Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Juxtaposition of Micro and Macro Dynamics of Dividend Policy on Stock Price Volatility in Financial Sector of Pakistan: (Comparative Analysis Through Common, Fixed, Random and GMM Effect)

The purpose of this study is to analyze the dividend policy dynamics in context to firm specific and macroeconomic variables with stock price volatility in the financial sector of Pakistan. Panel data is used for the period 2006-2014 to identify the common, fixed, random and GMM effect. It is concluded that dividend payout ratio, market value, interest volatility and inflation volatility have positive significant correlation with price volatility. Common effect model shows that dividend payout and interest volatility has a significant positive impact on the share prices. Whereas fixed effect model is more appropriate and good fit than random effect model and model indicate that dividend payout ratio has significant positive impact and market volatility has significant negative impact on stock prices. GMM results also support the fixed and random effect outcomes with more robustness. This study significantly contributes in dividend policy decisions and elaborates the dynamic roll of micro and macro variables on stock price volatility in financial sector of Pakistan.
Thread Criticality Assisted Replication and Migration for Chip Multiprocessor Caches

Non-Uniform Cache Architecture (NUCA) is a viable solution to mitigate the problem of large on-chip wire delay due to the rapid increase in the cache capacity of chip multiprocessors (CMPs). Through partitioning the last-level cache (LLC) into smaller banks connected by on-chip network, the access latency will exhibit non-uniform distribution. Various works have well explored the NUCA design, including block migration, block replication and block searching. However, all of the previous mechanisms designed for NUCA are thread-oblivious when multi-threaded applications are deployed on CMP systems. Due to the interference on shared resources, threads often demonstrate unbalanced progress wherein the lagging threads with slow progress are more critical to overall performance. In this paper, we propose a novel NUCA design called thread Criticality Assisted R eplication and Migration (CARM). CARM exploits the runtime thread criticality information as hints to adjust the block replication and migration in NUCA. Specifically, CARM aims at boosting parallel application execution through prioritizing block replication and migration for critical threads. Full-system experimental results show that CARM reduces the execution time of a set of PARSEC workloads by 13.7 and 6.8 percent on average compared with the tradition D-NUCA and Re-NUCA respectively. Moreover, CARM also consumes much less energy compared with the evaluated schemes.
Hydrogen peroxide-mediated alteration of the heme prosthetic group of metmyoglobin to an iron chlorin product: evidence for a novel oxidative pathway.

Treatment of metmyoglobin with H2O2 is known to lead to the crosslinking of an active site tyrosine residue to the heme [Catalano, C. E. , Y. S. Choe, and P. R. Ortiz de Montellano (1989) J. Biol. Chem. 264, 10534-10541]. We have found in this study that this reaction also leads to an altered heme product not covalently bound to the protein. This product was characterized by visible absorption, infrared absorption, and mass and NMR spectrometry as an iron chlorin product formed from the saturation of the double bond between carbon atoms at positions 17 and 18 of pyrrole ring D with concomitant addition of a hydroxyl group on the carbon atom at position 18 and lactonization of the propionic acid to the carbon atom at position 17. Studies with the use of (18)O-labeled H2O2, O2, and H2O clearly indicate that the source of the added oxygen on the heme is water. Evidently, water adds regiospecifically to a cationic site formed on a carbon atom at position 18 after oxidation of the ferric heme prosthetic group with peroxide. Prolonged incubation of the reaction mixture containing the iron hydroxychlorin product led to the formation of an iron dihydroxychlorin product, presumably from a slow addition of water to the initial iron hydroxychlorin. The iron chlorin products characterized in this study are distinct from the meso-oxyheme species, which is thought to be formed during peroxide-mediated degradation of metmyoglobin, cytochrome P450, ferric heme, and model ferric hemes, and give further insight into the mechanism of H2O2-induced heme alterations.
Tectal efferents in the banded water snake, Natrix sipedon

Visual information reaches the dorsal thalamus by two distinct routes in most reptiles. Retinal efferents terminate directly in the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (DLGN). Retinal information is also channeled indirectly through the tectum to nucleus rotundus. Retinal projections to DLGN and tectum are also well esablished in snakes, but the status of the tecto‐rotundal link of the indirect visual pathway is uncertain.
Effect of quality of service parameters on quality of experience for YouTube service in mobile networks

Recently, the YouTube service has been one of the most popular channels to upload and download many video clips. Even in the mobile networks, the user satisfaction on YouTube service becomes the key performance index to benchmark the system quality among various service providers. However, there are many parameters indicating Quality of Service (QoS) of YouTube service. This causes a lot of efforts on both money and time to improve all parameters. It is the fact that users do not concern any QoS parameters as long as they are satisfied with the services. The indicator of user satisfaction is defined as Quality of Experience (QoE). Hence, it would be better if we can know which QoS parameter has the most correlation with QoE. Then, the service providers can spend less money and time to focus on some but important parameters. This paper originally presents the effect of QoS parameters on QoE in order to find the most influencing parameters by surveying the user satisfaction of YouTube services in 3G and 4G networks. The results indicate that the download throughput and the duration to first play provide the strong relationship with user satisfaction while the buffering duration does not play any influences on user satisfaction.
The design of space debris removed simulation system based on flexible arm

Nowadays a great amount of space debris threat the safety of space activities, so the space debris removal becomes a hot research field. In particular, on the base of space mechanical arm technology, using mechanical arm to remove space debris proves feasible in the implementation. Traditional space mechanical arms are rigid arms, and in consideration of the uncontrolled momentum of rigid arm, this paper intend to use flexible arm to capture space debris, which can achieve the purpose of stably controlling collision momentum. According to the whole task process that flexible arm captures space debris, this paper built a model of flexible arm and space debris, and establishes their mathematics models. The simulation system is constructed based on the models, and use I/O Completion Port (IOCP) model to ensure the real-time transportation of data produced in collision. Finally, this paper designs a simulation application case to verify the ability of simulation system to support space missions.
A comparison of screening methods in two early phase oral leukoplakia clinical trials.

OBJECTIVES/INTRODUCTION Clinical trial accrual for oral dysplasia is difficult in the United States and elsewhere. Patients with dysplastic oral leukoplakia progress to frank invasive carcinoma at a rate of 5-37% over 5 years. We compared two clinical trial screening efforts to hopefully devise better accrual strategies to these types of clinical trials. METHODS For the first trial, we identified 244 patients with dysplastic oral leukoplakia in our university database and a media campaign. Patients were notified and screened by examination and biopsy. For the second clinical trial, we established a preneoplastic lesions clinic and teaching and communications network with regional oral healthcare professionals. RESULTS Only one of 244 patients accrued to the first clinical trial through an organized screening effort based on database/medical records review. The second clinical trial accrued 16/30 screened patients through redirected efforts in teaching, communications, and a preneoplastic lesions clinic. CONCLUSION We conclude that significant difficulties resulted from medical record/database review of leukoplakia patients as a screening method for leukoplakia clinical trial entry. We feel that persistent direct contact and education of healthcare professionals who are likely to examine leukoplakia patients improved accrual to the second clinical trial.
Evidence for Apoplasmic Phloem Unloading in Developing Apple Fruit1

The phloem unloading pathway remains unclear in fleshy fruits accumulating a high level of soluble sugars. A structural investigation in apple fruit (Malus domestica Borkh. cv Golden Delicious) showed that the sieve element-companion cell complex of the sepal bundles feeding the fruit flesh is symplasmically isolated over fruit development. 14C-autoradiography indicated that the phloem of the sepal bundles was functional for unloading. Confocal laser scanning microscopy imaging of carboxyfluorescein unloading showed that the dye remained confined to the phloem strands of the sepal bundles from the basal to the apical region of the fruit. A 52-kD putative monosaccharide transporter was immunolocalized predominantly in the plasma membrane of both the sieve elements and parenchyma cells and its amount increased during fruit development. A 90-kD plasma membrane H+-ATPase was also localized in the plasma membrane of the sieve element-companion cell complex. Studies of [14C]sorbitol unloading suggested that an energy-driven monosaccharide transporter may be functional in phloem unloading. These data provide clear evidence for an apoplasmic phloem unloading pathway in apple fruit and give information on the structural and molecular features involved in this process.
A Rapid Increase in the Inspired Concentration of Desflurane Is Not Associated with Epileptiform Encephalogram

The large inspired concentration of sevoflurane (S) during mask induction of anesthesia can induce epileptiform electroencephalogram (EEG) associated with tachycardia. Tachycardia is also seen when the concentration of desflurane (D) is abruptly increased. It is not known whether this is associated with epileptiform EEG similar to S. We studied EEG and heart rate (HR) during rapidly increased concentrations of S or D in 31 females during the postintubation period of anesthesia. Anesthesia was induced with propofol and remifentanil, and the tracheas were intubated. Patients were randomized to receive either S or D in nitrous oxide-oxygen mixture after intubation, at a small dose first. After 10 min, S or D vaporizer was advanced to the highest reading of the vaporizer (7% for S, 18% for D) for 5 min. HR and EEG were recorded. Epileptiform EEG activity was recorded in eight of 15 patients in group S and in none in group D (P < 0.05). HR increased in both groups. In group S, HR increased gradually and the highest HR value was 84 bpm at 5 min after the increase in sevoflurane concentration. In group D, HR increased to 93 bpm 2 min after the increase in desflurane concentration (no significant difference, S versus D). A rapid increase in the concentration of S frequently induces epileptiform EEG during normoventilation. Tachycardia during increasing concentrations of D is not associated with epileptiform EEG.
Frequencies of Genetic Polymorphisms of TLR4 and CD14 and of HLA-DQ Genotypes in Children With Celiac Disease, Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus, or Both

Objectives: Besides the central role of the adaptive immune system, a disturbance of innate immunity is also involved in the pathogenesis of celiac disease (CD). Inasmuch as CD and type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) frequently coexist because of a common genetic predisposition, our aim was to study the frequency of CD14 C-260T and TLR4 A+896G single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and the distribution of HLA-DQ genotypes in children affected by CD, T1DM, or both. Patients and Methods: TLR4 and CD14 SNPs were tested by polymerase chain reaction, followed by restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis in 80 children with T1DM, 100 children with CD, and 47 children with both CD and T1DM. Determination of HLA-DQ alleles was done by sequence-specific polymerase chain reaction. Frequencies were compared with those of healthy control children. Results: The prevalence of the homozygous CD14 C-260TT genotype was significantly (P = 0.0081) lower in children with T1DM but not in those with CD and T1DM, compared with control children. No difference was found in the genotype and allele frequencies of TLR4 between the studied groups. In patients with T1DM, the frequency of the homozygous HLA-DQ8 genotype was significantly higher than in CD, whereas the frequency of homozygous or heterozygous HLA-DQ2 genotypes did not differ from that in control children. In patients with CD, both homozygous and heterozygous HLA-DQ2 genotypes were significantly more frequent than in the control and T1DM groups, and no elevation in the frequency of the HLA-DQ8 genotypes was observed. In patients with T1DM and those with CD and T1DM, the occurrence of HLA-DQ2/8 heterozygosity was significantly higher than in children with CD only and in control children. Conclusions: Our results suggest that in patients with T1DM, the CD14 C-260TT homozygous genotype increases the risk for the development of CD. The distribution of HLA-DQ genotype is different in children with CD and T1DM than in children with CD or T1DM only. Determination of the HLA-DQ genotype in children with T1DM may help in estimating the risk for the development of CD.
Cytoplasmic structure in organotypic cultures of rat hippocampus prepared by rapid freezing and freeze‐substitution fixation

We have compared rapid freezing followed by freeze‐substitution fixation with conventional aldehyde fixation as preparative methods for the electron microscopic study of organotypic cultures of neonatal rat hippocampus. Rapid freezing by contact with a copper block chilled by liquid helium was accomplished without mechanical distortion of superficial structures, and preserved structure to a depth of at least 20 μM without visible ice crystals. Freeze‐substitution fixation in acetone/osmium tetroxide, followed by en bloc staining with tannic acid and uranyl acetate, provided satisfactory staining of cytoplasm and organelles. While both preparative techniques yielded generally satisfactory results, rapid freezing provided much better preservation of astrocytic lysosomal inclusions, and afforded new views of intermediate filament substructure. Rapid freezing and freeze‐substitution fixation seemed especially well suited to the preservation of short filamentous proteins, such as those forming the membrane cytoskeleton of dendritic spines or those associated with synaptic vesicles. The combination of rapid freezing methods and organotypic culture provides an opportunity to examine cytoplasmic structure in tissue from deep regions of the brain which had previously been inaccessible to rapid freezing techniques. © 1993 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Řízení kvality v organizacích poskytujících služby: Pojem kvalita a jeho význam

Přispěvek se zabýva pojmem kvalita v kontextu řizeni kvality v organizacich poskytujicich služby. Řizeni kvality neni v přispěvku chapano jako pouhe zavaděni postupů, metod a technik řizeni kvality, ale předevsim jako kulturni změna cele organizace. Za důležitý předpoklad uspěchu řizeni kvality je oznacena shoda v chapani obsahu tohoto pojmu mezi pracovniky organizace a mezi pracovniky a zakazniky/klienty organizace. Za perspektivni způsob zjisťovani obsahu pojmu kvalita ve vědomi pracovniků a zakazniků/klientů organizace je považovano mentalni mapovani (tvorba myslenkove mapy). Přispěvek prezentuje tvorbu myslenkove mapy jako poměrně malo znamou metodu umožňujici iniciaci a zachyceni přislusným způsobem zaměřených myslenkových procesů, jejich struktury a obsahu.
Efficiency-wise optimal design methodology of LCLC converter for wide input voltage range applications

LCLC converter is an LLC-based, four-element resonant topology, which has been proved to achieve high voltage gain and high efficiency. Such trait makes LCLC converter specifically suitable for wide-input-voltage-range DC/DC applications. Currently, LCLC converter lacks a design method targeting at optimal efficiency over a wide input voltage range. In fact, due to the complexity, efficiency itself is seldom used as optimization criterion even for LLC designs. In this paper, a systematic methodology is proposed to optimize the efficiency at different input voltage levels for LCLC converter. Three mathematical programs (developed in MATLAB) are employed respectively to find all resonant parameter combinations that critically achieve the required voltage gain; precisely analyze the current stress in time domain; and comprehensively calculate the losses in the power circuit including magnetic components. The programs will automatically generate the optimal parameter design with highest weighted efficiency at desired input voltage levels, as well as the magnetic components construction with specified types and sizes of core and conductor. Besides, this method can be extended to other topologies for wide voltage range applications. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed optimal design method, the function of the mathematical tools will be carefully explained in this paper; and a step-by-step design will be demonstrated as an example. Simulation will be included to verify the accuracy of the method.
Globally asymptotically stable hybrid observers design on SE (3)

This paper deals with the design of globally asymptotically stable invariant observers on the Special Euclidian group SE(3). First, we propose a generic hybrid estimation scheme (depending on a generic potential function) evolving on SE(3) χ R6 for pose (orientation and position) and velocity-bias estimation. Thereafter, the proposed observer is formulated explicitly in terms of inertial vectors and landmark measurements. Interestingly, the proposed globally asymptotically stable estimator, leads to decoupled translational and rotational error dynamics (in the velocity bias-free case), which is an important feature in practical applications with noisy measurements and disturbances.
Trigger-Based Language Model Adaptation for Automatic Transcription of Panel Discussions

We present a novel trigger-based language model adaptation method oriented to the transcription of meetings. In meetings, the topic is focused and consistent throughout the whole session, therefore keywords can be correlated over long distances. The trigger-based language model is designed to capture such long-distance dependencies, but it is typically constructed from a large corpus, which is usually too general to derive task-dependent trigger pairs. In the proposed method, we make use of the initial speech recognition results to extract task-dependent trigger pairs and to estimate their statistics. Moreover, we introduce a back-off scheme that also exploits the statistics estimated from a large corpus. The proposed model reduced the test-set perplexity considerably more than the typical trigger-based language model constructed from a large corpus, and achieved a remarkable perplexity reduction of 44% over the baseline when combined with an adapted trigram language model. In addition, a reduction in word error rate was obtained when using the proposed language model to rescore word graphs.
Performance analysis of topology-oriented solutions on energy efficient networks

Telecommunication networks have been designed and deployed with over-provisioning and redundancy of resources to cope with traffic load during peak hours and quickly recover from failure. However, most of these resources are underutilized and in most of the time idle but consuming full energy. With the growing concern of energy waste and greenhouse gases (GHG), the network design principles tend to shift to allocate resources on-demand and be energy-efficient. In this paper, we analyze and evaluate the performance of two energy-saving techniques, namely Energy Saving TOPology control (ESTOP) for coordinated sleeping, and Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) for uncoordinated sleeping. Furthermore, we evaluate the potential of combining ESTOP and EEE considering that the reduced topologies obtained running ESTOP can substantially increase link utilization and the length of some paths and therefore degrade the performance of EEE. The evaluation was conducted in OMNet++ with realistic and synthetic networks under different traffic conditions. The results show that the energy conservation of the combination is significant when a lower value of the connectivity threshold is used during off-peak hours and a higher value is used during peak hours. ESTOP depends on the density of the topology and can save about 50% of energy.
Stellar Double Coronagraph: A Multistage Coronagraphic Platform at Palomar Observatory

We present a new instrument, the “Stellar Double Coronagraph,” a flexible coronagraphic platform. Designed for Palomar Observatory's 200″ Hale telescope, its two focal and pupil planes allow for a number of different observing configurations, including multiple vortex coronagraphs in series for improved contrast at small angles. We describe the motivation, design, observing modes, wavefront control approaches, data reduction pipeline, and early science results. We also discuss future directions for the instrument.
Activities Scale for Kids: An Analysis of Normals

Several outcome tools have been developed to measure physical functioning in pediatric orthopedic patients. One such tool, the Activities Scale for Kids (ASK), allows assessment of physical functioning in the community in 5- to 15-year-olds. Previous validation of the ASK showed a significant difference in scores according to global ratings of disability. In this study, the ASK was administered to children without musculoskeletal disability to determine how normal respondents scored. ASK questionnaires were distributed to 137 children and 122 (89%) were returned. Normal children scored quite high, with a mean summary score of 93.12 (SD 6.45). This score differs significantly from the mean summary score for children with mild disabilities as determined in previous studies of disability (P = 0.005).
Do Responsible Beverage Service Programs Reduce Breath Alcohol Concentration Among Patrons: A Five-Month Follow-up of a Randomized Controlled Trial

Aims: To examine whether the decrease in the mean breath alcohol concentration (BrAC) and the rowdy social atmosphere reported after one month remained stable in the five-month assessment. Design: Randomized controlled trial. Setting: University bars. Participants: The five-month assessment was based on 596 students visiting student bars during ordinary pub evenings. Intervention: Bartenders (n = 40) in 6 of 12 bars on a university campus underwent training programs in a randomized pattern. Bartenders in control bars did not participate in the program. Measurements: The BrAC and reported social atmosphere in a five-month follow-up assessment. Findings: All measurements (BrAC, rowdy, cozy, and high social atmosphere) showed that time had a significant decreasing effect. The positive effects on BrAC and rowdy atmosphere shown in the one-month follow-up were no longer evident after five months. Conclusion: The positive results after one month were not stable after five months. The study's limitations are noted.