Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Comparison of Lexical Feedback on Writing Received from Peers and a Teacher

While a vast number of studies have compared feedback from different sources, few studies if any have compared feedback on lexis from different sources. It is therefore unclear whether the amount or type of feedback given by peers is comparable to that given by a teacher. This study considers feedback on lexical errors in writing as a method of incidental vocabulary instruction and compares lexical feedback given by peers and a teacher over a period of one academic year. While it was found that the teacher gave significantly more feedback on word choice than the peers did, there was no significant difference between the amount of feedback on word use, or the total amount of lexical feedback given by peers and the teacher. It was also found that both peers and the teacher gave a considerable amount of feedback on word use and much less on word choice. If written feedback on writing is to be effective as a form of incidental vocabulary instruction, it is suggested that both teachers and peers should focus more on word choice when giving feedback on writing.
Firm Tax Uncertainty, Cash Holdings, and the Timing of Large Investment

Firms accumulate cash holdings for a variety of reasons, including as a buffer against uncertainty and to finance large investments. This paper explores whether there is a trade-off between two competing uses of cash holdings: precautionary savings that result from increased tax uncertainty and savings devoted to large investments. Specifically, we test whether firm-specific tax uncertainty affects the timing and incidence of large investments (or investment spikes) made by firms. In our baseline analysis, we find that firms with higher tax uncertainty have higher cash holdings and lower investment, and that this adverse impact is more pronounced at higher levels of investment where we expect the trade-off effect to be larger. We then focus on the timing of large investments using a hazard framework and find that greater tax uncertainty delays large capital investments. This trade-off between tax uncertainty and investment implies that, from a policy standpoint, a reduction in tax uncertainty could free up valuable financial capital for firm investment, which may currently be tied up as a cash buffer for firms that are highly uncertain about their future tax incidence.
Equal treatment, asymmetric information and wage rigidity

We adapt the model of Menzio and Moen (2010) to consider a labour market with directed search in which firms can commit to wage contracts but cannot commit not to replace incumbent workers. Workers are risk averse, so that there exists an incentive for firms to smooth wages over time and in the face of shocks to labour productivity. To avoid worker replacement (which saves on the ex ante wage bill), they may choose a wage for new hires that is equally unresponsive to shocks. This leads to a large degree of downward rigidity in the wages of new hires, and magnifies the response of unemployment and vacancies to negative shocks. Our version of the Menzio-Moen model allows for the analysis of positive probability shocks in a tractable way. Moreover, we argue that the model provides a useful framework for analyzing other sources of wage rigidity; for example the interplay between asymmetric information can substantially enhance wage rigidity and increase the responsiveness of unemployment and vacancies to productivity shocks.
Unravel Tax Planning Differences between Multinational and Domestic Firms

Prior literature primarily identifies tax planning via an analysis of the firms’ effective tax rate (ETR) or variations of it. However, several disadvantages go along with ETRs like the exclusion of loss-firms (equal to 30% of the sample) or a mismeasurement of corporate tax planning which stems from truncating ETRs as pointed out by Henry and Sansing (2014). In this paper, we develop a new measure suitable to overcome these shortcomings. Another advantage is the separation of a firm’s tax planning activity into a time-invariant idiosyncratic component and a characteristic-varying component. The first should be associated with the firm’s tax strategy as a firm characteristic while the second should show any single-year effects as a reaction to a change of firm characteristics or external events/shocks. We present a comparison between the new measure and other tax planning measures like single-year/long-rung GAAPand Cash ETR or Book-Tax Differences. By manually seeding artificial tax planning activity into the data, we provide evidence that the new measure might be a better indicator to identify tax planning than variations of the ETR. Further, we apply the measure in a subsequent analysis to evaluate differences between tax planning behavior of multinational and domestic firms. We provide evidence that no structural difference exist between both groups and present a possible explanation for differences resulting from an analysis with ETRs. We identify effects of double taxation and foreign tax credits to be of major importance if comparing multinational and domestic firms. JEL Classification: H21, H25, H26, M40, M41
Riesz Potentials and Fractional Maximal Function for the Dunkl Transform

In this article we investigate the L → L boundedness properties of the Riesz potentials I α and the related fractional maximal function Mκ,α associated to the Dunkl transform. Mathematics Subject Classification 2000: Primary 33C52 ; Secondary 43A32, 33C80, 22E30.
In the market for extinction: birds for sale at selected outlets in Sumatra

Indonesia has long been recognised as the largest consumer of cage birds in South-east Asia, with bird markets in virtually all major towns and cities selling both legally and illegally obtained species (Nash, 1993; Shepherd et al., 2004). Recent reports of the trade have largely focused on bird markets in major cities on the island of Java (e.g. Profauna, 2009; Chng et al., 2015; Chng and Eaton, 2016; Chng et al., 2016) and studies carried out on Sumatra largely focused on the bird markets in Medan, the largest city on Sumatra and the capital of North Sumatra province (see Nash, 1993; Shepherd, 2006, Harris et al., 2015). Much of the trade observed in the markets of Medan and recorded in these earlier reports consisted of birds native to Sumatra and locally-caught, and also indicated substantial levels of trade between markets in Sumatra and Java. Species endemic to Sumatra, such as the Sumatran Laughingthrush Garrulax bicolor are regularly found in Javanese markets (Shepherd, 2007; Chng et al., 2015; Chng and Eaton, 2016; Shepherd et al., 2016) and, conversely, the Javan endemic Rufousfronted Laughingthrush G. rufifrons has been observed in the bird markets of Medan, in North Sumatra (Shepherd, 2010), as have other Indonesian endemics from islands other than Sumatra (Shepherd et al., 2004). Having documented the extent of trade through market inventories in Bandung, Jakarta, Malang, Medan, Surabaya and Yogyakarta (Shepherd et al., 2004; Chng et al., 2015; Chng and Eaton, 2016; Chng et al., 2016), the authors here examine bird markets in four major Sumatran cities to obtain a better grasp of the current levels of trade, species composition and legality, and the extent of the trade between Sumatra and Java. Methods
Knowledge about Mumps Infection among Medical Students in Diyala City, Iraq

Background: Mumps is a childhood disease characterized by swelling of the parotid glands, salivary glands and other epithelial tissues, causing high morbidity and in some cases more serious complications such as deafness. Objectives: To assess the knowledge of medical students regarding mumps virus infection and its transmission and prevention among Diyala Medical Students in Baqubah City, Iraq. Patients and methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 250 medical students in Baqubah City, Iraq, during the period from October 2017 till January 2018. A self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. In addition to basic demographic characteristics, the questionnaire included 14 questions about routes of transmission, effect and prevention of mumps. Result: Diyala medical students had good levels of awareness about viral transmission, and vaccination program while in some aspects such as knowledge about mumps effect, location of the vaccine in the human body and diagnosis showed intermediate awareness according to modified Bloom’s cut off point. Additionally, student in clinical years had significantly higher level of awareness than student in preclinical years (P < 0.05). Conclusion: General positive attitudes of Diyala Medical students toward mumps infection. However, some knowledge gaps were identified A critical level of public awareness and vaccination coverage, particularly among young students are essential to increase the knowledge among this group. Further research will needs to explore the reasons behind some intermediate and poor knowledge in a more in-depth manner to decrease the burden of the disease during another outbreak in Diyala in the future.
INFERRING SHALLOW MANTLE TEMPERATURES UNDER IRANIAN PLATEAU FROM INVERSION OF SHEAR-WAVE VELOCITY MODEL

Temperature is one of the key parameters controlling the dynamics and rheology of the crust and upper mantle. Knowing the temperature distribution with depth can help interpret the origin of the density heterogeneities. Recent attempts have been made to infer thermal structure from seismic velocity model using forward modeling, derived from laboratory studies on crustal and mantle minerals or inverse approaches. In this study, we invert the shear wave velocities of the Iranian lithosphere (Namvaran et al., 2019-under review) into temperature using the thermodynamic modeling codes, to generate synthetic P and S-wave velocities corresponding to the physical conditions of the upper mantle. In this way, physical properties are computed at regular intervals within a chosen range of pressure (P) and temperature (T) by performing a Gibbs free-energy minimization to determine the mineral phase relations at each (P, T) point in the model. The numerical code computes the bulk elastic properties of the mineral assemblage via an equation of state (Connolly, 2005). We used the equation of state of Stixrude and Lithgow-Bertelloni (2005) based on Mie–Gruneisen formulation. This equation is suitable for the upper mantle depths and the composition inferred in terms of percentage of the main oxides (Na2O–CaO–FeO–MgO–Al2O3–SiO2, NCFMAS system) is consistent with that of a peridotite of Phanerozoic age (Lee, 2003). The choice of the composition is in agreement with the age of the Zagros and Alborz Mountains (<50 Myr), and the main tectonic features of the study area (Stern and Johnson, 2010). In this way, we obtained the stable mineral phases and temperature due to the anharmonic effect in the chosen range of P, corresponding at depths between 60 km and 200 km and T between 0 and 1800 °C (Figure 1). We also evaluated the anelasticity effect, by using a model, which is representative of an upper mantle characterized by average hydrous conditions (Cammarano et al., 2011), as that beneath the Iranian micro continent. By comparing the obtained synthetic velocities with the shear wave velocities (Namvaran et al., 2019-under review), we estimated the temperature in the upper mantle beneath the seismic stations located in west Zagros, Sanandaj-Sirjan Zone (SSZ) – Urumieh Dokhtar Magmatic Arc (UDMA) and Central Iran. Therefore, using the estimated relation between synthetic velocity and temperature (as illustrated in Figure 1), the 1Dvelocity models beneath each seismic station is converted to temperature. Hence, we converted 8, 13 and 10 1D-velocity models for west Zagros, east Zagros, and Central Iran, respectively (Figure 2). The temperature distributions are consistent with those obtained by recent global thermal models (e.g., Cammarano et al., 2011). Furthermore, very hot shallow lithosphere (at depths between 80 to 120 km) is observed in correspondence of the SSZ and UDMA stations (1000-1100°C), which can likely reflect the effect of the magmatic activities occurred in this area.
The Impact of Unemployment on Child Abuse and Neglect in the United States∗

In this paper, we show that unemployment increased the neglect and physical abuse of children in the United States during the period from 2004 to 2012. A one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate led to a 25 percent increase in neglect and a 12 percent increase in physical abuse. We identify these effects by instrumenting for the county-level unemployment rate with a predicted county-level unemployment rate, which we create by combining national level unemployment rates across industries with differences in the initial industrial structure across counties. We tested whether the unemployment effects can be explained by changes in alcohol abuse or divorce, but failed to find consistent evidence with those mechanisms. However, we find that results for neglect are consistent with the poverty mechanism. By exploiting variation in unemployment policies over time within states, we find that the extension of unemployment benefits mitigates the effect of unemployment on neglect.
Public Pension Fund Investments: The Role of Governance Structures

This paper reports findings from an ongoing research project that examines the role formal governance structures play in the success of state-administered pension fund investment programs. Toward this end, governance structures are defined narrowly as an arrangement of formal rules that have been adopted, by legislators and pension systems, for purposes of directing and controlling the management of public pension assets. Previous research has shown that these structures can play an important role in the performance of public pension fund investments (Useem & Mitchell 2000; Yang and Mitchell 2004; Langensjo 2012). Research conducted by Langensjo (2012) suggests that successful governance structures can improve investment returns by as much as 2 percent.
Effects of Instruction on Yes-No Responses to L2 Collocations

The lexical decision task (LDT), in which a participant makes dichotomous judgments on target letter strings, is an established method in psycholinguistic research to investigate the mental lexicon. With the expansion of research interests from single lexeme to collocations, second language (L2) researchers have started to use a similar judgment task at a phrasal level (referred to as a phrasal decision task or PDT in this paper). However, unlike the LDT, the PDT has not yet established a standard form of prompt, and variation has been observed in previous L2 studies. Hence, the purpose of this study was to examine effects of varying instructions on PDT performance. Three instructions (acceptable/ commonly used/natural) were tested with Japanese university students and native speakers of English, who were asked to make judgments on English word combinations. Examining responses to congruent (felicitous both in Japanese and English), incongruent (felicitous only in Japanese or English), and baseline items, the study identified some effects of instruction differences. However, these effects were not so strong as to obscure the expected cross-linguistic congruency effect. Therefore, this result has led to the conclusion that researchers have more freedom of instruction selection in the PDT, at least among the three examined in this study and to the extent that the congruency effect was measured by accuracy scores.
Gastric outlet obstruction in Northwestern Ethiopia

This was a three-year prospective study to assess the magnitude and spectrum of gastric outlet obstruction in Gondar Teaching Hospital, North West Ethiopia. Out of the 63 proven cases of gastric outlet obstruction, 51 (81%) were caused by complicated duodenal or pyloric ulcer. Pyloric tuberculosis accounted for 11% of cases. Many (48%) of the patients were farmers and the peak age incidence was between 50 and 59 years. Four of the patients were in shock on admission. Truncal vagotomy with gastroenterostomy was the most frequently performed procedure with a good outcome. This study shows that peptic ulcer disease is a serious problem in the community. More effort is needed to make effective drugs against peptic ulcer disease available. Moreover, in our set up, tuberculosis should always be borne in mind differential diagnosis to the other causes of gastric outlet obstruction such as complicated peptic ulcer disease and malignancy. Keywords: Gastric outlet obstruction, peptic ulcer, tuberculosis, gastric cancer
Does Youth Training Lead to Better Job Quality? Evidence from Job Corps

There exists an extensive literature evaluating the effects of public training programs on the employability and earnings of participants. At the same time, such public training programs generally aim to improve the future quality of life of participants. While earnings is an important factor in attaining a better quality of life, there are surely other contributing factors. In this paper, we analyze the causal effect of the availability of a U.S. training program for youth—Job Corps—on future job quality. We define job quality by constructing a linear index that reduces a vector of job characteristics to a scalar quantity. In addition, we separately analyze several important characteristics of jobs. Our job quality index is consistent with the view that workers evaluate a job as a bundle of attributes that have some level of substitutability. Also, since our index is continuous, it permits us to evaluate the distributional impacts of training. Given that the quality of a job is defined only for employed individuals, we solve the selection-into-employment issue by estimating nonparametric bounds on the treatment effects of training for the latent subgroup of individuals that would be employed regardless of treatment assignment (a group that represents 65% of the population). An advantage of this approach is that it relies on relatively weak assumptions while partially identifying causal effects of training on job quality. We find that Job Corps has significant effects on average quality that are bounded between 10 and 18 percent of a standard deviation in our job quality index. The distributional analysis suggests that the effects are heterogeneous over the distribution of the job quality index. Finally, we also note that effects are heterogeneous across different demographic groups analyzed. ∗Email: gblanco@ilstu.edu. Department of Economics, Illinois State University. †Email: afloresl@maxwell.syr. edu. Department of Economics and Center for Policy Research, Syracuse University; and Research Fellow at IZA and GLO.
Prevalence of metabolic syndrome in euthyroid patients in Perambalur District

Background: Euthyroid diseases are frequently observed in clinical practice. They comprise both functional abnormalities such as overproduction and underproduction of thyroid hormone as a consequence of intrinsic thyroid diseases, as well as the development of structural abnormalities like goiter, adenoma or carcinoma. In community surveys, prevalence rates of elevated TSH levels – indicating impaired thyroid hormone secretion – range from 4–10% while prevalence rates of decreased TSH levels – indicating thyroid hormone overproduction – range from 0.7–1.5 %. Aim of this study: To assess the thyroid function, in euthyroid subjects, is associated with components of the metabolic syndrome parameters. Materials and methods: The study was conducted in the Department of Biochemistry at Dhanalakshmi Srinivasan Medical College and Hospital, Siruvachur, Perambalur District, Trichy. Total of 100 cases was included in the study homeostasis model assessment for insulin resistance (HOMAIR) metabolic syndrome was defined according to the national cholesterol education program’s adult treatment panel III criteria. Results: The T4 (FT4) was significantly associated with total cholesterol (standardized beta (β) = 0.059; P = 0.014), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (β = -0.068; P = 0.004), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (β = 0.100; P < 0.001), and triglycerides (β = -0.102; P < 0.001). Both FT4 and TSH were significantly associated with HOMA-IR (β = -0.133; P <0.001 and β = 0.055; P = 0.024, respectively). Median HOMA-IR increased from 1.42 in the highest tertile of FT4 to 1.66 in the lowest tertile of FT4. FT4 was significantly related to four of five components of the metabolic syndrome (abdominal obesity, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and blood pressure), independent of insulin resistance. G. Kavitha, A. Nageshwari. Prevalence of metabolic syndrome in euthyroid patients in Perambalur District. IAIM, 2019; 6(6): 36-40. Page 37 Conclusions: We have demonstrated an association between FT4 levels within the normal reference range and lipids, in accordance with the earlier observed association between (sub) clinical hypothyroidism and hyperlipidemia. Moreover, low normal FT4 levels were significantly associated
Do financial bidders exploit underpricing as a motive in acquisitions?

This paper examines if financial bidders exploit underpricing as a motive in acquisitions. To this end, we study acquisition bids that fail to complete. Any revaluation remaining after failure should be unrelated to the value creation envisioned by the acquisition attempt and could be driven by underpricing. We compute the market reaction from bid offer to bid failure, and we find a 30percent cumulative abnormal return to firms that are targeted by financial bidders and subject to severe information asymmetry. This revaluation effect does not revert to prior-bid price level. After a battery of tests, we interpret this finding as suggesting that mispricing is a relevant acquisition motive for financial bidders and, in some cases, the ripped benefits can be substantial. We compare these results to revaluation effects around failed bids issued by strategic bidders. We find that strategic bidders have other motives behind acquisitions and fall short to reap underpricing as a driver in choosing target firms. Overall, our results indicate that financial bidders seem to specialize or are more skilled in identifying and exploiting mispricing opportunities. This paper successfully tackles a long-standing empirical challenge to separate value-selection versus valuecreation motives for acquisitions and provides evidence that one of the motives for financial investors to acquire firms is to benefit from mispricing. JEL classification: G14, G32, G34
Do Cash Windfalls Affect Wages? Evidence from R&D Grants to Small Firms

This paper examines how employee earnings respond to a one-time cash flow shock in the form of a government R&D grant. In a regression discontinuity design, we find that the grant immediately increases average annual employee-level earnings by 2.9%. This benefit accrues only to incumbent employees and rises with job tenure. The grant also affects firm growth, but the initial wage patterns do not appear to reflect growth or productivity. Instead, the evidence supports implicit equity financing within the firm, where employees initially accept lower wages from financially constrained firms and earn more when the firm has ability to pay.
Percutaneous Trigeminal Thermocoagulation at Amiens-Picardie Teaching Hospital from 2004 to 2015: about 52 Procedures

Refractory trigeminal neuralgia may be source of heavy discomfort and disability for patients with pitiful quality of life. Trigeminal thermocoagulation by radiofrequency is helpful to provide a good outcome and better life. To report and assess our experience and to determine outcome of quality of life of patients after a percutaneous trigeminal thermocoagulation. Joint study both retrospective to analyse patients files admitted for a trigeminal thermocoagulation procedure from 2004 till 2015 and a prospective analysis with a questionnaire on quality of life before and after treatment; also use of scales to transcribe data and compare them to literature: Barrow Neurological Institute Pain Intensity Score (BNI-PS) and Facial Numbness Scale (FNS), modified Rankin Scale (mRS) and Excellent-Good-Fair-Poor Categorical Scale (EGFP).