Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF FESTIVAL BRAND CONGRUENCY ON DESTINATION BRANDS USING SCHEMA THEORY

ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF FESTIVAL BRAND CONGRUENCY ON DESTINATION BRANDS USING SCHEMA THEORY Haiyun Quan Advisor: University of Guelph, 2016 Dr. Statia Elliot Hosting festivals to improve destination appeal is a popular strategy in tourism practice nowadays. Match-up theories suggest that visitors use preconceived brand knowledge to search for congruity between co-marketed products, and that a matched alliance is preferable. Yet according to Mandler’s (1982) schema incongruity theory, moderately incongruent objects generate more favourable responses than do congruent objects. This theory has been tested in marketing studies but little empirical research is found in the tourism context. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of festival brand congruency on tourism destination brand attitude and visit intention to provide implications for destination branding practices. This study contributes to tourism literature on image incongruity in destination branding. Results suggest that leading destinations benefit more from congruent festivals, whereas second-tier destinations benefit more from incongruent festivals. The finding provides practical implication for destination marketers in selecting festivals to better promote destinations.
Key for identification of butterflies (Lepidoptera) of Hazara University, Garden Campus, Mansehra, Pakistan.

The present survey of butterflies (Lepidoptera) of Hazara University, Garden Campus, Mansehra, Pakistan was conducted during March-June 2012 and the key has been made for their identification. Total 170 specimens were collected from which 10 species with 8 genera belonging to 3 families were identified from 3 study sites. According to families, 50% species were belonging to Pieridae, 30% Namphalidae and 20% Papilionidae families. According to the study sites, 53% collection were made from residential area, 34% from main campus and 12% from administration area. The species were identified, the painted lady, Cynthia cardui (Linnaeus); blue pansy, Junonia orithya Linnaeus; and plain tiger, Danaus chrysippus (Linnaeus) were belonging to family Nymphalidae. The lime butterfly, Papilio demoleus Linnaeus and common mormon, Pa. polytes Linnaeus were belonging to family Papilionidae. The dark clouded yellow, Colias croceus (Geoffroy); common grass yellow, Eumera hecab (Linnaeus); Murree green-veined white, Pieris ajaka Moore; green-veined white, P. napi (Linnaeus) and Bath white, Pontia daplidice (Linnaeus) were belonging to family Pieridae. The most encountered species found was Po. daplidice whose 125 specimens were collected. The least encountered species were P. polytes and D. chrysippus, i.e., for each 1 specimen was collected. The largest wingspan was found D. chrysippus: (7±0 cm; n=1) and the smallest was E. hecabe: (3.7±0.8 cm; n=4). The largest body-length was found D. chrysippus (2.5±0.0 cm; n=1) and the smallest was E hecabe and J. orithya (1.4 cm; n=4). It is suggests that this region may have a diverse butterfly fauna. Similar surveys on large scales are recommended to fully evaluate the butterfly fauna of Hazara division.
Sagartia troglodytes (Anthozoa: Actiniaria) consists of two species

The sagartiid sea anemone Sagartia troglodytes (Price) has usually been considered to consist of 2 morphological varieties h k e d by intermediate forms (and therefore presumably by interbreeding). The techniques of starch gel electrophoresis and chromosome preparation, combined with an analysis of reproductive biology, were employed to investigate populations around the SW coasts of Britain to test this assumption. Var. decorata is extremely variable both morphologically and genetically with high levels of polymorphism and heterozygosity (P = 61 %, H, = 0.27). It reproduces exclusively by out-crossing, oviparous means producing maximal genotypic diversity and good gene flow between populations (Nei's Genetic Identity, 1 = 0.99). Var. ornata is less variable morphologically but genetically diverse (P = 62 %, H. = 0.47) due to 'fixed heterozygosity' at some locl, which is maintained by extensive clonal reproduction within populations producing relatively low inter-population identity (f = 0.86). Var. decorata has a chromosonle number of approximately 24 whereas var. ornata has approximately 48. On this basis it is proposed that var.decorata should retain the species name S. troglodytes (Price) and that var. ornata be restored to species status as Sagartia ornata (Holdsworth, in Gosse 1860).
Planning for Electrification: On- and Off-Grid Considerations in Sub-Saharan Africa

Energy poverty, in particular, the lack of access to electricity, is a chronic impediment to sustainable development in sub-Saharan Africa, affecting over one billion people. Recently, electrification efforts have bifurcated into two pathways: grid extension/enhancement and off‑grid. Expanding and enhancing the existing national grid is the de facto approach, but is struggling to keep up with growing populations and demand in many countries. Off-grid solutions such as solar home systems and mini-grids are seen as a way to ‘leap frog’ the national grid, but face distribution, affordability, and regulatory challenges. This article explores each electrification pathway through the lens of a traditional power system planner. This perspective shows that implicit planning assumptions about cost recovery, procurement, reliability requirements, economic benefit, what entities are involved, and the role of renewable energy require re‑visiting and re-invention in the sub‑Saharan African context.
Lawyer CEOs and corporate risk-taking

The purpose of this thesis is to study how lawyer CEOs affect corporate risk-taking. Chief executives with a law degree comprise 9% of S&P 1500 CEOs but have not received wide attention in the growing CEO-focused corporate finance literature. Lawyers are generally perceived as risk-averse due to their education and previous career that typically focuses on understanding, controlling and mitigating risks. The goal of this thesis is to empirically assess whether this potential risk-aversion affects corporate policies. I use OLS regressions to estimate the dependency between lawyer CEOs and investment, capital structure and acquisition variables, and find that lawyer CEOs associate with lower capital expenditure, lower R&D investments, higher leverage and lower cash-to-assets ratios. I find no effect for acquisition likelihood or volume but show that lawyer CEOs have a significant positive effect on cumulative abnormal stock returns surrounding acquisition announcements. The positive returns are not explained by acquisition characteristics or a higher completion rate and are robust to different sub-samples and time intervals. Finally, I do not find empirical support for risk-aversion in stock option holding behavior of lawyer CEOs. The empirical results suggest differences in corporate policies for companies with lawyer CEOs compared to the baseline, but general lawyer CEO risk-aversion is not established. Rather it appears that lawyer CEOs are averse towards certain policies such as capital expenditures and R&D investment, which have been shown to increase the company’s litigation risk, while being less riskaverse towards other corporate policies such as the capital structure of the company. The most significant finding of my thesis is documenting 1.4 percentage points higher cumulative announcement day returns in the three-day period [-1, +1] surrounding the announcement of a large acquisition. Based on previous research, I formulate three potential explanations for the result. Lawyer CEOs may be more effective in managing investor expectations which would decrease the negative surprise typically related to acquisitions. They may also be more talented in navigating the legal complexity of acquisitions and mitigating their litigation risk. Finally, lawyer CEOs may announce better acquisitions due to better negotiation outcomes or improved target selection. My thesis has significant contribution to finance literature and increases our understanding of CEOs, specifically lawyer CEOs, and their effect on firm policies. Further academic extensions of the thesis include studying lawyer CEOs in takeover target companies to better understand the causal effects of observed higher announcement returns. Studies could also be extended to other traditional areas of finance research such as innovativeness, IPO underpricing or stock returns. Finally, my thesis also provides practical implications to for example boards making CEO hiring decisions, investors reacting to CEO appointments and acquisition announcements, and lawyer CEOs themselves in understanding potential biases affecting their own decision making.
Approximate Compositional Values and Tissue Fatty Acid Profiles of Nile Tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus L.) Fed Azolla-Diets in Earthen Ponds

The approximate general composition and the fatty acid profile of Nile tilapia fed Azolla-diets in ponds were studied for 90 days. Six isonitrogenous (29.2% CP) and isoenergetic (16.9 kJ·g>sup>-1) diets were formulated to contain 0% (A0), 10% (A10), 20% (A>sub>20), 30% (A30), 40% (A40) and 50% (A50) of Azolla meal (AM), as partial fish meal (FM) substitutes. Diet A0 without AM served as a control. Fish growth decreased as AM level exceeded 20% in diets (P 0.05). Crude lipid was significantly lower in fish fed A50 and significant differences were also found in crude ash (P 20, A30 and A50. High level of the fern reduces growth without negatively affecting fatty acid in fish. Fish PUFA, especially the (n - 3) fatty acids, are affected positively, even when fed 50% AM, which is good for the quality of the fish produced in regard to the benefits for the health of consumers.
Where do firms manage earnings?

Despite decades of research on how, why, and when companies manage earnings, there is a paucity of evidence about the geographic location of earnings management within multinational firms. In this study, we examine where companies manage earnings using a sample of 2,067 U.S. multinational firms from 1994 to 2009. We predict and find that firms with extensive foreign operations in weak rule of law countries have more foreign earnings management than companies with subsidiaries in locations where the rule of law is strong. We also find some evidence that profitable firms with extensive tax haven subsidiaries manage earnings more than other firms and that the earnings management is concentrated in foreign income. Apart from these results, we find that most earnings management takes place in domestic income, not foreign income.
Turbulence models and plane layer dynamos

The parameter ranges in which naturally-occurring dynamos operate lie far beyond those that are numerically accessible. Small-scale motions that significantly influence the dynamo mechanism cannot be numerically resolved. Two approximate ways that have been suggested for incorporating these “subgrid scales” are investigated here: the addition of hyperdiffusion and the application of the LANSalpha theory. These proposals were tested by comparing their consequences, not only for marginal convection but also for finite amplitude dynamos, with corresponding “exact” results . Plane layer models were studied because of their numerical advantages. Both approximate theories raise the differential order of the governing equation so that additional boundary conditions are required. Physical considerations reduce the options but arbitrariness remains. Our choice was the simplest and made it possible to preserve the turbulent character of the solutions while increasing the time step by a factor of about 10, compared with that required by the exact solution at the same spatial resolution. It was found that, for optimal results, the hyperdiffusivities for velocity, momentum and magnetic field should be equal. In the case of the LANS-alpha approximation, a further choice of boundary conditions was investigated. In this model, alpha represents the rms fluid displacement from the mean turbulent motion, both of which vanish at the no-slip boundaries. Analysis of the resulting depression of alpha motivated the alternative conditions that led to even more satisfactory solutions. The question of the best choice of boundary conditions remains open, but is a prime target for future research that uses these methods.
Markovian framework for structural change detection with application on detecting built-in changes in airborne images

In the paper we address the problem of change detection in airborne image pairs taken with significant time difference. In reconnaissance and exploration tasks, finding the slowly changing areas through a long tract of time is disturbed by the temporal parameter changes of the considered clusters. We introduce a new joint segmentation model, containing two layers corresponding to the same area of different far times and the detected change map. We tested this co-segmentation model considering two clusters on the photos: built-in and natural/cultivated areas. We propose a Bayesian segmentation framework which exploits not only the noisy class-descriptors in the independent images, but also creates links between the segmentation of the two pictures, ensuring to get smooth connected regions in the segmented images, and also in the change mask. The domain dependent part of the model is separated, therefore the proposed structure can be used for significantly different descriptors and problems also.
An operational policy for a single vendor multi buyer integrated inventory supply chain system considering shipping time

ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First of all, I wish to thank the Almighty for giving me the endurance to complete my entire course. I want to express my deepest sense of gratitude to Dr. his invaluable guidance, constant encouragement, cooperative attitude, immense patience, useful discussions during the course of research and preparation of the manuscript. He has always been a fountain of inspiration to me. Also, I am honored to express my esteem and profound sense of gratitude to Dr. Pius J. Egbelu, Committee member and Professor of Industrial Engineering, for his constructive and valuable suggestions. He was always quick to extend his help whenever I asked for it, and he never failed to offer cooperative and accommodating services. constant help and collective efforts are undoubtedly reflected in the completion of this venture. Also, nothing could have been possible without the incessant love, affection, sacrifice and inspiration from my parents. I feel blessed to have such supportive parents, who were a central force in guiding me to this day. Finally, I would also like to devote my success to the financial assistance provided by the CMIE Department in the form of assistantship during the tenure. ABSTRACT Since its introduction, the concept of integrated inventory supply chain has received a considerable amount of attention. The majority of studies in the last three decades revealed an increase in holding cost as product moves further down the chain or up the chain. A recent study Hoque (2008) considered vendor's setup cost and inventory holding cost. Some research also considered fixed transportation cost, which is unrealistic. This study focuses on a single-vendor, multi-buyer scenario and presents three models. First, two models illustrate the transferring of equally-sized batches. Then, a third model considers the transferring of unequally-sized batches in a lot. This study relaxes the assumption that vendor's holding cost must be greater than or less than all buyer's holding costs in the system. Also, this research facilitates unequal transportation time and cost for different buyers for greater flexibility. The total system cost is calculated by summing the annual operational cost for all the parties in the system. Optimum values of the decision variables are determined using a direct search method. As presented by the third model, a numerical example demonstrates that the total system cost is less when compared with other two models presented. This study also presents the following: solution procedures to solve each model, …
Rest-Katyusha: Exploiting the Solution's Structure via Scheduled Restart Schemes

We propose a structure-adaptive variant of the state-of-the-art stochastic variance-reduced gradient algorithm Katyusha for the regularized empirical risk minimization. The proposed method is able to exploit the intrinsic low-dimensional structure of the solution, such as sparsity and low-rank, which is enforced by the non-smooth regularization, to achieve even faster convergence rate. This algorithmic improvement is done by restarting the Katyusha algorithm at a certain carefully-chosen frequency according to a modified version of restricted strong-convexity. Our analysis demonstrates that the proposed method is globally convergent and enjoys a local accelerated linear rate with respect to the low-dimensional structure of the solution represented by the restricted strong-convexity, even when the cost function itself is not strongly-convex. Since in practice the restricted strong-convexity is usually unknown and hard to be estimated accurately, we proposed two practical restart schemes. The first one is restarting the algorithm with a rough restricted strong-convexity estimate which is provably robust but have a compromise on the convergence rate. The second variant is based on the adaptive restart via convergence speed check. The numerical results on benchmark datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.
Testing for the Sustainability of the Current Account Deficit in Four Industrial Countries: A Revisitation

In this article we re-examine the mean-reverting property of the current account for the US, the UK, Canada and France. This is important because a current account that is not a stationary process implies that the external debts are unsustainable. The empirical results show that the current account-GDP ratios for the four countries are non-stationary processes based on the traditional unit root test. Bierens' non-linear unit root test results show that these current account-GDP ratios could exhibit mean stationarity, trend stationarity and non-linear trend stationarity once we account for a more general specification of the non-linear deterministic components based on a Chebishev polynomials approximation. One should, therefore, be cautious when concluding that the current account is sustainable or unsustainable based upon the traditional unit root test since it overlooks the non-linear property intrinsic in the data.
PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS' LEVEL OF COMPETENCE AND THEIR ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE TEACHING PROFESSION

Despite vast research about teachers’ competencies, little if any, is known about the relationship between this factor and attitudes towards the profession of teaching among the pre-service and novice teachers. In this study, the relationship between pre-service teachers’ level of competence and their attitudes towards the teaching profession was investigated. For this purpose, a competency measurement observation card and a questionnaire on attitudes were administered to a sample of 41 male and female pre-service teachers from 4 universities in the Gaza strip, Palestine before and after a three-month competency training program. Results showed that the teachers’ competency level correlated strongly with their attitudes before and after training. The paired Samples T-test indicated that the training improved their competencies as well as their attitudes. The findings have implications on teacher education programs to promote both competency and positive attitudes of preservice teachers.
University of Groningen Sex Differences in Orienting to Pictures with and without Humans

Objective: This study investigated the effect of social relevance in affective pictures on two orienting responses, i.e. the evoked cardiac response (ECR), and a long latency cortical evoked potential (LPP) and whether this effect would differ between males and females. Assuming that orienting to affective social information is fundamental to experiencing affective empathy, associations between self-report measures of empathy and the two orienting responses were investigated. Method: ECRs were obtained from 34 female and 30 male students, and LPPs from 25 female and 27 male students viewing 414 pictures from the International Affective Picture System. Pictures portrayed pleasant, unpleasant and neutral scenes with and without humans. Results: Both the ECR and LPP showed the largest response to pictures with humans in unpleasant situations. For both measures, the responses to pictures with humans correlated with self-report measures of empathy. While we found a greater male than female responsiveness to the pictures without humans in the ECR, a greater female than male responsiveness was observed in the LPP response to pictures with humans. Conclusion and Significance: The sensitivity of these orienting responses to social relevance and their differential contribution to the prediction of individual differences underline the validity of their combined use in clinical studies investigating individuals with social disabilities. Citation: Althaus M, Groen Y, van der Schaft L, Minderaa RB, Tucha O, et al. (2014) Sex Differences in Orienting to Pictures with and without Humans: Evidence from the Cardiac Evoked Response (ECR) and the Cortical Long Latency Parietal Positivity (LPP). PLoS ONE 9(10): e108224. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0108224 Editor: Alexandra Key, Vanderbilt University, United States of America Received January 15, 2014; Accepted August 27, 2014; Published October 15, 2014 Copyright: 2014 Althaus et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: The conduct of this study was facilitated by the Department of Clinical and Developmental Neuropsychology, University of Groningen and the Department of Childand Adolescent Psychiatry, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * Email: m.althaus@accare.nl
An Analytic Model for the Dielectric Function of Au, Ag, and their Alloys

An analytical model for the prediction of the dielectric properties of gold–silver alloys is developed. This multi‐parametric model is a modification of the usual Drude–Lorentz model that takes into account the band structure of the metals. It is fitted by a genetic algorithm to the dielectric function of thin alloy films of different gold–silver ratio obtained by ellipsometry. The model is validated for arbitrary alloy compositions by comparing the experimental extinction spectra of alloy nanoparticles with the spectra predicted by Mie theory.
RAM: Residual Attention Module for Single Image Super-Resolution

Attention mechanisms are a design trend of deep neural networks that stands out in various computer vision tasks. Recently, some works have attempted to apply attention mechanisms to single image super-resolution (SR) tasks. However, they apply the mechanisms to SR in the same or similar ways used for high-level computer vision problems without much consideration of the different nature between SR and other problems. In this paper, we propose a new attention method, which is composed of new channel-wise and spatial attention mechanisms optimized for SR and a new fused attention to combine them. Based on this, we propose a new residual attention module (RAM) and a SR network using RAM (SRRAM). We provide in-depth experimental analysis of different attention mechanisms in SR. It is shown that the proposed method can construct both deep and lightweight SR networks showing improved performance in comparison to existing state-of-the-art methods.