Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Asymmetric and negative return-volatility relation: a behavioural explanation

In this study we investigate the return-implied volatility relationship in the French market by considering the behavioural biases of representativeness, extrapolation and affect. We find a strong evidence of negative and asymmetric return-implied volatility relationship at daily frequency, which cannot be explained adequately through leverage and volatility feedback hypotheses. However, the study of this relation through behavioural perspective shows that the representativeness, affect, and extrapolation heuristics constitute a confirmed explanation of the asymmetric return-volatility relationship in the French market. The annual study of the relation show that is more pronounced in the 2007-2008 period characterised by the occurrence of the subprime crisis. Moreover, our results indicate that the relationship is more pronounced for extreme negative stock market returns.
Molecular anatomy of CCR5 engagement by physiologic and viral chemokines and HIV-1 envelope glycoproteins: differences in primary structural requirements for RANTES, MIP-1 alpha, and vMIP-II Binding.

Molecular analysis of CCR5, the cardinal coreceptor for HIV-1 infection, has implicated the N-terminal extracellular domain (N-ter) and regions vicinal to the second extracellular loop (ECL2) in this activity. It was shown that residues in the N-ter are necessary for binding of the physiologic ligands, RANTES (CCL5) and MIP-1 alpha (CCL3). vMIP-II, encoded by the Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus, is a high affinity CCR5 antagonist, but lacks efficacy as a coreceptor inhibitor. Therefore, we compared the mechanism for engagement by vMIP-II of CCR5 to its interaction with physiologic ligands. RANTES, MIP-1 alpha, and vMIP-II bound CCR5 at high affinity, but demonstrated partial cross-competition. Characterization of 15 CCR5 alanine scanning mutants of charged extracellular amino acids revealed that alteration of acidic residues in the distal N-ter abrogated binding of RANTES, MIP-1 alpha, and vMIP-II. Whereas mutation of residues in ECL2 of CCR5 dramatically reduced the binding of RANTES and MIP-1 alpha and their ability to induce signaling, interaction with vMIP-II was not altered by any mutation in the exoloops of the receptor. Paradoxically, monoclonal antibodies to N-ter epitopes did not block chemokine binding, but those mapped to ECL2 were effective inhibitors. A CCR5 chimera with the distal N-ter residues of CXCR2 bound MIP-1 alpha and vMIP-II with an affinity similar to that of the wild-type receptor. Engagement of CCR5 by vMIP-II, but not RANTES or MIP-1 alpha blocked the binding of monoclonal antibodies to the receptor, providing additional evidence for a distinct mechanism for viral chemokine binding. Analysis of the coreceptor activity of randomly generated mouse-human CCR5 chimeras implicated residues in ECL2 between H173 and V197 in this function. RANTES, but not vMIP-II blocked CCR5 M-tropic coreceptor activity in the fusion assay. The insensitivity of vMIP-II binding to mutations in ECL2 provides a potential rationale to its inefficiency as an antagonist of CCR5 coreceptor activity. These findings suggest that the molecular anatomy of CCR5 binding plays a critical role in antagonism of coreceptor activity.
Does Urbanization Foster Human Capital Accumulation?

The literature on growth theory has pointed to the importance of human capital in order to explain the process of economic development. In the present study, we highlight the role played by cities in fostering human capital accumulation. More particularly, building on a simple urban economics model, we perform cross-country estimations, measuring the relation between human capital accumulation and urbanization. Our results support the result according to which more urbanization induces higher rates of human capital accumulation, but only above a certain threshold level of development. This latter result raises policy concerns on issues related to over-urbanization.
The productivity and career development of women in science and technology

In the 21st century the role of women in science and technological (WIST) field are very important. They are technical workforce in the labor market. Many countries are actively promoting policy of women in higher education and R&D careers. Utilization of the talents of women should not be viewed only from the perspective of gender equity. In the rapid economic development today, WIST's productivity and career development must be understood. This research paper is to understand the contribution of WIST and suggest organization provides suitable career development programs to reduce their intention to leave. The goal is increasing WIST's visibility and participation in science and technological field. The principal theme presented in the paper is career of women in science and technology (WIST). To evaluate the career gap which the differences between careers needs and career development programs. Moreover, it is exam the relationship of career development gap and turnover intention.
Social Welfare and Demand for Health Care in the Urban Areas of Côte d'Ivoire

This paper analyses the relationship between the demand for health care and that for health insurance by the population of Cote d’Ivoire. A Poisson model is used to estimate the demand for health care and a multinomial logit model for estimating the demand for insurance. The data on which the research was based were taken from a sample of 2,040 households that were interviewed as part of a survey on Recours aux soins et depenses de sante or PSA 92 (Health care use and health expenses, or PSA 92), which was carried out in 1992 in Yopougon, a working class neighbourhood of Abidjan. The results show that the length of the illness appears to be the factor that triggers the use of modern health care. They also indicate that employment and age are important factors in making decisions about which insurance to take. Extending the data collection system to the rural population, or generalizing it to the whole population, and gaining a better definition of the variables “state of health”, “consulting a health service”, “behaviour of the insured person and of the insurance company vis-a-vis health services” should be envisaged to refine the research. All this will lead to a better grasp of the problems of moral hazard and adverse selection in Cote d’Ivoire’s health system as a result of the minimizing costs of the implementation of the expected Universal Health Insurance (AMU).
Managing intellectual labour in Sweden and England

Reports on findings from a research project, which has been examining the development of the New Public Management (NPM), a managerial reform movement for change in public sectors worldwide, and reports on a series of semi‐structured interviews with academics in Sweden and England as elements of NPM are introduced into the daily routines of university work. The findings suggest that, despite evidence of common elements of the NPM appearing in Higher Education in the two countries in question, as well as many similarities of experience and response among those subjected to change, there are differences ‐ with academics in England reporting longer hours and increased monitoring of their work than their Swedish counterparts. The article explores the nature of these similarities and differences.
The Structure of an Environmental Transaction: The Debt-for-Nature Swap

The structure and occurrence of debt-for-nature swaps are examined empirically. Contracts executing debt-for-nature swaps are studied to assess the role of transaction costs in determining how these agreements are structured. The emerging contract form is a product of weak enforcement of legal claims to environmental resources in developing countries, high costs for delineating and monitoring environmental outcomes, and nominal government ownership of the resources involved. The occurrence of swaps in individual countries is significantly related to host country attributes, including the presence of tropical land and threatened species, democratic political institutions, and large debt burdens.
KEMISKINAN DAN PEMBERDAYAAN MASYARAKAT MISKIN

This paper assumes that poverty is not just lack of income and productive assets. Poverty is also a trap, a combination of poverty burden, fragility, impowermence, physical weakness, and alienation. To empower the poor families, capital aid package is not sufficient. This paper suggests that the poor families should be empowered by a more bas ic policy, which is a peopleoriented anti-poverty policy. Kata -kata Kunci: deprivation trap, poverty rackets, empowerment
Narrative construction of expatriate experience and career cycle: discursive patterns in Finnish stories of international

Expatriate experience is not only a disconnected occasion for cross-cultural anxiety and adjustment but also an important event in the process of self-development and learning. Following this view and arguing for a discursive approach, the paper focuses on ways in which expatriates themselves tell and interpret their development and movement across expatriate career cycle. Meaning systems connecting expatriate job with previous and following work experiences in career stories of Finnish engineers and managers were identified using a combination of narrative and discourse analysis. No evidence was found of an autonomous expatriate discourse but, in contrast, expatriate career cycle was narrated using available organizational repertoires of development and career. Describing and discussing the meaning-making properties of three identified discourses - bureaucratic, occupational and enterprising - the paper emphasizes the organizational environment of expatriate experience while acknowledging the limits of t.
Extinction of experimental mammary cancer. I. Estradiol-17beta and progesterone.

Rats which had chemically induced (712-dimethylbenz(a)anthracene) b reast cancer were treated with estradiol-17-beta (20 mcg) plus progesterone and strong stimulation of the ovary with gonadotropin. Pregnancy and progesterone alone (4 mg) strongly accelerated growth of breast cancer and resulted in many foci of tumor. Estradiol-17-beta delayed the appearance of mammary cancer and the tumors were less widespread; however the incidence was 100%. Estradiol-17-beta plus progesterone resulted in a decreased incidence of breast cancer (52%). 20 mcg estradiol-17-beta was the dose that converted the 4 mg of progesterone from an accelerator of tumor to a suppressor. 1 unit of equine gonadotropin resulted in breast cancer suppression in 30% of the rats. Estradiol-17-beta plus progesterone produced extensive mammary growth and depressed ovarian function; however ovarian function returned within 6-9 days after cessation of the drugs.
Sparse representation of phonetic features for voice conversion with and without parallel data

This paper presents a voice conversion framework that uses phonetic information in an exemplar-based voice conversion approach. The proposed idea is motivated by the fact that phone-dependent exemplars lead to better estimation of activation matrix, therefore, possibly better conversion. We propose to use the phone segmentation results from automatic speech recognition (ASR) to construct a sub-dictionary for each phone. The proposed framework can work with or without parallel training data. With parallel training data, we found that phonetic sub-dictionary outperforms the state-of-the-art baseline in objective and subjective evaluations. Without parallel training data, we use Phonetic PosteriorGrams (PPGs) as the speaker-independent exemplars in the phonetic sub-dictionary to serve as a bridge between speakers. We report that such technique achieves a competitive performance without the need of parallel training data.
A Temporal Microblog Filtering Model

The rapid growth in the popularity of social networking and microblogging has led to a new way of finding and broadcasting information in the recent years. The real-time microblog filtering emerges as the times require. The task of real-time microblog filtering is to decide if subsequently posted tweets are relevant to a given query which represents the special information needs. One-side feedback is one of the most difficult problems in microblog filtering. This paper focuses on exploiting the time profile of relevant microblogs to address this problem. A temporal microblog filtering based on retrieval model is proposed. Specifically, similarity threshold achieved by the language model is adjusted according to temporal burst. Evaluated on the TREC 2012 microblog real-time filtering track dataset, the experimental results show that the proposed model is significantly better than several baselines.
Nonseparable Farm Household Decisions in a Computable General Equilibrium Model

Emerging empirical evidence and microeconomic theory suggest strongly that, in many developing country settings, farm household production and consumption decisions are "nonseparable"; that is, the farm household cannot be viewed as a separate or independent profit-maximizing producer and utility-maximizing consumer. The existence of such nonseparability indicates the presence of market imperfections or failures that may have important policy implications. For example, depending on the nature of the market imperfections, there may be "threshold" effects whereby policy changes have no effect on household behavior until the change is "large" in some measure. In this environment, policy analysis assuming the existence of perfect markets may badly misstate the impact of policy changes on producer behavior and household welfare.
Thin coal layer thickness estimation using MUSIC algorithm

In coal mining, thickness of thin coal layer is measured for maintaining a defined coal mining horizon. Researchers working in the geotechnical field for detection and thickness measurement of near surface interface address challenges using recent development in radar signal processing. This paper addresses challenge in measuring thickness of thin coal layer left on mine haulage way roof for mine safety. Here, step frequency continuous wave ground penetrating radar (SFCW GPR) signal processing is given for measuring thickness of thin coal layer in presence of interfaces as coal-shale and coal-shale-clay. We use multiple signal classification (MUSIC) algorithm for detecting the interfaces of dissimilar material. In order to improve the resolving power, MUSIC with spatial smoothing process (SSP) and modified spatial smoothing process (MSSP) are applied. Experimental results on thickness measurement using synthetic data models, full wave model (FWM), plane wave model (PWM) and modified plane wave model (MPWM) are demonstrated to compare the effectiveness of estimation algorithms.
Chromosomal characterization of cryopreserved mesenchymal stem cells from the human subendothelium umbilical cord vein.

AIMS To conduct a morphological, functional and chromosomal characterization of mesenchymal stem cell populations from the human subendothelium umbilical cord vein after cryopreservation. MATERIAL & METHODS Five human umbilical cords were processed in order to obtain mesenchymal stem cells. Flow cytometry, differentiation assays and cytogenetic analysis were carried out before and after the cryopreservation process. RESULTS Flow cytometry revealed that CD105, CD73 and CD90 markers were expressed by the cells, which lacked the expression of hematopoietic lineage markers, such as CD14, CD34 and CD45. The mesenchymal stem cells demonstrated capacity for osteogenic, adipogenic and chondrogenic differentiation. Chromosome analysis showed no clonal chromosome changes in the cells in either situation. However, a significant number of nonclonal chromosomal aberrations were apparent after cryopreservation, including monosomies and structural changes. Cells isolated from one umbilical cord exhibited a rare balanced paracentric inversion, likely a cytogenetic constitutional alteration. This was present both before and after experimental procedures. CONCLUSION These findings show that using mesenchymal stem cells for clinical approaches requires careful investigation and sensitive tests in order to ensure cellular therapy biosafety.
HOW PERFORMANCE RELATIVE TO ASPIRATION LEVELS AFFECTS STRATEGIC RESPONSE TO TECHNOLOGICAL DISCONTINUITY

We investigate how performance relative to aspirations affects firm response to a technological discontinuity by examining how incumbent firms in the U.S. computer industry responded to the introduction of the Personal Computer. We find that firms performing further below and further above their aspirations were more likely to adopt the new technology. Among adopters, those performing below historical aspirations were more likely to abandon their product strategy, while firms performing above aspirations pursued a hedge strategy by adding the new platform without abandoning their previous one.
An examination of the role of self-control in the health and wealth connection

viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION. 1 CHAPTER 2: STUDY 1: Self-control and health-wealth outcomes: Sacrifice today for rewards tomorrow. 7 Abstract . 8 Introduction. 9 Method . 14 Results. 20 Discussion. 22 References. 26. 8 Introduction. 9 Method . 14 Results. 20 Discussion. 22 References. 26 CHAPTER 3: STUDY 2: Predicting physical and financial behaviors in adults: Does the modern environment reward Self-Control? 36 Abstract . 37 Introduction. 38 Method . 45 Results. 50 Discussion. 51 References. 56. 37 Introduction. 38 Method . 45 Results. 50 Discussion. 51 References. 56 CHAPTER 4: STUDY 3: Evidence that self-control predicts quality of life in a healthwealth mediation model. 67
Determinants and consequences of applying value-based performance measures: the German evidence

This paper examines the determinants of applying value-based performance measures like economic value added (EVA) and the impact of applying these measures on firms' returns. Our research design exploits a unique situation in Germany, where a regulatory change requires firms to describe their performance measurement system in their annual report since 2006. Analysing these disclosures, we find that firm size and firm age have a positive impact on the propensity of applying value-based performance measures. In a second analysis, we are not able to document a positive influence of the application of value-based performance measures on firms' performance. However, we find a significant positive association with firm valuation when controlling for self-selection. The paper contributes to the literature, as it is the first to comprehensively investigate the determinants and consequences of applying value-based performance measures.
Innovation capability building through intermediary organizations: cases of manufacturing small- and medium-sized enterprises from China's Zhejiang province

Along with a continued expansion of the innovation landscape, collaboration with external partners becomes an increasingly critical strategy for organizations to acquire necessary resources from the outside when building their innovation capability. Based on three representative manufacturing small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in China's Zhejiang province, this study explores the evolution of the SMEs' unique organizational forms in response to such external collaboration. In particular, these organizational forms begin with a functional-level ‘technology department’ that subsequently evolves into a strategic-level ‘research centre’ that acts as a ‘quasi-intermediary organization’ within an existing organizational boundary and eventually becomes an independent professional ‘technology company’. Although, in general, the collaboration with universities and research institutes facilitates both exploratory and exploitative types of innovation capability building, this study further finds that such collaboration via a ‘technology department’ is the least effective. Furthermore, collaboration via a ‘research centre’ strengthens (weakens) the effect on the exploratory (exploitative) type of innovation capability building. Meanwhile, the collaboration via a wholly owned ‘technology company’ strengthens (weakens) the effects on the exploitative (exploratory) type of innovation capability building. Importantly, the collaboration via a joint-venture ‘technology company’ with universities and research institutes facilitates the ambidextrous exploratory and exploitative type of innovation capability building.
Size Dependence and Ballistic Limits of Thermal Transport in Anisotropic Layered Two-Dimensional Materials

Layered materials have uncommonly anisotropic thermal properties due to their strong in-plane covalent bonds and weak out-of-plane van der Waals interactions. Here we examine heat flow in graphene (graphite), h-BN, MoS2, and WS2 monolayers and bulk films, from diffusive to ballistic limits. We determine the ballistic thermal conductance limit (Gball) both in-plane and out-of-plane, based on full phonon dispersions from first-principles calculations. An overall phonon mean free path ({\lambda}) is expressed in terms of Gball and the diffusive thermal conductivity, consistent with kinetic theory if proper averaging of phonon group velocity is used. We obtain a size-dependent thermal conductivity k(L) in agreement with available experiments, and find that k(L) only converges to >90% of the diffusive thermal conductivity for sample sizes L > 16{\lambda}, which ranges from ~140 nm for MoS2 cross-plane to ~10 um for suspended graphene in-plane. These results provide a deeper understanding of microscopic thermal transport, revealing that device scales below which thermal size effects should be taken into account are generally larger than previously thought.
A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE EVALUATION OF COMPETITION BETWEEN CONTAINER TERMINAL OPERATORS

This paper presents a conceptual framework for analyzing the outcomes of potential competitive strategies and their expected payoffs for container terminal operators in the container handling industry. The framework is based on the integration of Bowley's linear model of aggregate demand of product differentiation with Porter's "Diamond" model. It focuses on the number of containers handled, prices charged, and profits earned to analyze a variety of strategies that could be employed by container terminal operators to enhance their competitive position. The findings suggest that strategies to build complementary relationships and stimulate greater demand are more desirable than alternatives because they generate benefits that accrue to the entire container port cluster. Conversely, strategies that are intended to raise entry barriers, employ strategic pricing mechanisms, and/or involve collusion are found to lead to the formation of insular clusters and retard competitive advantage in the long-run.