Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Female mating preference functions predict sexual selection against hybrids between sibling species of cichlid fish

The evolutionary outcome of interspecific hybridization, i.e. collapse of species into a hybrid swarm, persistence or even divergence with reinforcement, depends on the balance between gene flow and selection against hybrids. If female mating preferences are open-ended but sign-inversed between species, they can theoretically be a source of such selection. Cichlid fish in African lakes have sustained high rates of speciation despite evidence for widespread hybridization, and sexual selection by female choice has been proposed as important in the origin and maintenance of species boundaries. However, it had never been tested whether hybridizing species have open-ended preference rules. Here we report the first experimental test using Pundamilia pundamilia, Pundamilia nyererei and their hybrids in three-way choice experiments. Hybrid males are phenotypically intermediate. Wild-caught females of both species have strong preferences for conspecific over heterospecific males. Their responses to F1 hybrid males are intermediate, but more similar to responses to conspecifics in one species and more similar to responses to heterospecifics in the other. We suggest that their mate choice mechanism may predispose haplochromine cichlids to maintain and perhaps undergo phenotypic diversification despite hybridization, and that species differences in female preference functions may predict the potential for adaptive trait transfer between hybridizing species.
Impact of financial liberalization and foreign bank entry on Islamic banking performance

Purpose - This paper aims to examine the impact of financial liberalization and foreign Islamic bank entry on the performance of domestic Islamic banks, and credit availability to the private sector. Design/methodology/approach - The authors use the weighted least squares method to estimate four models. These models are suggested by Lee. For this, the inverse of the number of domestic Islamic banks in each period is used to weight the observations in the regressions to correct for varying number of bank observations in each country. Findings - The results indicate that foreign Islamic banks, on average, follow aggressive financing in host countries and enjoy higher net profit margin. Banking sector returns play an important role in the entry decision and presence of foreign banks. Moreover, favorable macro-economic conditions play a supportive role while higher tax policies play a hostile role for the entry and presence of foreign Islamic banks. The recent financial crisis does not seem to affect the entry decision significantly. But the profitability of domestic Islamic banks has been seriously affected by the recent crisis. Also domestic tax policy and macro-economic environment play important roles in determining the domestic Islamic bank performance. Results also indicate that private sector credit availability seems to suffer because of higher tax and reserve rate. Practical implications - The authors' findings suggest that host Islamic economies should strive for an efficient capital market with supportive macro-economic environment, which in turn helps the local banking sector to develop and benefit from the foreign Islamic bank entry. Originality/value - This is the first paper to analyze the entry of foreign Islamic banks in the host countries with Islamic banking sector.
General Practitioners, Patients, and Care Givers Support the Use of a Telegeriatric Memory Disorder Consultation for Older Adults

Evidence has shown that diagnosis of dementia is reliable via video conference, but uptake of telehealth in this field has been slow. The aim of this paper was to consider the feasibility of implementing a telegeriatric memory disorder consultation as a standard clinical service and to assess stakeholder satisfaction with such a service. Method: The focus was on patient population located some distance from access to specialist services. General Practitioners (GPs) located in a remote area referred patients for a video consultation (VC) for cognitive assessment. A satisfaction survey was completed by referring GPs, patients or care givers, and the geriatrician. Results: Seven GPs agreed to participate in the pilot. Nine patients were referred for assessment, eight were diagnosed with dementia. GPs identified the specialist input as significant to patient care. Participants interacted with the specialist on a level that was comparable to a face-to-face assessment. Conclusion: It was clinically feasible to implement a telegeriatric memory disorder clinic. GPs, patients and their families living in a remote area found that a telegeriatric memory consultation was a highly satisfactory alternative to traveling to a major city for a memory assessment. Key Points: 1) GPs judged the diagnosis and recommendations by the specialist to be reliable and would recommend the service; 2) Rather than travel a long distance to see a specialist, attending the appointment via video conference is a suitable alternative for geriatric cognitive assessment.
Bank Lending Opportunities and Credit Standards

This article empirically tests the hypothesis that credit-screening standards can be first increasing and then decreasing in the quality of the bank's pool of potential borrowers, which in turn may vary through the business cycle or across different segments of the lending markets. A key implication is that banks with lending opportunities toward the middle of the quality spectrum can have loan portfolios that perform better than do the portfolios of banks with loan-origination opportunities that are either too weak or too strong. Using banks' volume of secondary-market loan sales as a proxy for the richness of lending opportunities, I find an inverse U-shaped relation between the performance of banks' loan portfolios and their activity in the loan sales market. The pattern deserves scrutiny for its policy implications, as many regulators hold the view that countercyclical variation in credit standards may have a destabilizing effect on business cycles.
Vertical Integration and Antitrust Policy

RECENT decisions suggest that the United States Supreme Court is beginning to look upon integration as illegal per se, under the antitrust laws. It may be presumed, in so far as this inference is valid, that the Court believes that integration necessarily reduces competition "unreasonably. "2 No sharp distinction is made by the Court between vertical and horizontal integration. It is the purpose of this note to show that the Court is mistaken in its implied assumption respecting the influence of integration upon competition. Horizontal integration may, and frequently does, make for higher prices and a less satisfactory allocation of resources than does pure or workable competition. Vertical integration, on the contrary, does not, as such, serve to reduce competition and may, if the economy is already ridden by deviations from competition, operate to intensify competition. My argument will be confined largely to this last proposition.
Recent Episodes of Sovereign Debt Restructurings: A Case-Study Approach

Sovereign debt restructurings do constitute a recurrent phenomenon in emerging and developing economies. Consequently, the international community has repeatedly explored options to increase the predictability and orderliness of debt workouts, of which the debate on the Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism (SDRM) proposed by the IMF in 2002 is the most recent example. Eventually, however, the most ambitious reform proposals have been systematically abandoned, thereby consolidating debt restructurings as market-led case-by-case processes. This paper reviews nine recent sovereign debt restructurings: Argentina (2001-2005), Belize (2006-2007), the Dominican Republic (2004-2005), Ecuador (1999-2000), Pakistan (1998-2001), the Russian Federation (1998-2001), Serbia (2000-2004), Ukraine (1998-2000) and Uruguay (2004). Our case study analysis reveals the lack of a single model for sovereign debt restructurings. Indeed, we find significant variations in the roots of the crises, the size of the losses undergone by investors, the speed at which an agreement was reached with creditors, the proportion of creditors accepting the terms of that agreement, or the time needed to restore access to international financial markets. There also appears to be a lack of consistency in the role played by the IMF in the various crises. This is partly due to the lack of a policy specifically designed to deal with sovereign debt restructurings in the IMF's toolkit, which has provided the IMF with flexibility to adapt to each crisis on a case-by-case basis. However, it may have exacerbated the uncertainty that tends to characterize such disruptive episodes. This paper constitutes the basis of a broader effort to identify possible options for the IMF to endow itself with a policy to streamline and systematize its role during sovereign debt restructurings.
Inequality in Education and Economic Growth: Empirical Investigation and Foundations - Evidence from MENA Region

This paper investigates empirically the extent of educational inequality and its impact on economic growth. Based on Barro and Lee’s (2010) data, we calculate two indicators measuring inequality of education. The sample comprises 15 countries from the MENA region over the period 1970-2010. As a second step, we applied the Kuznets curve of education for each country of the sample. As a third step, we examine the impact of education inequality on the economic growth in MENA region by using OSL and Instrumental Variables panel regressions with country fixed-effects. The findings show a decline in the Gini index within all the countries, for men and women and also for all age groups. The results also indicate that the education distribution was more unequal in the middle-income countries than in the higher-income countries in 2010. The results suggested that the shape of the Kuznets curve depends basically on the measure used to approximate the inequality. The results demonstrate also that the Gini index of men negatively and significantly affects the growth of higher-income countries. At the same time, the total Gini index influenced negatively and significantly the economic growth of all the countries, including those of high income. These results are therefore robust for the used econometric techniques. In terms of economic policy, the results suggest policymakers to focus on educational policies apt to reduce educational inequalities, especially for women, to improve the well being of the population.
State-owned enterprises in Vietnam: are they ‘crowding out’ the private sector?

This article assesses, on a province-by-province basis, whether state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are constraining the development of private firms in Vietnam. The analysis suggests the greater the density of SOEs present in a province, the more they enjoy favouritism, the lower is the proportion of bank loans that go to private companies, and the longer it takes for private firms to get access to land. There is also a negative correlation between SOE growth and private sector growth. But most importantly, the greater the density of SOEs in a particular province, the lower the GDP (and GDP per capita) growth recorded by that province. This evidence suggests that SOEs are indeed ‘crowding out’ private companies in Vietnam.
PD168077, a D4 receptor agonist, reverses object recognition deficits in rats: potential role for D4 receptor mechanisms in improving cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia

This study investigated the effects of the dopamine D4 receptor agonist, PD168077, on recognition memory using a novel object recognition task, which detects disruption and improvement of recognition memory in rats by measuring their ability to discriminate between familiar and novel objects. When acquisition and test were 6 h apart (experiment 1), control rats failed to discriminate between familiar and novel objects at test. Rats given low doses of PD168077 (0.3; 1.0 mg/kg) also failed to discriminate between the objects, while rats given higher doses (3.0; 10.0 mg/kg) explored the novel object more than the familiar object, indicating retained memory of the familiar object. Thus, at higher doses, PD168077 improved recognition memory in rats. Experiment 2 tested whether PD168077 would attenuate deficits in novel object recognition induced by sub-chronic phencyclidine. Testing was 1 min after acquisition, such that vehicle pre-treated rats differentiated between the novel and familiar objects: however, sub-chronic phencyclidine-treated rats failed to discriminate between the two, indicating disruption of recognition memory. PD168077 (10 mg/kg) restored the ability of phencyclidine-treated rats to differentiate between the novel and familiar objects, indicating improved recognition memory. The results suggest that D4 receptor activation can improve cognitive dysfunction in an animal model relevant to schizophrenia.
Optimized adaptive AMBTC

An adaptive, multi-level absolute moment block truncation coding (AMBTC) is optimized with DRT and CAO to yield near perfect visual quality. The AMBTC will adapt to the signal variance and switch the output from 1 to 4 levels. The thresholds for 2- and 4-level are optimized by dynamic range tuning (DRT) while those of 3-level by central aggregate optimization (CAO). This optimized coding system eliminates the blockiness and the jagged edge artifact completely. The performance also leads the closest by a great margin. <<ETX>>
The Disappearing Calendar Anomalies in the Singapore Stock Market

This paper investigates the calendar anomalies in the Singapore stock market over the recent period from1993-2005. Specifically, changes in stock index returns are examined surroundingJanuary (the January effect), on different days of the week (the day-of-the-week effect), around the turn of the month (the turn-of-the-month effect) and before holidays (the pre-holiday effect). The findings reveal that these anomalies have largely disappeared from the Singapore stock market in recent years. The disappearance of these anomalies has important implications forthe efficient market hypothesis and the trading behavior of investors.
Economic Development: Is Social Capital Persistent?

This paper, on the one hand, goes a step closer to demonstrate the causality of social capital on economic performance. On the other hand, we confirm a continued role of social capital effects on economic performance in this paper by using a much larger sample, spanning three decades and increasing the scope of countries. This paper is unique in the sense that it contributes to revisiting questions of economic performance, social capital and institutions with a clearly better and updated dataset from the last 28 years building upon existing empirical evidence. We employ a longitudinal analysis (pooled unbalanced multiple cross-section datasets) with fixed effects in this study. Our sample includes both the World Values Survey and European Values Study dating back to the 1980s. Our results are twofold: Firstly, to confirm that trust has a significant positive effect on growth. And more importantly, they have a significant effect on growth for at least 5 years (for growth at 5, 7 and 10 years following a period of trust measure). Secondly, associational activities – another measure in the overarching definitions of social capital, along with institutions, inequality, and education are consistently significant determinants of trust.
The Greek Hyperinflation and Stabilization of 1943–1946: A Reply

Karatzas finds fault with four aspects of my paper. I list these in order and show that where his claims are to the point they are based on an incomplete reading of his references and that the empirical evidence offered is not relevant to the issue raised. First, I state that the Greek hyperinflation was caused by an overreliance on the inflation tax-an overreliance due either to choice or necessity, as the puppet government did not tax sufficiently to cover its expenditures. Karatzas contends that the puppet government did enact a number of taxes, collected others in kind, and tightened expenditures. He says, however, that revenue fell because evasion was widespread and effective. Interesting though this may be, it does not contradict my view that insufficient revenue from explicit taxes was responsible for an overreliance on the inflation tax that caused the hyperinflation. Second, I state that the first stabilization plan was prepared in haste and note a number of conditions that militated against its success-essentially an overdependence on revenue from the sale of aid goods. Because of the high distribution cost of the aid goods and the decision to price them so as to effect a redistribution of income, they actually yielded no net revenue in 1945. Karatzas does not dispute that the plan was prepared in haste or that the reliance of revenue on the sale of aid goods was excessive. Rather, he argues, the stabilization plan was doomed from the start because the Americans and the Swedes refused to consent to the Greek government's proposed selling of war relief supplies for revenue. The source for Karatzas's claim is Harold Macmillan's The Blast of War.I I do not believe he has interpreted his source correctly. Macmillan's discussion of the nature of the American objection is unclear, but it was easily resolved: "We managed to laugh this off somehow. "2 There is no doubt that the Swedish objection was also resolved before the stabilization plan was put into effect. It is worth quoting the relevant passage:
Online Reflec tions in a Blended Approach to Collaborative Faculty Development

Blended approaches to collaborative faculty development have the potential for stimulating critical reflection, but the process of online reflection by faculty members has not been fully explored in the literature. The purpose of this qualitative action research case study was to examine a blended approach to collaborative inquiry for professional development with a particular interest in the reflections that occurred online. This study had two focal points. First, to explore the relationship between the online reflections and the overall development of the participants and second, to more closely examine the levels of reflection that occurred within the online aspect of this blended collaborative inquiry. This dissertation employed the case study method to examine the experience of seven community college faculty members. Interviews and online discussion transcripts were used to identify themes and this study developed a rubric for identifying levels of online reflection. This study identified six major themes as follows: (a) discussions with other faculty members create a supporting atmosphere that is beneficial to learning about teaching, (b) the online reflections can be challenging, (c) the online reflections allow the discussion to continue and allow participants to keep up while missing a meeting, (d) the online reflections allow for more immediate idea sharing and for more in-depth reflection, (e) the convenience of the course management system facilitated reflection, (f) the lack of incentives to participate and the complicated structure of the discussion boards inhibited reflection.
The Extended Opening Session of the Futures Market and Stock Price Behavior: Evidence from the Taiwan Stock Exchange

This paper examines how the introduction of the extended opening session of the futures market affects stock price behavior around the market opening. On January 1, 2001, the Taiwan Futures Exchange (TAIFEX) extended the trading hours by opening earlier 15 minutes than the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE). This change presents an opportunity to analyze how the extended opening session of futures market affects stock price behavior. Compared with the pre-extension period, the empirical results show that stock returns are less volatile and return autocorrelations are less positively correlated around the stock market opening. Moreover, overreaction for opening prices of the stock market is mitigated in the post-extension period. Finally, unexpected futures returns during the extended opening session can predict overnight stock returns. Overall, the empirical results are consistent with Foster and Viswanathan (1990) in that informed traders will trade aggressively at the market opening.
Correcting for non‐compliance in randomized non‐inferiority trials with active and placebo control using structural models

The three‐arm clinical trial design, which includes a test treatment, an active reference, and placebo control, is the gold standard for the assessment of non‐inferiority. In the presence of non‐compliance, one common concern is that an intent‐to‐treat (ITT) analysis (which is the standard approach to non‐inferiority trials), tends to increase the chances of erroneously concluding non‐inferiority, suggesting that the per‐protocol (PP) analysis may be preferable for non‐inferiority trials despite its inherent bias. The objective of this paper was to develop statistical methodology for dealing with non‐compliance in three‐arm non‐inferiority trials for censored, time‐to‐event data. Changes in treatment were here considered the only form of non‐compliance. An approach using a three‐arm rank preserving structural failure time model and G‐estimation analysis is here presented. Using simulations, the impact of non‐compliance on non‐inferiority trials was investigated in detail using ITT, PP analyses, and the present proposed method. Results indicate that the proposed method shows good characteristics, and that neither ITT nor PP analyses can always guarantee the validity of the non‐inferiority conclusion. A Statistical Analysis System program for the implementation of the proposed test procedure is available from the authors upon request. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Transportation energy in Swedish towns and regions

An investigation of 97 towns and 15 commuting regions in Sweden shows that the developmental pattern has a significant influence on the energy consumption for transportation. The main source for the energy data is the officiai Swedish statistics on fuel sales quantities in the municipalities in 1989, adjusted for fuel consumption in the agricultural sector. For the individual town, a dense pattern of development clearly gives the lowest per capita energy consumption for transportation. At the regional level, however, a decentralized pattern of residence seems to be favourable with respect to energy conservation, provided that each individual town and village has sufficiently high population density.