Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The timing of initial public offerings – non-numerical model based on qualitative trends

The objective of this study is to develop a qualitative model supporting chief financial officers (CFOs) while considering the timing of initial public offerings (IPOs) under conditions of underdeveloped capital markets, where decision making is often made under information shortage. A lack of adequate statistical data in connection with turbulently changing environment suggests that additional research is needed to develop new IPO timing models based not only on statistical analyses. We used a qualitative research approach based on trends, which are increasing, constant or decreasing. Firstly, we identified key variables influencing IPO timing, which have sufficient support in the relevant IPO academic literature, e.g. GDP growth rates, level of compliance, stock market returns, etc. Next, a qualitative model working with 9 variables was developed. The result is represented by 19 scenarios and their qualitative solutions. The transitional graph represents all possible transitions among the 19 scenarios. The main message of the findings presented is what scenarios can occur and what actions might be implemented by CFOs in order to increase the chances of IPO success. We believe that our findings provide valuable implications for local issuers, investment bankers, stock exchanges and macroeconomic policy makers.
A Longitudinal Study of the Role of Trust During Change

The objective of the study was to explore factors that impact on trust relationships in a sample of South African organisations. A survey on trust was administered to a convenience sample of 484 respondents in the public and private economic sectors in South Africa. Parametric and non-parametric analyses were used to examine differences in trust between economic sectors and sample periods. Public sector participants differed from private sector employees in their levels of trust, compared to those in other sectors. Specifically, measures on the dimensions of change and organisational trust were significantly lower than expected. Senior employees or those at higher job levels experienced trust more positively overtime. Higher trust levels were apparent between colleagues and between employees and their immediate managers than between employees and top management.
Banking Efficiency in Lebanon: An Empirical Investigation

Problem statement: The main goal behind this study is to identify whether banks are working at full efficiency or not and spot the changes in efficiency for banks operating in Lebanon after 2007 financial crisis. Approach: This study was conducted to examine the technical efficiency of 40 banks operating in Lebanon over the two sub-periods 2002-2006 and 2006-2009 using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Results: The results from DEA show that the extent of technical efficiency varies across the banks. Citibank, HSBC, BBAC, IBL and FBL are found to be working at fully technical efficiency, while RBA, HBA, BCN, SGBL, BLA and SLCB are found to be prominently inefficient. Technical efficiency is the highest in large banks and lowest in small banks. Conclusion: After 2007 financial crisis, foreign banks have suffered more with technical efficiency decreasing in foreign banks, while local banks had a significant increase in technical efficiency. Small and medium banks are found to be working at increasing returns to scale, while large banks are working at decreasing returns to scale.
Liquidity Commonality and Pricing in UK Equities

We investigate the pricing of systematic liquidity risk in UK equities using a large sample of daily data. Employing four alternative measures of liquidity we first find strong evidence of commonality in liquidity across stocks. We apply asymptotic principal component analysis (PCA) on the sample of stocks to extract market or systematic liquidity factors. Previous research on systematic liquidity risk, estimated using PCA, is focused on the US, which has very different market structures to the UK. Our pricing results indicate that systematic liquidity risk is positively priced in the cross-section of stocks, specifically for the quoted spread liquidity measure. These findings around the pricing of systematic liquidity risk are not affected by the level of individual stock liquidity as a risk characteristic. However, counter-intuitively, we find that the latter is negatively priced in the cross-section of stocks, confirming earlier research.
Retrograde accretion and merging supermassive black holes

We investigate whether a circumbinary gas disc can coalesce a supermassive black hole binary system in the centre of a galaxy. This is known to be problematic for a prograde disc. We show that in contrast, interaction with a retrograde circumbinary disc is considerably more effective in shrinking the binary because there are no orbital resonances. The binary directly absorbs negative angular momentum from the circumbinary disc by capturing gas into a disc around the secondary black hole, or discs around both holes if the binary mass ratio is close to unity. In many cases the binary orbit becomes eccentric, shortening the pericentre distance as the eccentricity grows. In all cases the binary coalesces once it has absorbed the angular momentum of a gas mass comparable to that of the secondary black hole. Importantly, this conclusion is unaffected even if the gas inflow rate through the disc is formally super-Eddington for either hole. The coalescence time-scale is therefore always ∼ M2/M. where M 2 is the secondary black hole mass and M the inflow rate through the circumbinary disc.
METHOD TO DETERMINE THE NUCLIDE INVENTORY OF LOW-ACTIVITY WASTE OF THE RBMK-1500 REACTOR

Results of experimental and modelling evaluation of scaling factors for difcult-to-measure radionuclides in the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (INPP) waste are of primary importance in solving the decommissioning problems. The peculiarities of experimental measurements with radiochemical preparation of investigated INPP samples, the analysis of performed alpha, beta, and gamma spectrometric measurements, the theoretical evaluation and estimation of scaling factors, and nally a simplied method of determining the nuclide inventory for very-low-activity waste are presented in this work.
Clinically and Radiological isolated syndrome (MS risk)

The easy and wide availability of brain MRI in the last decades has led to its increasing use in evaluation of a variety of neurological symptoms. Given its widespread use, it is common to detect some incidental indings in patients undergoing brain MRI for unrelated medical indications, such as head trauma or headache. The most common of these incidental abnormalities are white matter lesions that based on their appearance, location, and distribution are consistent with demyelination or MS (multiple sclerosis) but are not associated with any clinical symptoms suggesting MS [1]. Diagnosis of MS is based on demonstrating dissemination in space and time on MRI and excluding other neurological disorders that can clinically and radiologically mimic MS [2]. MRI criteria for MS are based on the presence of focal lesions in the white and /or gray matter of the CNS, which are considered typical for this condition in terms of distribution, morphology, evolution, and signal abnormalities on conventional MRI sequences (T2weighted, FLAIR, preand post-contrast T1-weighted scans) [3]. According to the 2017 revision of McDonald criteria, including two major changes, irst is the early diagnosis of MS in patients with CIS with dissemination in space and +ve OCBs, without waiting for dissemination in time, second is, symptomatic or asymptomatic MRI lesions (except those in the optic nerve) can be considered as dissemination in space or time [4]. Incidental MR imaging indings resembling MS without typical MS symptoms are termed RIS, it was introduced in 2009 by Okuda to categorize incidental WM lesions Abstract
In vitro growth of sweet potato fed with potassium phosphite - doi: 10.4025/actasciagron.v34i1.10810

The main objective of this work was to verify the effect of the substitution of phosphate by its related compound phosphite on the in vitro growth of sweet potato nodal segments. Segments from a previous culture were incubated in MS media with the following combinations of phosphate:phosphite: Control (100 / 0%); T1 (87.5 / 12.5%); T2 (75 / 25%); T3 (50 / 50%) and T4 (0 / 100%) in a 5 x 5 factorial arrangement, with five treatments (Control, T1, T2, T3 and T4) and five evaluation periods (7, 14, 21, 28 and 35 days). The design was completely random, with three replicates of two explants per period. The evaluations were made weekly by counting the number of shoots and the length and dry weight of shoots and roots. Increasing the phosphite concentration decreased all attributes measured, including growth velocity, length and dry weight. These results indicate that phosphite cannot be used as substituted of phosphate in sweet potato tissue cultures.
Climate Change Knowledge and Awareness Creation in Relation to the Media among Senior High Students in Birim Central Municipal, Ghana.

Climate change has become one of the major Environmental problems facing the world today and the media has been central in making public the distressing evidence of a wide range of its implications on Agriculture, Ecosystems and health. Climate change knowledge and awareness creation are essential for successful adaptation and mitigation. The present study was conducted in the Birim Central Municipal, Ghana, and 400 Senior High Students were randomly selected from five schools. Both closed and open-ended questionnaire was used to assess students’ knowledge on climate and their participation in climate change awareness creation.The results revealed that, despite the flourishing media environment Senior High Students in Birim Central Municipal have low climate change knowledge level. Also, there was no statistically significant difference in the level of climate change knowledge with respect to gender, age and the main source of information about climate change. Again, it was found that Senior High School students’ involvement in climate change awareness creation is low, and there is a positive relationship between students knowledge level and awareness creation. Implications of the findings on educational curricula, policies and research have been discussed.
Discrimination between workers of Acromyrmex subterraneus molestans from monogynous and polygynous colonies

Ensaios comportamentais foram conduzidos com individuos de colonias monoginicas e poliginicas de Acromyrmex subterraneus molestans a fim de avaliar a habilidade discriminatoria de suas operarias. Estes bioensaios mostraram que esta subespecie nao e capaz de discriminar entre nao companheiras e companheiras de ninho. Entretanto, companheiras de mesma colonia discriminam operarias pertencentes a outra subespecie, Ac. subterraneus subterraneus. Nesta situacao, nao houve diferenca na resposta de operarias oriundas de colonias monoginicas e poliginicas. Similaridades ou diferencas no perfil quimico de ambas as subespecies podem explicar a ausencia ou presenca de agressividade entre operarias. O perfil quimico de colonias de mesma subespecie foi muito similar entre si e muito distinto entre subespecies. O numero de rainhas nao influenciou a composicao quimica cuticular das operarias e nem o seu comportamento discriminatorio.
Improving the Performance of CBIR on Islamic Women Apparels Using Normalized PHOG

The designs of Islamic women apparels is dynamically changing, which can be shown by emerging of online shops selling clothing with fast updates of newest models. Traditionally, buying the clothes online can be done by querying the keywords to the retrieval system. The approach has a drawback that the keywords cannot describe the clothes designs precisely. Therefore, a searching based on content–known as content-based image retrieval (CBIR ) –is required. One of the features used in CBIR is the shape. This article presents a new normalization approach to the Pyramid Histogram of Oriented Gradients (PHOG) as a mean for shape feature extraction of women Islamic clothing in a retrieval system. We refer to the proposed approach as normalized PHOG (NPHOG). The Euclidean distance measured the similarity of the clothing. The performance of the system was evaluated by using 340 clothing images, comprised of four clothing categories, 85 images for each category: blouse-pants, long dress, outerwear, and tunic. The recall and precision parameters measured the retrieval performance; the Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG) and PHOG were the methods for comparison. The experiments showed that NPHOG improved the HOG and PHOG performance in three clothing categories.
Market participation of smallholder maize farmers in the upper west region of Ghana

This study investigated farmer characteristics, private assets, public assets and transaction cost variables influencing the probability and intensity of participating in the market by smallholder maize farmers in the Upper West Region of Ghana. The Household Commercialisation Index was used to estimate the level of market participation and the Double Hurdle Model was used to estimate the factors influencing both market participation and intensity of participation. The results indicated that about twenty-four percent of maize is sold in the region within a production year which implies low commercialisation index. Specific farmer characteristics, private assets, public assets and transaction cost variables significantly influenced the probability and intensity of market participation behaviour in the region. The study concludes that maize is produced as a staple for household consumption. The study recommends that government through the Ministry of Food and Agriculture should institute productivity enhancing measures to increase the productivity of maize as well as establish rural finance schemes to address the credit needs of smallholders. Key words: Household commercialisation index, double hurdle model, market participation, maize, smallholder farmers, upper west region, Ghana.
An Exploration of Supervisory Satisfaction as a Mediator Variable in Organisational Citizenship Behaviour

This paper seeks to explore the mediating construct of supervisory satisfaction on the relationship between leadership styles and organisational citizenship behaviour in companies across Malaysia. While there have been past research that investigated the relationship between leadership styles and citizenship behaviour, until now, there is very little research investigating the mediating effects of supervisory satisfaction on such relationship especially in the Malaysian context. Data was collected from 280 respondents that represent major industries such as services, manufacturing, mining and construction. SmartPLS was used to test the proposed framework. The results show that the transformational leadership style has significant positive relationship with subordinatesi¯ organisational citizenship behaviour. This result found that supervisory satisfaction mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and citizenship behaviour. The conclusion of the research emphasizes the effects of the research for future research and practice.
The Long-Run Effect of Outward Foreign Direct Investment and Macroeconomic Variables on Domestic Investment: Evidence from World Major Economies Using Panel ARDL Approach

In this paper, we investigate relationship between outward foreign direct investment flows and domestic investment among thirteen world major economies over time period 1970-2013. From 1970-2013, had outward foreign direct investment flows along with macroeconomic control variables had significant long-term effects on domestic investment among world major economies. Following the latest dynamic techniques of panel data analysis of pooled mean group and dynamic fixed effect estimators proposed by Pesaran et al. (1999), we find strong evidence of positive impact of outward foreign direct investment flows on domestic investment. Pooled mean group estimator results show that one dollar increase in foreign direct investment outflows result in increase of Domestic investment by 0.49 dollars. Dynamic fixed effect result findings also strongly support positive impact of foreign direct investment outflows on domestic investment . i.e. (one dollar increase in foreign direct investment outflows result in increase of domestic investment by 0.87 dollars). Our result findings confirm that foreign direct investment outflows along with macroeconomic control variables have positive and significant impact on domestic investment. Dumitrescu Hurlin Panel Causality test results show that there is pairwise causality running between the variables. Keywords: Outward FDI; Domestic investment; Cointegration; Panel Data
The Virtual Self: Avatar and Individual Determinants of Mood

Given the relevance of self-related process in avatar-based virtual environments, examining the role of avatar-self representation was intended for better understanding of its function in media users’ experiences. The current study examined the differences between actual-and ideal-self avatars in terms of impact on mood, as measured through positive and negative affect. Undergraduate students ( N = 81) participated in an avatar-based gaming experiment, which assessed pre-and post-game play affect. Overall, participants experienced a statistically significant decrease in negative affect after game play, t (80) = 4.18, p < . 001, d =
Multiresolution Source Method for the Analysis of Planar Microstrip Structures

This paper presents an integral equation analysis of microstrip circuits and antennas. This approach uses an excitation on the plane of the circuit in conjunction with compactly-supported wavelets trial functions. This Multiresolution Source Method (MRSM) generates a sparse linear system. The application of the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) allows a significant reduction of the central processing unit time and the memory storage. Results for a step discontinuity, integrated filters and patch antennas are presented to show the efficiency of the method.
THE INFLUENCE OF DEMENTIA CAREGIVER MENTAL HEALTH ON QUALITY OF CARE IN ARGENTINA

THE INFLUENCE OF DEMENTIA CAREGIVER MENTAL HEALTH ON QUALITY OF CARE IN ARGENTINA By Alejandra Morlett Paredes, B.A. A Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2014 Major Director: Paul B. Perrin Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology This study examined the connections between cognitive functioning in individuals with dementia and caregiver burden, burden and mental health, mental health and quality of care. One hundred two dementia caregivers from San Lucas, Argentina completed questionnaires assessing these constructs. Caregiver burden, depression, anxiety, and satisfaction with life explained 18.8% of the variance in quality of care – respect and 14.7% of the variance in quality of care – provide. An SEM with generally adequate fit indices uncovered that cognitive functioning in individuals with dementia was inversely associated with caregiver burden, caregiver burden was inversely associated with mental health, and mental health was positively associated with quality of care. These findings suggest that the cascade may also be reversed with the development and use of dementia caregiver interventions that improve caregiver burden and mental health and as a result, the quality of care for individuals with dementia.
Why It Is Bad to Be Kind. Educating Refugees to Life in the Welfare State: A Case Study from Norway

In Norway, as elsewhere in Europe, the aim of policy-making is to ensure the integration of immigrants into mainstream society. This paper focuses on one of the most concrete and practical measures Norwegian authorities have ever taken in this field, namely the recent establishment of a compulsory two-year introduction programme for newly arrived refugees. This is an activationstyle programme involving both a financial and an educational component, where out-payments depend on participation in a full-time training programme aimed at enabling participants to become self-sufficient members of Norwegian society. In the first part of the paper the establishment of this policy is located within a broader context of integration crisis, before it moves on to look more specifically at the background for the programme and the problems it is set up to address. The latter part of the paper addresses the implementation of the introduction programmes in one medium-sized Norwegian city. The local discourse here is one of before and after, where the failings of previous policies have been overcome and new and productive practices have been established. Connections can be made between public and political discourses on integration crisis and the local discourses of implementation through the notion of kindness and the idea that kindness has hampered the integration efforts of the state. Herein lies a story not only about views on immigrants and diversity, but also about how immigration has challenged the Norwegian welfare state model.
Social Competence in Children with Cochlear Implants and Normal Hearing: Longitudinal Trajectories and Interrater Differences

of a thesis at the University of Miami. Thesis supervised by Professor Alexandra Quittner. No. of pages in text. (63) Children with hearing loss, who have substantial delays in language development, are likely to experience deficits in various aspects of social competence, such as social skills, emotional awareness, and interpersonal problem-solving. To date, few studies have measured and compared social competence in children with cochlear implants (CIs) and their hearing peers, and no studies have compared their longitudinal outcomes. Using parent, teacher, and child reports from two standardized measures, this study compared social competence in children with CIs and their hearing peers, followed by an analysis of discrepancies among these respondents over five years. Further, a latent variable of social competence was created and then modeled over time using data from parents. Several hypotheses were tested: 1) Children with CIs would have significant delays in social competence compared to their hearing peers on all measures and across all raters; 2) Fewer deficits in social competence would be observed in children implanted before vs. after age two; 3) A greater magnitude of rater discrepancies would be found between parents and teachers in the CI vs. hearing groups; 4) A greater magnitude of rater discrepancies would be found between parents and children in the CI vs. hearing groups; and 5) Using longitudinal modeling, children with CIs would display worse social competence at 48 months, but exhibit more improvement in social skills than their hearing peers over time. Results showed that children with CIs were rated as significantly delayed compared to hearing peers at all time points, according to both parent and child report. However, teachers reported no differences between the CI and hearing groups. Longitudinal modeling of the parent data revealed that children with CIs were significantly delayed compared to their hearing peers at 48, 72, and 96 months postimplantation and demonstrated minimal evidence of catch-up over a 5-year period. The magnitude of interrater discrepancies did not vary as a function of hearing status, but correlations among raters were low. These results indicated that children with CIs continue to experience delays in social competence even 8 years following implantation and, to date, no interventions exist to address these deficits.