Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Which Factors are Priced? An Application of the Fama French Three-Factor Model in Australia

type="main" xml:id="ecpa12119-abs-0001"> Various empirical studies on the application of the Fama French three-factor model have been attempted and the conclusions are mixed on which factors from the model are priced in the Australian context. Different approaches to portfolio formations have been adopted in different studies. This empirical study is conducted to examine the robustness of the estimates under various approaches to portfolio formation and to provide additional evidence on the debate of the “relevance” of the Fama French three-factor model in Australian regulatory decisions. Using the Fama and MacBeth (1973)'s two-stage cross-sectional regression technique on the period of five years, the standard Australian regulatory cycle, from July 2009 to May 2014, the findings from this study are mixed. It is argued that while the application of the Fama French three-factor model is interesting for research endeavour, the adoption of this model into public policy is problematic and as such, not recommended.
Success and Failure: Two Longitudinal Case Studies on Media-Tablet Usage in CRM

Media-tablets are gaining widespread acceptance in companies and are increasingly being used for various business tasks. However, although there are several successful examples, a growing number of media-tablet projects get turned down. Based on case study data covering one year, this paper presents two projects that introduced a front office customer-relationship-management application for media-tablets. For each case, we conducted expert interviews in 2011 and 2012 with both the project manager and internal client of the project, documented the existing solution, and conducted a user survey. Over the time frame, the two projects evolved differently in terms of success. While one project was further advanced, the other had in fact been turned-down completely by management. A comparison of the cases reveals that the successful project was funded by an operating department, and the advantages of the solution had been communicated to all internal stakeholders. In contrast, the other project was driven primarily by user demand for media-tablets and was executed as an innovation project without a clear business rational. Therefore, we advise managers to ensure that media-tablet projects follow a well-defined business logic and to communicate the advantages to all relevant internal stakeholders.
Biochemical Diversity of Carboxyl Esterases and Lipases from Lake Arreo (Spain): a Metagenomic Approach

ABSTRACT The esterases and lipases from the α/β hydrolase superfamily exhibit an enormous sequence diversity, fold plasticity, and activities. Here, we present the comprehensive sequence and biochemical analyses of seven distinct esterases and lipases from the metagenome of Lake Arreo, an evaporite karstic lake in Spain (42�46′N, 2�59′W; altitude, 655 m). Together with oligonucleotide usage patterns and BLASTP analysis, our study of esterases/lipases mined from Lake Arreo suggests that its sediment contains moderately halophilic and cold-adapted proteobacteria containing DNA fragments of distantly related plasmids or chromosomal genomic islands of plasmid and phage origins. This metagenome encodes esterases/lipases with broad substrate profiles (tested over a set of 101 structurally diverse esters) and habitat-specific characteristics, as they exhibit maximal activity at alkaline pH (8.0 to 8.5) and temperature of 16 to 40�C, and they are stimulated (1.5 to 2.2 times) by chloride ions (0.1 to 1.2 M), reflecting an adaptation to environmental conditions. Our work provides further insights into the potential significance of the Lake Arreo esterases/lipases for biotechnology processes (i.e., production of enantiomers and sugar esters), because these enzymes are salt tolerant and are active at low temperatures and against a broad range of substrates. As an example, the ability of a single protein to hydrolyze triacylglycerols, (non)halogenated alkyl and aryl esters, cinnamoyl and carbohydrate esters, lactones, and chiral epoxides to a similar extent was demonstrated.
Withdrawn Security Offerings

Abstract We examine the stock price behavior associated with public offerings of common stock and convertible debt that are withdrawn by the issuing firm, as well as the stock price behavior associated with completed offerings. We find that stock returns are negative in the period from the announcement to the withdrawal, and are statistically insignificant from the announcement to the issuance. Stock returns are positive at the withdrawal and negative at the issuance. Furthermore, the average stock returns associated with withdrawals are significantly different from zero only when the reported reason for the withdrawals is unfavorable market conditions. Our evidence suggests that managers' decisions to withdraw equity offerings depend on recent stock price behavior, and that managers' decisions convey information about firm value to market participants.
THE IMPACT OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS ON MONETARY AND FISCAL POLICY IN THE EURO AREA

Coordnation of both policies allows to avoid crisis situations having destibilizing effect on economy. Cooperation between central bank and government is quite difficult due to preclusive aims of fiscal and monetary policies. Financial crisis in 2008 had a profound impact on many changes in governance of monetary and fiscal policies in the euro area. It revealed significant economic decline and problems related to public finances (increase in debt obligations) in the euro area. In reaction to the crisis in the euro area, the monetary authorities introduced many changes. An increase in expansionary monetary policy speaks volumes about an attempt to utilize the transmission channel of the monetary policy to improve economy. This paper focuses on highliting the changes ocurred in monetary policy and fiscal policies that were the consequence of the financial crisis in the euro area. The article verifies the hypothesis that the increased level of the coordination of monetary policy and fiscal polices caused by the financial crisis contributed to deepening the crisis in its early stage in the euro area (in the period of 2008-2009). To verify the hypothesis the following research methods were used: review of scientific literature, statistical research methods and graphic presentation of economic events.
A THEORY OF ORGANIZATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CREATION

This paper proposes a theory of organizational knowledge creation, which is defined as the process that organizationally amplifies the knowledge created by individuals and crystallizes it as part of the knowledge system of an organization. The process is a never–ending spiral of tacit and explicit knowledge through four modes of knowledge conversion: i.e., socialization (from tacit to tacit), externalization (from tacit to explicit), combination (from explicit to explicit), and internalization (from explicit to tacit). Each of the four modes of knowledge conversion is explained, using actual vignettes. Finally, a few implications are argued.
Diversity Management: Development, Practices, and Perceptions among State and Local Government Agencies

As diversity increases among citizens and employees, human resource practitioners in the public sector have come to view diversity management strategies as essential for the effective performance of organizations. An examination of best practices among private and public organizations reveals common components necessary for successful diversity initiatives. While there have been numerous studies on diversity management in the federal government, far less is known about diversity management at the state and local level. In light of the best practices research on the factors necessary for successful diversity management, this study examines the extent of diversity initiatives at various state and local government agencies. Measures used to develop diversity strategies, diversity management practices, professional development initiatives, organizational policies, and perceptions of effectiveness are considered. The findings demonstrate a few variations based on level of government, region, and size of agency. In addition, the majority of respondents believed that the organization's diversity strategy was effective at recruitment, retention, development, and promotion; however, there was uncertainty about the effectiveness of the diversity strategy on organizational performance.
DECISION AND ORGANIZATION – PROCESSES OF STRATEGIC DECISION MAKING AND THEIR EXPLANATION

Strategic decisions shape the course taken by an organization, whether it be in the public sector or the private sector. An analysis is reported of 150 cases of the making of such decisions in both publicly and privately owned organizations. Three types of decision-making process are identified, sporadic, fluid, and constricted. Differences due to the nature of the subject matter under decision, and to the nature of the organization, are examined. Differences in the propensity to sporadic decision-making processes in the administration of publicly owned organizations are described.
Experience-based learning of symbolic numerical constraints

Learning symbolic-level numerical constraints is key to use abstractions in effective reasoning and transfer of knowledge for robot systems. We investigate this problem in an experience-based learning framework which uses inductive logic programming as the learning method. Our particular focus is on learning numerical constraints which is an open issue for ILP systems. Some approaches overcome this by using background knowledge given by domain experts. However, using expert knowledge is both expensive and domain dependent. To obtain more general solutions, numerical constraints should be induced by the robot system itself. For this purpose, we present a constraint induction method based on lazy evaluation, designed for deriving general numerical constraints from observations. We extend Aleph, an existing ILP system based on inverse entailment, with a constraint induction approach using a constraint solver. We analyze our method on some sample scenarios and demonstrate the cases where our method can induce the target concept while the prior lazy evaluation method cannot. Our results indicate that our method can generalize numerical constraints by the self observations of robots.
Optical coherence tomography angiography of circumscribed choroidal hemangioma treated with photodynamic therapy

We describe features of a circumscribed choroidal hemangioma (CCH) treated with photodynamic therapy (PDT) by means of optical coherence tomography angiography (OCT-A). A 40-year-old man had a complaint of decreasing visual acuity in his left eye for 10 days. A diagnosis of CCH was confirmed by fundus examination, fluorescein angiography, and indocyanine green angiography. An OCT-A study of choroidal lesion before and after PDT was carried out. Segmented en face OCT-A of CCH showed multiple irregular connected vascular channels with hyperflow and a capillary-like lesion. Absent and/or reduced intrachannel flow in most of the intratumoral vessels was shown by OCT-A soon after treatment (2 days), with normalization of vascular flow 7 days and 1 month after PDT. OCT-A was able to noninvasively visualize intrinsic vasculature of CCH showing vascular remodeling after PDT.
Molecular Dynamics Simulations To Investigate the Domain Swapping Mechanism of Human Cystatin C

Human cystatin C (HCC), one of the amyloidgenic proteins, has been proved to form a dimeric structure via a domain swapping process and then cause amyloid deposits in the brains of patients suffering from Alzheimerapos;s disease. HCC monomer consists of a core with a five‐stranded antiparallel β‐sheet (β region) wrapped around a central helix. The connectivity of these secondary structures is: (N)‐β1‐α‐β2‐L1‐β3‐AS‐β4‐L2‐β5‐(C). In this study, various molecular dynamics simulations were conducted to investigate the conformational changes of the monomeric HCC at different temperatures (300 and 500 K) and pH levels (2, 4, and 7) to gain insight into the domain swapping mechanism. The results show that high temperature (500 K) and low pH (pH 2) will trigger the domain swapping process of HCC. We further proposed that the domain swapping mechanism of HCC follows four steps: ( 1 ) the α‐helix moves away from the β region; ( 2 ) the contacts between β2 and β3‐AS disappear; ( 3 ) the β2‐L1‐β3 hairpin unfolds following the so‐called “zip‐up” mechanism; and finally ( 4 ) the HCC dimer is formed. Our study shows that high temperature can accelerate the unfolding of HCC and the departure of the α‐helix from the β‐region, especially at low pH value. This is attributed to the fact that that low pH results in the protonation of the side chains of Asp, Glu, and His residues, which further disrupts the following four salt‐bridge interactions stabilizing the α–β interface of the native structure: Asp15‐Arg53 (β1‐β2), Glu21/20‐Lys54 (helix‐β2), Asp40‐Arg70 (helix‐AS), and His43‐Asp81 (β2‐AS).
Is there any causality between human resource development and economic growth? A provincial case study on Pakistan

The present study aims to investigate the causality between economic growth and human resource development. In doing so, LLL (Larsson et al., 2001) panel co-integration rank test for heterogeneous panel models and recently developed panel causality tests by Hurlin and Venet (2001) are employed on panel of four provinces. The results of panel rank tests indicate that there exists a long run relationship between human resource development and economic growth in Pakistan. The results based on panel homogeneous causality hypothesis show that economic growth does not cause human resource development, while human resource development causes economic growth. However, panel non-homogeneous hypothesis suggest that there exist bi-directional causality relationship between human resource development and economic growth in Pakistan. The empirical evidence of heterogeneous causality hypothesis confirms the existence of bi-directional casual relationship between human resource development and economic growth in Punjab, while human resource development causes economic activity in Sind.
Fully Automatic Segmentation of Abdominal Organs from CT Images Using Fast Marching Methods

Computed tomography (CT) images are becoming an invaluable mean for abdominal organ investigation. In the field of medical image processing, some of the current interests are the automatic diagnosis of liver, spleen, and kidney pathologies and the 3D volume rendering of the abdominal organs. The first and fundamental step in all these studies is the automatic organs segmentation, that is still an open problem. In this paper we propose a fully automatic gray level based segmentation framework that employs a fast marching technique; the proposed segmentation scheme is general, and employs only established and not critical anatomical knowledge. For this reason, it can be easily adapted to separately segment different abdominal organs, by overcoming problems due to the high inter and intra patient gray level and shape variabilities; the extracted volumes are then combined to achieve robust results. The system performance has been evaluated on the data of 40 patients, by comparing the automatically detected organ volumes to the organ boundaries manually traced by three experts. The good quality of the achieved results is proved by the fact that they are comparable to the inter and intra personal variability of the manual segmentation produced by experts.
Understanding principles of integration and segregation using whole-brain computational connectomics: implications for neuropsychiatric disorders

To survive in an ever-changing environment, the brain must seamlessly integrate a rich stream of incoming information into coherent internal representations that can then be used to efficiently plan for action. The brain must, however, balance its ability to integrate information from various sources with a complementary capacity to segregate information into modules which perform specialized computations in local circuits. Importantly, evidence suggests that imbalances in the brain's ability to bind together and/or segregate information over both space and time is a common feature of several neuropsychiatric disorders. Most studies have, however, until recently strictly attempted to characterize the principles of integration and segregation in static (i.e. time-invariant) representations of human brain networks, hence disregarding the complex spatio-temporal nature of these processes. In the present Review, we describe how the emerging discipline of whole-brain computational connectomics may be used to study the causal mechanisms of the integration and segregation of information on behaviourally relevant timescales. We emphasize how novel methods from network science and whole-brain computational modelling can expand beyond traditional neuroimaging paradigms and help to uncover the neurobiological determinants of the abnormal integration and segregation of information in neuropsychiatric disorders. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Mathematical methods in medicine: neuroscience, cardiology and pathology’.
Are Our Data Relevant to the Theory? The Case of Aggregate Consumption

Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) in the National Income and Product Accounts are often used to investigate whether the time series properties of consumption are consistent with the permanent-income/life-cycle hypotheses. In this article, the author addresses the issue of the general quality of the PCE data and its definitional consistency with the typical model of the intertemporal allocation of consumption. He finds that, in terms of the population coverage and the consumption concept, the raw PCE data are unsuitable for the analysis of the permanent-income/life-cycle hypotheses. More fundamentally, adjustments to the data to provide great consistency with the theory alter critical conclusions concerning the time series properties of consumption.
Ethnic Spatial Segregation and Tobacco Consumption: A Multilevel Repeated Cross-Sectional Analysis of Smoking Prevalence in Urban New Zealand, 1981–1996

The growing literature on the role of ethnic segregation in understanding spatial inequalities in mortality and morbidity has not yet been extended to the study of health-related behaviours. We address this gap in knowledge through an examination of the geography of smoking prevalence in New Zealand, using a multilevel repeated cross-sectional analysis of smoking prevalences in 1981 and 1996 as revealed in the New Zealand census. Smoking prevalences are explored for fourteen age and sex groups, nested in 1110 census area units. These in turn are nested in forty primary and secondary urban areas. We consider different measures of segregation and focus in detail on the relationship between smoking and Māori ethnic isolation. We examine the interplay between deprivation and segregation, addressing questions concerning the impact of changing segregation on changes in smoking behaviour. We hypothesise that more highly segregated populations suffer more psychosocial stress and so may smoke more. Results reveal the changing dynamics of smoking prevalence over time, and challenge initial assumptions that spatial ethnic segregation should relate to smoking prevalence.
Interactive Multidimensional Scaling of Cognitive Structure Underlying Person Perception

by INTERSCAL were predictive of semantic differential type judgments, Repertory Grid Test triad judgments, and independent pair-comparison judgments. Typically, one or two dimensions were recovered and were labeled evaluative and potency dimensions, respectively. These dimensional structures were stable within individuals over a period of ten weeks. This pattern of overall consistency implies that particular characteristics of an individ-
AAaS: Area approaching and spray-and-wait routing scheme for DTN in Android

Most of the existing DTN routing algorithms have been studied in the simulation environment. They are not sufficiently used to the historical location and historical neighbor's information. So AAaS (Area Approaching and Spray-and-Wait) routing algorithm is proposed, which considers the practicability of the algorithm and the rules of the node's movement and the law of the meeting. AAaS divides the map into areas by the administrative area, public places and areas the DTN nodes clustered with historical GPS position. Each area maintenance the frequency vectors of different time scales and the frequency vectors of the historical encountered neighbor. AAaS forwards the bundles by these frequency vectors in the bundle lifetime, select the appropriate next hop, more efficient use of the limited bandwidth of encountered nodes in DTN network. Finally, the prototype of AAaS routing algorithm is implemented in Android based on Bytewalla. The experimental results prove that, even in the case of the buffer is not limited, the AAaS is more efficient than Epidemic in the use of the limited bandwidth between encountered nodes.
Electrical Properties of Low-Temperature-Compatible P-Channel Polycrystalline-Silicon TFTs Using High-$\kappa$ Gate Dielectrics

In this paper, we describe a systematic study of the electrical properties of low-temperature-compatible p-channel polycrystalline-silicon thin-film transistors (poly-Si TFTs) using HfO<sub>2</sub> and HfSiO<sub>x</sub>, high-k gate dielectrics. Because of their larger gate capacitance density, the TFTs containing the high-k gate dielectrics exhibited superior device performance in terms of higher I<sub>on</sub>/I<sub>off</sub> current ratios, lower subthreshold swings (SSs), and lower threshold voltages (V<sub>th</sub>), relative to conventional deposited-SiO<sub>2</sub>, albeit with slightly higher OFF-state currents. The TFTs incorporating HfSiO<sub>x</sub>, as the gate dielectric had ca. 1.73 times the mobility (mu<sub>FE</sub>) relative to that of the deposited-SiO<sub>2</sub> TFTs; in contrast, the HfO<sub>2</sub> TFTs exhibited inferior mobility. We investigated the mechanism for the mobility degradation in these HfO<sub>2</sub> TFTs. The immunity of the HfSiO<sub>x</sub>, TFTs was better than that of the HfO<sub>2</sub> TFTs-in terms of their V<sub>th</sub> shift, SS degradation, mu<sub>FE</sub> degradation, and drive current deterioration-against negative bias temperature instability stressing. Thus, we believe that HfSiO<sub>x</sub>, rather than HfO<sub>2</sub>, is a potential candidate for use as a gate-dielectric material in future high-performance poly-Si TFTs.
A FRAMEWORK FOR AUDITING AND ENHANCING PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT SYSTEMS

To be world class and be classified as a world class manufacturer, manufacturing organisations need to have a number of critical ingredients: one such ingredient is that of an appropriate performance measurement system. Measurement systems incorporating financial and non‐financial measures have been a topic of considerable interest to both business practitioners and academics for most of the 1990s. A voluminous amount of attention has focussed on manufacturing industry, especially regarding the selection and implementation of non‐financial performance measures. Throughout the 1990s, various novel frameworks have been devised to aid manufacturing organisations to select and implement measures. This paper will outline one such framework that was developed taking into account industry design requirements. Results of the framework having been implemented will be illustrated through a short case study, with the framework’s potential and shortcomings being discussed.