Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Influence of Mucus Production by the Slug, Deroceras reticulatum , on Predation by Pterostichus madidus and Nebria brevicollis (Coleoptera: Carabidae)

Slugs are important pests in many agricultural crops and potential biological control agents are being studied as an alternative to molluscicides. Carabid beetles may be able to reduce slug populations, but the defence mucus of slugs may deter some predator attacks. Interactions between the carabids Pterostichus madidus (Fabricius) and Nebria brevicollis (Fabricius) with healthy and 'stressed' (unable to produce defence mucus) Deroceras reticulatum (Müller) were investigated in laboratory conditions. Both beetle species consumed significantly more stressed slugs than controls. Defence mucus production by control slugs hampered beetle attacks. These generalist beetle species did not direct their attacks at vulnerable parts of the prey as equal numbers of contacts were made on the slug head, mantle and tail. Blowfly ( Calliphora sp.) larvae are readily consumed by P. madidus and N. brevicollis . Calliphora larvae coated in slug defence mucus were less acceptable to both beetle species compared with control larvae. Results indicate that these generalist beetle species are unable to overcome the defence mucus production of healthy slugs. Slugs sub-lethally poisoned by molluscicides may be a more suitable prey item due to a reduction in defence mucus production.
Genetic Variation and Invasion Pattern of the Arabian Rhinoceros Beetle, Oryctes agamemnon arabicus (Burmeister) (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae), in Tunisia, Deduced from Mitochondrial DNA Sequences

The Arabian rhinoceros beetle, Oryctes agamemnon arabicus (Burmeister, 1847), is an invasive species, introduced to Tunisia from the United Arab Emirates and causing serious damage to date palm trees in southern Tunisia. Considering the economic importance of this pest, it is necessary to understand the genetic diversity within and among its populations and investigate its dispersal mode. In the present study, the mitochondrial gene encoding the cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) was used to analyse the extent of genetic variation between samples of O. agamemnon arabicus, collected from geographically distant locations in Tunisia. A 505 bp DNA fragment, resulting from PCR amplification, was sequenced. Representative sequences were aligned, revealing nine polymorphic sites that identified eight haplotypes. Haplotype diversity (Hd) and Tajima's D neutral test were 0.707 and -0.043, respectively, indicating a low level of mtDNA variability. The calculated gene flow value was Nm = 0.47, indicating a high amount of gene flow occurring between populations from Tozeur and those from Kebili, although both departments are separated by the Chott-El-Jerid salt lake. The presence of common haplotypes between Tozeur and Kebili as well as the clustering pattern obtained by the NJ method confirmed this result. Based on these facts and considering the limited flight of O. agamemnon arabicus and its slow reproduction, it is likely that its expansion in Tunisia was facilitated mainly by human transportation of infected offshoots.
China’s Outward Direct Investment in Africa

We examine the empirical determinants of China’s outward direct investment (ODI) in Africa using an officially approved ODI dataset and a relatively new OECD-IMF format ODI dataset. China’s ODI is found responding to the canonical economic determinants that include the market seeking motive, the risk factor, and the resources seeking motive. It is also affected by the intensity of trade ties and the presence of China’s contracted projects. A host country’s natural resources have an impact on China’s decision on how much to invest in the country rather than on whether to invest in the country or not. China’s drive for Africa’s natural resources is mainly a recent phenomenon and, probably, became prominent after the “Going Global” policy adopted in 2002.
From Word to Financial Time Series Embedding

Pre-trained word vectors contributed to state of the art results in many Natural Language Processing tasks. In this work, we show that the same algorithms can be applied to the embedding of financial time series. Pre-trained vectors for financial time series are useful for visualizing an investable universe, embedding a portfolio of financial instruments, and can be used as context vectors in larger NLP networks.
Collective Reputation and Learning in Political Agency Problems

This study aims to reveal how an endogenous change in political trust affects the performance of a representative democracy. To this end, we construct a two-period political agency model wherein voters face uncertainty about the distribution of politicians’ types (model uncertainty) as well as each individual politician’s type. Such model uncertainty allows political trust to endogenously change over time, whereas political trust is invariant without model uncertainty. We show that model uncertainty substantially increases corruption. Furthermore, it generates self-fulfilling multiple equilibria: a high-accountability equilibrium and a low-accountability equilibrium coexist. In countries experiencing democracy only for a short time, model uncertainty would be severe. Our results indicate that democratic performance tends to be low and even similar countries could experience different performances depending on citizens’ expectations in such new democracies. By extending the model, we also discuss the relationship between political trust and the rise of an outsider candidate.
When teams of employees spin-off partnerships: matching-technology, information structure, and the “pure” incubator effect

The successful foundation of entrepreneurial firms comprises a multitude of complementary human tasks. The effect of founders’ human capital on firm success hinges on the information structure that prevails when nascent entrepreneurs are matched in partnerships. Empirically, we assume that rational matching occurs in incubated spin-offs and corporate-sponsored ventures. The human capital structure in such firms significantly differs from that of Greenfield projects. Using coarsened exact matching (CEM), we compute weights to level out these differences in human capital endowments. The impact of corporate support in founding the new firm is positive and increases as CEM-weights are applied to more of our human capital variables.
Checklist of the Bryophytes of Madagascar

Abstract This updated checklist of the bryophytes of Madagascar was compiled from the literature, herbarium and recent collections. A total of 1144 species and infraspecific taxa are recorded for Madagascar composed of 751 mosses, 390 liverworts and 3 hornworts. 28.67% of the species reported for the Island are endemics. Twenty-four taxa are newly recorded for Madagascar and two of them, Fissidens cyathaeicola Brugg.Nann. and Taxithelium nepalense (Schwägr.) Broth. are reported for the first time for the Sub-Saharan Africa region.
The Price, Quality and Distribution of Mortgage Payment Protection Insurance: A Hedonic Pricing Approach

Mortgage payment protection insurance (hereafter MPPI) provides varying combinations of accident, sickness and unemployment insurance and is used to protect the mortgage payments of policyholders in the event of a fall in income. Recently the provision of this service in the UK has been heavily criticized for providing poor value for money and for being associated with unhelpful sales techniques especially when sold jointly with a mortgage. Consequently in 2009 the Competition Commission ruled that MPPI should not be sold jointly with lending. In this study we examine whether this prohibition was justified and specifically does the form of distribution, either jointly with the mortgage or independently influence the premium levels. This research question is examined using a hedonic pricing approach with details and premiums of 281 MPPI policies. We conclude that the premiums of policies sold independently are lower than those policies distributed jointly for a given set of benefits and conditions. These findings support to the prohibition of the joint sale of the MPPI with mortgages.
Price Fluctuations and the Use of Bitcoin: An Empirical Inquiry

Over recent years, interest has been growing in Bitcoin, an innovation which has the potential to play an important role in e-commerce and beyond. The aim of our paper is to provide a comprehensive empirical study of the payment and investment features of Bitcoin and their implications for the conduct of e-commerce. Since network externality theory suggests that the value of a network and its take-up are interlinked, we investigate both adoption and price formation. We discover that Bitcoin returns are driven primarily by its popularity, the sentiment expressed in newspaper reports on the cryptocurrency, and total number of transactions. The paper also reports on the first global survey of merchants who have adopted this technology and model the share of sales paid for with this alternative currency, using both ordinary and Tobit regressions. Our analysis examines how country, customer and company-specific characteristics interact with the proportion of sales attributed to Bitcoin. We find that company features, use of other payment methods, customers’ knowledge about Bitcoin, as well as the size of both the official and unofficial economy are significant determinants. The results presented allow a better understanding of the practical and theoretical ramifications of this innovation.
Heterogeneity in the Speed of Adjustment Towards Target Leverage

Estimating the speed of adjustment towards target leverage using the standard partial adjustment model assumes that all firms within the sample adjust at the same (average) pace. Dynamic capital structure theory predicts heterogeneity in adjustment speed due to firm-specific adjustment costs. Applying an estimator designed to be unbiased in the context of unbalanced dynamic panel data with a fractional dependent variable (DPF estimator), we conduct an extensive analysis of cross-sectional heterogeneity in the speed of adjustment of firms. We find evidence for pronounced heterogeneity, where speed of adjustment is the highest for firms with high default risk or expected bankruptcy costs, and if opportunity costs of deviating from a target are high. Our evidence is consistent with the general relevance of the trade-off theory.
Arbitrages in the Volatility Surface Interpolation and Extrapolation

The implied volatility surface is built from a discrete set of vanilla option quotes. To move from a discrete set to a continuous surface, interpolation and extrapolation are therefore needed in the expiry dimension as well as in the strike dimension. This paper will study the interpolation and extrapolation in the time-to-expiry dimension. In particular, we show here that a linear interpolation in variance, a very common way of interpolation, of two arbitrage-free slices of increasing variance can lead to an arbitrage in an interpolated slice. We also show that flat volatility extrapolation, another common usage, will also lead to arbitrages. To conclude, we present an alternative simple extrapolation.
Valuation and Optimal Exercise of Derivatives Under Private Information

We provide an easy-to-use model that values derivatives for a privately informed agent. We introduce private forward prices that conveniently format private information for inclusion in a standard no-arbitrage framework. This framework yields simple expressions for the privately-informed value of European options. The flexible timing of American option exercise can be used to mitigate adverse information or exploit favorable information. Private information may thus cause significant differences between European and American call and put values, even in the absence of dividends.
Exponential and linear estimations of grazing on bacteria: effects of changes in the proportion of marked cells

We develop a method to calculate grazing on bacteria determined by the disappearance of marked cells or particles. The method uses an exponential model based on population dynamics. We also describe 2 linear approaches: one is a model currently in use that takes into account only the initial proportion of marked cells; the other also includes their final proportion. An expenmental data set 1s used to compare the 3 models. The first linear model tends to underestimate grazing due to lack of information concerning the final proportion of marked cells. The second linear model, whch does take into account the final abundances of marked and natural cells, results in a good approximation to the exponential. We conclude that consideration of the final proportion of marked to natural cells IS crucial to correctly estimate bacterial grazing.
Board Characteristics and Audit Quality: The Moderating Role of Gender Diversity

The incessant corporate scandals engulfing the corporate world today calls for great concern, also even the so-called big four recently have had their fair share of this blame too. Against this backdrop, we investigated to investigate the impact of board characteristics on audit quality of listed manufacturing firms in Nigeria. The study was driven by the positivist research philosophy and a deductive research approach using a multi-method quantitative research design. Descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to summarize the data and to draw inference on the population studied. We employed the Binary Probit Regression in testing the hypotheses stated. Findings revealed that board size had a positive and significant relationship on audit quality. The study found no evidence on the relationship between board independence, female gender on audit quality. The study also found no evidence on the moderating effect of the presence of a female on the board on the nexus between board independence and audit quality. The study concluded that board characteristics do not affect audit quality. Hence, we recommended that the Non-executive director on the board should be reduced in manufacturing firms to improve audit quality.
Doctrina Social de la Iglesia Católica y performance empresarial: la sostenibilidad como constructo ético y económico (Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church and Business Performance: Sustainability as an Ethical and Economic Concept)

Spanish Abstract: En esta investigacion vemos que la sostenibilidad empresarial tiene una logica etica y economica, por lo que puede ser un modelo a impulsar para lograr un verdadero desarrollo. Desde un punto de vista etico puede apoyarse en los derechos humanos y en la etica civica; pero en este trabajo nos hemos centrado principalmente en sustentar y enriquecer la sostenibilidad empresarial en base a la Doctrina Social de la Iglesia Catolica, rico acervo de sabiduria que, ademas, puede ser compartido en sus exhortaciones por muchas personas no catolicas. Tambien hemos trabajado sobre su logica economica: viendo por que es razonable que las empresas sostenibles obtengan buenos resultados, formulando el modelo para superar el problema de agencia (lo que le da ventaja sobre el tradicional modelo de los stakeholders), estudiando contrastes empiricos que demuestran la buena performance de las empresas sostenibles, y realizando un nuevo contraste que nos confirma lo anterior. English Abstract: In this research we see that business sustainability has an ethical and economic logic, so it can be a model to promote in order to reach real development. From an ethical point of view you can rely on human rights and civic ethics; but in this work we have focused mainly on sustaining and enriching business sustainability based on the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church, rich wealth of wisdom that, in addition, can be shared in its exhortations by many non-Catholic people. We have also worked on its economic logic: seeing why it is reasonable for sustainable companies to obtain good results, formulating the model to overcome the agency problem (which gives it an advantage over the traditional stakeholder model), studying empirical analysis that demonstrate the good performance of sustainable companies, and making a new analysis that confirms the above.
Wood collections in Australia: a history of expansion and retraction

Summary The history, size and status of each of Australia’s 12 public wood collections, or ‘xylaria’, are reviewed in light of the uncertain future of most of them. Their history is traced from the colonial era to the present. Australian colonies sent wood samples to Britain and international exhibitions from early in the nineteenth century to promote their timber exports. In the 1880s Queensland and New South Wales started the first two scientific reference collections of wood, other states followed, and in the 1920s the Commonwealth started two large national collections. The collections were used to develop classification systems for identifying samples of wood in the absence of botanical specimens. There are currently 12 collections held by public institutions, of which the largest, with 47 000 specimens, is held by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). Their expansion was followed by gradual retractions of government funding, staff and interest over the last 30 years. Ten of the 12 collections are now considered to be secure, six are in institutions that can conserve them, and only two are in use. Consolidation of the national collections under a professional curator is needed.
Methodological Problems in Evaluating Sustainability

To embody the concept of sustainability in environmental management and development planning has latterly become recognized internationally as a priority for the future. Governments in many countries have consequently dedicated substantial funds to the task of defining planning and management strategies that are sustainable. Somewhat surprisingly, however, there has been very little attention given so far to establishing appropriate frameworks within which to evaluate the implications of planning and policy alternatives for sustainability. One of the most important questions to be addressed in evaluation exercises relates to the conflicts among different systems – economic, social, and biophysical – that may be realized in pursuing development options that may be sustainable. It is also important to establish whether the pursuit of sustainability may compromise the capability to fulfil other important societal goals and objectives. If the potential for these various conflicts can be discerned, then it may also be possible to identify development strategies that minimize conflict, while simultaneously achieving sustainability.
Data-driven Dynamic Pricing and Ordering with Perishable Inventory in a Changing Environment

We consider a retailer that sells a perishable product, making joint pricing and inventory ordering decisions over a finite time horizon of T periods with lost sales. Exploring a real-life data set from a leading supermarket chain, we identify several distinctive challenges faced by such a retailer that have not been jointly studied in the literature: the retailer does not have perfect information on (1) the demand-price relationship, (2) the demand noise distribution, (3) the inventory perishability rate, and (4) how the demand-price relationship changes over time. Furthermore, the demand noise distribution is nonparametric for some products but parametric for others. To tackle these challenges, we design two types of data-driven pricing and ordering (DDPO) policies for the cases of nonparametric and parametric noise distributions. Measuring performance by regret, that is, the profit loss caused by not knowing (1)–(4), we prove that the T-period regret of our DDPO policies are in the order of [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] in the cases of nonparametric and parametric noise distributions, respectively. These are the best achievable growth rates of regret in these settings (up to logarithmic terms). Implementing our policies in the context of the aforementioned real-life data set, we show that our approach significantly outperforms the historical decisions made by the supermarket chain. Moreover, we characterize parameter regimes that quantify the relative significance of the changing environment and product perishability. Finally, we extend our model to allow for age-dependent perishability and demand censoring and modify our policies to address these issues. This paper was accepted by David Simchi-Levi, Management Science Special Section on Data-Driven Prescriptive Analytics.
Free‐energy landscape of a chameleon sequence in explicit water and its inherent α/β bifacial property

A sequence in yeast MATα2/MCM1/DNA complex that folds into α‐helix or β‐hairpin depending on the surroundings has been known as “chameleon” sequence. We obtained the free‐energy landscape of this sequence by using a generalized‐ensemble method, multicanonical molecular dynamics simulation, to sample the conformational space. The system was expressed with an all‐atom model in explicit water, and the initial conformation for the simulation was a random one. The free‐energy landscape demonstrated that this sequence inherently has an ability to form either α or β structure: The conformational distribution in the landscape consisted of two α‐helical clusters with different packing patterns of hydrophobic residues, and four β‐hairpin clusters with different strand–strand interaction patterns. Narrow pathways connecting the clusters were found, and analysis on the pathways showed that a compact structure formed at the N‐terminal root of the chameleon sequence controls the cluster‐cluster transitions. The free‐energy landscape indicates that a small conditional change induces α‐β transitions. Additional unfolding simulations done with replacing amino acids showed that the chameleon sequence has an advantage to form an α‐helix. Current study may be useful to understand the mechanism of diseases resulting from abnormal chain folding, such as amyloid disease.
Antecedents of Market Orientation and its Impact on Customer Oriented Behavior: Moderating Role of Job Satisfaction for Health Care Professionals

Purpose - This study develops and tests a model of Customer oriented behavior and Market orientation based on Professionalism, rewards and job satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach - It was a quantitative study that measures, the hypothesized relationship of above stated variables. The model was tested empirically in Pakistan, using convenient sampling approach for data collection. The service sector is selected for our survey, and health professionals were our respondents. Findings - Our findings provide an insight into the effect of professionalism and rewards on market orientation as well as impact of market orientation on customer oriented behavior of health employees. The results indicate that professionalism and rewards have significant impact on market orientation. But rewards have more strong impact than professionalism. On the other hand Market orientation is positive related with job satisfaction and customer oriented behavior. But the moderating role of job satisfaction to the relation of market orientation and customer oriented behavior is not proved significant. Research limitations/implications - This study involved only one service industry (health sector) and with small sample. However the model and relationship described in this study can be replicated in other settings or on longitudinal bases. Practical implications - By using our results and implication, health sector may be able to well mange the service providers and the market orientation of their employees in order to satisfy their customers.