Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reserve Requirements, Liquidity Risk, and Credit Growth

Many central banks in emerging economies have used reserve requirements (RR) to alleviate the trade-off between financial stability and price stability in recent years. Notwithstanding their widespread use, transmission channels of RR have remained largely as a black-box. In this paper, we use bank-level data to explore the interaction between RR and bank lending behavior. Our empirical findings suggest that short-term borrowing from the central bank is not a close substitute for deposits for banks. Bank lending behavior responds significantly to reserve requirements and liquidity positions. Our analysis allows us to identify a new channel that we name as the “liquidity channel”. The channel works through a decline in bank liquidity and loan supply due to an increase in reserve requirements.
A Novel PCR Method for Identifying Plankton in Cases of Death by Drowning

We present a new PCR method for identifying plankton in cases of death by drowning. We designed four primer pairs for chlorophyll-related genes of Euglena gracilis (EG) and Skeletonema costatum (SK), which are commonly distributed in water. The primers were selected from sequences coding chloroplast/chlorophyll apoprotein of EG (EG1 and EG2) and fucoxanthin-chlorophyll a/c harvesting protein of SK (SK1 and SK2). With EG1 or EG2, up to 2 fg of EG-DNA was identified, and 0.2 pg of SK-DNA was detectable with SK1 or SK2. No PCR products were amplified from green vegetables (komatsuna, spinach, parsley) or human DNA with the four primer pairs. Regardless of the origin, seawater or fresh water, most diatoms were detectable with primer pairs of EG1 and EG2. With SK1, only Centrales diatoms were identified, and five diatom strains originating from seawater were detectable with SK2. EG1 and EG2 gave rise to PCR products from most water samples. By using Percoll®, plankton was easily isolated from human tissue or blood samples and good results of PCR analysis were obtained in cases of death by drowning.
Free Cash Flow And Earnings Management: The Moderating Role Of Governance And Ownership

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the moderating effect of corporate governance and ownership features in lessening earnings management practices in a free cash flow (FCF) situation. A simultaneous equations model is developed to address endogeneity of the FCF variable. Based on a sample of French companies belonging to the SBF 120 index from 2001 to 2010, the results highlight the opportunistic behavior of managers in presence of free cash flows. Particularly, managers engage in earnings management practices that increase reported earnings. Our results also show that corporate governance mechanisms such as audit committee independence and external audit quality, in addition to institutional investors and managerial ownership reduce the extent of earnings management. Corporate governance mechanisms are substitutive in their monitoring role of managers’ behavior to reduce earnings management in presence of a free cash flow problem.
Identification of Indigenous Bacteria Isolated from Shrimp Aquaculture Wastewater with Bioremediation Application: Total Ammoniacal Nitrogen (TAN) and Nitrite Removal

Deterioration of water quality mainly due to high total ammonia nitrogen (TAN) and nitrite will affect the productivity of shrimp culture. In this study, three indigenous strains assigned as VCM5, VCM8 and VCM12 were evaluated for their ability to degrade TAN and nitrite. These strains were inoculated into shrimp aquaculture wastewater to enhance the degradation of TAN and nitrite. All the strains reduced TAN and nitrite level from the shrimp aquaculture wastewater significantly (p<0.05). Strain VCM5 (GenBank accession number KJ700465) and VCM8 (GenBank accession number KJ700464) showed 99.71% sequence similarity with the 16S rRNA gene type species Bacillus vietnamensis 15-1T (ABO99708) and strain VCM12 (GenBank accession number KJ700463) showed 99.05% sequence similarity with 16S rRNA gene sequence type species Gordonia bronchialis DSM43247T (CP001802).
RECESSION AND RESTRUCTURING IN PORT ALBERNI: CORPORATE, HOUSEHOLD AND COMMUNITY COPING STRATEGIES

This thesis examines the impact of restructuring and recession on the City of Port Alberni, a mill town on Vancouver Island. Within the context of multiperspectivism, the objectives of this research are first, to assess the relevance of contemporary restructuring literature to the experience of Canadian single-industry communities, and second, to evaluate the effectiveness of the coping strategies that were undertaken by the firm, by individuals and by the community. Both qualitative and quantitative data were gathered from laid-off employees, their spouses, and key informants within the community and MacMillan Bloedel. Findings indicate that the corporate strategies adopted at this time dealt a severe blow to the economic health of the city while achieving only modest success in stabilizing markets. At the level of the individual and household, laidoff employees experienced emotional distress; varied job search and job training processes; and modifications, that were usually temporary, in gender relations. No evidence of an informal economy emerged. At the level of the community, although some initiatives undertaken by local agencies were able to mitigate the negative effects of job loss in the short-term, the policies and programs implemented to reduce the level of dependence within the locality and diversify the economy were largely ineffective. It is suggested that more research effort be placed on understanding the need for economic development strategies that are pertinent to the particular experience of Canadian singleindustry communities.
The relationship between business orientations and brand performance: A cross‐national perspective

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to adopt a customer‐centric value creation perspective to provide insights into the contribution of business orientations, especially marketing orientation and innovation orientation to the creation of customer‐centric value (customer equity and brand performance). Design/methodology/approach – To undertake this examination, a model was developed and then tested to validate its applicability in the context of both developed and developing economies. The paper includes partial least squares.Findings – The findings demonstrate that being marketing‐oriented and innovation‐oriented appears to be important in creating customers, keeping them, and increasing add‐on selling to them and rewards the firm with greater brand performance in the marketplace. Importantly, these relationships are universally held across developed and developing business environments. Interestingly, marketing orientation was found to contribute more to the creation of customer‐centric value than inno.
Channel benefits portfolio management in the eBusiness era

The role of channels and their management in the eBusiness era is becoming increasingly important to customer relationship management. Traditional use of the application portfolio approach has been concerned with providing an appropriate basis for making investment decisions about IT applications for the firm. This paper argues that there is a gap between the established IS portfolio application theory and the requirements to support management investment decisions about eBusiness applications; Therefore, the paper proposes a channel benefits portfolio (CBP) approach to inform managers' channel investment decisions concerning business‐to‐customer channel interface. The suggested approach provides a conceptual framework and means to facilitate the alignment of the firm's portfolio with their customers' portfolio. The paper reports exploratory findings regarding customer channel preference and customer channel choice behaviour in the information search and purchasing stages during the customer decision‐making process on the basis of the CBP.
VISUALIZATION OF SITES OF PHOSPHATASE ACTIVITIES BY MEANS OF MORDANTED HAEMATEIN

More permanent visualization of sites of phosphatase activities is achieved by treating sections with haematein following incubation in media containing metal capture reagents. The metallic phosphates act as mordants for the haematein, and haematin mordanted by lead or cobalt has a rich purple color at alkaline pH. The purple color is fast in contrast to the brown lead or cobalt sulfides which tend to fade with time.
Efficient system of homologous RNA recombination in brome mosaic virus: sequence and structure requirements and accuracy of crossovers

Brome mosaic virus (BMV), a tripartite positive-stranded RNA virus of plants engineered to support intersegment RNA recombination, was used for the determination of sequence and structural requirements of homologous crossovers. A 60-nucleotide (nt) sequence, common between wild-type RNA2 and mutant RNA3, supported efficient repair (90%) of a modified 3' noncoding region in the RNA3 segment by homologous recombination with wild-type RNA2 3' noncoding sequences. Deletions within this sequence in RNA3 demonstrated that a nucleotide identity as short as 15 nt can support efficient homologous recombination events, while shorter (5-nt) sequence identity resulted in reduced recombination frequency (5%) within this region. Three or more mismatches within a downstream portion of the common 60-nt RNA3 sequence affected both the incidence of recombination and the distribution of crossover sites, suggesting that besides the length, the extent of sequence identity between two recombining BMV RNAs is an important factor in homologous recombination. Site-directed mutagenesis of the common sequence in RNA3 did not reveal a clear correlation between the stability of predicted secondary structures and recombination activity. This indicates that homologous recombination does not require similar secondary structures between two recombining RNAs at the sites of crossovers. Nearly 20% of homologous recombinants were imprecise (aberrant), containing either nucleotide mismatches, small deletions, or small insertions within the region of crossovers. This implies that homologous RNA recombination is not as accurate as proposed previously. Our results provide experimental evidence that the requirements and thus the mechanism of homologous recombination in BMV differ from those of previously described heteroduplex-mediated nonhomologous recombination (P. D. Nagy and J. J. Bujarski, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 90:6390-6394, 1993).
Eliminating dependent pattern matching without K

Abstract Dependent pattern matching is an intuitive way to write programs and proofs in dependently typed languages. It is reminiscent of both pattern matching in functional languages and case analysis in on-paper mathematics. However, in general, it is incompatible with new type theories such as homotopy type theory (HoTT). As a consequence, proofs in such theories are typically harder to write and to understand. The source of this incompatibility is the reliance of dependent pattern matching on the so-called K axiom – also known as the uniqueness of identity proofs – which is inadmissible in HoTT. In this paper, we propose a new criterion for dependent pattern matching without K, and prove it correct by a translation to eliminators in the style of Goguen et al. (2006 Algebra, Meaning, and Computation). Our criterion is both less restrictive than existing proposals, and solves a previously undetected problem in the old criterion offered by Agda. It has been implemented in Agda and is the first to be supported by a formal proof. Thus, it brings the benefits of dependent pattern matching to contexts where we cannot assume K, such as HoTT.
Energy-Aware Incentive Mechanism for Content Sharing through Device-to-Device Communications

The traffic of the base station can be offloaded by content sharing through device-to-device (D2D) communications if popular on-demand contents have been cached in user devices. In D2D content sharing, the receiving user gains benefit by obtaining contents while the transmitting user has to consume the transmission energy. However, users are selfish and have no obligation to help others. To motivate user involvement in D2D content sharing, we propose an energy-aware incentive mechanism where the key idea is that physically neighboring users can form a collaborative group. In a collaborative group, a user obtains contents from other users while consuming energy on providing contents to other users. We model the problem as a coalition formation game with non- transferable utility. To solve the problem, we also propose an algorithm which is proved to be of convergence and stability. Finally, simulation results show that our proposed mechanism has significant performance gains compared with two baseline schemes.
Historical geographic dispersal of the golden snub‐nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus roxellana) and the influence of climatic oscillations

Current understanding of historic climate oscillations that have occurred over the past few million years has modified scientific views on evolution. Major climatic events have caused local and global extinction of plants and animals and have impacted the spatial distribution of many species. The endangered golden snub‐nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus roxellana) currently inhabits three isolated regions of China: the Sichuan and Gansu provinces (SG), the Qinling Mountains in Shaanxi province (QL), and the Shennongjia Forestry District in Hubei province (SNJ). However, considerable uncertainty still exists about their historical dispersal routes under the influence of environment change. To date, two dispersal routes have been proposed: (1) the QL and SNJ populations originated from the SG population; and (2) the SG population recolonized from the QL and SNJ populations. We used the mitochondrial DNA complete control region to perform statistical assessments of the relative probability of alternative migration scenarios and the role of environmental change on the geographic dispersal of Rhinopithecus roxellana. Thirty haplotypes were identified from the three geographic regions and a high degree of genetic structure was observed. The most recent common ancestor among the mitochondrial DNA haplotypes was estimated to live around 0.47–1.88 million years ago and five notable haplotype clusters were found. Phylogenetic analysis and historical gene flow estimates suggested that the QL and SNJ populations originated from the SG population, with at least two dispersal events from the SG population occurring during the Pleistocene (1.17±0.70 and 0.53±0.30 Ma). Composite dispersal history of the golden snub‐nosed monkey can be explained by both environmental change inducing global climate change and the influence of the Tibetan Plateau uplift. Such range shifts involved considerable demographic changes, as revealed in the dramatic decreases in population size during the last 25,000 years.
Design of dual-band B-shaped monopole antenna for MIMO application

A dual-band B-shaped monopole antenna for MIMO application is presented. The proposed antenna consists of B-shaped element which operates at dual band frequencies of 2.45GHz and 5.8GHz. The prototype has been fabricated and when tested, the impedance bandwidths are 29.9% and 33.8% for 2.45GHz and 5.8GHz, respectively. Good agreement between the measurement and simulation results in term of return loss and radiation pattern have been obtained.
Tailored anterior temporal lobectomy. Relation between extent of resection of mesial structures and postsurgical seizure outcome.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to assess the relationship between the extent of resection of mesial temporal structures and postsurgical seizure outcome in a group of patients who had undergone a tailored anterior temporal lobectomy. METHODS Twenty-four patients with unilateral interictal and ictal foci restricted to anterior/mesial temporal regions underwent resection of mesial and temporal lateral structures, the extent of which was tailored by intraoperative electrocorticographic findings and functional mapping of eloquent cortex. The extent of resection was determined with postoperative magnetic resonance imaging scans, using a semiquantitative method, based on a 20-compartment model of the temporal lobe. The magnetic resonance imaging scans were rated by three investigators blinded to seizure outcome. Follow-up period ranged between 18 months and 5 years. RESULTS Amygdala and hippocampus were spared in six patients; nine patients had a partial to total resection of amygdala, eight patients had a resection of amygdala and the anterior third of the hippocampus, and one patient underwent resection of amygdala and anterior two thirds of hippocampus. Twenty-one of the 24 patients were seizure free (Engel's class I) and three had rare seizures (Engel's class II). Among these three patients, one had a resection of amygdala; one had resection of amygdala and anterior third of hippocampus; while in the third patient, mesial structures were spared. CONCLUSION These data suggest that in patients with an anterotemporal seizure focus, the sparing or limited resection of amygdala and/or hippocampus is not necessarily associated with a poor seizure outcome, as had been previously suggested, provided that the decision not to resect is based on the absence of epileptiform activity during intraoperative electrocorticography or during recordings with depth electrodes.
Development of a cancer-specific anterior skull base quality-of-life questionnaire.

OBJECT The goal of this study was to develop a disease-specific, multidimensional quality of life (QOL) assessment instrument for patients undergoing surgical extirpation of anterior skull base tumors. METHODS This investigation included 35 patients who had been surgically treated for more than 3 months before the study was begun. Relevant QOL questions were generated from a review of the literature and interviews with health professionals, patients, and their caregivers. The initial multidimensional, 80-item questionnaire was reduced to a 35-item questionnaire by using standard psychometric criteria. Six relevant domains were identified using factor analysis: performance, physical function, vitality, pain, specific symptoms, and influence on emotions. The internal consistency of the instrument had a correlation coefficient of 0.8 and a reliability coefficient (test-retest reliability) of 0.9. The validity of the construct was assessed by testing whether the clinical variable of the patient influenced his QOL domain score as hypothesized. Patients older than 60 years of age had significantly poorer scores in the domains of performance and physical function than younger patients. Patients with malignant tumors had significantly poorer scores in the domains of specific symptoms, influence on emotions, physical function, and performance compared with patients with benign tumors. Radiotherapy was associated with poorer scores in the domains of specific symptoms and influence on emotions. Comorbidity was associated with poor physical function scores. Using the final questionnaire, we prospectively evaluated the QOL of 12 additional patients before they underwent surgery and again between 5 and 6 months postoperatively to test the utility and validity of the instrument further. Again, significantly poorer QOL scores were recorded for patients with malignancy. CONCLUSIONS The proposed questionnaire appears to be sufficiently reliable and valid in estimating a patient's QOL after extirpation of anterior skull base tumors. The instrument can be used in face-to-face interviews and via electronic or regular mail.
Recursive SVD-based fuzzy extreme learning machine

We propose a recursive singular value decomposition (SVD)-based fuzzy extreme learning machine (RSVD-F-ELM) for the online learning in classification or regression analysis. By adopting the same architecture and operation as fuzzy extreme learning machine (F-ELM), which is originally designed for the batch learning, and replacing the Moore-Penrose generalized inverse in F-ELM with a recursive SVD-based least squares estimator for optimizing the output weights recursively, RSVD-F-ELM is applicable for the online learning. Compared with the other online learning approach, namely online sequential fuzzy extreme learning machine (OS-F-ELM), experimental results have revealed that RSVD-F-ELM generates the larger accuracy rates in classification analysis and the smaller mean squared errors in regression analysis. Moreover, the learning stability of RSVD-F-ELM is much better.
Multipactor-resistant low-pass harmonic filters with wide-band higher-order mode suppression

In this paper, a multipactor analysis of a new type of high-power low-pass harmonic filter in rectangular waveguide technology is performed. The filter is designed following a novel technique which permits to obtain a low-pass filtering function with suppression of the fundamental and all the higher-order modes over a wide frequency band. This is achieved by means of a smooth variation of the waveguide height and width. Although much larger minimum mechanical gaps than the ones achieved with classical techniques can be obtained with the proposed method, the smooth profile of the novel filter topology is enough to obtain a dramatic increase in the power-handling capability of the device. This is proved by high-power simulations and measurements.
Learning to plan for robots using generalized representations

Purpose – Robots operating in the real world should be able to make decisions and plan ahead their actions. We argue that learning using generalized representations of the robot's experience can assist such a ability.Design/methodology/approach – We present results from our research on methods for enabling mobile robots to plan their actions using generalized representations of their experience. Such generalized representations are acquired through a learning phase during which the robot explores its environment and builds subsymbolic (connectionist) representations of the result that its actions have to its sensory perception. Then these representations are employed by the robot for autonomously determining task‐achieving sequences of actions (plans),for attaining assigned tasks.Findings – Such subsymbolic mechanisms can employ generalization techniques in order to pursue plans through unexplored regions of the robot's environment.Originality/value – Subsymbolic motion planning can autonomously determine.
Staging Exchange Partner Choices: When Do Status and Reputation Matter?

This study proposes that the choice of exchange partners results from a staged process in which firms first use status to screen potential partners and then use reputation to choose a specific firm within the chosen status bracket. We examine our model in the context of the U.S. audit industry and the choice of new auditors by Arthur Andersen's former clients following its collapse in 2002. We show that accountability to powerful market institutions is an important determinant of the choice of status bracket, whereas reputations for industry expertise and business integrity are important in choosing a particular auditor.