Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dynamics between ownership structure and dividend policy: evidence from Bangladesh

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the impact of ownership structure such as family, government, institutional, foreign and public on dividend payouts as a representative of dividend policy of nonfinancial firms in Bangladesh.Design/methodology/approachThis study employs a dynamic panel data model, namely, differenced generalized method of moments (GMM), which follows a two-step process. The study uses annual data of a sample of 159 nonfinancial firms of Dhaka Stock Exchange for the period 2008–2017, which constitutes a panel data of 1,590 firm-year observations.FindingsThis study’s findings reveal that family and public ownerships have a significant and positive effect on dividend payouts, while government and institutional ownerships have a significant but negative effect. This study additionally incorporates some very important controlled variables and finds that except for size, all the selected controlled variables, i.e. lagged-one of dividend payout, returns on assets, debts to assets, price-earnings (PE) ratio, age and financial crisis have a significant effect on the dividend payouts. However, the findings support several dividend-related theories or hypotheses, i.e. agency cost theory, dividend stability theory and reputation hypothesis.Research limitations/implicationsThis study could consider some other aspects of corporate governance, as well as other emerging markets and financial institutions to perceive whether the results differ. Also, investigation could be carried out on conventional and Islamic firms individually to observe if the findings are different. However, the researchers are suggested to incorporate these issues in their future studies.Practical implicationsThis study offers an important insight into the relationship dynamics between dividend payouts and ownership structure in the context of an emerging market like Bangladesh. Moreover, it enhances the understanding of the ties of dividend payouts with the firm-specific factors as well as the financial crisis. The findings of the present study have also important implications for managers, policymakers and researchers, who are in quest of directions on the dividend policy of publicly listed nonfinancial firms.Originality/valueMost of the previous studies consider one or two types of ownership to examine the impacts on dividend payouts, while this study uses five types of ownership accompanied by a different data set. Moreover, to the authors’ knowledge, no study in Bangladesh has yet addressed this issue in such a comprehensive manner as theirs.
Superlens coupling to object and image: A secondary resonance mechanism to improve single-negative imaging of electromagnetic waves

Superlens slabs rely on the coherent superposition of multiply reflected evanescent waves to amplify and restore the fine details of an object at the image plane. If a superlens slab is placed in close proximity to a source object and image detector, similar interactions with these external components can introduce resonances outside of the superlens. In this work, we explore the role of external resonances on single-negative slab superlens performance by considering a complete electromagnetic imaging system containing a physical source object and image detector, each modeled as a planar dielectric half-space. In studying the transmission of spectral components that carry real power through this system, we find that resonances outside the lens can have a dramatic impact on single-negative superlens performance. In particular, we find that the resonances external to a μ-negative lens can be used to extend the imaging range beyond the extreme near field and maintain super-resolution even in the presence of loss.
Irrigation development and equity implications: the case of India

ABSTRACT This paper examines the inequity in irrigation distribution in India using a variant of Theil’s entropy measure for the period 1995–2010. The analysis reveals that the level of inequity in irrigation distribution has increased over time. Inequity has declined in canal, tank and well-irrigated systems and increased in the tube well-irrigated system. Decomposition analysis revealed that regional disparities have declined in all sources of irrigation except for tube wells. The role of property rights to groundwater, groundwater markets, energy pricing policy and competitive deepening of wells in worsening the inequity in access to groundwater resources is also discussed.
Migrants, Caravans, and the Impact of News Photos on Immigration Attitudes

The migrant caravan is comprised of thousands of people traveling from Central America to the Mexico–U.S. border seeking refuge from their home countries. In news coverage, images of the caravan regularly portray large groups of immigrants walking toward the border. What are the consequences of this depiction on attitudes toward immigration? We suggest that images of groups of immigrants, in contrast with images of individual immigrants, will tend to decrease support for immigration. In 2019, we preregistered and ran a web-based survey experiment in the United States in which respondents read a news story with either an image of immigrants in a crowd setting, an image of an individual immigrant, or a control condition. The group treatment produces no systematic increase in anti-immigrant sentiment relative to the control. However, we do find differences in the group and individual treatments for respondents who are high in threat sensitivity. Findings are discussed as they relate to recent work on the roles of both fear and person positivity in attitudes about immigration, as well as the potential importance of editorial choices in the portrayal of immigration to the United States.
Indoor Acoustic Requirements for Autism-Friendly Spaces

The architecture of spaces for people on the autistic spectrum is evolving toward inclusive design, which should fit the requirements for independent, autonomous living, and proper support for relatives and caregivers. The use of smart sensor systems represents a valuable support to internal design in order to achieve independent living for impaired people. Accordingly, these devices can monitor or prevent hazardous situations, ensuring security and privacy. Acoustic sensor systems, for instance, could be used in order to realize a passive monitoring system. The correct functioning of such devices needs optimal indoor acoustic criteria. Nevertheless, these criteria should also comply with dedicated acoustic requests that autistic individuals with hearing impairment or hypersensitivity to sound could need. Thus, this research represents the first attempt to balance, integrate, and develop these issues, presenting (i) a wide literature overview related to both topics, (ii) a focused analysis on real facility, and (iii) a final optimization, which takes into account, merges, and elucidates all the presented unsolved issues.
A New Approach to Modeling the Prediction of Movement Time

Fitts' law predicts the human movement response time for a specific task by a simple linear formulation, in which the intercept and the slope are estimated from the task's empirical data. This research was motivated by our pilot study, which found that the linear regression's essential assumptions are not satisfied in the literature. Furthermore, the keystone hypothesis in Fitts' law, that the movement time per response will be directly proportional to the minimum average amount of information per response demanded by the particular amplitude and target width, has never been formally tested. Therefore, this study developed an optional formulation derived from fusing the findings in psychology, physics, and physiology for fulfilling the statistical assumptions. An experiment was designed to test the hypothesis in Fitts' law and validate the proposed model. To conclude, our results indicated that movement time could be related to the index of difficulty underlying the same constant amplitude. The optional formulation accompanies the index of difficulty in Shannon form robustly performs the prediction better than the traditional model across studies. Finally, a new approach to modeling movement time prediction is deduced from our research results
Can Government Intervention Increase Volunteers and Donations? Analyzing the Influence of VISTA With a Matched Design

The United States has long relied on private organizations to provide public services to poor communities. However, while the federal government’s support of the civic sector through grants and contracts is well studied, little research investigates how it subsidizes voluntary organizations through national service programs, such as Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA). In this article, we assess whether nonprofits that receive VISTA members show higher levels of donations and volunteers than matched nonprofits that did not receive VISTA members in the years following the Great Recession. We find that nonprofits that participated in the VISTA program had higher numbers of volunteers 2 years after participation, suggesting that national service was effective at supporting local organizations and building local civic infrastructure during an economic recovery. We also follow VISTA receiving organizations from 2010 to 2016 in a longitudinal design, finding a robust relationship of VISTA service and volunteering. These findings suggest VISTA is a resource for organizations and invite further research on the relationship between national service and anti-poverty work.
Determination of the optimal cutoff values and validity of the Purdue Pegboard Test

Introduction The Purdue Pegboard Test (PPT) is crucial for assessing fine dexterity of patients with hand injury. Determining the PPT cutoff value is needed to distinguish patients with impaired hand dexterity from those with unimpaired hand dexterity. The aim of this article is to examine the construct validity of PPT and to determine its cutoff values for patients with hand injuries. Method The PPT and Disabilities of Arm Shoulder and Hand Questionnaire Turkish version (DASH-T) were used to measure hand dexterity. To examine construct validity, we measured the correlation between PPT and DASH-T. The cutoff values were determined using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve generated with sensitivity and 1-specificity. We recruited 101 patients with hand injury and 162 healthy participants. Results Correlation between all subtests of PPT and DASH-T were weak (r = −0.282; −0.473: p<0.05). The cutoff value for the assembly subtest of PPT was 24.5. The range of area under the curve (AUC) values for PPT subtests was good to excellent (AUC: 0.82–0.92). Conclusion The current study demonstrates that PPT is a valid instrument for measuring hand dexterity in patients with hand injury. Results also suggest that PPT distinguished the patients with impaired hand function from those with unimpaired hand dexterity.
Investigations of rotating instability and fluctuating tip clearance flow in a low-speed axial compressor

To investigate the relationship between rotating instability and fluctuating tip clearance flow, experimental tests as well as numerical studies are conducted on a 1.5 stage low-speed axial compressor rig. The rotating instability is detected through casing mounted dynamic pressure sensors. The phase-locked and root-mean-square pressure contours show that the interaction of tip clearance flow with the neighboring blade is the most likely cause of casing flow field fluctuation. From the calculated results of entire-annulus cascade, it is found that the tip clearance vortex structures oscillate periodically at low flow rate conditions. That leads to intense fluctuation of the casing flow field. Further, phase lag of pressure fluctuations exists between two neighboring passages, which induces a rotating pressure pattern of multiple frequencies. The frequency characteristics of this rotating pressure pattern caused by fluctuating tip clearance flow is coincident with the frequency of rotating instability. This suggests that the fluctuating tip clearance flow is the major contributor to the initiation of rotating instability.
Neural‐network‐based distributed security filtering for networked switched systems

In this paper, distributed security filtering is investigated for networked switched systems under the round‐robin protocol (RRP). In order to fully take the practical situation into account, a cyber attack without additional bounded constraint is considered by introducing the neural network approximate technique. Moreover, the scattered sensor nodes are universally utilized to transmit and collect system information. The distributed filtering is proposed for the networked switched systems to estimate the system output. In order to ease data collisions, RRP is taken to schedule signal communication through the shared network. By constructing a token‐dependent and mode‐dependent Lyapunov function, sufficient conditions are given to ensure the filtering error system under cyber attack is finite‐time bounded. The filtering gains are determined by solving a set of linear matrix inequalities. Finally, the availability of the acquired methods is verified by a PWM‐driven boost converter model.
Tissue Preservation Techniques for Bone-Anchored Hearing Aid Surgery

Objective: Compare outcomes of surgical techniques in percutaneous bone-anchored hearing implant surgery. Study Design: Matched retrospective cohort study. Setting: Tertiary referral center. Patients: Electronic review of adult and pediatric patients who underwent bone conduction device surgery by either the Minimally-invasive Ponto Surgery (MIPS) technique or the linear incision with no soft tissue removal (LnSTR) technique or between August 2015 and April 2018 at our facility. Intervention: Patients in MIPS group underwent Minimally invasive Ponto Surgery (MIPS) technique, while those in LnSTR group underwent LnSTR technique. Main Outcome Measure: Major outcome was presence/severity of localized skin reaction. Secondary outcomes included cosmetic outcome, revision surgery, minor adverse events, device utilization, and postoperative aided speech recognition thresholds (SRTs) across 250 to 4000 Hertz (Hz). Results: Fifty patients met inclusion criteria. There was a significantly lower rate of localized cutaneous reactions for the MIPS group (4.5%) compared with LnSTR group (33.3%; p = 0.026). Rate of revision surgery was significantly less for MIPS (13.6%) compared with LnSTR (20.8%; p = 0.008). Occurrence of poor cosmetic outcome was noted significantly less for the MIPS group (9.1%) compared with LnSTR patients (20.8%; p = 0.005). Minor adverse events and aided SRTs were comparable between groups. Conclusions: MIPS leads to a statistically significant decrease in localized cutaneous reaction compared with LnSTR. Both the LnSTR and MIPS techniques are safe and effective in the treatment of hearing loss, however MIPS may be superior in certain cases by offering improved healing, decreasing needs for wound care, and possibly decreasing need for frequent follow up.
Dark, gray, or bright creativity? (Re)investigating the link between creativity and dishonesty

The question of whether and, if so, how creativity and unethical behavior such as dishonesty are related to each other has been addressed in multiple studies, with mixed results overall. The aim of this Registered Report is to shed further light on this issue. We first present a meta-analysis on the relation between creativity and dishonesty comprising the samples from a pre-registered multi-lab study (on a different topic), which indicated no relation between the constructs in question (k = 19, N = 2,154, rp = .02). Next, we examined the relation between creativity and dishonesty in a study (N = 1,152), in which we addressed several limitations of previous research. Specifically, we examined relations between comprehensively assessed creativity and dishonesty using subjective and objective indicators for both constructs. We found mixed results concerning the relation between creativity and dishonesty. In the majority of the confirmatory statistical tests, subjective creativity was positively related, whereas objective creativity was negatively related to dishonesty in the mind game. However, in exploratory analyses, we found that neither subjective nor objective creativity was related to dishonesty in the second dishonesty measure, the sender–receiver game.
Constraining Spectral Models of a Terrestrial Gamma‐Ray Flash From a Terrestrial Electron Beam Observation by the Atmosphere‐Space Interactions Monitor

Terrestrial Gamma ray Flashes (TGFs) are short flashes of high energy photons, produced by thunderstorms. When interacting with the atmosphere, they produce relativistic electrons and positrons, and a part gets bounded to geomagnetic field lines and travels large distances in space. This phenomenon is called a Terrestrial Electron Beam (TEB). The Atmosphere‐Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) mounted on‐board the International Space Station detected a new TEB event on March 24, 2019, originating from the tropical cyclone Johanina. Using ASIM's low energy detector, the TEB energy spectrum is resolved down to 50 keV. We provide a method to constrain the TGF source spectrum based on the detected TEB spectrum. Applied to this event, it shows that only fully developed Relativistic Runaway Electron Avalanche spectra are compatible with the observation. More specifically, assuming a TGF spectrum ∝E−1exp−E/ϵ , the compatible models have ϵ ≥ 6.5 MeV (E is the photon energy and ϵ is the cut‐off energy). We could not exclude models with ϵ of 8 and 10 MeV.
Towards Learner-Oriented Monitoring and Evaluation in Adult Education Program: A Vital Approach to Ensure Adult Learners’ Learning Needs

Monitoring and evaluation practice of adult education by its flexible nature highly needs effective and continuous professional support based on a bureaucratic system that accomplishes expectations using a hierarchical arrangement. The central essence of adult education monitoring is conceptualized as the continuous comparison of implementation progress against the predetermined principles. As well, another common vital task is evaluation. Such practice can provide formative and summative information about program implementation and outcomes for concerned stakeholders. This study placed on examining learner-oriented monitoring and evaluation practices in integrated functional adult education programs. In doing so, a qualitative research approach and case study design were employed. Purposive and available sampling techniques were used to select 83 respondents. Data were collected through interviews, FGD, and document analysis. The collected data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Results showed that integrated functional adult education monitoring practice was limited to report learners’ enrollment data and mere attendance in literacy class. Narrow emphasis is given to monitoring and evaluation activities that can enhance adult learners’ academic performance and ability in relation to their life skills and practical learning needs have been largely forgotten.
Sewage Sludge Compared with Other Substrates in the Inoculation, Growth, and Tolerance to Water Stress of Samanea saman

This study evaluated the initial growth and tolerance to water stress after planting Samanea saman seedlings produced with different substrates and inoculation patterns. The experiment used a factorial design (3 × 3), with three substrates: standard (67% subsoil + 33% cattle manure), a commercial substrate (composed mainly of peat), and treated sewage sludge; and three inoculation patterns: control (no inoculation), fertilized (no inoculation + chemical fertilization), and inoculation with nitrogen-fixing bacteria and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. The seedlings were planted in plastic pots inside a greenhouse. They received irrigation after planting and were submitted to water deficit for 35 days, followed by rehydration for 31 days. The inoculation promoted higher height and biomass for seedlings produced in the standard substrate. In the sludge, the roots biomass decreased when fertilized or inoculated. Seedlings grown in sludge showed higher height and biomass before planting and at the end of the experiment. Although, after rehydration, the height increment was similar for the sludge and the standard substrate. Seedlings grown with the commercial substrate are not recommended for planting sites subjected to water deficit. The standard substrate with inoculation and the sludge without inoculation or fertilization produced seedlings that showed better recovery and growth after water deficit.
Thermal management of grid‐tied PV system: A novel active and passive cooling design‐based approach

The photovoltaic (PV) cells are highly sensitive to temperature variations. The linear variation of PV cells with operating temperature could lead to the loss of conversion efﬁciency and permanent damage of PV material. To address this critical issue, while improving the performance of solar photovoltaic system (SPVS) during the operating period, the deploy-ment of a proper cooling system is a prime requisite in the design process. Considering this, two new and cost-effective cooling techniques are proposed in this study, which can improve efﬁciency and increase the life of the PV panel. The ﬁrst technique is the active cooling design with water. The proposed design enhances the access to PV cells to max-imize cooling. The second one is an improved passive cooling technique that uses ﬁns mounted on the backside of PV module. This further reduces the temperature by increasing the heat dissipation. Additionally, a third PV module without any cooling system is deployed as a reference margin. The techniques have been experimentally evaluated and a recommendation is made in order to reduce the temperature variation across the PV panel.
Responses of tropical tree seedlings in the forest–savanna boundary to combined effects of grass competition and fire

Co‐occurring tree functional types (TFTs) within forest–savanna transitions may differ in seedling responses to grass competition and fire in savannas. We performed a common garden experiment in the Guinea savanna of Ghana to test hypotheses related to competition effects on growth, allocation to root storage reserves, and subsequent survival responses to dry season fire for savanna‐transitional TFT (i.e., species occurring both in forest and savanna) and forest TFT. The experiment included factorial combinations of TFT, comprising four species each of forest versus savanna‐transitional trees, wet season grass competition (grass competition vs. grass no‐grass competition), and dry season fire (burn vs. no‐burn). Partly consistent with prediction, we found that grass competition suppressed tree seedling growth and caused a 17% reduction in root non‐structural carbohydrates concentration [NSC] but had no effect on direct survival regardless of TFT at the end of the wet season. Post‐fire survival averaged 6% for forest versus 91% for savanna‐transitional TFTs across competition treatments. In contrast to our prediction on how grass competition influences post‐fire seedling survival, a history of grass competition did not result in lower post‐fire survival regardless of TFT, although plant mass, root mass fraction, and root [NSC] at the end of the dry season were lower for tree seedlings with a history of competition. Our results demonstrate that grass competition suppresses tree seedling growth and root storage reserves irrespective of TFT, and that competition alone (without fire) may not preclude the establishment of forest seedlings in savannas close to forests.