Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Corporate governance and information asymmetry between managers and investors

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of governance on information asymmetry between managers and investors. Hence, the paper seeks to extend prior voluntary disclosure research.Design/methodology/approach – The paper investigates how a firm's governance maps into the level of information asymmetry between managers and investors. Governance encompasses two complementary dimensions: formal monitoring attributes and voluntary disclosure about board processes. Information asymmetry is measured by either share price volatility or Tobin's Q.Findings – The results show that some formal monitoring attributes (board and audit committee size) as well as the extent of voluntary governance disclosure reduce information asymmetry. This suggests that governance disclosure may complement a firm's governance monitoring attributes, especially in a country such as Canada where investors have good legal protection. It appears also that firms take into account ultimate costs and benefits to shareh.
Platelet Glycoprotein IIb/IIIa Receptor Blockade: Lessening the Risk of Coronary Interventions

Summary For the patient undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention, the administration of a platelet glycoprotein IIb/IIIa receptor blocker reduces the incidence of a periprocedural nonfatal myocardial infarction and the need for unplanned emergency stenting. In the diabetic patient undergoing intracoronary stenting, the use of a platelet glycoprotein IIb/IIIa receptor blocker appears to decrease the need for subsequent target vessel revascularization. There is considerable evidence in support of the use of glycoprotein IIb/IIIa receptor inhibitors in all categories of patients – “high-risk” patients, “low-risk” patients, and those undergoing primary angioplasty for acute myocardial infarction – and for the full armamentarium of percutaneous procedures (angioplasty, directional atherectomy, rotational atherectomy, and intracoronary stenting).
Labor Market Dynamics and Structural Change: Evidence from China

Structural change theories usually assume agents are homogeneous. However, because of demand-side or supply-side heterogeneities, the probability of switching among sectors differs across people. This paper reveals these differences through restoring a long-period, individual-level panel dataset from China's Urban Household Survey for 1986–2009. We find that both for people who started working for the first time and those who switched jobs, the sector choice depends on personal characteristics. In particular, women and people with higher educational attainment or a previous white-collar job are more likely to join the tertiary sector and less likely to join the primary sector. These effects are substantial even if the macroeconomic variables used in conventional structural change theories are controlled. They are also robust in various periods and at more detailed industry levels. Our research suggests that it is important to pay greater attention to the labor composition when making policy related to economic structural change.
The Welfare of Children During the Great Depression

This paper examines the impact of New Deal relief programs on demographic outcomes in major U.S. cities during the 1930s. A five-equation structural model is estimated that tests the effect of the relief spending on infant mortality, non-infant mortality, and fertility. For 111 cities for which data on relief spending during the 1930s were available, we collected annual data that matched the relief spending to the demographic variables, socioeconomic descriptions of the cities, and retail sales, which serve as a proxy for the level of economic activity. Relief spending directly lowered infant mortality rates to the degree that changes in relief spending can explain nearly one-third of the decline in infant mortality during the 1930s. Relief spending also raised general fertility rates. Our estimates suggest that the cost of saving an infant life during this period ranged from $2 to 4.5 million dollars (measured in year 2000 dollars). This range is similar to that found in modern studies of the effect of Medicaid and is within the range of market values of human life.
Absence of a space-charge-derived enhancement of ionic conductivity in β|γ- heterostructured 7H- and 9R-AgI

Extreme room temperature conductivity enhancements have been reported for nanocrystalline AgI of up to × 104 relative to bulk β-AgI (Guo et al 2005 Adv. Mater. 17 2815–9). These samples were identified as possessing 7H and 9R polytype structures, which can be considered as heterostructures composed of thin, commensurate layers in the β (wurtzite) and γ (zincblende) phases. It has been proposed that space-charge layer formation at β|γ-interfaces causes near complete disordering of the Ag+ sublattice in these polytypes, resulting in a massive intrinsic enhancement of ionic conductivity. We have performed molecular dynamics simulations of β- and γ-AgI and mixed β|γ superlattices, to study the effect of heterostructuring on intrinsic defect populations and Ag+ transport. The ionic conductivities and Ag+ diffusion coefficients vary as β > 7H ≈ 9R ≈ 10L > γ. The β|γ-heterostructured polytypes show no enhancement in defect populations or Ag+ mobilities relative to the β-AgI phase, and instead behave as simple composites of β- and γ-AgI. This contradicts the proposal that the extreme conductivity enhancement observed for 7H and 9R polytypes is explained by extensive space-charge formation.
Small Area Variation in Homeownership

The aim of the study is two-fold. First, it adds to the existing state-of-the-art housing research by suggesting the implementation of new econometric methodology. Specifically, the study adds to earlier studies of homeownership by adding spatial impacts. It advocates simultaneous adjustment for intra-municipal correlation and heterogeneity as well as spatial spillover patterns between municipalities. It concludes that ignorance of controlling for intra-municipal correlation, heterogeneity and spatial spillover skews conclusions regarding effects of the determinants of homeownership. Furthermore, it finds that endogenous as well as exogenous spatial spillovers are essential parts of specifying demand for homeownership. Specifically, the demand for homeownership spills over and stimulates demand in neighbouring municipalities, and house prices and incomes exert positive effects on demand for homeownership in neighbouring municipalities. Second, as is clear from the above empirical conclusions, the study adds to existing empirical research and knowledge.
Enzyme Kinetics and Interaction Studies for Human JNK1β1 and Substrates Activating Transcription Factor 2 (ATF2) and c-Jun N-terminal kinase (c-Jun)*

Background: JNK1β1 has a role in diabetes and unique substrate interactions could affect function. Results: JNK1β1 showed lower affinity and capacity to phosphorylate ATF2 than other variants. ATP binding and JNK1β1 activation affected substrate interaction rates and affinities. Conclusion: JNK1β1 activation and ATP binding affects interactions with substrates. Significance: First kinetic and biochemical characterization of a β JNK splice variant. c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) is a stress signal transducer linked to cell death, and survival. JNK1 has been implicated in obesity, glucose intolerance, and insulin resistance. In this study we report the kinetic mechanism for JNK1β1 with transcription factors ATF2 and c-Jun along with interaction kinetics for these substrates. JNK1β1 followed a random sequential mechanism forming a ternary complex between JNK-substrate-ATP. Km for ATF2 and c-Jun was 1.1 and 2.8 μm, respectively. Inhibition studies using adenosine 5′-(β,γ-methylenetriphosphate) and a peptide derived from JNK interacting protein 1 (JIP1) supported the proposed kinetic mechanism. Biolayer interferometry studies showed that unphosphorylated JNK1β1 bound to ATF2 with similar affinity as it did to c-Jun (KD = 2.60 ± 0.34 versus 1.00 ± 0.35 μm, respectively). The presence of ATP increased the affinity of unphosphorylated JNK1β1 for ATF2 and c-Jun, to 0.80 ± 0.04 versus 0.65 ± 0.07 μm, respectively. Phosphorylation of JNK1β1 decreased the affinity of the kinase for ATF2 to 11.0 ± 1.1 μm and for c-Jun to 17.0 ± 7.5 μm in the absence of ATP. The presence of ATP caused a shift in the KD of the active kinase for ATF2 to 1.70 ± 0.25 μm and for c-Jun of 3.50 ± 0.95 μm. These results are the first kinetic and biochemical characterization of JNK1β1 and uncover some of the differences in the enzymatic activity of JNK1β1 compared with other variants and suggest that ATP binding or JNK phosphorylation could induce changes in the interactions with substrates, activators, and regulatory proteins.
The Economic Consequences of Unwed Motherhood: Using Twin Births as a Natural Experiment

The authors estimate the short-run and life-cycle effects of unplanned children on unwed mothers by comparing unmarried women who first gave birth to twins with unwed mothers who bore singletons. They find large short-term effects of unplanned births on labor-force participation, poverty, and welfare recipiency among unwed mothers but not among married mothers. Although most of the adverse economic effects of unplanned motherhood dissipate over time for whites, there are larger and more persistent negative effects on black unwed mothers. Copyright 1994 by American Economic Association.
Interrogating an insect society

Insect societies such as those of ants, bees, and wasps consist of 1 or a small number of fertile queens and a large number of sterile or nearly sterile workers. While the queens engage in laying eggs, workers perform all other tasks such as nest building, acquisition and processing of food, and brood care. How do such societies function in a coordinated and efficient manner? What are the rules that individuals follow? How are these rules made and enforced? These questions are of obvious interest to us as fellow social animals but how do we interrogate an insect society and seek answers to these questions? In this article I will describe my research that was designed to seek answers from an insect society to a series of questions of obvious interest to us. I have chosen the Indian paper wasp Ropalidia marginata for this purpose, a species that is abundantly distributed in peninsular India and serves as an excellent model system. An important feature of this species is that queens and workers are morphologically identical and physiologically nearly so. How then does an individual become a queen? How does the queen suppress worker reproduction? How does the queen regulate the nonreproductive activities of the workers? What is the function of aggression shown by different individuals? How and when is the queen's heir decided? I will show how such questions can indeed be investigated and will emphasize the need for a whole range of different techniques of observation and experimentation.
An Artificially Anisotropic Antenna Substrate for the Generation of Circular Polarization

The purpose of this communication is to present the design of an artificially anisotropic antenna substrate (AAAS) for the generation of circular polarization (CP) for a linearly polarized antenna. The AAAS can be manufactured by assembling thin sheets with certain relative permittivities for the host or environment eε and inclusion ei materials as a stack. Using two different stacking materials enables the generation of different effective permittivities ex' and ey' for the wave components propagating in-between an antenna and a ground. The idea is to modify the antenna polarization by exploiting reflections from a ground in a way that CP operation is obtained. By properly designing the AAAS, the radiator shape can be maintained simple. The operation of AAAS is demonstrated for substrates made of homogeneous anisotropic and thin sheets. It is shown that by using sufficient high inclusion permittivity (e.g., e· = 15), the AAAS is observed to even show axial ratio . 2 dB with over 25 dBi higher right-hand CP gain than left-hand CP in the main beam of the antenna. A prototype with available low-lossy materials is manufactured and successful correlation with theory and simulation results is observed.
Exploring interestingness through clustering: a framework

Determining interestingness is a notoriously difficult problem: it is subjective and elusive to capture. It is also becoming an increasingly more important problem in knowledge discovery from database as the number of mined patterns increases. In this work we introduce and investigate a framework for association rule clustering that enables automating much of the laborious manual effort normally involved in the exploration and understanding of interestingness. Clustering is ideally suited for this task; it is the unsupervised organization of patterns into groups, so that patterns in the same group are more similar to each other than to patterns in other groups. We also define a data-driven inferred labeling of these clusters, the ancestor coverage, which provides an intuitive, concise representation of the clusters.
Estimating the labour transformation elasticity between agricultural and non-agricultural sectors in China

Abstract In this paper we examine labour mobility between agricultural and non-agricultural sectors in China using a household survey data set. We use the approaches of Jacoby, as well as Sicular and Zhao, to estimate the elasticity of transformation of labour between agricultural and non-agricultural employment. Firstly, shadow wages are imputed by estimating the household agricultural production function. Secondly, labour supply decisions are modelled as functions of imputed shadow wages, observed market employment wages and other relevant variables. The coefficients of the labour supply equations are then used to derive the labour transformation elasticity. Our empirical results show that China's labour market at the beginning of the 2000s, as measured by the ease of transfer between agriculture and non-agriculture, was relatively open, despite continuing institutional barriers. This has important implications when assessing the distributional impact of further opening of China's economy to international trade.
Lecture Notes on Network Information Theory

These lecture notes have been converted to a book titled Network Information Theory published recently by Cambridge University Press. This book provides a significantly expanded exposition of the material in the lecture notes as well as problems and bibliographic notes at the end of each chapter. The authors are currently preparing a set of slides based on the book that will be posted in the second half of 2012. More information about the book can be found at this http URL The previous (and obsolete) version of the lecture notes can be found at this http URL
A Logistic Regression Analysis of the Cross-Cultural Differences of the Main Destination Choices of International Tourists in China's Main Gateway Cities

ABSTRACT This cross-cultural study of international tourists' main destination choices (MDCs) within China's three major gateway cities – Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou – adds to the literature in two respects. First, a cognitive ‘cultural distance’ variable, formed from cultural constructs perceived by the respondents was used to underpin the comparative framework in addition to usually applied cultural proxies, such as nationality, in cross-cultural studies. A discreet choice modelling approach is used to address the operational challenges of incorporating behavioural elements in choice analysis. The research findings support the international gateway positions of Beijing and Shanghai, but that of Guangzhou is questioned. The research also revealed that, although both of the two types of cultural variables are related to the MDCs of the tourists, the level of significance of ‘cultural distance’ and ‘cultural proxies’ at expressing the differences of tourists' MDCs within a destination country are not parallel. The former appeared to be a more sensitive element in determining the behavioural patterns of international tourists than the latter. Geographical distance and demographic characteristics show no significant interrelationship with the MDCs of international tourists within a destination country.
Differentiation and growth potential of human ovarian surface epithelial cells expressing temperature-sensitive SV40 T antigen

SummaryThe epithelial ovarian carcinomas arise in the ovarian surface epithelium (OSE) which is the mesothelial covering of the ovary. Studies of human OSE have been hampered by the small amounts and limited lifespan of this epithelium in culture. OSE cells expressing SV40 large T antigen (Tag) or the HPV genes E6 and E7 have increased growth potentials but lack some of the normal characteristics of OSE. In this study, we used conditional SV40 Tag expression to produce OSE cells with increased proliferative potentials but relatively normal phenotypes. Primary OSE cultures from three women, one of whom had a BRCA1 mutation, were infected with a temperature-sensitive Tag construct (tsTag), and from these, 28 monoclonal and four polyclonal lines were isolated. The effects of temperature changes were examined in two monoclonal and two polyclonal lines. At the permissive temperature (34°C), these cell lines underwent 52–71 population doublings (PD) compared to 15–20 PD for normal OSE. Nuclear SV40-Tag and p53 expression, demonstrated by immunofluorescence, showed that tsTag was uniformly present and biologically active in all lines. At 34°C, culture morphologies ranged from epithelial to mesenchymal. The mean percentage of cells expressing the epithelial differentiation response to explantation into culture, was present in 24–43% of cells. At 39°C, tsTag was inactivated by 2 d while nuclear p53 staining diminished to control levels over 2 wk. Over 3 d, the cells assumed more epithelial morphologies, keratin expression reached 85–100% in all lines and collagen expression increased significantly in two lines. The cultures with the BRCA1 mutation expressed the most keratin and the least collagen III at both temperatures. As indicated by β-galactosidase staining at pH 6.0, changes leading to senescence were initiated at 39°C by 6 h and were present in all cells after 24 h. However, the cells underwent 1–3 population doublings over up to 1 wk before growth arrest and widespread cell death, thus providing an experimental system where large numbers of OSE cells with different genetic backgrounds and growth potentials can be studied without the concurrent influence of Tag.
Optimal duration and timing of adjuvant chemotherapy after definitive surgery for ductal adenocarcinoma of the pancreas: ongoing lessons from the ESPAC-3 study.

PURPOSE Adjuvant chemotherapy improves patient survival rates after resection for pancreatic adenocarcinoma, but the optimal duration and time to initiate chemotherapy is unknown. PATIENTS AND METHODS Patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma treated within the international, phase III, European Study Group for Pancreatic Cancer-3 (version 2) study were included if they had been randomly assigned to chemotherapy. Overall survival analysis was performed on an intention-to-treat basis, retaining patients in their randomized groups, and adjusting the overall treatment effect by known prognostic variables as well as the start time of chemotherapy. RESULTS There were 985 patients, of whom 486 (49%) received gemcitabine and 499 (51%) received fluorouracil; 675 patients (68%) completed all six cycles of chemotherapy (full course) and 293 patients (30%) completed one to five cycles. Lymph node involvement, resection margins status, tumor differentiation, and completion of therapy were all shown by multivariable Cox regression to be independent survival factors. Overall survival favored patients who completed the full six courses of treatment versus those who did not (hazard ratio [HR], 0.516; 95% CI, 0.443 to 0.601; P < .001). Time to starting chemotherapy did not influence overall survival rates for the full study population (HR, 0.985; 95% CI, 0.956 to 1.015). Chemotherapy start time was an important survival factor only for the subgroup of patients who did not complete therapy, in favor of later treatment (P < .001). CONCLUSION Completion of all six cycles of planned adjuvant chemotherapy rather than early initiation was an independent prognostic factor after resection for pancreatic adenocarcinoma. There seems to be no difference in outcome if chemotherapy is delayed up to 12 weeks, thus allowing adequate time for postoperative recovery.
A HYBRID PERSONALIZED RECOMMENDER SYSTEM BASED ON AGGLOMERATIVE CLUSTERING ALGORITHM

In the era of Big Data, there occurs a potential for making faster advances in many scientific disciplin es and improving the profitability and success of many ent erprises through better analysis of the large volumes of dat that are becoming available. Initial techniques like content based recommendation lost its importance and the trend se tting collaborative filtering approach gains its efficiency in all domains. In order to perform a better data recommendation cl uster based collaborative filtering approaches are used nowaday s. Clustering leads to the reduction of huge data set in to small er data set in which all the services are similar to one another. In this paper a hybrid personalized recommender system based on agg lomerative clustering algorithm is proposed which reduces the overall computation time in Big Data recommendation. Various disadvantages in traditional recommender systems li ke data sparsity, cold start problem have been overcome in this proposed system and a comparison made with the traditional s ystems in terms of Mean Absolute Error(MAE) and computation time have shown better results. Index Terms – Clustering, collaborative filtering, recommender.
Protective factors for youth considered at risk of criminal behaviour: does participation in extracurricular activities help?

BACKGROUND There is a lack of research investigating the potential protective effect of participation in extracurricular activities on youth who are at risk of engaging in delinquent activity. AIM This study examined the potential for participation in extracurricular activities to act as a protective factor for youth deemed at risk of engaging in delinquent activity. METHOD One hundred and sixty-nine secondary students from Glasgow, Scotland completed two questionnaires (the Youth Self-Report and an additional information sheet) requesting information about their participation in extracurricular and delinquent activities as well as their possible risk factors. Activities included sports, non-sports (hobbies and games), current activities (youth clubs and other organisations) and previous involvement in activities. Risk factors included residing in a broken home, having four or more siblings, academic failure and lacking a non-parental very important person. Delinquent activities included rule-breaking and aggressive behaviours. RESULTS Independent samples t-tests found that females participated in significantly more non-sports and previous activities than males and that males participated in significantly more rule-breaking behaviour than females. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses found that gender and participation in sports were strong predictors of rule-breaking behaviour. A significant positive correlation was found between participation in sports and involvement in aggressive behaviour. CONCLUSION The results suggest that participation in extracurricular activities does not act as a protective factor for youth, regardless of whether or not they are considered to be at risk of engaging in delinquent activity. The significant correlation found between participation in sports and involvement in aggressive behaviour suggests that youth participation in sports may act as a risk factor.