Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bank Specific and Macroeconomic Determinants of Profitability: Evidence From Participation Banks in Turkey

In this paper I investigate the bank specific and macroeconomic determinants of profitability in participation banks for Turkish banking sector by looking at two different profitability indicators namely return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE). I find that in terms of bank specific determinants of profitability the ratio of non-performing loans to total loans and log of real assets are both highly significant and the former one has a negative effect on profitability whereas the latter one has a positive impact on profitability in participation banks. The ratio of equity to total assets is highly significant for both indicators but it has different effects on ROA and ROE. In terms of macroeconomic determinants of profitability the level of exchange rate and the real interest rate are significant and they are expected to have a positive impact on profitability in participation banks.
Altered auditory processing in patients with panic disorder: A pilot study

Abstract Objectives. Clinical and electrophysiological studies suggest that panic disorder (PD) patients show disturbed response inhibition to sensory stimuli. Thus, habituation of neuronal activation after repeated sine tone stimulation was assessed by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in patients with PD. Methods. Twenty patients with PD and 20 age- and gender-matched healthy controls were assessed by 3T fMRI for auditory habituation. During three stimulation cycles of digitally generated pulsed (ν=5 Hz) 800-Hz sine tones alternating with silent periods, activation of the auditory cortex and other anxiety- or sensory integration-related regions was assessed. Brain activation was further analyzed dependent on functional serotonin transporter (5-HTT) gene variation (5-HTTLPR). Results. PD patients demonstrated an extended brain activity in the first stimulation block, which normalized during the second stimulation cycle. A positive correlation with anxiety measures (HAMA) and an increased activity of distinct anxiety- or sensory integration-related areas (e.g., BA 22, BA 10) were seen during the third block of auditory stimulation. There was a significant interaction of left amygdala activation and the 5-HTTLPR S allele. Conclusions. Our results support the hypothesis of an aberrant processing of sensory information in PD patients. This phenomenon may underlie an enhanced responsiveness to anxiety-relevant or irrelevant stimuli possibly increasing PD vulnerability.
A framework for determining and prioritizing relational capitals: The case of Iran e-business

– The purpose of this study is to propose a framework to determine and prioritize relational capitals. This study has empirically performed the framework and revealed prioritized indicators of relational capital within service and non-service industries in Iran. , – A valid questionnaire was utilized to conduct a survey of 243 business managers in different organizational levels of service and non-service industries in Iran. , – Correlation analysis was utilized to ascertain validity of measures. Priority of each relational capital was specified using ordinal regression analysis. , – The findings offer valuable insights on relational capital and its indicators in a novel perspective. , – Using the proposed framework and utilizing the classification of relational capital indicators, managers and analysts will be able to enumerate the most effective factors for improving business performance and competitive authority based on types of business relations and its environment. , – This study provides a guideline for determining and prioritizing business relational capital considering both sides, business-to-business and business-to-consumer relations, which have been under examination in the literature.
ARBITRAGE IN SECURITIES MARKETS WITH SHORT-SALES CONSTRAINTS

In this paper we derive the implications of the absence of arbitrage in securities markets models where traded securities are subject to short-sales constraints and where the borrowing and lending rates differ. We show that a securities price system is arbitrage free if and only if there exists a numeraire and an equivalent probability measure for which the normalized (by the numeraire) price processes of traded securities are supermartingales. Also, the tightest arbitrage bounds that can be inferred on the price of a contingent claim without knowing agents’preferences are equal to its largest and smallest expected normalized payoff with respect to the supermartingale measures. In the case where the underlying security price follows a diffusion process and where short selling is possible but costly, we derive partial differential equations that must be satisfied by the arbitrage bounds on derivative securities prices, and we determine optimal hedging strategies. We compute the arbitrage bounds on common securities numerically for several values of the borrowing and short-selling costs and show that they can be quite sharp.
Impact of time demands of work on job satisfaction and turnover intention: Software developers in offshore outsourced software development firms in Sri Lanka

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating effect of job satisfaction on the relationship between time demands of work and turnover intention of software developers in offshore outsourced software development firms (OOSDF) in Sri Lanka.Design/methodology/approach – Survey research methodology was used and 232 software developers attached to OOSDF responded.Findings – It was found that job satisfaction partially mediates the relationship between time demands of work and turnover intention.Research limitations/implications – The results of the questionnaire survey provided access to breadth of experience. If qualitative data were also obtained those could have provided depth by adding insight and substance to the questionnaire survey.Practical implications – The findings imply that a greater understanding of employee turnover intentions might be gained by investigating the time demands of work.Originality/value – It is expected that the paper's findings will provide useful information f.
Forecasting Inflation in the Netherlands and the Euro Area

In this study we build two forecasting models to predict inflation for the Netherlands and for the euro area. Inflation is the yearly change of the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP). The models provide point forecasts and prediction intervals for both the subcomponents of the HICP and the aggregated HICP-index itself. Both models are small-scale linear time series models allowing for long run equilibrium relationships between HICP subcomponents and other variables, notably the hourly wage rate and the import prices. The model for the Netherlands is used to generate Dutch inflation forecasts over an horizon of 11-15 months ahead for the Narrow Inflation Projection Exercise (NIPE). NIPE-forecasts have been generated quarterly by each country in the eurosystem since 1999.
Intergenerational mobility in seven European Countries

This paper provides new evidence on cross-country comparison of intergenerational mobility using the eight waves of the European Community Household Panel. I estimate intergeneration earnings elasticity for sons and daughters father pairs in seven European countries. Data comparability across countries allows me to rank European countries according to their degree of intergenerational income mobility. When I consider intergenerational transmission of earnings towards daughters, it turns out that that Italy is the most immobile country in Europe. When considering sons, all the Mediterranean countries result to be more immobile than Germany.
Issue Selling and Bargaining Power in Intrafirm Competition: The Differentiating Impact of the Subsidiary Management Composition

This paper reports the findings from five case studies on Danish-owned subsidiaries in China and India and demonstrates how a subsidiary's issue-selling strategy influences its bargaining power in intrafirm competition within a multinational corporation. Issue-selling strategies of subsidiaries involve various activities aiming at (a) making the parent company understand an issue, (b) attracting parent-company attention to an issue, and (c) lobbying for an issue at the parent company. Next to illustrating these activities, the empirical part of the paper shows that subsidiaries managed by parent-company nationals have more bargaining power than subsidiaries managed by host-country nationals. To begin with, parent-company national subsidiary managers are better at translating the context-specific information deriving from cultural distances between the parent company and the subsidiary. Second, they are better at packaging the issue in order to match parent-company formalised application requirements. Further, they are better at framing the issue to match the parent-company goals and objectives. And last, they often have closer relationships with decision makers within the parent company.
University of Groningen Natural Solution to FraCaS Entailment Problems

Reasoning over several premises is not a common feature of RTE systems as it usually requires deep semantic analysis. On the other hand, FraCaS is a collection of entailment problems consisting of multiple premises and covering semantically challenging phenomena. We employ the tableau theorem prover for natural language to solve the FraCaS problems in a natural way. The expressiveness of a type theory, the transparency of natural logic and the schematic nature of tableau inference rules make it easy to model challenging semantic phenomena. The efficiency of theorem proving also becomes challenging when reasoning over several premises. After adapting to the dataset, the prover demonstrates state-of-the-art competence over certain sections of FraCaS.
The Ruding Committee report: an economic assessment

The Ruding Committee began work in January 1991 on three questions posed by the European Commission: (1) Do differences in business taxation among Member States cause major distortions in the functioning of the internal market, particularly with respect to investment decisions and competition? (2) In so far as such distortions do arise, are they likely to be alleviated or eliminated simply through the interplay of market forces and competition between national tax regimes, or is action at the Community level required? (3) What specific measures are required at the Comminity level to remove or mitigate these distortions?
A Hybrid Monitoring Mechanism in Virtualized Environments

Virtual machine introspection plays an important role in the area of security. Most virtual machine introspection mechanisms either poll the VM state actively or intercept the VM execution passively. Unfortunately, the active introspection approach cannot acquire information in real time, while the information acquired by passive method is fragmented and is hard to build complete semantic views of guests. This paper proposes HVMI, a hybrid virtual machine introspection mechanism that acquires complete semantic information in real time and without compromising performance. Firstly, HVMI leverages active acquisition to create an initial semantic view of the monitored guests and then employs the passive method to update the views in real time by capturing all related events. We implement a prototype of HVMI on Xen virtualization platform, and show its functional capability by developing two applications, FileFetcher and ProDetector. The experimental results demonstrate that our approach can effectively monitor VMs and detect several kinds of malware without imposing significant performance loss.
Determinants of tourism impact on tourists' quality of life

Despite the growing importance of the quality of life (QOL), research on QOL in the area of tourism is very limited. Additionally, the majority of this research focuses on the impact of tourism on QOL of destinations? hosts. This paper analyses the impact of tourism on several dimensions of tourists? QOL (physical health, psychological features, social relationships and environment). Additionally, a model of determinants of the tourism impact on QOL is proposed and tested. Multivariate regression analyses are undertaken to identify the factors that influence the impact of tourism on tourist? s QOL. Travel motivations, the travel group, type of destinations and activities are the factors with more influence on tourism impacts on QOL. However, results highlight that the influence of each factor on the tourism impact on QOL varies according to the dimension of the QOL. Important implications for improving the tourism impact on tourists? QOL are discussed.
Location3: How Users Share and Respond to Location-Based Data on Social

In August 2010 Facebook launched Places, a location-based service that allows users to check into points of interest and share their physical whereabouts with friends. The friends who see these events in their News Feed can then respond to these check-ins by liking or commenting on them. These data consisting of the places people go and how their friends react to them are a rich, novel dataset. In this paper we first analyze this dataset to understand the factors that influence where users check in, including previous check-ins, similarity to other places, where their friends check in, time of day, and demographics. We show how these factors can be used to build a predictive model of where users will check in next. Then we analyze how users respond to their friends’ check-ins and which factors contribute to users liking or commenting on them. We show how this can be used to improve the ranking of check-in stories, ensuring that users see only the most relevant updates from their friends and ensuring that businesses derive maximum value from check-ins at their establishments. Finally, we construct a model to predict friendship based on check-in count and show that cocheck-ins has a statistically significant effect on friendship.
Income and Energy Consumption in Mexican Households

The analysis of household energy consumption patterns is critical for evaluating public mechanisms, such as subsidies and social tariffs that aim to provide lower income earners with better access to energy sources. This paper focuses on Mexican households to analyze the relations between their levels of income, consumption of different forms of energy, and the role played by different household characteristics. Using microdata from the Mexican Income Expenditure Surveys, the paper first relate income and energy expenditure to determine the shape of this relation. It then applies OLS and Tobit models to determine how income levels affect energy consumption in relation to other covariates. The results show a positive relation for income deciles and energy consumption and some household characteristics -- pointing to differentiated mechanisms for improving energy use.
The effect of the DNA conformation on the rate of NtrC activated transcription of Escherichia coli RNA polymerase.sigma(54) holoenzyme.

The transcription activator protein NtrC (nitrogen regulatory protein C) can catalyze the transition of Escherichia coli RNA polymerase complexed with the sigma 54 factor (RNAP.sigma(54)) from the closed complex (RNAP.sigma(54) bound at the promoter) to the open complex (melting of the promoter DNA). This process involves phosphorylation of NtrC (NtrC-P), assembly of an octameric NtrC-P complex at the enhancer sequence, interaction of this complex with promoter-bound RNAP.sigma(54) via DNA looping, and hydrolysis of ATP. We have used this system to study the influence of the DNA conformation on the transcription activation rate in single-round transcription experiments with superhelical plasmids as well as linearized templates. Most of the templates had an intrinsically curved DNA sequence between the enhancer and the promoter and differed with respect to the location of the curvature and the distance between the two DNA sites. The following results were obtained: (i) a ten- to 60-fold higher activation rate was observed with the superhelical templates as compared to the linearized conformation; (ii) the presence of an intrinsically curved DNA sequence increased the activation rate of linear templates about five times; (iii) no systematic effect for the presence and/or location of the inserted curved sequence was observed for the superhelical templates. However, the transcription activation rate varied up to a factor of 10 between some of the constructs. (iv) Differences in the distance between enhancer and promoter had little effect for the superhelical templates studied. The results were compared with theoretical calculations for the dependence of the contact probability between enhancer and promoter expressed as the molar local concentration j(M). A correlation of j(M) with the transcription activation rate was observed for values of 10(-8) M
A simple approach to analyzing clustered longitudinal data

ABSTRACT When modeling correlated binary data in the presence of informative cluster sizes, generalized estimating equations with either resampling or inverse-weighting, are often used to correct for estimation bias. However, existing methods for the clustered longitudinal setting assume constant cluster sizes over time. We present a subject-weighted generalized estimating equations scheme that provides valid parameter estimation for the clustered longitudinal setting while allowing cluster sizes to change over time. We compare, via simulation, the performance of existing methods to our subject-weighted approach. The subject-weighted approach was the only method that showed negligible bias, with excellent coverage, for all model parameters.
The impact of MTSA on investment uncertainty and the persistence of financial return volatility of marine firms

This paper summarizes research analysing the effects of the Maritime Transportation Security Act (MTSA) on a set of listed marine operator equities. The paper uses GARCH models to compare volatility before MTSA and after MTSA to determine if there was a systematic change in the persistence of volatility. This paper also investigates the effect of MTSA on investment uncertainty (measured by return kurtosis). Homan (2009) 1 found that both kurtosis and volatility persistence increased following 9/11. The results of this paper show that after MTSA there was a reduction in return kurtosis for many of the marine operators. However, the persistence of that volatility did not go down following MTSA. Consequently, MTSA may have mitigated some of the increased return kurtosis documented by Homan but was not able to reverse the increased volatility persistence.
Safety and productivity in underground coal mining

An extended Cobb-Douglas production function is developed and estimated in order to examine the extent to which the decline in measured productivity in underground coal mining can be attributed to (1) changes in safety conditions which reflect movement along a product transformation frontier relating safety and marketable output and (2) a shift downward of the entire transformation surface. The model incorporates work-related accidents as a joint output and accounts for the discrete nature of the technological choices available in underground mining. The results indicate that movements along the product transformation curve relating accidents and marketable output do not account for the decline in measured productivity. This decline instead reflects a shift downward of this frontier - a real decline in potential production of marketable output. The non-linear pattern in technological change parameters and differences in these parameters across technologies indicate that a variety of factors have influenced productivity trends including CMHSA and the 1974 contract between union and management. 14 references
Mixture toxicity of microcystin-LR, paraoxon and bromadiolone in Xenopus laevis embryos.

OBJECTIVES Apart from infections and habitat loss, environmental pollution is another major factor of global decline of amphibians. Using the model of Xenopus laevis embryos, we test the hypothesis that combined exposure of amphibians to natural toxins and anthropogenic pollutants induces more pronounced adverse effects than single exposures. METHODS Experimental procedures adhered to Frog Embryo Teratogenesis Assay - Xenopus standards (FETAX). Exposure groups included controls, solvent (dimethyl sulfoxide) controls, and embryos exposed for 96 h to single, double and triple action of paraoxon (P), bromadiolone (B), and microcystin-LR (M), added to the FETAX medium at a dose of 300, 350, and 500 μg. L(-1), respectively. Studied responses of X. laevis embryos included mortality and malformations, head-to-tail length, total antioxidant capacity, lipid peroxidation, and caspase-3 activity. RESULTS The triple combination induced the highest mortality. Malformations in embryos significantly prevailed only in B-, and B+P-exposure groups. Apart from the single exposure to B, the tested substances and their combinations inhibited the embryonic growth. Triple exposure had the most pronounced effect both on the growth inhibition and total antioxidant capacity. Lipid peroxidation was increased after B+M exposure, while single and combined exposures to B and P had an opposite effect. CONCLUSIONS This study helps to understand adverse effects of environmental pollution by natural toxins and agrochemicals in amphibians. The results allow for risk assessment of environmental pollution and findings of low concentrations of contaminants in aquatic environments. Further research to address issues such as mixture toxicity to metamorphosing and adult amphibians is necessary.
A COMPARISON OF PROCEDURES FOR ESTIMATING RETURNS TO RESEARCH USING PRODUCTION FUNCTIONS

The production function approach has been one of the two main ex-post procedures used to estimate the rate of return to agricultural research. A critical part of estimating the marginal internal rate of return (MIRR) is the procedure adopted to spread the benefits of research through time. Past studies using this approach have given only brief consideration to this computational procedure. The objective in this study was to review the different computational procedures used and, then, using cross-section production function estimates for U.S. agriculture, determine whether the MIRR estimates are sensitive to the computational procedure used. The results from this comparison indicate a large range in the estimates. The implication, then, is that careful consideration should be given to the choice of computational procedure, both when undertaking such a study and when comparing the results of different studies.
Significance of Nanofluid and Partial Slip on the Peristaltic Transport of a Non-Newtonian Fluid with Different Wave Forms

In this study, we present the new investigations on the combined effect of partial slip and nanofluid on the peristaltic transport of a Jeffrey fluid model in an asymmetric channel. Mathematical formulation of the present problem is first given and then simplified under the conjecture of long wave length and low Reynolds number approximation. The homotopy perturbation technique is used to calculate the solution of the coupled nonlinear equations of temperature and nanoparticle volume fraction. The exact solution of the momentum equation is calculated using the solutions of temperature and nanoparticle volume fraction. In the end, the graphical results of the proposed problem are discussed to study the behavior of the emerging parameters.