Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Morphological and Molecular Study of Spectatus spectatus (Kathlaniidae), Including Redescription of the Species and Amendment of Genus Diagnosis

Abstract: Spectatus spectatus Travassos, 1923 (Nematoda: Kathlaniidae) found in the intestine of Piaractus mesopotamicus (Holmberg, 1887) (Characiformes: Serrasalmidae) from the River Miranda, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil is redescribed based on morphological evaluation of newly collected material and examination of type and voucher specimens from the Coleção Helmintológica do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz. The following characteristics previously unreported or insufficiently described were observed: morphology of lips, presence of lamellae-like supplementary lips, presence of pharynx and cuticular ring surrounding the oral opening associated with a complex cuticular apparatus anterior to the pharynx, the number and arrangement of caudal papillae (13 pairs plus 1 unpaired), and the position of nerve ring. Since S. spectatus is the type species of Spectatus, the diagnosis of this Neotropical genus is amended. Synonymy of Chabaudinema Díaz-Ungría, 1968 with Spectatus, first proposed in 1980 by Baker, is supported by the present data. Molecular data that include the first sequence of the SSU rDNA for any species of Spectatus indicate a basal position of S. spectatus within Cosmocercoidea, forming a distant lineage from that comprising 2 species of Falcaustra Lane, 1915. This separate position of S. spectatus supports validity of the genus.
Self‐induced accumulation of glutamate in striatal astrocytes and basal ganglia excitotoxicity

Excitotoxicity induced by high levels of extracellular glutamate (GLU) has been proposed as a cause of cell degeneration in basal ganglia disorders. This phenomenon is normally prevented by the astrocytic GLU‐uptake and the GLU‐catabolization to less dangerous molecules. However, high‐GLU can induce reactive gliosis which could change the neuroprotective role of astrocytes. The striatal astrocyte response to high GLU was studied here in an in vivo rat preparation. The transient striatal perfusion of GLU (1 h) by reverse microdialysis induced complex reactive gliosis which persisted for weeks and which was different for radial‐like glia, protoplasmic astrocytes and fibrous astrocytes. This gliosis was accompanied by a persistent cytosolic accumulation of GLU (immunofluorescence quantified by confocal microscope), which persisted for weeks (self‐induced glutamate accumulation), and which was associated to a selective decrease of glutamine synthetase activity. This massive and persistent self‐induced glutamate accumulation in striatal astrocytes could be an additional factor for the GLU‐induced excitotoxicity, which has been implicated in the progression of different basal ganglia disorders. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Exploring Firm Development in the Context of New Zealand SMEs

Abstract The relative strengths and weaknesses of ‘stages of development ‘ models for explaining small firm growth have attracted significant research attention. Despite this there remains little consensus regarding the ways in which SME owner-managers and their firms experience growth, and the transitions and milestones it comprises. In an attempt to heed the call for ongoing investigations into this phenomenon this paper reports on a project investigating the topic in the context of New Zealand small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Findings from 50 interviews with small firm owner-managers are reported, along with conclusions and suggestions for future research.
Continuous hydrolysis of oil by immobilized lipase in a countercurrent reactor

Lipase from Pseudomonas fluorescens biotype I was immobilized by adsorption of anion exchange resin using glutaraldehyde to enhance the adsorption. The activity yield of the immobilized lipase was very low (below 1%) when lipase activity was measured using emulsion substrate. The activity yield was 10–70% when lipase activity was measured using non‐emulsion substrate. Countercurrent reactors for hydrolysis of oil using non‐emulsion substrate were studied. A fluidized bed reactor was found to be superior to a fixed bed one since in a fixed bed reactor the separation rate of the two layers was slow and the flow rate of the reactor had to be slower than the separation rate. A fluidized bed reactor system equipped with settling compartments and stirring compartments was devised. Continuous lipolysis at 60 °C and continuous separation of oily product and water soluble product were performed. After continuous operation for more than 3 months, 70% of the initial activity of the immobilized lipase was observed at the end of the reaction.
Comparing Share Buybacks in Highly Regulated and Less Regulated Market Environments

Do changes in the legal and regulatory environment of a country affect companies' financing/investment decisions? In this paper, we address this question by examining the market's reaction to announcements of share buybacks in Australia. Before 1989, Australian companies were prohibited from repurchasing their shares and, until 1995, they were heavily regulated with few companies repurchasing their shares. In December 1995, the regulations governing share buybacks were simplified making it considerably easier for companies to repurchase their shares. The changing Australian legal regulation of share repurchases provides a unique opportunity to test the effects of legal regulation on companies' financing/investment decisions. We find that, unlike in the United States, the market reacts most positively to on-market buybacks (equivalent to open-market repurchases), while the reaction to other types of share buybacks is positive but not statistically significant. We also find that the abnormal returns earned by resource sector companies announcing share buybacks are higher than the abnormal returns earned by share buybacks announced by companies in the industrial and financial services sectors. An examination of matched companies announcing share buybacks before and after the regulatory changes in December 1995 shows that the market attaches a substantially higher value to the removal of stringent regulations governing share buybacks. This evidence is consistent with the expectation that the stringent regulation of share buybacks during 1989-1995 made them less effective as a credible signaling mechanism.
Framework for dynamic congestion management in open power markets

Congestion management is one of the key functions of any independent system operator (ISO) in the restructured power industry. Improper implementation of congestion management will sabotage the security and reliability of the power system, and the free trading in the markets. Based on a hybrid market structure, this paper presents a new framework for dynamic congestion management when system stability is seriously infringed due to unexpected contingencies. An integrated dynamic congestion management market is proposed, in which all market participants are encouraged to participate by submitting their offers and bids for their owned control means. By optimally utilising the available resources in this market, a system operator can stabilise the post-contingency system in an economical way. A modified quasi-newton method is employed to solve the formulated dynamic optimisation problem. The IEEE 30-bus test system is studied to illustrate the proposed method.
How Do Fund Managers Invest: Self Strategy of Herding in Private Pension Funds?

We use Sias (2014) approach to decompose the correlation among investment strategies followed by pension funds administrators in the Chilean private pension fund system during the periods 1997-2001 and 2002-2005, and find that most of this correlation is explained by herding behavior. That is, fund managers mimicking the investment strategy of other funds. We argue that the obligated minimum guaranteed return that pension funds institutions must fulfill, created the incentive for fund managers to herd.
Does the Internet compete with or complement bricks‐and‐mortar bank branches?

What does the Internet imply for the business of banking and how will it affect it? Are branch offices “doomed” and obsolete? Explores the major Swedish banks’ adoption of the Internet with a view to highlighting the ensuing changes in the way banks conduct their business and deliver their services. Although the number of branches is shrinking in rhythm with increased Internet use, their role is increasingly changing as banks move from a view of the Internet as a means for improving efficiency, to one of seeing it as a strategic device for transforming the business. Since more and more of the transaction processing load is taken over by technology, banks are concentrating on strengthening their marketing approach and re‐inventing their business model. In this context, traditional bank branches, with an infrastructure supporting transaction processing, are being transformed into an open‐space interface within which bank experts engage intimately with their customers, delivering specialised, advisory services.
Improving treatment access and primary care referrals for depression in a national community‐based outreach programme for the elderly

Mental illness is highly prevalent and disabling, but is under‐treated. Outreach services attempt to overcome system and personal barriers to care, but there are few reports of their effects in improving access and use of mental health services. In the Community‐based Early Psychiatric Interventional Strategy (CEPIS) programme in Singapore, community nurses routinely screened seniors for depressive symptoms, and provided psychoeducation and referral for primary care treatment. We evaluated the impact of the outreach programme and the extent to which determinants of treatment‐seeking were altered by removing socioeconomic, physical and cognitive barriers to care.
Corporate Social Responsibility and Analyst's Recommendation

Investment analysts act as important capital market participants that transmit information about the merits of doing CSR on firm’s financial perspective to investors. If an analyst perceives that CSR engagement is value-enhancing, then he/she tends to rate a “buy” for the firm with superior CSR performance, and vice versa. This paper examines the linkage between a firm’s CSR engagement and its frequency of analysts’ recommendation and how favorable recommendations are. Quarterly data of listed companies on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) from 2005Q1 to 2012Q2 is employed. We construct dichotomous CSR measures based on the Common Wealth’s "Best-Corporate-Citizens" and the Global Views Monthly’s "CSR-Award. " We collect firm data about analyst recommendations from the DataStream I/B/E/S database. Regression results generally show: (1) firms with superior CSR performance have a higher percentage of hold recommendations and a smaller percentage of buy/sell recommendations; (2) CSR-firms do not have a superior recommendation score than non-CSR-firms and receive a lower frequency of recommendation; (3) while CSR-firms in a high-growth industry receive a higher percentage of hold recommendations and lower frequency of buy recommendations, CSR-firm in a non-high-growth industry receive a lower percentage of hold recommendations and a higher frequency of buy recommendations; and (4) after controlling for self-selection of firms engaging in CSR, firms with superior performance on CSR tend to have a greater percentage of hold recommendations, a higher recommendation score and a higher frequency of recommendation. The evidence generally supports the view that firms engaging in CSR receive financial market benefit in terms of more favorable analyst recommendation, potentially enhancing their market value.
Methods for hysteresis losses determinations at non-standard ring core geometries equivalent to Epstein measurements

The iron losses in electrical machines differ significantly from those of measurements using the standardized measurement method, i.e. by use of an Epstein frame. In order to obtain a better approximation of the losses in an electrical machine, several toroidal geometries were examined more closely. In the first step, according to the standardized method, a ring-geometry was chosen, which corresponds to the magnetic path length of the Epstein frame. Starting from this reference ring and by gradual reduction of the diameter, further ring cores were measured. Within this framework, different methods were used, in which e.g. the influence of axial height, length of the cutting edge relative to the area or the ratio of outer and inner diameter was investigated. In addition to the measurements, numerical calculations were performed. Here, the focus lies on the exploration of the field density distribution over the ring width with respect to the various methods. Taking into account for those processing effects with the highest impact, the smallest geometries of each method and the largest ring, acting as a reference, were studied in detail. The investigations on the toroidal cores of the methods were carried out at a frequency of 400 Hz and a target minimum polarization of 1.0 T. As a final outcome, a recalculation of an existing machine with the new parameters of a selected ring nucleus was done.
COMMUNITY-GENERATED ONLINE IMAGE DICTORNARY

Online image dictionary has become more and more popular in concepts cognition. However, for existing online systems, only very few images are manually picked to demonstrate the concepts. Currently, there is very little research found on automatically choosing large scale online images with the help of semantic analysis. In this paper, we propose a novel framework to utilize community-generated online multimedia content to visually illustrate certain concepts. Our proposed framework adapts various techniques, including the correlation analysis, semantic and visual clustering to produce sets of high quality, precise, diverse and representative images to visually translate a given concept. To make the best use of our results, a user interface is deployed, which displays the representative images according the latent semantic coherence. The objective and subjective evaluations show the feasibility and effectiveness of our approach.
Semantic roles labeling system for Slovak sentences

The proposed paper is focused on the automatic semantic roles labeling problem. First, semantic roles are discussed and a new two-layer set of semantic roles for Slovak language is described. Then the automatic semantic roles labeling system is introduced. It uses newly-designed training and recognition tool based on Viterbi algorithm, where HMM models are trained on a small “example-based” manually-annotated corpus of Slovak sentences. The classification system is able to classify “unseen” tokens using information about word suffices. The pilot evaluation was performed on the testing part of the corpus.
Cloud Computing Security Case Studies and Research

Cloud computing is an emerging technological paradigm that provides a flexible and scalable information technology infrastructure to enable business agility. There are different vulnerabilities in cloud computing and various threats to cloud computing. We have investigated several real-world cases where companies' cloud was infiltrated by attacks. In this paper several types of attacks are discussed, real-world cases are studied, and the solutions that providers developed are presented. Our current research will also be discussed.
The Impact of Information Asymmetry, Moral Hazard and the Structure of Funding on Corporate U.S. Dollars Loan Pricing: The Empirical Study in Indonesia the Period 1990-1997

This study aims to answer the question: 'What factors that influence the price of corporate loans in Indonesia? ' and 'Are there some differences in loan pricing between several types of creditors? '. Furthermore, this research is to develop and test the loan pricing model that was developed in America and Europe to the context or setting in Asia, especially Indonesia. Different conditions and settings of the financial system between America/Europe and Asia, especially Indonesia, causing the loan pricing model that was developed in America/Europe can not be fully implemented for Indonesia.Key issues in this study consisted of: information asymmetry, moral hazard and funding structure. The first issue, information asymmetry consists of the type of creditors, foreign and domestic ownership, public and non-public ownership. The second issue, moral hazard problem consists of variables governmental and non-government ownership, and the special relationship between creditors and debtors. The last issue, creditors’ structure of funding is proxied by the ratio of CD/ML. In addition, this study also adobt the loan pricing models that are developed in America/Europe as control variables. This study also examines the argument of Strahan (1999) whether the loan fees also reflected the condition of the loan as well as loan spreads.The OLS regression (Ordinary Least Squares) with white correction method (White heteroskedasticity correction) for heteroscedasticity problem is conducted to test the model. Various samples and sub samples are prepared to answer various research questions and hypotheses. Testing between regression coefficients are conducted to examine differences in loan pricing between different types of creditors for each variable in the model.The test results generally show that only two new variables suggested by the study, namely: ownership and structure of funding have a significant contribution to the loan pricing model. For variable type of institution consisting of investment banks and commercial banks indicate that generally there is no difference in loan pricing between the two, only in some models of these variables are not significant with signs consistent. Ownership variable show results consistent with the hypothesis and significant effect on loan prices. While the variable special relationship between creditors and debtors have no effect on loan prices, it is due to inter-group loans made by conglomerates. For the case of capital costs of the creditor shows that the variable has a positive effect on lending rates set by creditors. Testing different regression coefficients lead to the conclusion that domestic creditors succeeded in detecting an increased risk of the debtor before the economic crisis of 1997 compared with foreign creditors.
Scalable Name Lookup with Adaptive Prefix Bloom Filter for Named Data Networking

In Named Data Networking (NDN), packet forwarding decisions rely upon lookup operations on variable-length hierarchical names instead of fixed-length host addresses. This pivotal feature introduces new challenges in the deployment of NDN at the Internet scale. In this letter, a novel Name Lookup engine with Adaptive Prefix Bloom filter (NLAPB) is conceived, in which each NDN name/prefix is split into B-prefix followed by T-suffix. B-prefix is matched by Bloom filters whereas T-suffix is processed by the small-scale trie. The length of B-prefixes (and T-suffixes) is dynamically throttled based on their popularity in order to accelerate the lookup. Experimental results show that: (i) NLAPB is able to lower the false positive rate with respect to a lookup entirely based on Bloom filters; (ii) it decreases the memory requirements with respect to a trie-based approach; (iii) it reduces processing time with respect to both them.
Structure of amorphous semiconductors: Reverse Monte Carlo studies on a-C, a-Si, and a-Ge.

As an attempt to establish a unified treatise of the structure of amorphous germanium, silicon, and (tetrahedral) carbon, a series of reverse Monte Carlo simulations were carried out for all of the three materials. A number of constraints have been applied during the calculations in order to test how many (and how much) different assumptions can be consistent with given experimental data sets. Solely on the basis of diffraction data, the results of the unconstrained calculations seem to be the models of the above systems that are the most consistent with the experiment, but these models are not satisfactory from the electronic structure point of view. With slightly worse agreement with the data, it was possible to generate dominant tetrahedrally coordinated models (with coordination numbers equal to exactly 4) in each case. The most extreme model proposed is the one where no fourfold coordinated atom could be found. However, the proportion of tetrahedral angles in this latter case is still high. It is therefore concluded that the most characteristic common feature of these amorphous semiconductors is not the fourfold coordination but the always apparent presence of closely tetrahedral bond angles.
A Directly Modulated Multiwavelength Transmitter Monolithically Integrated on InP

This paper presents an integrated multiwavelength transmitter with eight channels realized on a generic InP integration platform. The photonic integrated circuit (PIC) comprises eight tunable directly modulated distributed feedback lasers emitting in the C-band, eight monitoring photodetectors, and MMI couplers. The PIC has been mounted on a printed circuit board for easier operation and wavelength control. The directly modulated lasers, designed with a 100 GHz spacing between 1541.4 and 1547 nm, show a 3-dB bandwidth up to 12 GHz and a tunability range of about 4 nm. Transmission experiments demonstrate error-free operation in back-to-back and open eye-diagrams up to 20 Gb/s per channel, while short-range communications (along a 2.1 km fiber span) up to 15 Gb/s per channel incur in a limited power penalty (4.5 dB at a bit error rate = 10 −9).
Development of a Statistical Method for Predicting Human Driver Decisions

As autonomous vehicles enter the fleet, there will be a long period when these vehicles will have to interact with human drivers. One of the challenges for autonomous vehicles is that human drivers do not communicate their decisions well. However, the kinematic behavior of a human-driven vehicle may be a good predictor of driver intent within a short time frame. The authors analyzed the kinematic time-series data (e.g., speed) for a set of drivers making left turns at intersections to predict whether the driver would stop before executing the turn or not. The authors used principal components analysis (PCA) to generate independent dimensions that explain the variation in vehicle speed before a turn. These dimensions remained relatively consistent throughout the maneuver, allowing the authors to compute independent scores on these dimensions for different time windows throughout the approach to the intersection. The authors then linked these PCA scores to whether a driver would stop before executing a left turn using the Bayesian additive regression trees (BART). The model achieved an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of more than 0.90 by -25m away from the center of an intersection.
Acceptance of Genetically Modified Foods with Health Benefits: A Study in Germany

A study was carried out in Germany in order to assess consumers' acceptance of genetically modified (GM) foods with health benefits (bread, yohurt and eggs). Acceptability of GM foods increases when its source does not involve animal products such as eggs. Three factors have been identified as direct antecedents of the acceptance of GM foods: respondents' attitude towards biotechnology, health consciousness, and time pressure, being the first one the most salient one. Price consciousness has an indirect positive impact (mediated by health consciousness) upon acceptance of GM products. Males were more likely to accept GM foods with health benefits.