Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Understanding financial information used to assess small firm performance: An Australian qualitative study

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the reality of financial and management accounting in a small group of small firms. Specifically, from the owner's perspective, an exploration is undertaken to see what financial information is collected, how it is used (or not) to make business decisions and evaluate the firm's performance, and the role played by the accountant in that process. Design/methodology/approach A phenomenological paradigm underpins this exploratory study. Semi‐structured interviews were undertaken with the owners of ten small firms, where the focus was on understanding what happens in an organisational setting, as opposed to theory and textbook practice. Findings The qualitative data supported prior research in other countries. The in‐depth analysis revealed a very basic understanding of accounting information and problems with the financial literacy amongst these small firm owners. Accounting reports were not widely produced or used, so an informal assessment, such as how much cash was in the bank, was the primary means of assessing business performance. Accountants were used for taxation services, although some owners sought more general business advice. Originality/value An understanding is developed of why there might be a gap between textbook rhetoric and reality of accounting practice in small firms. The conclusion is that accounting textbooks need to include more information about the reality of financial management in small firms.
Estimating threshold vector error-correction models with multiple cointegrating relationships

Hansen and Seo (2002) outline procedures to test for threshold cointegration, and to estimate a bi-variate model. However, in their conclusion they note that future research will have to find a way of estimating larger systems with multiple cointegrating vectors. This paper proposes a new algorithm that can be used to estimate such models. Simulation experiments are used to compare the algorithm´s performance with that of Hansen and Seo, and a practical application to the term structure of UK interest rates is also presented.
Description of the classifiers

With xij we denote the value of variable j (j = 1, ., p) for sample i (i = 1, ., n); xi is the set of variables for sample i and x is the set of variables for all samples. Some of the n samples are known to belong to Class 1 (n1 samples) and the others to Class 2 (n2, n1 +n2 = n); the proportion of samples from Class 1 and 2 is denoted by k1 = n1/n and k2 = n2/n, respectively, and yi = {−1, 1} is the class membership for sample i. Let ŷi = c(xi) be the predicted class for sample i.
Benefits and Pitfalls of Network Interconnection

This paper assesses the private and social incentives for disjoint networks to interconnect under various ownership structures. Terms of interconnection are derived for a noncooperative equilibrium. We find that networks mutually profit from interconnection when it creates new services that did not exist beforehand, but also when it creates services that compete directly with existing ones. Given the opportunity to move first, an integrated network will choose not to foreclose its non-integrated rivals. Generally we find that when two or more networks contribute components to a service, double marginalization reduces industry profit and consumer surplus. For this reason, divestiture often harms consumers as well as lowering network profits. Competitive supply of gateway services reduces profit and surplus, but individual networks profit by selling off these facilities to a third party. In contrast, an integrated network will not voluntarily divest its end-to-end service. Compulsory divestiture may inflict serious harm, not only on owners of the integrated network, but on consumers as well.
Studying Labor Market Institutions in the Lab: Minimum Wages, Employment Protection and Workfare

A central concern in economics is to understand the interplay between institutions and labor markets. In this paper we argue that laboratory experiments are a powerful tool for studying labor market institutions. One of the most important advantages is the ability to implement truly exogenous institutional change, in order to make clear causal inferences. We exemplify the usefulness of lab experiments by surveying evidence from three studies, each of which investigates a different, crucial labor market institution: minimum wage laws, employment protection legislation and workfare.
Improving Propositional Satisfiability Algorithms by Dyna mic Selection of Branching Rules

The problem of proving that a propositional boolean formula is satisfiable (SAT) is one of the fundamental problems in computer science. The most popular SAT algorithms are based on the well known Davis-Putnam procedure. There, to guide search, a branching rule is applied for selecting still unassigned variables and computing an assignment to this variable. Additionally, conflict analys is methods were developed which result in non-chronological backtracking that preserves the SAT algorithm to search nonrelevant parts of the search space. In this paper we focus on the impact of different branching rules and present an approach which (1) allows several and not only one branching rules to be applied and (2) uses informationen from non-chronological backtracking to dynamically adapt the probabilities of the branching rules to be selected. Our approach results in a faster and more robust behaviour of the SAT algorithm, whereby speedups of up to 185% can be achieved.
MMIS at GeoCLEF 2008: Experiments in GIR

In this paper we present our Geographic Information Retrieval System, Forostar, and the results of three experiments. We compare two data fusion methods, and show that a simple geographic filter outperforms a penalty based system. We compare context based disambiguation to a default gazetteer and show no significant dierence. Finally we compare a unique geographic index to an ambiguous geographic index. The ambiguous index outperformed all other methods and was statistically significantly better than the baseline.
An Efficient Assignment of Transmission Opportunity in QoS Guaranteed Wireless LAN

IEEE802.11e standard adopts several important techniques to guarantee the quality of service (QoS) of multimedia communications in wireless LAN. A key technique introduced in the standard is an efficient media access control based on hybrid coordination function (HCF), in which each flow is assigned an appropriate transmission opportunity (TXOP) to satisfy several requirements on the flow such as the delay bound and the communication bandwidth. Although it could provide an efficient tool to guarantee the QoS in wireless LAN, HCF has a serious drawback such that a useless bandwidth assignment frequently occurs, which is primarily due to the limitation of the scheme such that all flows share the same service interval (SI). In this paper, we propose a new scheduling scheme that associates each flow with its own SI according to the hardness of the delay bound. The effect of the scheme is experimentally evaluated by simulation. The result of simulations indicates that the number of admitted flows and the data transmission rate certainly increase by the proposed scheme
Enabling multi-layer cyber-security assessment of Industrial Control Systems through Hardware-In-The-Loop testbeds

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are under modernization towards increasing efficiency, reliability, and controllability. Despite the numerous benefits of interconnecting ICS components, the wide adoption of Information Technologies (IT) has introduced new security challenges and vulnerabilities to industrial processes, previously obscured by the systems' custom designs. Towards securing the backbone of critical infrastructure, selection of the proper assessment environment for performing cyber-security assessments is crucial. In this paper, we present a layered analysis of vulnerabilities and threats in ICS components, that identifies the need for including real hardware components in the assessment environment. Moreover, we advocate the suitability of Hardware-In-The-Loop testbeds for ICS cyber-security assessment and present their advantages over other assessment environments.
The Southern European migrant-based care model

ABSTRACT The development of personal social services and female employment is intertwined, not only in the domain of childcare. With the ageing of the population, the changing forms of care and the developments in the eldercare labour market become crucial issues. The new risk of dependency represents a challenge, but also an opportunity. This paper provides an overview of the relationship between the development of long-term care policies and services in distinct European countries and female employment in the care sector. Whereas Northern European countries have developed policies in the field at an earlier stage and continental countries intervened with new policies in the last 10–15 years, in Southern Europe policies remain weak and fragmented. The paper concentrates on the case of Southern European countries, where the weakness of social policies and low development of services did not prevent the rise of a new care labour market. Next to still low employment rates among women, long-term care tends to be provided mainly by migrant care workers often in the underground economy regardless of their legal status. The last development is a key issue for Southern European countries, as discussed in the paper, not only for the current consequences on migrant workers, older people and their families, but also because it is likely to structure any possible future development in long-term care policies.
State observer-based robust control scheme for electrically driven robot manipulators

By using a state observer, a new robust trajectory tracking control scheme is developed in this paper for electrically driven robot manipulators. The role of the observer is to estimate joint angular velocities. The proposed controller does not employ adaptation, but assures robust stability of tracking error between joint angles and desired trajectories. At sacrificing asymptotical stability of the tracking errors, the configuration of the proposed controller becomes very simple, compared with regressor-based adaptive controllers. It is shown in the closed-loop system using the proposed controller that the Euclidian norm of tracking errors arrives at any small closed region with any convergent rate by setting only one design parameter. Especially for the desired trajectories converging to constant ultimate values, it is assured that tracking errors converge to zero.
Language discrimination via PPM model

In this study, the lossless compression tool employing an adaptive statistical modeling technique called prediction by partial matching (PPM) is used for written language discrimination. PPM can well serve as a cryptographic tool in that, while encoding, as long as the algorithm itself is unknown to the third parties, it rearranges the plaintext in a hard-to-recover form. Furthermore, PPM algorithm yields lossless compression to far better rates (in bits per character - bpc) than that of many other conventional compression tools. Trained version of PPM, which uses training text to gather symbol frequencies, is employed during implementation. Language identification experiment results obtained by applying the PPM model on sample texts from English, French and Turkish corpora are given. The rate of success yielded that the performance of the system is highly dependent on the diversity, as well as the size of the target and training texts. In practice, if the training text itself is kept secret, the system would provide cryptographic security to promising degrees.
An improved synthetic attractant for the mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae), in northeastern California

The mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins 1902, is found in pine forests throughout the western U.S., north to northern British Columbia and Alberta, Canada and south to Mexico. It causes high levels of pine mortality throughout its range. Hosts include many species of Pinus (Pinaceae); in northern California, D. ponderosae is a pest of pine types dominated by P. ponderosa Douglas ex Lawson et C.Lawson, P. contorta Douglas ex Loudon, P. monticola Douglas ex D. Don, and in mixed conifer types where P. lambertiana Douglas is the principal host (Struble 1945). The extensive geographic range of D. ponderosae, and the variability in environments in which it occurs, create challenges for developing effective semiochemical tools for reducing beetle-caused tree mortality. Nonrandom genetic variation occurs among populations of D. ponderosae and has been attributed to both geography and host differences Variation has also been observed in D. ponderosae responses to host-produced pheromone synergists (Pitman & Vité 1969, Billings et al. 1976, Libbey et al. 1985, Miller & Lindgren 2000), leading to uncertainties in semiochemical deployment among locations and forest types. Semiochemical attractants (lures) can be used efficiently only when their effectiveness in different locations and host types is understood. For more than 20 years the standard lure for D. ponderosae has consisted of three components: two pheromones, trans-verbenol and exo-brevicomin, and myrcene, a host-based monoterpene synergist (Borden & Lacey 1985). This lure has generally caught greater numbers of D. ponderosae than other combinations of host compounds; however, most comparisons have been limited to British Columbia (e.g., Borden et al. 1987, Pureswaran & Borden 2005). In western U.S., uncertainty remains about the relative effect of individual monoterpenes for synergizing aggregation pheromones of D. ponderosae. This is especially true for terpinolene, which is commonly found as a minor component of oleoresin in hosts of D. ponderosae (e.g., Smith 2000), and has been found to catch similar numbers of beetles to myrcene in some forest types (Billings et al. 1976). Terpinolene appears to be less ubiquitous in western pines than myrcene, but in California is frequently present in the oleoresins of both P. ponderosa and P. lambertiana among others (Smith 2000, S. L. Smith et al. unpublished data). Because the effectiveness of terpinolene as a pheromone synergist for D. ponderosae has varied (Billings et al. 1976, Conn et al. 1983), its utility for particular applications (geographic regions and forest types) must be evaluated before …
International Outsourcing and the Sector Bias: New Empirical Evidence

Considering labor market effects of international outsourcing on more disaggregated industry levels, a sector bias appears showing that low skilled labor receives a wage premium when international outsourcing takes place in low skill-intensive industries. However, there is no empirical evidence supporting this pattern. Applying a panel data analysis for Germany, this paper provides new empirical evidence for the existence of the sector bias of international outsourcing: significant results confirm the decreasing wage gap if international outsourcing takes place in low skill-intensive industries. If international outsourcing takes place in high skill-intensive industries, the wage gap increases.
Early appearance of germinal center–derived memory B cells and plasma cells in blood after primary immunization

Immunization with a T cell–dependent antigen elicits production of specific memory B cells and antibody-secreting cells (ASCs). The kinetic and developmental relationships between these populations and the phenotypic forms they and their precursors may take remain unclear. Therefore, we examined the early stages of a primary immune response, focusing on the appearance of antigen-specific B cells in blood. Within 1 wk, antigen-specific B cells appear in the blood with either a memory phenotype or as immunoglobulin (Ig)G1 ASCs expressing blimp-1. The memory cells have mutated VH genes; respond to the chemokine CXCL13 but not CXCL12, suggesting recirculation to secondary lymphoid organs; uniformly express B220; show limited differentiation potential unless stimulated by antigen; and develop independently of blimp-1 expression. The antigen-specific IgG1 ASCs in blood show affinity maturation paralleling that of bone marrow ASCs, raising the possibility that this compartment is established directly by blood-borne ASCs. We find no evidence for a blimp-1–expressing preplasma memory compartment, suggesting germinal center output is restricted to ASCs and B220+ memory B cells, and this is sufficient to account for the process of affinity maturation.
Imidazole acetol phosphate aminotransferase in Zymomonas mobilis: molecular genetic, biochemical, and evolutionary analyses

hisH encodes imidazole acetol phosphate (IAP) aminotransferase in Zymomonas mobilis and is located immediately upstream of tyrC, a gene which codes for cyclohexadienyl dehydrogenase. A plasmid containing hisH was able to complement an Escherichia coli histidine auxotroph which lacked the homologous aminotransferase. DNA sequencing of hisH revealed an open reading frame of 1,110 bp, encoding a protein of 40,631 Da. The cloned hisH product was purified from E. coli and estimated by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis to have a molecular mass of 40,000 Da. Since the native enzyme had a molecular mass of 85,000 Da as determined by gel filtration, the active enzyme species must be a homodimer. The purified enzyme was able to transaminate aromatic amino acids and histidine in addition to histidinol phosphate. The existence of a single protein having broad substrate specificity was consistent with the constant ratio of activities obtained with different substrates following a variety of physical treatments (such as freeze-thaw, temperature inactivation, and manipulation of pyridoxal 5'-phosphate content). The purified enzyme did not require addition of pyridoxal 5'-phosphate, but dependence upon this cofactor was demonstrated following resolution of the enzyme and cofactor by hydroxylamine treatment. Kinetic data showed the classic ping-pong mechanism expected for aminotransferases. Km values of 0.17, 3.39, and 43.48 mM for histidinol phosphate, tyrosine, and phenylalanine were obtained. The gene structure around hisH-tyrC suggested an operon organization. The hisH-tyrC cluster in Z. mobilis is reminiscent of the hisH-tyrA component of a complex operon in Bacillus subtilis, which includes the tryptophan operon and aroE. Multiple alignment of all aminotransferase sequences available in the database showed that within the class I superfamily of aminotransferases, IAP aminotransferases (family I beta) are closer to the I gamma family (e.g., rat tyrosine aminotransferase) than to the I alpha family (e.g., rat aspartate aminotransferase or E. coli AspC). Signature motifs which distinguish the IAP aminotransferase family were identified in the region of the active-site lysine and in the region of the interdomain interface.
Protegen: a web-based protective antigen database and analysis system

Protective antigens are specifically targeted by the acquired immune response of the host and are able to induce protection in the host against infectious and non-infectious diseases. Protective antigens play important roles in vaccine development, as biological markers for disease diagnosis, and for analysis of fundamental host immunity against diseases. Protegen is a web-based central database and analysis system that curates, stores and analyzes protective antigens. Basic antigen information and experimental evidence are curated from peer-reviewed articles. More detailed gene/protein information (e.g. DNA and protein sequences, and COG classification) are automatically extracted from existing databases using internally developed scripts. Bioinformatics programs are also applied to compute different antigen features, such as protein weight and pI, and subcellular localizations of bacterial proteins. Presently, 590 protective antigens have been curated against over 100 infectious diseases caused by pathogens and non-infectious diseases (including cancers and allergies). A user-friendly web query and visualization interface is developed for interactive protective antigen search. A customized BLAST sequence similarity search is also developed for analysis of new sequences provided by the users. To support data exchange, the information of protective antigens is stored in the Vaccine Ontology (VO) in OWL format and can also be exported to FASTA and Excel files. Protegen is publically available at http://www.violinet. org/protegen.
Brain network dynamics during error commission

Previous studies suggest that the anterior cingulate and other prefrontal brain regions might form a functionally‐integrated error detection network in the human brain. This study examined whole brain functional connectivity to both correct and incorrect button presses using independent component analysis (ICA) of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data collected from 25 adolescent and 25 adult healthy participants (ages 11–37) performing a visual Go/No‐Go task. Correct responses engaged a network comprising left lateral prefrontal cortex, left postcentral gyrus/inferior parietal lobule, striatum, and left cerebellum. In contrast, a similar network was uniquely engaged during errors, but this network was not integrated with activity in regions believed to be engaged for higher‐order cognitive control over behavior. A medial/dorsolateral prefrontal‐parietal neural network responded to all No‐Go stimuli, but with significantly greater activity to errors. ICA analyses also identified a third error‐related circuit comprised of anterior temporal lobe, limbic, and pregenual cingulate cortices, possibly representing an affective response to errors. There were developmental differences in error‐processing activity within many of these neural circuits, typically reflecting greater hemodynamic activation in adults. These findings characterize the spatial structure of neural networks underlying error commission and identify neurobiological differences between adolescents and adults. Hum Brain Mapp 2009. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Attitudinal Ambivalence Towards Turkey's EU Membership

This article takes a comparative political behaviour approach to examine the multifaceted nature of Turkey's European Union (EU) membership bid from the perspective of the EU citizens. We propose a multidimensional explanation for EU citizens' attitude towards Turkey's membership by referring to the political psychology literature on attitudinal ambivalence. We examine whether EU citizens simultaneously hold multiple and conflicting considerations on Turkey's EU accession bid, and whether this ambivalence has attitudinal consequences. To that end, we use the Eurobarometer 66.1 data set to analyze the EU public attitudes on various aspects of possible Turkish EU membership. The findings show that the EU citizens maintain ambivalent views about Turkish membership across three domain pairs: economy–security, immigration–security and population–culture. The significant impact of these ambivalence domains on increasing support for Turkey's membership to the EU is further discussed in the article.
Report of a survey

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