Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quadrant root planing versus same-day full-mouth root planing. II. Microbiological findings.

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that over a period of 6 months, same-day full-mouth scaling and root planing (FM-SRP) resulted in greater reductions in the detection frequency of five putative periodontal pathogens compared with quadrant scaling and root planing (Q-SRP) in chronic periodontitis patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS Forty patients were recruited into this study. Subjects were randomised into two groups. The FM-SRP group received full-mouth scaling and root planing completed within the same day, while the Q-SRP group received quadrant root planing at 2-weekly intervals over four consecutive sessions. Selected-site analyses were performed on the deepest site in each quadrant before and after therapy, at approximately 3 and 6 months from baseline (R1 and R2) and clinical indices were recorded with an electronic pressure-sensitive probe. In addition, subgingival plaque samples were collected from these sites at baseline (BAS), at reassessment 1 (R1), approximately 6 weeks after the completion of therapy and at reassessment 2 (R2), 6 months from baseline. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to determine the presence of Porphyromonas gingivalis, Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans, Prevotella intermedia, Treponema denticola and Bacteroides forsythus in plaque. RESULTS Both therapies resulted in significant improvements in all clinical indices both at R1 and R2. A marked reduction in the presence of all candidate periodontal pathogens was noted after both treatment modalities, reaching statistical significance for the majority of the test organisms. These improvements were maintained over a period of 6 months. When the two treatment groups were compared, a significantly higher percentage of Q-SRP patients was positive for P. intermedia at R1 compared with FM-SRP patients (p<0.05). In addition, a greater reduction in the patient prevalence for T. denticola was found for the FM-SRP group than the Q-SRP group at R1 and R2 from baseline (p<0.005), but the significance of this is questionable given the skewed detection frequency of this organism at baseline between the two treatments (p<0.01). CONCLUSION This study failed to confirm that same-day FM-SRP resulted in greater microbiological improvements compared with Q-SRP at 2-weekly intervals over a 6-month period, as determined by PCR.
Corporate America's Search for the “Right” Direction: Outlook and Opportunities for Family Firms

The recent accounting scandals and corporate misdeeds of several high-profile Fortune 500 companies have left the investing public reeling. This paper highlights the attributes and characteristics of family firms that confer operational and financial performance advantages on them vis-à-vis nonfamily, or publicly controlled, firms. As a result, family firms have a unique opportunity to model the way regarding corporate reform.
Wood Classification Based on PCA, 2DPCA, (2D)2PCA and LDA

Wood classification is fairly important to the forestry industry and forest conservation. There have already been some microcomputer-assisted classification methods which accomplish the classification mainly with feature image analysis. But it is also necessary to find out a more effective method to optimize the classification process. So we propose to apply Principal Component Analysis (PCA), 2-Dimensional Principal Component Analysis (2DPCA), 2-Dimensional 2-Dimensional Principal Component Analysis ((2D)2PCA) and Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) to wood texture feature extraction and expect to obtain a better effect. With two sets of experiments, we verify that not only PCA and its corrective methods but also LDA are completely feasible in extracting wood texture features and LDA is a little better than PCA in the cross section sample classification but not good in the tangential section sample classification. Therefore, the cross section is better than the tangential section to act as the experiment sample in wood classification. But according to our experimental results, LDA does not outperform 2DPCA and (2D)2PCA because of lack of training samples, which prove that the latter are more preferred algorithms to identify wood.
Computationally Efficient Algorithms for Sparse, Dynamic Solutions to the EEG Source Localization Problem

Objective: Electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography noninvasively record scalp electromagnetic fields generated by cerebral currents, revealing millisecond-level brain dynamics useful for neuroscience and clinical applications. Estimating the currents that generate these fields, i.e., source localization, is an ill-conditioned inverse problem. Solutions to this problem have focused on spatial continuity constraints, dynamic modeling, or sparsity constraints. The combination of these key ideas could offer significant performance improvements, but substantial computational costs pose a challenge for practical application of such approaches. Here, we propose a new method for EEG source localization that combines: 1) covariance estimation for both source and measurement noises; 2) linear state-space dynamics; and 3) sparsity constraints, using 4) novel computationally efficient estimation algorithms. Methods: For source covariance estimation, we use a locally smooth basis alongside sparsity enforcing priors. For EEG measurement noise covariance estimation, we use an inverse Wishart prior density. We estimate these model parameters using an expectation–maximization algorithm that employs steady-state filtering and smoothing to expedite computations. Results: We characterized the performance of our method by analyzing simulated data and experimental recordings of eyes-closed alpha oscillations. Our sparsity enforcing priors significantly improved estimation of both the spatial distribution and time course of simulated data, while improving computational time by more than 12-fold over previous dynamic methods. Conclusion: We developed and demonstrated a novel method for improved EEG source localization employing spatial covariance estimation, dynamics, and sparsity. Significance: Our approach provides substantial performance improvements over existing methods using computationally efficient algorithms that will facilitate practical applications in both neuroscience and medicine.
Foreign Direct Investment Inflows, Economic Growth, and Trade Balances: The Experience of the New Members of the European Union

The study examines the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth and trade balances of 10 emerging economies in Europe before they joined the European Union. This article uses the Granger causality test to investigate the link between FDI inflows and economic growth for the countries under study. The findings show that gross domestic product growth has a unilateral Granger-cause on FDI inflows for 9 of 10 emerging European economies. However, the results did not show FDI inflows Granger-causing the changes in economic growth of any of the 10 countries. Furthermore, FDI inflows had no or negative effects on trade balances of the majority of the emerging European nations. The policy implications of this study are that host governments in emerging economies must carefully evaluate spillover effects of FDI inflows on their economies before offering significant incentive packages to lure multinational enterprises into their countries.
Equity Risk Incentives and Corporate Tax Aggressiveness

This study examines equity risk incentives as one determinant of corporate tax aggressiveness. Prior research finds that equity risk incentives motivate managers to make risky investment and financing decisions, since risky activities increase stock return volatility and the value of stock option portfolios. Aggressive tax strategies involve significant uncertainty and can impose costs on both firms and managers. As a result, managers must be incentivized to engage in risky tax avoidance that is expected to generate net benefits for the firm and its shareholders. We predict that equity risk incentives motivate managers to undertake risky tax strategies. Consistent with this prediction, we find that larger equity risk incentives are associated with greater tax risk and the magnitude of this effect is economically significant. Our results are robust across four measures of tax risk, but do not vary across several proxies for strength of corporate governance. We conclude that equity risk incentives are a significant determinant of corporate tax aggressiveness.
Interim Reporting Frequency and Financial Analysts' Expenditures

This paper relates interim financial reporting frequency in a multiperiod Kyle framework to securities prices, trading volume, market liquidity, and analysts' information acquisition expenditures. The model supports conventional wisdom that more frequent interim reporting improves the information content of securities prices, reduces reporting day price volatility and trading volume, and enhances market liquidity. However, the model suggests that more frequent financial reporting induces analysts to increase their redundant information acquisition expenditures, which may be socially wasteful.
Foreign Factor Ownership and Optimal Tariffs

In the presence of foreign factor ownership tariffs change not only the terms of (goods) trade but also income flows between countries. Assume that only the home country owns factors abroad. Then the optimal tariff is negative if and only if foreign factor ownership entails trade-pattern reversals. Trade-pattern reversals are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for a negative optimal tariff if the foreign country owns factors in the home country. Changes in the home country's tariff shift the foreign country's offer curve. This adds a new dimension to optimal tariff analysis. Copyright 1997 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
The Index Tracking Strategies of Passive and Enhanced Index Equity Funds

This study represents the first empirical examination of the daily trading and portfolio configuration strategies of index and enhanced index equity funds. We document that passive funds benefit from employing less rigid rebalancing and investment strategies. During index revision periods, enhanced index funds commence portfolio rebalancing earlier than index funds, and employ more patient trading strategies. This activity translates into higher returns and lower trading costs for enhanced index funds. In cases where passive funds do not perfectly mimic the benchmark, passive funds exhibit a greater propensity to overweight stocks with higher liquidity, larger market capitalization and higher past performance. For non-index portfolio holdings, enhanced funds exhibit a higher propensity to hold ‘winners’ and sell ‘losers’.
An Examination of the Impact of the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982 on Commercial Banks and Savings and Loans

This paper evaluates the effects of events leading to the passage of the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982. The evidence suggests that the call for reform by President Reagan's Housing Commission and the Senate passage of the bill produced positive abnormal returns to stockholders of large savings and loans and commercial banks. Stockholders of small S&Ls and banks, on the other hand, generally experienced negative abnormal returns. Furthermore, when hopes of passage of the act faded, significant negative (positive) abnormal returns were experienced by stockholders of large (small) S&Ls and banks. Copyright 1990 by American Finance Association.
Does Ex post uncovered interest differential reflect the degrees of capital mobility

This paper examines whether ex post uncovered interest differential between the US and the UK reflects the degrees of capital mobility over the time period 1973-92 by using GMM, GARCH and Kalman filter methods. The empirical results, however, do not support the hypothesis that the magnitude of the absolute deviation from UIP or the conditional variance of the deviation becomes smaller as the degrees of capital mobility increases.
WATER MARKETS IN THE LOWER ORANGE RIVER CATCHMENT OF SOUTH AFRICA

Abstract Irrigation farmers in the Lower Orange River were surveyed during October 2003 in order to study whether water marketing has promoted efficiency and to identify factors that affect future investment in irrigation farming. Econometric procedures (principal component and logit model) indicate that purchasers of water rights produce lucrative export grapes and horticultural crops with relatively less raisin, wine or juice grapes and less field crops; are more specialised in production; have more livestock (probably liquidity factor) and have a less negative view of the five-year review period. The water market has facilitated a transfer of water use from relatively lower value crops to relatively higher value crops, and also promoted the use of more advanced irrigation. An investment model using Ridge Regression indicates that the following variables are associated with future investment in irrigation farming; expected profitability, risk perception and risk aversion (Arrow/Pratt). Results confirm that farmers who are more risk averse invest less in the future as can be expected from theory. Policies that increase risk in agriculture will have a significant negative effect on future investment in irrigation. What is significant from the results is that irrigation farmers are highly risk averse (down side). Results also show that farmers who feel that water licenses are not secure expect to invest less in the future. The latter effect is thus amplified as farmers appear to be highly risk averse. This has important policy implications, and measures should be taken to improve the perceived security of water licenses. This could be achieved by keeping farmers more informed about the practical implications of the National Water Act (NWA) and specifically water licenses.
Does Enhanced Disclosure Really Reduce Agency Costs? Evidence from the Diversion of Corporate Resources

ABSTRACT: This study investigates whether extensive disclosure reduces managerial expropriation of corporate resources by examining the potential effects of enhanced reporting on the values of cash assets and investment ventures, respectively. We uncover evidence that liquid asset holdings are valued at a discount by firms with fewer disclosure practices than their more transparent counterparts. Moreover, disclosure activity substantially improves the value of cash assets in excess of requirements for operations and investment. These findings suggest that detailed reporting facilitates the scrutiny and discipline of capital markets, thus preventing the diversion of cash reserves. In further support of the disciplinary power of greater disclosure, we find that value-destroying projects, through internal capital investment and external acquisitions, are concentrated in firms adopting opaque disclosure policies. Collectively, our results support the premise that extensive disclosure impairs insiders' abiliti.
Implementing open innovation: a case study in the renewable energy industry

This paper focuses on a relatively neglected aspect of the open innovation model, i.e., the anatomy of the organisational change process a firm goes through when it modifies its strategic approach to innovation from a closed to an open approach. By analysing the case of an Italian firm in the renewable energy industry, this paper illuminates the role of pilot projects in fostering this process of organisational change. For each stage of this organisational change process, the paper identifies the variables that should be taken into account to purposefully manage pilot projects as instruments to enable transition from closed to open innovation. The paper provides a discussion of these findings and outlines avenues for future research.
Cross-Country Determinants of Payout Policy: A Survey of European Firms

We survey managers from 16 European countries to examine cross-country determinants of payout policy. We find that European managers' views on dividend policy are driven largely by factors similar to that of their U.S. peers. They strongly agree with Lintner's findings that dividends are smoothed out and are difficult to cut, although they follow different dividend targets than a fixed payout ratio. A majority of European managers, however, consider repurchases as a tool of flexibility rather than a substitute for dividends. Our cross-country analysis does not support La Porta, Lopez, Shielfer and Vishny's (2000) contention that dividend policy is influenced primarily by the quality of legal system. Instead, we find that dividend policy is determined by a complex interaction of the firm's ownership structure of the firm and the legal and institutional structure of its home country. Repurchase policy, on the other hand, is influenced primarily by tax and institutional ownership variables.
Clinical and methodological factors related to reliability of the best-estimate diagnostic procedure.

OBJECTIVE The reliability and accuracy of the best-estimate diagnostic procedure were examined, and factors associated with reliability were determined. METHOD The subjects were 134 members of large multigenerational pedigrees densely affected by bipolar disorders or schizophrenia. Three best-estimate diagnoses were derived: first, by a research psychiatrist and research assistant unblind to the relatives' diagnoses; second, by two blind independent psychiatrists; third, by a panel of four blind psychiatrists. The subjects were characterized on several clinical and methodological variables, which were used to compare the agreements of two types of best-estimate diagnoses with the disagreements. RESULTS There was satisfactory agreement between the unblind and blind consensus best-estimate diagnoses and between the two blind independent psychiatrists. Latent class analyses revealed that limited sensitivity was the main source of imperfect reliability. Confusability analyses revealed that the most problematic diagnostic distinctions involved schizoaffective disorder, which was confused with schizophrenia, bipolar I disorder, and schizophreniform disorder. Blindness significantly affected diagnostic outcome in latent class analyses. Moreover, for diagnostic disagreements, unblind diagnoses had greater continuity with the most predominant diagnosis in the pedigree than did blind diagnoses. Diagnostic disagreements were associated with the presence of mixed affective and psychotic symptoms, less diagnostic certainty, and shorter duration of illness. CONCLUSIONS These results suggest that it is possible to identify cases that are more likely to lead to diagnostic disagreements in family and epidemiological studies and that blind diagnoses may help to prevent false positive diagnoses, which may be particularly detrimental to genetic linkage analyses.
Party positions or party direction? An analysis of Party Manifesto Data

The use of the party manifesto data (PMD) to identify parties' position in the political space provides a rather distorted picture of the Italian party system. Three possible explanations for this are explored, namely that the Italian party system is exceptional, that there are flaws in the data and there might be flaws in the methodology. The article argues that none of these explanations is fully satisfactory and advances the hypothesis that the PMD left–right scores do not indicate parties' positions but instead indicate parties' direction, that is how (and how much) parties move to adjust to changing political conditions and to remain competitive. Statistical analyses, performed to test the validity of the directional interpretation of the left–right scores, support this new interpretation.
Kinect Sensor based Human Fall Detection System Using Skeleton Detection Algorithm

The elder people of age band 65 to 75 are more prone to falling. Most of falling occur accidentally without consciousness. It can cause serious disorders and aftermath health issues for elderly people. For people with Alzheimer’s disease, this could be even disastrous. Palliative care includes detection of fall of the elderly and treating them at the right time. This detection can be improved for efficient care and diagnosis by implementing recent technological advancements in image processing and embedded sensor systems. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithmic approach of unobtrusive fall detection system, which runs in a real time scenario based on skeleton detection of a human figure with the help of sensors in Kinect.
Pericytic-Like Angiotropism of Glioma and Melanoma Cells

We have identified in malignant melanoma an angiotumoral complex in which tumor cells occupy a pericytic location along the endothelium of microvessels without evidence of intravasation. We have suggested that this pericytic-like angiotropism could be a marker of an extravascular migration of tumor cells along the abluminal surface of vessels. The extravascular migratory metastasis proposed for melanoma has close analogies with glioma migration. To compare our hypothesis of extravascular migration by melanoma with the migration of glioma cells, we have used the B16 murine melanoma cell line and the GL26 murine glioma cell line in an in vivo murine brain tumor model and in vitro using endothelial cells that have formed capillary-like structures and have been cocultivated with tumor cells. In the brain tumors, a clear progression of glioma and melanoma cells was observed along the abluminal surface of vessels, where they occupied a pericytic location along the periendothelial laminin. In vitro, time-lapse videomicroscopy recorded the migration of tumor cells toward endothelial tubules. After 24 hours, both the melanoma cells and the glioma cells were localized along the external surfaces of the vascular tubules, occupying a pericytic-like location. These similarities between glioma and melanoma support the hypothesis of an extravascular migration of melanoma cells, particularly along the abluminal surface of vessels.