Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Economic Growth and Air Pollution Dynamics: The Case of Canada

The root cause of the most important issues facing humanity today could be traced back to environmental mismanagement or inequality. Thus, the aim of this paper is to examine the dynamic relationship between economic growth and air pollution in Canada using cointegration tests, vector error correction models and causality tests on annual data from 1960 to 2014. The cointegration tests reveal that there is a long-run relationship between economic growth, trade and air pollution in Canada. The results also show that in the long-run, economic growth and trade respectively have a positive and a negative impact on air pollution. The vector error correction models reveal that the coefficient associated with the error correction term is negative and significant. This means that, any shock disturbing the long-run equilibrium between economic growth, trade and air pollution will be corrected at a speed of 10 percent per year. As for the causality analyses, they show that economic growth does not cause air pollution in Canada.
Asymmetric dependence in international currency markets

We find new channels for the transmission of shocks in international currencies, by developing a model in which shock propagations evolve from domestic stock markets, liquidity, credit risk and growth channels. We employ symmetric and asymmetric copulas to quantify joint downside risks and document that asset classes tend to experience concurrent extreme shocks. The time-varying spillover intensities cause a significant increase in cross-asset linkages during periods of high volatility, which is over and above any expected economic fundamentals, providing strong evidence of asymmetric investor induced contagion. The critical role of the credit crisis is amplified, as the beginning of an important reassessment of emerging currencies which lead to changes in the dependence structure, a revaluation and recalibration of their risk characteristics. By modelling tail risks, we also find patterns consistent with the domino effect.
Foreign Banks in Emerging Market Crises : Evidence From Malaysia

Foreign banks have greatly increased their presence in emerging market countries in recent years. This paper compares the performance of domestic banks and a long-established group of foreign banks during the recent crisis in Malaysia. We find that the sharpest differences are between banks mainly active in Asia (including all domestic and some foreign banks) and foreign banks not specialized in Asia. The latter group performed better than the rest during the crisis, maintaining higher profitability thanks to higher interest margins and lower nonperforming loans. Foreign banks did not abandon the local market during the crisis and received less government support than domestic institutions.
Self-assessment Accuracy, Overconfidence and Student Performance

We have analyzed results of the Brazilian National Student Performance exam, applied by the Ministry of Education, to verify overconfi dence in students. Looking at 549,487 student-level observations, we estimated an overconfi dence score, comparing the perceived performance with the actual grade in two different parts of the exam. Ordered logit models suggest that overconfi dence in Brazilian students is positively correlated with income and that overconfi dent students took less time to complete the exam. Contrary to previous studies conducted in other countries, male students presented lower overconfi dence in our sample. Moreover, performance was inversely related to the overconfi dence score, indicating that students with better performance “know more about what they do not know”, as already widely discussed in the education literature.
Self-disclosure effect on cultural context of Papuan teenagers

Self-disclosure is revealed through various phenomena such as information on behavior, attitudes, feelings, desires, motivations, and ideas. Related to the statement, this study aims to analyze the relationship between self-disclosure to the culture of Papuan teenagers. The sample of the current study was teenager students of Middle School in Sentani, Papua- Indonesia. In the study, a random technique was applied in order to gain 183 students as the total sample. They were 20% of the 919 teenager students. The quantitative approach was applied to examine the instruments of validity and reliability, factor analysis, t-test, and correlation coefficient. The results have shown that from 78 statement items of self-disclosure, 64 statement items were declared valid while 14 others were not valid. For 85 items about culture, there were 68 valid statement items while 17 were invalid. The self-disclosure analysis of reliability was 0.823 while the culture analysis was 0.810. Furthermore, factor analysis has shown that from 64 items of self-disclosure statements, 60 items were stated to be fulfilled while 4 other items were not fulfilled. The results of the correlation coefficient were obtained at 86.5%. It is concluded that self-disclosure has a strong and significant effect on the culture of Papuan teenagers.
Self -Efficacy and Human Caring Correlates of Child Welfare Caseworker Performance in the Juvenile Courts.

This study explored the relationship between personal characteristics o f casework staff in a public child welfare agency and the way in which they work with the courts and legal system. A set o f six measures was developed or adapted for this research to explore theoretical linkages between the personal psychological variables of self-efficacy and human caring, and the way in which caseworkers participate in the formulation of agency decisions concerning families and children as well as the way in which their performance is assessed by judges hearing child dependency matters. The research also addressed the reliability and construct validity of these measures and tested a response stem for the measurement of self-efficacy which is more consistent with the theoretical definition of that construct as a system of beliefs than have been response formats used in most earlier studies. Differences among caseworkers based on demographic variables such as education and experience were also examined. Results of the study showed reasonable reliability and validity of the study measures, a significant relationship between the self-efficacy and human caring independent variables, and a significant relationship between certain domains of selfefficacy and the extent to which caseworkers support the agency case decisions which they must present in court. Analysis o f measures completed by judges showed that they relied for more strongly on evidence provided by caseworkers than that presented by other participants in hearings. A total o f 37 judges enrolled in the study, with an estimated 34 actually completing ratings of caseworkers. Judicial ratings showed strong reliability, indicating that they made consistent discriminations in their assessments of
Chinese Word Segmentation: A Decade Review

During the last decade,especially since the First International Chinese Word Segmentation Bakeoff was held in July 2003,the study in automatic Chinese word segmentation has been greatly improved.Those improvements could be summarized as following:(1) on the computation sense Chinese words in real text have been well-defined by "segmentation guidelines + lexicon + segmented corpus";(2) practical results show that performance of statistic segmentation systems outperforms that of handcrafted rule-based systems;(3) the evaluation in terms of Bakeoff data shows that the accuracy drop caused by outof-vocabulary(OOV) words is at least five times greater than that of segmentation ambiguities;(4) the better performance of OOV recognition the higher accuracy of the segmentation system in whole,and the accuracy of statistic segmentation systems with character-based tagging approach outperforms any other word-based system.
Knowledge of indefinite articles in L2-English: Online vs. offline performance

This study uses both offline and online tasks in order to investigate whether second language learners of English from an article-less first-language (Mandarin) are able to integrate the indefinite article into their grammar despite the lack of articles in their first language. This article reports on two studies, one on learners’ sensitivity to errors of article omission and one on learners’ sensitivity to errors of article misuse. The results indicate that learners show quite native-like sensitivity to errors with articles online, and in fact perform in a more target-like manner in an online task than in a traditional offline judgment task. The findings of this study provide evidence against the Morphological Congruency Hypothesis in that they indicate that learners can represent a new morphological category (in this case, the indefinite article) in their Interlanguage grammar.
A preliminary constraint grammar for Russian

This paper presents preliminary work on a constraint grammar based disambiguator for Russian. Russian is a Slavic language with a high degree of both in-category and out-category homonymy in the inflectional system. The pipeline consists of a finite-state morphological analyser and constraint grammar. The constraint grammar is tuned to be high recall (over 0.99) at the expense of low precision.
A study of attrition in rape cases

The present study investigated the attrition process of rape allegations. The study adopted a multi-method research approach incorporating quantitative and qualitative data to reveal the factors that influence the processing of rape and the degree to which stereotypical notions, or 'rape myths', can still be held responsible for the poor outcome of so many cases. Analysis revealed that the majority of rape allegations did not proceed beyond the police stage of proceedings, complainant withdrawals accounting for the majority of these. Just 21 per cent of the original sample reached the Crown Court, resulting in a final conviction rate of six per cent. The research established that the views of those involved in investigating and prosecuting rape cases were often based on stereotypical views of 'genuine' rape, usually rooted in notions of appropriate female behaviour. Thus, cases approximating the 'classic rape' - involving stranger perpetrators, virginal victims, the use - or threat - of a weapon, and evidence of injury to the complainant - were those most likely to proceed. However, in a climate where the nature of rape has changed to include more allegations involving complainants and perpetrators who are known to one another, physical evidence is often lacking and the issue becomes one of 'consent' and whether the complainant willingly engaged in sexual relations with the alleged perpetrator. In this case, the focus turns increasingly to the character and the credibility of the complainant and whether she will present as a strong witness in court. Indeed, what is found to be at the centre of the debate is not necessarily whether there is a 'genuine rape' or even whether there is a 'credible victim', but, more usefully for the purposes of the criminal justice system, whether there is a convincing witness to put before a jury - a consideration that was found to affect decision-making throughout the system.
The Effects of Task Irrelevant Images on Glance Time for In-vehicle Systems

The goal of the present study was to understand how buttons and images affect glance times for in-vehicle tasks. Search tasks that simulated in-vehicle tasks (e.g., radio tuning, navigation) were used to measure these effects. Participants across various age groups were required to select an item (e.g., “Mango”) on each screen that matched a category of items (e.g., “Fruit) that was given at the beginning of the task. For example, a category of “fruit” would have targets of “strawberry” or “mango. ” Glance times were collected for each screen to analyze the effects of the number of buttons and presence of images on the display. Additionally, the image detail was varied by using a generic graphic (e.g., polygons) and a photographic image. A regression model showed that the image variable resulted in a small improvement to the “number of buttons” model (∆R2 = .005) but adding the “level of detail” variable (i.e., polygons or photograph) did not. However, the significant effect of images reflected a decrease from the condition with no images. Further analysis showed that the screens with the images had similar variability to the ones without. These results suggest that the effects of task irrelevant images are measurable and should be thought of as similar to other interface elements. Additionally, there does not appear to be a quality in images that causes higher glance time over and above other interface elements. The implications for distraction policy are discussed.
System dynamics approach for the economic impacts of ICTs: evidence from Macedonia

Measuring the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) on the economy is a major challenge and a research question standing at the forefront of economics in the past years. In terms of methodologies, two approaches have been followed extensively, i.e. the standard growth accounting methodology and the regression-based models. This paper aims at developing an alternative approach to studying the usage and impact of ICTs. For this purpose, a two-step methodology is proposed here. At first, hierarchical cluster analysis is used to provide an objective clustering of countries (Macedonia and EU-28) according to 53 indicator values/scores of the Networked Readiness Index. Furthermore, a system dynamics model is proposed to simulate the evolution of the NRI indicator values for Macedonia. This second step allows for examining the potential of the country to improve its rankings on a global scale and thus, become better at leveraging ICTs for increased competitiveness and well-being. Beyond the rankings, the proposed methodology can serve as a useful guide for those attributes Macedonia should focus on in order to improve its position relative to other countries, i.e. to move from its current to the next higher cluster.
Bacterial Phage Tail-like Structure Kills Eukaryotic Cells by Injecting a Nuclease Effector

Many bacteria interact with target organisms using syringe-like structures called Contractile Injection Systems (CIS). CIS structurally resemble headless bacteriophages and share evolutionarily related proteins such as the tail tube, sheath, and baseplate complex. Recent evidence shows that CIS are specialized to puncture membranes and often deliver effectors to target cells. In many cases, CIS mediate trans-kingdom interactions between bacteria and eukaryotes, however the effectors delivered to target cells and their mode of action are often unknown. In this work, we establish an in vitro model to study a CIS called Metamorphosis Associated Contractile structures (MACs) that target eukaryotic cells. We show that MACs kill two eukaryotic cell lines, Fall Armyworm Sf9 cells and J774A.1 murine macrophage cells through the action of a newly identified MAC effector, termed Pne1. To our knowledge, Pne1 is the first CIS effector exhibiting nuclease activity against eukaryotic cells. Our results define a new mechanism of CIS-mediated bacteria-eukaryote interaction and are a first step toward understanding structures with the potential to be developed as novel delivery systems for eukaryotic hosts.
Validating Prediction of a CGE Model of India: An Introspection

Although computable general equilibrium (CGE) models have been used extensively to evaluate the potential impact of economic reforms, few efforts have been made to assess the predictive power of the models. This paper attempts to test the performance of one such model, viz., Chadha, Pohit, Deardorff and Stern’s study of India’s unilateral trade/domestic policy reforms in the 1990s. Our model does not incorporate many of the rigidities/features of the Indian economy. Nevertheless, our model can perform quite well at simulating, if not forecasting, actual changes in sectoral output and exports
The deep determinants of economic development in China—a provincial perspective

Abstract There is a significant body of literature arguing that institutional quality is the key for long run economic growth and development. While the majority of these studies are based on cross-country growth regressions, we focus on the institution-economic growth nexus within a particular country, namely China. China is often regarded as an exception by having achieved miraculous growth for more than three decades despite relatively low institutional quality. Nonetheless, our findings suggest that at the provincial level, institutional quality played in fact an important role for the economic success of a province in China, even more important than geography and integration. However, when simultaneously examining the relationship between institutions, human capital, and economic development, we find that human capital ‘trumps’ everything else; however institutional quality has a highly significant indirect effect on provincial per capita income by improving human capital. We employ, among others, instrumental variable estimation techniques to address endogeneity problems.
Dividend policy on controlling and non-controlling shareholders: case in Indonesia

The purpose of this study is to examine dividend policy on both the controlling and non-controlling shareholders based on assumptions according to theories of life cycle, and free cash flow.The sample for this study is 241 listed firm in Indonesia Stock Exchange during the period from 2010 to 2015. This study divides the sample based on quartiles and analyzes it by conducting logistic regression with significant rate at 0.05. This study provides the evidences that: (1) firms as dividend payers tend not distribute their dividend for controlling shareholders and non-controlling shareholders while the composition for both shareholders are almost equal; (2) firms as dividend payers also have tendency not to distribute dividend on controlling shareholders when this shareholders have largest percentage of ownership; and (3) firms as dividend payers tend not distribute dividend on non-controlling shareholders while they have lowest retained earnings.The findings imply that life cycle theory and free cash flow theory can explain the behavior of dividending policy on controlling shareholders and non-controlling shareholders depend on their circumstances.The study uses alternative measurement for non-controlling shareholders as this variable together with controlling shareholders are moderating the other independent variables for testing the model of dividend policy.
Corporate networks in post-war Britain: Do finance–industry relationships matter for corporate borrowing?

Abstract The relationship between interlocking directorates and corporate finance patterns is a widely-researched aspect of the literature on national financial systems. This literature often considers the United Kingdom to be analogous to the United States, without directly investigating the nature and impact of finance–industry relationships. Based on a hand-collected data set covering eight benchmark years between 1950 and 2010, the authors start filling this gap by combining historical narratives, social network analysis, and regression analysis. They investigate whether finance–industry relations affect corporate borrowing patterns differently across time periods. The authors find that network-embedding had an impact on corporate borrowing from the 1950s to 1970s, but not thereafter. They also find that network structure and its function do not always evolve in parallel, highlighting limitations of purely structural approaches to understanding the link between corporate networks and firm behaviour and the importance of the historical idiosyncrasies of each country case.
The Effect of Generalized Trust on Cost Stickiness: Cross-Country Evidence

We investigate the impact of an informal social attribute on cost behavior. More specifically, we examine the effect of generalized trust (trust in others) on cost stickiness. Using a large international sample from 44 countries, we find that generalized trust significantly increases cost stickiness. Important rationales for this result are that managers in more trusting societies are more optimistic as well as committed to stable, long-term employment relationships. This study makes a significant contribution in understanding cost stickiness differences across the globe. Our results further complement prior research which has found, to the contrary, that trust and cost stickiness are negatively associated at the local level. Hence, our study corroborates the importance of distinguishing between local social capital and global generalized trust concerning their effect on economic outcomes.
Empowerment vs. meritocracy discourses in Indonesian public universities: The case of female leaders

ABSTRACT This paper examines the tension between meritocracy and empowerment discourses in Indonesian public universities and its relationship with gender-related leadership representation. The recent emergence of five female rectors signals a change that allows women to undertake leadership roles. We argue that there are two contradictory discourses (i.e., empowerment and meritocracy), which are concurrently visible pertaining to university leadership. The discourse of empowerment promotes gender equity and women’s participation in decision making processes in universities in ways that highlight the historically progressive political agenda of empowerment in Indonesian society. In contrast, the discourse of meritocracy refers to achievement on the basis of individual merit, such as ability and talent. This contradiction is explored through interview data that illuminates the changing conditions of leadership representation in the Indonesian university context. This article makes three contributions to the literature. Firstly, it adds to an underresearched area in higher education in Indonesia. Secondly, it provides a different perspective and analysis of the relationship between gender and higher education by considering both local and international culture. Thirdly, the article offers an argument about the corrosive effect of meritocracy in any university, irrespective of geographical location and local culture.
Improvement of the European thermodynamic database NUCLEA in the frame of EU-funded experiments

Modelling of corium behaviour during a severe accident requires knowledge of the phases present at equilibrium for a given corium composition, temperature and pressure. The thermodynamic database NUCLEA in combination with a Gibbs Energy minimizer is theEuropean reference tool to achieve this goal. Within SARNET, this database has beenimproved thanks to the analysis of bibliographical data and to EU0funded experimentsperformed within the SARNET network, PLINIUS as well as the ISTC CORPHAD and EVAN projects. To assess the uncertainty range associated with Energy Dispersive X-ray analyses, a round robin exercise has been launched in which a UO2-containing coriumconcrete interaction sample from VULCANO has been analyzed by three European laboratories with satisfactorily small differences.
Emotional Intelligence at Work

What do love, happiness, fear, affection, hate, shame, disgust, surprise, sadness, elation and anger have in common? These are emotions that directly affect your day-to-day life. For long, it has been believed that success at the workplace depends on your level of intelligence or intelligence quotient (IQ) as reflected in your academic achievements, exams passed, marks obtained, and so on. In other words, your intellectual credentials are: doing well in school, holding an engineering degree or even an advanced computer degree, obtaining high scores in an IQ test. All these are instances of intelligence of the academic variety. But how smart are you outside the classroom, faced with life’s difficult moments? Here, you need a different kind of resourcefulness. You need, what is called, emotional intelligence or emotional quotient (EQ), which is a different way of being smart.