Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Skin folds and Merino breeding. 1. The net reproductive rates of flocks selected for and against skin fold

Single character selection flocks-Folds Plus (selection for high fold score) and Folds Minus (selection for low fold score)-were established at Trangie in 1951 from a Peppin Merino flock. The Trangie environment over the period 1951 to 1960 has been described relative to the management of these experimental flocks. An analysis of the vital statistics for the first nine joinings showed a net reproductive rate (the number of 19 month old replacement ewes produced by a ewe in her lifetime) for Folds Plus of 1.248 compared with 2.270 for Folds Minus. This resulted from the Folds Minus flock having a higher percentage of ewes wet and twins mothered, from it having lower mortality rates of young sheep between birth and mothering, between mothering and weaning, and between weaning and 19 months, as well as from it having lower death and casting rates of mature ewes. An analysis of the relative importance of each component of net reproductive rate (N) in contributing to the difference between the Folds flocks (percentage deviation technique) showed :- 1. Twenty eight per cent of the difference could be ascribed to wet ewes (W) and nine per cent to twinning (M) a total of 37 per cent from lambs born per ewe mated (L). 2. Differential survival rate of lambs between birth and 19 months (S) contributed 36 per cent, made up of 17 per cent birth to mothering (Sm), 11 per cent mothering to weaning (Sw), and 8 per cent weaning to 19 months (Sj). 3. The remaining 27 per cent was contributed by the annual wastage of breeding ewes as this affected the number of times a ewe is joined in her lifetime (J). This component was further divided into 16 per cent from death rate (D) and 11 per cent from casting rate (C).
Carotenoid‐Based Plumage Coloration Predicts Leukocyte Parameters during the Breeding Season in Northern Cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis)

Dichromatism in songbirds is often associated with polygyny and dimorphic parental investment, and is thought to arise via sexual selection. Northern cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis) are not only dichromatic but also monogamous and biparental, suggesting that plumage coloration in this species may serve different functions than in more typical dichromatic species. In order to explore the role of sexual selection in the evolution of plumage coloration in cardinals, we used reflectance spectrophotometry to investigate whether two carotenoid-based ornaments, the male’s red breast and the female’s underwing coverts, contain information that potential mates or competitors could use to assess condition. We found that whereas coloration was not related to body condition (measured as the residual body mass from a regression of body mass on wing chord), more saturated carotenoid coloration was associated with higher heterophil to lymphocyte ratios in males, and with higher white blood cell counts in females. Thus, in both sexes, carotenoid coloration was positively linked to immune measures normally associated with higher levels of stress and infection. These results do not indicate that carotenoid-based coloration functions as a signal of low levels of stress or disease in this species. We propose instead that because plumage coloration may be related to competitiveness, the more saturated individuals increase their risk of injury, stress, and infection by engaging in more competitive behavior or by secreting more testosterone, or both. Our finding that carotenoid pigmentation is positively associated in males with the size of the cloacal protuberance, an androgen-sensitive sex character, supports this hypothesis.
The Weight of Price - On the Structural Fomation of (Nominal) Market Prices

A new method to the investigation of nominal prices is presented. Taking into account (a) the weight of a number’s digits, (b) the build-in characteristics of cardinal numbers in decimal notation, and (c) a probable misconception of decimal notation, the main features of nominal prices are demonstrated to be well predictable: the probability of market prices’ first digits obeys Benford’s Law due to (b); the length of prices, and the distribution of digits on the consecutive positions are determined by a price’s first digit, as well as by (a) and (c). A secondary data analysis from el Sehity, Hoelzl and Kirchler (2005) is undertaken on price data from 10 EMU-countries before and after the transition to the euro. Price structures of the former national currencies re-established in euro within one year according to (a), (b), and (c).
Causal Classification: Treatment Effect Estimation vs. Outcome Prediction

The goal of causal classification is to identify individuals whose outcome would be positively changed by a treatment. Examples include targeting advertisements and targeting retention incentives to reduce churn. Causal classification is challenging because we observe individuals under only one condition (treated or untreated), so we do not know who was influenced by the treatment, but we may estimate the potential outcomes under each condition to decide whom to treat by estimating treatment effects. Curiously, we often see practitioners using simple outcome prediction instead, e.g., will someone purchase if shown the ad? Rather than disregarding this as naive behavior, we present a theoretical analysis comparing treatment effect estimation and outcome prediction when addressing causal classification. We describe a causal bias-variance tradeoff: because treatment effect estimation depends on two outcome estimates, its larger variance may lead to more errors than the (biased) outcome prediction approach. Moreover, the often stronger signal-to-noise ratio in outcome prediction may help with intervention decisions. The theoretical results as well as large-scale simulations illustrate settings in which outcome prediction should be better, including cases where (1) the bias may be partially corrected by choosing a different threshold, (2) outcomes and treatment effects are positively correlated, and (3) data to estimate counterfactuals are limited.
Geography-based Competition and Corporate Policies: Evidence from Textual Analysis of 10-K Filings†

An average firm competes for resources and customers in only five out of 50 U.S. states while an average industry tends to have operational presence in 27. However, we have a limited understanding of geography-based competition mostly due to the lack of a measure capturing locational aspect of competition for a broad-coverage of firms. Using textual analysis, we develop such a time-varying firm-specific measure based on firms' disclosures about operationally relevant U.S. states in their 10-K filings. We validate this measure using major customer and U.S. Census data, document its association with the rate of mean reversion of profitability, and focus on two economic decisions as the empirical framework for evaluation. We find localized competition explains innovation and cash policies incremental to productattribute based measures of competition. Further, the relevance of localized competition is greater in industries with high geographic segmentation and for firms that have smaller geographic footprints than the industry as a whole. Overall, our results suggest firms can be better characterized as competing in several local markets.
The plankton of a large oligotrophic freshwater Antarctic lake

The planktonic community of Crooked Lake, a large freshwater lake in the Vestfold Hills, Antarctica was investigated during the austral summer in 1990. Very low levels of chlorophyll a ranging between mean values of 0 29 and 1.8 μl-1 were recorded. The phytoplankton was largely made up of coloured flagellates, including single species of Chlamydomonas, Ochromonas and Pendimum, which occurred in low concentrations (23.8× 102-47.3 ×102 l-1). Heterotrophic colourless flagellates, including Paraphysomonas vestita, were also relatively sparse (2.1× 102-21.3×102 l-1). Ciliated protozoans were particularly poorly represented. Only three species occurred reaching densities of ∼1001-1, and among them the mixotrophic species Strombidium vinde was the most common. A single species of heliozoan Actinosphaerium and relatively large numbers of naked amoebae were the sarcodine representatives The protistan community and the bacteria were concentrated into microbial consortia associated with floes of paniculate organic matter probably derived from the benthic algal mat. Of the two microcrustacean zooplankters recorded from the lake only Daphniopsis studeri was found breeding in the plankton in very low numbers. The behavioural and physiological adaptations of the organisms inhabiting this extremely oligotrophic environment are discussed. © 1991 Oxford University Press.
Nematophagous Verticillium spp. in soils infested with Meloidogyne spp. in Cuba: Isolation and screening

Root-knot nematodes cause substantial economic loss of yield in coffee plantations and vegetable crops in Cuba. At present, methods to control the nematodes are ineffective or inappropriate and alternatives are being sought. The nematophagous fungus Verticillium chlamydosporium (Goddard) was isolated from soils collected from coffee plantations and infected root-knot nematode eggs from roots of tomato plants grown in these soils. A total of 83 isolates were collected and identified morphologically as V. chlamydosporium var. chlamydosporium, V. chlamydosporium var. catenulatum, V. psalliotae, V. suchlasporium and an isolate of V. chlamydosporium var. chlamydosporium with unusually large dictyochlamydospores. From these, 24 that represented a range of origins were selected and screened for their ability to parasitize eggs of root-knot nematodes, colonize the rhizosphere of barley roots and produce chlamydospores. None of the isolates grew at temperatures below 15°C and V. suchlasporium grew at a faster rate at lower temperatures than the other isolates. These were also screened in the glasshouse and V. chlamydosporium var. catenulatum caused the greatest reduction in nematode populations. One isolate of each subspecies of V. chlamydosporium was tested with the standard, Rothamsted isolate 10, on a range of host plants. The greatest reduction in numbers of nematodes occurred on tomato plants (cv. Pixie). The Rothamsted isolate 10 reduced numbers of nematodes toa greater extent than the other isolates, and therefore has the greatest potential as a biological control agent of root-knot nematodes.
The Memory of Beta

Researchers and practitioners employ a variety of time-series processes to forecast betas, using either short-memory models or implicitly imposing infinite memory. We find that both approaches are inadequate: beta factors show consistent long-memory properties. For the vast majority of stocks, we reject both the short-memory and difference-stationary (random walk) alternatives. A pure long-memory model reliably provides superior beta forecasts compared to all alternatives. Finally, we document the relation of firm characteristics with the forecast error differentials that result from inadequately imposing short-memory or random walk instead of long-memory processes.
Big Data, Retail Investors, and Financial Markets

Retail investors, on average, are known to be less informed. The democratized access to big financial data enabled by recent technological advances has the potential to make them better informed. At the same time, behavioral finance and economic theories postulate that such unprecedented access to big data may inspire more retail trades which are incongruent with market fundamentals. Against this backdrop, we investigate the impact of convenient access to big data on retail investors and the financial market. Our identification strategy exploits the sudden shutdown of Yahoo! Finance Application Programming Interface (API), which feeds financial data primarily to retail investors. We find that within one month after the API shutdown, retail trading volumes in retail target firms dropped by 9% (no effect on institutional trades), market liquidity deteriorated, and retail trades as a whole became more predictive of future returns, suggesting that retail trades supported by big data access are, on average, noisier. The findings imply big data alone can be harmful to retail investors without sufficient financial literacy.
Is Director Industry Experience Valuable?

We investigate whether investor reactions to the announcement of a new outside director appointment significantly depend upon the director’s experience in the appointing firm’s industry. Our sample includes 688 outside director appointments to boards of S&P 500 companies from 2005 to 2010. We find significantly higher announcement returns upon appointments of experienced versus inexperienced directors. To alleviate endogeneity concerns, we use the deaths of 200 directors holding 280 outside directorships as an identification strategy and find significantly more negative announcement returns associated with the deaths of experienced versus inexperienced directors. However, while our results are robust to accounting for time-fixed unobservable director and firm characteristics, we still cannot completely rule out endogenous firm-director matching driving our results.
Recovering the FOMC Risk Premium

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings have significant impact on market returns. We propose a methodology to recover the risk premium associated with FOMC meetings from option prices. We also estimate the sizes of upward/downward market price jumps after an imminent FOMC meeting. In our empirical analysis, with observed price data for 67 meetings and with data backed out via machine learning for the remaining 109 meetings from 1996 to 2017, we find that the risk premium varies from 15 to 88 basis points (bps), with an average of 38 bps which is consistent with the average realized returns documented in the literature. The average upward jump size is 103 bps, and the average downward jump size is 87 bps.
Adsorption of ochratoxin a by Saccharomyces cerevisiae living and non-living cells

In presented work the ability of Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells to binding of ochratoxin A was evaluated. The viable and thermally inactivated cells at various densities were incubated with ochratoxin A in PBS buffer and the toxin residue in supernatant was determined using HPLC method. The amount of OTA removed after 24 h of contact equalled 20, 29 and 75% for 1, 5 and 50 mg of dry biomass/ml, respectively. It was proved that killed biomass remove OTA from buffer in higher quantities than viable cells. The process of adsorption proved to be very fast; 30 min after mixing the cells with toxin, its amount significantly decreased. It was stated that incubation of the samples under static conditions is more effective than incubation with shaking. The releasing from 11 to 22% of initially binding toxin after three washing of biomass indicates the reversibility of bond between cells and toxins. The complex of killed cells-ochratoxin A is less firm than it is in case of viable biomass. Adsorption of toxin is cl.
Do CEOs Gain More in Foreign Acquisitions than Domestic Acquisitions?

This paper examines the impact of domestic and foreign acquisitions on chief executive officer (CEO) compensation packages using a sample of 147 completed bids by UK companies from 1999 to 2005. We find that foreign acquisitions lead to higher CEO compensation than domestic acquisitions. Overall, our findings suggest that CEOs have strong incentives to do foreign acquisitions rather than domestic acquisitions since they receive larger compensation following a foreign acquisition regardless of how poor firm performance is. Furthermore, we observe a positive and significant relation between CEO compensation and firm size during the pre-acquisition period for firms involved in foreign acquisitions, thus their CEOs would expect to increase their compensation package through foreign acquisitions. However, our results show that there is no significant link between firm size and CEO compensation during the pre-acquisition period for firms involved in domestic acquisitions.
Situação nutricional de seringais produtivos no estado de São Paulo

Avaliou-se o estado nutricional de quarenta seringais em producao, instalados em diversas regioes edafoclimaticas paulistas, por meio da analise quimica foliar e dos solos correspondentes. As amostragens de folhas foram feitas no verao e no outono e as de solo, apenas na primeira epoca, ambas em 1984 e 1985. De forma consistente, verificaram-se baixos niveis de P nos solos de quase todos os seringais e de K naqueles localizados no litoral. A acidez apresentou grande variabilidade, registrando-se desde baixos indices de saturacao por bases em solos do litoral e na regiao dos latossolos vermelho-escuros de textura media ate niveis bastante elevados nos latossolos roxos eutroficos e nos podzolicos. Embora nao se tenham registrado deficiencias de micronutrientes, as concentracoes de Fe e B se mostraram marcadamente associadas ao tipo de solo. As produtividades mais elevadas de alguns seringais foram associadas com niveis mais altos de N e K nas folhas. Para os demais macronutrientes, as concentracoes nas folhas foram semelhantes, independente do grupo de produtividade em gue os seringais se enquadraram: baixa, media ou alta. Nao ocorreram deficiencias visiveis de Ca e Mg, porem os baixos niveis de P tanto nas folhas como nos solos possivelmente estejam afetando a produtividade.
Morphological variation in the Common Fiscal Lanius collaris along an altitudinal gradient in southern Africa

Geographic variation among four Common Fiscal subpopulations along an altitudinal gradient in South Africa demonstrated significant variation of 13 morphological features and 38 skeletal characters. Common Fiscals were largest in cooler, less humid, more arid areas and smallest in warmer, wetter, more humid localities, supporting Bergmann's Rule. Patterns of variation in morphology, anatomy and skeletal trends were significantly correlated with 11 climatic trends. Cardiopulmonary organ mass and blood haematocrit increased with altitude and reflected adaptations to low ambient temperatures and decreased oxygen pressures associated with high altitudes. These trends are concordant with those reported in various other avian species.
Allelopathic potential of cucumber (Cucumis sativus) on barnyardgrass (Echinochloa crus-galli)

Rice is the most important crop inVietnam, while barnyardgrass (Echinochloa crus-galli L. Beauv.) is the most significant biological constraint to rice production. In spite of the wide use of commercial herbicides to control barnyardgrass, the rice crop yield loss from this weed remains high.The negative impacts of commercial herbicide use in relation to environmental contamination make it necessary to diversify the weed management options (Putnam 1988; Weston 1996; Einhellig 1999). Controlling weeds through allelopathy is one of the strategies to reduce commercial herbicide dependency (Rice 1984; Putnam 1988; Duke et al. 2000). It has been observed that many plant species can provide excellent weed suppression after the incorporation of their residues into the soil (Semidey 1999; Caamal-Maldonado et al. 2001). However, in Vietnam there has been, so far, no attempt to exploit the allelopathy of plants for possible weed control purposes in the agricultural field setting.
Optimal Design of Uptime-Guarantee Maintenance Contracts

This paper analyzes the contracting of maintenance services provided by an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to an operator for a device. The service provider can exert different levels of maintenance effort during the course of the contract and the device's reliability (uptime) is influenced by these levels. However, the service provider's effort level is non-contractible. We obtain the optimal design of performance-based maintenance contracts in this context by singling out a unique uptime-guarantee contract structure that contains profit-maximizing contracts in all situations. With the optimal contract structure, the service provider guarantees 100% uptime and compensates the operator's downtime at a higher unit rate than it charges him/her for maintenance services (with the factor of inverse expected downtime under no contract). This finding shows that some of the well-known performance-based contract structures used in practice (e.g., pay-for-performance contracts) can be sub-optimal for the OEMs. When the operator's revenue rate from the device is known to the service provider, the optimal contract compensates for any lost revenue due to downtime yet leaves the operator with zero expected profit from the contract. Under asymmetric information, we provide a closed-form formula for calculating the optimal compensation rate. We also demonstrate the advantages and limitations of offering menus of contracts to increase the service provider's expected profits.
Risk Contributions and Realised Losses: An Analysis Using Quantile Simulation

This paper tests whether the economic interpretation of risk contributions, as measure by marginal change in volatility, is true when accounting for fat tails in the asset return distributions (Qian, 2006). This is relevant to portfolio managers that have an expectation that risk and loss contributions will be approximately equal. A simulation study is conducted to replicate the environment required by the proof. The Quantile Simulation method is used to simulate asset return distributions that are reasonable replicates of the empirical samples. Given the relative novelty of the method, this paper also reports the extent to which the simulated samples are able to approximate the empirical sample of each asset.
Surges

This paper examines why surges in capital flows to emerging market economies (EMEs) occur, and what determines the allocation of capital across countries during such surge episodes. We use two different methodologies to identify surges in EMEs over 1980-2009, differentiating between those mainly caused by changes in the country's external liabilities (reflecting the investment decisions of foreigners), and those caused by changes in its assets (reflecting the decisions of residents). Global factors-including US interest rates and risk aversion&#x000A1;-are key to determining whether a surge will occur, but domestic factors such as the country's external financing needs (as implied by an intertemporal optimizing model of the current account) and structural characteristics also matter, which explains why not all EMEs experience surges. Conditional on a surge occurring, moreover, the magnitude of the capital inflow depends largely on domestic factors including the country's external financing needs, and the exchange rate regime. Finally, while similar factors explain asset- and liability-driven surges, the latter are more sensitive to global factors and contagion.