Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the substitution effect of board capital as a governance mechanism in emerging markets: Evidence from Latin-America

This paper analyzes the substitution effect of board capital as corporate governance mechanism on firm performance proxied by Tobin’s Q under the context of weak legal regime for investor protection. The study focuses on Latin America as a representative emerging market that includes a dataset of 442 firms in 6 countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru) from 2001 to 2012. We measure board capital as a composite index of directors’ educational attainment and professional experience. We find a positive relationship but with differential effects between board capital and firm performance within weak firm internal governance schemes such as firms with low board independence, dual roles as firm CEOs and COBs, and low blockholder contestability. Also analyzing country level governance standards, we find that as long there are improvements in country’s regulatory quality, rule of law, and corruption control the less the need for firm board capital as an internal governance mechanism.
An Evaluation of the Zeeman Shift of the 87Sr Optical Lattice Clock at the National Time Service Center

The Zeeman shift plays an important role in the evaluation of optical lattice clocks since a strong bias magnetic field is applied for departing Zeeman sublevels and defining a quantization axis. We demonstrated the frequency correction and uncertainty evaluation due to Zeeman shift in the 87Sr optical lattice clock at the National Time Service Center. The first-order Zeeman shift was almost completely removed by stabilizing the clock laser to the average frequency of the two Zeeman components of mF = ±9/2. The residual first-order Zeeman shift arose from the magnetic field drift between measurements of the two stretched-state center frequencies; the upper bound was inferred as 4(5) × 10−18. The quadratic Zeeman shift coefficient was experimentally determined as –23.0(4) MHz/T2 and the final Zeeman shift was evaluated as 9.20(7) × 10−17. The evaluation of the Zeeman shift is a foundation for overall evaluation of the uncertainty of an optical lattice clock. This measurement can provide more references for the determination of the quadratic coefficient of 87Sr.
How does a team’s virtuality impact knowledge transfer effectiveness among its members?: A multi-mediator-moderator model

ABSTRACT A thorough understanding of how organisational teams behave effectively in the ever increasingly virtual setting has become integral to team success. One such vital team behaviour is the transfer of knowledge among team members (i.e. knowledge transfer). Two divergent views of team virtuality and its impact on knowledge transfer effectiveness have been presented in the literature. Our approach to addressing this research gap is to identify the mediating pathway between virtuality and knowledge transfer effectiveness and identify the contingent conditions of the mediating pathway. We test our research model through a quasi-experimental study. The results establish a sequential link among virtuality, the transactive memory system, open communication climate, and knowledge transfer effectiveness in a team context. Further, the results show that the timing of virtuality has intricate influences on the overall nature (i.e. being positive or negative) of virtuality’s impact on knowledge transfer effectiveness.
Drug Reviews: Cross-condition and Cross-source Analysis by Review Quantification Using Regional CNN-LSTM Models

Pharmaceutical drugs are usually rated by customers or patients (i.e. in a scale from 1 to 10). Often, they also give reviews or comments on the drug and its side effects. It is desirable to quantify the reviews to help analyze drug favorability in the market, in the absence of ratings. Since these reviews are in the form of text, we should use lexical methods for the analysis. The intent of this study was two-fold: First, to understand how better the efficiency will be if CNN-LSTM models are used to predict ratings or sentiment from reviews. These models are known to perform better than usual machine learning models in the case of textual data sequences. Second, how effective is it to migrate such information extraction models across different drug review data sets and across different disease conditions. Therefore three experiments were designed, first, an In-domain experiment where train and test data are from the same dataset. Two more experiments were conducted to examine the migration capability of models, namely cross-data source, where train and test are from different sources and cross-disease condition model training, where train and test data belong to different disease conditions in the same dataset. The experiments were evaluated using popular metrics such as RMSE, MAE, R2 and Pearson’s coefficient and the results showed that the proposed deep learning regression model works less successfully when compared to the machine learning sentiment extraction models in the literature, which were done on the same datasets. But, this study contributes to the existing literature in the quantity of research work done and in quality of the model and also suggests the future researchers on how to improve. This work also addressed the shortcomings in the literature by introducing dimensionality to sentiment, which represents user feelings better than sentiment polarity.
Landscape and Urban Planning

While urban parks are generally considered to be a positive amenity, past research suggests that some parks are perceived as a neighborhood liability. Using hedonic analysis of property data in Baltimore, MD, we attempted to determine whether crime rate mediates how parks are valued by the housing market. Transacted price was regressed against park proximity, area-weighted robbery and rape rates for the Census block groups encompassing the parks, and an interaction term, adjusting for a number of other variables. Four models were estimated, including one where selling price was log-transformed but distance to park was not, one where both were log-transformed, a Box–Cox regression, and a spatially adjusted regression. All results indicate that park proximity is positively valued by the housing market where the combined robbery and rape rates for a neighborhood are below a certain threshold rate but negatively valued where above that threshold. Depending on which model is used, this threshold occurs
Efficient Approximation Algorithms for Point-set Diameter in Higher Dimensions

We study the problem of computing the diameter of a set of $n$ points in $d$-dimensional Euclidean space for a fixed dimension $d$, and propose a new $(1+varepsilon)$-approximation algorithm with $O(n+ 1/varepsilon^{d-1})$ time and $O(n)$ space, where $0 < varepsilonleqslant 1$. We also show that the proposed algorithm can be modified to a $(1+O(varepsilon))$-approximation algorithm with $O(n+ 1/varepsilon^{frac{2d}{3}-frac{1}{2}})$ running time. Our proposed algorithms are different with the previous algorithms in terms of computational technique and data structures. These results provide some improvements in comparison with existing algorithms in terms of simplicity and data structure.
Change-Specific Cynicism among Academia in Malaysian Polytechnics

Workers’ cynicism towards organizational change or known as change-specific cynicism refers to the tendency of workers to be cynical about any changes introduced by their respective organisations. Specific change in the organization of this study focuses on the changes of system in Malaysian Polytechnic regarding the corporatization of the organization. This survey-based quantitative study examines the level of informational, organizational and social support factors in association with the academia’s change-specific cynicism towards their organisational change. 263 sets of questionnaires were analysed in this study. The descriptive analysis showed the moderate level for change-specific cynicism among academia and all three main factors associated with change-specific cynicism. Despite the moderate level for independent variables, the results showed that social support was the highest level, followed by organizational relation and information. This indicates that the formation of a framework based on a study of Social Information Processing Theory found the meaningful impact on the findings. Theoretical and practical implications of the study as well as suggestions for future research are discussed.
Low-cost thermoluminescence measurement using photodiode sensing

Many branches of scientific and industrial research require precise instrument(s) for control and measurement. Such instruments tend to be prohibitively expensive. In the current global economic climate the funding to procure research equipment is fast dwindling. One current interest that our institution has is the synthesis and thermoluminescence (TL) characterization of phosphors, polymers and nano-materials. TL measurement requires precise control and measurement of sample temperature as a function of output intensity. In the present research, we describe the design and construction of a low-cost TL instrument that allows automatic control of various steps of the experiment while logging instantaneous intensity output. This work started with two fundamental considerations. Firstly, whether a low-cost thermoluminescence equipment is feasible. Secondly and more importantly, whether a photodiode can form the intensity sensing apparatus. We answer these questions affirmatively by first putting together a course of research and assimilating the necessary tools needed. Using the the resulting demonstrable TL instrument, we demonstrate the versatility for temperature sequencing, range and heating control of the sample over the temperature range of 23 to 600 ± 0.5 ◦C. A comparable instrument in the institution operates at a maximum ceiling of 300 ◦C. Additional refinements to the prototype instrument enable the sample temperature to be held constant at any temperature within this range with the aid of software tuned Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) control. The intensity measurements are made using a temperature-compensated, large area photo-diode operated in photovoltaic mode and covering a wavelength range 400 to 1100 nm. The interfaces of the instrument that made the instrument easy to use were developed con-currently. For instance the Universal Serial Bus (USB) handler, the Visual BASIC.NET control program that also logs the temperature and intensity data, and the PIC18F2520 micro-controller firmware code that was written in the C-language. Several other tools, listed in the body of the dissertation were also used. Finally, we present various results of temperature control and measurement and a demonstration measurement on a ceramic sample.
A random-valued impulse noise removal algorithm via just noticeable difference threshold detector and weighted variation method

Abstract The paper presents a random-valued impulse noise (RVIN) removal algorithm by using distinct impulse noise detection and correction stages. In the noise detection phase, the local luminance adaption of an image is used to detect the obvious noise pixels firstly, and the just noticeable difference (JND) is introduced to detect the noise pixels hiding in image details afterward. In the noise candidate correction phase, the obvious noise pixels, almost distributing in the smooth region, are restored by a weighted mean filter. For the noise candidates hiding in image details, we adopt a weighted detail-preserving variation method to restore them. Since human visual perception and detail-preserving are taken into account during the course of the noises detection and restoration, our method outperforms some existing methods, both in visual and quantitative measurements.
Demonstration of resistance to satyrization behavior in Aedes aegypti (Linnaeus) from La Réunion island

Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus are competent vectors of arboviruses such as dengue and chikungunya viruses which co-exist in some areas including La Réunion island. A kind of reproductive interference called satyrization has been described in sympatric species where a dominant species tends to control the spread of the other species. Here, we investigated satyrization in laboratory experiments to provide insights on the potential impact on Ae. aegypti of a control campaign including a sterile insect technique component against Ae. albopictus. Different mating crosses were used to test sympatric, conspecific-interspecific and allopatric effects of irradiated and non-irradiated male Ae. albopictus on female Ae. aegypti, including in a situation of skewed male ratio. Our results suggest that there was only a low level of satyrization between sympatric populations of Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus colonised from La Réunion island. A male Ae. albopictus to female Ae. aegypti ratio of 3:1 did not increase the level of satyrization. Female Ae. aegypti previously mated to male Ae. albopictus were not prevented from being inseminated by conspecific male Ae. aegypti. A satyrization effect was not seen between allopatric Ae. albopictus and Ae. aegypti strains from La Réunion Island either. The tested Ae. aegypti strain from La Réunion island has therefore developed full resistance to satyrization and so releasing sterile male Ae. albopictus may not suppress Ae. aegypti populations if an overflooding of irradiated male Ae. albopictus leads to similar results. The management strategy of two competent species in a sympatric area is discussed.
Impact of evapotranspiration on the local microclimate

Climate change is having and will have drastic consequences for high density populated areas such as cities. There is thus a need to develop more tools to evaluate new strategies for adaptation to and mitigation of changing temperatures. Additional functionalities were integrated in the urban energy modelling tool CitySim to include an evapotranspiration process and to integrate low rise vegetation as well as trees. In the process, the Canopy Interface Model (CIM) – previously coupled with CitySim – was further developed to integrate the evapotranspiration process and to analyse its impact on the local microclimate. Tvapotranspiration as well as the surface temperature are computed in CitySim and the values are then used as boundary conditions in CIM to calculate the vertical profiles of wind speed, temperature and humidity. Using the campus of the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland as a case study, it was demonstrated that the ground evaporative cooling can be an effective mitigation measure for decreasing locally the urban heat island intensity. In future studies, other strategies such as reflective asphalt, will be combined with the evaporative cooling strategies, to determine the most effective action measures that could be easily implemented.
Differential 2.4‐GHz CMOS power amplifier using stacked NMOS, transformer, and PMOS structures to enhance reliability

In this work, we propose a power amplifier using a stacked NMOS, transformer, and a PMOS structure to enhance the reliability of CMOS power amplifiers. The power stage of the amplifier is separated into NMOS and PMOS amplifier stages to moderate the peak voltages at the drains of each NMOS and PMOS. The power generated in the 2 amplifier stages is combined in the transformer, which has 2 primary parts and 1 secondary part. To verify the functionality of the structure, we designed a 2.4‐GHz differential CMOS power amplifier for IEEE 802.11n WLAN applications with 64 quadrature amplitude modulation, 9.6 dB peak‐to‐average power ratio, and a bandwidth of 20 MHz. The designed power amplifier is fabricated using the 180‐nm silicon‐on‐insulator RF CMOS process. The measured maximum linear output power is 17.88 dBm with a gain of 24.34 dB.
Energy efficiency with quality of service constraints in heterogenous networks

The Fifth Generation (5G) cellular network is a new technology that is driven by the demand of high data usage, large number of wireless devices and better Quality of Service (QoS). An important challenge for 5G is the energy consumption which is causing the wireless communication networks to be one of the main contributors of the global worming. Thus, energy efficiency becomes an important aspect in designing the wireless communication networks. In this thesis, we study different approaches for Energy Efficient (EE) operation of Small Base Stations (SBSs) in Heterogenous wireless Networks (HetNets). First, we focus on enhancing energy efficiency in heterogenous networks, where Macro BSs (MBSs) and SBSs co-exist, by presenting a sleeping strategy. In the sleeping strategy SBSs serving few or no users are turned off and their users and resources are offloaded to neighboring SBSs. However, adapting the sleeping strategy will affect the lifetime of the electronics of the SBSs, due to the frequent change of power level between turning ON and OFF the SBS. Therefore, in order to maximize energy savings, we formulate an optimization problem that provides an optimal user association and SBSs sleeping strategy for the entire network, while minimizing the total numbers of the switching of SBSs ON and OFF. Furthermore, an other approach consider is the deactivated SBSs are equipped with two power sources, a harvested energy (HE) source and a grid power source, where first the SBS will use its available HE to serve the associated users. Then, the SBS will request any shortage of its energy from other active or deactivated SBSs which have surplus of HE. Finally, if there is still shortage in energy, the SBS will use the power drawn from the grid. However, since the formulated problem is a Mixed Integer NonLinear Problem (MINLP), Generalized Bender Decomposition (GBD) is proposed to decompose the problem into two
Inconclusive evidence for the efficacy of tranexamic acid in reducing transfusions, postoperative infection or hematoma formation after primary shoulder arthroplasty: A meta-analysis with trial sequential analysis

Background Tranexamic acid efficacy on clinically relevant adverse outcomes in patients undergoing shoulder arthroplasty has been contradictory. The aim of this review was to analyze whether tranexamic acid administration could decrease transfusions, infection and hematoma formation in patients undergoing shoulder arthroplasty. Methods PubMed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library were searched up to May 2019 for randomized controlled trials comparing tranexamic acid to placebo in shoulder arthroplasty. Random-effect models were performed to meta-analyze the evidence. Trial sequential analysis was used to calculate and to establish the conclusiveness of the evidence derived from the meta-analysis. Results Four randomized controlled trials comprising 375 patients were included. Meta-analysis showed no effect of tranexamic acid on transfusion rate (RR = 0.48 (adjusted 95% CI 0.05 to 3.85)). The possible effect of tranexamic acid on hematoma formation or infection rates after shoulder arthroplasty is non-estimable with the current evidence. The sample size necessary to reliably determine if tranexamic acid decreases transfusions, infection rates and hematoma formation is not available from the current literature as determined by the trial sequential analysis. Discussion While tranexamic acid has proven its efficacy in decreasing blood loss in shoulder arthroplasty, this meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials clarifies that there is currently no conclusive evidence for a positive effect of tranexamic acid upon transfusion rate, infection rates or hematoma formation in patients undergoing primary shoulder arthroplasty.
Gastroprotective effects of amifostine in rats treated by T-2 toxin

Abstract Cytoprotector amifostine (AMI) was given in a dose of 50, 100 or 150 mg/kg ip in rats treated with several highly toxic doses of T-2 toxin. The best survival rate (24 h and 7 days after treatment) was obtained with AMI50 (50 mg/kg ip). After T-2 intoxication, a peak in the mean number of gastric lesions (petechiae and ulcerations) was reached on the third day (26.40 ± 6.24). Administration of AMI50 reduced, almost completely, the total number of gastric lesions in rats acutely poisoned by 0.5 LD50 T-2 (1.5 mg/kg sc), starting with day 1 after intoxication (5.60 ± 3.42).
Water footprint

Sustainability of water use has got into focus recently, as availability of fresh water resources is under depletion. Population growth, extreme weather conditions (drought), increasing global meat demand all results in higher water consumption of humanity and ecosystem. Water footprint is a promising indicator, which assesses both qualitative and quantitative deterioration of fresh water supplies. By identifying blue, green and grey water components, water use can be assessed in a more comprehensive way. Furthermore impact assessment of different components during production and processing let us identify crucial points of water use, where more efficient solution should be found. As a consequence of a more conscious and sustainable water use assessment considering water footprint, there is a chance, that future generations will inherit fresh water supplies at least in the same condition as we got it from our ancestors.
Evaluation of the Effect of Internal Pressure and Flaw Size on the Tensile Strain Capacity of X42 Vintage Pipeline Using Damage Plasticity Model in Extended Finite Element Method (XFEM)

Pipelines subjected to displacement-controlled loading such as ground movement may experience significant longitudinal strain. This can potentially impact pipeline structural capacity and their leak-tight integrity. Reliable calibration of the tensile strain capacity (TSC) of pipelines plays a critical role in strain-based design (SBD) methods. Recent studies were focused mostly on high toughness modern pipelines, while limited research was performed on lower-grade vintage pipelines. However, a significant percentage of energy resources in North America is still being transported in vintage pipelines. Eight full-scale pressurized four-point bending tests were previously conducted on X42, NPS 22 vintage pipes with 12.7 mm wall thickness to investigate the effect of internal pressure and flaw size on TSC. The pipes were subjected to 80% and 30% specified minimum yield strength (SMYS) internal pressures with different girth weld flaw sizes machined at the girth weld center line. This paper evaluates the TSC of X42 vintage pipeline by utilizing ductile fracture mechanics models using damage plasticity models in ABAQUS extended finite element method (XFEM). The damage parameters required for simulating crack initiation and propagation in X42 vintage pipeline are calibrated numerically by comparing the numerical models with the full-scale test results. With the appropriate damage parameters, the numerical model can reasonably reproduce the full-scale experimental test results and can be used to carry out parametric analysis to characterize the effect of internal pressure and flaw size on TSC of X42 vintage pipes.