Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of Financial Development on Firm Size and Growth

I consider the extent to country’s financial institutions magnify or dampen differences in firm size and growth, within an industry. The effect of particular financial institutional arrangements is likely to vary across firms, in part due to competitive dynamics. In particular, poor financial development likely limits the growth of firms most dependent on external finance. However, this reduces the competitive pressure on firms less dependent on external finance. Hence, financial development potentially has heterogeneous effects across firms. I provide empirical evidence in support of this, within narrowly defined industries based on firm-level Western European data that includes coverage of small, private firms. I find poor financial development reduces (increases) the growth of small (large) firms and increases the relative size of large versus small firms, with consistent patterns across industries. The effects are greater in industries with higher capital intensity, as this raises investment, and higher elasticity of demand, as this strengthens competitive reactions.
Assessing the dynamic effects of fiscal policy shocks in selected leading and lagging economies

Fiscal policy dynamics received more attention after the global movement of 1990’s. The global movement converted the attention of researchers towards free market economy, fiscal consolidation and decentralization. The present study examines that how macroeconomic variables (economic growth, private investment, consumption, Public debt and inflation) respond to fiscal shocks during 2002 to 2014 for a sample of ten economies, including leading economies (Germany, Japan, Switzerland, USA and UK) and lagging economies (Bangladesh, China, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka). Variance decomposition technique and impulse response function were used to analyze the data. Data for the variables of the study is collected from World Development Indicator (WDI) and International Financial Statistics (IFS) databases. The results of variance decomposition and impulse response function showed that government expenditure has a strong correlation with macroeconomic activities. Furthermore, the shock in public spending has positive impact on key macroeconomic activities. The study also verifies the fact that private and public investments are complementary. The results also suggested that fiscal policy is playing a pivotal role in solving key fiscal problems in the selected economies. It study also suggests that fiscal policy must be used as an important tool to control inflation, interest rate and public debt. Nevertheless, it also suggests that investment will be encouraged through effective fiscal policy mechanism and integrate the fiscal policies among different leading and lagging economies to reach the ultimate aim and objectives of global
MEANINGFUL POLICY ANALYSIS

With the rapidly changing policy landscape of late, I have chosen to focus my address on the more stable fundamentals of economic policy analysis in a time of changing methodologies. In the classical dichotomy of purposes for empirical microeconomic analysis—positive versus normative—my focus might be characterized as a revival of normative purposes— identification of policies that make people better off. My underlying premise is that the normative purpose of economic policies is to improve the well-being of the people who they serve (the fundamental ethical postulate) and the libertarian notion that choices of individuals reflect their preferences. I show that preferences have been identified by imposing arbitrary perception specifications so that estimated relationships are essentially reduced form equations that serve positive but not normative uses. This permits prediction of measured variables (a positive contribution) but fails to identify policies that make people better off (the normative ideal). First, I show that support for normative policy analysis has been eroded by empirical practices that have turned toward estimation of atheoretic and reduced form equations that fail to identify marginal behavior and underlying preferences. Second, I demonstrate that estimation of behavioral equations derived from optimization theory cannot distinguish preferences from perceptions in microeconomic problems with uncertainty and is thus
Biodiversity Impacts of Increased Ethanol Production in Brazil

Growing domestic and international ethanol demand is expected to result in increased sugarcane cultivation in Brazil. Sugarcane expansion currently results in land-use changes mainly in the Cerrado and Atlantic Forest biomes, two severely threatened biodiversity hotspots. This study quantifies potential biodiversity impacts of increased ethanol demand in Brazil in a spatially explicit manner. We project changes in potential total, threatened, endemic, and range-restricted mammals’ species richness up to 2030. Decreased potential species richness due to increased ethanol demand in 2030 was projected for about 19,000 km2 in the Cerrado, 17,000 km2 in the Atlantic Forest, and 7000 km2 in the Pantanal. In the Cerrado and Atlantic Forest, the biodiversity impacts of sugarcane expansion were mainly due to direct land-use change; in the Pantanal, they were largely due to indirect land-use change. The biodiversity impact of increased ethanol demand was projected to be smaller than the impact of other drivers of land-use change. This study provides a first indication of biodiversity impacts related to increased ethanol production in Brazil, which is useful for policy makers and ethanol producers aiming to mitigate impacts. Future research should assess the impact of potential mitigation options, such as nature protection, agroforestry, or agricultural intensification.
The Dark Side of Private Benefits: Implications from Block Trades

As a test of the agency theory, this paper examines the relationship between the size of the private benefits of the new blockholder and the likelihood of future litigation or earnings management. Using a sample of 391 US firms whose blocks of shares are traded over 1987-2002, we find that the incidence of securities litigation against the new blockholder or the new management team is positively related to the size of block premium at the time of the block trade. Our findings are consistent with the agency theory which suggests that controlling stakeholders are more likely to engage in corporate misconduct in the presence of greater private benefits. JEL classification: G34; K42.
Uniformity Constraints in German Reportive Contexts

In this paper, I analyze variation in interpretations and surface forms of German embedded clauses under reportive verbs. Variation exists in the position and modality of the finite verb. In order to account for this variation, I argue for a pronominal theory of tense and world variables, following Partee (1989), Kratzer (1998; 2005) and Percus (2000). In addition, I propose a hypothesis of uniformity, which restricts the occurrence of binders and variables on the same head. A pronominal approach to tense combined with the uniformity constraint correctly predicts and explains different interpretations of clausal complements of reportive verbs in German.
WP / 18 / 028 Investigating the relevance of mobile technology adoption on inclusive growth in West Africa 1 Forthcoming : Contemporary Social Science

This paper empirically investigates the role of mobile technology adoption on inclusive growth in 15 West African countries with a view to ascertaining if the positive role of mobile technology adoption on human development as established in other regions holds in West Africa. It used data from World Development Indicators for the period 2004 to 2014, which was estimated with system generalised method of moments (SGMM). The SGMM results show that mobile cell subscription has a statistically insignificant effect on inclusive growth in West Africa which refutes the positive and significant role of mobile technology adoption on inclusive growth. The possible reasons for the results and recommendations are documented in the study.
Oral Candidiasis: A Disease of Opportunity

Oral candidiasis, commonly referred to as “thrush,” is an opportunistic fungal infection that commonly affects the oral mucosa. The main causative agent, Candida albicans, is a highly versatile commensal organism that is well adapted to its human host; however, changes in the host microenvironment can promote the transition from one of commensalism to pathogen. This transition is heavily reliant on an impressive repertoire of virulence factors, most notably cell surface adhesins, proteolytic enzymes, morphologic switching, and the development of drug resistance. In the oral cavity, the co-adhesion of C. albicans with bacteria is crucial for its persistence, and a wide range of synergistic interactions with various oral species were described to enhance colonization in the host. As a frequent colonizer of the oral mucosa, the host immune response in the oral cavity is oriented toward a more tolerogenic state and, therefore, local innate immune defenses play a central role in maintaining Candida in its commensal state. Specifically, in addition to preventing Candida adherence to epithelial cells, saliva is enriched with anti-candidal peptides, considered to be part of the host innate immunity. The T helper 17 (Th17)-type adaptive immune response is mainly involved in mucosal host defenses, controlling initial growth of Candida and inhibiting subsequent tissue invasion. Animal models, most notably the mouse model of oropharyngeal candidiasis and the rat model of denture stomatitis, are instrumental in our understanding of Candida virulence factors and the factors leading to host susceptibility to infections. Given the continuing rise in development of resistance to the limited number of traditional antifungal agents, novel therapeutic strategies are directed toward identifying bioactive compounds that target pathogenic mechanisms to prevent C. albicans transition from harmless commensal to pathogen.
Reflection Analysis of Impermeable Slopes under Bimodal Sea Conditions

Understanding of the reflection characteristics of coastal seawalls is crucial for design. Wave reflection can cause difficulties in small vessel manoeuvring at harbour entrances; this can cause damage to the toe of coastal structures by scouring. Previous studies have examined the reflection characteristics of coastal seawalls under random wind-generated waves without considering the effects of wave bimodality created by the presence of swell waves. This present study focuses on the influence of random wave bimodality on the reflective characteristics of coastal seawalls. 823 experimental tests were conducted to examine the reflection performance of impermeable sloping seawalls under bimodal waves. Reflection coefficients were computed from each test. The analysis of the results suggests that both unimodal and bimodal waves give similar reflection characteristics. However, the reflection coefficient in bimodal sea states seems to be more prolonged than in the unimodal sea states. It was found that the reflection coefficients of coastal seawalls are strongly influenced by the seawall slope, the wave steepness, the relative water depth, and the surf similarity parameters. A new empirical reflection equation to describe the influence of wave bimodality on the reflection characteristics of coastal seawalls has been formulated based on this study.
Continuing the MODIS Dark Target Aerosol Time Series with VIIRS

For reflected sunlight observed from space at visible and near-infrared wavelengths, particles suspended in Earth’s atmosphere provide contrast with vegetation or dark water at the surface. This is the physical motivation for the Dark Target (DT) aerosol retrieval algorithm developed for the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS). To extend the data record of aerosol optical depth (AOD) beyond the expected 20-year lifespan of the MODIS sensors, DT must be adapted for other sensors. A version of the DT AOD retrieval for the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi-National Polar-Orbiting Partnership (SNPP) is now mature enough to be released as a standard data product, and includes some upgraded features from the MODIS version. Differences between MODIS Aqua and VIIRS SNPP lead to some inevitable disagreement between their respective AOD measurements, but the offset between the VIIRS SNPP and MODIS Aqua records is smaller than the offset between those of MODIS Aqua and MODIS Terra. The VIIRS SNPP retrieval shows good agreement with ground-based measurements. For most purposes, DT for VIIRS SNPP is consistent enough and in close enough agreement with MODIS to continue the record of satellite AOD. The reasons for the offset from MODIS Aqua, and its spatial and temporal variability, are investigated in this study.
Financial Literacy: The Case of Poland

Financial literacy is a path to sustainability and has an important role in ensuring the financial sustainability of individuals, families, enterprises and national economies. The level of these economic indicators such as debt, payment discipline, savings and financial management all translate into prosperity or insolvency and bankruptcy and result partially from financial literacy. The higher the level of financial literacy, especially of young people, the more favourable the level of economic indicators, which translates into the economy and sustainable development. With this study we aim to determine the level of financial literacy of high school students in Poland and to determine whether financial literacy changes according to gender. The most important element that distinguishes our study from the others is that or study was carried out with a large sample of high school students with an average age of 15–16 years. In addition, the effect of gender on financial literacy at an early age was investigated, also comparing the wider themes to the so-called narrow themes. The results of the research demonstrated a good and partially very good, level of financial knowledge of the young people in Poland. 45.3% obtained an average level score and 43.8% achieved a high-level score in financial knowledge. This result shows that they can be rational in their financial decision making. However although, it is understood that gender makes a difference on financial behaviour and use of financial instruments, gender does not make any difference on the level of financial knowledge. Moreover, the financial literacy level of males is found to be higher than females.
Evaluation of Left Ventricular Function after Percutaneous Recanalization of Chronic Coronary Occlusions: The Role of Two-Dimensional Speckle Tracking Echocardiography

Background: The recanalization of a chronic total coronary occlusion is the possible way to improve left ventricular (LV) function through the recovery of hibernating myocardium. Aim: The aim of this study is to evaluate the role of 2D speckle tracking in evaluation of the left ventricular (LV) systolic function in chronic total occlusion (CTO) patients before and at 1 day as well as 3 months after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Patients and Methods: A prospective observational study included 40 patients diagnosed with coronary angiography to have a chronic total occlusion. Percutaneous coronary revascularization was performed according to standard practices with the femoral approach. Conventional 2D echocardiography was used to assess LV functions and wall motion abnormalities scoring index (WMAI). Using speckle-tracking echocardiography was to measure global longitudinal strain (GLS) and. Follow-up of patients was done at day 1 and 3 months later after PCI. Results: Forty patients were included in this study, with a mean age of 58.55 ± 7.98 years. GLS and WMAI difference at baseline and follow-up shows a positive correlation with left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) changes at baseline and follow-up (p < 0.001). Mean value of baseline GLS (-14.26 ± 0.93) significantly improved at follow-up as GLS was (-15.66 ± 0.92) with p-value < 0.001. Periprocedural complications were contrast induced nephropathy (CIN) in 2 (5%), Cardiac tamponade 1 (2.5%) and Emergency re-PCI 1 (2.5%). Conclusion: The results of this study provide evidence to support the clinical use of 2D-STE to monitor the early changes of LV function. In patients undergoing CTO revascularization, change in GLS was more sensitive predictors for LV function improvement at 3-month follow-up.
A Study on Copro-Epidemiology of Poultry Coccidiosis in and Around Jimma Town, Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia

A Coprology based cross sectional study was conducted on poultry coccidiosis of local and exotic breed from April to June, 2018 in and around Jimma town, Oromia regional state, south western Ethiopia. A total of 367 faecal samples were collected from exotic and Indigenous breeds of chickens randomly, including both younger and adult age groups from different management system. Saturated solution of sugar was used as floating medium. Out of the 367 chicken examined, 119 were positive for coccidian parasites giving the overall prevalence of 32.4%. Among age groups, breed, sex, management system, hygienic status and medication history and vaccinated, higher prevalence was observed in young (48.8%), exotic chicken (36.4%), male (35%), and those with intensive management system (39.5%), poor hygienic status (37%) and not medicated (36%) and vaccinated (35.5%) respectively. Young chicken and those with intensive management, poor hygienic status, exotic breed and not medicated had higher risk of acquiring coccidiosis (P<0.05). Even though relatively higher prevalence of coccidiosis was recorded in the chicken that were vaccinated (34%) than non-vaccinated (30.5%), but no significant difference (P>0.05) was obtained. In conclusion, the present study showed that coccidiosis is an important disease of poultry and this warrant appropriate control strategies need to be designed in order to reduce the impact of poultry coccidiosis in the study area.
A study on tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) and tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS) in BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutated triple negative breast cancer (TNBC)

3 Introduction 3 Material and Method 3 Results 3 Conclusion 4 Introduction 5 Hyphothesis and Aims 7 Material and Method 8 Bibliographic research 8 Scientific research 8 Patients and specimens 8 Genetic testing 9 Immunohistochemistry 9 Evaluation of TIL, TLS and PD-1/PD-L1 10 Statistical analysis 10 Results 11 Patients 11 Immune infiltration in TNBC 11 Immune checkpoint molecule expression in TNBC 13 Association between BRCA status, immune infiltration and immune checkpoint molecule expression in TNBC 14
Social skills of and social environments produced by different Holland types: A social perspective on person€nvironment fit models.

A critical aspect of the environment in person-environment models is the nature and density of the social interactions of the members who populate the environment. Because social types solve problems through social mechanisms, it was hypothesized that they would have greatest skills in social coping and that the further the Euclidean distance (in Holland's hexagon) from social, the lower the skill level in these social skills, but that there would be no differences among Holland types in skill level for problem-focused social skills. On the basis of an assessment of vocational interests and self-reported social skills of 134 undergraduates, this hypothesis was corroborated. Chemistry laboratory groups were qualitatively studied to describe the social interaction environment of persons with relative deficits in the social-coping skills. These chemists interacted often, enjoyed and benefited from the interactions, but constrained their social interactions to minimize the dependence on social-coping social skills.
CRD-SentEnse: Cross-domain Sentiment Analysis using an Ensemble Model

Micro-blogging and comments on social media include valuable information about people's emotions and opinions towards products, political and social topics and so forth. Unfortunately, due to the large volume of data, is infeasible to label all these comments and reviews. Additionally, having this data labelled manually by human experts is very expensive, time-consuming and applicable only for small amounts of data. As a result, a more scalable solution is needed. Cross-domain sentiment analysis addresses the problem of training a model for classifying a text with respect to its sentiment polarity as a negative, positive (and/ or neutral), using data from one domain (source domain), then the same model is tested using data from a different unlabeled domain (target domain). Cross-domain sentiment analysis is still an open research issue, as the classification performance is still not as good as in the in-domain sentiment analysis, even though proposed approaches have improved significantly. In this paper, we propose a framework for cross-domain sentiment analysis that uses the chi-square test with the data in the source domain. Firstly, we eliminate domain-related words from the source domain that do not bear transferable knowledge to the target domain. Secondly, the chi-square test is utilized for finding the important words regarding the sentiment polarity. Subsequently, we develop a second model that drops the nouns both from source and target domains and we use TFIDF weights for finding the important words in both domains. Finally, we use a stacking ensemble model that combines the two above proposed models for enhancing the performance of the proposed framework.
HIV_A_229531 357..367

Rooku KC* Sadiksha Adhikari* Anup Bastola Lina Devkota 2 Parmananda Bhandari Prabina Ghimire Bipin Adhikari 4 Komal Raj Rijal 1 Megha Raj Banjara Prakash Ghimire 1 1Central Department of Microbiology, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal; 2Sukraraj Tropical and Infectious Diseases Hospital, Kathmandu, Nepal; 3Nepal Medical College, Jorpati, Kathmandu, Nepal; 4Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Bidirectional LSTM-CRF for Named Entity Recognition

Named Entity Recognition (NER) is a challenging sequence labeling task which requires a deep understanding of the orthographic and distributional representation of words. In this paper, we propose a novel neural architecture that beneﬁts from word and character level information and dependencies across adjacent labels. This model includes bidirectional LSTM (BI-LSTM) with a bidirectional Conditional Random Field (BI-CRF) layer. Our work is the ﬁrst to experiment BI-CRF in neural architectures for sequence labeling task. We show that CRF can be extended to capture the dependencies between labels in both right and left directions of the sequence. This variation of CRF is referred to as BI-CRF and our results show that BI-CRF improves the performance of the NER model compare to an unidirectional CRF and backward CRF is capable of capturing most difﬁcult entities compare to the forward CRF. Our system is competitive on the CoNLL-2003 dataset for English and outperforms most of the existing approaches which do not use any external labeled data.