Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The green transition in emerging economies: green bond issuance in Brazil and China

ABSTRACT Green bonds have emerged as an innovative financial instrument that may be used to mobilise incremental resources for long-term financing projects focused on building sustainable infrastructure. In this regard, this article advances research on green bond markets in emerging economies (EEs) by comparing the evolution of the certified green bonds markets in Brazil and China. For this purpose, a mixed analysis was applied. The qualitative analysis is based on a literature review to contextualise the main drivers and barriers to the evolution of the green bond market in light of national policies and features of the financial system in each country. For the quantitative analysis, the certified green bond markets are assessed in terms of the amounts issued as a percentage of the debt securities markets, considering the participation of each issuer type and the allocation of revenue across eligible sectors. Information on certified green bond amounts issued and on debt securities’ markets was obtained from the Climate Bonds Initiative and BIS databases. The results show that the evolution of the Chinese and Brazilian certified green bonds markets remains negligible, in terms of the whole debt securities market. Although green bonds may be considered an important market solution, they still do not provide sufficient resources necessary for a meaningful green transition, especially in EEs. However, findings also show that in China, compared to Brazil, features of the financial system combine with more consolidated green policies to act in favour of scaling up and distributing revenue to crucial sectors to green transition. Key policy insights Without well-coordinated national green policies and appropriated institutional arrangements, the growth of the debt securities market in emerging economies (EEs) will not boost the certified green bond market. In EEs, notably in Brazil and China, the central government’s influence on the policy coordination and the financial system is fundamental in achieving green goals. Greater participation of state-owned financial institutions in EEs could improve the access to finance more emergent solutions (e.g. low carbon transport, water infrastructure, etc.) beyond more mature ones (the usual solar and wind energy) to promote the green transition.
The Anti-Corruption Campaign and the Inter-Generational Transmission of Working in Bureaucracy: Evidence from China

There is a clear and persistent inequality of bureaucratic employment between individuals with a bureaucrat parent and those without. Using the recent anti-corruption campaign in China as a quasi-experiment, we investigate how endeavors for counter-corruption aﬀect inequality and potential cronyism in bureaucratic employment through inter-generational transmission. First, we conduct a diﬀerence-in-diﬀerences analysis to compare changes in the probability of working in bureaucracy after the campaign came into eﬀect in diﬀerent provincial administrative divisions of mainland China, between individuals with a bureaucrat parent and those without. We ﬁnd that before the campaign, bureaucrats’ children were over 13 percentage points more likely to work in bureaucracy, and that positive selection on human capital can explain only 12–25 percent of this advantage of bureaucrats’ children. However, after the campaign took eﬀect, this premium signiﬁcantly reduced by more than 5 percentage points. Moreover, we explore potential mechanisms through which anti-corruption eﬀorts have diminished the inter-generational transmission of bureaucratic employment. We provide evidence that the campaign decreased the economic attractiveness of bureaucratic jobs, and that better outside options are more likely to explain the reduced inter-generational transmission. We do not ﬁnd evidence supporting other two alternative channels: the insider information of bureaucrat parents on the campaign, or changes in perceptions of bureaucracy.
Heterogeneity and Asset Prices: An Intergenerational Approach

In an overlapping-generations economy, the consumption growth of a given cohort member (the “marginal agent”) differs from the aggregate consumption growth. A cohort member is faced with long-run consumption uncertainty even in the absence of aggregate (and within-cohort) consumption risk. This uncertainty allows the model to account for several stylized asset-pricing facts (high market price of risk and volatility, return predictability, low and nonvolatile interest rate) despite deterministic macroeconomic aggregates and inequality measures that are contemporaneously uncorrelated with asset returns. We devise and implement a methodology to measure the marginal agent’s consumption growth and evaluate the model’s quantitative implications.
Prevalence and Ascertainment of Dementia Cases in the Malmö Diet and Cancer Study

Background: Register diagnoses, both hospital-based and from open clinic care, are often used in research studies in Sweden. The validity of such diagnoses has been debated and a validation assessment can improve the diagnostic accuracy for use in research studies. Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the quality of register-derived dementia diagnoses in the Malmö Diet and Cancer population study (MDCS) and to validate these diagnoses using systematic criteria. Methods: MDCS is a population-based prospective study comprising 30,446 participants. Register diagnoses of dementia for the MDCS population were derived from the Swedish National Patient Register (NPR) and validated through re-evaluation of available medical records by physicians. Results: In the MDCS cohort, 2,206 participants were diagnosed with dementia according to the NPR during a mean follow-up of 18.1 years. The general dementia diagnosis was valid in 96% of the cases, but 40% of the specific dementia diagnoses were changed during the process of reevaluation. The diagnostic validity varied between 25.2% and 82.9% for the different diagnoses. The results from the validity assessment per diagnostic category revealed that the validity of the NPR diagnoses was higher for the more specific diagnoses and lower for unspecified dementia. The major diagnostic shift during the re-evaluation was from unspecified dementia to more specific diagnoses. Conclusion: Validation of dementia diagnoses using medical records results in more precise diagnoses. Dementia diagnoses derived from registers should be validated in order to study associations between influential factors and different dementia diagnoses.
Higher-Order Community Detection: On Information Degeneration and Its Elimination

Community detection aims to identify the cohesive vertex sets in a network. It is widely used in many domains, e.g., World Wide Web, online social networks, and communication networks. Many clustering models are proposed in the literature. However, most of them are designed directly on the original structure of a network, they usually achieve low accuracy in practice, since real-world networks are presenting fuzzy community structures. Recently, higher-order network units are introduced to community detection, these models typically define a higher-order hypergraph, where communities are extracted. Although the higher-order models are effective in terms of accuracy, many essential edges are completely eliminated or trivialized in the hypergraph. To address the problem, we propose a novel connectivity pattern with a mixture of standard edges and higher-order connections, whereby we define biased personalized PageRank diffusion for local community detection and develop a local approach to compute the PageRank vectors. Moreover, we present a higher-order seeding strategy to derive the starting seeds. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed framework largely outperforms the approaches in the state of the art in terms of accuracy.
Lewis Acid-Induced Dinitrogen Cleavage in an Anionic Side-on End-on Bound Dinitrogen Diniobium Hydride Complex

The side-on end-on dinitrogen hydride complex [{Na(dme)}2{(O3)Nb}2(μ-η1:η2-N2)(μ-H)2] (3-Na, [O3]3− = [(3,5-tBu2-2-O-C6H2)3CH]3−) was observed to undergo facile elimination of H2 and cleavage of the N–N bond in the presence of 9-borabicyclo[3.3. 1]nonane (9-BBN), AlMe3, and ZnMe2. Treatment of 3-Na with 9-BBN and ZnMe2 afforded the nitride complex [{K(dme)2}2{(O3)Nb}2(μ-N)2] (2-Na). The reaction of 3-Na with AlMe3 afforded [{Na(dme)}2{(O3)AlMe}2(NbMe2)2(μ-N)2] (5). The nitride complex 2-Na was treated with 9-BBN and AlMe3 to form [{Na(dme)}2{(O3)Nb}(μ-NH)(μ-NBC8H14){Nb(O3C)}] (4) and 5, respectively. Complex 2-Na, 4, and 5 were structurally characterized.
Credibility of Microfinance Institutions Loans to Financial Sustainability of Small and Medium Enterprises in Tanzania: A Case of Selected Enterprises in Arusha

In evolution of global business, entrepreneurs have faced a number of new dares as they get into rivalries in their respective industries. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) financing by Micro Financing Institutions (MFIs) has been one of the areas of interest to establish the credibility of loans provided by the said funding institutions. The purpose of this study was to determine MFIs loans credibility for the sustainability of SMEs in Tanzania. The specific objectives of the study were two, namely: to analyze the MFIs loans credibility on financial sustainability of the SMEs in Arusha City; and, to establish the effective supportive mechanisms for MFIs loans sustainability to SMEs in Arusha City. The study was a mixed quantitative and qualitative in approach, adopted a multiple case study design; involving few selected SMEs in Arusha – Tanzania. The study used qualitative and quantitative data gathered by the use of research schedules. The collected data were analyzed by the aid of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) v.16 software. Descriptive statistics such as: frequencies, percentages, and mean were tabulated for giving gist to data; and hence, drawing the conclusion. The results in this study meant to help the stakeholders to ascertain whether MFIs’ loans provided by the said institutions are credible enough to ensure the sustainability of the funded SMEs or not. The study revealed that, the credibility of MFIs loans is impaired by; borrowers lack of collateral; lack of trainings; institutional corruptions; high interests attached to loans and inadequate grace periods provided to borrowers, among others. The study recommends the link between SMEs success and MFI’s group landing model be an area for future studies; in assessing its effectiveness for the said parties’ mutual growths.
The Evolution and Development of the Universe

This document is the Special Issue of the First International Conference on the Evolution and Development of the Universe (EDU 2008). Please refer to the preface and introduction for more details on the contributions. Keywords: acceleration, artificial cosmogenesis, artificial life, Big Bang, Big History, biological evolution, biological universe, biology, causality, classical vacuum energy, complex systems, complexity, computational universe, conscious evolution, cosmological artificial selection, cosmological natural selection, cosmology, critique, cultural evolution, dark energy, dark matter, development of the universe, development, emergence, evolution of the universe evolution, exobiology, extinction, fine-tuning, fractal space-time, fractal, information, initial conditions, intentional evolution, linear expansion of the universe, log-periodic laws, macroevolution, materialism, meduso-anthropic principle, multiple worlds, natural sciences, Nature, ontology, order, origin of the universe, particle hierarchy, philosophy, physical constants, quantum darwinism, reduction, role of intelligent life, scale relativity, scientific evolution, self-organization, speciation, specification hierarchy, thermodynamics, time, universe, vagueness.
Fracture Behavior and Digital Image Analysis of GFRP Reinforced Concrete Notched Beams

This study presents three-point bending fracture tests on glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) reinforced concrete notched beams. Few studies have been conducted to date to understand the fracture behavior of this type of specimens. The specimens have nominal depth, width, and length equal to 150 mm, 150 mm, and 550 mm. Plain concrete notched beams with the same dimensions are cast from the same batch of concrete to compare the responses with GFRP reinforced concrete notched beams. The notch of the plain concrete specimens is either saw cut or cast. These two notch fabrication methods are compared based on the load responses. The peak load, crack mouth opening displacement (CMOD), GFRP bar slip at two ends, and load point displacement are used to discuss the results of the fracture tests. In addition, digital image analysis is performed to identify the fracture process zone (FPZ) and the location of the neutral axis, which are used to determine the force in the GFRP bar via cross-sectional analysis. Finally, the GFRP bar force versus slip responses are compared with those from the pull-out tests performed on the same bar to show that the bond of the bar in the pull-out tests represents an upper bound limit compared to the behavior in bending.
The influence of initial investor backing on post-IPO acquisition activity

Financial sponsors, in the form of venture capital (VC) or private equity (PE) investors, can significantly influence a firm's growth strategy. We test whether VC or PE backing at the time of a firm's IPO leads to different post-IPO acquisition strategies by using a sample of 1,341 US IPOs between 2001 and 2017 and 1,845 subsequent acquisitions by these newly public firms. We find that PE-backed newly public firms engage in almost three times as many acquisitions as VCbacked newly public firms and almost twice as many as non-backed ones. PE-backed firms are also more likely to engage in more transformative acquisitions as proxied by size, while VCbacked firms tend to increase their capex and R&D spending. Finally, we document positive shortterm stock market reactions to acquisition announcements of newly public firms, but only PEbacked firms that become acquirers following their IPO achieve significant, positive post-IPO long-run stock returns. [149 words]
Diagnostic Performance of AFP, AFP-L3, or PIVKA-II for Hepatitis C Virus-Associated Hepatocellular Carcinoma: A Multicenter Analysis

Background and Aim: Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), a lens culinaris agglutinin-reactive fraction of AFP (AFP-L3), is a protein that is induced by vitamin K deficiency or antagonist-II (PIVKA-II) that has been clinically used as a serum biomarker for early detection and diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Diagnostic performance of each serum biomarker alone, or their combinations for the detection of hepatitis C virus (HCV)-associated HCC were compared. Methods: Serum AFP, AFP-L3, and PIVKA-II levels were evaluated in patients with HCV-associated HCC, and those with chronic HCV infection without HCC (HCV-controls). The areas under the curve (AUC), sensitivity, and specificity were compared to identify the diagnostic performance of each serum HCC biomarker alone or in combination. Results: Overall, 172 HCV controls and 105 patients with HCV-associated HCC were enrolled. The AFP, AFP-L3, and PIVKA-II levels were significantly increased among patients with HCV-associated HCC when compared with HCV patients without HCC (p < 0.001). When these biomarkers were analyzed individually, PIVKA-II revealed the best predictive performance (AUC: PIVKA-II 0.90 vs. AFP 0.80 vs. AFP-L3 0.69, p < 0.001). In evaluating the combinations of any two biomarkers, the best predictive performance was found in PIVKA-II + AFP (0.93 vs. AFP + AFP-L3 0.78, p = 0.001; and PIVKA-II + AFP-L3 0.89, p < 0.001), which had no difference compared to the predictive performance of the combination of all three serum biomarkers (AFP + AFP-L3 + PIVKA-II 0.93, p = 0.277). Similar results were identified in the subgroups of patients with HCV-induced cirrhosis, and among patients with early-stage HCC defined by BCLC and TNM staging. Conclusions: The addition of the PIVKA-II test to routine AFP test maybe provide a more suitable biomarker approach to detect HCV-induced HCC in patients with HCV infection undergoing HCC surveillance.
A study of psychiatric morbidity among school going adolescents

Aim: This study aims to study the prevalence of psychiatric morbidity among adolescents and compare its distribution in the urban and rural areas. Study Design: This was a cross-sectional study. Materials and Methods: One thousand adolescents aged 11 to 16 years studying in various private and government schools in urban and rural areas in district Patiala, Punjab were studied. Stratified cluster sampling was used considering the type of school as strata and sections of each standard as clusters. The study was conducted in two steps; in the first step, self-designed sociodemographic questionnaire and socioeconomic status scale, Parekh's method of socioeconomic classification for rural area, and Kuppuswamy's revised method of social classification for urban areas. To study the psychiatric morbidity, the strength and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ) self-report version and parent version was used.Students who scored borderline or abnormal on SDQ, were further evaluated in second stage by clinical interview, detailed case history, and mental state examination; psychiatric disorders were diagnosed following International Classification of Diseases-10 (ICD-10) criteria. Statistical Analysis Used: Chi-square, Student's t-test. Results: The prevalence ranges from 17.94 in the private school in the urban area and 20.96% in government schools in the urban area to 20.61% in private schools in the rural area and 22.17 in government school of the rural area. The overall prevalence of psychiatric disorders is higher among adolescents in the rural area (21.38%) as compared to the urban area (19.43%). Rural adolescents had significantly higher rates of somatoform disorders (4.45%), conduct disorder (3.78%), dysthymia (1.11%), and other mood disorders (0.89%) whereas higher rates of depression (3.88%), anxiety (3.67%), and hyperkinetic disorders (3.02%) were found in urban counterparts. Conclusion: An alarming number of adolescents suffer from different emotional and behavioral problems, but there is no excess of formal mental illness reaching the psychiatrist. This should help us formulate a rational basis for deploying our resources for the treatment and prevention of mental illness in tomorrow's adults.
A saddlepoint approximation to the distribution of the sum of independent non‐identically beta random variables

The exact distribution of the sum of more than two independent beta random variables has not been known. Even in terms of approximations, only the normal approximation is known for the sum. Motivated by Murakami [Statistica Neerlandica, 2014, doi:10.1111/stan.12032], we derive here a saddlepoint approximation for the distribution of sum. An extensive simulation study shows that it always performs better than the normal approximation.
Millennial land use explains modern high‐elevation vegetation in the submediterranean mountains of Southern Europe

Pinewood decline and scrubland expansion are major features of Late Holocene vegetation history in the Cantabrian Range. However, the drivers of this remarkable vegetation shift remain to be investigated. Here, we aim at disentangling the role of past land use and climate in shaping the high‐elevation Cantabrian landscape during the past two millennia.
In name only

1. EXO-SKELETAL EXPLANATIONS 1. Structuring Sense: Introductory Comments 2. Nuts and Bolts 2. DETERMINING STRUCTURES 3. The Proper Way: Some Introductory Comments in the Context of Proper Names 4. Some Stuff on the Mass-Count Distinction 5. Things that Count: Null D 6. Things that Count: Null # and Others 3. ANOTHER LANGUAGE, ANOTHER SYSTEM 7. One is the Loneliest Number 8. Cheese and Olives, Bottles, and Cups
Exploring linguistic stereotyping of international students at a Canadian university

Although international students often report satisfaction with their studies and view Canada as being tolerant and multicultural, increasing anti-Asian sentiment triggered by the global pandemic has highlighted the importance of exploring whether international students, especially from South and East Asia, experience discrimination. This study examines how university students perceive the speech characteristics (accentedness, comprehensibility), status attributes (e.g., competent, intelligent), and solidarity traits (e.g., pleasant, attractive) of international students from Europe, China, and South Asia along with their interest in participating in academic activities with international students. Eighty university students in Canada evaluated short speech samples from six fellow students from Mandarin Chinese, European (Romanian, German), and South Asian (Urdu) backgrounds, with the voices presented with an image matching or mismatching the speaker’s ethnic features. Results showed that the Chinese and South Asian students were rated as more accented and less comprehensible than the European students. They were also viewed less favorably in status and solidarity and received lower academic engagement ratings. Students whose speech was easier to understand received higher status, solidarity, and academic engagement ratings. The findings are discussed in relation to various ways in which universities can reduce prejudicial and discriminatory behaviors toward international students.
ON THE GENERALIZED ZALCMAN FUNCTIONAL FOR SOME CLASSES OF UNIVALENT FUNCTIONS

C Dedicated to Professor David Shoikhet on the occasion of his 60th birthday Abstract. We prove three sharp estimates for the generalized Zalcman coeffi- cient functional: one for the Hurwitz class, another for the Noshiro-Warschawski class, and yet another for the functions in the closed convex hull of convex univalent functions. In each case the extremal functions are identified. We also observe that an asymptotic version of the Zalcman conjecture is true. On the Zalcman functionals. Let D denote the unit disk in the complex plane and S the class of all normalized univalent (that is, analytic and one-to- one) functions in D with the Taylor series f(z) = z+ P ∞=2 anz n . See (4) and (12) for the theory of these functions. It is well known that the coefficients of anyf in S satisfy |a 2 − a3| ≤ 1; see (12, Theorem 1.5). Zalcman's conjecture states that every f in S should satisfy a more general inequality |a 2 − a2n−1| ≤ (n− 1) 2 . Partial progress was obtained in (2), (9, 10), and (7, 8). The importance of the conjecture stems from the fact that, if assumed true, it implies the celebrated Bieberbach's conjecture: |an| ≤ n (see (2)). This problem was instrumental in the development of the subject for several decades and was finally solved by L. de Branges in 1984 (cf. (3) or (6)). We observe in this paper that the Zalcman conjecture is asymptotically true. More general versions of Zalcman's conjecture have also been considered for the generalized functional �(f) = λa 2 − a2n−1 for certain positive values of λ, e.g., in (2) and (10). For this general functional, we obtain sharp estimates for three well-known classes of functions: for the Hurwitz and Noshiro-Warschawski classes of univalent functions and for the closure of the convex hull of convex functions in S. These results, although simple and referring to special classes of functions, do not seem to have been recorded in the literature and it is our belief that they should be. Our exposition of results will flow from the more general to the more special classes and various methods of proof will be employed. Acknowledgments. This paper is part of the first author's doctoral thesis work under the supervision of the second author at Universidad Autonoma de Madrid. The second author thankfully acknowledges partial support from MINECO grant MTM2012- 37436-C02-02, Spain.