Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Real Options Valuation: An Application to the Portuguese Real Estate Market

The contribution of real options analysis on the valuation of Portuguese undeveloped building sites is significant on the decision making regarding the apartment-buildings construction. Using the options model developed by Quigg (1993), and including the necessary readjustments for the Portuguese market, it was found that the scale price elasticity parameter and construction expenditures’ elasticity of scale parameter had a strong impact on building sites’ values. The empirical analysis revealed that the option to defer adds value to undeveloped building sites’ valuations. This fact cannot be ignored when deciding upon an investment’s implementation.
The quality of drugs in private pharmacies in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic

Objective: To describe and discuss the quality of a number of sample drugs collected in private pharmacies in Laos (Lao P.D.R.). Design: A stratified random sample was used to select 115 pharmacies and four sample drugs were collected from each. Three tests were used; identity, assay and measurement of weight variation. The identity was confirmed by TLC, UV and colour reactions. Titrimetric, UV and HPLC methods were used for assay. Setting: Savannakhet province in Laos. Study population: The 214 licensed private pharmacies in the province. Main outcome measures: Drug quality as assessed against the standards of the British and US pharmacopoeias. Results: 12 (3.3%) out of the 366 drugs contained no active ingredient, 42 (11.5%) had levels of active ingredient outside acceptable limits in assay, 128 (35.0%) had excessive weight variation, and 4 (1.1%) were managed badly in the pharmacy. Conclusions: The major problem is caused by insufficient attention to Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP). Half of the sample drugs would not be approved according to international standards. There is little difference between the private and public sectors. Serious problems such as counterfeit drugs and mix-ups are not frequent. The government should focus its efforts on ensuring that all drugs in the pharmacies can be traced to manufacturer.
ESTIMATION OF THE DEMAND FOR COMMERCIAL TRUCK PARKING ON INTERSTATE HIGHWAYS IN VIRGINIA

The steady growth of truck traveling on most Interstate and primary highways has resulted in increasing demand for both public rest areas and private truck stops in Virginia. In addition, inadequate parking spaces for commercial trucks may be a contributing factor to drivers' fatigue and the unsafe practices of parking commercial trucks on highway shoulders and interchange ramps. This study developed a methodology to determine the supply and demand for commercial truck parking along highway systems. In this study, supply was defined as the number of parking spaces available for commercial truck parking, and demand was defined as the sum of the parking accumulation and the illegal parking at a given time. A two-phase research project on the supply and demand for commercial heavy vehicle parking facilities in Virginia has been carried out to evaluate truck driver parking needs. Phase one of this study developed a methodology to determine the supply and demand for commercial truck parking using Interstate-81 in Virginia as a case study. Phase two expanded the study to other Interstate and primary highways in Virginia, checked the applicability of the parking demand model developed in phase one and developed new models for the other Interstate highways in Virginia. Extensive data on the characteristics of commercial truck parking including parking duration and accumulation for different times of day were obtained. Detailed information was also obtained on the characteristics of each truck stop and rest area, including the location, number and types of parking spaces, and availability of other amenities, such as restaurants and showers. Two types of questionnaire surveys were conducted. The first survey involved truck drivers, and the second survey involved truck stop managers/owners. The survey data were used to develop models to describe the relationship between parking accumulation and independent variables such as traffic volume on the highway, truck percentage, parking duration, and the distance from a highway to a truck stop. After testing the applicability of the models, they were then used to estimate commercial truck parking demand in 2010 and 2020. Deficiencies of parking spaces in supply with respect to the estimated demand were then determined for each truck stop and the entire highway system.
Product involvement, price perceptions, and brand loyalty

Purpose – This paper aims to contribute to the literature on brand loyalty by illustrating the mechanisms through which product involvement influences brand loyalty. In doing so, the study is original in considering the mediating role of the multidimensional price perceptions’ construct. Design/methodology/approach – Two thousand questionnaires were distributed in two shopping malls, yielding a sample of 535 consumers, covering eight different grocery products. To test the hypothesized model, the authors relied on structural equation modelling. Findings – Product involvement influences on brand loyalty are partially mediated by price perceptions. This is a novel finding. Moreover, product involvement relates positively to six price perceptions, and this is also original. As expected, value consciousness and sale proneness are detrimental to brand loyalty, whereas price – quality schema contributes to it. Unexpectedly, however, price consciousness, sale proneness and price mavenism are positively related t.
Dielectric resonator-based flow and stopped-flow EPR with rapid field scanning: A methodology for increasing kinetic information.

We report methodology which combines recently developed dielectric resonator-based, rapid-mix, stopped-flow EPR (appropriate for small, aqueous, lossy samples) with rapid scanning of the external (Zeeman) magnetic field where the scanning is preprogrammed to occur at selected times after the start of flow. This methodology gave spectroscopic information complementary to that obtained by stopped-flow EPR at single fields, and with low reactant usage, it yielded more graphic insight into the time evolution of radical and spin-labeled species. We first used the ascorbyl radical as a test system where rapid scans triggered after flow was stopped provided "snapshots" of simultaneously evolving and interacting radical species. We monitored ascorbyl radical populations either as brought on by biologically damaging peroxynitrite oxidant or as chemically and kinetically interacting with a spectroscopically overlapping nitroxide radical. In a different biophysical application, where a spin-label lineshape reflected rapidly changing molecular dynamics of folding spin-labeled protein, rapid scan spectra were taken during flow with different flow rates and correspondingly different times after the mixing-induced inception of protein folding. This flow/rapid scan method is a means for monitoring early immobilization of the spin probe in the course of the folding process.
A more reliable PCR for detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in clinical samples

Diagnostic techniques based on PCR have two major problems: false-positive reactions due to contamination with DNA fragments from previous PCRs (amplicons) and false-negative reactions caused by inhibitors that interfere with the PCR. We have improved our previously reported PCR based on the amplification of a fragment of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex-specific insertion element IS6110 with respect to both problems. False-positive reactions caused by amplicon contamination were prevented by the use of uracil-N-glycosylase and dUTP instead of dTTP. We selected a new set of primers outside the region spanned by the formerly used primers to avoid false-positive reactions caused by dTTP-containing amplicons still present in the laboratory. With this new primer set, 16 copies of the IS6110 insertion element, the equivalent of two bacteria, could be amplified 10(10) times in 40 cycles, resulting in a mean efficiency of 77% per cycle. To detect the presence of inhibitors of the Taq polymerase, which may cause false-negative reactions, part of each sample was spiked with M. tuberculosis DNA. The DNA purification method using guanidinium thiocyanate and diatoms effectively removed most or all inhibitors of the PCR. However, this was not suitable for blood samples, for which we developed a proteinase K treatment followed by phenol-chloroform extraction. This method permitted detection of 20 M. tuberculosis bacteria per ml of whole blood. Various laboratory procedures were introduced to reduce failure or inhibition of PCR and avoid DNA cross contamination. We have tested 218 different clinical specimens obtained from patients suspected of having tuberculosis. The samples included sputum (n=145), tissue biopsy samples (n=25), cerebrospinal fluid (n=15), blood (n=14), pleural fluid (n=9), feces, (n=7), fluid from fistulae (n=2), and pus from a wound (n=1). The results obtained by PCR were consistent with those obtained with culture, which is the "gold standard. " We demonstrate that PCR is a useful technique for the rapid diagnosis of tuberculosis at various sites.
Can Mutual Fund Managers Outguess Sectors?

Previous research demonstrates that actively managed mutual funds exhibit negative market timing abilities. However, few studies have investigated the sector timing abilities of these fund managers. By implementing a multi-factor model based on Sharpe (1992), I derive a time series of mutual fund sector risk exposure coefficients which are demonstrated to be good proxies for actual fund exposures to the eight sectors examined in this study. Based on these sector risk exposures, sector timing measures are derived and used to explore whether fund managers in general, or certain sub-groups of fund managers in particular, exhibit successful sector timing abilities. My sample covers 485 randomly selected mutual funds listed on Datastream for the period from April, 1997 to July, 2002. I conclude that mutual funds as a whole exhibit some evidence of negative sector timing abilities. However, particular groups of funds, such as aggressive growth funds, appear to possess better sector timing abilities than other.
X-ray Structures of the Three Lactococcus lactis Dihydroxyacetone Kinase Subunits and of a Transient Intersubunit Complex*

Bacterial dihydroxyacetone (Dha) kinases do not exchange the ADP for ATP but utilize a subunit of the phosphoenolpyruvate carbohydrate phosphotransferase system for in situ rephosphorylation of a permanently bound ADP-cofactor. Here we report the 2.1-Å crystal structure of the transient complex between the phosphotransferase subunit DhaM of the phosphotransferase system and the nucleotide binding subunit DhaL of the Dha kinase of Lactococcus lactis, the 1.1-Å structure of the free DhaM dimer, and the 2.5-Å structure of the Dha-binding DhaK subunit. Conserved salt bridges and an edge-to-plane stacking contact between two tyrosines serve to orient DhaL relative to the DhaM dimer. The distance between the imidazole Nϵ2 of the DhaM His-10 and the β-phosphate oxygen of ADP, between which the γ-phosphate is transferred, is 4.9 Å. An invariant arginine, which is essential for activity, is appropriately positioned to stabilize the γ-phosphate in the transition state. The (βα)4α fold of DhaM occurs a second time as a subfold in the DhaK subunit. By docking DhaL-ADP to this subfold, the nucleotide bound to DhaL and the C1-hydroxyl of Dha bound to DhaK are positioned for in-line transfer of phosphate.
LncRNA CCAT1/miR-130a-3p axis increases cisplatin resistance in non-small-cell lung cancer cell line by targeting SOX4

ABSTRACT Background: Colon cancer-associated transcript-1 (CCAT1) has been demonstrated to act as an oncogene and promote chemoresistance in several cancers. However, little is known about the underlying mechanism of CCAT1 in cisplatin (DDP) resistance of non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cells. Methods: qRT-PCR was performed to detect the expression levels of CCAT, miR-130a-3p, or sex-determining region Y-box 4 (SOX4) mRNA. Luciferase reporter assay, RNA immunoprecipitation (RIP), and qRT-PCR analysis were carried out to explore the potential targets of CCAT1 or miR-130a-3p. Effect of CCAT1, miR-130a-3p, or SOX4 on IC50 value of DDP and ATP binding cassette subfamily G member 2 (ABCG2) level in NSCLC cells were determined by cell counting kits-8 (CCK-8) assay and western blot, respectively. Results: CCAT1 and SOX4 were up-regulated, and miR-130a-3p was down-regulated in DDP-resistant NSCLC cells compared with their parental NSCLC cells. CCAT1 directly interacted with miR-130a-3p and negatively regulated miR-130a-3p expression. CCAT1 contributed to DDP resistance of A549/DDP cells by down-regulating miR-130a-3p. miR-130a-3p was found to directly target SOX4 to suppress its expression. SOX4 knockdown reversed miR-130a-3p-inhibition-induced increase of DDP resistance and ABCG2 expression in NSCLC cells. Exogenous expression of SOX4 abrogated CCAT1-knockdown-mediated decrease of DDP resistance and ABCG2 expression in DDP-resistant NSCLC cells. Conclusion: CCAT1/miR-130a-3p axis enhanced DDP resistance of NSCLC cells by targeting SOX4, providing potential targets to overcome DDP resistance and improve efficacy of chemotherapy for patients with NSCLC.
Monetary policy instruments for developing countries

In developing countries, the evolution of financial markets and growing disenchantment with directed credit programs and bank-by-bank credit ceilings have increased the interest in examining and moving to indirect methods of implementing monetary policy. The authors provide an overview of the policy issues developing countries face in light of industrial country experience in the last two decades. They discuss the objectives of monetary policy and how these have evolved in recent years, and they describe the different policy instruments that have become available to monetary authorities and how these instruments can be used to cope with the main shocks affecting monetary policy : government deficit financing and those related to external flows. Shifting from direct ways of controlling monetary policy is not universally appealing. Direct controls are simple to operate and seem to offer a sure handle on overall credit or money growth. Moving away from direct controls often involves a fundamental reorientation of central bankers and government officials, not only toward directed credit but toward the financing of government debt. Not every country is in a position to immediately apply the experience gained by industrial countries in operating indirect methods of monetary control. However, more and more monetary authorities can be expected to follow the lead taken especially by several Asian economies.
A Spoken Afrikaans Language Resource Designed for Research on Pronunciation Variations

In this contribution, the design, collection, annotation and planned distribution of a new spoken language resource of Afrikaans (SALAR) is discussed. The corpus contains speech of mother tongue speakers of Afrikaans, and is intended to become a primary national language resource for phonetic research and research on pronunciation variations. As such, the corpus is designed to expose pronunciation variations due to regional accents, speech rate (normal and fast speech) and speech mode (read and spontaneous speech). The corpus is collected by the Potchefstroom Campus of the North-West University, but in all phases of the corpus creation process there was a close collaboration with ELIS-UG (Belgium), one of the institutions that has been engaged in the creation of the Spoken Dutch Corpus (CGN).
Simulation of settlement of soft ground of highway by FLAC~(3D)

Based on the geological condition and treatment method of Jing Jin Tang highway project, a model is established. With parameters acquired from the site experiment and the ELAC3D program, the deformation behavior of soft base is simulated, and the settlements of the ground, especially of the surface are analyzed. The equivalent permeability parameter is used to decrease the time of calculation for settlement consolidation. The results are similar with practice.
A Comparison and an Implementation of Time DrivenActivity Based Costing and Activity Based CostingMethods in Private Schools

Due to the recent increase in demand for private schools, these schools have experienced a growth in number and in significance. Therefore, it has been crucial for the executives of private schools to be able to gain competitive advantage and to make strategically decisions. This increase of demand for private schools has also increased the competition in the area. Due to this increasing competition in private schooling, it has been more significant to correctly calculate the costs. This study points out the applicability of activity based costing and time based activity based costing methods of modern costing methods and the differences between them so that the executives of private schools could make strategic decisions. Even though both activities based costing and time driven activity based costing methods can be applied in private schools, it seems more advantageous to apply time driven activity based costing since it allows a faster way to access the information and it is easier to update, which provides a better chance for long-lasting usage. Keywords: Activity Based Costing Method; Time Driven Activity Based Costing Method; Private Education; Costing; Education Institution.
Interactive Control of Fire Simulation based on Computational Fluid Dynamics

Visual simulation of fire plays an important role in many applications, such as movies and computer games. In these applications, artists are often requested to synthesize realistic fire with a particular behavior. This paper presents two methods in order to help artists meet such requirements. First, we propose a method for controlling fire simulation by extending a previous method for smoke simulation. Controlling fire simulation with the previous method is difficult because of strong buoyancy forces caused by high-temperature. To address this problem, our method locally adjusts magnitudes of control forces. Second, we present an interactive editing method for external force field. The user can interactively design the shape of fire by placing a set of control points. Our method generates a force field to form the shape of the fire. Experimental results show that our method can control the fire into an arbitrary shape specified by the user.
STRUKTUR KEPEMILIKAN, MEKANISME TATA KELOLA PERUSAHAAN, DAN BIAYA KEAGENAN DI INDONESIA (Studi Empirik pada Perusahaan di Bursa Efek Indonesia)

This study is to examine the effect of corporate governance (the owners’s character and thegovernance mechanism) on agency cost. This research shows that family ownership, financialinstitution ownership, government ownership, and foreign ownership have negative effects onagency cost that is proxied as managerial operation cost and or as assets turnover, compared topublic ownership. Furthermore, ownership concentration of at least 5 percent each is not provento effect the agency cost. Results of other examination show that the proportion of independentboard and the number of board meetings have negative effects to the agency cost that is proxiedas assets turnover. However, these two variables and the number of audit committee meetinghave the opposite effect to the agency cost when it is proxied as managerial operation cost.Theseinconsistencies are caused by the ineffective implementation of corporate governance mechanismin Indonesia even after 10 years of implementation.
Improving Energy Adaptivity of Constructive Interference-Based Flooding for WSN-AF

Constructive interference (CI) is a synchronous transmission technique for multiple senders transmitting the same packet simultaneously in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). CI enables fast and reliable network flooding in order to reduce the scheduling overhead of MAC protocols, to achieve accurate time synchronization, to improve link quality of lossy links, and to realize efficient data collection. By achieving microsecond level time synchronization, Glossy realizes millisecond level CI-based flooding and 99% reliability. However, Glossy produces substantial unnecessary data forwarding, which significantly reduces the network lifetime. This is a very critical problem, especially in energy-limited large-scale wireless sensor networks for agriculture and forestry (WSN-AF) system. In this paper, we present an energy adaptive CI-based flooding protocol (EACIF) by exploiting CI in WSN-AF. EACIF proposes a distributed active nodes selection algorithm (ANSA) to reduce redundant transmissions, thereby significantly reducing energy consumption and flooding latency. We estimate the performance of EACIF both with real data traces and with uniformly distributed topology. Simulation results show that EACIF achieves almost the same packet reception ratio (PRR) as Glossy (e.g., 99%), while reducing 63.96% energy consumption. EACIF also reduces 25% flooding latency. When the packet interval is 30 seconds, EACIF achieves 0.11% duty cycle.
Audit Partner Tenure and Reported Internal Control Reporting Quality: U.S. Evidence from the Not-for-Profit Sector

This study examines the effect of audit partner tenure and audit partner changes on auditors’ reporting of internal control deficiencies among large U.S. not-for-profit (NFP) organizations. We find a negative association between audit partner tenure and the likelihood that the audit report discloses significant deficiencies and material weaknesses, which our tests indicate reflects deterioration in the quality of internal control reports with audit partner tenure. We also find that audit reports are more likely to disclose a significant deficiency rather than a material weakness as tenure increases. Further, audit partner tenure is associated with lower odds of remediating an internal control deficiency in the following year. Finally, we find limited evidence that audit partner changes are associated with reported internal control deficiencies. Our findings contribute large-sample U.S. evidence on the association between audit partner tenure and internal control reporting and provide useful information to government regulators, NFP boards charged with auditor and internal control oversight, and NFP stakeholders.