Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Meaning of Internal Rates of Return

Nearly one hundred years after Irving Fisher's persuasive argument that net present value is the fundamental criterion for appraising investment projects, businessmen and bankers continue to consider the internal rate of return. Business practice is justified in some circumstances. It has long been recognized that a firm will grow asymptotically at a rate equal to the largest real positive root of an individual project's rate of return equation if the net cash flows are continually reinvested in projects of the same type. That same root also controls the firm's asymptotic growth rate if any fixed proportion of the cash flows is reinvested. The other roots of the equation are important also, since the stability of the firm's growth path depends on them. FOR A VERY LONG time, two families of criteria for capital investment decisions have coexisted: net present value criteria, most forcefully advanced by Irving Fisher [9], and internal rate of return criteria. Throughout most of this time the Fisherian criteria have received the endorsement of orthodox economic theory, but the rate of return criteria have survived in business and banking practice, as attested by the fact that the most popular financial hand calculator contains a built-in program for computing rates of return. The purpose of this paper is to explore the element of validity in the rate of return criteria and, secondarily, to clarify the meaning of the internal rates of return-there are almost always several. The debate between net present value criteria and internal rate of return criteria goes back to the inception of modern interest theory. A definitive statement of the case for net present value criteria appears in Irving Fisher's The Rate of Interest [8]; that argument remains the foundation of the dominant school of capital investment appraisal to this day. The internal rate of return criterion is implicit in Boehm-Bawerk's Positive Theorie des Kapitales [3]. There, Boehm-Bawerk took it for granted that businessmen would (and should) invest so as to obtain the greatest annual net cash flow in perpetuity per dollar invested-a simple version of the internal rate of return principle. This approach has remained popular ever since (though not so popular among theorists, with some exceptions including Keynes [15]). The list of intervening contributors, expositors, and commentators is too long to be worth recounting. A few have to be mentioned, however. Alchian [1] clarified the conceptual relationships among the internal rate of return, the net present value criterion, and a subsidiary concept, Fisher's "rate of return over cost". Hirschleifer's influential paper [13] explored the implications of imperfections in the capital markets for the net present value criterion. Marglin, in a pair of elegant articles [16, 17], showed how to incorporate the possibility of reinvesting proceeds in the present value criterion. Wright [19], Fleming and
Dietary supplements containing red clover extracts were no better than placebo for hot flashes in menopause.

P a t i e n t s 252 women who were 45 to 60 years of age (mean age 52 y) and had ≥ 35 hot flashes per week; a follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) level ≥ 30 mIU/mL; either bilateral oophorectomy or ≥ 2 consecutive months of amenorrhea; and ≥ 6 months of amenorrhea in the previous year. Exclusion criteria were vegetarian diet; regular use of dietary supplements containing isoflavones; allergy to red clover; consumption of soy products more than once per week; use of medications affecting isoflavone absorption or use of hormone preparations in the previous 3 months; consumption of > 2 alcoholic beverages per day; or gastrointestinal disease. 98% of women completed the study.
The Relationship Between Firm Size, Competitive Advantages and Export Performance Revisited

The Relationship Between Firm Size, Competitive Advantages and Export Performance Revisited 0YSTEIN MOEN IS ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR AT the Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. This study examines the impact of firm size on the competitive advantages and export motives of industrial firms. 335 small and medium-sized Norwegian firms participated. The results indicate that small firms tend to have a strong advantage with regard to products and technology while they are weaker than larger firms with regard to marketing. The relationship between firm size and competitive advantage appears to be nonlinear. The proactive motives for exporting are more important than the incidental or reactive motives, regardless of firm size. Comparing export motives by firm size shows that proactive motives are more important for large firms than for small firms. Five out of the size possible relations between firm size and export performance were non-significant. International marketing researchers often export that small firms will be less competitive than larger firms. This belief is not supported by the findings of this stuidy. The results instead indicate that small firms have different competitive advantages from larger firms, not that thiey are less competitive. One possible explanation is that only the most competitive small firms engage in international markets.
Who are really purchasing environmentally friendly detergents

This paper investigates the purchasing behaviour of environmentally friendly detergents in Belgium on the basis of a binomial logit model. The results of this analysis shed some light on the extent to which household characteristics influence demand for environmentally friendly detergents. The estimated determinants of revealed preferences are compared with the results from previous stated preference research. Although the positive influence of population density on the chance of purchasing environmentally friendly products could not be confirmed, the estimation results corroborate the importance of household size, age and socio-economic class (yuppie factor).
Growth factor‐associated graft‐versus‐host disease and mortality 10 years after allogeneic bone marrow transplantation

This study analysed the effects of growth factor on outcome after haematopoietic stem‐cell transplantation (HSCT) with >9 years follow‐up. Of 1887 adult patients with acute leukaemia who received bone marrow from human leucocyte antigen (HLA)‐identical siblings and were treated with myeloablative conditioning, 459 (24%) were treated with growth factor. Growth factor hastened engraftment of neutrophils (P < 0·0001), but reduced platelet counts (P = 0·0002). Graft‐versus‐host disease (GVHD)‐free survival (no acute GVHD grade II–IV or chronic GVHD) at 10 years was 12 ± 2% (±SE) in the growth factor group, as opposed to 17 ± 2% in the controls [hazard ratio (HR) 0·81, P = 0·001]. Similar differences in GVHD‐free survival were seen in patients with or without conditioning with total body irradiation (TBI). Non‐relapse mortality (NRM) was higher in the growth factor group irrespective of whether or not TBI conditioning was included [HR = 1·48; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1·15–1·9; P = 0·002; HR = 1·59; 95% CI: 1·07–2·37; P = 0·02, respectively]. Both groups had similar probabilities of leukaemic relapse (HR = 0·96; 95% CI: 0·78–1·18; P = 0·71). Leukaemia‐free survival (LFS) at 10 years was 35 ± 2% in those receiving growth factor prophylaxis, as opposed to 44 ± 1% in the controls (HR = 0·70; 95% CI: 0·60–0·82; P = 0·00001). Prophylaxis with growth factor increases the risk of GVHD, does not affect relapse, increases NRM and reduces LFS > 10 years after HSCT, regardless of conditioning with TBI.
The Implication of PGC-1α on Fatty Acid Transport across Plasma and Mitochondrial Membranes in the Insulin Sensitive Tissues

PGC-1α coactivator plays a decisive role in the maintenance of lipid balance via engagement in numerous metabolic processes (i.e., Krebs cycle, β-oxidation, oxidative phosphorylation and electron transport chain). It constitutes a link between fatty acids import and their complete oxidation or conversion into bioactive fractions through the coordination of both the expression and subcellular relocation of the proteins involved in fatty acid transmembrane movement. Studies on cell lines and/or animal models highlighted the existence of an upregulation of the total and mitochondrial FAT/CD36, FABPpm and FATPs content in skeletal muscle in response to PGC-1α stimulation. On the other hand, the association between PGC-1α level or activity and the fatty acids transport in the heart and adipocytes is still elusive. So far, the effects of PGC-1α on the total and sarcolemmal expression of FAT/CD36, FATP1, and FABPpm in cardiomyocytes have been shown to vary in relation to the type of PPAR that was coactivated. In brown adipose tissue (BAT) PGC-1α knockdown was linked with a decreased level of lipid metabolizing enzymes and fatty acid transporters (FAT/CD36, FABP3), whereas the results obtained for white adipose tissue (WAT) remain contradictory. Furthermore, dysregulation in lipid turnover is often associated with insulin intolerance, which suggests the coactivator's potential role as a therapeutic target.
Preparing an application for a higher-education teaching-excellence award: whose foot fits Cinderella's shoe?

We were interested in how preparing for a national teaching award influences those who subsequently receive awards and whether these influences expand higher education's exploration of teaching excellence or limit it. We explored these interests by conducting semi-structured telephone interviews with 10 awardees from five different countries and used an inductive approach to identify key themes from the transcripts. Three themes significant to our research interests did emerge relating to: variation in the how awardees conceptualised teaching excellence and of how they became excellent teachers; the nature of the changes undertaken by awardees during their award process; and awardees' perceptions of their particular award process, of its description of excellence and the extent to which particular award processes may elicit particular changes in awardees. We conclude that one award process may be better designed than others to enable higher education to explore teaching excellence but even those award processes that appear to impose particular notions of excellence on awardees do not necessarily succeed in doing so. We discuss the implications of this research to institutional learning and teaching policies.
Co-creation Willingness Matrix and Capability Continuum for Classification and Scaling of Services

ABSTRACT Interaction-centric capabilities for engaging consumers are the basis of “co-creation capabilities” of a firm. These capabilities can be used as a strategic tool to develop competitive advantage for service firms under service-dominant logic. The authors develop a “co-creation continuum” for scaling of services, based on their relative extent of co-creation capability. The study establishes consumer's knowledge about the service process or the application technology, flexibility within the service processes, level of people interaction involved, and degree of importance of the service, as the underlying factors determining co-creation capability of a service. Practicing managers can use this continuum to effectively develop consumer co-creation strategies, by gauging the existing capabilities of their firm and hence, focusing on key areas of improvement. This research also conceptualizes a “co-creation willingness matrix,” which is helpful in classification of services based on the firm-consumer willingness to co-create. This classification is useful for the firms lying on the disadvantageous end of the co-creation continuum, to reap the benefits of high level of consumer value co-creation by displaying higher willingness to co-create and by generating consumers’ willingness to co-create by adopting suitable strategies. This article also sets out agenda for future research.
Australian medical students' attitudes towards specialities and specialists

Two hundred and thirteen medical students in their first five years of study at the Flinders University of South Australia completed a 50‐item questionnaire studying their beliefs and attitudes towards the specialities and the specialists involved in hospital medicine, surgery, paediatrics, obstetrics and gynaecology, and psychiatry. Four factors were identified that appeared to be of particular importance to the students. These were labelled, “scientific/treatment effective”, “patient relationships”, “usefulness of speciality” and “intellectual/status”. Psychiatry consistently stood out from the other four specialities on all four factors, although the Australian students in this study generally appeared more positive towards all five specialities than did their British counterparts whose attitudes have been described elsewhere. Students' beliefs about medical stereotypes appeared relatively constant throughout their first five years of medical training.
EDUCATION FOR A NEW ERA: STAKEHOLDERS' PERCEPTION OF QATARI EDUCATION REFORM

The paper reports the results of a qualitative research study that explores principal, teacher, and parent perceptions with regard to Qatar's education reform, Education for a New Era (EFNE) launched in 2004. The study focuses on the effects of the reform on each group, their perceived advantages and disadvantages of the reform, and the challenges they face in the implementation of EFNE. Data for this study was collected through an open-ended questionnaire. The results point to the positive effects of EFNE on improving in- struction, principals' leadership style, and learner attitude to education. These stakeholders believe that the reform is too ambitious and sometimes unrealistic. The three groups also report challenges that revolve around the amount of extra effort and work it requires from them, the continuous reform changes, and the threats to the local culture and language. Discussion and conclusions are provided regarding EFNE. Ellili-Cherif, M. & Romanowski, M. (2013). Education for a New Era: Stakeholders' Perception of Qatari Education Reform. In- ternational Journal of Education Policy & Leadership 8(6). Retrieved from www.ijepl. org .
Mean Square Error for the Leland–Lott Hedging Strategy

AbstractThe Leland strategy of approximate hedging of the call-option under proportional transaction costs prescribes to use, at equidistant instants of portfolio revisions, the classical Black–Scholes formula but with a suitably enlarged volatility. An appropriate mathematical framework is a scheme of series, i.e. a sequence of models Mn with the transaction costs coefficients kn depending on n, the number of the revision intervals. The enlarged volatility $\widehat{\sigma}_n$, in general, also depends on n. Lott investigated in detail the particular case where the transaction costs coefficients decrease as n-1/2 and where the Leland formula yields $\widehat{\sigma}_n$ not depending on n. He proved that the terminal value of the portfolio converges in probability to the pay-off. In the present note we show that it converges also in L2 and find the first order term of asymptotics for the mean square error. The considered setting covers the case of non-uniform revision intervals. We establish the asymptotic expansion when the revision dates are $t_i^n = g(i/n)$ where the strictly increasing scale function g : [0, 1] → [0, 1] and its inverse f are continuous with their first and second derivatives on the whole interval or g(t) = 1 - (1 - t)β, β ≥ 1.
Public Capital, Asymmetric Information, and Economic Growth

We investigate the provision of public capital in an endogenous growth model with asymmetric information. In a credit market with costly screening, we show that the equilibrium contracts are characterized by the self-selection of borrowers. Through identifying an additional adverse effect of taxation on growth, we show that the optimal tax rate in our model is smaller than the output elasticity of public capital. Therefore, our analysis justifies a more conservative tax policy in the presence of asymmetric information. Furthermore, our model suggests a number of implications that appear to be well supported by preliminary evidence in cross-country data.
Fast Multi-Scale Detection of Relevant Communities in Large-Scale Networks

Nowadays, networks are almost ubiquitous. In the past decade, community detection received an increasing interest as a way to uncover the structure of networks by grouping nodes into communities more densely connected internally than externally. Yet most of the effective methods available do not consider the potential levels of organisation, or scales, a network may encompass and are therefore limited. In this paper we present a method compatible with global and local criteria that enables fast multi-scale community detection on large networks. The method is derived in two algorithms, one for each type of criterion, and implemented with 6 known criteria. Uncovering communities at various scales is a computationally expensive task. Therefore this work puts a strong emphasis on the reduction of computational complexity. Some heuristics are introduced for speed-up purposes. Experiments demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of our method with respect to each algorithm and criterion by testing them against large generated multi-scale networks. This study also offers a comparison between criteria and between the global and local approaches. In particular our results suggest that global criteria seem to be more robust to noise and thus more accurate than local criteria.
The role of keratinocytes in defense against infection

Purpose of review The discovery of increasing numbers of epithelial antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), cytokines that specifically induce AMPs in epithelial cells, and mechanisms of its regulation point toward a central role of the keratinocyte as effector cell of the epithelial innate defense system. This review summarizes recent progress in understanding the keratinocyte's role in combating infection that can help to understand why skin is usually covered with microbes but normally not infected. Recent findings The AMP LL-37 has been identified as regulator of keratinocyte apoptosis. The hypothesis of a direct defense function of keratinocytes, combating bacterial, fungal, virus and parasite infection, is strengthened. The discovery of an IL-22-producing T-lymphocyte subpopulation implicates a role in AMP induction of keratinocytes. Multiple studies are adding to our understanding of how skin keratinocytes are interacting in skin barrier defects and with the microflora. Although in atopic patients AMP production is not generally impaired, in hyperIgE syndrome a lack of Th17 cytokines causes local Staphylococcus aureus infection due to a defective keratinocyte defense system. Ultraviolet radiation induces AMPs and thus may have beneficial effects to combat skin infection. Summary There is better understanding of the keratinocyte's role in the skin's innate defense system, and these data can help to generate therapeutics that can activate this defense system.
Adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) protein regulates epithelial cell migration and morphogenesis via PDZ domain‐based interactions with plasma membranes

The tumor suppressor adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) protein is localized at the plus ends of microtubules (MTs) at the migrating edges of cells. Here, we established Xenopus A6 epithelial cell transfectants expressing GFP‐fused full‐length APC (GFP‐fAPC) or truncated APC lacking the COOH‐terminal PDZ‐binding motif TSV (GFP‐APC(ΔTSV)). Although both APC proteins were similarly accumulated at the MT ends, GFP‐fAPC, but not GFP‐APC(ΔTSV), was associated with the basal and lateral plasma membranes and co‐localized with a PDZ protein, DLG1. Stable over‐expression of GFP‐fAPC enforced cell–substrate attachment and thereby enhanced cell spreading on the substratum and induced polarized extension of lamellipodia and MTs during scratch‐induced migration. Truncation of the PDZ‐binding motif was sufficient to abolish these effects of GFP‐fAPC. Furthermore, expression of GFP‐APC(ΔTSV) disturbed the establishment of a continuous epithelial monolayer. These results suggest that APC links MTs to plasma membranes through interactions with PDZ proteins, such that the migration and morphogenesis of epithelial cells can be properly regulated.
Juvenile Justice in the U.S.: Facts for Policymakers

www.nccp. org Recent research shows that the human brain continues to develop throughout adolescence, with the pre-frontal cortex – the section of the brain responsible for executive function and complex reasoning – not fully developing until the mid-twenties.1 Because adolescents’ brains are not fully matured, their decision-making and thought processes differ from those of adults. For example, it is developmentally normative for adolescents to take greater risks and show greater susceptibility to peer influences than adults.1 These otherwise normal differences can contribute to behaviors that lead to involvement with the juvenile justice system. Beyond developmental influences, additional risk factors associated with youth ending up in the juvenile justice system are cognitive deficits, low school involvement, living in poverty, or being runaway or homeless.2-3
More Countries, Similar Results: A Nonlinear Programming Approach to Normalising test Scores Needed for Growth Regressions

Analysts such as Hanushek and Woessman have brought to the fore the deceptiveness of education enrolments, or years of schooling, in growth regressions and the need to consider educational quality. In this paper, a nonlinear programming solution is proposed as a way of normalising to a single scale country average test scores from various international testing programmes. This method, though less transparent and more dependent on certain subjective choices than the existing approach put forward by Hanushek and Woessman, allows for the inclusion of more countries, in particular more African and developing countries, into a growth regression. The regression produces the results one would expect, namely a strong conditional correlation between growth and educational quality. The utility of growth regressions with an educational quality variable for the education policymaker is discussed. A method for arriving at feasible annual improvements in educational quality and hence feasible country targets is presented.
Morning glory syndrome

Morning glory syndrome is a congenital optic disc anomaly in which much of die excavated colobomatous optic disc is filled with glial tissue. Ocular complications may include strabismus, reduced visual acuity and retinal detachment and it may have systemic associations as in Aicardi's syndrome. A patient widi monocular morning glory syndrome and reduced visual acuity is reported. The pattern reversal visually evoked potential was reduced and the latency increased in the affected eye.