Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Differences of Skin Normal Microbiota in Adult Men and Elderly

Introduction: Skin is the largest human body organ, colonized by a variety of microorganisms that are mostly harmless or even beneficial to the host. Microbiota includes bacteria, fungi, viruses, and archae that inhabit various areas of the body. Microbiota is a dynamic and will be shift its diversity with age. Objective: To see the difference in normal skin microbiota in adult men and elderly. Methods: This research is an observational study using a case control design to see differences in normal skin microbiota in 10 adult men and 10 elderly men. Each skin smear was taken on the forehead, axilla and forearms of the patient. Cultivation of bacteria or fungi is carried out and then isolates of bacterial or fungal are identified using Vitek-2 compact. Results: The forehead was dominated by phylum Firmicutes (adult men: 74%, elderly men: 82.3%) followed by Actinobacteria (adult men: 25.9%, elderly men: 17.6%). Axilla was dominated by phylum Firmicutes (adult men: 77.2%, elderly men: 86.9%) followed by Actinobacteria (adult men: 22.7%, elderly men: 13%). In the forearms was dominated by phylum Firmicutes (adult men: 57.5%, elderly men: 77.7%) followed by Actinobacteria (adult men: 42.4%, elderly men: 22.2%). Conclusion: Based on the predominant phylum, the normal microbiota of the skin on the forehead, axilla and forearms of adult men and elderly is not too different. Based on the three location, we found the forearms area had the highest diversity of microbiota and was followed by the forehead area and the least diversity was found in the axilla area.
How banking relationships affect certification: The role of private information in underwriting

I provide evidence that following deregulation allowing for private information transfers within banks, an underwriter is better able to certify a seasoned equity issue if it has a lending relationship with the firm. An unexpected announcement of being underwritten by the firm’s lending-relationship bank reduces ex-post information asymmetry and improves the announcement return. Consistent with this enhanced certification effect, firms reveal a preference for lending-relationship banks as underwriters. In turn, these banks select which firms to underwrite based on their private information about the firm and strategically set lower fees the more favorable that information is. Also consistent with their higher certification ability, lending relationships are associated with a fee premium after controlling for the effect of private information on the firm-underwriter match. Overall, these results add support to the value of banks in the production and transmission of information.
The effect of auditor quality and ownership structure on the debt maturity of AIM firms

The aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of two corporate governance mechanisms that might affect the debt maturity structure of listed firms on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM): the use of the services provided by a Big 4 auditor and the firms’ ownership structure. Analyzing a sample of 330 firms during the period 1998-2016 and applying both crosssectional and panel data estimations, we find that: i) there is a positive and significant relationship between being audited by a Big 4 auditor and debt maturity, which is reflecting lower agency conflicts within these firms; ii) firms with more ownership concentration have a higher fraction of long term debt in their capital structure; iii) while family firms are, on average, associated with shorter debt maturities, when they are audited by a Big4 their debt maturity lengthens. In the paper we discuss this complementarity effect of Big4 auditor and ownership structure. Results are robust when we control for the possible endogeneity problem of the Big 4 auditor choice. We also find that the effect of Big 4 auditor and the ownership structure on debt maturity is conditioned by firm size.
Rejecta Mathematica Vol. 2, No. 1

This article presents a new classification framework that can extract individual features per class. The scheme is based on a model of incoherent subspaces, each one associated to one class, and a model on how the elements in a class are represented in this subspace. After the theoretical analysis an alternate projection algorithm to find such a collection is developed. The classification performance and speed of the proposed method is tested on the AR and YaleB databases and compared to that of Fisher’s LDA and a recent approach based on on `1 minimisation. Finally connections of the presented scheme to already existing work are discussed and possible ways of extensions are pointed out.
Self-Generated Actions in Preliterate Children

LD A B u ltin | B rain rearch sh ow s w h y h an d w ritin g sh o u ld b e au gh t in th e co m p u er ge Karin James and Virginia Berninger explain how brain research has shown that teaching handwriting is not only helpful in itself but has positive effects on letter learning, word reading, and writing. The practical implications are clear: keyboarding complements but should not be a replacement for the teaching of handwriting in the digital age.
Are Measures of Early Education Programs Too Pessimistic? Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment∗

We estimate the direct and spillover effects of a large-scale early childhood intervention on the educational attainment of over 2,000 disadvantaged children. We show that failing to account for spillover effects results in a severe underestimation of the true policy impact. The intervention induced modest positive direct effects on both cognitive and non-cognitive test scores of children assigned to the treatment groups. We document large spillover effects on both treatment and control children who live near treated children. On average, spillover effects increase a child’s non-cognitive (cognitive) scores by about 1.2 (0.6 to 0.7) standard deviations. The spillover effects are localized, decreasing with the spatial distance to treated neighbors. Our evidence suggests the spillover effect on non-cognitive scores are more likely to operate through the child’s social network rather than the parents’. Our evidence also suggests influencing parental investment is an important channel through which cognitive spillover effects operate.
Negative concord in classical Greek case study : Xenophon

Ancient Greek has at its disposal a complex system of negatives (n-words and negators) that can combine in different ways. Drawing on Xenophon’s works, I will show various patterns reflecting the combinations of negatives (negator and n-words) in Ancient Greek sentences; due to its relatively free word order, the place of negative elements may vary considerably. I pay special attention to n-words and negative spread, which is markedly developed in Ancient Greek, and examine the differences between non-strict negative concord languages (like Italian and Spanish) and specific non-strict negative concord languages (like Ancient Greek), arguing for scalar properties of negation.
On The Use of Channel Incentive Programs: A Cross Country A nalysis on the Crop Protection Industry in Brazil and USA

On The Use of Channel Incentive Programs: A Cross Country A nalysis on the Crop Protection Industry in Brazil and USA Luciano Thomé e Castro Prof. Dr. Marcos Fava Neves Prof. Dr Jay Taylor Akridge Abstract This paper presents a new theoretical form of analyzing mark eting channel incentive programs. It suggests that the distribution of power among dealers and manufacturers plays a key role defining the performance measures and ben efits used by manufacturers with dealers. A cross country analysis is conducted and the same three firms were selected in Brazil and in US in the crop protecti on industry, an industry where incentive programs are being widely used. While ma rket context explains much of the difference in how power is distributed between deale rs and manufacturers in both countries, the incentive programs used in the US and in Brazil evolved very differently. The research is organized in the spirit of g r unded theory with the use of multiple case studies. The paper also offers a method in man agement practice for creating relationships with channel members using incentiv s.
Social Learning and Monetary Policy at the Effective Lower Bound

This paper develops a model that jointly accounts for the missing disinflation in the wake of the Great Recession and the subsequently observed inflation‐less recovery. The key mechanism works through heterogeneous expectations that may durably lose their anchoring to the central bank (CB)'s target and coordinate on particularly persistent below‐target paths. The welfare cost associated with persistent low inflation may be reduced if the CB announces to the agents its target or its own inflation forecasts, as communication helps coordinate expectations. However, the CB may lose its credibility whenever its announcements become decoupled from actual inflation.
Managerial Pay Disparity, Firm Risk and Productivity: New Insights from the Bond Market

Prior literature suggests three alternative explanations for CEO pay gap: tournament incentive, CEO entrenchment, and CEO productivity. In this study, we examine the relation between CEO pay gap and a firm's default risk and its implication for debt contracting. We find negative relations between CEO pay gap and default risk, cost of debt, and the number of restrictive debt covenants but a positive relation between CEO pay gap and debt maturity. Additional analysis indicates that these results concentrate in firms with highly productive CEOs. Our findings are consistent with the CEO productivity explanation for CEO pay gap.
Bacterial contamination of packaged smokeless tobacco sold in India

INTRODUCTION About 21.4% of India’s population uses smokeless tobacco products (SLT), yet limited data are available on their microbial contamination. To understand the potential microbiological risks associated with SLT use, the present study aims to investigate bacterial contamination of tobacco and the types of microbes that could be cultured from SLT products. METHODS Twenty-two brands of SLT products, including paan masala, khaini, gutka and tobacco-containing dentifrices were examined and cultured by using appropriate selective and differential media including MacConkey agar and CLED agar. This was followed by a sequence of further identification by biochemical tests. RESULTS All 22 types of SLT products showed growth of aerobic bacteria. The most common bacteria isolated were Pseudomonas aeruginosa followed by Streptococcus faecalis. Other bacteria that were isolated from products, in traces, included Klebsiella spp. , E. coli, and Bacillus subtilus. CONCLUSIONS This study raises and addresses the issue of bacterial contamination of packaged SLT products. SLT users might be subjected to a significant health hazard, especially those who are immunocompromised.
The Use of Claim Resources by Undergraduate Students in High- and Low-Graded Persuasive Essays

This paper compares high-graded essays to low-graded essays in terms of various ‘Claims’ resources used by undergraduate students. The theoretical basis of the Claim is mainly derived from the ENGAGEMENT system of the appraisal theory within a Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) framework. The ENGAGEMENT system is concerned with how writers engage with readers through internal voices of Averral and external voices of ‘Attribution’. Data was collected from 12 persuasive essays written by both international and local Australian students enrolled in an EAP course running at a regional university in Australia. The text analyses reveal significant differences between highgraded essays and low-graded essays in using Claim resources. While successful writers can produce essays that display a balanced incorporation of strategies of internal Averral into their presentation of external Attribution within particular schematic stages, poor writers fail to display the pattern. Pedagogical implications will be discussed in terms of academic literacy and integrity.
Identifying Female Leadership and Performance in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in a Transition Economy: The Case Study of Vietnam

A review of the literature shows that there is no consistently positive impact on enterprise performance of female participation in business leadership (gender diversity in leadership). This study conducts direct surveys of more than 500 Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Hanoi, Vietnam, to assess the relationship between women in top management positions and enterprise performance. Unlike previous studies, which used financial indicators to measure enterprise performance, this study adopts the Balance Scorecard theory (BSC) developed by Kaplan and Norton (1996) that assesses enterprise performance based on four groups of criteria: Financial, customer, internal operating process, and training and development. In addition to the control variables used commonly in previous studies, this study adds two factors: (1) awareness of equal opportunities for men and women to become business leaders (2) appropriateness of men and women in leadership positions. The results of the study have shown no clear relationship between the percentage of female participation in leadership, and the financial results and customer development of the enterprise. However, internal operating process and training and development results are negatively affected by the participation of women on the board of directors. The inconsistency of these research results suggests the need to continue to study this topic in SMEs with larger sample size and geographic scope.
Topological peculiarities of mammalian networks with different functionalities: transcription, signal transduction and metabolic networks

We have comparatively investigated three different mammalian networks – on transcription, signal transduction and metabolic processes with respect to their common and individual topological traits. The networks have been constructed based on genome-wide data collected from human, mouse and rat. None of these three networks exhibits a pure power-law degree distribution and, therefore, could be considered scalefree. Rather, the degree distributions of all three networks were best fitted by mixed models of a power law with an exponential tail. The networks differ from one another in the quantitative parameters of the models. Moreover, the transcription network can also be very well approximated by an exponential law. The connectivity within each network is rather robust, as is seen when removing individual nodes and computing the values of their pairwise disconnectivity index (PDI), which characterizes the topological significance of each node v by the number of direct or indirect connections in the network that critically depend on the presence of v. The results evidence that the networks are not centralized: none of nodes globally controls the integrity of each network. Just a few vertices appeared to strongly affect the coherence of the networks. These nodes are characterized by a broad range of degrees, thereby indicating that the degree alone is not the decisive criteria of a node’s importance. The networks reveal distinct architectures: The transcriptional network exhibits a hierarchical modularity, whereas the signaling network is mainly comprised of semi-autonomous modules. The metabolic network seems to be made by a more complex mixture of substructures. Thus, despite being encoded by the same genomes, the networks significantly differ from one another in their general architectural design. Altogether, our results indicate that the subsets of genes and relationships that constitute these networks have co-evolved very differently and through multiple mechanisms.
Asymmetric Price Impact and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns

This paper investigates which component of price impact plays a main role for asset pricing. To find a main component, we decompose the price impacts measured by turnover-version Amihud illiquidity into the permanent and transitory price impacts. We then further decompose each of these price impacts into half-price impact measures that correspond 1) positive and negative return days, and 2) good and bad news days. We find that, among the eight decomposed half-price impact measures, the “transitory half-price impact associated with bad news days” is the main component of the turnover-version Amihud illiquidity measure. Based on this finding, we suggest a new price impact measure, “Net price impact”, defined as the average net ratio of the daily transitory deviation to share turnover. With this suggested measure, we find that the price impact measure that takes into account the investors’ asymmetric response to not only the good and bad news days but also the asymmetric effect of transitory deviation associated with the news is better in explaining future stock
Il Mulino-Rivisteweb

Based on evidence from empirical analysis of an emblematic case within the Italian context, this article proposes an interpretation of the political meanings implied in the institutionalization of deliberative practice. Through the adoption of a mix of quantitative and qualitative techniques, we conducted contextualized analysis of two experiments of public deliberation which have recently been promoted by the Regional Government of Tuscany. The research findings show that the general effect of the two processes was more the domestication of bottom-up participation, rather than the opening of new inclusive and participative spaces. Relevant political functions have emerged with reference to the internal needs of party elites and to the competition/negotiation between consolidated and new political actors. Thus, we suggest that institutionalization of deliberative democracy can be better understood when put in relation to the current process of functional adaptation undertaken by some institutional political actors. Through ‘outsourcing’ and individualizing participative processes away from the party arena, ruling elite would maintain the control over their own selection and political agenda. In other words, in some contexts the institutionalization of public deliberation operates more like a complementary instrument than a real remedy challenging post-democratic governance.
Effect of Grape Juice on the Physiochemical and Sensory Properties of Yogurt

Fruit yogurt was prepared with the addition of grape juice and its effect of on the physicochemical, functional and sensory properties of yogurt was investigated. Yogurts with grape juice at a ratio of 3%, 5% and 7% were prepared and the properties were analyzed along with the control. The pH, syneresis, viscosity and firmness of yogurt were measured and the considerable changes were observed. The adhesiveness, taste, mouthfeel, color, flavor, texture and overall acceptability of grape juice added yogurt were analyzed. The pH value of yogurt was changed dramatically due to the addition of grape juice and it was decreased steadily by the increasing percentage of grape juice. Syneresis was higher in 7% grape juice added yogurt compared to those of no addition of grape juice. The viscosity was decreased with the increased concentration of grape juice. The firmness was increased with the increasing percentage of grape juice on yogurt. The sensory analysis revealed that there was no significantly different (p<0.05) between yogurt with added grape juice and that with no addition of grape juice. The consumer acceptance of 3% and 5% grape juice concentrated yogurt were higher than those of 7% grape juice concentrated yogurt. The 3% and 5% grape juice concentrations could be recommended for the industrial scale production of fruit yogurt.
Presence of Others and Online Helping Behavior Submission Type : Completed Research Paper

People can see how others respond to charitable events on social networking sites (SNSs). The effect of the presence of others can be explained by two contrastive accounts: the bystander effect and social learning theory. The former predicts that the perceived presence of others causes people to be less likely to help people, whereas the latter predicts the opposite. This research supported the social learning theory by finding that the perceived presence of others on SNSs positively affected intention to help, recommending behavior, and monetary donation via the mediating effects of awareness of needs and perceived responsibility to help. Additionally, this study proposed that perceived tie strength between SNS friends and psychological closeness between donors and beneficiaries would moderate the effects of the perceived presence of others. The results did not empirically confirm the moderating effect of tie strength but supported the negative moderating effect of psychological closeness.
Analyzing students’ reasoning about the inverse-square law through the lens of dual processing theories

We discuss an investigation exploring students’ reasoning about the inverse-square law using the perspectives of dual processing. We ﬁnd that students in both introductory mathematics and physics courses have difﬁculties with the law when it is presented in multiple representations. More than half of the students who provided incorrect responses to the written surveys inappropriately based their reasoning on various cues in the questions without engaging in genuine conceptual thinking. One common reasoning students provided was based on the inverse relationship rather than the inverse-square relationship between two variables. We suggest that the reason for this could be due to the students’ choice of an intuitive and automatic processing (system 1) over a controlled and conscious processing (system 2) while responding to the questions.
Does cooperation of women in top positions enhance or impede firm performance?

Based on the notion that women cooperate more with women than with men, we investigate whether the cooperation among women at the top of corporate hierarchy in China affects firm performance. We show that the cooperation between female leaders and female directors leads to higher ROA but lower Tobin’s q. The opposite effects are a result of earnings management that leads to overstated accounting profits but unfavourable stock market reactions. Further, the significant gender interaction effect arises from the managerial support provided by female executive directors to female leaders. Collectively, we demonstrate that the growing pressure on women to perform leads to ‘women helping women’, which is detrimental to shareholder interests. JEL classification: G10, G34
4.3. How important are organizational decisions in determining a firm’s productivity? | Lorenzo Caliendo, Giordano Mion, Luca David Opromolla, Esteban Rossi-Hansberg

Measuring and understanding differences and variations in firm, and therefore country, productivity is a difficult—and important—task. Economists throughout the world have documented large and persistent differences in measured productivity across firms: Syverson (2004), looking at the variation in revenue-based productivity across US plants within four-digit SIC industries, finds that the plant at the 90th percentile of the productivity distribution makes almost twice as much output, with the same measured inputs, as the 10th percentile plant.
A framework for the development of a management system for Engineering education (MaSEE)

BACKGROUND Management systems based on recognised Standards provide the framework within which engineers operate. They reduce risk by establishing consistent processes for completing projects and tasks. Traditionally, student exposure to this area of the professional environment has been addressed in the curriculum through uncontrolled work-integrated learning activities, or introduced as graduate development in industry. Similarities between core management system processes and effective teaching strategies present an opportunity to integrate industry adapted processes into the curriculum as learning and teaching tools.