Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Does a mandatory gender boardroom quota lead to more gender equality in the corporate sector? A dual country perspective

Does a mandatory boardroom gender quota lead to more gender equality in the corporate sector? I hypothesize that such a quota leads to an increase in female participation and a decrease in the gender pay gapamong executive directors.As a response to the quota,firms have the option to onlyhire female non-executive directors to satisfy the rules of the quota.This gives firms the opportunity to limittheinfluence ofnew enteringfemales and withho ld females from theexecutive board. Therefore, I testthe effectof a gender quotaon participat io n for executive directors, because thisgivesastrongerindication ofwhether a quota leads to more gender equality. To researchwhether the quota leads to more gender equality,I examine the effect of a quota for CEOs and Non-CEO executives in France and Norway.The resultsof probit regressionsshow that the quota leads to an increase in female participation for all groups examined.Between France and Norway,I find no difference in the strength of the quota effect on participation. Using difference-in-difference models, I find mixed results on the effect of the quota on the gender pay gap.The quota decreased the raw gender pay gap for CEOs. In addition, results suggest that there exists equality in cash-compensationbetween females and malesafter the quota. Results for Non-CEO executives in France fail to prove a positive effect on the gender pay gap.In Norway, there isalsono significant quota effect present for Non-CEO executives. The shortage ofdata makes it impossible to concludeon the quota effect for Norwegian CEOs.
Fruit maturation and associated changes in ‘Mosambi’ orange

Fruit maturity changes in terms of physico-chemical, physiological, and sensory characteristics of monsoon-blossom crop of ‘Mosambi’ orange grown under sub-humid tropical climate of central India were studied. Rapid increase in fruit diameter, volume and weight was recorded from 180 to 220 days after fruit set, however, the growth was slow thereafter up to 250 days. Maximum diameter was 8.42 cm, while maximum weight was 253.28 g after 240 and 250 days, respectively. Fruit firmness, peel thickness, peel and rag percentage decreased, while peel colour, TSS/acid ratio and juice content increased from 180 to 250 days. Vitamin ‘C’ content was 56.60 mg/100 ml after 180 days and decreased to 52 mg/100 ml as fruit matured. After 240 days, TSS : acid ratio was 16.63 with 12.82% TSS and 0.78% titratable acids. The p H of the juice increased with fruit maturity. Fruits developed acceptable flavour and appearance after 240 days. ‘L’ and chroma values rose and hue angle (h°) declined with maturation and fruit colour turned yellow after 250 days. Chlorophyll (‘a’, ‘b’ and total) content dropped and total carotenoides in rind flavedo increased significantly. Reducing and total sugars in juice increased. Total phenols in flavedo increased up to 210 days and then declined. Fructose, glucose and sucrose increased in juice with fruit maturity and were in the ratio of 1:2:2 at 240 days. Xylose and maltose were present in trace amounts and ribose was not detected. Respiratory rate declined with fruit maturity confirming non-climacteric nature of ‘Mosambi’ fruit.
Adoption of rainwater harvesting and its impact on smallholder farmer livelihoods in Kutaber district, South Wollo Zone, Ethiopia

Abstract This study aimed to identify determinants of rainwater harvesting adoption, and evaluate its impact on livelihood of smallholder farmers in Kutaber district. A multi-stage sampling technique was employed to select 196 sample households. Descriptive statistics and econometric models were used to analyze the primary data. Logit model was used to identify determinants of rainwater harvesting adoption while propensity score matching was used to evaluate its impact on livelihood of smallholder farmers. The result of logit model revealed that education level, family size, farming experience, participation in technology demonstration, and membership in farmer cooperative were significantly and positively affected adoption of rainwater harvesting technology, while age of household head negatively affected it. The finding of this study showed that adoption of rainwater harvesting technology have a positive and significant effect on the livelihood of farmers in terms of household annual farm income and food security. The result indicated that rainwater harvesting has significantly increased adopters' annual farm income by 35.13% and daily calorie intake per adult equivalent by 15.56% than non-adopters. Therefore, it is recommended to alter the attitude of technology averse older farmers, enhance farmer training and experience sharing, accessible demonstration sites and farmer cooperative to achieve extensive adoption of the technology thereby improve farmer’s livelihood.
Procurement Auction with Corruption by Quality Manipulation

We studied an agency problem in procurement auction where the principal cares both price and quality. The project that can be delivered at a range of quality level chosen by the rms. The quality evaluation job is delegated to the auctioneer and a collusive auctioneer can manipulate rm's quality score. The collusive rm thus has larger chance to win the contract and the principal's cannot procure at best combination of price and quality. We construct a model to show the equilibrium and principal's optimal procurement mechanism with presence of this corruption by quality manipulation. Depending on severeness of corruption, the principal pick a mechanism inducing e cient rm to win by giving out more rent, or allow the collusive rm wins but procure at lower quality. The model allows us to compare principal's payo and e ciency in two famous procurement auction format: scoring auction and minimum quality under corruption.
e-ISSN 2710-5946 Halal Journal – No.3/2019 ISSN 1394-4428

The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of halal practices on organizational performance among the halal food industries (Small and Medium Enterprises — SMEs) in Malaysia. In this study, four key elements have been identified as performance predictors which are; halal and thoyyib, internal process, halal assurance, and staff. A cross-sectional study design has been adopted in this study through quantitative methods using closed-ended questions. Questionnaires were distributed to the halal food industry in Malaysia, and 172 of them are usable for analysis at an organizational level. Respondents who participated in this study are internal committee members specially appointed for halal control management within the organisation. Data were analyzed by using SPSS version 21. Descriptive analysis showed that the level of halal practices and the performance of the halal food industry in Malaysia were positive. In addition, the inference test results proved that there is a significant correlation between all the variables studied. However, based on the regression analysis, the halal and thoyyib; and halal assurance dimensions majorly influence the performance of the organization as compared to internal dimensions of the process and staff. This research gives the implications toward government, industry and consumers.
Insider Trading Restriction Enforcement, Investor Protection, and Innovation

U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement actions are intended to protect investors and limit expropriation by firm insiders. However, these SEC actions may also limit insiders’ incentives to contribute to value enhancing corporate activities. We explore how corporate innovation and performance respond to insider trading restrictions imposed by firms and regulators. Using manually collected data on SEC indictments against corporate insiders, we document higher innovative activities following external insider trading restrictions. External restrictions are also followed by higher corporate investment, capital access, and operating performance. Similarly, internal blackout periods and restrictions to insider trading are also linked to higher patent activity. We use SEC and congressional rule changes related to enforcement and indictments for identification and inference. Overall, our results suggest insider trading restrictions and enforcement actions impact subsequent firm activities and managerial decisions by protecting outside investment, resulting in higher innovation and investment.
COVID-19 Challenges, Opportunities and Lessons for Developing Economies

The purpose of this study is to examine the Covid -19 challenges, opportunities and lessons for developing countries particularly Uganda. This is motivated by the covid -19 epidemic, which was first reported on 27 December 2019 in China- in the capital city of Wuhan, in Hubei province. This pandemic of covid- 19 began to spread like bush fire and affected mostly at first European nations of Italy, United Kingdom, German France, and United States of America (leading currently). The pandemic later in early March 2020 spread in Africa, which abruptly left them with no choice other than closure of their borders, implementation of WHO guidelines on covid 19. There was abrupt lockdown of sectors, which started from education to the rest, a part from the health sector to cater for the patients in many countries including Uganda and excluding Tanzania. This study utilized qualitative method; narrative approach and narrative data analysis were used from personal perspective point of view. Findings revealed that although covid 19 had challenges, it come along with opportunities and developing countries have been availed with plentiful lessons to learn to be able to cope up with post covid 19 as they pull up from the yelped and winced economies and attain sustainable development. This paper has limitations, implications and recommendations as detailed in the paper.
Academic Procrastination in Study Habits and Its Relationship with Self-Reported Executive Functions in High School Students

Procrastination is a widespread phenomenon in educational settings. This study aimed to determine the relationship between academic procrastination regarding study habits and self-reported executive functions in high school students. In a sample of 52 students, the following instruments were applied: Academic Procrastination Scale (APS), Study Habits Inventory (SHI), Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF®) and as a control variable, anxiety was measured using the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI). The results indicated that high school students had moderate procrastination scores that were negatively correlated with the SHI scores. A significant correlation was also found between the APS and the scales associated with the Metacognition Index (MI) as measured by BRIEF®. It is concluded that students who procrastinate have difficulty organizing, planning and assimilating school content. The implementation of strategies for study habits in high school students is suggested, which would result in an impact on their metacognition.
Foreign direct investment and corporate income taxation under legal uncertainty*

This paper analyzes the effects of legal uncertainty on foreign direct investment (FDI) in developed and developing economies. Legal uncertainty is modeled considering different aspects: the application of double tax agreements, the different types of legal systems existing and the level of corruption. The final effect of legal uncertainty on FDI is not clear in the literature. Whilst we would suppose that the existence of a double tax agreement should encourage foreign direct investment, the literature is surprisingly inconclusive and more often than not finds a negative or insignificant relationship. The impact of different legal systems on FDI is not straightforward in the various empirical results. As far as corruption is concerned most empirical findings underline a negative effect of corruption on FDI. We explain these different stylized facts by taking legal uncertainty into account. We will study a general equilibrium model of foreign investors who consider investing in a profitable developed or developing market. In such a context uncertainty arises due to the application of double tax agreements, due to different legislation in act and to corruption’s issues. The entry decision will be undertaken strategically, taking the behavior of other market participants into account. Depending on the industry structure, firms may decide to enter until economic rents are zero in the low tax scenario. Companies that compete with each other may underbid each other, speculating that legal uncertainty resolves in their favor. This * The author would like to thank DEIR (University of Sassari) for hospitality, FWF SFB F2008 and the ETPF for funding, Eva Eberhartinger, Michael Lang, Dimitri Paolini, Pasquale Pistone and Cristiana Zanzottera for fruitful comments and discussion, and Valerie Bösch and Oliver Prausmüller for help with the data. † Correspondence: Martin Zagler, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Augasse 26, A-1090 Vienna, Austria, www.wu.ac.at/vw1/z, zagler@wu.ac.at
Column Curves for Stainless Steel LippedChannel Sections<query id="aq1">Please check and confirm that article title is set coorrectly.</query>

5 Abstract: The strength of thin-walled stainless steel columns has been investigated extensively over the last few years. The present paper 6 presents the results of an extensive computational study of the buckling strength of lipped–channel section columns made of austenitic, 7 duplex, and ferritic grades. The numerically computed strengths together with the available experimental data collected in the literature 8 are compared to the current European and Australian/New Zealand standard (AS/NZS) codified predictions over the whole slenderness 9 range. Minor and major axis buckling as well as flexural-torsional buckling are considered. A reliability assessment in the sense of both 10 standards is then performed. The safety factor γm and resistance factor φc are computed per family of stainless steel. In conclusion, we advise 11 the use of different European buckling column curves rather than the one currently adopted in the code and to make a distinction between the 12 families of stainless steel. Besides, seeing the very good agreement found against the AS/NZS guidance, we propose that the factor η, 13 currently being a linear expression in the European standard, be replaced by the AS/NZS expression with the proposed parameters for each 14 stainless steel family. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)ST.1943-541X.0002708. © 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
UNSUPERVISED MONOCULAR DEPTH ESTIMATION OF DRIVING SCENES USING SIAMESE CONVOLUTIONAL LSTM NETWORKS

Estimating depth from a single RGB image is an active research topic in computer vision because of its broad applications in scene understanding, autonomous driving, and traﬃc surveillance systems. This task involves estimating a pixel-wise depth map from a single image. Signiﬁcant progress has been made on monocular depth estimation using deep learning-based techniques. Current approaches employ geometry-based image reconstruction methods instead of ground truth depth labels to perform depth estimation in an unsupervised manner. In this paper, we present a deep learning model to simultaneously learn and reﬁne depth maps from a single RGB image and in an end-to-end manner by casting the monocular depth estimation as an image reconstruction problem. We propose an unsupervised framework for monocular depth estimation that trains a Siamese convolutional long short-term memory (Siamese convLSTM) network to jointly perform estimation and reﬁnement of depth maps using rectiﬁed stereo image pairs and produce a depth map from a single RGB image at test time. Experimental results show that simultaneously performing these two tasks leads to improving depth estimation accuracy. In particular, using the KITTI 2015 driving dataset for evaluation, our proposed Siamese convLSTM network achieves excellent performance on monocular depth estimation, both quantitatively and qualitatively.
Mountain permafrost and recent Alpine rockfall events : a GIS-based approach to determine critical factors

Glacier retreat and permafrost changes, as related to climate change, are supposed to affect stability conditions of steep rock walls in cold mountain ranges. Several rock-fall events, which have occurred in the European Alps during the 20 th century, are possibly related to warm permafrost. This study undertakes a systematic parameterization of rock-fall events in order to increase information about thermal and topographic conditions under which rock instabilities develop in areas of mountain permafrost. Thermal conditions of historically documented starting zones are parameterized by applying either empirical rules or GIS-based spatial models; slope is derived from DTMs. Despite the relatively small number of events documented so far (around 20), the first results presented clearly indicate that the factor ‘permafrost’ must be considered in connection with rock-falls from high mountain slopes. Table 1. Geomorphometric parameters of the rock-fall events considered. The altitude relates to the uppermost point of the starting zone. H is the fall from the top of the scarp to the bottom of the accumulation, L the corresponding horizontal travel distance. The star in column Gl. indicates events that are situated in a glacial environment. n. Name Date Altitude Aspect Volume H L H/L Gl. Reference ______ ______ __ __ m a.s. l. 10 6 . m 3 m m 1 Triolet (I) 1717 3600 E 16-2
Relation between critical thinking and motivation to learn among nursing students at Zagazig University

Back ground: The need for critical thinking in nursing has been accentuated in response to the rapidly changing health care environment . Nurse must think critically to provide effective care whilst coping with the expansion in role associated with the complexities of current health care system. The aim of the present study was conducted to assess the critical thinking on developing & motivation to learn among nursing students. Subject & method: Research design:, Descriptive correlation design was used to conduct the present study: Setting: the current study was conducted at faculty of nursing, zagazig university. Subject of the study will include all nursing students enrolled in the academic year 2017-2018. Tools of data collections: Tool I: Nurse Student's knowledge assessment questionnaire to assess nurse student's knowledge about critical thinking, Tool II: California critical thinking skills test it was to assess the nurse student's skills& Tool III: Motivation to learn questionnaire. Results the present study reveals there's statistically significant between critical thinking, and motivation to learn. Conclusion: it could be concluded that: all nursing student had inadequate level of knowledge regarding critical thinking, the highest percentages of them had a weak level of critical thinking skills and a moderate level of motivation to learn. Recommendations: Development of curriculum contents, which concentrates on improving thinking skills-in general- and critical thinking skills-in specific.
Long-run Performance of the Organised Manufacturing Sector in India An Analysis of Sub-periods and Industry-level Trends

The Indian manufacturing sector has not increased its share in output or employment along expected lines. The aggregate trends in this sector at the 3-digit level of the National Industrial Classification from 1983 to 2017 are investigated here. Using data from the Annual Survey of Industries obtained from the EPWRFITS, it identifies three sub-periods within the overall period: 1988–96, 1996–2006, and 2006–17. A shift-share decomposition is used to show that most of the decline in the labour to capital ratio can be explained by within-industry changes. Finally, industries are analysed with respect to their capacity to deliver job and wage growth.
Nature of errors and mistakes in the English writings of graduating students in Bangladesh: A case study

There is no denying that writing is quite tiresome in both second language teaching and learning situations. And so, selecting an appropriate strategy to provide the learners with necessary feedback in their writings seems to be a complicated task in language pedagogy. The present researchers observe that despite the writing practice of English for about 12 years in Bangladesh, the tertiary students commit mistakes and errors. They, therefore, feel numerous studies should be conducted to find an effective means of feedback for mistakes and errors the students make. Thus, this paper identifies the nature of mistakes and errors in their writings and finds out remedial procedures by means of knowing the factors contributing to the recurrence of these errors and mistakes year after year. To obtain data, some writing samples of paragraphs in groups, business letters, and letters of application have been taken from some undergraduate students of a university, and an opinion survey of teachers with an open-ended questionnaire has also been conducted. The study concludes with some pedagogical recommendations based on relevant concerns.
Discovering Through Experience... Embodiment Caught Between Planning and Theater

This article explores the use of constructivist embodied methodologies in a multi-case study researching two community-based theaters in support of the democratization of urban planning. The theaters in question seek community change through immersive, collaborative, and intensive theater productions. The article contains critical reflections of myself, the research process, and the work necessary to ethically act within social and entangled environments. The research conducted required a concentrated reflexivity not just of positionality, but of methods, epistemology, and historical legacies of academic institutions and urban and regional planning. Through co-constructing and performing within theatrical productions, I provide a framework for how the pedagogical experiences derived from the cases helped to understand constructivist embodiment as it applies to urban planning.
Evaluation of pharmacist’s knowledge regarding chronic kidney disease

Background: Chronic Kidney Disease is a complex condition characterized by a decrease in kidney function. Objective: The objective of this study was to develop and validate a knowledge tool and assess the knowledge of pharmacists regarding Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD). Methods: The study consisted of 2 phases with phase-I involving the development and validation of a knowledge tool. The development phase encompassed a thorough review of the literature, focus-group discussion, and expert review. The validation phase consisted of pilot testing and involving content and face validity and reliability testing using Cronbach alpha. Phase-II involved an assessment of knowledge of pharmacists by administering the validated tool to 183 practicing pharmacists working in tertiary care hospitals in 3 big cities of Pakistan. The data obtained were statistically analyzed involving descriptive and inferential statistics including chi-square test, one way ANOVA, post hoc Tukey’s test, and regression analysis. Results: The developed knowledge was found to be reliable with Cronbach alpha values above 0.7 during the pilot testing. A high response rate of 93.4% was observed during the study. 50.9% of the pharmacists in the study had good knowledge, the mean percent knowledge score was found to be 54.76. The knowledge score was found to be associated with the male gender, 30 – 39 years of age, >5 years of experience and clinical / hospital pharmacy certification during the post hoc analysis (p<005). Strong positive correlation and linear regression relationship were observed between percentage knowledge score and number of years of professional clinical experience. Conclusions: Pharmacists working in tertiary care hospitals in Pakistan exhibit a good knowledge of chronic kidney disease.