Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Do ‘Fat Tails’ Matter in GARCH Estimation? Stock Market Efficiency in Romania and the Czech Republic

The use of the GARCH-class of models is commonplace when examining stock market returns. In this paper we use data on stock markets in two transition economies to demonstrate the importance of using the correct GARCH specification. When returns are characterised by ‘fat tails’ or kurtosis the use of a GARCH-t specification is appropriate. Returns in Romania are symmetric, but characterised by kurtosis. Returns in the Czech Republic are normally distributed. Using a standard GARCH specification leads to rejection of the null hypothesis of market efficiency in Romania, whereas this null hypothesis cannot be rejected using the GARCH-t specification. The null hypothesis of efficiency cannot be rejected in the Czech Republic using either specification. Thus, we find that the presence of ‘fat tails’ can have important implications for inference in the analysis of stock market returns.
Automated Vision-Based Diagnosis of Banana Bacterial Wilt Disease and Black Sigatoka Disease

Machine learning has been applied in agriculture in various areas including crop disease detection and image processing systems have been developed for some crops. These crops include cotton, pomegranate plant, grapes, vegetables, tomatoes, potatoes and cassava among others. However, no machine learning techniques have been used in an attempt to detect diseases in the banana plant such as banana bacterial wilt (BBW) and banana black sigatoka (BBS) that have caused a huge loss to many banana growers. The study investigated various computer vision techniques which led to the development of an algorithm that consists of four main phases. In phase one, images of banana leaves were acquired using a standard digital camera. Phase two involves use of different feature extraction techniques to obtain relevant data to be used in phase three where images are classified as either healthy or diseased. Of the seven classifiers that were used in this study, Extremely Randomized Trees performed best in identifying the diseases achieving 0.96 AUC for BBW and 0.91 for BBS. Lastly, the performance of these classifiers was evaluated based on the area under the curve (AUC) analysis and best method to automatically diagnose these banana diseases was then recommended.
A diffusion-compensated model for the analysis of DCE-MRI data: theory, simulations and experimental results

Accurate quantification of pharmacokinetic parameters in dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) MRI may be affected by the passive diffusion of contrast agent (CA) within the tissue. By introducing an additional term into the standard Tofts–Kety (STK) model, we correct for the effects of CA diffusion. We first develop the theory describing a CA diffusion corrected STK model (DTK). The model is then tested in simulation with simple models of diffusion. The DTK model is also fit to 18 in vivo DCE-MRI acquisitions from murine models of cancer and results are compared to those from the STK model. The DTK model returned estimates with significantly lower error than the STK model (p ≪ 0.001). In poorly perfused (i.e., Ktrans ≤ 0.05 min−1) regions the STK model returned unphysical ve values, while the DTK model estimated ve with less than 7% error in noise-free simulations. Results in vivo data revealed similar trends. For voxels with low Ktrans values and late peak concentration times the STK model returned ve estimates >1.0 in 40% of the voxels as compared to only 16% for the DTK model. The DTK model presented here shows promise in estimating accurate kinetic parameters in the presence of passive contrast agent diffusion.
Triclosan Can Select for an AdeIJK-Overexpressing Mutant of Acinetobacter baumannii ATCC 17978 That Displays Reduced Susceptibility to Multiple Antibiotics

ABSTRACT In order to determine if triclosan can select for mutants of Acinetobacter baumannii ATCC 17978 that display reduced susceptibilities to antibiotics, we isolated a triclosan-resistant mutant, A. baumannii AB042, by serial passaging of A. baumannii ATCC 17978 in growth medium supplemented with triclosan. The antimicrobial susceptibility of AB042 was analyzed by the 2-fold serial dilution method. Expression of five different resistance-nodulation-division (RND) pump-encoding genes (adeB, adeG, adeJ, A1S_2818, and A1S_3217), two outer membrane porin-encoding genes (carO and oprD), and the MATE family pump-encoding gene abeM was analyzed using quantitative reverse transcriptase (qRT) PCR. A. baumannii AB042 exhibited elevated resistance to multiple antibiotics, including piperacillin-tazobactam, doxycycline, moxifloxacin, ceftriaxone, cefepime, meropenem, doripenem, ertapenem, ciprofloxacin, aztreonam, tigecycline, and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, in addition to triclosan. Genome sequencing of A. baumannii AB042 revealed a 116G→V mutation in fabI, the gene encoding the target enzyme for triclosan. Expression analysis of efflux pumps showed overexpression of the AdeIJK pump, and sequencing of adeN, the gene that encodes the repressor of the adeIJK operon, revealed a 73-bp deletion which would cause a premature termination of translation, resulting in an inactive truncated AdeN protein. This work shows that triclosan can select for mutants of A. baumannii that display reduced susceptibilities to multiple antibiotics from chemically distinct classes in addition to triclosan resistance. This multidrug resistance can be explained by the overexpression of the AdeIJK efflux pump.
Restoring Trust in the Highway Trust Fund

This paper argues for a return to using the Highway Trust Fund to pay for highway maintenance and construction, instead of using it for non-highway programs such as land-use planning, passenger trains, public transit and energy subsidies. As the nation has pulled away from the users-pay/users-benefit funding mechanism (dedicated fuel taxes) which enabled the interstate highway system to be built, highway infrastructure has suffered. The paper promotes the case for highway user fees, indicating the it is fair, proportional, self-limiting, and predictable as a revenue stream.
Intuition and the development of expertise in surgical ward and intensive care nurses.

AIM The aim of this study was to explore and identify nurses' clinical expertise in surgical ward and intensive care settings in England. One of the objectives of the study and the focus of this paper was the exploration of these nurses' understanding and use of intuition in the context of their practice. BACKGROUND Since 1980 many studies have investigated qualified nurses' use of intuition within aspects of their practice. However, it was Benner's (1982, 1984) seminal work that firmly established the relationship between intuition and expert clinical practice. Since that time a possible relationship between intuitive components of decision-making and nonexpert nurses' practice has remained relatively unexplored until recently. METHODS This constructivist qualitative study incorporated observation and interview to explore 61 qualified nurses' expertise through their assessment of patients following major surgery. FINDINGS Specific findings highlighted refinement in nurses' use of intuitive and analytical elements of decision-making across the four identified levels of expertise. The most fluent and effective use of intuitive and analytical components of decision-making was found in the expert group. CONCLUDING REMARKS These results are discussed in relation to current understanding of the components of expert decision-making in nursing practice. Both intuitive and analytical elements should be recognized in any model that seeks to depict the true nature of nurses' decision-making as they develop clinical expertise.
Disentangling Managers’ and Analysts’ Non-GAAP Reporting

Researchers frequently proxy for managers’ non‐GAAP disclosures using performance metrics available through analyst forecast data providers (FDPs), such as I/B/E/S. The extent to which FDP‐provided earnings are a valid proxy for managers’ non‐GAAP reporting, however, has been debated extensively. We explore this important question by creating the first large‐sample data set of managers’ non‐GAAP earnings disclosures, which we directly compare to I/B/E/S data. Although we find a substantial overlap between the two data sets, we also find that they differ in systematic ways because I/B/E/S (1) excludes managers’ lower quality non‐GAAP numbers and (2) sometimes provides higher quality non‐GAAP measures that managers do not explicitly disclose. Our results indicate that using I/B/E/S to identify managers’ non‐GAAP disclosures significantly underestimates the aggressiveness of their reporting choices. We encourage researchers interested in managers’ non‐GAAP reporting to use our newly available data set of manager‐disclosed non‐GAAP metrics because it more accurately captures managers’ reporting choices.
Effect of Interface Traps and Oxide Charge on Drain Current Degradation in Tunneling Field-Effect Transistors

In this letter, we report for the first time the degradation mechanism of drain current in tunneling field-effect transistors (TFETs). Using positive-bias and hot-carrier (HC) stress experiments and TCAD simulation, we show that the drain current degradation is mainly induced by the interface traps and/or oxide charge located above the tunneling region, causing reduction of tunneling field and tunneling current. The interface traps mainly induce the degradation in transconductance, while the oxide charge essentially causes a threshold-voltage shift in TFETs. The results show that the interface-trap generation is dominant under a positive-bias stress, while the oxide-charge creation is important under an HC stress in n-TFETs.
The use of erythrocyte sensitizing substance in the diagnosis of leptospiroses. II. The sensitized erythrocyte lysis test.

Summary A modified method for the extraction of ESS from leptospirae has been developed which yields preparations stable for at least 41 weeks at 4°C. ESS antibody apparently deteriorated on storage at -20°C. for more than 1 to 1.5 years. Good correlation between the SEA and the agglutination-lysis tests were obtained with fresh sera. Unsatisfactory results were obtained with sera shipped from Australia. About 8 per cent of sera sent to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health for various diagnostic tests were positive in the SEA test, the significance of which is not ascertained. Different antibodies are responsible for the SEA and the agglutination-lysis reactions.
The Retinoblastoma Susceptibility Gene Product Represses Transcription When Directly Bound to the Promoter (*)

Rb represses E2F-mediated transcription in part by blocking the trans-activation domain of E2F. In addition, Rb can convert an E2F binding site from a positive to a negative element. To examine the effect of a Rb-DNA-bound complex on transcription, full-length Rb was fused to the DNA binding domain of GAL4. Here, we report that GAL4-Rb can repress transcription mediated by either Sp1, AP-1, or p53, dependent upon the presence of both the GAL4 DNA binding domain and GAL4 binding sites. Moreover, GAL4-Rb inhibited the activity of the herpes simplex virus tk promoter from GAL4 binding sites located at a distance from the promoter. In contrast, GAL4-Rb was unable to repress basal transcription. Cotransfection of specific cyclins and cyclin-dependent kinases or SV40 T-antigen abolished the repressive activity of GAL4-Rb. The domains of Rb involved in mediating the repression of transcription were mapped to regions that are overlapping, but not identical, to those required for the interaction with E2F. We propose that Rb can function as a general repressor of transcription when bound to the promoter region.
Evaluation of Treatment Programs for Persons with Severe Mental Illness

This study evaluated several statistical models for estimating treatment effects in a randomized, longitudinal experiment comparing assertive community treatment (ACT) versus brokered case management (BCM). In addition, mediator and moderator analyses were conducted. The ACT clients had improved outcomes in terms of housing and psychiatric symptoms thanBCM clients. Case management housing assistance and financial assistance partially mediated housing outcomes. No reliable mediators were found for psychiatric symptoms, and no reliable moderators were found for either housing or psychiatric symptoms. The study also made several important methodological advances in the analysis of longitudinal data in randomized experiments.
The Performance of Measures of Shareholder Influence

This article investigates the performance of various measures of shareholder influence. Performance is evaluated on the basis of the measures' ability to explain the representation of the two largest shareholders in the boards of German stock corporations. This yardstick for the shareholders' power seems to be more closely related to actual shareholder power than the yardsticks used in the small stock of previous studies. The measures of shareholder influence comprise the share in voting rights, the Shapley-Shubik index, and the Banzhaf index, from all of these measures several variants enter the analyses. In case of the principal shareholder, the plain share in voting rights can fend off all competitors. For the second largest shareholder, the ability of power values to accentuate the strength of the second largest shareholder's position subject to the principal shareholder power emerges as an important improvement, but it can be conveniently reproduced by simple modifications of the share in voting rights. The results reveal that the fine tuning of the power values is of little importance, even the choice between Shapley-Shubik index and an identically defined Banzhaf index does not matter much. The most important dividing line separates the power indices with adjusted majority requirement from all remaining measures, including the share in voting rights. Another major insight is the context sensitivity of many results. As a consequence, the perspective to find a single measure of shareholder influence for all corporations is unfavorable. Possibly the most striking outcome is that all measures of shareholder influence, including the plain share in voting rights, sramatically lose explanatory power for board representation when corporations with a majority shareholder are excluded from the sample. All measures fail to explain our yardstick of shareholder power for samples which only consist of corporations without majority shareholder. The poor performance of all measures of shareholder influence might hint at another potential cause why the empirical research of the relationship between shareholder structure and corporate performance yields such inconclusive results.
Problems of measuring asthma prevalence

Abstract This review considers the issues involved in measuring the community prevalence of asthma, particularly in the context of international comparisons. We argue that there is no gold standard definition for measuring asthma prevalence, and discuss the currently available methods of case ascertainment. Prevalence studies, if they are to be generalizable, need to involve large sample sizes with high response rates. This necessitates methods that are simple, inexpensive and practicable, but also as sensitive and specific for asthma as possible. We discuss some of the issues that are specific to comparisons of asthma prevalence between diverse populations, and suggest that large surveys using written or video questionnaires of self reported symptoms validated in all of the target populations are the method of choice.
Sorted dominant local color for searching large and heterogeneous image databases

Recent work on Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) have presented alternative methods for fast image indexing and retrieval using Bags of Visual Words (BoVW). In such methods, images are represented as sets of visual words, which can be indexed and searched using well-known text retrieval techniques, allowing fast search on large image databases. In this paper we propose a novel method based on BoVW that improves over current methods by using a new kind of local color descriptor, which we call SDLC, that encodes the most predominant color occurrences in blocks of different image regions. We report results of experiments we performed with two publicly available image databases. The results indicate that the use of SDLC led to a quite competitive CBIR method in comparison to the state-of-the-art.
Voltage-controlled M-M relaxation oscillator

This paper discusses voltage-controlled M-M relaxation oscillator with analytical and circuit simulations. The introduced circuit has two different configurations based on the polarities of memristor; whether they are in the same direction or in the opposite direction. The Analytical formulas are function of the reference voltage such as the oscillation frequency and oscillation conditions for each case are derived with some numerical examples. The circuit simulations are introduced to validate the mathematical concepts as well as the effect of the reference voltage which can be used in frequency modulation application. A comparison between the two oscillators is presented versus different parameters. Finally, similar discussion based on asymmetric voltage controlled oscillator is introduced where different frequency ranges can be obtained.
The relationship between Service Quality Dimensions and Customer Satisfaction in E-Tailing Environment: An Empirical Study on Online Travel and E-mart Retail Model

This paper aims to identify online service quality dimensions that facilitate the customer satisfaction for the e-travel and e-mart online retail. Further, it evaluates how well these dimensions are being perceived by the customers so as to provide an objective measure of service performance. Two phase study was undertaken. The first phase included literature review and expert opinions to identify the service quality dimensions whereas the second phase involved collecting data from students on the identified dimensions and their overall satisfaction on the services. Ten e-service quality dimensions were identified and the extent to which current online retailers provided online service attributes were analyzed to be low or moderate on most of the dimensions for both the e-travel and e-mart service providers. The model tested for the relationship between the service quality dimensions and customer satisfaction was also found to be correlated at a low level.
THE ROLE OF ISO 9001: 2000 CONSULTANTS

The revision of ISO 9000 standards involving a paradigm shift from being quality assurance oriented to quality management oriented imply a change in their implementation approach. This paper chooses to focus on one of the often overlooked issues of ISO 9000 implementation – the role of the ISO 9000 consultant in the implementation process. Specifically, this research attempts to find out (i) the role of consultant in ISO 9000: 1994, (ii) the role of the consultant in ISO 9001: 2000, and (iii) the shifting of roles from ISO 9000: 1994 to ISO 9001: 2000. The results suggest that for ISO 9000: 1994, the ISO consultant plays four major roles in the implementation process: Trainer, Coordinator, Documenter, and Adviser. On the other hand, there can only be one major role for ISO 9000: 2000, that of the ‘Comprehensive Implementer’, suggesting a dramatic change in the ways the ISO consultant assists and coordinates the ISO 9000 applicant (the company). In addition, the results also imply a change in the consultant’s role from that of a ‘knowledge broker’ to a more ‘expert’ oriented one in ISO 9000 implementation.
Myoadenylate deaminase deficiency does not affect muscle anaplerosis during exhaustive exercise in humans

1 Myoadenylate deaminase (AMPD) deficiency is present in 1‐2 % of the population. In theory, this deficiency may alter exercise energy metabolism by impairing the purine nucleotide cycle (PNC) and reducing tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle anaplerosis. The role of the PNC in TCA cycle anaplerosis is still a debated issue in physiology. Using patients with the AMPD1 mutation will allow a human ‘knockout’ approach to answering this question. 2 Muscle AMPD activity and genotype (whole blood AMPD1 analysis) was used to classify participants into three groups: n= 3 with absence of AMPD activity and ‐/‐ AMPD1 genotype (homozygous); n= 4 with less than 50 % normal AMPD activity and +/‐ genotype (heterozygous) and n= 12 with normal AMPD activity and +/+ genotype (control). Biopsies were taken from the vastus lateralis muscle before and after incremental cycle ergometry exercise to exhaustion. The muscle biopsies were analysed for AMPD activity, purine nucleotides/nucleosides and bases, creatine, phosphocreatine, amino acids, and the TCA cycle intermediates malate, citrate and fumarate. 3 Time to exhaustion on the cycle ergometer was not different between groups. Muscle adenosine monophosphate increased significantly with exercise for homozygous subjects as compared with the other groups (P < 0.05). Inosine monophosphate increased significantly after exercise for control (P < 0.05) but not for the homozygous subjects. There were no other between‐group differences for any other measured variables. 4 In summary, complete and partial muscle AMPD deficiency did not affect TCA cycle anaplerosis, phosphocreatine hydrolysis, energy charge or exercise performance.
Sex differences in symptoms of depression: clinical disorder or normal distress?

Studies that employ screening inventories to assess depression in the general population consistently find that women report more symptoms than men. The present study investigates the hypothesis that relatively mild, if not clinically trivial, symptoms of distress largely account for the female excess in symptom reports. A confirmatory factor analysis of data from a 1978 central Wisconsin community survey of 1,026 adults was done, and the results support the hypothesis. The implications of such sources of measurement error for epidemiological investigations are discussed.
Urgent reversal of vitamin K antagonists

### What you need to know A 78 year old man is brought to the emergency department after collapsing. He is drowsy with signs of a left hemiparesis. Computed tomography of the brain shows an intracranial bleed. He has a history of atrial fibrillation, and he has been taking warfarin (INR target 2-3) for several years. His wife says he started a course of antibiotics for a chest infection a week before. His INR is 8. Warfarin is a vitamin K antagonist (fig 1) and a coumarin (more accurately 4-hydroxycoumarin) derivative. It is the most commonly used vitamin K antagonist in the world.1 The main uses for vitamin K antagonists are prevention of stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation, and prevention of thrombosis in those with previous venous thromboembolism or with mechanical heart valves. In some countries, other coumarins are used with a similar action but a shorter (acenocoumarol) or longer (phenprocoumon) half-life. Fig 1 Coagulation factors II (prothrombin), VII, IX, and X, and the physiological anticoagulant proteins C and S, undergo vitamin K-dependent post-translational carboxylation in the liver before secretion into plasma. This step activates the coagulation factors, giving them the ability to bind to calcium. During carboxylation, vitamin K is oxidised to its inactive form vitamin K epoxide, which is regenerated by the enzyme vitamin K epoxide reductase. Vitamin K antagonists act as competitive …