Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Microanatomy of the thyroid gland in sheep (Ovis aries)

A study on the Histomorphology and Histochemistry of the thyroid gland was conducted in the prenatal and postnatal age groups of sheep. For the prenatal study, the thyroid gland was collected from sheep embryos of early (42 days), mid (77.7 days) and late (128 days) gestation. Postnatal study included the collection of thyroid gland from young (<1 year), adult (1-5 years) and old (> 5 years) sheep, irrespective of the sexes. Tissue pieces were collected in different fixatives for routine paraffin embedding. Paraffin sections were used for routine and special staining techniques. Frozen sections were used for histochemical techniques. In the early gestation sheep embryo, only the central zone of the thyroid gland showed differentiated follicles. In the mid and late gestation embryos, the entire thyroid gland was differentiated into follicles. The location of C cells and ultimo branchia follicles was similar to the postnatal age groups. In the postnatal age groups, the thyroid gland was encircled by a connective tissue capsule. From the capsule, trabeculae entered the parenchyma and divided the gland into many lobules. The thyroid follicles varied in size and shape, in the different age groups studied. The diameter of the follicles showed a tendency to increase in size and became irregular in outline with advancing age. In the interfollicular area, in addition to the connective tissue fibres, nerves and capillaries, clusters of polyhedral cells were present. The ultimo branchia follicles were located in the perivascular connective tissue in the central zone and in the periphery of the thyroid gland within the capsule. The capsule of the thyroid gland was weakly PAS positive. The follicular cells and colloid showed strong PAS positive reaction. The accumulation of lipids and the presence of acid and alkaline phosphatases was noticed in the different structures of the thyroid gland.
Information Sequencing with Naive Social Learning∗

Does the order and timing of information arrival affect beliefs formed within a group? We address this question by extending the DeGroot social learning model to allow for sequential information arrival. We find that the final beliefs can be altered by varying only the sequencing of information arrival, keeping the information content unchanged. We identify the optimal and pessimal information release sequences that yield the highest and lowest attainable consensus, respectively. In doing so, we bound the variation in final beliefs that can be attributed to the variation in the sequencing of information. We show that groups in which all members are equally influential are those most susceptible to information sequencing. Finally, with regard to information aggregation, as the number of group members grows, the sequential arrival of information compromises the group’s beliefs: in all but particular cases, beliefs converge away from the truth. I am indebted to Leeat Yariv, Roland Bénabou and Alessandro Lizzeri for their continued guidance. I have greatly benefited from discussions with Ben Golub, Pietro Ortoleva, Can Urgun, Xiaosheng Mu, Joao Thereze, Mu Zhang, and Evgenii Safonov. I am also grateful to audiences at Princeton University and “The 30th International Conference on Game Theory Stony Brook Center for Game Theory” for their helpful comments and discussions. Department of Economics, Princeton University preshidi@princeton.edu
Dual-angle open field wavefront sensor for simultaneous measurements of the central and peripheral human eye

We have developed a novel dual-angle open field wavefront sensor. This device captures real-time foveal and peripheral Zernike aberrations, while providing natural binocular viewing conditions for the subjects. The simultaneous data recording enables accurate analysis of changes in ocular optics with accommodation overcoming any uncertainties caused by accommodative lag or lead. The instrument will be used in myopia research to study central and peripheral ocular optics during near work and to investigate the effects of optical myopia control interventions. Proof of concept measurements, performed on an artificial eye model and on 3 volunteers, showed good repeatability with foveal-peripheral data synchronization of 65 msec or better. The deviations from subjective cycloplegic refractions were not more than 0.31 D. Furthermore, we tested the dual-angle wavefront sensor in two novel measurement schemes: (1) focusing on a close target, and (2) accommodation step change. © 2020 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement
Peer-rated organizational citizenship behavior: Does familiarity improve rating quality?

Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) is valuable to organizations and has become an important focus of employee performance evaluation. Employees’ peers may be particularly well-situated to rate their OCB. We investigated the proportion of variance in peer-rated OCB attributable to the ratee (true score) versus the rater (rater bias). Furthermore, we investigated whether these proportions were affected by the familiarity of the peer with the ratee. We found that high familiarity was associated with a greater proportion of ratee variance (.43 vs. .18), and a lower proportion of rater bias (.30 vs. .51), than was the case with low-to-moderate familiarity. Thus, when choosing peers as raters of OCB, there may be value in carefully considering the peers’ familiarity with the ratees.
22. PETROGRAPHY AND CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF THE LAVA FLOWS FROM THE EMPEROR SEAMOUNTS, DSDP

During DSDP Leg 55, volcanic rocks were recovered at Sites 430, 432, and 433, on Ojin, Nintoku, and Suiko seamounts, respectively, in the Emperor Seamount chain. Of the five lava flows recovered at Hole 430A, the upper four flows are typical hawaiites and the lowest flow is tholeiite. Three lava flows of alkalic basalts recovered at Hole 432A on Nintoku Seamount are petrographically and chemically similar to the analogous rocks from the Hawaiian Islands. Ninety-six cooling units, from 163 to 550 meters sub-bottom, were sampled at the re-entry Hole 433C. Most of them are lava flows and others are secondary thin flows or flow lobes from fissures of basic flows. The three uppermost flows are alkalic basalts. Eight individual cooling units of picritebasalts (Flow Units 4A-4H) occur below them. The underlying sequence of flows is composed almost entirely of tholeiites; only four flows are transitional toward alkalic basalts, and one of them is picrite-basalt. In spite of the nearly complete absence of sedimentary and pyroclastic interbeds between the flows, good recovery permitted us to distinguish boundaries of cooling units and determine their thicknesses. We calculated the thicknesses of tholeiitic and transitional basalt flows in the flow sequence of Hole 433C assuming that the flows fill all void space proportionally to the recovery in each flow. Most cooling units range in thickness from 0 to 2 meters (Figure 1A). This is the interval defining not only primary lava flows, but also secondary flows or flow lobes. A minimum in the interval from 1.25 to 1.5 meters (Figure IB) apparently is a boundary between lava flows and flow lobes. As a whole, this agrees with data obtained in the Hawaiian Islands, where thickness of the tholeiitic flows is commonly not less than 1 meter (Macdonald and Abbott, 1970), although very thin flows can be found occasionally, for instance, tholeiitic flows 0.3 to 1.3 meters thick in the flow sequence of Waikolu Valley, Molokai Island (Beeson, 1976). This study is undertaken to determine petrologic and chemical heterogeneities caused by crystallization conditions and alteration. Figure 2 illustrates the position of 10 flows under study. Forty-nine samples from top to bottom of these flows were studied in thin sections. Grain sizes of the groundmass minerals were measured. Optical determinations of plagioclase composition were made according to Vande-Kirkov's (1974) method using the Fedorov universal stage. The whole-rock composition of major elements was determined using the classical wet method (except for Na2O and K2O) in the Cen0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0
Empirical Investigation on Determinants of Lending Behaviour: Evidence from Commercial Banks in Ethiopia

This study was carried out to investigating determinants to lending behaviour in commercial banks of Ethiopia from 20102017. The study tried to investigate bank specific and macroeconomic determinants of lending behaviour based on data of eleven commercial banks in Ethiopia by using deposit ratio, liquidity ratio, bank size, efficiency ratio and banks ownership as bank specific factors and Reserve requirement ratio, exchange rate, lending rate, inflation rate and gross domestic product as macroeconomic determinants of lending behaviour. The study also sought to examine lending disparity among banks under the investigation by taking into account individuality of each bank through dummy variable. Data was obtained from national bank of Ethiopia and world bank data base and analyzed through panel data regression analysis by applying fixed effect regression model. The finding revealed that from bank specific factors, deposit ratio and bank ownership have positive and significant effect on lending behaviour of banks under the investigation. On the other hand, liquidity ratio, bank size and efficiency ratio have negative but statistically insignificant effect on lending behaviour. The finding also shows that from macroeconomic factors, exchange rate, lending rate and gross domestic product have found to have positive but statistically insignificant effect on lending behaviour. Result on macroeconomic factors also shows that reserve requirement ratio and inflation rate have negative but insignificant effect on lending behaviour of banks under the investigation. Finally, the study revealed existence of statistically significant disparity between CBE and other banks under the investigation in terms of lending behaviour.
Conceptualization and Measurement of Export Performance: A Critical Review and a Working Proposition Autoria:

Export performance is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. Along the past 40 years several attempts have been made to measure such construct. However, despite all theoretical and empirical efforts, little consensus has been reached on how to conceptualize and operationalize export performance. In this article, a critical analysis is conducted on previous works that have tried to provide general guidelines on how to characterize and measure export performance. However, as will be shown, proposed classification schemes have lacked internal consistency and collective exhaustiveness. Building from their foundations, a new analytical framework is advanced and applied to the identification of export performance dimensions that have been used in recent (1999 through 2004) empirical research. Results are analyzed and compared against previous reviews and analyses conducted by other researchers.
Microsoft Word-Nyholm Lab Publications.docx

Female Hawaiian bobtail squid, Euprymna scolopes, harbor a symbiotic bacterial community in a reproductive organ, the accessory nidamental gland (ANG). This community is known to be stable over several generations of wild-caught bobtail squid but has, to date, been examined for only one population in Maunalua Bay, Oahu, HI. This study assessed the ANG and corresponding egg jelly coat (JC) bacterial communities for another genetically isolated host population from Kaneohe Bay, Oahu, HI, using 16S amplicon sequencing. The bacterial communities from the ANGs and JCs of the two populations were found to be similar in richness, evenness, phylogenetic diversity, and overall community composition. However, the Kaneohe Bay samples formed their own subset within the Maunalua Bay ANG/JC community. An Alteromonadaceae genus, BD2-13, was significantly higher in relative abundance in the Kaneohe Bay population, and several Alphaproteobacteria taxa also shifted in relative abundance between the two groups. This variation could be due to local adaptation to differing environmental challenges, to localized variability, or to functional redundancy among the ANG taxa. The overall stability of the community between the populations further supports a crucial functional role that has been hypothesized for this symbiosis. IMPORTANCE In this study, we examined the reproductive ANG symbiosis found in two genetically isolated populations of the Hawaiian bobtail squid, Euprymna scolopes. The stability of the community reported here provides support for the hypothesis that this symbiosis is under strong selective pressure, while the observed differences suggest that some level of local adaptation may have occurred. These two host populations are frequently used interchangeably as source populations for research. Euprymna scolopes is an important model organism and offers the opportunity to examine the interplay between a binary and a consortial symbiosis in a single model host. Understanding the inherent natural variability of this association will aid in our understanding of the conservation, function, transmission, and development of the ANG symbiosis.
Insider Tax Effects on Acquisition Structure and Value

This study investigates the effect of target firm insiders’ capital gain tax liabilities on acquisition structure and value. We construct insider holdings using data from the Thomson Financial Insiders Data Feed for a large sample of acquisitions over the last twenty years. Results indicate that the positive relations between shareholder-level capital gain tax rates and 1) the likelihood of a nontaxable acquisition and 2) acquisition premiums documented in Ayers, Lefanowicz, and Robinson (2004, 2003) are largely driven by insider tax effects. We also show that whether acquisition structure or premium is adjusted in response to insider taxes depends on the alternatives available for the acquirer. Our study contributes to our understanding of what taxes and whose taxes affect acquisition structure and value. An overriding question in the literature is whether firm management considers shareholder-level taxes in decision-making. We confirm that shareholderlevel taxes matter in acquisitions but find that the effects are concentrated in firms where insiders own relatively more of the firm. _______________ *Corresponding author contact information: 100 Main street, Cambridge, MA 02142; Phone: (617) 253-9849; email: mhanlon@mit.edu. We appreciate helpful comments from workshop participants at the University of Oregon. We also thank Alexander Ljungqvist for sharing his firm headquarters location data. The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from Boston College and the MIT Sloan School of Management.
THE EFFECT OF DEGREE OF CONVERGENCE TO IFRS AND GOVERNANCE SYSTEM TO QUALITY OF FINANCIAL REPORTING : EVIDENCE FROM ASIA

Dr. Ratna Wardhani Affiliation : Postgraduate Program in Accounting, Faculty of Economics, University of Indonesia Depok 16424, Indonesia Postal Address : Gedung Pascasarjana Fakultas Ekonomi Universitas Indonesia, Kampus UI Depok 16424, Indonesia Email Address : ratnawardhani@yahoo.com Telephone Number : (+62-21) 78880745/47, (+62-21) 7270164 Mobile Phone Number : (+62-81) 79865683 Fax Number : (+62-21) 78880745
Board of Directors Characteristics and Firm Performance: Evidence from the Insurance Sector in Bahrain

This paper aims to examine the relationship between the board of directors’ characteristics and insurance firms’ performance. The study focused on an important sector, insurance companies in Bahraini Bourse for the past eight years (2012-2019). Data were obtained from annual reports issued by the firm’s sites of both the characteristic of boards of directors that were considered as the independent variable and the firm's performance that was regarded as the dependent variable. The research analysed how the board of directors’ characteristics relates to return on equity (ROE), return on assets (ROA) and earnings-per-share (EPS), which measure company performance. The analysis used the Panel regression approach. The study found a positive and significant relationship between the frequency of boards meeting and insurance performance. Other characteristics are found insignificant, specifically, the board size, independent directors, and board attendance.
Treatment of hydrophobic VOCs in trickling bed air biofilter: Emphasis on long-term effect of initial alternate use of hydrophilic VOCs and microbial species evolution

The main research objective of this study is to enhance the removal of recalcitrant compounds that are not readily bioavailable due to limiting mass transfer rate between the liquid and gas phases. Four trickle-bed air biofilters (TBABs), loaded with pelletized diatomaceous earth support media, were run at an empty bed residence time (EBRT) of 120 sec. After an acclimation period at constant loading rate (LR) of n-hexane (13.2 g m−3 hr−1) and intermittent feeding of methanol, n-hexane influent LR was then increased in step-wise fashion to 47.7 g m−3 hr−1 for biofilters receiving acidic nutrients (pH 4), and to 36.3 g m−3 hr−1 for biofilters receiving nutrient at pH 7. The results have shown that for TBABs receiving nutrient at pH 4, greater elimination capacities were obtained as compared to TBABs working at pH 7. n-Hexane removal efficiency of more than 84% at LR up to 47.7 g m−3 hr−1 was obtained for pH 4 nutrient-fed biofilters, while for biofilters with nutrients fed at pH 7, the removal efficiency did not exceed 64% for n-hexane LR of 36.3 g m−3 hr−1. The microbial analysis revealed that no fungal community was detected in TBABs run at neutral pH. The fungi communities that were initially acclimating TBABs run at pH 4, namely, Aspergillus niger and Fusarium solani, were not detected at the end of the experiment, while Gibberella moniliformis (Fusarium verticillioides) genus became the dominant species. Gibberella moniliformis (Fusarium verticillioides) was present along all the biofilter media and sustained very high n-hexane elimination at steady-state condition. Implications: With growing apprehension about sustainability and environmental protection, with limited resources available, and with the passage of the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act, there is more need for using air pollution control techniques that are sound economically and proven environmentally friendly. Biofiltration systems, namely, trickle-bed air biofilters, were for decades recognized as efficient in treating air pollutants. Thus, the application of this technique over a wide industrial spectrum would certainly contribute to reduction of hazardous gas emissions.
The KMOS3D Survey: Investigating the Origin of the Elevated Electron Densities in Star-forming Galaxies at 1 ≲ z ≲ 3

We investigate what drives the redshift evolution of the typical electron density (n e ) in star-forming galaxies, using a sample of 140 galaxies drawn primarily from KMOS3D (0.6 < z < 2.6) and 471 galaxies from SAMI (z < 0.113). We select galaxies that do not show evidence of active galactic nucleus activity or outflows to constrain the average conditions within H ii regions. Measurements of the [S ii]λ6716/[S ii]λ6731 ratio in four redshift bins indicate that the local n e in the line-emitting material decreases from 187 cm−3 at z ∼ 2.2 to 32 cm−3 at z ∼ 0, consistent with previous results. We use the Hα luminosity to estimate the rms n e averaged over the volumes of star-forming disks at each redshift. The local and volume-averaged n e evolve at similar rates, hinting that the volume filling factor of the line-emitting gas may be approximately constant across 0 ≲ z ≲ 2.6. The KMOS3D and SAMI galaxies follow a roughly monotonic trend between n e and star formation rate, but the KMOS3D galaxies have systematically higher n e than the SAMI galaxies at a fixed offset from the star-forming main sequence, suggesting a link between the n e evolution and the evolving main sequence normalization. We quantitatively test potential drivers of the density evolution and find that n e (rms) , suggesting that the elevated n e in high-z H ii regions could plausibly be the direct result of higher densities in the parent molecular clouds. There is also tentative evidence that n e could be influenced by the balance between stellar feedback, which drives the expansion of H ii regions, and the ambient pressure, which resists their expansion.
Uniqueness and Ulam–Hyers–Mittag–Leffler stability results for the delayed fractional multiterm differential equation involving the Φ-Caputo fractional derivative

Abstract. The principal aim of the present paper is to establish the uniqueness and Ulam-Hyers MittagLeffler (UHML) stability of solutions for a new class of multi-terms fractional time-delay differential equations in the context of the Φ-Caputo fractional derivative. To achieve this purpose, the generalized Laplace transform method alongside facet with properties of the Mittag-Leffler functions (M-LFs), are utilized to give a new representation formula of the solutions for the aforementioned problem. Besides that, the uniqueness of the solutions of the considered problem is also proved by applying the well-known Banach contraction principle coupled with the Φ-fractional Bielecki-type norm. While the Φ-fractional Gronwall type inequality and the Picard operator (PO) technique combined with abstract Gronwall lemma are used to prove the UHML stability results for the proposed problem. Lastly, an example is offered to assure the validity of the obtained theoretical results.
Structural Balance and Interpersonal Appraisals Dynamics: Beyond All-to-All and Two-Faction Networks

Structural balance theory describes stable configurations of topologies of signed interpersonal appraisal networks. Existing models explaining the convergence of appraisal networks to structural balance either diverge in finite time, or could get stuck in jammed states, or converge to only complete graphs. In this paper we study the open problem how steady non-all-to-all structural balance emerges via local dynamics of interpersonal appraisals. We first compare two well-justified definitions of structural balance for general non-all-to-all graphs, i.e., the triad-wise structural balance and the two-faction structural balance, and thoroughly study their relations. Secondly, based on three widely adopted sociological mechanisms: the symmetry mechanism, the influence mechanism, and the homophily mechanism, we propose two simple models of gossip-like appraisal dynamics, the symmetry-influence-homophily (SIH) dynamics and the symmetry-influence-opinion-homophily (SIOH) dynamics. In these models, the appraisal network starting from any initial condition almost surely achieves non-all-to-all triad-wise and twofaction structural balance in finite time respectively. Moreover, the SIOH dynamics capture the co-evolution of interpersonal appraisals and individuals’ opinions. Regarding the theoretical contributions, we show that the equilibrium set of the SIH (SIOH resp.) dynamics corresponds to the set of all the possible triad-wise (two-faction resp.) structural balance configurations of the appraisal networks. Moreover, we prove that, for any initial condition, the appraisal networks in the SIH (SIOH resp.) dynamics almost surely achieve triad-wise (two-faction resp.) structural balance in finite time. Numerical studies of the SIH dynamics are conducted on how the final proportion of negative links depends on the initial proportion of negative links and the network topology. These simulation results imply some insightful take-home messages on whether multilateral relations reduce or exacerbate conflicts.