Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Consumer Spending and Consumer Confidence in South Africa: Cointegration Analysis

The study uses the time series data covering the period 1980Q1 to 2012Q3 to test the existence of any possible long run relationship between consumer spending and consumer confidence in South Africa. The analysis is done using the Vector Auto-Regressive (VAR) model, with the unit root and the direction of causation also tested before any inference can be concluded on this relationship. The unit root tests using the DF-GLS as well as the Ng-Peron show that consumer spending, consumer confidence and economic growth are integrated of order zero ~I(0). Causality results on the other hand reveal that causation runs from consumer confidence to consumer spending and from economic growth to consumer spending in South Africa. The non-existence of unit root compels the establishment of the long-run relationship that leads us to performing VECM to establish short-run and long-run dynamics. Our results indicate that the positive effect of consumer confidence cannot be refuted in South Africa and that it exerts a significant and positive impact on consumer spending, hence aggregate spending.
Relationship marketing practice in Lithuanian logistics organizations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to establish relationship marketing practice aspects, their prevalence and opportunities in Lithuanian logistics organizations.Design/methodology/approach – By applying a standardized questionnaire, Lithuanian logistics organizations were examined. Mostly executives, organizations' owners and logistics specialists were key informants.Findings – The findings indicated that cooperation is a fundamental element in the organizations. Depending on the developed relationship type in the organizations the significance attached to relationship marketing elements differ, level of satisfaction of long‐term relationship different too.Research limitations/implications – A suggestion for further research is to adapt the study in other Lithuanian industries business relationships.Practical implications – This study is of managerial interest, as the framework may be applied by logistics organizations and if necessary modified considering the main aspects of customer relationships.O.
A constrained graph algebra for semantic parsing with AMRs

When learning grammars that map from sentences to abstract meaning representations (AMRs), one faces the challenge that an AMR can be described in a huge number of different ways using traditional graph algebras. We introduce a new algebra for building graphs from smaller parts, using linguistically motivated operations for combining a head with a complement or a modiﬁer. Using this algebra, we can reduce the number of analyses per AMR graph dramatically; at the same time, we show that challenging linguistic constructions can still be handled correctly.
Recommended architecture for car parking management system based on cyber-physical system

A joint combination of interacting network of physical components and computational algorithms form cyber-physical system (CPS). Cyber-physical systems are intended to improve the quality of life by forming a sound basis of emerging smart services. There is a need to apply CPS in different fields to acquire the prominent result and therefore, we have applied CPS in the car parking management system. Looking for parking space waste a lot of time as a user has to search for parking space, since lack of car parking information. It results in traffic congestion, environmental pollution making the environment more badly. A lot of approaches have been developed to solve this problem but they are insufficient either they are not sufficient to cope with the user needs and they are not able to communicate properly with the external interfaces or they are much costly. The proposed solution based on CPS, solve the problem of car parking system. The proposed solution is effective and efficient as the user will enter location details using the smartphone app and send it to the server. The server will search for the available parking slots, getting information from sensors and send it back to the user with the route directions. The user will follow that particular route and park vehicle at the area designated by the server. The proposed solution is a novel approach to solve the car parking problem using cyber-physical system.
China's Drought Strategies in Rural Areas along the Lancang river

Given that climate change is likely to exacerbate drought in certain parts of the world, a critical issue is how appropriate context-relevant drought policy can be developed and implemented. This paper examines how China is developing policies to help local communities in the Lancang River Basin to cope with the problems of climate variability and change. The research process includes (a) content analysis of relevant policies at different levels of administration and (b) stakeholder interviews to examine how effective policies are at the local level along the Lancang River in Yunnan province. The paper concludes that China needs to provide more emphasis on (a) enhancing the adaptive capacity of institutions and individuals, (b) drought risk rather than disaster management, (c) enhancing coordination between different departments and levels of government, (d) decentralization in policymaking as local governments can make context-relevant comprehensive policies more easily and are less hierarchical in their relationships, (e) involving farmers or other stakeholders in decision making, (f) building up grass root organizations to support policy implementation to compensate for the retreat of governmental organizations from the local level and (g) adopting market mechanisms which are still in a nascent stage now.
Implementing a web‐based introductory bioinformatics course for non‐bioinformaticians that incorporates practical exercises

A recent scientific discipline, bioinformatics, defined as using informatics for the study of biological problems, is now a requirement for the study of biological sciences. Bioinformatics has become such a powerful and popular discipline that several academic institutions have created programs in this field, allowing students to become specialized. However, biology students who are not involved in a bioinformatics program also need a solid toolbox of bioinformatics software and skills. Therefore, we have developed a completely online bioinformatics course for non‐bioinformaticians, entitled “BIF‐1901 Introduction à la bio‐informatique et à ses outils (Introduction to bioinformatics and bioinformatics tools),” given by the Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Bioinformatics of Université Laval (Quebec City, Canada). This course requires neither a bioinformatics background nor specific skills in informatics. The underlying main goal was to produce a completely online up‐to‐date bioinformatics course, including practical exercises, with an intuitive pedagogical framework. The course, BIF‐1901, was conceived to cover the three fundamental aspects of bioinformatics: (1) informatics, (2) biological sequence analysis, and (3) structural bioinformatics. This article discusses the content of the modules, the evaluations, the pedagogical framework, and the challenges inherent to a multidisciplinary, fully online course. © 2017 by The International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 46(1):31–38, 2018.
Policy Choices and Resilience to International Monetary Shocks

Abstract The well-known trilemma theory states that the nominal exchange rate regime plays a crucial role in a country's ability to pursue monetary policy that is for its domestic objectives independent from other countries' influences. In particular, a flexible exchange rate is required for an independent monetary policy. Capital controls may help a country with a fixed exchange rate to gain some policy space but the effect of capital controls is leaky and often short-lived. We revisit these conventional wisdoms and find no strong evidence supporting them in practice. In particular, a flexible exchange rate does not reliably deliver monetary policy independence, but capital controls do. This is consistent with the view that most (developing) countries dislike either depreciation or appreciation of their currencies, and therefore would choose to follow US monetary policy moves even if they are on a flexible exchange rate regime. In other words, to build resilience to international monetary policy shocks, capital controls are a necessarily component.
Local spatial distortion caused by simple geometrical figures

Dynamic distortion of the visual field has been shown to affect perceptual judgment of visual dimensions such as size, length, and distance. Here, we report four experiments demonstrating that the different aspects of a triangle differently influence judgments of distance. Specifically, when the base of the triangle faces the centre of the display, participants consistently underestimate and overestimate the distance of a small dot from the unmarked centre of the display relative to conditions in which the vertex of the triangle faces the centre. When the dot is close to the figure, the distance of the dot to the centre is underestimated. Conversely, when the dot is close to the figure, the distance to the centre is overestimated. The effect is replicated when the internal distances are equalized and when ellipses are used instead of triangles. These results support a ripple model of spatial distortion in which local curvature acts to attract or repel objects. In conclusion, we suggest some implications of our findings for theories of perceptual organization.
Supervisory practices in non-formal educational settings as perceived by agricultural education teachers: A national study

Student achievement in the United States is receiving increased scrutiny, placing higher levels of accountability upon the classroom teacher. Instructional supervisors responsible for the supervision of teachers have also felt added pressure to maintain student achievement at levels consistent with state and national mandates. Instructional supervisors use formalized supervision of instruction in traditional classroom settings to guide teachers in increasing student achievement. High school agricultural education utilizes a three-pronged model for program implementation that includes SAE and FFA. Agricultural education teachers should initiate activities that encourage collaborative supervision in the non-formal components of the program to help improve student achievement. This descriptive study determined the relative importance of ten general instructional supervision beliefs, the importance of 28 selected supervisory practices, and the frequency in which the 28 selected supervisory practices were experienced by teachers in the non-formal educational settings of the agricultural education program. A disproportionate stratified random sample of 700 agricultural education teachers was drawn from state groupings stratified by FFA membership. An electronic questionnaire was used to collect the data through Survey Monkey. Findings were obtained from the responses of 234 agricultural education teachers from 17 states. Independent samples t-tests and analysis of variance were used to determine differences in perceptions based upon demographic characteristics. The average respondent was male, 42 years of age, held a bachelor’s degree and had taught nearly 15 years. Respondents believed that supervision is more art than science, should be collaborative, and used in all teachable moments for the improvement of student
A hybrid ARIMA-EGARCH and Artificial Neural Network model in stock market forecasting: evidence for India and the USA

This study develops a hybrid model that combines Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA), Exponential GARCH (EGARCH) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to predict the daily returns of S&P CNX Nifty and S&P 500 indices by modifying Zhang’s (2003) approach. The performance of the hybrid ARIMA-EGARCH-ANN model is benchmarked against the ARIMA-EGARCH and ANN models. The empirical evidence provides superiority of the hybrid ARIMA-EGARCH-ANN model in terms of the traditional forecasting accuracy measures and Sign and directional change and delivers consistent results for the two time series. This endorses hybrid model robustness and provides its practical use in formulating a strategy for trading in the S&P 500 and Nifty indices.
Toroidal-type shielding coil systems for the power system control SMES

SMES systems for applications of power system control, such as power line stabilization and compensation of power fluctuation, attract interest recently. In these applications, the use of low-loss type conductors as strand cables are necessary to reduce AC losses accompanied with rapid changes of magnetic fields; however, it brings some difficulties of high cost and low mechanical strength of the superconducting coil. To solve the above problems, the shielding coil system, which is composed of a main superconducting coil and a normal shielding coil connected in parallel, were proposed. In the shielding coil system, the fluctuated current at energy input and output is diverted to the shielding coil and only the constant current flows in the main superconducting coil. In this paper, we propose a new shielding coil system of toroidal arrangement, which has low stray magnetic fields in ambient areas. Results of the optimization of coil configurations in the toroidal shielding system are presented. Besides the toroidal systems of the circular elementary coil, those of D-shaped elementary coils, which have lower electromagnetic stress than circular one, are also studied.
Single season heteroscedasticity in time series

We consider seasonal time series in which one season has variance that is different from all the others. This behaviour is evident in indices of production where variability is highest for the month with the lowest level of production. We show that when one season has different variability from others there are constraints on the seasonal models that can be used; neither dummy and trigonometric models are effective in modelling this type of behaviour. We define a general model that provides an appropriate representation of single-season heteroscedasticity and suggest a likelihood ratio test for the presence of periodic variance in one season. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Non-homothetic preferences and growth

We observe that countries at low levels of income invest at lower rates than those at higher levels of income. This paper explains this fact as a consequence of Engel's law, i.e. that there is an inverse relation between expenditure and its proportion spent on food. It introduces non-homothetic preferences based on Engel’s law in a simple Solow model. These preferences imply rates of net investment that increase with the level of income as we approach the steady state. Increasing investment rates imply a positive correlation between growth rates and the level of income, at low levels of income, rather than an inverse relation, as the usual Solow model implies. The existence of a positive correlation between income growth rates and income levels, at low levels of income in the presence of this type of preference, has already been shown in a previous paper for a closed economy. The purpose of this paper is to show that this positive correlation persists when we introduce trade into the model.
Detrended Fluctuation Analysis of EEG as a Measure of Depth of Anesthesia

For several decades, a number of methods have been developed for the noninvasive assessment of the level of consciousness during general anesthesia. In this paper, detrended fluctuation analysis is used to study the scaling behavior of the electroencephalogram as a measure of the level of consciousness. Three indexes are proposed in order to characterize the patient state. Statistical analysis demonstrates that they allow significant discrimination between the awake, sedated and anesthetized states. Two of them present a good correlation with established indexes of depth of anesthesia. The scaling behavior has been found related to the depth of anesthesia and the methodology allows real-time implementation, which enables its application in monitoring devices
Conservative Accounting and Linear Information Valuation Models

Prior research using the residual income valuation model and linear information models has generally found that estimates of firm value are negatively biased. We argue that this could result from the way in which accounting conservatism effects are reflected in such models. We build on the conservative accounting model of Feltham and Ohlson (1995) and the Dechow, Hutton and Sloan (1999) (DHS) methodology to propose a valuation model that includes a conservatism-correction term, based on the properties of past realizations of residual income and other information. Other information is measured using analyst-forecast-based predictions of residual income. We use data comparable to the DHS sample to compare the bias and inaccuracy of value estimates from our model and from models similar to those used by DHS and Myers (1999). Valuation biases are substantially less negative for our model, but valuation inaccuracy is not markedly reduced.
Are Secondary Workers Informal Workers? Evidence for Argentina ¿Son informales los trabajadores secundarios? Evidencia para Argentina

Empirical studies attempting at testing dualism in developing countries often rely on an ex-ante definition of the primary and the secondary sector. Many times this methodology causes biases in the estimation due to sample selection problems. Also, such definitions may be arbitrary sometimes. We use twenty seven years of household data in order to test for the existence dual labor markets in Argentina. We estimated an endogenous switching model with unknown regime without defining ex-ante sector attachment. We find evidence of dualism for both periods analyzed. However, the differences between the two sectors have significantly changed over time. Finally, our estimations also corroborate the fact that using the usual ex-ante definition of sector attachment may not be adequate for testing dualism.
Duplication of functional polyadenylation signals in polyomavirus DNA does not alter efficiency of polyadenylation or transcription termination

We constructed viable insertion mutants of polyomavirus that contain duplications of the nucleotide sequences surrounding the polyadenylation sites for both E- and L-strand RNAs. Our results showed that formation of poly(A)+ 3'termini of L-strand mRNAs requires sequence elements located between 12 and 87 nucleotides downstream of AAUAAA. No more than 19 nucleotides upstream and 44 nucleotides downstream of AAUAAA are required for polyadenylation of E-strand mRNAs. Our results and those of others suggest that there are three distinct sequence elements required for mRNA 3' end formation: AAUAAA and two downstream elements. An insertion mutant containing two adjacent functional polyadenylation signals produced E-strand and L-strand mRNAs with 3' ends at both sites. However, the overall level of polyadenylation of L-strand RNAs was not increased over the low (10 to 25%) levels seen with wild-type virus. Neither was the efficiency of termination of L-strand transcription increased in mutant virus-infected cells. We conclude that factors required for both polyadenylation and transcription termination are limiting in polyomavirus-infected mouse cells.
Voluntary Contributions to Personal Pension Plans: Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey

In this paper, we use data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) for the years 1992 to 1998 to study the determinants of saving in the form of voluntary contributions to personal pension plans (PPPs). We first estimate a probit model with selection for the probability of making these voluntary contributions. We then estimate a random-effects tobit regression for the amounts contributed and compare the results with those of a similar regression for conventional saving. Our findings suggest that voluntary contributions to PPPs are made essentially for retirement purposes, whereas conventional saving is undertaken for precautionary motives. The former type of saving is thus unlikely to offset the latter completely.
The Nature and Consequences of Trade-Off Transparency in the Context of Recommendation Agents

That recommendation agents (RAs) can substantially improve consumers' decision making is well understood. Far less understood is the influence of specific design attributes of the RA interface on decision making and other outcome measures. We investigate a novel design for an RA interface that enables it to interactively demonstrate trade-offs among product attribute values (i.e., trade-off transparency feature) to improve consumers' perceived product diagnosticity and perceived enjoyment. We also examine the extent to which the trade-offs among product attribute values should be revealed to the user. Further, based on the stimulus-organism-response model, we develop a theoretical model that extends the effort-accuracy framework by proposing perceived enjoyment and perceived product diagnosticity as two antecedents for perceived decision quality and perceived decision effort, respectively. In an experimental study, we find that (1) the trade-off transparency feature significantly affects perceived enjoyment and perceived product diagnosticity, (2) perceived enjoyment and perceived product diagnosticity follow an inverted U-shaped curve as the level of tradeoff transparency increases, (3) although users spend more time understanding attribute trade-offs with the trade-off transparency feature, they are more efficient in selecting a product, (4) perceived enjoyment simultaneously leads to better perceived decision quality and lower perceived decision effort, and (5) perceived product diagnosticity leads to better perceived decision quality without compromising perceptions of decision effort. Theoretically, this study increases our understanding of how the design of an RA interface can improve consumers' product diagnosticity and enjoyment, and proposes two antecedents to improve perceived decision quality and reduce perceived decision effort. For design practitioners, our results indicate the importance of providing the trade-off transparency design feature to potential consumers.
Insurance and Banking Interconnectedness in Europe: The Opinion of Equity Markets

Conditional expected shortfalls calculated for European insurance companies and banks under stressed market conditions are shown to be of similar magnitudes. Measured at 95% and 99% stress levels, on data covering the period from 1995 to 2011, the equity-return tail losses of insurance undertakings and banks are indistinguishable. Granger causality analysis, on all pairs of banks and insurance companies included in the sample, shows that banks and insurance companies have equal propensity to cause each others price movements. Even though the business model of insurance undertakings is different from the business model typically applied by banks, and even though insurance companies are not depending to a similar degree on short term funding as banks, the empirical results indicate that the financial equity markets in Europe do not differentiate their trading of banks and insurance companies in periods of stress.