Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
TRACKS: Dual Accounting and the Enron Control Crisis

At the time of the Enron collapse, the new fair value accounting (FVA) paradigm was progressively incorporated into the framework of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), to serve along with the well-established historical-cost accounting (HCA) paradigm. Naturally, the Enron debacle involved misuses of both paradigms. As a result, the FVA—and in particular the “mark-to-model” valuation procedure—became a target for keen criticism. It was suggested that, apart from its application to a limited number of marketable financial instruments, the time of FVA had not yet come. In this paper, we reject this criticism and discuss the basic conditions that facilitated the abuse of FVA. We argue that despite the obvious advantage of value relevance information offered by the FVA paradigm, the lack of well-designed and effective, adequate control systems produced opportunities for the abuse and manipulation of FVA. We claim that the current control systems, designed for and capable of providing effective safeguards for HCA, are not suitable for FVA, and do not supply adequate safeguards for FVA. Furthermore, these existing accounting control systems turned into gauges for new standards and thus into barriers for FVA-based standards. These, among other reasons, caused the FVA to develop at a slow pace, creating a hybrid accounting system in which HCA and FVA are used simultaneously. We argue that the dual accounting system distorts the coherency of the reporting system, increases potential income management and “window dressing,” and nullifies the effectiveness of the existing control systems. We also stress that a well-designed and carefully implemented control system is indispensable for a properly functioning FVA model. We note that the proposed Statement of Auditing Standards, “Auditing Fair Values,” is an important step in the right direction.
Sea state measurements using TerraSAR-X data

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is a unique sensor able to provide two dimensional information on meteo-marine parameters of the ocean surface e.g. wind speed and wave height. We present an algorithm (XWAVE) to derived significant wave height (Hs) from TerraSAR-X (TS-X) data without the need of a priori information. The algorithm is based on spectral analyses of TS-X data, using a Geophysical model function, the coefficients are fitted to collocated in-situ buoy measurements using the least squares method. Wind speed information provided by the wind speed estimation XMOD algorithm [1] is combined in the XWAVE algorithm as well. Sea state parameters derived from TS-X data using the proposed algorithm have been compared to in-situ buoy measurements. Additionally, the one dimensional spectra are compared to the wave spectrum provided by the one given by the NOOA buoys. The SAR wave peak direction is also compared to the wave peak direction given by directional buoys. Sea state properties in coastal areas change rapidly in the spatial domain. TS-X data are especially suitable for the study of sea state variability in coastal areas due to its high resolution. Coastal wave fields have been derived from TS-X data and verified with numerical wave model results and with in-situ buoy measurements for the collated point in the area of the North Sea.
Selective Cysteine Protease Inhibition Contributes to Blood-feeding Success of the Tick Ixodes scapularis*

Ixodes scapularis is the main vector of Lyme disease in the eastern and central United States. Tick salivary secretion has been shown as important for both blood-meal completion and pathogen transmission. Here we report a duplication event of cystatin genes in its genome that results in a transcription-regulated boost of saliva inhibitory activity against a conserved and relatively limited number of vertebrate papain-like cysteine proteases during blood feeding. We further show that the polypeptide products of the two genes differ in their binding affinity for some enzyme targets, and they display different antigenicity. Moreover, our reverse genetic approach employing RNA interference uncovered a crucial mediation in tick-feeding success. Given the role of the targeted enzymes in vertebrate immunity, we also show that host immunomodulation is implicated in the deleterious phenotype of silenced ticks making I. scapularis cystatins attractive targets for development of antitick vaccines.
The Axford Debate Revisited: A Case Study Illustrating Different Approaches to the Aggregation of Benefits Data

Recent debate following the rejection of the Environment Agency case regarding an application for water abstraction at Axford on the River Kennet has focused upon the benefits procedure employed for aggregating non-user benefits which underpinned the economic case put forward by the Agency (although this was not the reason cited by the inquiry for rejection of the case). Commentators have seen this case as setting an unfortunate precedent for the use of economic assessments in such resource management issues. The paper presents a number of highly tractable alternative methods for the aggregation of benefits estimates designed to address the central problems of the definition of a relevant aggregation population and a potential decay of values with increasing distance from a given valuation site. These methods are tested using data obtained from a national survey of non-users of a specific natural area. Results from this application indicate that simpler approaches such as that used at the Axford inquiry may result in aggregate benefits estimates which are very substantially larger than those produced by our proposed alternative approaches to aggregation.
The Market for Controlling Rights, Independent Directors System and Supervisory Board Governance - A New View Based on Comparative Institutional Analysis

Focusing on the theoretical issue on the "reinforcement theory" and the "rejection theory" of board of supervisors in recent years, this paper analyzes the characteristics of historical-path dependency in the evolution of independent directors system and supervisory board system. Meanwhile, it also demonstrates the necessity of reinforcing the supervisory board governance based on the reality of the incompletion of the market for controlling rights and the "independence paradox" existing in the independent directors system of our country nowadays. Finally, the paper proposes to perfect the supervisory board system as a breakthrough to drive the overall optimization of governance structure in China's listed companies
Measurement of harmony of financial reporting within and between countries: the case of the Nordic countries

This article aims to examine the usefulness of Archer et al.et's (1995) decomposed C-index in measuring harmony and hence harmonization. Financial reporting in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) at four dates in the period between 1981 and 1998 is used as a case study to demonstrate the method and to generate debate about the methodology. The discussion of the results of the analysis leads to the identification of a number of problems that arise in the interpretation of the indices. The difficulties have been divided into two main groups: (1) problems relating to causal inference; and (2) problems relating to properties of the indices. It is argued that the inter-play between these difficulties means that the use and interpretation of the indices is very complicated. Overcoming these obstacles would require a far more intricate model, which might prove less satisfactory than a qualitative analysis based on closer examination of the base data.
Recent advances in research on fibronectin and other cell attachment proteins

Fibronectin and other cell attachment proteins provide molecular models for beginning to unravel the complex interactions of the cell surface with the extracellular matrix. This area has been reviewed in considerable detail previously [1–10]. Our brief review will therefore be selective rather than comprehensive, and it will focus on some recent generalizations about this class of proteins, as well as on recent advances in the molecular analysis of the functions of these proteins and their receptors. we shall also present various popular or provocative hypotheses and speculations about future work in the field.
Is Mass Higher Education Working? Evidence from the Labour Market Experiences of Recent Graduates

This paper uses a variety of recent sources of information to explore the labour market experiences of those who gained a degree in the 1980s and 1990s. Specifically, we address the issue of ‘overeducation’ — the view that the expansion of higher education in the 1990s created a situation in which increasing numbers of graduates were unable to access employment that required and valued graduate skills and knowledge. Two complementary approaches to this issue are adopted. We review available evidence on the graduate earnings premium and change in the UK occupational structure, and we conduct a detailed examination of the earnings and characteristics of jobs done by a large sample of 1995 graduates seven years after graduation. We conclude that, while there may have been a decline from the high premium enjoyed by older graduates, for those who graduated in 1995 the average premium was holding up well, despite the expansion. Although we found differences between established graduate occupations and the newer areas of graduate employment, our evidence suggests that the development of new technical and managerial specialisms and occupational restructuring within organisations has been commensurate with the availability of an increased supply of highly qualified people.
hNIS-IRES-eGFP Dual Reporter Gene Imaging

The human and rodent sodium iodide symporters (NIS) have recently been cloned and are being investigated as potential therapeutic and reporter genes. We have extended this effort by constructing an internal ribosomal entry site (IRES)-linked human NIS (hNIS)-enhanced green fluorescent protein (eGFP) hybrid reporter gene for both nuclear and optical imaging. A self-inactivating retroviral vector, termed pQCNIG, containing hNIS-IRES-eGFP dual reporter gene, driven by a constitutive CMV promoter, was constructed and used to generate RG2-pQCNIG cells and RG2-pQCNIG tumors. 131I-iodide and 99mTcO4-pertechnetate accumulation studies plus fluorescence microscopy and intensity assays were performed in vitro, and gamma camera imaging studies in RG2-pQCNIG and RG2 tumor-bearing athymic rats were performed. RG2-pQCNIG cells expressed high levels of hNIS protein and showed high intensity of eGFP fluorescence compared with RG2 wild-type cells. RG2-pQCNIG cells accumulated Na131I and 99mTcO4– to a 50:1 and a 170:1 tissue/medium ratio at 10 min, compared with 0.8:1.2 tissue/medium ratio in wild-type RG2 cells. A significant correlation between radiotracer accumulation and eGFP fluorescence intensity was demonstrated. RG2-pQCNIG and RG2 tumors were readily differentiated by in vivo gamma camera imaging; radiotracer uptake increased in RG2-pQCNIG but declined in RG2 tumors over the 50-min imaging period. Stomach and thyroid were the major organs of radionuclide accumulation. The IRES-linked hNIS-eGFP dual reporter gene is functional and stable in transduced RG2-pQCNIG cells. Optical and nuclear imaging of tumors produced from these cell lines provides the opportunity to monitor tumor growth and response to therapy. These studies indicate the potential for a wider application of hNIS reporter imaging and translation into patient studies using radioisotopes that are currently available for human use for both SPECT and PET imaging.
Bridges to the Future: Teaching Information Literacy Across Standards, Institutions, and the Workforce

Teaching information literacy skills to prepare young adults for the demands of a technologically modern workforce requires collaboration between schools and libraries. Identifying opportunities to build bridges that enable smooth transitions for information literacy learning across content areas, standards, and institutions requires collaboration among librarians. Perspectives and discoveries of four librarians (secondary school, two-year technical college, and an undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degree granting university) engaged in collaboration are examined. Collaboration resulted in a common framework for teaching information literacy skills designed with the goal of developing academic and workforce competencies including accessing, sorting, evaluating, and incorporating reliable information into daily lives.
Government Expenditure and Economic Growth: A Cross-Country Study

This paper examines the relationship between the share of government consumption expenditure in GDP and the rate of growth of real per capita GDP. The work of the U.N. International Comparison Project has recently made available new estimates for over 100 countries of both per capita GDP and the share of government consumption. These new estimates are based on direct price comparisons rather than exchange rate conversions. ' As a result, the statistics for different countries are more comparable and cross-country studies will be more reliable.
Cryogenic Operation of Junctionless Nanowire Transistors

This letter presents the properties of nMOS junctionless nanowire transistors (JNTs) under cryogenic operation. Experimental results of drain current, subthreshold slope, maximum transconductance at low electric field, and threshold voltage, as well as its variation with temperature, are presented. Unlike in classical devices, the drain current of JNTs decreases when temperature is lowered, although the maximum transconductance increases when the temperature is lowered down to 125 K. An analytical model for the threshold voltage is proposed to explain the influence of nanowire width and doping concentration on its variation with temperature. It is shown that the wider the nanowire or the lower the doping concentration, the higher the threshold voltage variation with temperature.
International Evidence on Weekend Anomalies

Recent studies on the U.S. market find that the Monday effect is observed mainly when the return on the previous Friday is negative or when the Monday falls within the last two weeks of the month. I look for international evidence and examine whether such properties of the Monday effect are related to another anomalous phenomenon --- high weekend correlation. By examining twenty-three equity market indices, I find that the negative Friday is, in general, important to the Monday effect. Furthermore, the Monday returns tend to be lowest on the fourth week of the month. Although high weekend correlation is also common to these markets, it seems not related to the bad-Friday factor and shows no seasonality across weeks of the month.
Dynamic Dependencies: A Geographic Investigation of Local Labor Markets*

Knowledge is grounded in experience, which in large part is rooted in the place-bound interactions of everyday life. We view labor market processes in the context of such interactions and explore the ways in which the experience-based knowledges of employers and employees construct labor markets within metropolitan areas and contribute to segmentation within the labor force. In-depth interviews with workers and employers in the manufactur- ing and producer services sectors of Worcester, Massachusetts, reveal the place-based processes through which local labor markets and segmentations develop. Employers prove to be astute social geographers, keenly aware of local variations in the residential landscape, locating their firms to win proximity to a local labor force having the particular characteristics deemed desirable. In recruiting workers, employers rely on strategies, such as advertisements in local newspapers and word of mouth, to ensure a localized labor force. Employers' rootedness in the local area and their reluctance to risk losing their current labor force by moving far reinforce the spatial divisions of labor they themselves helped to create through their locational and recruiting strategies. Employees, for their part, contribute to carving out small-scale labor markets through a preference for short journeys to work, a reliance on personal contacts in finding jobs, and through residential rootedness in particular parts of the metropolitan area. The sometimes microscopic labor markets that develop as a result have distinctive characteristics in terms of employment opportunities and wage levels. A geographic perspective shows that labor markets emerge from processes far more complex than economic exchange.
A Path-Oriented Timing-Aware Diagnosis Methodology of At-Speed Transition Tests

Speed path identification is an indispensable step for pushing the design timing wall. We propose a new at-speed diagnosis methodology. Key characteristics of the methodology are (a) path-oriented diagnosis, (b) failing frequency guided, and (d) identified speed paths referenced in the timing verification design database. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our technique on a quad-core AMD Opteron (tm) Processor.
The Unified Astronomy Thesaurus: Semantic Metadata for Astronomy and Astrophysics

Several controlled vocabularies have been developed and used by the astronomical community, each designed to serve a specific need and a specific group. The Unified Astronomy Thesaurus (UAT) attempts to provide a highly structured controlled vocabulary that will be relevant and useful across the entire discipline, regardless of content or platform. Because classifying articles and data will be the two major functions of the UAT, we examine the UAT in comparison with the Astronomical Subject Keywords used by major publications and the JWST Science Keywords used by STScI’s Astronomer’s Proposal Tool.
Restructure Expectation and the Mug’s Games of Capital Market

At the end of 2014, wars of protecting shell resource broke out in Chinese A-share market. Based on the case of financial fraud of WanFu Biotechnology, we present and explain the trade abnormality existing in the capital market from restructure perspective. By virtue of analyzing the case of WanFu Biotechnology, we reveal the loopholes in the capital system, and finally put forward some corresponding policy suggestions for policy makers.
Interactive Pop-up Card Design, Part I

Pop-up cards are fun to create and receive. They're also a great output medium for computer graphics, offering an economic and compact way to show 3D scenes without the need for special glasses, shutters or any other electronic hardware. Two basic pop-up mechanisms - the single-slit and the V-fold - are the heart of my interactive pop-up design assistant, which I use to design cards on the computer that I then print out and assemble. Happily, these two mechanisms are also among the most general of all techniques used in pop-ups, since many of the other constructions are combinations of these mechanisms or variations on their geometry. Of course, a variety of pop-up mechanisms exist that aren't captured by those ideas. Happily, most of those are straightforward to design and create with special-purpose code and don't present the sort of design challenges that the slit and V-fold designs do.
The Role of Strategic Alliances in the International Organization of Industry

In this study the motivations for entering international strategic alliances are investigated. The reasons for alliance entry reflect the ways firms are restructuring economic activities. A theoretical basis for the study is built from the conceptual arguments of transaction-cost theory and resource-dependence theory. A partial synthesis of the two approaches suggests that alliances are especially well suited to the combined pursuit of increased efficiency and reduced uncertainty. The empirical investigation is based on a series of thirteen case studies, each involving a small Canadian firm and a foreign partner. Growth resulting from efficient access to foreign markets was an important reason for Canadian firms to enter alliances. Collaboration enabled small firms to learn about market demand. This information reduced the uncertainty of international marketing, and was used to guide the development and modification of products. Complementary abilities, where the Canadian firms offered technology and their foreign partners had marketing capabilities, were at the heart of most alliances. In general, alliances were considered necessary to protect proprietary information and to forge strong links with firms taking over important downstream functions.
A Neural Network Based Approach to Knowledge Acquirement in Conceptual Design of Mechanical Derive

Selecting an appropriate drive type that meets design requirements depends on a large amount of experiential knowledge in conceptual design of mechanical drive, whereas the complexity of conceptual design results in a great difficulty existing in knowledge acquirement. To tackle it, a BP network based approach to knowledge acquirement is proposed, in which a binary coding method is used to structure learning samples to accumulate expert knowledge, and through training this constructed network using these samples, the knowledge related with mechanical drive is acquired and expressed with the trained weight and threshold matrix. This paper provides a promising approach to deal with the bottleneck problem in knowledge acquirement of intelligent design system. Under this approach, the automation of knowledge acquirement is effectively solved and in a sense, this trained network can be used as a knowledge base of expert system to facilitate the design process of mechanical drive.
Spotlight On: Insider Threat from Trusted Business Partners. Version 2: Updated and Revised

Abstract : This article is the sixth in the series Spotlight On, published by the CERT Insider Threat Center at Carnegie Mellon University s Software Engineering Institute and funded by CyLab. Each article focuses on a specific area of concern and presents analysis based on hundreds of actual insider threat cases cataloged in the CERT insider threat database. For more information about the CERT Program s insider threat work, see http://www.cert. org/insider_threat/. This article focuses on cases in which the malicious insider was employed by a trusted business partner of the victim organization. We first define the concept of trusted business partner (TBP) and then describe case scenarios in which a TBP has become an insider threat. These case scenarios concentrate on presenting the who, what, why, and how of the illicit activity. Finally, we provide recommendations that may be useful in countering these threats.