Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Employment of Ecology Themes in Magazine Advertisements Directed to Children

Abstract The study described here was undertaken to assess the degree to which magazine advertisements depicted environmentally sound behavior on the part of children. Analyses were conducted on which environmental issues were emphasized and the extent to which large and small firms and companies in different industries utilized such advertisements. A content analysis permitted comparisons of the advertisements in 1987, 1997 and 2002. Various conclusions were reached regarding the extent and nature of the advertisements employed during both years.
Noise robust speech parameterization using multiresolution feature extraction

In this paper, we present a multiresolution-based feature extraction technique for speech recognition in adverse conditions. The proposed front-end algorithm uses mel cepstrum-based feature computation of subbands in order not to spread noise distortions over the entire feature space. Conventional full-band features are also augmented to the final feature vector which is fed to the recognition unit. Other novel features of the proposed front-end algorithm include emphasis of long-term spectral information combined with cepstral domain feature vector normalization and the use of the PCA transform, instead of DCT, to provide the final cepstral parameters. The proposed algorithm was experimentally evaluated in a connected digit recognition task under various noise conditions. The results obtained show that the new feature extraction algorithm improves word recognition accuracy by 41 % when compared to the performance of mel cepstrum front-end. A substantial increase in recognition accuracy was observed in all tested noise environments at all different SNRs. The good performance of the multiresolution front-end is not only due to the higher feature vector dimension, but the proposed algorithm clearly outperformed the mel cepstral front-end when the same number of HMM parameters were used in both systems. We also propose methods to reduce the computational complexity of the multiresolution front-end-based speech recognition system. Experimental results indicate the viability of the proposed techniques.
Quality of Lyme disease serology. Lessons from the German Proficiency Testing Program 1999-2001. A preliminary report.

OBJECTIVE External quality control surveys are an important tool in regulating the quality of infection serology in general and of borreliosis serology in particular. We report on the results of a Lyme disease proficiency testing program which is regularly organised twice a year by our institutions in close cooperation with the Institute of Standardisation in the Medical Laboratory (INSTAND). METHODS From 1999 to 2001, between 226 and 337 microbiological laboratories participated in each of the four surveys that have been held so far. In addition, between 23 and 30 laboratories from 13 other European countries also participated in each trial. In each survey two serum samples which had been unambiguously characterised by six reference laboratories to contain or not to contain antibodies against the Lyme disease spirochete were distributed in order to determine the accuracy of the diagnostic methods used in participating laboratories. The laboratories also reported interpretative statements of whether or not the test constellation suggested a possible borrelial infection and if an early or late phase of the specific antibody response was suspected. RESULTS Test results were found to be in part highly variable and clearly correlated with the manufacturers and the applied test methodology. It was also clear that IgM tests were more difficult to handle than were IgG tests. ELISA-testing was more reproducible and proved to be more sensitive and specific than IFA and IHA testing. Quantification of test results and reporting of specific immunoblot bands also showed high variability. Moreover, for some assays a high number of false positive and false negative test results were reported by the participants. CONCLUSION In view of our results further standardisation of Lyme disease serology is not just desirable but is urgently needed. Moreover, stronger criteria for the validation of available test kits must be applied.
High-level observability for effective high-level ATPG

This paper focuses on observability, one of the open issues in high-level test generation. Three different approximate metrics for taking observability into account during RT-level ATPG are presented. Metrics range from a really naive and optimistic one to more sophisticated analysis. Metrics are evaluated including them in the calculation of the fitness function used in a RT-level ATPG. Advantages and disadvantages are illustrated. Experimental results show how sharp observability metrics are crucial for making effective RT-level ATPG possible: test sequences generated at RT-level outperform commercial gate-level ATPGs on some ITC99 benchmark circuits.
Essays on hedge fund risk, return and incentives

There is no legal or regulatory of what constitutes a hedge fund, though the generally accepted definition is that they are unregulated pools that invest in any asset class as well as derivative securities and use long and short positions, as well as leverage where the manager is compensated with a proportion of the returns. Hedge funds are not new, Alfred Winslow Jones in generally credited with the formation of the first hedge fund in 1949, however the industry remained small and relatively unnoticed for many years. In 1990, there were just 610 hedge funds managing approximately $39bn of capital, however by the end of 2007 the industry had grown to over 10,000 funds managing almost $2trn of capital. The credit crisis of 2008 which has caused hedge funds to suffer both investment losses and investor redemption means that as of the end of 2008 the industry has contracted with over 1,000 funds closing and the capital being reduced to $1.5btrn.
Colliders and brane vector phenomenology

Brane world oscillations manifest themselves as massive vector gauge fields. Their coupling to the standard model is deduced using the method of nonlinear realizations of the spontaneously broken higher dimensional space-time symmetries. Brane vectors are stable and weakly interacting and therefore escape particle detectors unnoticed. LEP and Tevatron data on the production of a single photon in conjunction with missing energy are used to delineate experimentally excluded regions of brane vector parameter space. The additional region of parameter space accessible to the LHC as well as a future lepton linear collider is also determined by means of this process.
The contingent effects of differentiation and integration on corporate entrepreneurship

This paper develops a contingency view regarding the effects of structural differentiation and integration on levels of corporate entrepreneurship. Integrating notions of benefits and costs resulting from integration with structural contingency theory, we argue that the joint effects of structural differentiation and integration on corporate entrepreneurship levels are moderated by organizational size and environmental dynamism. Our findings from a time-separated sample demonstrate that in smaller organizations and more dynamic environments, the positive effects of integration on the structural differentiation-corporate entrepreneurship relationship strongly diminish. As such, with this research we begin to identify contingencies that influence the corporate entrepreneurship levels observed among firms striving to balance the needs for structural differentiation and integration.
Age at injury and long-term behavior problems after traumatic brain injury in young children.

OBJECTIVE This study examined the effects of age at injury on the persistence of behavior problems and social skill deficits in young children with complicated mild to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). METHOD A concurrent cohort/prospective research design was used with repeated assessments of children with TBI (n = 82) or Orthopedic Injury (OI) (n = 114). Parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist, the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functions, and the Preschool and Kindergarten Behavior Scales or the Home and Community Social and Behavior Scales shortly after injury to assess preinjury functioning, and at an extended follow-up an average of 38 months postinjury. Generalized linear modeling was used to examine the relationship of age at injury to the maintenance of behavior problems, and logistic regression was used to examine the persistence of clinically significant behavior problems. RESULTS At the extended follow-up, severe TBI was associated with significantly greater anxiety problems relative to the Group OI. With increasing time since injury, children who sustained a severe TBI at an earlier age had significantly higher levels of parent-reported symptoms of ADHD and anxiety than children who were older at injury. CONCLUSIONS Findings suggest that longer-term treatment for behavior problems may be needed after severe TBI, particularly for those injured at an earlier age.
Source estimates for MEG/EEG visual evoked responses constrained by multiple, retinotopically‐mapped stimulus locations

Studying the human visual system with high temporal resolution is a significant challenge due to the limitations of the available, noninvasive measurement tools. MEG and EEG provide the millisecond temporal resolution necessary for answering questions about intracortical communication involved in visual processing, but source estimation is ill‐posed and unreliable when multiple; simultaneously active areas are located close together. To address this problem, we have developed a retinotopy‐constrained source estimation method to calculate the time courses of activation in multiple visual areas. Source estimation was disambiguated by: (1) fixing MEG/EEG generator locations and orientations based on fMRI retinotopy and surface tessellations constructed from high‐resolution MRI images; and (2) solving for many visual field locations simultaneously in MEG/EEG responses, assuming source current amplitudes to be constant or varying smoothly across the visual field. Because of these constraints on the solutions, estimated source waveforms become less sensitive to sensor noise or random errors in the specification of the retinotopic dipole models. We demonstrate the feasibility of this method and discuss future applications such as studying the timing of attentional modulation in individual visual areas. Hum Brain Mapp, 2009. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Disclosure Quality and Capital Investment

We examine whether disclosure quality affects the link between a firm’s cash flow or asset values and its capital investment. We use a unique setting to examine this issue: a sudden 50% decrease in oil prices in 1986. This setting allows us to examine the effect of disclosure quality immediately prior to an unexpected, exogenous increase in a firm’s capital constraint on the firm’s capital investment immediately following the shock. In contrast to prior research, which examines the association between the level of disclosure and the level of a firm financing attribute (e.g., cost of public equity capital), we examine how the level of disclosure affects the change in firm investment. We find that high quality disclosure mitigates the effect of the oil price shock on investment. In addition, firms that are more capital constrained get a larger benefit from better disclosure, and high disclosure firms have a smaller reduction in long-term external capital following the price shock.
Exercise prescription for a patient 3 months after hip fracture.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Most patients with hip fracture do not return to prefracture functional status 1 year after surgery. The literature describing interventions, however, does not use classic overload and specificity principles. The purpose of this case report is to describe the use of resistance training to improve functional outcomes in a patient following hip fracture. CASE DESCRIPTION The patient was a 68-year-old woman who had a comminuted intertrochanteric fracture of the left hip 3 months previously. She used a cane for ambulation, and her walking was limited. The patient received 16 sessions of lower-extremity strengthening exercises, aerobic training on a stationary bicycle, functional training supervised by a physical therapist, and a home stretching program. OUTCOME The patient's isometric muscle force for involved hip extension, hip abduction, and knee extension improved by 86%, 138%, and 33%, respectively; walking endurance increased by 22.5%; balance improved by 400%; balance confidence increased by 41%; and self-reported ability to perform lower-extremity functional activities increased by 20%. DISCUSSION The authors believe that some patients can perform comprehensive exercise programs after hip fracture and that properly designed programs can affect patient outcomes beyond observed impairments.
Equitable Coloring of Trees

Abstract A graph is equitably k -colorable if its vertices can be partitioned into k independent sets of as near equal sizes as possible. Regarding a non-null tree T as a bipartite graph T ( X , Y ), we show that T is equitably k -colorable if and only if (i) k ≥ 2 when | | X | − | Y | | ≤ 1; (ii) k ≥ max{3, ⌈(| T | + 1)/(α( T − N [ v ]) + 2)⌉} when | | X | − | Y | | > 1. In case (ii), v is an arbitrary vertex of maximum degree in T and the number α( T − N [ v ]) denotes the independence number of the subgraph of T obtained by deleting v and all its adjacent vertices.
Cation-specific structural accommodation within a catalytic RNA.

Metal ions facilitate the folding of the hairpin ribozyme but do not participate directly in catalysis. The metal complex cobalt(III) hexaammine supports folding and activity of the ribozyme and also mediates specific internucleotide photocrosslinks, several of which retain catalytic ability. These crosslinks imply that the active core structure organized by [Co(NH3)6]3+ is different from that organized by Mg2+ and that revealed in the crystal structure [Rupert, P. B. , and Ferre-D'Amare, A. R. (2001) Nature 410, 780-786] (1). Residues U+2 and C+3 of the substrate, in particular, adopt different conformations in [Co(NH3)6]3+. U+2 is bulged out of loop A and stacked on residue G36, whereas the nucleotide at position +3 is stacked on G8, a nucleobase crucial for catalysis. Cleavage kinetics performed with +2 variants and a C+3 U variant correlate with the crosslinking observations. Variants that decreased cleavage rates in magnesium up to 70-fold showed only subtle decreases or even increases in observed rates when assayed in [Co(NH3)6]3+. Here, we propose a model of the [Co(NH3)6]3+-mediated catalytic core generated by MC-SYM that is consistent with these data.
The Private Provision of Higher Education in Ethiopia: Growth, Challenges, and Prospects*

Since the overthrow of the Derg in 1991, the government of Ethiopia has embarked on a number of reforms of the higher education sector. These reforms have been driven by the need to address geographical and structural imbalances in the higher education system, the increasingly sophisticated demand of both the public and expanding private sector for high quality employees, and the changing context of international economic competition. The key elements of these reforms are: expanding access; addressing the geographical distribution of access; improving quality; and encouraging competition in the provision of higher education by allowing private provision. Since these reforms were enacted, the private higher education sector has grown significantly, providing both enhanced access to higher education and diversification of the higher education curricula. The emergence of a pluralistic higher education sector presents threats and opportunities and has, as a consequence, generated considerable public policy debate in the country. However, there has been very little analysis of the sector to serve as a basis for decision-making. This paper seeks to provide information on the private higher education sector in Ethiopia by examining the general characteristics of the private provision sector and its contribution to expanding access and on the creation of new knowledge through research. It also examines the likely impact of plural providers on
Incentive-Compatible Information Sharing by Dual-Channel Retailers

We consider a market in which dual-channel retailers sell competitive products to consumers. Each retailer has its own information about the market demand (i.e., asymmetric information). In this setting, we present a game-theoretic model to investigate the value of incentive-compatible information sharing. Our results show that information sharing is not always beneficial for each retailer all the time; both the online and the traditional retailer can be better off under certain conditions; and the value of information sharing for each retailer increases as products are more compatible with online marketing. Furthermore, we also analyze the incentives for information distortion in information sharing. We find that both the online and the traditional retailer have an incentive to overstate their forecasts while sharing information. The information distortion may make the shared information useless or even stop the retailers from participating in information sharing. We thus propose an effective mechanism to eliminate information distortion, so that both the online and the traditional retailer can share their forecast information truthfully.
Forecasting the Nominal Brent Oil Price with VARs-One Model Fits All?

We carry out an ex post assessment of popular models used to forecast oil prices and propose a host of alternative VAR models based on traditional global macroeconomic and oil market aggregates. While the exact specification of VAR models for nominal oil price prediction is still open to debate, the bias and underprediction in futures and random walk forecasts are larger across all horizons in relation to a large set of VAR specifications. The VAR forecasts generally have the smallest average forecast errors and the highest accuracy, with most specifications outperforming futures and random walk forecasts for horizons up to two years. This calls for caution in reliance on futures or the random walk for forecasting, particularly for near term predictions. Despite the overall strength of VAR models, we highlight some performance instability, with small alterations in specifications, subsamples or lag lengths providing widely different forecasts at times. Combining futures, random walk and VAR models for forecasting have merit for medium term horizons.
Privatization of agricultural extension services in Nigeria: a fallacy?

Aims: This review reveals the weaknesses and inherent inconsistencies of private funded agricultural extension services and posits that this model cannot be practical in a Third World country like Nigeria. Discussion: It brought to the fore the basics of publicly and privately funded agricultural extension services. It alluded to the fact that some private bodies have done reasonably well in providing agricultural extension services to rural farmers in Nigeria. Proponents of privatized agricultural extension are of the opinion that public-financed agricultural extension is bedeviled with the many weaknesses associated with government bureaucracies. On the contrary, supporters of public-funded agricultural extension maintained that 95% of extension work world over is done by one government department or the other and that privatized extension would not be visible in Nigeria, a country that has over 90% of its farmers operating at subsistence level and who are too poor to pay for extension services cannot but be serviced for free as a matter of policy. Furthermore, the paper frowned at the policy of the First world who wants subsidies removed for the agricultural enterprise in all ramifications and in the contrary heavily subsidized their own agricultural sector, these subsidies have hurt African milk, livestock and grains export. Again, it called for a blend of public private agricultural extension services; this it Research Article Adetayo and Eunice; AJAEES, Article no. AJAEES.2013. 002 15 maintained would be compatible and most practical for the Third World milieu. Recommendation: Finally, it recommended that instead of an outright privatization of the sector, a middle ground should be pursued and this will be most desirable.
Lust for rust : wreck divers and the management of underwater cultural heritage

ii Publications arising from this research . iv Publication . iv Conference presentations . iv Acknowledgements . v Abbreviations & acronyms . xv Chapter 1 – Introduction . 1 1.1 Study background . 1 1.2 Research aim and objectives . 1 1.3 Justification of the research . 1 1.4 Relationship of the researcher to the study . 4 1.5 Thesis structure and outline . 5 Chapter 2 – Underwater cultural heritage and visitor behaviour. 9 2.
Cognitive-Behavioural Problem Solving in the Treatment of Patients who Repeatedly Attempt Suicide a Controlled Trial

In a controlled trial, 20 patients at high risk of repeated suicide attempts were randomly allocated to either cognitive-behavioural problem solving or a ‘treatment-as-usual’ control condition. The group practising problem solving improved significantly more than controls on ratings of depression, hopelessness, suicidal ideation and target problems at the end of treatment and at follow-up of up to one year, and there was evidence of an effect on the rates of repetition over the six months after treatment.
Analysis and Synthesis of Load Forecasting Data for Renewable Integration Studies: Preprint

As renewable energy constitutes greater portions of the generation fleet, the importance of modeling uncertainty as part of integration studies also increases. In pursuit of optimal system operations, it is important to capture not only the definitive behavior of power plants, but also the risks associated with systemwide interactions. This research examines the dependence of load forecast errors on external predictor variables such as temperature, day type, and time of day. The analysis was utilized to create statistically relevant instances of sequential load forecasts with only a time series of historic, measured load available. The creation of such load forecasts relies on Bayesian techniques for informing and updating the model, thus providing a basis for networked and adaptive load forecast models in future operational applications.
Faktor-Faktor yang Mempengaruhi Struktur Modal

The objective of this research is to test and analyze whether pro-fitability, firm size, assets growth, dividend, assets structure, and business risk influence to firm capital structure. Listed manufacturing companies at Indonesian Stock Exchange from period 2005 to 2007 were examined. Forty three companies met the criteria and were analyzed descriptive statistic and multiple regression were performed to test the hypotheses. The conclusion shows that assets growth, profitability, and assets structure influence firm capital structure of manufacturing companies. Firm size, dividend, and business risk do not influence firm capital structure