Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Impact of CEO Turnover on Property–Liability Insurer Performance

Chief executive officer (CEO) turnover has long been an important topic in the academic literature. Previous research has focused mostly on the rationale for CEO turnovers, or circumstances that lead to CEO changes, with much less attention paid to how CEO turnovers affect future firm performance. We extend the literature regarding the impact of CEO turnover on performance using data for U.S. property‐liability insurers. Measuring firm performance with cost efficiency (CE) and revenue efficiency (RE) scores, we find strong support for the hypothesis that firms with a CEO turnover, especially those with a nonroutine turnover, experience more favorable performance changes than firms without a CEO turnover.
Central Artery Stiffness in Hypertension and Aging: A Problem With Cause and Consequence.

Systemic hypertension is a risk factor for many diseases affecting the heart, brain, and kidneys. It has long been thought that hypertension leads to a thickening and stiffening of central arteries (ie, stiffness is a consequence), whereas more recent evidence suggests that stiffening precedes hypertension (ie, stiffness is a cause). We submit, however, that consideration of the wall biomechanics and hemodynamics reveals an insidious positive feedback loop that may render it irrelevant whether hypertension causes or is caused by central arterial stiffening. A progressive worsening can ensue in either case, thus any onset of stiffening merits early intervention. Understanding arterial function requires integration of biological and mechanical information.1–4 Stress (a force intensity) is a key concept in biomechanics; it enables one to calculate the stiffness of a material and assess its strength. Mean circumferential stresses in arteries can be estimated using Laplace’s equation: ! [Formula][1] (1) where P is pressure, a is the pressurized luminal radius, and h is the whole wall thickness. In vitro experiments reveal nonlinear pressure–radius relations, ! [Graphic][2] , hence acute increases in blood pressure increase both wall stress (with a increasing because of wall elasticity and h decreasing because of the near incompressibility) and material stiffness (essentially the slope of the stress–stretch relationship). Such pressure-induced increases in material stiffness increase most clinical measures of arterial stiffness, thus it is important to delineate acute and chronic (remodeling) changes. The latter can arise from mechanobiological responses (eg, altered gene expression) by endothelial cells, smooth muscle cells, and fibroblasts to changes in hemodynamically induced loads, with an apparent goal of preserving homeostatic values of stress and material stiffness3 although often at the expense of increasing structural stiffness (essentially wall thickness times material stiffness). Different metrics are used clinically to assess structural stiffness of central arteries, with carotid-to-femoral pulse wave … [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif [2]: /embed/inline-graphic-1.gif
Influenza virus NS1 protein inhibits pre‐mRNA splicing and blocks mRNA nucleocytoplasmic transport.

The influenza virus RNA segment 8 encodes two proteins, NS1 and NS2, by differential splicing. The collinear transcript acts as mRNA for NS1 protein, while the spliced mRNA encodes NS2 protein. The splicing of NS1 mRNA was studied in cells transfected with a recombinant plasmid that has the cDNA of RNA segment 8 cloned under the SV40 late promoter and polyadenylation signals. As described for influenza virus‐infected cells, NS1 mRNA was poorly spliced to yield NS2 mRNA. However, inactivation of the NS1 gene, but not the NS2 gene, led to a substantial increase in the splicing efficiency, as shown by the relative accumulations of NS1 and NS2 mRNAs. This effect was not specific for NS1 mRNA, since the splicing of the endogenous SV40 early transcript was altered in such a way that t‐Ag mRNA was almost eliminated. These changes in the splicing pattern coincided with a strong inhibition of the mRNA nucleocytoplasmic transport. Both NS1 and NS2 mRNAs were retained in the nucleus of cells expressing NS1 protein, but no effect was observed when only NS2 protein was expressed. Furthermore, other mRNAs tested, such as T‐Ag mRNA and the non‐spliceable nucleoprotein transcript, were also retained in the nucleus upon expression of NS1 protein, suggesting that it induced a generalized block of mRNA export from the nucleus.
Enhancing genetic gain in the era of molecular breeding

As one of the important concepts in conventional quantitative genetics and breeding, genetic gain can be defined as the amount of increase in performance that is achieved annually through artificial selection. To develop pro ducts that meet the increasing demand of mankind, especially for food and feed, in addition to various industrial uses, breeders are challenged to enhance the potential of genetic gain continuously, at ever higher rates, while they close the gaps that remain between the yield potential in breeders' demonstration trials and the actual yield in farmers' fields. Factors affecting genetic gain include genetic variation available in breeding materials, heritability for traits of interest, selection intensity, and the time required to complete a breeding cycle. Genetic gain can be improved through enhancing the potential and closing the gaps, which has been evolving and complemented with modern breeding techniques and platforms, mainly driven by molecular and genomic tools, combined with improved agronomic practice. Several key strategies are reviewed in this article. Favorable genetic variation can be unlocked and created through molecular and genomic approaches including mutation, gene mapping and discovery, and transgene and genome editing. Estimation of heritability can be improved by refining field experiments through well-controlled and precisely assayed environmental factors or envirotyping, particularly for understanding and controlling spatial heterogeneity at the field level. Selection intensity can be significantly heightened through improvements in the scale and precision of genotyping and phenotyping. The breeding cycle time can be shortened by accelerating breeding procedures through integrated breeding approaches such as marker-assisted selection and doubled haploid development. All the strategies can be integrated with other widely used conventional approaches in breeding programs to enhance genetic gain. More transdisciplinary approaches, team breeding, will be required to address the challenge of maintaining a plentiful and safe food supply for future generations. New opportunities for enhancing genetic gain, a high efficiency breeding pipeline, and broad-sense genetic gain are also discussed prospectively.
A cost‐based selective maintenance decision‐making method for machining line

Machine line is a type of manufacturing system in which machines are connected in series or in parallel. It is significant to ensure the reliability as well as to reduce the total cost of maintenance and failure losses in the maintenance programs of such systems. Cost‐based selective maintenance decision‐making, which is the best method for a selected group of machines in machine line is presented under limited maintenance durations. Fault losses and maintenance costs of a single machine under different maintenance actions i.e. minimal repair, preventive maintenance and overhaul on the fault rate of the machine are calculated. An algorithm combining the heuristic rules and tabu search is proposed to solve the presented selective maintenance model. Finally, a case study on the maintenance decision‐making problem of a connecting rod machining line in the automobile engine workshop is presented to illustrate the applicability of the proposed method. The end result shows that the fault losses can be further reduced by the optimization of maintenance interval and maintenance duration. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The Errors in the Variables Problem in the Cross‐Section of Expected Stock Returns

Recent research has documented the failure of market beta to capture the cross-section of expected returns within the context of a two-pass estimation methodology. However, the two-pass methodology suffers from the errors-in-variables (EIV) problem that could attenuate the apparent significance of market beta. This article provides a new correction for the EIV problem that is robust to conditional heteroscedasticity. After the correction, I find more support for the role of market beta and less support for the role of firm size in explaining the cross-section of expected returns. While the EIV correction leads to a diminished role of firm size, the size variable remains a significant force in explaining the cross-section of expected returns. Copyright 1995 by American Finance Association.
Impact of nonoperative treatment, vertebroplasty, and kyphoplasty on survival and morbidity after vertebral compression fracture in the medicare population.

BACKGROUND The treatment of vertebral compression fractures with vertebral augmentation procedures is associated with acute pain relief and improved mobility, but direct comparisons of treatments are limited. Our goal was to compare the survival rates, complications, lengths of hospital stay, hospital charges, discharge locations, readmissions, and repeat procedures for Medicare patients with new vertebral compression fractures that had been acutely treated with vertebroplasty, kyphoplasty, or nonoperative modalities. METHODS The 2006 Medicare Provider Analysis and Review File database was used to identify 72,693 patients with a vertebral compression fracture. Patients with a previous vertebral compression fracture, those who had had a vertebral augmentation procedure in the previous year, those with a diagnosis of malignant neoplasm, and those who had died were excluded, leaving 68,752 patients. The patients were stratified into nonoperative treatment (55.6%), vertebroplasty (11.2%), and kyphoplasty (33.2%) cohorts. Survival rates were compared with use of Kaplan-Meier analysis and Cox regression. Results were adjusted for potential confounding variables. Secondary parameters of interest were analyzed with the chi-square test (categorical variables) and one-way analysis of variance (continuous variables), with the level of significance set at p < 0.05. RESULTS The estimated three-year survival rates were 42.3%, 49.7%, and 59.9% for the nonoperative treatment, vertebroplasty, and kyphoplasty groups, respectively. The adjusted risk of death was 20.0% lower for the kyphoplasty group than for the vertebroplasty group (hazard ratio = 0.80, 95% confidence interval, 0.77 to 0.84). Patients in the kyphoplasty group had the shortest hospital stay and the highest hospital charges and were the least likely to have had pneumonia and decubitus ulcers during the index hospitalization and at six months postoperatively. However, kyphoplasty was more likely to result in a subsequent augmentation procedure than was vertebroplasty (9.41% compared with 7.89%; p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS Vertebral augmentation procedures appear to be associated with longer patient survival than nonoperative treatment does. Kyphoplasty tends to have a more striking association with survival than vertebroplasty does, but it is costly and may have a higher rate of subsequent vertebral compression fracture. These provocative findings may reflect selection bias and should be addressed in a prospective, direct comparison of methods to treat vertebral compression fractures. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE Therapeutic Level III. See Instructions for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.
Structure of the vesicular stomatitis virus nucleocapsid in complex with the nucleocapsid-binding domain of the small polymerase cofactor, P

The negative-strand RNA viruses (NSRVs) are unique because their nucleocapsid, not the naked RNA, is the active template for transcription and replication. The viral polymerase of nonsegmented NSRVs contains a large polymerase catalytic subunit (L) and a nonenzymatic cofactor, the phosphoprotein (P). Insight into how P delivers the polymerase complex to the nucleocapsid has long been pursued by reverse genetics and biochemical approaches. Here, we present the X-ray crystal structure of the C-terminal domain of P of vesicular stomatitis virus, a prototypic nonsegmented NSRV, bound to nucleocapsid-like particles. P binds primarily to the C-terminal lobe of 2 adjacent N proteins within the nucleocapsid. This binding mode is exclusive to the nucleocapsid, not the nucleocapsid (N) protein in other existing forms. Localization of phosphorylation sites within P and their proximity to the RNA cavity give insight into how the L protein might be oriented to access the RNA template.
Sendai virus C protein physically associates with Stat1

Background The P/C gene of the Sendai virus (SeV), a member of the family Paramyxoviridae, encodes C protein, which plays a crucial role in counteracting the antiviral effect of interferon (IFN). The C protein blocks IFN signalling to prevent the activation of IFN stimulated genes. However, its underlying molecular mechanism remains to be defined.
The Welfare Effect on Different Income Groups of Indirect Tax Changes and Inflation in New Zealand

This paper has two main aims, both associated with measuring the welfare effects of price changes. First, it examines the distributional effects of the change in the indirect tax system in New Zealand during the mid-1980s. Second, it examines the distributional impact of recent inflation in New Zealand. The results confirm those of previous studies which found that indirect taxes in New Zealand did not have a substantially larger impact on low income groups compared with high income groups. Furthermore, the introduction of the goods and services tax does not appear to be regressive. However, recent price changes in New Zealand have had a higher impact on the high income groups, although this tendency is quite small. Copyright 1998 by The Economic Society of Australia.
Does Size Influence the Suitability of the IFRS for Small and Medium-Sized Entities? – Empirical Evidence from Germany

This study is set within the context of the IASB's initiative to develop an IFRS for small and medium-sized entities (SMEs). It is based on a questionnaire survey of small and medium-sized entities in Germany exploring the suitability of the IASB's proposed SME standard for entities of different size classes. Quantitative size criteria are used in many national jurisdictions to differentiate financial reporting requirements between entities. However, there is very little empirical evidence on the question whether the economic size of an entity has an impact on the economic issues that should be regulated by accounting rules and on management's preferences for specific accounting methods. This paper addresses these deficiencies by exploring to what extend an entity's economic size has an impact on its international exposure, the relevance of specific accounting issues and preparers’ perceptions on costs and benefits associated with the application of selected accounting methods. Our findings are ambiguous. Size effects are revealed with regard to the structure of entities, their international exposure and to a large extent to the relevance of particular accounting issues. Cost and benefit assessments of accounting methods also differ within and between the size clusters investigated, albeit a generalisation of size as a factor determining the cost-benefit considerations of firms with regard to particular accounting treatments and methods is not supported by the study's results.
RcppGSL: Easier GSL use from R via Rcpp

The GNU or is a of numerical routines for scientiﬁc computing (Galassi et al. , 2010). It is particularly useful for C and C++ programs as it provides a standard C interface to a wide range of mathematical routines such as special functions, permutations, combi-nations, fast fourier transforms, eigensystems, random numbers, quadra-ture, random distributions, quasi-random sequences, Monte Carlo integration, N-tuples, differential equations, simulated annealing, numerical differentiation, interpolation, series acceleration, Chebyshev approxima-tions, root-ﬁnding, discrete Hankel transforms physical constants, basis splines and wavelets. There are over 1000 functions in total with an exten-sive test suite. The RcppGSL package provides an easy-to-use interface between GSL and R, with a particular focus on matrix and vector data structures. RcppGSL relies on Rcpp (Eddelbuettel and François, 2011; Eddelbuettel, 2013; Eddelbuettel et al. , 2019a; Eddelbuettel and Balamuta, 2018) which is itself a package that eases the interfaces between R and C++. } transforms, random differential
Neural images of pursuit targets in the photoreceptor arrays of male and female houseflies Musca domestica

SUMMARY Male houseflies use a sex-specific frontal eye region, the lovespot, to detect and pursue mates. We recorded the electrical responses of photoreceptors to optical stimuli that simulate the signals received by a male or female photoreceptor as a conspecific passes through its field of view. We analysed the ability of male and female frontal photoreceptors to code conspecifics over the range of speeds and distances encountered during pursuit, and reconstructed the neural images of these targets in photoreceptor arrays. A male's lovespot photoreceptor detects a conspecific at twice the distance of a female photoreceptor, largely through better optics. This detection distance greatly exceeds those reported in previous behavioural studies. Lovespot photoreceptors respond more strongly than female photoreceptors to targets tracked during pursuit, with amplitudes reaching 25 mV. The male photoreceptor also has a faster response, exhibits a unique preference for stimuli of 20-30 ms duration that selects for conspecifics and deblurs moving images with response transients. White-noise analysis substantially underestimates these improvements. We conclude that in the lovespot, both optics and phototransduction are specialised to enhance and deblur the neural images of moving targets, and propose that analogous mechanisms may sharpen the neural image still further as it is transferred to visual interneurones.
Immunodiagnosis of sheep infections with Echinococcus granulosus: in 35 years where have we come?

W. K. Yong and D. D. Heath published in 1979 a seminal paper in the first issue of Parasite Immunology describing their efforts to determine whether the arc 5 precipitin band, formed when test human serum is reacted against electrophoresed hydatid cyst fluid antigen, would be a suitable immunodiagnostic test for the identification of sheep infected with Echinococcus granulosus. Although they found antibodies to arc 5 in the sera of hydatid‐infected sheep, the sera of some sheep harbouring Taenia ovis and T. hydatigena also precipitated the hydatid cyst fluid arc 5 antigen, so they concluded arc 5 antibodies were not suitable for the specific immunodiagnosis of E. granulosus infection in sheep in New Zealand. Subsequent work has shown that the existence of multiple infections with different taeniid species, antigenic cross‐reactivity between these related parasites and the low level of specific antibody response to infection continue to hinder efforts to improve the diagnosis of hydatid infection in sheep and other natural intermediate hosts, thereby preventing the development of any practical test. In particular, the poor antibody response of ruminants to naturally acquired hydatid infection may prove an insurmountable barrier in future efforts to develop a reliable and accurate immunological test.
Executive Stock Options: Early Exercise Provisions and Risk-Taking Incentives

Traditional executive stock option plans allow fixed numbers of options to vest peri-odically, independent of stock price performance. Because such options may climb deep in-the-money long before the manager can exercise them, they can exacerbate risk aversion in project selection. Making the proportion of options that vest a gradually increasing function of the stock price can ensure that appropriate numbers of options are retained while they provide risk-taking incentives, but are exercised once they have lost their convexity. "Progressive performance vesting" can allow the firm more efficiently to rebalance the manager's risk-taking incentives. Copyright 2006 by The American Finance Association.
The Monetary Transmission Mechanism

Several articles have recently questioned the "money view" of the monetary transmission mechanism and have offered an alternative "credit view". We argue that the money view has been incompletely presented in much of the literature and in almost all textbooks on Macroeconomics and Money and Banking. A distinction between the two views is unnecessary if one presents the money view correctly. A change in the money supply can affect income both directly and indirectly through what we call the "cash balance effect", which has other aspects than the wealth aspect that Patinkin emphasizes in discussing his "real-balance effect. "
Low-resolution pedestrian detection via a novel resolution-score discriminative surface

Pedestrian detection, as an important task in video surveillance and forensics applications, has been widely studied. However, its performance is unsatisfactory especially in the low resolution conditions. In realistic scenarios, the size of pedestrians in the images is often small, and detection can be challenging. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a novel resolution-score discriminative surface method to investigate the variation behaviors of detection scores under different pedestrian and non-pedestrian image resolutions. The discriminative surface consists of a series of positive and negative resolution-score lines, and each of them is a connected line to depict the variation relationship between pedestrian's detection scores under various image resolutions. On this basis, the resolution-score discriminative surface can classify a resolution-score line as a pedestrian or not according to whether it lies in the positive or the negative region. Experimental results on two public datasets and one campus surveillance dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Expectations, Learning and the Kalman Filter

Muth-rational expectations embody instantaneous learning by agents. The author relaxes this assumption and suggests that agents slowly learn about the time series behavior of variables, in a model with time varying parameters. The approach can be made empirically tractable via the Kalman filter. The complex structure of the Kalman filter is reinterpreted in terms of familiar least squares procedures. The importance of "optimal" expectations schemes that embody "learning" are compared with adaptive and Muth-rational approaches. Copyright 1988 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd and The Victoria University of Manchester
Understanding value for money at a live music performance

Value for money is a complex concept and might differ between people, events and industries. The perceptions towards value for money may be influenced by a number of factors. Thus, the aim of this research was to determine the factors that influence value for money as well as the relationship between travel motives and value for money when attending a live music performance. To achieve this goal, a survey was conducted at two Eagles concerts in South Africa. 889 usable questionnaires were obtained. Factor analyses in SPSS were carried out and a regression analysis was used to further analyse the data. Findings from this research entailed four factors concerning value for money: performance quality, ancillary quality, souvenirs and exchange rate. The research further highlighted a strong relationship between value for money and motives, with performance quality (PQ) being the most significant. This study makes a valuable contribution to the industry in terms of literature and knowledge.