Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of trading activity on financial leverage and financial distress likelihood of listed firms in Kenya

Over the years, numerous cases of financial distress have been witnessed among listed firms in Nairobi Securities Exchange. Trading activity affects corporate financial decisions by reducing cost of capital and facilitating access to more funds on the capital markets. Consequently, trading activity enhances firm performance due to the feedback effect. In view of the aforementioned, the primary aim of this study is to determine the role of trading activity on the relationship between financial leverage and the likelihood of financial distress among listed firms in Kenya. The analysis is based on a sample of 40 listed firms on the Nairobi Securities Exchange-Kenya for the period 20062015. The study found a positive and significant effect of financial leverage (β=0.824; p<0.05) on the likelihood of financial distress. Subsequently, when trading activity was introduced, the findings indicated that trading activity moderated the relationship between financial leverage and financial distress (β=-1.498; p;< 0.05), hence presence of moderating effects of trading activity on the relationship between financial leverage and financial distress. The findings that trading activity accounted for a significant variance on relationship between financial leverage and the likelihood of financial distress presents major contributions of this study as they extend feedback theories. This is by centering the influence of trading activity on the empirical testing of feedback theory. This study recommends that firms should have reversion of excess debt to an optimum and initiate trading activity enhancing policies so as to reduce the likelihood of financial distress. Further research should focus on using different samples like private non-listed firms which may provide additional insights and add to the existing understanding of the issues explored in this study.
Pediatric liver transplantation with daclizumab induction1

Background. A new class of monoclonal antibodies (non-T–cell depleting) has gained favor for induction therapy after transplantation. This study evaluated the non-T–cell depleting antibody to the CD25 cell, daclizumab, as a single-dose induction agent immediately after pediatric liver transplantation to spare the use of the calcineurin inhibitor, tacrolimus, for 7 days in respect to both efficacy and renal function. Methods. From January 1998 to November 2001, 81 pediatric orthotopic liver transplant recipients receiving 89 liver grafts were evaluated. The treatment arm (n=61) received daclizumab 1 mg/kg immediately after liver transplantation along with mycophenolate, steroids, and, on postoperative day 7, tacrolimus. The control group did not receive induction therapy, whereas tacrolimus, mycophenolate, and steroids were started immediately after surgery. Results. The induction group had fewer patients with rejection within the first 30 days after liver transplantation (9 [14.8%] vs. 10 [50%]; P =0.003). The mean time to first rejection was similar between groups (12.1 [±7.8] days vs. 18.5 [±8.1] days; P =not significant). There was a 3.39 increase in relative risk to develop rejection within the first 30 days after orthotopic liver transplantation if the patient did not receive induction therapy (relative risk=3.39; 95% confidence interval [1.61, 7.14]). Two-year actuarial survival for the induction group was 93.2% compared with 85% in the control; graft survival was also similar between groups (87.8% vs. 72.7%) at 2 years. Conclusion. Daclizumab 1 mg/kg given immediately after pediatric liver transplantation and withholding tacrolimus, is safe, efficacious, and reduces rejections within the first 30 days after surgery.
Development of an Online Doctor of Education Program in Applied Exercise Science

Peterson, D. D. (2014). Ed. D. United States Sports Academy; presented July, 2014, Tide: DEVELOPMENT OF AN ONLINE DOCTOR OF EDUCATION PROGRAM IN APPLIED EXERCISE SCIENCE. Chair: Dr. Stephen Butler Since its formal introduction in the 1990s, online (aka distance) learning has grown significantly in both popularity and scope. The proposed benefits o f online learning are well documented in the literature and the quality o f education provided is arguably the same, and in some cases potentially better, as that o f traditional classroom instruction. Even so, some fields of study do not offer online degree programs at all or only at the bachelor’s and master’s level. The purpose o f this study was to develop the first online doctoral program (Doctor o f Education (EdD)) in Applied Exercise Science for accreditation and implementation at the United States Sports Academy (USSA). The paper starts with a comprehensive comparison between traditional classroom and fully online instruction. This is followed by a brief review o f the EdD in Sports Management program currently employed at USSA. Next, the paper provides an extensive review o f some of the different resident and online master’s and doctoral programs (Doctor o f Philosophy (PhD)) in Exercise Science/Physiology currently offered at four traditional ‘brick and mortar’ universities and three online universities. Finally, the paper introduces a proposed EdD program in Applied Exercise Science that was developed after an extensive review o f file literature and traditional Exercise Science/Physiology doctoral programs already in existence. The primary purpose behind this study was to develop a sound program of study that could be completed completely online and at the convenience o f the students, but at the same time, adequately prepare them for the rigors o f academia and research in the field o f Exercise Science.
Prevalence of hypertension and co-morbidities among elderly women in rural area: a cross sectional study

Background: NCDs have been the leading causes of death among women globally for the past three decades and are now responsible for two in every three deaths among women each year. India endorsed the Sustainable Development Goal for health to set a target to decrease premature deaths from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) by one-third by 2030. Aims of the study were to estimate the prevalence of hypertension among the elderly women from rural area and to know the associated co-morbidities among the elderly women from rural area.Methods: A community based cross sectional study was conducted among elderly women >60 yrs. Data was collected by using pre tested structured questionnaire, which contained basic information like name, age, education & socioeconomic status, occupation, marital status, known case of hypertension, family history, any other co- morbidities.Results: 65.2% of the participants had normal blood pressure, 34.7% were hypertensive. 38% of study subjects living in joint family were hypertensive, majority (53.8% and 85.6%) of them who were obese and had a history of tobacco intake were hypertensive. The association between hypertension and these variables was found to be statistically significant.Conclusions: 15.4% of the study participants were newly detected hypertensives. This indicates a need for awareness to be created among the elderly women regarding hypertension risk factors, to sensitize them for regular medical check-ups to ensure prevention and early detection of hypertension.
Predicting Winners and Evaluating Simple betting Strategies for BCS College Football Games

We investigate two sets of questions concerning Bowl Championship Series (BCS) college football games. The first set of questions pertains to predictors for the outcomes of these games. We evaluate whether the differences in rankings between teams and the point spread are good predictors for outcomes of BCS games, which involve top ranked teams in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision. We use probit regressions with the differences in ranking, differences in the log rankings, and the point spread as the predictors of the outcomes of the games. The second set of questions pertains to betting market efficiency and testing if simple betting strategies are profitable. We investigate whether betting on the underdog is profitable when the spread is greater than 5 points and also if there are returns to betting the under. We use Z-values and likelihood ratio testing for these analyses. Keywords: Amateur sports, Rankings, Gambling, Betting, Market efficiency, Prediction markets. JEL Code: L83
The impact of the school choice policy on student sorting: evidence from Seoul, South Korea

ABSTRACT This article examines the impact of a high school choice policy in Seoul, South Korea on school segregation by student performance levels. Seoul replaced random assignment of high schools with school choice in 2010. By exploiting the policy change, this article examines the effect of the school choice policy on student sorting by ability. Using rich administrative data, this article compares school segregation prior to and following the implementation of the high school choice policy in Seoul. We find that schools became segregated by student performance levels after the implementation of the school choice policy. Because of the high degree of racial and ethnic homogeneity of South Korea, the results of this article suggest that school choice increases school academic segregation independently from school racial segregation.
The experiences of peer leaders in a driving cessation programme

Introduction Peer leaders are increasingly involved in health-related programmes due to the perceived benefits that they bring to the group process. This exploratory study examined the experiences of peer leaders in the University of Queensland Driver Retirement Initiative, an educational support group for older people undergoing driving cessation. Method Semi-structured interviews were conducted with five peer leaders (two men, three women, age range: 67–81 years) regarding their role and involvement as a peer leader in the University of Queensland Driver Retirement Initiative programme as well as their positive and negative experiences. Results Inductive thematic analysis revealed three themes: diversity of peer leaders, drawing on personal strengths and experiences, and taking the middle ground. Conclusion This study revealed that peer leaders drew from their diverse range of personal resources and experiences to perform the role of peer leader, using varying approaches to perform the role successfully. The provision of broad guidelines in training allowed individual approaches to be developed and this contributed to a positive experience for peer leaders in the University of Queensland Driver Retirement Initiative. These findings have implications for the development of future peer-led driving cessation programmes and the selection of their peer leaders.
Complications of Urinary Catheterization

These catheters are used to manage urinary incontinence and retention, reducing postoperative bladder dysfunction related to anesthesia, surgery, and immobility (Kramer et al., 2008). Indwelling urinary catheters are frequently used to measure accurate urinary output in critically ill patients. In addition IUCs are used with patients with spinal cord injuries as well as patients who receive large-volume infusions or diuretics during surgery and improvement comforts for end of life care (Wald et al., 2008). Currently there are three main types of urinary catheters which are commonly used in clinical settings: condom catheters, indwelling catheters and intermittent catheters.
Corporate tax avoidance: is tax transparency the solution?

Corporate tax avoidance has been a matter of considerable public attention, particularly since the 2008 global financial crisis. The nature of calls for tax reform and increased regulation, advocated most prominently by tax activists and NGOs, has revolved around transparency as a possible corrective to unacceptable tax avoidance, although there is no consensus as to what the term tax avoidance encompasses and when it becomes unacceptable. We examine two responses to calls for increased transparency about the tax affairs of multinational entities: firstly, country by country reporting that provides information to tax authorities, and secondly the UK requirement for publication of tax strategies, whereby large companies put information into the public domain. We find considerable misunderstanding about the benefits of transparency in this setting. By failing to consider the limits of transparency initiatives there is a risk of dysfunctional consequences, for example additional costs in providing and processing additional information, the prospect of increased disputes as new information generates new misinterpretations and uncertainty in determining the final tax position. There is a risk that greater disclosure will not effectively address concerns about unacceptable corporate tax avoidance.
Introduction to Psychoanalysis: Contemporary Theory and Practice

Anthony Bateman, Jeremy Holmes Routledge, pounds sterling12.99, pp 289 ISBN 0 415 10739 3 Introduction to Psychoanalysis attempts to fill a gap in the market for a source of reference about psychoanalysis, and it is particularly useful for those beginning a study of the subject. It examines the contributions made by various schools of thought and follows them in a historical context. The first part of the book deals with the theory of psychoanalysis and the second part …
Differentiated Distribution Recovery for Neural Text Generation

Neural language models based on recurrent neural networks (RNNLM) have significantly improved the performance for text generation, yet the quality of generated text represented by Turing Test pass rate is still far from satisfying. Some researchers propose to use adversarial training or reinforcement learning to promote the quality, however, such methods usually introduce great challenges in the training and parameter tuning processes. Through our analysis, we find the problem of RNNLM comes from the usage of maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) as the objective function, which requires the generated distribution to precisely recover the true distribution. Such requirement favors high generation diversity which restricted the generation quality. This is not suitable when the overall quality is low, since high generation diversity usually indicates lot of errors rather than diverse good samples. In this paper, we propose to achieve differentiated distribution recovery, DDR for short. The key idea is to make the optimal generation probability proportional to the β-th power of the true probability, where β > 1. In this way, the generation quality can be greatly improved by sacrificing diversity from noises and rare patterns. Experiments on synthetic data and two public text datasets show that our DDR method achieves more flexible quality-diversity trade-off and higher Turing Test pass rate, as compared with baseline methods including RNNLM, SeqGAN and LeakGAN.
Does Place of Origin Matter in the Online Marketplace? Empirical Evidence from Taobao.com

Due to uncertainties regarding quality in terms of both product and seller, information asymmetry is a significant problem for consumers in the online marketplace. Online sellers are keen to improve their sales by highlighting quality signals such as price, reputation, and e-WOM. In traditional offline markets, place of origin (POO) as an extrinsic cue is an effective indicator through which consumers can evaluate product quality and make consumption decisions. However, its effect on consumers’ purchase decisions in the online marketplace has not been closely examined. In this study, we analyze the impact of POO and its interactive effects with other existing quality signals based on a transaction panel dataset from one of the biggest online marketplaces in the word. Our results demonstrate that POO signal has a significant and positive effect on online retailers’ sales. Furthermore, when multiple quality signals coexist in the online marketplace, the positive effect of POO is attenuated by both word of mouth (WOM) valence and seller’s reputation. Our results highlight the importance of POO in the competitive online market and have implications both for academic research and for online retailing practice.
Learning And Teaching Research Based Methods

learning and teaching research based methods is available in our digital library an online access to it is set as public so you can get it instantly. Our books collection hosts in multiple locations, allowing you to get the most less latency time to download any of our books like this one. Merely said, the learning and teaching research based methods is universally compatible with any devices to read.
Bambu Sebagai Alternatif Penerapan Material Ekologis: Potensi dan Tantangannya

Bidang industri konstruksi disinyalir menjadi pelaku kedua dalam menyumbang pemanasan global. Pemakaian bahan material yang tidak dapat diperbaharui dalam jangka waktu tertentu akan habis dan efek yang ditimbulkan merusak lingkungan. Penerapan material ekologis yang merupakan pemenuhan aspek pada konsep green building menjadi topik yang terus dikaji oleh peneliti atau praktisi. Bambu memenuhi kriteria sebagai alternatif penerapan material ekologis. Berbagai potensi bambu baik unsur kekuatan, cepat tumbuh, rendah energi, dan bahan melindungi ekosistem bumi termasuk peningkatan ekonomi. Kendala bambu adalah mulai tergerus oleh perkembangan teknologi modern. Bambu sebagai penopang kehidupan sehari-hari mulai kehilangan identitasnya yang mengakibatkan pasokan material bambu atau keberlangsungan material bambu, perlahan di masyarakat mulai langka/sulit dicari. Oleh sebab itu, material bambu dapat digunakan sebagai material ekologis dengan terobosan dalam hal modernisasi pemanfaatan bambu dalam konteks industri. Dimensi bambu harus dapat mengakomodir kesulitan perancang dalam mendisain bambu. Membangun identitas budaya bambu modern dalam konteks industri. Sehingga, bambu sustainable dengan terjadinya harmoni bahan baku bambu dengan budaya terhadap arus kemajuan teknologi. Dalam rangka mengurangi efek global warming dan terwujudnya kelestarian alam demi generasi mendatang
Testing models of driver behaviour

Iedereen heeft een eigen mening over het hoe en waarom mensen zich in het verkeer gedragen en zelfs de Verkeerspsychologie, een vakgebied dat zich bij uitstek hiermee bezig houdt, kent modellen en theorieen die uiteenlopen of zelfs tegenstrijdig zijn. Meestal worden dergelijke modellen eenmalig gepubliceerd maar zelfs de wat meer gevestigde theorieen zijn vaak gebrekkig empirisch onderbouwd. Mijn proefschrift omvat een poging om dit gebrek te herstellen door de belangrijkste assumpties van een aantal vooraanstaande modellen te toetsen. In het bijzonder theorieen die uitgaan van constante monitoring van de rij-taak zoals de “Task Difficulty Homeostasis” theorie, de “Risk Allostasis” theorie en het “Risk Monitor” model zijn bestudeerd in vergelijking met drempel-reactie theorieen zoals de “Zero-Risk” theorie en het “multiple Comfort Zone” model. De resultaten van mijn onderzoek zet vraagtekens bij het idee dat bestuurders van motorvoertuigen constant risico’s waarnemen en bewust risico’s nemen. Eigenlijk blijkt dat zij in hun taakuitvoering “gewoontedieren” zijn, meestal rijden “op de automatische piloot”, soms onbewust de regels overtredend en misschien zelfs beinvloed door emoties zonder dat ze het in de gaten hebben. In het kort komt auto leren rijden neer op leren niet bang te zijn, en om een bekende uitspraak van Wagenaar (1992) te parafraseren: mensen lopen wel risico’s maar nemen of voelen ze niet. Dat verkeersdeelnemers uiteindelijk lang niet altijd, of zelfs zelden, risiconemers zijn zet vraagtekens bij de cultuur van de beschuldigende vinger en nodigt uit tot een meer methodische en complexe systeembenadering van de verkeersveiligheid.
Sevoflurane versus propofol in the induction and maintenance of anaesthesia in children with laryngeal mask airway

Objective : To compare effectiveness of inhalation sevoflurane and intravenous (IV) propofol anaesthesia with the laryngeal mask airway (LMA) in children undergoing surgeries below umbilicus. Method : Sixty premedicated children 3-12 years old with the American Society of Anaesthesiologists physical status of I to II were enrolled and received either induction with sevoflurane 7% by face mask and maintained with a 50% oxygen and 50% nitrous oxide mixture followed by 1.7% sevoflurane or induction with 3 mg/kg propofol IV followed by infusion of 170µg/kg/min with LMA. Demographic data, induction time, number of attempts, LMA insertion, removal and recovery times, haemodynamic parameters, complications, Aldrete score and child’s behaviour score were recorded. Results: Demographic data and induction time were similar for the 2 treatment groups. LMA insertion was successful at the first attempt in 93% with sevoflurane and 83% with propofol. LMA insertion, removal and recovery times were significantly longer in the propofol group (1.56±0.22, 5.89±1.23, 12.3±3.09 minutes respectively) than in the sevoflurane group (1.26±0.36, 2.76±0.51, 5.16±1.6 minutes respectively) (P Conclusions: Sevoflurane provided shorter LMA insertion, removal and recovery times than IV propofol in children undergoing minor surgeries below umbilicus with comparable perioperative complications. Agitation was significantly more with sevoflurane. Sri Lanka Journal of Child Health , 2014; 43 (2): 77-83 (Key words: Sevoflurane; laryngeal mask airway; propofol; paediatric) DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.4038/sljch.v43i2. 7004
Simple Real-Time Multi-face Tracking Based on Convolutional Neural Networks

We present a simple real-time system that is able to track multiple faces for live videos, broadcast, real-time conference recording, etc. Our proposed tracking system is comprised of three parts: face detection, feature extraction and tracking. We employ a previously proposed cascaded Multi-Task Convolutional Neural Network (MTCNN) to detect a face, a simple CNN to extract the features of detected faces and show that a shallow network for face tracking based on the extracted feature maps of the face is sufficient. Our multi-face tracker runs in real-time without any on-line training. We do not adjust any parameters according to different input videos, and the tracker's run-time will not significantly increase with an increase in the number of faces being tracked, i.e., it is easy to deploy in new real-time applications. We evaluate our tracker based on two commonly used metrics in comparison to five recent face trackers. Our proposed simple tracker can perform competitively in comparison to these trackers despite occlusions in the videos and false positives or false negatives during face detection.
TEACHERS� CREATIVITY IN DESIGNING LEARNING ACTIVITIES: SUSTAINING STUDENTS� MOTIVATION

Sustaining students� motivation during teaching and learning process, unquestionably, is considered as the most challenging task. Therefore, the teachers have to be mindful and creative in designing an activity as it is the core of the lesson. However, in practice, some teachers are sometimes found to aimlessly use an activity as they run out of idea. Thus, this study is conducted to serve as a reference for the teachers in designing a specific activity that helps the students stay motivated. A descriptive qualitative was employed as the research design to gain deeper analysis on types of activity that encourage the students to learn English. The data were collected through interview which involved 5 professional English teachers as participants. The result revealed that the design of the activity should be appealing and correspond to the students� interest, age, level of proficiency, school policy, materials and media availability. Thus, it is suggested that the teachers should be brave to try out new activity and attend some teachers� training, such as CELTA or DELTA, to improve their teaching skills.