Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Value investing and the business cycle in the South African context

Value and growth investment strategies can be traced back to Fama and French (1992) and Lakonishok, Shleifer and Vishny (1994). The studies built on earlier work done and lead to attention being shifted to valuation ratios and company size as leading explanatory indicators for stock returns. Based on the accumulated evidence from studies, the academic and investment community came to agree that value investment strategies, on average, outperform growth investment strategies. Value and growth, are widely recognised and used by money managers and investors as distinctive investment strategies. These style-specific investment strategies were tested on the South African market for the period 1990 to 2009. The significant changes within the economic conditions and securities markets motivated the research to include the business cycle – specifically, contraction and expansion of the economy – within the scope of this study. The Sharpe, Treynor and Information performance ratios, that were calculated for compiled value and growth portfolios, were compared and analysed. The performance evaluation is not normally initiated with a detailed analysis of the return distribution in order to determine which performance measure is superior. The return densities for all portfolios were calculated in order to gain a better understanding of return distributions and risk considerations within the different business cycles. The results indicated that, within the South African context, value investing did outperform growth investing as indicated by previous research that stocks with high valuation ratios tend to outperform stocks with low valuation ratios. The mean monthly performance of value portfolios also outperformed growth portfolios in the period of economic upswing, which is a similar result as that of other markets where this kind of research has been conducted. In the economic downturn period growth investing seems to be superior to value investing similar to that of the US market. The study indicates that the superior performance of value investing is robust for the whole sample period, meaning that investors will be better off investing in stocks with high valuation ratios for all economic conditions, but the benefits of value investing would be greater during periods of economic upswing. The volatility of returns within the two economic conditions is quite evident and highlights the importance of incorporating business cycles into investment strategies and decisions. The business cycle adds another dimension to value investing strategy evaluation and should be incorporated in the evaluation process.
The Compressed Model of Residual CNDS

Convolutional neural networks have achieved a great success in the recent years. Although, the way to maximize the performance of the convolutional neural networks still in the beginning. Furthermore, the optimization of the size and the time that need to train the convolutional neural networks is very far away from reaching the researcher's ambition. In this paper, we proposed a new convolutional neural network that combined several techniques to boost the optimization of the convolutional neural network in the aspects of speed and size. As we used our previous model Residual-CNDS (ResCNDS), which solved the problems of slower convergence, overfitting, and degradation, and compressed it. The outcome model called Residual-Squeeze-CNDS (ResSquCNDS), which we demonstrated on our sold technique to add residual learning and our model of compressing the convolutional neural networks. Our model of compressing adapted from the SQUEEZENET model, but our model is more generalizable, which can be applied almost to any neural network model, and fully integrated into the residual learning, which addresses the problem of the degradation very successfully. Our proposed model trained on very large-scale MIT Places365-Standard scene datasets, which backing our hypothesis that the new compressed model inherited the best of the previous ResCNDS8 model, and almost get the same accuracy in the validation Top-1 and Top-5 with 87.64% smaller in size and 13.33% faster in the training time.
EXQ: a multiple‐item scale for assessing service experience

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize, construct, refine and empirically validate a multiple‐item scale for measuring customers' service experience (EXQ). Design/methodology/approach – The authors present exploratory research developing a conceptualization of service experience based on a two‐stage approach: initial item generation through qualitative research, initial purification of these findings through exploratory factor analysis, and validation through the use of confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling.Findings – The paper conceptualizes and validates the concept of customer/service experience. In total, 19 items in four dimensions of the EXQ scale were identified: product experience, outcome focus, moments‐of‐truth and peace‐of‐mind. These dimensions reflect service experience perceptions. The findings support the conclusion that the service experience has a significant impact on customer satisfaction, loyalty and word‐of‐mouth intentions. The scale demonstrat.
Poultry welfare problems related to avian influenza and other contagious diseases.

In this paper various bird welfare aspects related to avian influenza and other contagious diseases are discussed. Disease outbreaks will, apart from the obvious direct effects on bird health, and thereby their wellbeing, also indirectly influence the welfare of the birds. For example, restrictions on outdoor access for free-range poultry may be imposed, and vaccination or testing schemes may lead to handling or sampling procedures that are stressful to the birds. At the same time, the immediate risk of a disease outbreak may lead to improved biosecurity measures on farms, which may in turn decrease the risk of other diseases entering the premises, thus resulting in improved bird health and welfare.
Linker histone H1 represses recombination at the ribosomal DNA locus in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Several epigenetic phenomena occur at ribosomal DNA loci in eukaryotic cells, including the silencing of Pol I and Pol II transcribed genes, silencing of replication origins and repression of recombination. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, studies focusing on the silencing of Pol II transcription and genetic recombination at the ribosomal DNA locus (rDNA) have provided insight into the mechanisms through which chromatin and chromatin‐associated factors regulate gene expression and chromosome stability. The core histones, H2A, H2B, H3 and H4, the fundamental building blocks of chromatin, have been shown to regulate silent chromatin at the rDNA; however, the function of the linker histone H1 has not been well characterized. Here, we show that S. cerevisiae histone H1 represses recombination at the rDNA without affecting Pol II gene silencing. The most highly studied repressor of recombination at the rDNA is the Silent information regulator protein Sir2. We find that cells lacking histone H1 do not exhibit a premature‐ageing phenotype nor do they accumulate the rDNA recombination intermediates and products that are found in cells lacking Sir2. These results suggest that histone H1 represses recombination at the rDNA by a mechanism that is independent of the recombination pathways regulated by Sir2.
Aspect oriented programming using actors

This paper summarizes an actor-based middleware in Java for the development of time-dependent distributed systems. The approach centres on the separation of concerns. Functional, synchronization, control and configuration aspects of an application can be separately dealt with in a design so as to favour the fulfilment of the application requirements. Actors are encapsulation units of data and behaviour and are modelled as finite state machines. They enable ubiquitous computing, have location transparent names, and can migrate, possibly autonomously, from node to node of an heterogeneous computing infrastructure like Internet, for accomplishing their computational task. They are based on an explicit messaging system. Crosscutting concerns in a group of actors can be programmed in special actors which transparently filter message exchanges and superimpose to them the timing and synchronization constraints which directly affect the message scheduling. The paper describes the implementation of a real-time multimedia QoS synchronizer.
Equilibrium and Media of Exchange in a Convex Trading Post Economy with Transaction Costs

General equilibrium is investigated with N commodities traded at N(N−1) 2 commodity-pairwise trading posts. Trade is a resource-using activity recovering transaction costs through the spread between bid (wholesale) and ask (retail) prices (quoted as commodity rates of exchange). Budget constraints are enforced at each trading post separately implying demand for a carrier of value between trading posts, commodity money. Existence of general equilibrium is established under conventional convexity and continuity conditions while structuring the price space to account for distinct bid and ask prices. Trade in media of exchange (commodity money) is the difference between gross and net inter-post trades.
Opportunistic Device-to-Device Communication in Cellular networks: From Theory to Practice

Cellular service providers have been struggling with users’ demand since the emergence of mobile Internet. As a result, each generation of cellular network prevailed over its predecessors mainly in terms of connection speed. However, the fifth generation (5G) of cellular network promises to go beyond this trend by revolutionizing the network architecture. Device-to- Device (D2D) communication is one of the revolutionary changes that enables mobile users to communicate directly without traversing a base station. This feature is being actively studied in 3GPP with special focus on public safety as it allows mobiles to operate in adhoc mode. Although under the (partial) control of the network, D2D communications open the door to many other use-cases. This dissertation studies different aspects of D2D communications and its impact on the key performance indicators of the network. We design an architecture for the collaboration of cellular users by means of timely exploited D2D opportunities. We begin by presenting the analytical study on opportunistic outband D2D communications. The study reveals the great potential of opportunistic outband D2D communications for enhancing energy efficiency, fairness, and capacity of cellular networks when groups of D2D users can be form and managed in the cellular network. Then we introduce a protocol that is compatible with the latest release of IEEE and 3GPP standards and allows for implementation of our proposal in a today’s cellular network. To validate our analytical findings, we use our experimental Software Defined Radio (SDR)-based testbed to further study our proposal in a real world scenario. The experimental results confirm the outstanding potential of opportunistic outband D2D communications. Finally, we investigate the performance merits and disadvantages of different D2D “modes”. Our investigation reveals, despite the common belief, that all D2D modes are complementary and their merits are scenario based.
Appeals in television advertising: A content analysis of commercials aimed at children and teenagers

Abstract A content analysis of 601 commercials was conducted in order to identify the appeals that characterize commercials aimed at children and teenagers. Our findings demonstrated that the use of appeals (a) showed strong age differences and (b) was highly gender-role stereotyped, particularly in commercials aimed at children. The most typical appeals in commercials aimed at male children were action-adventure, sports, and play, whereas commercials aimed at female children emphasized nurturing, physical attractiveness, friendship, and romance. Having the best, competition, and achievement were the dominant appeals in commercials aimed at male teenagers, whereas romance, sexuality, and belonging to a group were emphasized in commercials aimed at female teenagers.
Determinants of the effectiveness of 'agriclinics and agribusiness centres scheme' in Kerala.

To identify the socio-psychological characteristics of graduate trainees in agriculture contributing to the effectiveness of ‘Agriclinics and Agribusiness Scheme’, a survey of 60 trainees from the agriclinics and agribusiness training programme of Kerala Agricultural University for the period from May 2002 to October 2003 was conducted. Results show that the most important factors influencing establishment of agribusiness units are attitude towards self-employment, entrepreneurial ability, and self-confidence. Gender-related variations were also significant with regard to attitude towards self-employment, decision- making ability, and information seeking behaviour. Agribusiness training programmes should, therefore, focus on changes in attitude towards self-employment, develop entrepreneurial ability, and enhance self-confidence of the trainees, which in turn, will promote successful agribusiness ventures.
Potentiated glucose deprivation‐induced death of astrocytes after induction of iNOS

Astrocytes play an essential role in the maintenance of normal neuronal function. Here we report that pretreatment of interferon‐γ (IFN‐γ) and lipopolysaccharides (LPS) made murine astrocytes highly vulnerable to glucose deprivation‐induced death. Neither 12‐hr glucose deprivation nor 2‐day treatment with IFN‐γ (100 U/ml) and LPS (1 μg/ml) altered the viability of astrocytes. However, significant death of IFN‐γ/LPS‐treated astrocytes was observed after 4‐hr glucose deprivation. This augmented death was mimicked by the nitric oxide releasing reagent 3‐morpholinosydnonimine and was in part prevented by the nitric oxide synthase inhibitor NG‐nitroarginine. The data indicate that immunostimulated astrocytes can undergo suicidal death during glucose deprivation through the expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase. J. Neurosci. Res. 54:870–875, 1998. © 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Constituent Analysis: A Paradigm for Marketing Effectiveness in the Not‐for‐profit Organisation

Not‐for‐profit organisations have a much more complicated and less formal relationship with the various constituent groups they serve than do for‐profit organisations. As a result, the not‐for‐profit organisation must carefully analyse the needs and requirements of each of its constituent groups and develop individual strategies for responding to those needs. A paradigm for that analysis is proposed in this article.
Sentiment Analysis in Financial News

This thesis studies the relation between the numerical information found in financial markets and the verbal information reported in financial news. I explore whether we can use market data to teach a computer to distinguish between positive news and negative news. If we have an algorithm that successfully determines polarity in financial texts, can we apply it to outside domains such as movie reviews? Can we use knowledge about polarity in texts to predict market returns? These questions have been approached by two communities: one in finance, one in machine learning. These communities use different methods and are unaware of each other’s work. This thesis compares and combines the existing methods to sentiment analysis in financial news, evaluating them using the above questions. I find that methods from machine learning are very effective at distinguishing between positive and negative news. However, algorithms trained on financial news are not useful for predicting sentiment in movie reviews. I also find that the methods from machine learning outperform the methods proposed by the finance community when predicting future stock returns. These predictions suggest strategies that generate positive returns when trading with public information, but these returns vanish after accounting for trading costs.
Decoupled DC-Link Capacitor Voltage Control of DC–AC Multilevel Multileg Converters

This paper studies the coupling between the capacitor voltage control loops of diode-clamped (or functionally equivalent) multilevel multileg (multiphase) dc-ac converters. From a complete model of the plant revealing the coupling, a simple approach consisting in multiplying the vector of control commands by a constant matrix is proposed to decouple the control problem and achieve a better controller performance. Simulation and experimental results are presented to prove the superior performance of the proposed decoupled control.
The effect of punch velocity on the compaction of a variety of materials

The effect of punch velocity over the range 0 033–400 mms−1 on the compaction of a variety of materials has been studied using constants derived from the Heckel equation as criteria to describe their behaviour. For materials known to deform plastically, e.g. maize starch and polymeric materials, there was an increase in the yield pressure with punch velocity attributable to a change either from ductile to brittle behaviour or a reduction in the amount of plastic deformation due to the time dependent nature of plastic flow. For materials known to consolidate by fragmentation, e.g. magnesium and calcium carbonates, there was no change in yield pressure with increasing punch velocity. The data has been analysed in terms of the strain rate sensitivity of the materials calculated from their yield pressure at low and high punch velocities.
COACH: a teaching agent that learns

Ognitiw Adaptive Computer Ht+ (COACH) is a sys-tan that records user rxp&rnce to create prrsonalized user help. Imagine you are learning a new operating sys trrn or programming language. COACH watches your actions to build an adaptive user model (AUM) that selects appropriate advic? ,Just as a football coach will stand on the sidelines and enconr-age, cajole or reprimand, so COACH is an advisory system that does nor intrrfprr with the user's actions but comments opporurnisti-tally to help the user along. COACH might choose to use description, example, syntax, timing , topic, style and level of help according to user-demonstrated experience and proficitwcy. A description that advertises a command or function is helpful for getting started, but might become Ignored if it is prewntrd too often. Example information demonstrating how to perform a procedure is often valuable until the procedure is mastered. Syntax information generalizing the procedure becomes valuable when the procedure is more or less mastered. An example user is starting to write Lisp programs, typing (DEFUN. The help pane sen'es as a reminder that the function being defined must be named and then given an argument list. The system provide an abbreviated syntax: DEPUN function-name (l function-body), omitting the difficult argument types (optional arguments, keyword arguments, etc.). As the user types TIMES-2 (I) (PLUS, the system shifts its focus to helping with the PLUS function, and an example of a previous use ot PLUS is displayed. The usrr realizes that adding numbers was not intended and back-spaces and types TIMES I 2). The system changes its focus of help to TIMES as it is being typed, and back to DEFUN when the user is done with TIMES. Intermediate-style programmers have problems keeping track of the contrxt and appropriateness of program pieces. The adaptive teaching scenario works to keep this type of programmer oricntcd by providing context-sensitive help and user examples. The example user's experience with Lisp data structures is more extensive, however. When (SETF is typed, the system's AUM knows to show only the very complex argument list syntax for the SETF function. If an error is made (e.g., wrong argument type), the system changes its view of the user's expertise slowly, at first giving examples of the use of SETF and information on CONS cells (a related topic) to support progress. Experts use complex arguments even if they can't remember them, but often have enough experience so as …
Nitrous acid and nitrite in the atmosphere

Why is nitrous acid important as an atmospheric trace gas? It is present in very small quantities, typically up to a few parts in 109 by volume (ppbV), and usually makes up only a small fraction of the total amount of gaseous nitrogen oxides present in the atmosphere. One reason for an increasing number of recent studies into the chemistry of HNO2 is the increasing importance of nitrogen oxides as atmospheric pollutants. Unlike the emissions of sulphur dioxide, which have been decreasing markedly in recent years in Europe and North America, if not in the developing world, the emissions of nitrogen oxides are far from decreasing.
Influence of consumer online resale awareness on purchase decisions: a mental accounting perspective

Purpose – Consumer online resale is becoming an increasingly common method of both buying and selling goods. When an item can be easily resold online, consumers' subjective estimation of the value of that item changes in complex ways based on consumption cost and resale return. This in turn can affect consumers' decisions to purchase new products. The authors aim to apply the principles of mental accounting to investigate how consumers' economic psychology associated with buying a new product is affected when an awareness of the possibility of online resale is aroused. Design/methodology/approach – Three studies with between-subjects designs were conducted online to examine the effects of consumer awareness of a resaleable item on purchase intention of a new item under different situations. Findings – The results indicate that: consumers' awareness of the resale value of an already possessed product can influence their decision to purchase a new product; and when the product to be resold is the same type .
Community Participation in Decentralized Management of Natural Resources in the Southern Region of Mali

Decentralized governance of natural resources is considered one of the key strategies for promoting sustainable management of natural resources at local level. Effective decentralized natural resource management requires strong local natural resource institutions. Therefore, strengthening local institutions governing the management of natural resources is one of the core principles of decentralization reforms in Francophone West Africa countries. This study assessed the existing local institutions (rules, norms and or local conventions) governing the management of natural resources and forms of community participation in the development of these natural resource institutions. Our findings showed significant variation within the study sites regarding the level of knowledge of existing local rules and norms governing the management of natural resources by the respondents. Results showed that the level of knowledge of local conventions was significantly (P < 0.05) higher in the district of Bougouni than in the district of Koutiala (a score of 3.16 compared to 1.70 on a scale of 0 to 4). This study shows also that participation was dominated by a small group of individuals, often community leaders and elites. The results suggest that women are marginalized. Presently, the big challenge that faces the institutions governing natural resource use in the study area is the system of representativeness in the community in the development of local rules and norms as community leaders and household heads often dominate, which does not encourage active participation of community members. Therefore, for effective implementation of local natural resource institutions, the interest of key natural resource users should be taken into account. It is also important to promote rules and norms that attempt to protect or strengthen women’s access to natural resources in the community.