Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Value and Growth Stocks: European Evidence

In the four European regions (EU Without UK, EU With UK, UK, and Scandinavia), we use value and growth portfolios of firms sorted on various value-growth proxies, such as bookto-price (B/P), earnings-to-price (E/P), cash earnings-to-price (CE/P), and dividend-to-price (D/P), to examine whether the return distribution of a value portfolio stochastically dominates that of a growth portfolio. This study uses the LMW tests to test whether value index portfolios outperforms growth index portfolios based on B/M, E/P, CE/P, and D/P ratios. Using forty years of European data on value and growth stocks, we show that the non-book-to-price ratios are better than the book-to-price ratio as a value-growth proxy in Europe, except for Scandinavia. Specially, the evidence during the recent period shows a clear second-order stochastic dominance relationship of growth stocks over value stocks based on the book-to-price ratio in all four regions. Furthermore, during the boom market, the superior performance of value stocks over growth stocks that sorted by the non-book-toprice ratios also exists by the book-to-price ratio for all Europe stock markets, except for Scandinavia. However, during the recession period, all value-growth strategies based on various sorting criteria work poorly in all regions. ○C 2016 IRABF All rights reserved.
CEO Compensation and Risk Taking: Evidence from the Pre-Crisis Banking Industry

We study the risk-vega relation for banks and find a significant, negative relationship between firm risk measures and vega conditional on moneyness (proxied by delta, vested options or CEO stock and option related wealth). Further, the negative risk-vega relation is driven by the 1999-2006 subperiod where deltas were generally high and the banks were deregulated. In contrast, the earlier 1993-1998 subperiod actually supports a positive risk-vega relationship. Finally, large banks reliably show a negative risk-vega relationship while the same cannot be said of small banks. Our results inform on two separate debates. First, merely granting stock-options to bank CEOs does not always encourage risk-taking in the banking industry. Option-incentivized risk taking also depends on other characteristics – bank size, CEO’s exposure to stock price change (delta), and regulatory and market conditions. Also, option grants are often blamed for the excessive risk taking by the bank CEOs. However, our evidence indicates that risk-taking declined in stock options (as measured by vega) in the period leading to the financial crisis of 2008.
A Critical Re-evaluation of Neural Methods for Entity Alignment

Neural methods have become the de-facto choice for the vast majority of data analysis tasks, and entity alignment (EA) is no exception. Not surprisingly, more than 50 different neural EA methods have been published since 2017. However, surprisingly, an analysis of the differences between neural and non-neural EA methods has been lacking. We bridge this gap by performing an in-depth comparison among five carefully chosen representative state-of-the-art methods from the pre-neural and neural era. We unravel, and consequently mitigate, the inherent deficiencies in the experimental setup utilized for evaluating neural EA methods. To ensure fairness in evaluation, we homogenize the entity matching modules of neural and non-neural methods. Additionally, for the first time, we draw a parallel between EA and record linkage (RL) by empirically showcasing the ability of RL methods to perform EA. Our results indicate that Paris, the state-of-the-art non-neural method, statistically significantly outperforms all the representative state-of-the-art neural methods in terms of both efficacy and efficiency across a wide variety of dataset types and scenarios, and is second only to BERT-INT for a specific scenario of cross-lingual EA. Our findings shed light on the potential problems resulting from an impulsive application of neural methods as a panacea for all data analytics tasks. Overall, our work results in two overarching conclusions: (1) Paris should be used as a baseline in every follow-up work on EA, and (2) neural methods need to be positioned better to showcase their true potential, for which we provide multiple recommendations.
C-Reactive protein and Neutrophil leucocyte ratio in Depressive disorder: a hospital based cross sectional study

Aim of the study. To evaluate High sensitive C-reactive Protein (Hs CRP) and neutrophil lymphocyte ratio (NLR) in patients with Depression and to compare HsCRP and NLR in Major Depressive disorder (MDD) and Recurrent depressive disorder (RDD) Material and Methods. This was a hospital-based case control study conducted in year 2019 for 3 months duration. Ninety eight patients with Depressive disorder and 50 healthy controls were included. HAM-D, HsCRP and NLR was assessed for all subjects. Results. HsCRP and NLR was more in patients with Depression than in controls and this was statistically significant. HsCRP and NLR was more in RDD compared to MDD. Both HsCRP, NLR were positively correlated with age, duration of illness, number of depressive episodes and HAMD scores. The odds of suicidal ideas in depressive patients was more with increase in HsCRP and NLR. Discussion. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to compare inflammatory parameters in MDD and RDD. In our study, CRP and NLR were more in RDD compared to MDD. This could be explained by immune dysregulation and chronic inflammation in RDD. Resistance to antidepressant therapy, and relapse of depression causes an activation of inflammatory response. In the present study, we observed an association between suicidal ideas and CRP, NLR. Conclusions. Inflammation plays a significant role in depression as indicated by elevated HsCRP and NLR. These parameters help to assess suicidal risk. A futuristic study can be taken up to assess the effect of antidepressants on their levels. depression; high sensitive C-reactive protein; neutrophil lymphocyte ratio
Serum Laboratory Biomarkers to Estimate the Probability of Complicated Appendicitis: CRP and LDH

Objective: Acute inflammation of the appendix is a very common finding in patients representing the emergency department. Here, we assessed the levels of the serum laboratory biomarkers in the patients with complicated (defined by the presence of perforation, abscess, or peritonitis) and simple appendicitis. Methodology: This observational study was conducted in Sina Hospital, Tabriz-Iran, between March 2019 and August 2019. Data regarding age, sex, body temperature, length of hospital stays, clinical signs and symptoms, and time of symptom onset for each patient. Laboratory values including white blood cells (WBC) count, neutrophil percentage, erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), C-reactive protein (CRO), mean platelet volume (MPV), and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) were evaluated. Results: A total of 279 patients were enrolled in the study. 131 patients (46.9%) had complicated and 148 (53.0%) had simple appendicitis. Mean body temperature (P-value <0.05) and CRP levels (P-value <0.0001), were significantly higher in the complicated appendicitis group. (P-value >0.05). There were no significant differences regarding WBC, neutrophil, 1st and 2nd hour ESR, MPV, and LDH levels, and mean length of hospital stay (P-value>0.05). Conclusion: CRP concentrations are reliable markers showing an increased risk of developing complications in acute appendicitis patients.
Institutional investor preferences for analyst forecast accuracy : Which institutions care ?

We examine the association between analyst earnings forecast accuracy and three different types of institutional ownership for US firms: transient investors, dedicated investors, and quasi-indexers. After accounting for endogeneity, we find consistent evidence that transient investors prefer an information environment with lower forecast errors, while dedicated and quasi-indexers appear indifferent to analyst forecast accuracy. Interestingly, the presence of transient investors lead to lower forecast error, while the presence of dedicated investors and quasi-indexers increases forecast error. Our findings indicate that, the practice of achieving “predictable earnings” by management or analysts may only appeal to certain types of institutional investors JEL: G11, G14, G30, M41
Knowledge, Attitude and Perception of Smallholder Farmers on Corona Virus Pandemic in Nigeria

Corresponding Author: Obot Akaninyene Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Nigeria Email: ap.obot@unizik.edu. ng Abstract: Agriculture plays an essential role in the economy of Nigeria as it provides food for the entire population of a country and also provides raw materials for the non-agriculture sectors of the economy. Nigeria's agriculture is made up of a higher percentage of smallholder farmers who are often exposed to shocks and have less capacity to combat the impact and increase the rate of recovery due to shocks. Therefore, the strengths and weaknesses of farmers' knowledge systems are important in building a resilient agricultural sector to improve farmers' food security, and livelihoods and build resilient capacity toward pandemics. The COVID-19 pandemic was a big threat to Nigeria's food security since the bulk of the food produced in Nigeria is by the smallholder farmers who are often vulnerable to shocks. The paper examined smallholder farmers' knowledge, attitude, and perception of the COVID-19 pandemic using descriptive statistics. A total of 400 smallholder farmers in the study area were interviewed about their knowledge and perception of the COVID-19 pandemic. The finding showed that 332 of the respondents were aware of the virus, 340 did not believe in the existence of the virus, 365 believed they cannot be infected by the virus, and 271 adhered to government-imposed measures on combating the virus. On the methods employed to mitigate the spread of the virus in the study area, 180% of the respondents observed the social distancing, 78% used hand sanitizer, 48% wore nose masks and 40% reduced farm visits.
Forever young: where older workers keep on working

This paper examines inter-industry patterns of the employment of older workers over the last 20 years to understand where employment opportunities have grown the most. The underlying premise is that firms strategically align their age mix depending on production function and labor cost parameters. The industries that had the largest increases in the percentage of older workers were those that had the broadest pension coverage and those that made the greatest use of high-tech capital. There also is evidence in 2001–07 that the percentage of older workers increased more in the industries most exposed to increased Chinese imports.
Does Earnings Management Explain the Long-Term Performance of Capital Reduction Firms?

a. Department of Finance, National University of Kaohsiung, Kaohsiung, Taiwan b. Department of Finance, National Chung Cheng University, Chia-Yi, Taiwan c. Department of Asia-Pacific Industrial and Business Management, National University of Kaohsiung, Kaohsiung, Taiwan ______________________________________________________________________________________ Abstract: In Taiwan, firms can implement capital reduction under either the Company Act or the Securities Exchange Act. This study examines whether earnings management associated with different forms of capital reduction can partially explain long term share price underperformance. The results indicate that firms reducing their capital under the Company Act engage in earnings management for longer than those engaging in a capital reduction under the Securities Exchange Act. Furthermore, stock performance reduces with increasing aggression of accruals. The analytical results imply that managers engage in earnings management by reducing capital to boost stock prices without improving firm solvency.
Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluid Dynamics: Fundamentals and Large-Scale Circulation

The atmosphere and ocean are two of the most important components of the climate system, and fluid dynamics is central to our understanding of both. This book provides a unified and comprehensive treatment of the field that blends classical results with modern interpretations. It takes the reader seamlessly from the basics to the frontiers of knowledge, from the equations of motion to modern theories of the general circulation of the atmosphere and ocean. These concepts are illustrated throughout the book with observations and numerical examples. As well as updating existing chapters, this full-color second edition includes new chapters on tropical dynamics, El Nino, the stratosphere and gravity waves. Supplementary resources are provided online, including figures from the book and problem sets, making this new edition an ideal resource for students in the atmospheric, oceanic and climate sciences, as well as in applied mathematics and engineering.
Gut microbial metabolites lower 24-hour systolic blood pressure in untreated essential hypertensive patients

Background: Fibres remain undigested until they reach the colon, where some are fermented by gut microbiota, producing metabolites called short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). SCFAs lower blood pressure (BP) of experimental models, but their translational potential is unknown. We aimed to determine whether SCFAs lower 24-hour systolic BP (SBP) in untreated participants with essential hypertension. Methods: We performed a phase II randomized placebo-controlled double-blind cross-over trial using SCFA-supplementation, delivered as acetylated and butyrylated high amylose maize starch (HAMSAB). Twenty treatment-naive hypertensive participants were recruited from the community and randomised to 40g/day of HAMSAB or placebo. Participants completed each arm for three-weeks, with a three-week washout period between them. The primary endpoint was a 24-hour SBP decrease. Results: Participants were on average 55.8{+/-}11.2-years old (mean{+/-}SD), had a body mass index (BMI) of 25.7{+/-}2.5km2/m, 30% were female, baseline 24-hour SBP 136{+/-}6mmHg. No adverse effects were reported. After the intervention, the placebo-subtracted reduction in 24-hour SBP was 6.1{+/-}9.9mmHg (P= 0.027). This was independent of age, sex, BMI, and study arm. There was no statistical significance in the placebo arm. Day and night SBP were reduced by 6.5{+/-}12.3mmHg (P=0.01) and 5.7{+/-}9.8mmHg (P=0.02), respectively, and 24-h central SBP by 7.2{+/-}14.7 mmHg (P=0.005). HAMSAB increased levels of acetate and butyrate by 7.8-fold (P=0.016), shifted the microbial ecosystem, and expanded the prevalence of SCFA-producers. Conclusions: We observed a clinically relevant reduction in 24-hour SBP in participants with essential hypertension treated with the gut microbial-derived metabolites acetate and butyrate. These metabolites may represent a novel option for lowering BP.
The movement characteristics of pedestrians on a single-file track at the uphill and downhill conditions

Ramps, as very common building structures, are widely used in railway stations, subways, shopping malls and other public places. In order to study the movement characteristics of pedestrians both uphill and downhill, we present a group of single-file movement experiments of pedestrians on a ramp with a 9° slope. It is found that in the free flow state, the average speed uphill and downhill is about 1.1 m s−1, while the average speed on the flat surface is about 1.4 m s−1. As the density increases, the critical densities at which the speed of pedestrians begins to decrease going uphill and downhill are both slightly higher than that on the flat surface. We also propose a step-based model considering different step frequencies and step lengths of pedestrians to simulate the movement on the ramp. Compared with the experimental results, it is shown that the model can reproduce the pedestrian’s walking behavior on the ramp well.
Characteristics of Oil Palm Stem Mulch as Soil Conditioner at Oil Palm

Oil palm is a plantation crop that has great potential in Indonesia. The very rapid development of oil palm is due to the high economic value of this commodity. However, the handling and utilization of oil palm waste resulting from replanting is not optimal yet. Planting new seedlings is delayed because the decomposition process of oil palm stems from replanting takes a long time. One method of replanting uses a mulcher machine which produces mulches in the form of thin fibers and has different characteristics from other replanting methods. The purpose of this study was to identify the characteristics of the mulch from the chopping of oil palm stems using a mulcher, to learn the effect of oil palm stem mulch on soil conditioner in oil palm replanting land, and to determine the optimum heap thickness to maintain soil quality in oil palm replanting land. Oil palm stem mulch was composted for two months using the bin method. The application of oil palm stem mulch as a soil conditioner was carried out in different thickness treatment was 1 cm, 5 cm, 10 cm thickness and control. Oil palm stem compost chopped by mulcher has the characteristics as the quality of standard Indonesian compost and decomposed faster than other replanting methods. The results showed that at a soil depth of 0-5 cm, 5-10 cm, 10-15 cm and 15-20 cm, mulch with a thickness of 10 cm was the best treatment because it was able to increase the average value of soil moisture content respectively amounted to 28.22% and decreased the value of soil penetration resistance to 15.13 kgf/cm2 and and soil temperature 27.5°C respectively. The results of the compost fit in criteria of SNI:19-7030-2004, which is moisture content of 22.99%; density of mulch of 0.77 g/cm3; C-organic content of 10.72%; N-total of 0.7952%; mulch porosity of 70.3%; and C/N ratio of 13.48%.
Technology Strategy for Meticulous Governance of Smart Cities: Memory Bus Width Aware Pruning for Efficient Image Super-Resolution Implementation in FPGA

The mega-city governance is based on the aggregation, collation, development and application of multi-scene data, and efficient access to scene data is a key link to promote the meticulous governance of smart cities. Super-resolution technique is the process of upscaling and improving the details within an image. In this paper, we implement a 16-layer residual neural network (ResNet) for the efficient image super-resolution in FPGA. We discover that the memory access is the major performance bottleneck of this implementation. To reduce the memory access overhead, we design a pruning algorithm with the consideration of the memory bus width. Since the memory used in our design generates 256 bits for each access, the proposed pruning algorithm drops the kernel by aligning this bit width. That is, all kernels in one layer are ranked by its L1-norm and we drop the kernels out of the 256 bits. The experimental results show that the proposed method reduces the number of weights by 50% compared with the baseline. As a result, the inference speed can be enhanced by 3 times.
ReprogrammingSignaling and Gene Expression Induced Cell - NPM/ALK Recapitulates IL-2 Lymphocytes Mediated by Oncogenic Kinase T + Malignant Transformation of CD4

Anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK), physiologically expressed only by nervous system cells, displays a remarkable capacity to transform CD4 + T lymphocytes and other types of nonneural cells. In this study, we report that activity of nucleophosmin (NPM)/ALK chimeric protein, the dominant form of ALK expressed in T cell lymphomas (TCLs), closely resembles cell activation induced by IL-2, the key cytokine supporting growth and survival of normal CD4 + T lymphocytes. Direct compar-ison of gene expression by ALK + TCL cells treated with an ALK inhibitor and IL-2–dependent ALK 2 TCL cells stimulated with the cytokine revealed a very similar, albeit inverse, gene-regulation pattern. Depending on the analysis method, up to 67% of the affected genes were modulated in common by NPM/ALK and IL-2. Based on the gene expression patterns, Jak/ STAT- and IL-2–signaling pathways topped the list of pathways identiﬁed as affected by both IL-2 and NPM/ALK. The expression dependence on NPM/ALK and IL-2 of the ﬁve selected genes—CD25 (IL-2R a ), Egr-1, Fosl-1, SOCS3, and Irf-4—was conﬁrmed at the protein level. In both ALK + TCL and IL-2–stimulated ALK 2 TCL cells, CD25, SOCS3, and Irf-4 genes were activated predominantly by the STAT5 and STAT3 transcription factors, whereas transcription of Egr-1 and Fosl-1 was induced by the MEK-ERK pathway. Finally, we found that Egr-1, a protein not associated previously with either IL-2 or ALK, contributes to the cell proliferation. These ﬁndings indicate that NPM/ALK transforms the target CD4 + T lymphocytes, at least in part, by using the pre-existing, IL-2–dependent signaling pathways. The Journal of Immunology 000–000.
Productive V-J Joints in the Bursa Diversification and the Selection of Effect of Environmental Antigens on the Ig

In chickens, a single set of unique functional segments of both Ig H and L chain genes is rearranged during early embryogenesis to generate a pool of B cell progenitors that will be diversiﬁed in the bursa by gene conversion, forming the preimmune repertoire. After hatching, bursal cells are exposed to environmental Ags in the bursal lumen. We prepared B cells from each single bursal follicle and used PCR-directed Ig L chain gene analysis to study the differentiation of B cells and the effect of antigenic stimulation from the bursal lumen on the neonatal chicken B cell repertoire formation. Selective ampliﬁcation of B cell clones with a productive V-J joint was observed during the late embryonic stage, possibly by the interaction with ligands expressed on the bursal stroma and further accelerated in the neonatal chicken. Administration of the artiﬁcial Ags into the bursal lumen before the isolation of bursa by bursal duct ligation in the embryo caused a signiﬁcant increase in lymphocytes with a productive V-J joint in the neonatal chicken bursa compared with the isolated bursa. Intra- and interclonal diversity of a complementarity-determining region measured by an evolutionary distance increased during bursal development. Clonal diversiﬁcation did not require stimulation by artiﬁcial Ags from the bursal lumen. Thus, the preimmune repertoire in the bursa is generated by gene conversion during Ag-independent B cell proliferation, and antigenic stimulation from the bursal epithelium to bursal B cells plays roles in the selection of clones with a productive V-J joint. The Journal of Immunology, 2002, 169: 818–828.