Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Managerial Preference, Asymmetric Information, and Financial Structure

If firm performance affects managers' wealth or reputation, preferences of managers dominate firms' financing decisions. When information about real a sset investment is symmetric, managers finance exclusively with equit y. If managers know more about investment quality than do investors, and if managers are sufficiently risk averse, they signal high qualit y projects with debt. Increases in collateral value decrease debt use Increases in interest rates, that do not change productive opportun ities, increase debt use. The explanation for these and further resul ts is based on underpricing of equity and overpricing of debt at the margin. Copyright 1987 by American Finance Association.
Human Capital and Growth Empirics

In this paper I attempt to understand the empirics of human capital (schooling attainment here) and economic growth under the framework of neoclassical growth model and later endogenizing the technological progress as a function of stock value of human capital. Various econometric methodologies have been used to overcome estimation problems involved here - such as omitted variable bias, endogeneity of independent variables, and weak instruments problem. I used panel data method, Difference GMM method, and System GMM method respectively to overcome the above problems. In all the above estimation methodologies, the positive and significant effect of human capital is not observed. The paper concludes with the observations that significance of human capital may be understated, because of (i) inappropriate specification of human capital production function, (ii) inappropriate estimation methodologies, (iii) not controlling for variables related to governance, institutions, etc. Hence further research works on these points may help in appropriately estimating the significance of human capital in growth empirics.
Time Pressed and Time Poor: Unpaid Household Work in Guatemala

Abstract This study examines unpaid work in the household in Guatemala using data from a national 2000 household survey (ENCOVI 2000), which included a time-use module. The contribution highlights the importance of unpaid work in Guatemalan households in economic terms and concludes that in 2000, its value was equivalent to approximately 30 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for that year. The value of unpaid work is estimated using an opportunity cost approach applying market wages as well as different measures of replacement costs. The study then explores the nature of time poverty in Guatemala and examines the determinants of being both time and income poor, concluding that women are more likely to experience this condition. The study also finds that investment in small infrastructure and ownership of an electric or gas stove has the potential to reduce time and income poverty in Guatemala, primarily by alleviating women's time burdens and making their unpaid household work more efficient.
Limiting Size of Fish Fillets at the Center of the Plate Improves the Sustainability of Aquaculture Production

North American dining customers like to have a singular large piece of protein in the center of the plate. When fish is the protein of choice, the portion size from many species is limited by the overall size of the fish. Therefore, for these species, the means to achieve a singular larger portion of “center of the plate” protein is to grow a larger animal. However, fish become less efficient in converting feed to protein as they age. A second option would be to provide two smaller fillets originating from younger, more efficient fish. Here, the sustainability ramifications of these two protein provisioning strategies (single large or two small fillets) are considered for three species of fish produced in aquaculture. Growth data for channel catfish ( Ictalurus punctatus ) produced in ponds, rainbow trout ( Oncorhynchus mykiss ) in raceways, and sablefish ( Anoplopoma fimbria ) in marine net pens, were modeled to assess the total biomass and overall food conversion ratio for the production of small, medium or large fish. The production of small fish added an additional 50% or more biomass per year for trout, catfish, and sablefish compared to the production of large fish. Feed conversion ratios were also improved by nearly 10% for the smaller compared to larger fish of each species. Thus, even though all of these species tend to be considered aquaculture species of low environmental impact (and hence “green” or sustainable options), the product form requested by retailers and served by chefs can further increase the sustainability of these species.
The only CC mode charger using estimation of battery internal voltage

This research is purposed for the developing battery charger using the internal parameters - internal voltage of batteries and phase-which the existing charger don't use. For the research, the volume of applied voltage and current to batteries has been adjusted using direct connected capacity, and output voltage and current has been sensed. The sensed data go through the DFT, and DFT shows direct component, real, and imaginary numbers. Using these three values, internal voltage of batteries has been monitored. By monitoring the change of the internal voltage, the time which CV takes in ordinary ways can be reduced. Therefore, the quick charger can be developed. Simulation using Psim has been made to prove this idea, and stack has been developed to see the possibilities.
Homocysteine interference in neurulation: a chick embryo model.

BACKGROUND Periconceptional folic acid supplementation reduces the occurrence and recurrence risk of neural tube defects (NTD). Mothers of children with NTD have elevated plasma homocysteine levels. Administering homocysteine to chick embryos is reported to cause 27% NTD. Therefore, elevated plasma homocysteine levels per se or a disturbed homocysteine metabolism may be teratogenic to the embryo and may interfere with neural tube closure. Our aim was to obtain a chick embryo model to explore the interference of homocysteine in neural tube closure. METHODS Homocysteine or saline was administered to chick embryos in ovo at 3 hr, 30 hr, and 60 hr of incubation and harvested at 74 hr. Homocysteine was then applied to chick embryos in vitro at a defined time window of four to six somites and followed for 6 hr. RESULTS Homocysteine administration to chick embryos in ovo resulted in several malformations but not in an increased number of NTDs. Homocysteine administration to chick embryos in vitro resulted in a transient, dose-dependent widening of the anterior neuropore and closure delay of the rhombencephalic neuropore. After 16 hr of incubation the neural tube was closed. CONCLUSIONS The in vitro chick embryo model appears a good model to explore the interference of a disturbed homocysteine metabolism in neurulation.
Transmission line matrix method reduced order modeling

The finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method and the transmission line matrix (TLM) method allow the formulation of state-equation representations of the discretized electromagnetic field. These representations usually involve very large numbers of state variables. Reduced order modeling (ROM) of the investigated structure may yield considerable reduction of the computational effort and can be used to generate compact models of the electromagnetic system. While complexity reduction approaches based on moment matching techniques have been intensively studied in the case of FDTD, they have not yet been considered for TLM. In this paper, we apply Krylov subspace methods to TLM using the basic Arnoldi and non-symmetric Lanczos algorithms. It is shown that the inherent unitarity property of the TLM operator nevertheless implies an essential difference in comparison to former implementations for FDTD or circuit analysis. Simulation results for a rectangular cavity resonator using both TLM with and without ROM and a study of the convergence of the eigenvalues are presented here.
DMSS: A Robust Deep Meta Structure Based Similarity Measure in Heterogeneous Information Networks

Similarity measure as a fundamental task in heterogeneous information network analysis has been applied to many areas, e.g. product recommendation, clustering and web search. The state-of-the-art metrics depend on meta paths or meta structures specified by users. In this paper, a novel similarity measure on heterogeneous information networks, called Deep Meta Structure based Similarity ($DMSS$), is proposed. The deep meta structure as a schematic structure on heterogeneous information networks provides a unified framework integrating all the meta paths and meta structures. It can be constructed automatically. In order to formalize the semantics encapsulated in the deep meta structure, we decompose it into several deep meta paths, and then combine all the commuting matrices of these deep meta paths according to different weights. It is noteworthy that the weights can be determined by the proposed strategy. As a result, $DMSS$ is defined by virtue of the final commuting matrix and therefore is robust to different schematic structures. Experimental evaluations show that the state-of-the-art metrics are really sensitive to meta paths or meta structures in terms of clustering and ranking. Besides, $DMSS$ outperforms the state-of-the-art metrics in terms of ranking and clustering in the case of selecting an appropriate decaying parameter.
Autocorrelation-Corrected Standard Errors in Panel Probits: An Application to Currency Crisis Prediction

Many estimates of early-warning-system (EWS) models of currency crisis have reported incorrect standard errors because of serial correlation in the context of panel probit regressions. This paper documents the magnitude of the problem proposes and tests a solution and applies it to previously published EWS estimates. We find that (1) the uncorrected probit estimates substantially underestimate the true standard errors by up to a factor of four; (2) a heteroskedasicity- and autocorrelation-corrected (HAC) procedure produces accurate estimates; and (3) most variables from the original models remain significant though substantially less so than had been previously thought.
Preliminary hazard assessment of polychlorinated biphenyls, polybrominated diphenyl ethers, and polychlorinated dibenzo‐p‐dioxins and dibenzofurans to yangtze finless porpoise in dongting lake, china

Yangtze finless porpoise (Neophocaena phocaenoides asiaeorientalis), a protected endangered species, is the sole freshwater subspecies of finless porpoise, living only in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, China, and its appended lakes. Its population has decreased sharply to 1,400 because of human activities, including environmental contamination. In the present study, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), and polychlorinated dibenzo‐p‐dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs) were determined in the blubber, liver, kidney, stomach, small intestine, and brains of five individual Yangtze finless porpoises collected from 1998 to 2004. The results showed PCB concentrations ranged from 0.06 to 1.89 μg/g lipid weight in the organs and consisted mainly of penta‐, hexa‐, and decachlorinated biphenyls. The PBDE concentrations were between 5.32 and 72.76 ng/g lipid weight. Tetra‐, penta‐, and hexabrominated diphenyl ethers were the major homologues. The PCDD/F concentrations ranged from 65 to 1,563 pg/g lipid weight, and their predominant homologues were penta‐ and hexachlorinated dibenzofurans and hepta‐ and octachlorinated dibenzo‐p‐dioxins. The hazard quotients (HQs) based on toxic equivalency were determined to be greater than one in all individuals for PCBs, for PCDD/Fs, and for PCBs and PCDD/Fs In addition, HQs would be higher if PBDEs were included. The results suggest that reduction of environmental contamination may contribute greatly to protecting this highly endangered species.
Channel coding with multilevel/phase signals

A coding technique is described which improves error performance of synchronous data links without sacrificing data rate or requiring more bandwidth. This is achieved by channel coding with expanded sets of multilevel/phase signals in a manner which increases free Euclidean distance. Soft maximum--likelihood (ML) decoding using the Viterbi algorithm is assumed. Following a discussion of channel capacity, simple hand-designed trellis codes are presented for 8 phase-shift keying (PSK) and 16 quadrature amplitude-shift keying (QASK) modulation. These simple codes achieve coding gains in the order of 3-4 dB. It is then shown that the codes can be interpreted as binary convolutional codes with a mapping of coded bits into channel signals, which we call "mapping by set partitioning. " Based on a new distance measure between binary code sequences which efficiently lower-bounds the Euclidean distance between the corresponding channel signal sequences, a search procedure for more powerful codes is developed. Codes with coding gains up to 6 dB are obtained for a variety of multilevel/phase modulation schemes. Simulation results are presented and an example of carrier-phase tracking is discussed.
An image encryption scheme using mixed high dimensional chaotic system combined with Fast Fourier Transform

For the deficiencies of the current number of low-dimensional chaotic systems or fractional Fourier transform in image encryption, it presents an image encryption scheme using mixed high dimensional chaotic system combined with Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). The method mixes a number of high-dimensional chaotic systems to generate the encryption sequences for the image position scrambling and pixel XOR encryption, then performs FFT of encrypted image. So that it increases the complexity of the encrypted image and sensitivity of the original image, reduces the correlation of the encrypted image pixels and enhances secrecy and anti-attack capability of the image. Compared with the other three different encryption algorithms, it verifies that the proposed image encryption scheme in this paper can completely restore the original image, increase the complexity and anti-attack capability of the encrypted image, and the proposed scheme also provides a more secure, more complex, more effective encryption method.
The Identities of sym-2, sym-3 and sym-4, Three Genes That Are Synthetically Lethal With mec-8 in Caenorhabditis elegans Sequence data from this article have been deposited with the EMBL/GenBank Data Libraries under accession nos. AY220985, AY221634, AY223545, and AY372076.

On the basis of synthetic lethality, five genes in Caenorhabditis elegans are known to be redundant with the mec-8 gene, which encodes a protein that contains two copies of an RNA recognition motif (RRM) and affects alternative RNA splicing. The molecular identities of two of the redundant genes, sym-1 and sym-5, were previously reported. The remaining three genes have now been cloned, and their synthetically lethal phenotypes with mec-8 are described in more detail. Animals homozygous for mec-8 and sym-2 loss-of-function mutations die during late embryogenesis. The SYM-2 predicted protein contains three RRMs; we propose that SYM-2 and MEC-8 can substitute for each other in promoting the maturation of the transcripts of a vital gene. Animals homozygous for mutations in mec-8 and in either sym-3 or sym-4 have the same striking defect: they arrest development just prior to or just after hatching with a pharynx that appears fully formed but is not properly attached to the body cuticle. sym-3 encodes a protein of unknown function with orthologs in Drosophila and mammals. sym-4 encodes a WD-repeat protein and may also have orthologs in Drosophila and mammals. We propose that SYM-3 and SYM-4 contribute to a common developmental pathway that is redundant with a MEC-8-dependent pathway.
Development of a web-based telemedicien system for remote ENT diagnoses

This paper presents an asynchronous web-based ear-nose-throat (ENT) diagnosis system to carry out location independent diagnoses. The proposed diagnosis model provides a medical service process for patients who may ask for diagnosis at a distance location instead of going to hospitals directly. Based on the web-based ENT diagnosis system, patients are able to submit their physiological signals and multimedia data to the virtual hospital server through the internet. Meanwhile, ENT physicians may process the diagnoses through the internet via accessing the data and files in the virtual hospital server. Especially, the quality of multimedia data transmissions can be guaranteed by using an asynchronous communication mechanism. Tentative diagnostic reports are used to suggest the requested patients for further face-to-face diagnoses at appropriate clinics, local hospitals, general hospitals, or medical centers. Therefore, the nation's medical resources can be well arranged. As a consequence, a system prototype with self-modified hardware devices and software components had been implemented in our laboratory. Finally, several experimental results are demonstrated to verify our approaches.
Inducible reactivation of bacteriophage T7 damaged by methyl methanesulfonate or UV light

We examined the effects of host mutations affecting "SOS"-mediated UV light reactivation on the survival of bacteriophage T7 damaged by UV light or methyl methanesulfonate (MMS). Survival of T7 alkylated with MMS was not affected by the presence of plasmid pKM101 or by a umuC mutation in the host. The survival of UV light-irradiated T7 was similar in umuC+ and umuC strains but was slightly enhanced by the presence of pKM101. When phage survival was determined on host cells preirradiated with a single inducing dose of UV light, these same strains permitted higher survival than that seen with noninduced cells for both UV light- and MMS-damaged phage. The extent of T7 reactivation was approximately proportional to the UV light inducing dose inflicted upon each bacterial strain and was dependent upon phage DNA damage. Enhanced survival of T7 after exposure to UV light or MMS was also observed after thermal induction of a dnaB mutant. Thus, lethal lesions introduced by UV light or MMS are apparently repaired more efficiently when host cells are induced for the SOS cascade, and this inducible reactivation of T7 is umuC+ independent.
Serine 13 Is the Site of Mitotic Phosphorylation of Human Thymidine Kinase*

It has been reported that the polypeptide of thymidine kinase type 1 (TK1) from human and mouse cells can be modified by phosphorylation. Our laboratory has further shown that the level of human TK phosphorylation increases during mitotic arrest in different cell types (Chang, Z.-F., Huang, D.-Y., and Hsue, N.-C. (1994) J. Biol. Chem. 269:21249–21254). In the present study, we demonstrated that a mutation converting Ser13 to Ala abolished the mitotic phosphorylation of native TK1 expressed in Ltk− cells. Furthermore, we expressed recombinant proteins of wild-type and mutated human TK1 with fused FLAG epitope in HeLa cells, and confirmed the occurrence of mitotic phosphorylation on Ser13 of hTK1. By using anin vitro phosphorylation assay, it was shown that wild-type hTK1, but not mutant TK1Ala13, could serve as a good substrate for Cdc2 or Cdk2 kinase. Coexpression of p21 waf1/cip1 , which is a universal inhibitor of Cdk kinases, in Ltk− fibroblasts also suppressed mitotic phosphorylation of hTK1 expressed in this cell line. Thus, Cdc2 or related kinase(s) is probably involved in mitotic phosphorylation on Ser13 of the hTK1 polypeptide. We also found that mutation on Ser13did not affect the functional activity of hTK1. As the sequences around Ser13 are highly conserved in vertebrate TK1s, we speculate that phosphorylation of Ser13 may play a role in the regulation of TK1 expression in the cell cycle.
Understanding spurious correlation: a rejoinder to Kliman

This paper is a rejoinder to Kliman's (2008-9) reply to a paper published in the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics by Díaz and Osuna (2005-6). We show that Kliman's reasoning about spurious correlation rests on the popular confusion between correlation and causation.
Syria's next generation: youth un/employment, education, and exclusion

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the educational and employment opportunities of Syrian youth. It examines findings from a number of nation‐wide surveys of Syrian youth to investigate the educational and labor market conditions Syrian youth face amidst economic and social changes.Design/methodology/approach – The study summarizes numerous nation‐wide surveys conducted by Syrian and foreign organizations concerning the employment and educational opportunities of Syrian youth and their attitudes to their future opportunities and other social and economic issues.Findings – The study finds that class gender and regional background significantly impact the educational and employment opportunities available to Syrian youth. It also finds that Syrian youth express real concerns about their living conditions and future opportunities.Practical implications – The study argues that future research on Syrian youth must disaggregate findings by background and demographic characteristics. It also argue.
Runx1/AML1/Cbfa2 Mediates Onset of Mesenchymal Cell Differentiation Toward Chondrogenesis

Runx proteins mediate skeletal development. We studied the regulation of Runx1 during chondrocyte differentiation by real‐time RT‐PCR and its function during chondrogenesis using overexpression and RNA interference. Runx1 induces mesenchymal stem cell commitment to the early stages of chondrogenesis.
Tracking Clerkship Experience: Just What Do Clinical Clerks See on an Elder Care Rotation?

The Schulich School of Medicine, University of Western Ontario, Canada, has created a mandatory clerkship in Elder Care that consists of small group seminars, clinical experiences, and an Elder Care manual. This article describes the use of a paper‐based log to track students' clinical encounters to determine whether the Elder Care clerkship offers students the opportunity for a broad range of clinical experiences to address curriculum objectives.
Sustainable heritage tourism: the Inanda Heritage Route and the 2010 FIFA World Cup

This paper discusses the Inanda Heritage Route (IHR) in Durban on the east coast of South Africa, which was developed in preparation for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The IHR comprises five important cultural heritage sites of the black majority, including the Phoenix Settlement established by Mahatma Gandhi in 1904. Forty-one tourists, mostly international soccer fans, were interviewed about their experiences of visiting the route in June/July 2010. The findings are analyzed in relation to issues of sustainability, focusing on a demand-side approach and the challenges of increasing tourist flow and community benefits. A brief literature review illustrates priority issues in the South African understanding of sustainable and “responsible” tourism development, and the question of incorporating neglected black heritage. It is argued that the IHR could become a successful model of sustainable “alternative” tourism, but more community participation is needed both in tourism and in cultural heritage site management to increase the sense of ownership and opportunities for material gains and poverty alleviation. The last section focuses on heritage interpretation at each of the interview sites. It is argued that the interpretation should not primarily be targeted at foreign tourists, but must more strongly be geared towards enticing local people to visit.