Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Incorporated intangible assets with a multiple-agent decision tree for financial crisis prediction

With the current financial scandals and European debt crisis, corporate financial crisis prediction has become an essential task in the fields of financial and risk management. Numerous pre-warning mechanisms based on statistical or artificial intelligence theories have been introduced in the literature, yet no current pre-warning model presents the best performance under all measurements. With significant great improvements in information technologies and computational techniques, the multi-agent mechanism or ensemble learning has been proposed as an efficient way to achieve superior performance. The fundamental concept of multi-agent learning aims at complementing errors made by a singular method, and thus this study proposes a pre-warning model based on multi-agent learning and further considers the impacts from intangible assets, which are at the core of value-creating procedures in a knowledge economy, on constructing such a model. This model can help firms with a large amount of intangible assets to have a higher possibility of gaining considerable wealth in the future and a lower possibility for encountering financial troubles. The introduced pre-warning mechanism is a promising alternative for predicting financial crises, is supported by real cases, and assists managers to modify their capital structure and debt leverage.
Cloning and Characterization of a cDNA Encoding a Novel Extracellular Peroxidase from Trametes versicolor

ABSTRACT The white rot basidiomycete Trametes versicolorsecretes a large number of peroxidases which are believed to be involved in the degradation of polymeric lignin. These peroxidases have been classified previously as lignin peroxidases or manganese peroxidases (MnP). We have isolated a novel extracellular peroxidase-encoding cDNA sequence from T. versicolor CU1, the transcript levels of which are repressed by low concentrations of Mn2+ and induced by nitrogen and carbon but not induced in response to a range of stresses which have been reported to induce MnP expression.
Environmental Risk Factors for Rheumatoid Arthritis

In this review we examine the association between rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and exposure to silica and other environmental toxicants. We performed a series of meta-analyses of peer-reviewed studies, using 10 studies for silica, and 5 studies for other exposures published between 1986 and 2001. Before the meta-analyses, all studies were reviewed and evaluated for heterogeneity and publication bias. We detected a significant heterogeneity among studies on silica and calculated a combined estimator of relative risk (RR), using the random effect model. Most studies reported consistent elevation in the risk of RA with exposure to silica. The combined RR for silica exposure was 3.43 195% confidence interval (95% CI) 2.25-5.22] for all studies, and 4.45 (95% CI 2.24-8.86) for male cohorts. The combined RR for male farmers was 1.40 [95% CI 1.18-1.66] and was 1.29 [95% CI 0.84-1.97] for pesticide exposure. The combined RR for hair dressers was 1.52 [95% CI 1.04-2.20]. The findings of this study suggest a significant elevation in the risk of RA from exposure to silica. Further studies assessing the dose-response effect would greatly aid in determining whether the observed association is causal.
Pension reforms, liquidity constraints and labour supply responses*

Abstract Labour supply responses among older people are estimated on 1996 cross-section register data covering all Norwegians aged 55–68, with an inter-temporal structural model of retirement decisions. Simulations illustrate the impact of introducing flexible pension take-up with actuarial adjustment. With the option of perfect consumption smoothing via the credit market, the reform which comes into effect in Norway from 2011 will reduce the share of retired persons in the age bracket 60–67 (in the base year 15–16%) by around 3 percentage points. With no consumption smoothing, the reduction will be 0.75 percentage points.
100 Years of the American Economic Review: The Top 20 Articles

This paper presents a list of the top 20 articles published in the American Economic Review during its first 100 years. This list was assembled in honor of the AER 's one-hundredth anniversary by a group of distinguished economists at the request of AER 's editor. A brief description accompanies the citations of each article.
Comparison of the antiinflammatory effects of Drosera rotundifolia and Drosera madagascariensis in the HET‐CAM assay

The antiinflammatory effects of ethanol and aqueous extracts from Drosera rotundifolia and from Drosera madagascariensis were compared in vivo in the HET‐CAM assay. Both extracts from D. rotundifolia and the ethanol extract from D. madagascariensis showed remarkable efficacy at doses of 500 µg/pellet. The inhibition of the inflammation by the extracts was stronger than that by 50 µg hydrocortisone/pellet. In contrast, there was only a very weak effect observed at a dose of 500 µg/pellet of the water extract from D. madagascariensis. The chemical analyses of the extracts showed that the effect cannot be attributed to naphthoquinones, but might be due to flavonoids. Ellagic acid obviously plays an important role in the antiangiogenic effect of the Drosera extracts. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Le Régime d’accumulation dans le Cône Sud-Americain depuis les années 1990. Crise de régulation ou crise d’accumulation ?

Cet article etudie les formes prises par le regime d’accumulation en Argentine et au Bresil depuis la decennie 1990. Malgre la hausse de la productivite du travail la population de ces pays n’a pas beneficie de maniere homogene de la croissance. Les salaries ont notamment ete particulierement touches par la volatilite macro-economique et exclus de la croissance economique. L’article propose un guide illustratif sur l'experience de ce regime de croissance excluant, ainsi qu’une premiere evaluation des gouvernements Lula (Bresil) et Kirchner (Argentine) en terme de ruptures/continuite de ce regime d’accumulation.
Synthesis of a novel photoresponsive axially chiral phosphine ligand containing an arylazo group and its application to palladium-catalyzed asymmetric allylic alkylation.

Novel photoresponsive axially chiral monophosphine ligands containing azobenzene moiety were prepared and applied to a palladium-catalyzed allylic alkylation. The reaction of rac-1,3-diphenyl-2-propenyl acetate gave the alkylated products with up to 90% enantiomeric excess. The ligand exhibited a trans to cis photoisomerization upon irradiation with UV light.
Hypergraph based Subnetwork Extraction using Fusion of Task and Rest Functional Connectivity

Functional subnetwork extraction is commonly used to explore the brain's modular structure. However, reliable subnetwork extraction from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data remains challenging due to the pronounced noise in neuroimaging data. In this paper, we proposed a high order relation informed approach based on hypergraph to combine the information from multi-task data and resting state data to improve subnetwork extraction. Our assumption is that task data can be beneficial for the subnetwork extraction process, since the repeatedly activated nodes involved in diverse tasks might be the canonical network components which comprise pre-existing repertoires of resting state subnetworks. Our proposed high order relation informed subnetwork extraction based on a strength information embedded hypergraph, (1) facilitates the multisource integration for subnetwork extraction, (2) utilizes information on relationships and changes between the nodes across different tasks, and (3) enables the study on higher order relations among brain network nodes. On real data, we demonstrated that fusing task activation, task-induced connectivity and resting state functional connectivity based on hypergraphs improves subnetwork extraction compared to employing a single source from either rest or task data in terms of subnetwork modularity measure, inter-subject reproducibility, along with more biologically meaningful subnetwork assignments.
A comparative study of regional innovative entrepreneurship in Russia and the United States

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to conduct comparative research of small innovative entrepreneurship under different types of institutional environment in Russia and the USA. Design/methodology/approach – A survey was administered among small innovative firms in the State of Minnesota (USA) and Novosibirsk Oblast (Russia). Mann-Whitney test for median differences adjusted for multiple comparisons using Benjamini-Hochberg procedure is used to establish statistically significant dissimilarities between Siberian and Minnesotan populations. Findings – The results indicate that there are significant differences in the challenges faced by the Russian and American firms. The most important among them are the lack of legal structure for innovation and availability of qualified staff in Russia. Research limitations/implications – The study is limited to two regions with comparable economic and geographic environments. Practical implications – It is indicated in the results that significant changes in instit.
Equilibrium Unemployment with Wage Posting: Burdett-Mortensen Meet Pissarides

The wage posting approach to search equilibrium is incorporated into the equilibrium unemployment approach in the paper. The unique equilibrium to the wage posting game analyzed is a distribution of wage offers of the same functional form as that originally derived by Burdett and Mortensen (1998). The synthesis is extended by allowing for match specific investment by employers. The outcome is endogenous productivity differences across jobs that are induced by equilibrium wage offer differences. Contrary to the original Burdett-Mortensen solution, the equilibrium wage offers distribution can be unimodal with a long right tail when match-specific investment are included.
Capital Structure and Firm Efficiency

This paper investigates the relationship between firm efficiency and leverage. We consider both the effect of leverage on firm performance as well as the reverse causality relationship. In particular, we address the following questions: Does higher leverage lead to better firm performance? Does efficiency exert a significant effect on leverage over and above that of traditional financial measures of capital structure? Is the effect of efficiency on leverage similar across different capital structures? What is the signalling role of efficiency to creditors or investors? Using a sample of 12,240 New Zealand firms we find evidence supporting the theoretical predictions of the Jensen and Meckling (1976) agency cost model. Efficiency measured as the distance from the industry's 'best practice' production frontier is positively related to leverage over the entire range of observed data. The frontier is constructed using the non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method. Using quantile regression analysis we show that the reverse causality effect of efficiency on leverage is positive at low to mid-leverage levels and negative at high leverage ratios. Firm size also has a non-monotonic effect on leverage: negative at low debt ratios and positive at mid to high debt ratios. The effect of tangibles and profitability on leverage is positive while intangibles and other assets are negatively related to leverage. Copyright 2007 The Authors Journal compilation (c) 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Experimental evaluation of an LPV-gain-scheduled observer for rejecting multisine disturbances with time-varying frequencies

A linear time-varying (LTV) discrete-time controller for the rejection of harmonic disturbances with time-varying frequencies on linear time-invariant (LTI) systems is proposed and validated in real-time experiments. The controller is an observer-based state feedback controller with a time-varying observer system matrix and a time-invariant state feedback gain. For the controller design, the combination of plant and disturbance is modeled as a polytopic linear parameter-varying (pLPV) system and linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) derived from quadratic stability theory and LMIs for an upper bound on the H2 performance are used. The design guarantees closed-loop stability even for arbitrarily fast changes of the varying parameters. The controller is tested on an active noise control headset for a disturbance signal consisting of four harmonics.
BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT FACTORS DETERMINING THE SELECTION OF TIME FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES IN LITHUANIAN INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES

Purpose – to evaluate business environment factors of the Lithuanian industrial enterprises, conditioning the selection of time to implement new technologies. Methodology. The general research methods applied in this article are the systemic comparative and structural analysis of the scientific literature, statistical data analysis, and schematic modelling. Empirical research is based on qualitative methodological approach: method of expert evaluation on the basis of a questionnaire survey and rating coefficients of factors’ weight. Results. Obtained results revealed that in the recent years, the connection of industrial progress, organizational changes and economic competitiveness has increased. Due to this, the development of new technologies and their implementation in the industry has become one of the most significant factors of Lithuanian economic strategy, determining the speed and results of the economic-social development. Therefore, the evaluation of internal resources of the enterprise as well as the capacity, business environment market and finally the selection of time for the implementation of the new technology serve as the basis for achieving the competitive advantage and successful performance of the enterprise. This paper presents the findings of the expert evaluation, which aimed to investigate the most important external business environment factors determining the selection of time for the implementation of new technologies in the Lithuanian industrial enterprises. Considering the results of the expert evaluation, a summarizing conclusion has been made that the most essential factors of external business environment are as follows: the level of market concentration, the change of consumer needs and product price in sales market. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.5755/j01.em. 18.4. 5347
The ordered transmission disequilibrium test: detection of modifier genes

We consider the problem of detection of modifier genes that lead to variations in a disease‐related continuous variable (DRCV), such as the age of onset or a measure of disease severity, in a strategy of candidate genes. We propose a novel method, the ordered transmission disequilibrium test (OTDT), to test for a relation between the clinical heterogeneity expressed by a DRCV and marker genotypes of a candidate gene. The OTDT applies to trio families with one patients and his parents, all three genotyped at a bi‐allelic marker M. The OTDT aims to find a critical value of the DRCV which separates the sample of families in two subsamples in which the transmission rates are significantly different. We investigate the power of the method by simulations under various genetic models and covariate distributions and compare it with a linear regression analysis. Genet. Epidemiol. 2008. ©2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Virtual Histology Assessment of Cardiac Allograft Vasculopathy Following Introduction of Everolimus—Results of a Multicenter Trial

In this 12‐month multicenter Scandinavian study, 78 maintenance heart transplant (HTx) recipients randomized to everolimus with reduced calcineurin inhibitor (CNI) exposure or continued standard CNI‐therapy underwent matched virtual histology (VH) examination to evaluate morphological progression of cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV). Parallel measurement of a range of inflammatory markers was also performed. A similar rate of quantitative CAV progression was observed in the everolimus (n = 30) and standard CNI group (n = 48) (plaque index 1.9 ± 3.8% and 1.6 ± 3.9%, respectively; p = 0.65). However, VH analysis revealed a significant increase in calcified (2.4 ± 4.0 vs. 0.3 ± 3.1%; p = 0.02) and necrotic component (6.5 ± 8.5 vs. 1.1 ± 8.6%; p = 0.01) among everolimus patients compared to controls. The increase in necrotic and calcified components was most prominent in everolimus patients with time since HTx >5.1 years and was accompanied by a significant increase in levels of von Willebrand (vWF) factor (p = 0.04) and vascular cell adhesion molecule (VCAM) (p = 0.03). Conversion to everolimus and reduced CNI is associated with a significant increase in calcified and necrotic intimal components and is more prominent in patients with a longer time since HTx. A significant increase in vWF and VCAM accompanied these qualitative changes and the prognostic implication of these findings requires further investigation.
Classification of road curves and corresponding driving profile via smartphone trip data

Smart cities are the new settlement structures formed by new technologies that change human life. Among these technologies, intelligent automobiles have an important place, and many scientific studies on it have been realized. Especially Tesla, Apple, and Google have completed their prototypes of autonomous automobiles. One of the indispensable part of recent automotive technologies is Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS). This system has been developed to improve safety and comfort of driver while driving. In this study, we have tried to predict road geometry and driving profile by using sensor data acquired by driver smartphone on steering wheel for a certain trip. Driving profiles are identified as aggressive and safe. GPS, accelerometer and gyroscope sensors are employed in this study. Using smartphone sensor data, road portions are initially determined by the proposed algorithm. Then, road shapes are obtained by a Fuzzy Classifier, which are straight, right curved, and left curved. Afterwards, the acceleration data corresponding road shapes are considered to find acceleration type for the portion of that road. Transitions between straight and curved roads including vehicle speed are determined by Hidden Markov Model (HMM). Thus, speed preference of subject driver for corresponding road shapes are obtained in probabilistic manner. Validation results have shown that the error rate between ground truth and observation data for proposed approach is obtained as 11.81%. Consequently, driving profile have been estimated considering road shapes.
Rethinking local government: Essays on municipal reform

Good local governance is essential for an efficient and financially robust public sector as well as high quality public services. During the last decade or so, many countries have aimed at better local governance by reforming their local government and the fiscal relations between central and local authorities. In the coming years, we can expect to see more reforms in many countries, including Finland, as most countries will have to adjust to ageing populations and dwindling fiscal resources. This book is about reforms that aim to improve local governance. The articles of this book are written by academic scholars with outstanding expertise about local governance, reforms of fiscal relations and rules that steer the economics of local and central government.
What factors enable community leadership of renewable energy projects? Lessons from a woodfuel heating initiative

Increasing renewable energy generation is fundamental to sustainable development as current reliance on fossil fuel combustion is an environmentally damaging, inequitable use of finite resources with far-reaching negative social impacts. To date, UK energy policy has sought to increase renewable energy capacity by encouraging large-scale commercially led developments. Recently, however, there has been growing interest in the scope for alternative small scale and community-led renewable energy development. This case study research from northwest England investigates the development of a community-led woodfuel heating project in a remote rural setting. Qualitative data from project participants’ interviews show the project was conceived as means of addressing multiple threats to the sustainability of their rural community. Participants’ vision of the project was found to fit the eco-economy paradigm.
Saving Depraved Africans in a Neoliberal Age

This article critically examines the fight against HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. As the epidemic revealed its devastating power when neoliberalism emerged as a dominant force in economic and development thinking, it investigates how policies like SAPs have affected the severity of the epidemic in a country like Zambia. Moreover, the article examines how the dominance of medical and private actors has influenced the fight against HIV/AIDS. By, for example, tracing the influence of the pharmaceutical industry and conservative Christian forces in PEPFAR, it is argued that the epidemic has been largely conceptualized in biomedical and behavioural terms – placing too much emphasis on African sexuality and culture – while ignoring structural factors like poverty and inequality. As a result, inhumane conditions for millions persist and solutions that would be unacceptable for the affluent are still implemented. Inspired by the work of Farmer (2005) and Pogge (2008), a more inclusive development agenda is outlined that involves structural democratic reforms of global institutions.
Making tobacco consumption a political issue in the United States and Denmark: The dynamics of issue expansion in comparative perspective

Abstract This article represents one of the first attempts to study agenda setting and policy processes in a cross-national perspective, and we do so by examining the issue of tobacco consumption in Denmark and the United States over the last half-century. There are similarities in the ways that the political systems have responded. In both countries political attention has been rising, and so has the number of measures to control tobacco consumption. There are also striking differences, however. In the US federal system with its separation of powers there are multiple venues for the tobacco issue to reach the political agenda. The issue broke through into the congressional political agenda after a major settlement between the tobacco industry and individual states, which joined forces with private attorneys. This settlement expanded the political conflict around tobacco into one of taxpayers against the industry. The Danish Parliament has been more reluctant to take up issues pertaining to tobacco consumption. In the Danish single-venue parliamentary system, an issue must be defined along existing party conflict lines in order to expand and reach the political agenda. Regulation of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), however, has been defined as an “ethical” issue; in contrast to normal policies, MPs can, on a personal basis, cast a free vote, meaning that ETS is on no party's political agenda. Policy initiatives on ETS have consequently been sparse. Thus, in both the United States and Denmark, we find that the structure of the political system has played a crucial role in the expansion of tobacco-control issues from the public to the political agenda and also in shaping policy initiatives themselves.