choice of discount rates in cost-benefit analysis. The paper explores a model in which the future benefits provided by a generic public good – environmental quality – should be discounted at a rate that is close to the market rate of return for risk-free financial assets. This holds true even when the public good is in the same risk class as risky forms of wealth such as corporate stocks.
EXPORT DIVERSIFICATION AND INTRA‐INDUSTRY TRADE IN SOUTH AFRICA

This paper uses cumulative export experience functions to explore the structural dynamics of South Africa's exports for the period 1990-2003. It finds a large spread of emerging non-traditional accelerating export products across industry clusters of different factor intensities, steadily increasing their proportion in total exports and her main markets. Shift-share and correlation analyses show that increased intra-industry specialisation and trade within import competing product groups explain the structural change in the direction of export diversity. With respect to quality, as measured by relative unit prices of exports and imports in intra-industry trade with the EU and the US, a relative improvement of export quality is found. Copyright 2005 Economic Society of South Africa.
Corporate Environmental and Financial Performances and the Effects of Information-based Instruments of Environmental Policy in Japan *

Focusing on 278 listed corporations in Japan, the present study tests the hypothesis that robust environmental conservation activities have a positive effect on their financial performance. It also examines the role played by the environmental policies introduced and strengthened by the government since the end of the 1990s. By a statistical causality analysis using data from 1999 to 2003, we have shown that a positive effect of corporate environmental activities on financial performance was verified more clearly when data accounting the firms' responses to environmental policies were included with information about their management activities. Furthermore, an analysis of industrial groups revealed some differences. From the recent experience of environmental policies in Japan, we suggest that information-based environmental policy measures are effective to encourage the ongoing transition towards a more sustainable market economy.
Residential Construction: Using the Urban Growth Model to Estimate Housing Supply

This article presents an empirical model of housing supply derived from urban growth theory. This approach describes new housing construction as a function of changes in house prices and costs rather than as a function of the levels of those variables, which previous studies have used. Empirical tests support this specification over the leading alternative models. Our estimates show that a 10% rise in real prices leads to an 0.8% increase in the housing stock, which is accomplished by a temporary 60% increase in the annual number of starts, spread over four quarters.
Fiscal Sustainability and Economic Growth in Bolivia

n this paper we analyze the role played by fiscal sustainability shocks on the Bolivian economic growth performance. To do this, we impose restrictions on a VAR for the Bolivian economy that allow us to identify fiscal sustainability shocks. We argue that imposing long run identification restrictions in our tructural VAR is a new (applied to fiscal issues) and useful way to identify the macroeconomic impact of shocks on fiscal sustainability. Our results show a significant lost in the level of GDP in the Bolivian economy as a consequence of the sequence of adverse fiscal sustainability shocks this economy has experienced. Although, fiscal sustainability shocks have not permanent effect on BoliviaA¢â‚¬â„¢s economic growth, the fact that adverse fiscal sustainability shocks has occurred during the period studied (in a significant way at least during the late 70s early 80s and at the late 90s early 2000s) have negatively affected Bolivian economic growth. Our results also show that inflation has been affected by fiscal sustainability shocks, especially the adverse shocks experienced during the period from 1977 to 1986, which ended in the hyperinflation in 1985.
A Cascaded Part-Based System for Fine-Grained Vehicle Classification

Vehicle make and model recognition (VMMR) has become an important part of intelligent transportation systems. VMMR can be useful when license plate recognition is not feasible or fake number plates are used. VMMR is a hard, fine-grained classification problem, due to the large number of classes, substantial inner-class, and small inter-class distance. A novel cascaded part-based system has been proposed in this paper for VMMR. This system uses latent support vector machine formulation for automatically finding the discriminative parts of each vehicle category. At the same time, it learns a part-based model for each category. Our approach employs a new training procedure, a novel greedy parts localization, and a practical multi-class data mining algorithm. In order to speed up the system processing time, a novel cascading scheme has been proposed. This cascading scheme applies classifiers to the input image in a sequential manner, based on the two proposed criteria: confidence and frequency. The cascaded system can run up to 80% faster with analogous accuracy in comparison with the non-cascaded system. The extensive experiments on our data set and the CompCars data set indicate the outstanding performance of our approach. The proposed approach achieves an average accuracy of 97.01% on our challenging data set and an average accuracy of 95.55% on CompCars data set.
EXAMINING THE ANTECEDENTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT IN THE CONTEXT OF UN AND EU POLICE CONTINGENTS IN CONFLICT AND TERROR AREAS

Examining the Antecedents of Organizational Commitment in the context of UN and EU Police Contingents in Conflict and Terror Areas By Onur Murat KOPRULU Dissertation Director: Dr. Norman Samuels: Professor and Provost Emeritus This dissertation explores organizational commitment attitudes and factors affecting them among peacekeepers deployed for intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) in peacekeeping settings. Existing literature indicates that the construct of organizational commitment is considered highly significant in relation to organizational effectiveness; by extension, an employee’s organizational commitment and attitude have an important impact on work outcomes such as effort, coming to work on time, absenteeism, job performance, employee health and well being, organizational citizenship behavior, and retention. To this purpose, this analysis is one of the scarce studies enhancing our understanding of organizational commitment in the context of important institutions of global governance such as the UN or EU. This study helps enhance our understanding of the structures and operation of those organizations. This study utilized a mixed methods approach, applying both quantitative and qualitative analyses based on a theoretical model developed by examining equity theory and the extant literature. This study hypothesized that the components of equity theory would be significant in shaping organizational commitment attitudes of the employees of
Patterns of Multi-Agent Land Conservation: Crowding In/Out, Agglomeration, and Policy

Private agents make large contributions to networks of conserved land, but little is known about how private agents' decisions might be altered by government actions. This paper explores the impact of public conservation and public policy on the quantity and configuration of private land conservation and the extent to which the social optimum is reached. Because land conservation benefits often have thresholds and spatial characteristics, we consider the impact of different land conservation benefit functions on the patterns of conservation created by the interaction of private and public agents. We find that public conservation crowds private conservation in or out depending on whether marginal conservation benefits increase or decrease with total acreage, and crowding out is mitigated by the presence of budget constraints. We show how land conservation agents might interact strategically in space depending on preferences over fragmentation, and we explore that spatial strategic interaction in a case with a regional land trust and a case with hot-spot parcels. We identify when government policies, such as agglomeration bonuses and mitigating coordination costs, are most likely to increase the social benefits provided by private land conservation agents.
The Cyclicality of Real Wages within Employer-Employee Matches

Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the author examines the cyclicality of wages within employer-employee matches for the years 1970–91. Recent research on wage cyclicality has suggested that wages are very procyclical (tending to rise and fall with economic upturns and downturns), even for workers who remain with the same employer. The author finds, however, that the evidence for wage procyclicality within the matches he examines is rather weak except for the small group of workers who were paid by piece rate or commissions. Despite having acyclical wage rates, men who were paid hourly had earnings movements that were very procyclical. Salaries exhibited little cyclicality, but salaried workers who had income sources from bonuses, commissions, or overtime had procyclical earnings. The results suggest that the increasing prevalence of incentive-based pay will increase the procyclicality of wages within matches.
Economic Interests, Party, and Ideology in Early Cold War Era U.S. Foreign Policy

Although it is widely acknowledged that economic interests influence the politics of trade policy, most research on international relations treats security issues differently. Do conflicting economic interests shape political debate over foreign policy even when security issues are highly salient? To answer this question, I test a range of hypotheses about conflicting interests in the economic stakes of U.S. foreign policy during the early Cold War era. I present evidence that economic interests in their home states were closely related to senators' voting patterns on foreign policy issues. These patterns hold across economic and security issues. I also find that political parties play an important mediating role, making senators more or less receptive to various economic interests.
The New Generation of Public Participation: Internet-based Participation Tools

Abstract Since the advocacy planners of the 1960s first brought widespread public participation to the planning process, there have been innovations and improvements. However, the participation practices in the real world, with its face-to-face politics of difference and unequal power relations, are flawed. Today, technology allows for an entirely new generation of forms and practices of public participation that promise to elevate the public discourse in an unprecedented manner while providing an interactive, networked environment for decision-making. This is occurring with asynchronous communities interacting with one another on a variety of planning subjects, which allows for more democratic planning and more meaningful participation. In this paper, we review the ways in which today's web-based virtual worlds, like Facebook and Second Life, provide platforms for public participation in planning in a manner distinct from previous formats. We explore the different ways that citizens and communities are using web-based technologies for citizen participation, including the use of Facebook for community organizing around planning issues and of Second Life for virtual workshops. We include case studies of communities that are using these tools. The paper concludes by exploring the contribution that virtual participation can make to planning and examines the challenges that it poses.
Comparison of invasive and less‐invasive techniques of cardiac output measurement under different haemodynamic conditions in a pig model

Background and objective: Despite the introduction of various less‐invasive concepts of cardiac output measurement, pulmonary arterial thermodilution is still the most common measurement technique. Methods: This prospective controlled study was designed to compare different methods of cardiac output measurement simultaneously. Pulmonary arterial thermodilution, transpulmonary thermodilution (PiCCO™), trans‐oesophageal echo‐Doppler probe (HemoSonic™) and partial carbon dioxide rebreathing technique (NICO™ monitor) were evaluated against a peri‐aortic transit‐time flow‐probe as reference method in a clinically relevant animal model. After approval from the Local Ethics Committee on Animal Research, the investigations were conducted in nine anesthetized domestic pigs. Systemic haemodynamics were modulated systematically by the application of catecholamines, caval occlusion and exsanguination. Statistical analysis was performed with Bland‐Altman and linear regression. Results: A total of 366 paired cardiac output measurements were carried out at a reference cardiac output between 0.5 and 7 L min−1. The correlation coefficients for pulmonary arterial and transpulmonary thermodilution against reference were 0.93 and 0.95, for trans‐oesophageal Doppler and partial rebreathing technique 0.84 and 0.77. Pulmonary arterial thermodilution and transpulmonary thermodilution showed comparable bias and limits of agreement. Where HemoSonic™ showed an overestimation of cardiac output at a higher precision, NICO™ overestimated low and underestimated higher cardiac output values. Conclusions: Our data suggest that pulmonary arterial thermodilution and PiCCO™ may be interchangeably used for cardiac output measurement even under acute haemodynamic changes. The method described by Bland and Altman demonstrated an overestimation of cardiac output for both thermodilution methods. HemoSonic™ and NICO™ offer non‐invasive alternatives and complementary monitoring tools in numerous clinical situations. Trend monitoring and haemodynamic optimizing can be applied sufficiently, when absolute measures are judged critically in a clinical context. The use of the NICO™ system seems to be limited during acute circulatory changes.
Bayesian Estimation of Short-Rate Models

Estimating continuous-time short-rate models is challenging since the likelihood function for most popular models is unknown. While approximate likelihood functions are often used, this practice induces bias into the estimation process. This paper explores a Bayesian method of estimating short-rate models. While the approach also employs an approximate likelihood data augmentation is utilised to mitigate discretisation bias. The results suggest that Bayesian estimates of posterior densities for model parameters closely resemble true posterior densities. While nonessential for point estimation, a small degree of data augmentation is useful in recovering accurate posterior densities and reducing the bias in estimates of bond price. These findings are encouraging for the many cases where exact likelihood-based estimation is impossible and approximations must be relied upon.