Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The power of unit root tests against nonlinear local alternatives

This article extends the analysis of local power of unit root tests in a nonlinear direction by considering local nonlinear alternatives and tests built specifically against stationary nonlinear models. In particular, we focus on the popular test proposed by Kapetanios et al. (2003, Journal of Econometrics 112, 359–379) in comparison to the linear Dickey–Fuller test. To this end, we consider different adjustment schemes for deterministic terms. We provide asymptotic results which imply that the error variance has a severe impact on the behaviour of the tests in the nonlinear case; the reason for such behaviour is the interplay of non‐stationarity and nonlinearity. In particular, we show that nonlinearity of the data generating process can be asymptotically negligible when the error variance is moderate or large (compared to the ‘amount of nonlinearity’), rendering the linear test more powerful than the nonlinear one. Should however the error variance be small, the nonlinear test has better power against local alternatives. We illustrate this in an asymptotic framework of what we call persistent nonlinearity. The theoretical findings of this article explain previous results in the literature obtained by simulation. Furthermore, our own simulation results suggest that the user‐specified adjustment scheme for deterministic components (e.g. OLS, GLS, or recursive adjustment) has a much higher impact on the power of unit root tests than accounting for nonlinearity, at least under local (linear or nonlinear) alternatives.
Comparing the effects of introduced signal crayfish and native noble crayfish on the littoral invertebrate assemblages of boreal lakes

The introduced North American signal crayfish Pacifastacus leniusculus (Dana) has replaced the native noble crayfish (Astacus astacus) in many European freshwaters and can be considered a new component of these ecosystems. The 2 species are apparently similar in many respects, but their ecological equivalence is uncertain and has been little investigated, especially at the whole-lake scale. We compared the effects of the 2 species on the abundance, species richness, and composition of littoral macroinvertebrate assemblages in a set of small- and medium-sized boreal lakes, which included 8 lakes with noble crayfish, 8 lakes with signal crayfish, and 8 lakes without crayfish. We collected semiquantitative littoral macroinvertebrate samples with a kick net from 3 replicate sites in each lake. The abundance of invertebrates did not differ significantly among the 3 lake categories, but lakes with crayfish had lower species richness than lakes without crayfish. Mollusk taxa, in particular, were fewer in lakes with crayfish. Assemblage composition also differed between lakes with and without crayfish. However, macroinvertebrate species richness and composition did not differ between lakes with signal or noble crayfish, indicating that the 2 crayfish species are ecologically equivalent with respect to their effects on shallow, littoral invertebrate assemblages of boreal lakes.
Psychotherapeutic practitioners’ views of the efficacy of mindfulness for the treatment of obsessive compulsive disorder: A qualitative key informant analysis

Abstract Objectives: A substantial proportion of individuals affected by obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) are not experiencing adequate therapeutic outcomes from current standard psychotherapeutic treatments. Mindfulness has had a positive therapeutic impact on many symptoms associated with OCD. This study investigated the views of experienced psychotherapeutic practitioners concerning the potential efficacy of mindfulness as a therapeutic intervention for individuals with OCD. Method: Six psychotherapeutic professionals experienced in using mindfulness with individuals affected by OCD were interviewed. Data were subjected to thematic analysis. Results: Participants reported that engaging in mindfulness enabled people with OCD to experience an altered relationship with their symptoms and self. This new attitude, in conjunction with cognitive behavioural therapy, was perceived as helping individuals manage their OCD in an effective and healthy way. However, participants were unsure whether an exclusively mindfulness-based treatment would be effective. Conclusion: This study indicates the potential for mindfulness practice to constitute a valuable therapeutic resource in helping people manage their OCD experience. Implications for future research and practice are considered.
Beliefs, attitudes, and reflections of EFL pre-service teachers while exploring critical literacy theories to prepare and implement critical lessons

Foreign language teaching and learning is an issue of high relevance nowadays in Colombia. Unfortunately, language teaching has often been reduced to the mastery of language structures, disregarding the vast number of possibilities that language teaching provides to involve students in the discussion and analysis of issues that affect their everyday life. Shifting language teaching toward this goal, however, has to start in language teacher preparation programs. To gain a better understanding of the implication of this shift, this study explored the beliefs, attitudes, and reflections of three student-teachers, from a foreign language teaching program at a public university, towards the exploration of critical literacy theories, and the design and implementation of critical lessons. Data collected included audio-recordings of group discussions and individual interviews with the three participants, their reflections in different stages, lesson plans, and class observations of their lesson implementation. Results from this study suggest that exposing future EFL teachers to critical literacy approaches to language teaching can have different effects on their perspectives towards education and their teaching practice. Thus, their beliefs and attitudes towards Critical Literacy Theories can be continuously transformed as they face various situations in the exploration and implementation of these theories. Key words: pre-service EFL teachers, Critical Literacies, Language teacher preparation programs, Teaching practicum.
Effect of GA3 and ethrel on growth and flowering of African marigold cv. Pusa Narangi Gainda

An experiment was conducted at department of horticulture CSAUA&T, Kanpur with nine treatments viz., four concentration each of GA3 (25, 50,100 and 200 ppm) and Ethrel (100,200,300 and 400 ppm) and with control (distilled water) in R.B. D. with three replication on African marigold cv. - Pusa Narangi Gainda to study their effect on regulation of growth and flowering during winter season (2006–2007). The result of experiment revealed that GA3 at 50,100 and 200 ppm significantly increased the plant height, number of main branches, basal diameter of plant, number of flower per plant, weight and size of flower and flower yield per plant over control. GA3 at all concentration caused early flowering and long duration of flowering, while ethrel at all concentration reduced plant height,increased number of main branches, basal diameter of stem and caused late flowering than control. Ethrel at 100 and 200 ppm increased the number of flower per plant, diameter of flower, fresh weight of flower and flower yield per plant than control. Among all treatments GA3 at 200 ppm significantly superior and registered maximum flower yield per plant (639.18 gm) with longest duration of flowering (87.18 days) as compared to control (406.13 gm and 80.26 days) respectively.
BENCHMARK OF MACHINE LEARNING METHODS FOR CLASSIFICATION OF A SENTINEL-2 IMAGE

Abstract. Thanks to mainly ESA and USGS, a large bulk of free images of the Earth is readily available nowadays. One of the main goals of remote sensing is to label images according to a set of semantic categories, i.e. image classification. This is a very challenging issue since land cover of a specific class may present a large spatial and spectral variability and objects may appear at different scales and orientations. In this study, we report the results of benchmarking 9 machine learning algorithms tested for accuracy and speed in training and classification of land-cover classes in a Sentinel-2 dataset. The following machine learning methods (MLM) have been tested: linear discriminant analysis, k-nearest neighbour, random forests, support vector machines, multi layered perceptron, multi layered perceptron ensemble, ctree, boosting, logarithmic regression. The validation is carried out using a control dataset which consists of an independent classification in 11 land-cover classes of an area about 60 km2, obtained by manual visual interpretation of high resolution images (20 cm ground sampling distance) by experts. In this study five out of the eleven classes are used since the others have too few samples (pixels) for testing and validating subsets. The classes used are the following: (i) urban (ii) sowable areas (iii) water (iv) tree plantations (v) grasslands. Validation is carried out using three different approaches: (i) using pixels from the training dataset (train), (ii) using pixels from the training dataset and applying cross-validation with the k-fold method (kfold) and (iii) using all pixels from the control dataset. Five accuracy indices are calculated for the comparison between the values predicted with each model and control values over three sets of data: the training dataset (train), the whole control dataset (full) and with k-fold cross-validation (kfold) with ten folds. Results from validation of predictions of the whole dataset (full) show the random forests method with the highest values; kappa index ranging from 0.55 to 0.42 respectively with the most and least number pixels for training. The two neural networks (multi layered perceptron and its ensemble) and the support vector machines - with default radial basis function kernel - methods follow closely with comparable performance.
Molecular characterisation of a mycorrhizal inoculant that enhances Trifolium alexandrium resistance under water stress conditions

The occurrence of drought is an economically important problem in Morocco. The use of mycorrhizal technology offers a possibility to overcome this problem. A mycorrhizal fungal inoculum “Aoufous Complex” isolated in Morocco was shown to enhance Trifolium alexandrium resistance in water deficit situation. The efficiency of this inoculum was confirmed in this study. In order to identify this inoculum, specific primers were used to amplify the 18S subunit. The AluI RFLP typing of the PCR products revealed a single pattern showing no diversity. Phylogenetic analyses of seven sequences including other glomeromycetes allowed an unambiguous identification of the “Aoufous Complex” as Glomus mosseae strains.
BRAIN DRAIN – BRAIN GAIN: SLOVAK STUDENTS AT CZECH UNIVERSITIES

The Slovak Republic is experiencing a growing brain drain of elite secondary school students. Slovak human capital flows chiefly to Czech Higher Education Institutes (HEIs). The aim of this paper is to analyse who these Slovak students are to create a complete profile of Slovak students at Czech HEIs. We used a unique dataset based on the surveys EUROSTUDENT V and DOKTORANDI 2014 to explore differences between Czech and Slovak students, their financial situation and the functionality of the intergenerational transmission mechanism. We have found that Slovak students at Czech HEIs come from highly educated families and from the middle and higher class families significantly more often than Czech students at Czech HEIs or Slovak students at Slovak HEIs. Approximately 80% of them came from grammar schools. Slovak students also often have better language skills. We have discovered that Slovak students at Czech HEIs enjoy certain social benefits, slightly more often they have higher monthly income compared to Czech students, and they work slightly less often during their studies. Finally, according to our findings, Slovak doctoral students are often reluctant to return back to the Slovak Republic or to stay in the Czech Republic.
Family and Dispersed Ownership in Swedish Public Companies

This paper examines the relationship between corporate ownership structure and firm performance, approximated by Tobin’s Q. I distinguish between costs of private benefits of control, due to expropriation of minority shareholders, and agency costs, due to poor management. Data on 144 Swedish public companies observed over the years 1985 to 2000, are used in fixed firm-effects estimations. The results indicate that family control, per se, leads to slightly worse firm performance than a dispersed ownership structure with a professional manager in control. The agency costs associated with family control are larger than the costs of private benefits of control associated with professional managers and a dispersed ownership structure. It is argued that this is mainly caused by entrenchment of founder heirs, exhibiting poor management skills, which in turn leads to agency costs. Furthermore, if the family controls the CEO-position the negative effect on firm performance increases. The argument for this is that the CEO-position entrenches the owner even further, which amplifies the agency costs. This effect mainly stems from founder family controlled firms, where the agency costs are already high. Dual-class shares in combination with a CEOposition, further deteriorates firm performance. The owner is powerful enough to extract more private benefits, when his or her incentives to do so are greater. Since it is quite common for families to control the CEO-position, and the use of super-voting shares is widespread, family firms perform worse than firms with dispersed ownership. In particular, founder family firms have the worst firm performance. This is partly explained by the fact that these owners have, in many cases, inherited their position, thus lacking the right skills, but also because of the prevalent control of the CEO-position, and use of super-voting shares.
Impact of financial crisis on earnings management in listed companies of Portugal and UK

Firm’s financial information is essential to stakeholders’ decision making. Although not always financial statements show the firm’s real image. This study examines listed firms from Portugal and UK. Firms have different purposes to manipulate earnings: some strive for influencing investors’ perception about a particular company, some try to provide better position for gaining finance from credit institutions or paying less tax to tax authorities. Usually, this behaviour is induced when firms have financial problems. Consequently, the study also aims to see the impact of financial crisis on earnings management. We try to answer question how does extent of firms’ involvement in earnings management change when the world undergoes financial crisis. Furthermore, we also compare two countries with different legal forces in terms of quality of accounting to see the main differences. We used a panel data methodology to analyse financial data from 2004 till 2014 of listed firms from Portugal and UK. Beneish (1999) model was applied to categorize manipulator and non-manipulator firms. Analysing accounting information according to Beneish’s ratios, findings suggest that financial crisis had certain impact on firms’ tendency to manipulate financial results in UK although it is not statistically significant. Moreover, besides the differences between Portugal and UK, results contradict the common view of legal systems’ quality, as UK firms tend to apply more accounting techniques for manipulation than the Portuguese ones. Our main results also confirm that some UK firms manipulate ratios of receivables’ days, asset quality index, depreciation index, leverage, sales and general administrative expenses whereas Portuguese firms manipulate only receivables’ days. Finally, we also find that the main reason to manipulate results is not to influence the cost of obtained funds neither to minimize tax burden since net profit does not explain the ratios used in the Beneish model. Results suggest that the main concern to listed firms manipulate results is to influence financial investors perception.
Green Approach for In-Situ Growth of CdS Nanorods in Low Band Gap Polymer Network for Hybrid Solar Cell Applications

In-situ growth of CdS nanorods (NRs) has been demonstrated via solvothermal, in a low band gap polymer, poly [[4,8-bis[(2-ethylhexyl)oxy] benzo [1,2-b:4,5-b’] dithiophene-2,6-diyl] [3-fluoro-2-[(2-ethylhexyl) carbonyl] thieno [3,4-b] thiophenediyl]] (PTB7). It is a high yielding, green approach as it removes use of volatile and hazardous chemicals such as pyridine as ligand which are conventionally used to synthesize precursors of CdS (NRs). Moreover the solvothermal process is a zero emission process being a close vessel synthesis and hence no material leaching into the atmosphere during the synthesis. The PTB7:CdS nanocomposite has been characterized by SEM, XRD, FTIR, UV-visible spectroscopy techniques. The photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy study of PTB7 with CdS NRs has shown significant PL quenching by the incorporation of CdS NRs in PTB7; this shows that CdS NRs are efficient electron acceptors with the PTB7. The PTB7:CdS is used as active layer in the fabrication of hybrid solar cells (HSC) as donor-acceptor combination in the bulk heterojunction (BHJ) geometry. The HSCs fabricated using this active layer without any additional supporting fullerene based electron acceptor has given power conversion efficiency of above 1%.
Transmission through an arbitrarily shaped aperture in a conducting plane separating air and a chiral medium

The analysis of chiral materials has been an important subject in computational electromagnetics. In this paper, the method of moments technique is used to solve the problem of transmission through an arbitrarily shaped aperture separating air and a chiral medium. The aperture is in an infinite PEC (perfect electric conductor) plane. The excitation is assumed to be a plane wave in air. The equivalence principle is used to replace the aperture with a conducting surface with an equivalent magnetic current on each side of it. By enforcing the continuity of the tangential components of the total electric and magnetic fields across the aperture, coupled integral equations are obtained. The aperture has been modeled by triangular patches. The equivalent magnetic currents are approximated by linear combinations of expansion functions. The mixed potential formulation for a homogeneous chiral medium is used to obtain the electric and the magnetic fields produced by these expansion functions. The coefficients of these expansion functions are obtained by using the method of moments to solve the coupled integral equations.
Two uncommon cases of Pneumococcal pyomyositis

We report two new cases of pneumococcal pyomyositis managed at an inter-regional referral centre for bone and joint infections in the south of France. One of our patients had heterozygous sickle-cell disease, and the second had no apparent immunodeficiency. The pneumococcal pyomyositis was localized primarily to the psoas muscle and was complicated by hip arthroplasty infection in one of our cases. In the other case, it was localized to the abductor muscle, which has not been reported previously.
Methyl halides in surface seawater and marine boundary layer of the northwest Pacific

[1] The partial pressures of methyl halides (CH3X; X = Cl, Br, or I) and of CHClF2 (HCFC-22), which are all volatile organic compounds (VOCs), were measured in the air of the marine boundary layer (pVOCair) and in surface seawater (pVOCwater) during a cruise from the subarctic to subtropical regions of the northwest Pacific in summer of 2008. In the northern transition water (TWN) with high biological activity, high levels of the three CH3Xs in surface seawater were frequently observed, probably owing to their enhanced production by phytoplankton. Supersaturation of CH3Br was only present in TWN water, with a saturation anomaly (SCH3Br) of 0.95 [SCH3X = (pCH3Xwater − pCH3Xair)/pCH3Xair]. The highest saturation anomalies for CH3Cl (SCH3Cl = 1.6) and CH3I (SCH3I = 91) were found in the southern subtropical water (STS) with low biological production south of the subtropical front. We found that the molar concentrations of CH3Cl (CCH3Cl) and CH3I (CCH3I) sharply increased with increasing sea surface temperature (SST) in the subtropical waters. The maximum CCH3Cl (144 pmol l−1) was present in STS water at SST = 30°C and is 1.5 times the value extrapolated from the previously reported relationship between CCH3Cl and SST. Photochemical production might have contributed to the production of CH3Cl and CH3I in STS water.
Influence of workers' training programmes on conflict reduction in industrial organizations in Nigeria

This study investigated the influence of workers’ training programmes on conflict reduction among industrial workers in Nigeria. This is for the purpose of ascertaining the relevance of workers’ training programmes, as an alternative approach to human capital formation and conflict reduction among industrial workers in Nigeria. A total of 416 respondents were selected for the study using stratified sampling technique to reflect the two strata of public and private organizations. Two sets of questionnaires, with five subscales, titled ‘Workers Training Programmes Scale (WTPS) and Conflict Reduction Scale (CRS)’ were used for data collection. All the hypothesized research questions were tested using Regression Analysis and t-test statistical methods at 0.05 alpha levels. The findings revealed that workers’ training programmes (taken together) had significantly influenced conflict reduction among industrial workers. It was also found that only three independent variables (computer skill training, labour relations skill training and interpersonal treatment skill training) have significantly influenced conflict reduction. However, it was found that management skill, conflict skill and communication skill training programmes were not as significant in influencing conflict reduction in work organization. Also, there was no significant difference in the level of both female and male workers’ participation in workers’ training programmes in both public and private organizations selected for the study. Based on the findings of this study, it is recommended that workers’ training programmes should be given priority by all establishments in order to forestall industrial peace for all levels of workers. Also, training needs of the organization as well as that of workers must be identified before making recommendations for training. This will possibly foster specialization and encourage technical-driven training in work organizations. Key words: Nigeria, workers, training programmes, conflict reduction, organizations.