Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Earnings management and corporate governance: the Ghanaian experience

Though a number of studies have been carried out in corporate governance and also on companies listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange, this paper is the first in the country that considers the relationship of Corporate Governance (CG) in relation to Earnings Management (EM). It increases the understanding of EM and its relationship with CG of listed firms. The study used the cash flow approach and the modified Jones model in estimating total accruals discretionary accruals (measure of earnings management). It also employed a panel regression analysis to determine the relationship between earnings management and corporate governance of 14 listed companies from 2002 to 2006. The results indicate an increasing trend of EM for the listed companies. It also shows a significant relationship between some CG attributes such as board size and board independence and EM.
Principles underlying the Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT) and its uses

The Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT) is designed to be objective (so it can be administered by a lay native speaker of the language) and equivalent across languages (to allow for a comparison between the languages of a given patient as well as across patients from different institutions). It has been used not only with aphasia but also with any condition that results in language impairment (Alzheimer's, autism, cerebellar lesions, developmental language disorders, mild cognitive impairment, motor neuron disease, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, vascular dementia, etc.). It has also been used for research purposes on non-brain-damaged unilingual and bilingual populations. By means of its 32 tasks, it assesses comprehension and production of implicit linguistic competence and metalinguistic knowledge (which provide indications for apposite rehabilitation strategies). Versions of the BAT are available for free download at www.mcgill. ca/linguistics/research/bat/.
Can Results Obtained with Commercially Available MicroScan Microdilution Panels Serve as an Indicator of β-Lactamase Production among Escherichia coli andKlebsiella Isolates with Hidden Resistance to ExpandedSpectrum Cephalosporins and Aztreonam?

ABSTRACT Among clinical isolates of Escherichia coli,Klebsiella pneumoniae, and Klebsiella oxytoca, there is an ever-increasing prevalence of β-lactamases that may confer resistance to newer β-lactam antibiotics that is not detectable by conventional procedures. Therefore, 75 isolates of these species producing well-characterized β-lactamases were studied using two MicroScan conventional microdilution panels, Gram Negative Urine MIC 7 (NU7) and Gram Negative MIC Plus 2 (N+2), to determine if results could be utilized to provide an accurate indication of β-lactamase production in the absence of frank resistance to expanded-spectrum cephalosporins and aztreonam. The enzymes studied included Bush groups 1 (AmpC), 2b (TEM-1, TEM-2, and SHV-1), 2be (extended spectrum β-lactamases [ESBLs] and K1), and 2br, alone and in various combinations. In tests with E. coli and K. pneumoniae and the NU7 panel, cefpodoxime MICs of ≥2 μg/ml were obtained only for isolates producing ESBLs or AmpC β-lactamases. Cefoxitin MICs of >16 μg/ml were obtained for all strains producing AmpC β-lactamase and only 1 of 33 strains producing ESBLs. For the N+2 panel, ceftazidime MICs of ≥4 μg/ml correctly identified 90% of ESBL producers and 100% of AmpC producers among isolates of E. coli andK. pneumoniae. Cefotetan MICs of ≥ 8 μg/ml were obtained for seven of eight producers of AmpC β-lactamase and no ESBL producers. For tests performed with either panel and isolates of K. oxytoca, MICs of ceftazidime, cefotaxime, and ceftizoxime were elevated for strains producing ESBLs, while ceftriaxone and aztreonam MICs separated low-level K1 from high-level K1 producers within this species. These results suggest that microdilution panels can be used by clinical laboratories as an indicator of certain β-lactamases that may produce hidden but clinically significant resistance among isolates of E. coli, K. pneumoniae, andK. oxytoca. Although it may not always be possible to differentiate between strains that produce ESBLs and those that produce AmpC, this differentiation is not critical since therapeutic options for patients infected with such organisms are similarly limited.
Quantitative Easing: Entrance and Exit Strategies

Apparently, it can happen here. On December 16, 2008, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), in an effort to fight what was shaping up to be the worst recession since 1937, reduced the federal funds rate to nearly zero.1 From then on, with all of its conventional ammunition spent, the Federal Reserve was squarely in the brave new world of quantitative easing. Chairman Ben Bernanke tried to call the Fed? s new policies credit easing, probably to differentiate them from what the Bank of Japan had done earlier in the decade, but the label did not stick.
Hyperlipidaemia in renal transplantation—risk factor for long‐term graft outcome

Abstract. The role of hyperlipidaemia for the outcome of renal transplantation was evaluated in a prospective study involving 151 patients. Graft losses were associated with more pronounced pre‐transplant lipid abnormalities. An increased risk of graft loss during the first two post‐transplant years was found in patients with marked pre‐transplant hypercholestero‐laemia (≥6.9 mmol L‐1, P= 0.014; relative risk 2.2). Hypercholesterolaemia ≥6.9mmol L‐1 at 6 months after transplantation, present in 41/115 patients, was associated with a lower GFR (P= 0.007) and more pronounced albuminuria (P= 0.009) at 2 years. In patients with graft dysfunction (serum creatinine >160μmol L‐1) at 2 years, more pronounced lipid abnormalities before and at 6 months after transplantation were found. Between 6 months and 2 years, total and LDL cholesterol did not change significantly, but HDL cholesterol decreased (P= 0.03). In conclusion, hyperlipidaemia is also a risk factor for the long‐term outcome in renal transplantation. Further investigations are needed to determine whether graft losses and late graft failure can be prevented or ameliorated by treating hyperlipidaemia in renal transplantation.
The Effects of Foreign Resource Inflow and Savings on the Economic Growth of South Africa: A VAR Analysis

This study adopts both the Vector Autoregressive (VAR) analysis and the Impulse-Response Function (IRF) to examine the importance and the effects of domestic savings and foreign direct investment (FDI) on South African economy, using data spanning over the period 1975 to 2011. While the level of domestic savings is quite low, compared to other emerging economies, South Africa has also been struggling to attract inflow of foreign resources. The form of savings in South Africa is different from the western way of savings; hence the low levels of domestic savings. The variables considered were tested for stationarity and they were all stationary before proceeding to test for cointegration and then estimate and VAR. The cointegration test revealed that there was at least one cointegrating equation; which signifies that there exists a long-run relationship among the variables. The results from the VAR Granger test of causality depicted that domestic savings lead economic growth, while economic growth leads investment. This result of the IRF also showed that while increased domestic savings is important to improve the level of economic growth in South Africa, it also leads FDI. This means that the economic environment needs to be suitable in order to attract foreign investments. The results obtained are reliable and stable as the model passes a battery of diagnostic tests. The study proposes some recommendations for policy.
Automatic Welding Seam Tracking and Identification

In the automatic welding process on mid/thick plates, the precision of the welding position has an important effect on welding quality, which mainly relies on the identification of the welding seam. However, due to some possible disturbances in complex unstructured welding environments, e.g., strong arc lights, welding splashes, thermal-induced deformations, etc., it is a great challenge to identify the welding seam. In this paper, we propose a robust automatic welding seam identification and tracking method by utilizing structured-light vision. First, after the preprocessing of the welding image, the gray distribution of the laser stripe is tracked and the profile of the welding seam is searched in a small area by using the Kalman filter, with the aim to avoid some disturbances. Second, in order to extract the welding seam profile, a series of centroids obtained by scanning the columns in the rectangular window are fitted using the least-squares method. Third, a character string method is proposed to qualitatively describe the welding seam profile, which might consist of different segment and junction relationship elements. And then, these character strings acquired from the object image are matched with those from the model, so that the position of the welding seam can be determined. Finally, the advantages of the new algorithm are testified and compared through several experiments.
Decision-Directed Channel Estimation and High I/Q Imbalance Compensation in OFDM Receivers

Direct-conversion architectures suffer from the mismatch between the in-phase (I) and the quadrature-phase (Q) branches, commonly called I/Q imbalance. Even low I/Q imbalances imply poor performance of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm that uses both training and data symbols in a decision-directed fashion to jointly estimate the channel and compensate for high receiver I/Q imbalance. Simulation results show that our method can compensate for high I/Q imbalance values and also estimate a frequency selective channel.
Minimum Wage Impacts on Youth Employment Transitions, 1993-1999

The longitudinal nature of the Master File of the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) for the period 1993-9, enables comparing transitions from employment to non-employment for individuals affected by minimum wage changes with appropriate comparison groups not affected by minimum wages. This is based on the large number (24) of minimum wage changes that have occurred across the different provincial jurisdictions in Canada over the 1990s. The results indicate that the minimum wage increases have increased the transition from employment to non-employment of employed low-wage youths, who are at-risk of being affected by a minimum wage increase, by around 6 percentage points (ranging from 4 to 8 percentage points). These disemployment effects in turn imply `minimum wage' elasticities of about -0.4 (ranging from -0.3 to -0.5).
Characterization of a US Sheep Scrapie Isolate with Short Incubation Time

Scrapie is a naturally occurring fatal neurodegenerative disease of sheep and goats. Susceptibility to the disease is partly dependent upon the genetic makeup of the host. In a previous study it was shown that sheep intracerebrally inoculated with US scrapie inoculum (No. 13–7) developed terminal disease within an average of 19 months. We have since produced an inoculum, No. x124 from pooled brains of US-origin sheep scrapie, that results in incubations nearly threefold shorter. The present study documents clinicopathologic findings and the distribution of abnormal prion proteins (PrPSc) by immunohistochemical (IHC) and Western blot (WB) techniques, in tissues of sheep inoculated with No. x124. All inoculated sheep developed clinical disease and were euthanatized within an average of 7.7 months postinoculation (MPI). Sheep that had valine/valine or alamine/valine at codon 136 of prion protein (PRNP) gene developed the disease faster and were euthanatized at an average of 4.3 and 5.6 MPI, respectively. Also, the inoculum was able to induce disease in a short time (7 MPI) in a sheep that was relatively resistant (QR at codon 171) to scrapie. This indicates that inoculum No. x124 appears to induce scrapie in shorter time than inoculum No. 13–7, especially in sheep homozygous or heterozygous for valine at codon 136.
Confidence in Critical Care Nursing

The purpose of the study was to gain an understanding of the nursing phenomenon, confidence, from the experience of nurses in the nursing subculture of critical care. Leininger’s theory of cultural care diversity and universality guided this qualitative descriptive study. Questions derived from the sunrise model were used to elicit nurses’ perspectives about cultural and social structures that exist within the critical care nursing subculture and the influence that these factors have on confidence. Twenty-eight critical care nurses from a large Canadian healthcare organization participated in semistructured interviews about confidence. Five themes arose from the descriptions provided by the participants. The three themes, tenuously navigating initiation rituals, deliberately developing holistic supportive relationships, and assimilating clinical decision-making rules were identified as social and cultural factors related to confidence. The remaining two themes, preserving a sense of security despite barriers and accommodating to diverse challenges, were identified as environmental factors related to confidence. Practice and research implications within the culture of critical care nursing are discussed in relation to each of the themes.
Assessing the Use of Mobile Health Technology by Patients: An Observational Study in Primary Care Clinics

Background There is significant potential for mobile health technology to improve health outcomes for patients with chronic diseases. However, there is a need for further development of mobile health technology that would help to improve the health of lower-income communities. Objective The study objective was to assess mobile phone and app usage among a culturally diverse patient population, and to determine whether patients would be interested in using mobile health technology to help manage their chronic diseases. Methods An observational study was conducted with patients of the Internal Medicine resident primary care clinics of Los Angeles County and University of Southern California (LAC+USC) Medical Center. Self-reported information regarding demographics, current mobile phone usage, current mobile health app and social media usage, barriers to using mobile phones or mobile health apps, and interest in using a mobile health app was collected. Results Ninety-one percent of patients owned a mobile phone, with 76% (169/223) of these reporting having a mobile phone with Internet capability. Fifty-seven percent of subjects used mobile apps on their mobile phones, and 32% (41/130) of these used mobile apps related to their health. Eighty-six percent (207/241) of respondents voiced interest in using a mobile app to improve their health, and 40% (88/221) stated they would use such an app daily. Patients stated they would find the mobile health app most useful for nutrition, exercise, and obtaining general information on medical conditions. Conclusions Despite the fact that the majority of our primary care patients were of lower socioeconomic status, they utilized mobile phones with Internet and mobile app capabilities to a great extent. There was substantial interest among our patients in using mobile health technology to both manage chronic disease and improve overall health. Given that cultural, educational, and socioeconomic disparities strongly correlate with higher rates of chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes and hypertension, access to culturally relevant mobile health tools may empower patients in these populations to improve health outcomes.
The Association between Corporate Boards, Audit Committees, and Management Earnings Forecasts: An Empirical Analysis

We study how corporate boards and audit committees are associated with voluntary financial disclosure practices, proxied here by management earnings forecasts. We find that in firms with more effective board and audit committee structures, managers are more likely to make or update an earnings forecast, and their forecast is less likely to be precise, it is more accurate, and it elicits a more favorable market response. Together, our empirical evidence is broadly consistent with the notion that effective corporate governance is associated with higher financial disclosure quality.
The Compleat Fish Wars with Changing Area for Fishery

Abstract In this article a discrete-time game model related with the bioresource management problem (fish catching) is considered. The center (referee) shares a reservoir between the competitors. The players (countries) which harvest the fish stock are the participants of this game. We assume that there is a migratory exchange between the regions of reservoir. We derive the Nash and cooperative equilibrium for infinite planning horizon. We investigate the cooperative incentive equilibrium in the case when the center punishes players for a deviation from cooperative equilibrium. The numerical modelling and the results comparison are given.
Cash versus Accrual Accounting Measures in Greek Municipalities: Proxies or Not for Decision-Making?

Cash figures still constitute the main basis for performance assessment and resource allocation decisions in the Greek public sector even though accrual accounting information is available. The scope of this paper is to compare accrual accounting and cash accounting figures in order to assess whether such a policy could be justified on the grounds of cash eventually reflecting a fair proxy of accrual measures. Our analysis is based on 370 municipality observations over the period 2002 to 2004. The empirical findings of our study show that approximately 70% of the accrual revenues (expenses) figures can be explained on the basis of cash based revenues (expenses) as well as specific municipality socio-economic factors. Our findings shed light on the long-lasting Greek public administration shortcomings that may have contributed to the public sector financial crisis that Greece is experiencing since the end of 2009.
An Evaluation of the Quality and Employability of Graduates of Nigeria Universities

The goal of this study was to conduct a comparative evaluation of how the public and private sector employers perceive the employability of graduates of Nigeria Universities. The study used the expost-facto research design model concentrating on longitudinal data covering the period 2000 – 2010. A research question was raised and one hypothesis was formulated. Samples were obtained from the major towns and cities in the South-South geo-political zone of Nigeria. The stratified purposive sample technique was used, a total of 1,480 respondents who were senior Staff of various organizations were selected for the study. The survey method was used involving structured questionnaire. The frequency and percentage statistics were deployed in the analysis of data and used to answer the research question while the ttest statistics was used to analyse the hypothesis. The study finds that both the public and private sector employers perceived and rated the employability and quality of graduates of Nigeria Universities as ranging between ‘average’ and ‘ high’ on the 20 indices of quality. The finding also shows that there are significant differences in the perception and rating of the quality and employability of the graduates by the public and private sectors. Whilst the private sector employers consider graduates of Nigeria Universities as high quality; the public sector employers rated the graduates as low quality.
Collusion and the Banking Structure of a Duopoly

The author shows that, in credit relationships, the choice of a lender may become a determinant of the extent of competition in downstream industries. In the presence of imperfect output markets and asymmetric information in financial markets, members of an industry may achieve a partial collusion in the output market by borrowing from the same bank. In an oligopoly, debt is procompetitive as it gives incentives to the borrowing firm to undertake an aggressive output strategy. As both firms borrow, the industry becomes more competitive and riskier. The firms' debt value is decreased. A common lender can better control these incentive effects and hence limit the extent of competition in the output market.
Is the Response of Output to Monetary Policy Asymmetric? Evidence from a Regime-Switching

This paper investigates regime switching in the response of U.S. output to a monetary policy action. We find substantial, statistically significant, time variation in this response that corresponds to “high response” and “low response” regimes. We then investigate whether the timing of the regime shifts are consistent with three particular manifestations of asymmetry by modeling the transition probabilities governing the switching process as functions of state variables. We find strong evidence that policy actions taken during recessions have larger effects than those taken during expansions. We find less evidence of asymmetry related to the direction or size of the policy action.
An Estimated Canadian DSGE Model with Nominal and Real Rigidities

We develop a dynamic, stochastic, general-equilibrium (DSGE) model due to Ireland (1997) and others and estimate it for the Canadian economy to analyse the real effects of monetary policy shocks. To generate high and persistent real effects, the model combines nominal frictions in the form of costly price adjustment with real rigidities modelled as convex costs of adjusting capital and-or employment. The structural parameters identifying transmission channels are estimated econometrically using a maximum-likelihood procedure with a Kalman filter. The estimated nominal and real rigidities impart substantial and persistent real effects following a monetary policy shock. Furthermore, the results suggest that the monetary authority has accommodated technology shocks and has successfully offset the real effects of money-demand shocks, by actively responding to these shocks.
Trading Mechanisms and Market Quality: Call Markets Versus Continuous Auction Markets

On July 29, 2002, the trading mechanism in the Taiwan Futures Exchange (TAIFEX) was switched from an exclusive call market to a continuous auction market. Based upon several proxies of market quality, in the present study, we set out to empirically examine whether this switch has resulted in any significant improvement in market quality within the TAIFEX. We find that while the quoted spreads, effective spreads, and price volatility are all smaller in the continuous auction market, the call auction market exhibits greater market depth and smaller pricing errors; the latter is also found to be more effective in resolving the problem of information asymmetry. Overall, the results of the present study suggest that the choice between call and continuous auction trading mechanisms essentially involves trade-offs between the bid-ask spread, market depth, price volatility, information asymmetry costs, and price efficiency.