Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Credit Growth in Central and Eastern Europe

This thesis focuses on the development of credit to the private sector in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. Although the speed of credit growth in these countries has recently slowed down as the consequence of the global financial crisis, the overall increase in credit to the private sector over the past decades has been immense. As a result, the thesis examines whether this substantial increase in credit is linked to the convergence of the CEE countries towards the equilibrium or whether it represents an excessive credit growth that could threaten the macroeconomic and financial stability in these countries. We estimate the equilibrium credit levels for 11 transition countries by applying a dynamic panel data model. Since in-sample approach may bias the estimation results we perform the estimates out-of-sample using a panel of selected developed EU countries as a benchmark. The difference between the actual and estimated credit-to-GDP ratios serves as a measure of private credit excessiveness. The results indicate a slightly excessive or close to the equilibrium credit-to-GDP ratios in Bulgaria, Estonia, and Latvia prior to the financial crisis. With regard to the significant decline in GDP during the crisis this measure of credit excessiveness in these countries have further increased. JEL class: C23, E44, G21
Dissecting the brains of central bankers: the case of the ECB’s Governing Council members on reforms

Since 2009, European central bankers have supported some reforms, in order to draw roadmaps to get out of the euro debt crisis. This paper tests whether the educational and professional background of European central bankers matter for the type of reforms each of them advocated. Through a textual analysis of public speeches delivered by the European central bankers, we draw a cognitive map for each of them and, thus, of the reforms they propose as ways out of the euro debt crisis. Our results show that their occupational background is an important determinant of their respective economic reform proposals.
ADEMU WORKING PAPER SERIES Bank funding and risk taking

In this paper we use a novel approach to address issues of endogeneity in estimating a causal effect of leverage on risk taking by banks. Using data on local bank office deposits and local unemployment we construct an instrument to use in a regression of leverage on a measure of risk taking constructed from new issuance of loans. The results (i.) confirm that due to limited liability banks increase their risk taking after an exogenous increase in leverage, and (ii.) that an increase in deposit supply has a direct positive effect on risk taking by banks. JEL Codes: G11, G20, G21, G28
Working Paper No. E2017/2 Information Disclosure by a Seller in Sequential First-Price Auctions

I study sequential first-price auctions where two items are sold to two bidders with private binary valuations. A seller, prior to the second auction, can publicly disclose some information about the outcome of the first auction. I characterize equilibrium strategies for various disclosure rules when the valuations of bidders are either perfectly positively or perfectly negatively correlated across items. I establish outcome equivalence between different disclosure rules. I find that it is optimal for the seller to disclose some information when the valuations are negatively correlated, whereas it is optimal not to disclose any information when the valuations are positively correlated. For most of the parameter values, the seller’s expected revenue is higher if the losing bid is disclosed. When only the winner’s identity is disclosed, the equilibrium is efficient whether the valuations are positively or negatively correlated.
Age differences in aggression in Bulgarian primary school age children

In order to study the age differences of the status of aggression from the beginning to the end of the primary school age, 244 typically developing Bulgarian children were examined with the adapted for Bulgarian population questionnaire for measurement of aggression and depression in primary school age children. The total sample was divided into 2 age groups: first graders’ group (6-8 years, Mean age = 6.99, SD = 0.189; N = 82; 42 girls) and fourth graders’ group (9-11 years; Mean age = 10.23, SD = 0.450; N = 162; 79 girls). It was suggested that age-related differences in aggression status were present in the age range considered. It was also assumed that there were some gender differences in the participants’ aggressive status. The results did not reveal any statistically significant differences between the two age groups in the mean aggression scores, suggesting no essential aggression change in this age period. As regards to the effect of the participant’s gender, some statistically significant differences between the age subgroups in the mean aggression scores were found, with the boys demonstrated higher aggression than girls, suggesting that the subjects’ sex was a factor with significant effect on the level of aggression in this age period.
Running head: SEXUAL MOTIVATION PROFILES Examining sexual motivation profiles and their correlates using latent profile analysis

According to self-determination theory, sexual motivations are cardinal in relation to sexual wellbeing and functioning. Despite that motivations are thought to occur in combination instead of separately, this proposition has not been explicitly tested in relation to sexual motivations. To address this issue, the present two-study investigation examined the simultaneous cooccurrence of multiple sexual motivations on distinct samples of young adults (N1 = 679, N2 = 632) using the novel latent profile analysis. To document the validity of the profiles and the positive and negative aspects of sexuality, theoretically-relevant correlates were also included from inside (sexual passion, sexual satisfaction, positive and negative emotions during sex) and outside (problematic pornography use and life satisfaction) the realm of partnered sexuality. Four highly similar profiles were identified across the two studies: (1) highly self-determined, (2) moderately self-determined, (3) moderately non-selfdetermined, and (4) highly non-self-determined. These profiles differed from one another on most, but not all, correlates with the more self-determined profiles being associated with more positive correlates. These results contribute to a better understanding of one’s underlying sexual motivations by highlighting the importance of simultaneously considering these motivations in regard to sexual wellbeing.
Anatomical characteristics of Gigantochloa scortechinii bamboo rhizome in relation with hydraulic conductance

Structural development and modification of bamboo culm’s anatomical characteristics occur during the maturation period. This process affects the conductivity efficiency in individual bamboo culms (above ground). The present study clarified this process in the sympodial type of bamboo rhizome (belowground). This study aimed to observe the anatomical characteristics of Gigantochloa scortechinii rhizome, examine their relationship with different study sites and rhizome ages, and investigate their relationship with hydraulic conductance. Destructive sampling on four consecutive rhizomes was conducted using a selective random sampling method. All rhizome anatomical characteristics were significantly different between study sites except parenchyma diameter, parenchyma lumen diameter, and fiber cell wall thickness. The results also indicated that the vascular bundle diameter, parenchyma diameter, parenchyma lumen diameter, parenchyma cell wall thickness, fiber diameter, fiber cell wall thickness, and fiber length increased with age, but radial to tangential ratio decreased with age. All measured characteristics including the conductance elements had no relationship with hydraulic conductance, except parenchyma diameter and parenchyma lumen diameter. The sizes parenchyma diameter and lumen diameter did not imply a determinant factor in hydraulic conductance. Further studies on rhizome chemical attributes should be carried out to isolate the cause of decreasing hydraulic conductance.
EXPLORING THE IMPACT OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT ON EMPLOYEES: SYSTEM, CONFIGURATION AND PRACTICE EFFECTS

Many recent studies have explored the relationship between human resource management practices and organisational performance. Most of these studies suggest that a bundle of complimentary practices that comprise High Performance Work Systems (HPWS) are associated with higher levels of organisational performance. Although progress has been made in understanding the relationship between HPWS and organisational performance, the impact of these practices on employee performance, behaviour and attitudes is less well understood.
Auroral Beads at Saturn and the Driving Mechanism: Cassini Proximal Orbits

During the Grand Finale Phase of Cassini, the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph on board the spacecraft detected repeated detached small-scale auroral structures. We describe these structures as auroral beads, a term introduced in the terrestrial aurora. Those on DOY 232 2017 are observed to extend over a large range of local times, i.e., from 20 LT to 11 LT through midnight. We suggest that the auroral beads are related to plasma instabilities in the magnetosphere, which are often known to generate wavy auroral precipitations. Energetic neutral atom enhancements are observed simultaneously with auroral observations, which are indicative of a heated high pressure plasma region. During the same interval we observe conjugate periodic enhancements of energetic electrons, which are consistent with the hypothesis that a drifting interchange structure passed the spacecraft. Our study indicates that auroral bead structures are common phenomena at Earth and giant planets, which probably demonstrates the existence of similar fundamental magnetospheric processes at these planets.
Honware: A Virtual Honeypot Framework for Capturing CPE and IoT Zero Days

Existing solutions are ineffective in detecting zero day exploits targeting Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. We present honware, a high-interaction honeypot framework which can emulate a wide range of devices without any access to the manufacturers' hardware. Honware automatically processes a standard firmware image (as is commonly provided for updates), customises the filesystem and runs the system with a special pre-built Linux kernel. It then logs attacker traffic and records which of their actions led to a compromise. We provide an extensive evaluation and show that our framework improves upon existing emulation strategies which are limited in their scalability, and that it is significantly better both in providing network functionality and in emulating the devices' firmware applications - a crucial aspect as vulnerabilities are frequently exploited by attackers in ‘front-end’ functionalities such as web interfaces. Honware's design precludes most honeypot fingerprinting attacks, and as its performance is comparable to that of real devices, fingerprinting with timing attacks can be made far from trivial. We provide four case studies in which we demonstrate that honware is capable of rapid deployment to capture the exact details of attacks along with malware samples. In particular we identified a previously unknown attack in which the default DNS for an ipTIME N604R wireless router was changed. We believe that honware is a major contribution towards re-balancing the economics of attackers and defenders by reducing the period in which attackers can exploit zero days at Internet scale.
Novel classes 2 Original classesNovel classes 1 Novel classes 3 Novel classes 2 Novel classes 1 Novel classes

Data augmentation is one of the most effective approaches for improving the accuracy of modern machine learning models, and it is also indispensable to train a deep model for meta-learning. However, most current data augmentation implementations applied in meta-learning are the same as those used in the conventional image classification. In this paper, we introduce a new data augmentation method for meta-learning, which is named as “Task Level Data Augmentation” (referred to Task Aug). The basic idea of Task Aug is to increase the number of image classes rather than the number of images in each class. In contrast, with a larger amount of classes, we can sample more diverse task instances during training. This allows us to train a deep network by meta-learning methods with little over-fitting. Experimental results show that our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance on miniImageNet, CIFAR-FS, and FC100 few-shot learning benchmarks. Once paper is accepted, we will provide the link to code.
The influence of leverage in determining risk for the Brazilian banking system

The high leverage of financial institutions is seen as a relevant factor to explain the last global financial crisis. Risk’s over-taking by banks has brought great costs to the economies of several countries. For this reason, the Basel Committee recommended the establishment of operational limits, including leverage. For the Brazilian case, it is important to know how leverage influences banks’ risk taking and how it affects financial stability. Previous results for the US pointed out by Papanikolaou and Wolff (2014) show that, when the financial crisis of 2007 emerged, banks had to deleverage their positions, amplifying the downward pressure on assets price, especially for banks that were engaged in off-balance sheet operations. In the Brazilian case, the results show that the measurement of leverage carried out by the Basel Committee is relevant for the determination of institution risk as measured by z-score. Considering specific segments of banks, such as non-commercial ones, some types of transactions are riskier, such as derivative operations, or less risky, such as off-balance operations. For commercial banks, it was verified the importance of monitoring typical financial intermediation variables, such as the composition of assets and deposits of financial institutions, in order to mitigate the banking system’s risk. Thus, the results of the study bring important insights to market agents and to banking regulation.
Identity tracking in multi-view camera surveillance system

Person and vehicle re-identification (re-ID) are important challenges for the analysis of the burgeoning collection of urban surveillance videos. As this data is usually populated with both vehicles and pedestrians, it would be preferable to unify the tasks under one framework. Due to the contrasting composition of humans and vehicles, vehicle re-identification typically requires a more advanced network that is robust to drastic shape changes as the viewing angle is altered. Motivated by the success of the triplet loss function in both domains, we propose a re-ID framework which does not require any specialised design for the data stream on which it is applied. We create two functions to minimise the intra-class distance and maximise the inter-class distance respectively and combine them with the triplet loss to create our novel loss function. Moreover, we proposed an extended method with the spatio-temporal constraint for multiple camera tracking. The proposed framework is comprehensively evaluated on the Market-1501, CUHK03, DukeMTMC4ReID, VeRI and VehicleReId data sets and outperforms state-ofthe-art methods on both tasks.
Impact of Salespeople's Entrepreneurial Behavior toward Customer Satisfaction, Trust, Commitment, and Loyalty

The past 10 years has witnessed a dramatic shift in customer’s orientation from goods-dominant to servicedominant logic (Vargo, Merz, He, & Vargo, 2014). Salespeople not only sell a product or service, but also focus on helping customers to make the right decision to buy a satisfactory product or service (Singh & Koshy, 2012). Salespeople’s entrepreneurial behavior, such as innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk taking (Amyx, Bhuian, & Shows, 2016), helps a company to increase sales and foster customer relationships. The present study aims to examine the impact of salespeoples’ entrepreneurial behavior on customer satisfaction, trust, commitment, and loyalty. This impact in the context of banking industry is examined using structural equation model. The study results found that salespeople’s entrepreneurial behavior affected customer satisfaction, trust, commitment, and loyalty. Keywords—entrepreneurial behaviors, customer satisfaction, trust, commitment, loyalty
On the mechanism of open-loop control of thermoacoustic instability in a laminar premixed combustor

We identify mechanisms through which open-loop control of thermoacoustic instability is achieved in a laminar combustor and characterize them using synchronization theory. The thermoacoustic system comprises two nonlinearly coupled damped harmonic oscillators – acoustic and unsteady heat release rate (HRR) field – each possessing different eigenfrequencies. The frequency of the preferred mode of HRR oscillations is less than the third acoustic eigenfrequency where thermoacoustic instability develops. We systematically subject the limit-cycle oscillations to an external harmonic forcing at different frequencies and amplitudes. We observe that forcing at a frequency near the preferred mode of the HRR oscillator leads to a greater than 90 % decrease in the amplitude of the limit-cycle oscillations through the phenomenon of asynchronous quenching. Concurrently, there is a resonant amplification in the amplitude of HRR oscillations. Further, we show that the flame dynamics plays a key role in controlling the frequency at which quenching is observed. Most importantly, we show that forcing can cause asynchronous quenching either by imposing out-of-phase relation between pressure and HRR oscillations or by inducing period-2 dynamics in pressure oscillations while period-1 in HRR oscillations, thereby causing phase drifting between the two subsystems. In each of the two cases, acoustic driving is very low and hence thermoacoustic instability is suppressed. We show that the characteristics of forced synchronization of the pressure and HRR oscillations are significantly different. Thus, we find that the simultaneous characterization of the two subsystems is necessary to quantify completely the nonlinear response of the forced thermoacoustic system.
Constraints on Fe‐Oxide Formation in Monsoonal Vertisols of Pliocene Kenya Using Rock Magnetism and Spectroscopy

Pliocene Vertisols from the Turkana Basin of northwest Kenya (~4°N latitude) have been examined using isothermal remanent magnetization (IRM) experiments, susceptibility measurements, and diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. The complete vertical profile of each paleosol is almost intact, measuring >2 m in thickness and being strongly magnetic (IRM at 1.0T ranges from 4 to 25 × 10−3 Am2/kg). Downprofile changes to the proxy indicators suggest uninterrupted pedodevelopment and a lack of stratigraphic inversions caused by argilli‐pedoturbation. Magnetic minerals consist of hematite to a lesser degree, and pedogenic ferrimagnets derived from moisture cycles that were controlled by monsoonal rainfall. Basal pedogenic zones of the paleosols are magnetically intense, and preserve the greatest slickenside development indicating pronounced seasonal wetting and drying. These observations indicate a deeper dry season water table as compared to poorly drained temperate/tropical Vertisols, which suffer reductive dissolution of Fe oxides in basal pedogenic horizons associated with weak magnetic intensities. Magnetic susceptibilities and the well‐represented presence of fine pedogenic ferrimagnets suggest that Pliocene rainfall was greater than the local modern rate of 200 mm/year and may have been within the range of 500–1,000 mm/year. The study highlights the need to expand the database on Vertisols Fe oxides and magnetism, especially considering the anomalously dry and bimodal rainfall seasonality of East Africa.
SUPPLEMENTATION STRATEGIES FOR BEEF HEIFERS IN TROPICAL PASTURES IN THE PREWEANING AND REARING PERIODS

vii RESUMO . ix GENERAL INTRODUCTION . 1 REFERENCES . 5 Chapter 1 Effects of supplementation strategies in female calves under grazing in the tropics: I. Productive and nutritional performance and metabolic profile in the preweaning period . 8 Abstract. 8 Introduction . 9 Materials and methods . 10 Results . 17 Discussion . 19 Conclusions . 22 References . 22 Tables . 28 Figures . 34 Chapter 2 Effects of supplementation strategies in heifers under grazing in the tropics: II. Productive and nutritional performance, metabolic profile and ovarian activity in the rearing period . 35 Abstract. 35 Introduction . 36 Materials and methods . 37 Results . 44 Discussion . 48 Conclusions . 52 References . 53 Tables . 58 Figures . 63
UNDERSTANDING WORK ENGAGEMENT: SIMPLIFIED LITERATURE REVIEW FOR EARLY SCHOLARS

worked with particularized review of highly prominent studies on the topic to educate early scholars about the major scholarly developments on the topic. Methodology: Through this, the author has also reviewed and underlined how engagement can be of considerable value towards bringing passion, zeal and zest at work. To article goes further to offer details on the prominent theoretical underpinnings and the notable predictors of work engagement. Towards the end, the article also sheds light on the prominent model of work engagement, popularly known as JD-R model of engagement and the prominent efforts made towards extending in the past to help understand the concept better. Lastly, the paper also sheds light for early researcher on the concept of developmental Resources such as HR infused elements as a major gap that could be added to the JD-R and also considered by other emerging researchers for future research. Results: Overall, this simple yet critical insight-based piece of work provides a healthy piece of understanding and way forward for enthusiasts on the concept of engagement.
Roles of the Moisture and Wave Feedbacks in Shaping the Madden–Julian Oscillation

This study investigates themoisture and wave feedbacks in theMadden–Julian oscillation (MJO) dynamics by applying the general three-way interaction theoretical model. The three-way interaction model can reproduce observed large-scale characteristics of the MJO in terms of horizontal quadrupole-vortex structure, vertically tilted structure led by planetary boundary layer (PBL) convergence, slow eastward propagation with a period of 30–90 days, and planetary-scale circulation. Themoisture feedback effects can be identified in this model by using diagnostic thermodynamic and momentum equations, and the wave feedback effects are investigated by using a diagnostic moisture equation. The moisture feedback is found to be responsible for producing theMJO dispersivemodes when the convective adjustment process is slow. Themoisture feedback mainly acts to reduce the frequency and growth rate of the short waves, while leaving the planetary waves less affected, so neglecting the moisture feedback is a good approximation for the wavenumber-1MJO. The wave feedback is shown to slow down the eastward propagation and increase the growth rate of the planetary waves. The wave feedback becomes weak when the convective adjustment time increases, so neglecting the wave feedback is a good approximation for theMJO dynamics during a slow adjustment process. Sensitivities of these two feedbacks to other parameters are also discussed. These theoretical findings suggest that the two feedback processes, and thus the behaviors of the simulatedMJOmode, should be sensitive to the parameters used in cumulus parameterizations.