Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Financing: A Review of Literature

There is no doubt that access to finance is of crucial importance for the ongoing and sustainable growth and profitability of small and medium enterprises sector (SMEs) through its role in facilitating the creation of new businesses and nurturing the innovation process as well as promoting the growth and development of existing businesses, which in turn, boost national economic growth. The main motive of this paper is that SMEs significantly differ from large firms in terms of their financial decisions and behaviour. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to review the literature on the various financing sources of SMEs taking into account the effects of both SME characteristics and those of the owner–managers on SME financial behaviour.
Detecting changes in forced climate attractors with Wasserstein distance

Abstract. The climate system can been described by a dynamical system and its associated attractor. The dynamics of this attractor depends on the external forcings that influence the climate. Such forcings can affect the mean values or variances, but regions of the attractor that are seldom visited can also be affected. It is an important challenge to measure how the climate attractor responds to different forcings. Currently, the Euclidean distance or similar measures like the Mahalanobis distance have been favored to measure discrepancies between two climatic situations. Those distances do not have a natural building mechanism to take into account the attractor dynamics. In this paper, we argue that a Wasserstein distance, stemming from optimal transport theory, offers an efficient and practical way to discriminate between dynamical systems. After treating a toy example, we explore how the Wasserstein distance can be applied and interpreted to detect non-autonomous dynamics from a Lorenz system driven by seasonal cycles and a warming trend.
Economic Analysis of Residential, Commercial, and Industrial Uses of Water in Sri Lanka

Abstract The aim of this study is to provide an economic analysis of urban water use with a view to enhance the understanding of the factors influencing urban water demand and to estimate price elasticities of residential, commercial, and industrial water demands in Sri Lanka. Lack of research in the Sri Lanka context of this area and the need for understanding the price elasticity of demand for urban water for effective implementation of the new water-demand management policy formulated by the Government of Sri Lanka in early 2000 were important motivations for this study. Separate water-demand functions for each of the major sectors were estimated, using monthly time series for 60 months from January 1994 to December 1998. In general, the price is found to have a significant effect on water demand, and this effect is much higher for the industrial sector than for the residential and commercial sectors. In addition, real income, number of connections (population), and weather variables are found to be important determinants of urban water demand. Estimated price elasticities are -0.18, -0.17, and -1.34 for the residential, commercial, and industrial water demands, respectively. The study concludes that while the price will be an important tool in influencing demand, other measures such as public education and information/awareness will be necessary to achieve desired reductions in water consumption, especially in the less-responsive residential and commercial sectors.
Multiple-Doppler radar observations of vertical wind profile heterogeneity in convective boundary layers

The heterogeneity of the thermodynamic and kinematic state of the atmosphere has received increased appreciation in the last decade within the severe storms community, probably due in part to dense observations obtained from some recent field experiments as well as recent simulation studies demonstrating sensitivity of convective storms to small thermodynamic and wind shear perturbations. Weckwerth et al. (1996) showed that the thermodynamic variability observed among soundings within the boundary layer strongly depends on whether the sounding is launched through the updraft or downdraft of circulations induced by boundary layer convective overturning. Soundings launched through a boundary layer updraft depicted deeper, richer moist layers, implying less convective inhibition (CIN) and larger convective available potential energy (CAPE) than nearby soundings launched through a boundary layer downdraft, where lesser moisture concentrations and relatively shallow moist layers were indicated. Brooks et al. (1996) documented substantial thermodynamic heterogeneity revealed by soundings launched during the Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment (VORTEX). Markowski et al. (1998) also documented heterogeneity revealed by VORTEX soundings, but in the storm-relative helicity (SRH) values derived from the sounding wind profiles. It cannot be known to what degree the variability documented by Brooks et al. and Markowski et al. was due to mesoscale processes versus boundary layer convection. Work is currently underway to obtain a much more complete picture of the heterogeneity present in environments favorable for convective storms than can be gleaned from soundings alone. Our goal is to document the spatial and temporal variability of vertical wind profiles in convective boundary layers and to relate the variability to the organization of boundary layer convection. In this preprint, we present the research we have completed to date. What follows below are analyses derived from a ground-based mobile radar data set obtained during the International H2O Project (IHOP). An overview of these data and the wind synthesis methods is provided in the next section. Sections 3–5 contain examples of the time and space variability of hodographs and the vertical wind shear parameters derived from them. Some closing remarks are provided in section 6.
Do Family Firms Use Dividend Policy as a Governance Mechanism? Evidence from the Euro Zone

Manuscript Type. Empirical. Research Question/Issue. This study investigates whether family firms use dividend policy as a corporate governance mechanism to overcome agency problems between the controlling family and minority investors. We further account for deviations between ownership and control and consider the presence and identity of other large shareholders in family companies. Research Findings/Insights. Based on a sample of firms from nine Eurozone countries and using a panel data method, we find that family firms distribute higher and more stable dividends to alleviate expropriation concerns of minority investors. However, the higher dividend payments are mainly explained by family firms with no separation between the largest owner's voting and cash flow rights and those with non‐family second blockholders. Theoretical/Academic Implications. We contribute to the literature by shedding light on how the family business model affects companies’ dividend preferences. Our research also highlights the importance of taking into account the identity of large shareholders, especially in a context in which concentrated ownership structures are commonplace. The reported differences in dividend policies between family and non‐family firms help to clarify the variant performances of family businesses found in previous studies. Practitioner/Policy Implications. Family firms should regard dividend policy as a governance tool that allows them to attract prospective investors and enlarge their shareholder base. Simultaneously, minority investors can benefit from family firms’ dividend decisions. Our evidence also suggests that European policy makers should lay the necessary foundations to prevent controlling families from adopting ownership structures that serve their own personal interests.
Seismic activity of the Alpine-Carpathian-Bohemian Massif region with regard to geological and potential field data

The seismicity of the geological complexes of the northern part of the Eastern Alps, the Western Carpathians and the Bohemian Massif is investigated by means of new seismic stations and a review of earthquake catalogues available. Eleven earthquake catalogues are evaluated and checked for multiple entries, fake earthquakes and mis- takes. The final data set of earthquakes covers the time span from 1267 to 2004 and comprises 1968 earthquakes in total. The resulting epicentral map provides a very detailed idea of the seismicity of this region. An attempt at a seismo- tectonic interpretation of earthquakes based on the geological overview of the region is presented. Gravity and airborne magnetometry data in addition to seismic events are collected and cross-border maps are compiled and analysed in order to determine the spatial extent of these geological structures. The Linsser filtering technique is used to trace faults at two depth horizons - 4 and 8 km. Correlation between the epicentres of earthquakes and lineaments derived from gravity data is discussed for major historical earthquakes such as Neulengbach (1590) or Scheibbs (1867). This data set enables us to determine seismically active fault structures and to get an insight into the fault system interaction. The ability to assess the potentially seismically active vertical and horizontal extent of fault structures enables improved hazard assessments in future. The magnetometric map shows a belt of positive anomalies which reflects the presence of magnetized rocks between the Bohemian Massif and the Alpine-Carpathian zone.
Developmental changes in foraging-predator avoidance trade-offs in larval lumpfish Cyclopterus lumpus

The 5-12 wk old larvae increased time spent clinging to a surface in the presence of a predator, trading-off time available for foraging in order to reduce the probability of attack. Overall, fewer fish fed in the presence of a predator, and of the fish that did feed, 12 wk old lumpfish also showed a significant decrease in feeding rate (bites per minute swimming) in the presence of a predator. -from Authors
Curriculum Leadership as Mediated Action.

Abstract The conception of school leadership as role‐based, top‐down activity appropriate for only a few within the school is considered to be inappropriate for current reforms characteristic of many school systems. In contrast, school leadership is proposed as a phenomenon of the whole school context involving a dynamic interplay of school‐related factors and personal factors. An empirical study of teachers in a large educational system is reported here where levels of participation and factors influencing this participation are investigated. Three school‐related factors are isolated, namely organisational structures, social dynamics and images of curriculum, while only one set of personal factors could be established. These various factors, in terms of neo‐Vygotskian theory, are considered to be mediating factors for curriculum leadership in that there is a dialectical relationship between them and the curriculum leadership actions to which they pertain. It is hypothesised that the significance of these.
Effect of fruit thinning rate on yield and fruit quality of Zaghloul and Haiany date palms.

The effect of bunches and strands thinning on yield and fruit quality of Zaghloul and Haiany date palms was investigated during three successive seasons, 2009, 2010 and 2011. Fruit thinning was carried out by adjusting the number of bunches/palm to 5, 7 or 9 bunches. The nine bunches/palm, however, were especially thinned to 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 and 45 strands/bunch. The results of the present study indicated a significant negative correlation between bunch weight and bunch-number/palm and a positive one between the bunch weight and strand numbers/bunch. Reducing the strand-numbers/bunch to either 20 or 25 strands significantly decreased the bunch weight and yield/palm compared with the unthinned ones. A remarkable improvement on fruit quality was noticed, after the fruit thinning in comparison to the unthinning. Thinning either bunches or strands lead to a significant increase in the fruit weight, size and flesh percentage as compared to unthinning at all. Fruit thinning also positively improved the date palm fruit chemical properties. It is worth notable that, leaving 30 to 35 strands/bunch would result in a considerable yield characterized by high fruit quality of Zaghloul and Haiany date palms.
On properness and related properties of quasilinear systems on unbounded domains

The purpose of this paper is to provide tools for analyzing the compactness properties of sequences in Sobolev spaces, in particular if the sequence gets mapped onto a compact set by some nonlinear operator. Here, our focus lies on a very general class of nonlinear operators arising in quasilinear systems of partial differential equations of second order, in divergence form. Our approach, based on a suitable decomposition lemma, admits the discussion of problems with some inherent loss of compactness, for example due to a domain with infinite measure or a lower order term with critical growth. As an application, we obtain a characterization of properness which is considerably easier to verify than the definition. © 2011 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
Effects of Language and Music Learning on Pitch and Duration Perception: an Experimental Investigation

The ability to discriminate pitch and duration is fundamental for the processing of both music and spoken language. There is now consistent evidence that an intensive musical training may improve the ability to discriminate sound changes not only in musical but also in linguistic stimuli so that studying music may help learning foreign languages. By contrast, evidence for the reverse claim - a real transfer from linguistic experience to musical aptitude - is still lacking. This research investigates whether linguistic and musical competences can mutually influence each other especially as far as pitch and duration are concerned. Three groups of subjects (i.e. Naives, Musicians and Bilinguals) performed a discrimination task on sound stimuli that were either linguistic (Japanese words) or musical (isolated notes), and differed in either duration (tempi and syllable lengths) or pitch (tones and stresses). Results showed that besides regular music practice, also an early but not a late exposure to foreign languages strongly improves pitch but not duration discrimination.
THE INFLUENCE OF SPECTRAL WAVELENGTH ON THE QUALITY OF PANSHARPENED IMAGE SIMULATED USING HYPERSPECTRAL DATA

Abstract. Preservation of the spectral characteristics in multispectral images is important in the development of pansharpening methods because it affects the accuracy of subsequent applications, such as visual interpretation, land cover classification, and change detection. The combinations of the spectral properties (observation wavelength and width of spectral bands) of multispectral and panchromatic images affect both the spatial and spectral quality of pansharpened images. Therefore, the clarification of the relations between spectral bands and quality of pansharpened image is important for improving our understanding of pansharpening methods, and for developing better schemes for image fusion. This study investigated the influence of the spectral waveband of panchromatic images on the image quality of multispectral (MS) images using simulated images produced from hyperspectral data. Panchromatic images with different spectral band position and multispectral images with degraded spatial resolution were generated from airborne visible/infrared imaging spectrometer (AVIRIS) images and pansharpened using seven methods: additive wavelet intensity, additive wavelet principal component, generalized Laplacian pyramid with spectral distortion minimization, generalized intensity-huesaturation (GIHS) transform, GIHS adaptive, Gram–Schmidt spectral sharpening, and block-based synthetic variable ratio. The pansharpened near-infrared band was visually and statistically compared with the non-degraded image. Wide variation in quality was identified visually within and between methods depending on the spectral wavelengths of the panchromatic images. Quantitative evaluations using three frequently used indices, the correlation coefficient, erreur relative globale adimensionnelle de synthese (ERGAS), and the Q index, showed the individual behaviors of the pansharpening methods in terms of the spectral similarity in panchromatic and near-infrared, though all methods had similar qualities in the case with the lowest similarity. These findings are discussed in terms of the fundamentals and structures of the methods.
Nest-site characteristics and breeding success of three species of boreal songbirds in western Newfoundland, Canada

Delineating habitat requirements and preferences of species is essential for conservation planning. We studied nest habitat use and effects of microsite vegetation characteristics on breeding success of yellow-rumped warblers (Dendroica coronata (L., 1766)), blackpoll warblers (Dendroica striata (J.R. Forster, 1772)), and white- throated sparrows (Zonotrichia albicollis (Gmelin, 1789)) in an area with a low extent (<6% of available land) of forest harvest in northwestern Newfoundland. During 2004 and 2005, 99 nests were located and monitored, and the characteristics of nest sites measured. Vegetation at yellow-rumped and blackpoll warbler nest sites differed from ran- dom sites; however, within used sites, no vegetation characteristics were significantly associated with success. White- throated sparrow nest sites contained more downed wood and less ground vegetation than did random sites; however, successful nests were associated with different variables than those that distinguished them from random sites, includ- ing less canopy cover and less woody debris. Thus, whereas yellow-rumped and blackpoll warblers used specific nest- site characteristics and white-throated sparrows had higher nest success associated with certain characteristics, the nest characteristics these birds appeared to choose did not have demonstrable fitness benefits.
HISTOLOGICAL STUDY AND IMMUNOHISTOCHEMICAL EXPRESSION OF INDUCIBLE NITRIC OXIDE SYNTHASE AND VASCULAR ENDOTHELIAL GROWTH FACTOR IN SKIN WOUND HEALING AND ITS APPLICATION FOR FORENSIC WOUND AGE DETERMINATION

Wound healing examination is one of the most important aspects of the forensic pathology to estimate wound age. Chronological histopathological alterations characterizing the different phases of wound healing can be applied to wound age determination. Recently immunohistochemical studies are used for cutaneous wound age determination. Therefore, the aim of this work was to investigate the morphological changes as a result of ante-mortem (A/M) and post mortem (P/M) incisional skin wound and to evaluate the immunohistochemical expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) for wound age estimation. Thirty five adult male albino rats were divided into seven groups (five rats each). group1 (G1) five rats was used as a control to study the normal skin structure. Twenty five rats were wounded; one cm length and full thickness skin incision was made on the back of each animal. The animals were then divided into five equal groups. Skin biopsies were taken 6 hours (G2), 1 day (G3), 3 days (G4), 6 days (G5) and 10 days (G6) after incision. G7 represented P/M group. Skin biopsies were processed for histological and immunohistochemical studies. Morphometric and statistical analysis were done. Different degrees of wound healing signs (re-epithelization, granulation tissue formation, cellular infiltration and new collagen formation) could be detected with L/M examination of H&E and masson trichrome stained sections of A/M wounded groups. In P/M wound, no signs of wound healing could be detected. Immunohistochemical study of all groups revealed that iNOS expression markedly increased after 6 hours and peaked at 1day after incision. After 3days and 6days, it is still highly significant increased but less than 6hours after incision and peaked again after 10days to be nearly of its expression at 6hours after incision. iNOS was not expressed in P/M wound. VEGF expression gradually increased with increase post wounding time, it peaked at 10 days after incision but was not expressed in normal intact skin, 6 hours after incision and in P/M wound. There was highly significant correlation between optical density means of iNOS / VEGF and optical density means of VEGF/mean area % of collagen fibers. We can conclude that, time dependent expression of both iNOS, VEGF proteins and area % of collagen fibers suggested that they would be useful markers for the determination of cutaneous wound age assisted by histological changes during different stages of wound healing.
Bayesian Approach to Perceptual Edge Preservation in Computer Vision

This paper presents a novel approach for preserving perceptual edges representing boundaries of objects as perceived by human eyes. First, a subset of pixels (pixels of interest, POI) in an input image is selected by a pre-process of removing background and noise. One by one as a target pixel, each of POI is subjected to a Bayesian decision. This approach is characterized by iteratively employing a shape-variable mask to sample gradient orientations of pixels for measuring the directivity of a target pixel, the mask shape is updated after each iteration. We show that a converged mask covers pixels that best fit the orientation similarity with the target pixel, which in effect fulfills the similarity and proximity principles in Gestalt theory. Subsequently, a Bayesian rule is applied to the converged directivity to determine whether the target pixel belongs to a perceptual edge. Instead of using state-of-the-art edge detectors such as Canny detector [1], a pre-process combining Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) [2] and Difference of Gaussian (DoG) [3] is devised to select POI, wherein GMM is responsible for removing the background of an input image (first screening), whereas DoG for filtering noisy or false contours (second screening). Experimental results indicate that a great amount of computational load can be saved, in comparison with the use of Canny detector in our previous work [4]. Since the perceptual edges are useful for forming a complete object contour corresponding to the human visual perception, the results of this paper can be potentially cooperated with other more advanced object detection methods such as the deep learning-based SSD [5] to achieve the same effect as the human visual system in dealing with obscured or corrupted input images, whereby even if a target object is occluded by other objects or corrupted by rainy water, it can be still identified correctly, this feature should greatly enhance the operational safety of unmanned vehicles, unmanned aircraft and other autonomous systems.
Evaluating the Effectiveness of Using Peer-Dialogue Assessment (PDA) for Improving Pre-Service Teachers' Perceived Confidence and Competence to Teach Physical Education

Developing effective methods for improving student learning in higher education is a priority. Recent findings have shown that feedback on student work can effectively facilitate learning if students are engaged as active participants in the feedback cycle; where they seek, generate and use feedback in the form of dialogue. This novel study investigates the use of peer dialogue assessment as an assessment for learning tool used in an existing undergraduate physical education course. Our findings demonstrate that when thirty six undergraduate physical education students were provided with instruction and practice using peer dialogue assessment after consecutive teaching performances, they exhibit significant improvements in perceived teaching confidence and competence, and teaching self-efficacy. Process evaluation results implying thatembedding peer dialogue assessment in higher education courses may be a feasible approach for facilitating learning, and that students were satisfied with using peer dialogue as a feedback method for improving teaching practices.