Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quantitative And Structural Tendencies In International Services Trade

International trade in services has grown, year after year, in importance in the world economy. The trade with services undergoes a more accelerated ascension than the one with goods, but it still holds less than 20% of the global trade partly due to the barriers of entrance on the market. However, the foreign direct investments (FDI) in services are superior to those from the manufactory sector because of the growth of the efforts made by the traders in order to establish some commercial presences on the foreign markets. The liberalization of the international trade with services is likely to generate substantial benefits concerning the prosperity and the economical growth
Navigating with new managerial tools

Ericsson Business Consulting has placed much effort in trying to find better ways to measure and manage the company’s intangible assets. Illuminates how the company has worked with three modern management concepts: balanced scorecard, knowledge management, and intellectual capital. For Ericsson Business Consulting, the three concepts are closely related and represent different stages in a development process that can be described by five logical steps: categorisation of the intangible assets; transforming strategy into actions; management and communication of the intangible assets; capturing the dynamics of the intangible assets; and looking into future developments. For each development step, the article will describe a number of key learning points based on the company’s experiences.
Strain-Enhanced CMOS Through Novel Process-Substrate Stress Hybridization of Super-Critically Thick Strained Silicon Directly on Insulator (SC-SSOI)

This paper describes a biaxial-uniaxial hybridized strained CMOS technology achieved through selective uniaxial relaxation of thick SSOI, dual-stress nitride capping layer, and embedded SiGe source/drain. Through novel strain engineering, nFET/pFET Idsat enhancements as high as 27%/36% have been achieved for sub-40nm devices at 1V with 30% reduction in gate leakage current, while introducing minimum process complexity. This work demonstrates the scalability of SC-SSOI and its advantages over pure biaxial and single uniaxial strained Si technologies
An Investment Strategy Based on Value Line’s Dual-Rank System

In this study, we document that the Value Line enigma originating from a timeliness single-sort portfolio no longer holds once trading costs are taken into account. In addition, we discover that safety ranks help explain cross-sectional stock returns within optimistic timeliness ranks. The information complementarity between timeliness and safety ranks makes it advisable to formulate a better investment strategy by constructing cross-ranking portfolios to yield significant abnormal returns allowing for conventional risk factors and transaction costs.
The relationship between inflation and financial development in Saudi Arabia

The improved performance of the financial sector through its process of financial intermediation between savers and investors and between lenders and borrowers as well as the guidance of the funds those are available to the optimal investments lead to achieve the desired stable economic growth. Economists generally believe that high rates of inflation cause problems to some individuals and as well as for the whole economic performance. In general, low inflation rate with financial sector development plays a crucial and essential role in achieving sustained and stable economic growth. Therefore, maintaining inflation rate at low level and improving the financial sector performance are considering themain targets for policy makers to promote sustained and stable economic growth. So, the main purpose of this paper was to investigate empirically the relationship between inflation and financial sector development in Saudi Arabia for the period of 1982-2013.This paper used the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound testing approach suggested by Perasan et al. (2001) to examine the existence of the long-run relationship between the inflation rate and financial sector development. The advantage of the bounds testing approach is in its applicability irrespective of whether the underlying variables are purely I (0), purely I (1) or mutually co-integrated.All data were tested for stationarity using Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test and the Phillip-Perron (PP) test to determine the order of integration. The variables included in this study are: The credit to the private sector as percentage of GDP was used as a proxy of financial development and inflation rate measured by the consumer price index. The study also included two more control variables: trade openness and real gross domestic product. The main findings are as follows. First, tests results of the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and Phillips – Perron (PP) showed that consumer price index (LCPI), real gross domestic product (LGDP) and trade openness (LOPEN) did not seem to be stationary at their level but they were at first difference. Accordingly, they were integrated of order one I (1). On the other side, both tests results of financial development (LFD) seemed to be stationary at its level. Accordingly, it was integrated of order zero I (0). Second, results showed that there was a statistically significant long-and-short run negative relationship between inflation and financial development. Third, there was statistically significant positive impact of previous financial sector’s policies on financial sector development.Forth, results indicated that there was statistically significant positive impact of economic growth on financial development. Fifth, there was a statistically significant negative impact of trade openness on financial development.Accordingly, inflation and trade liberalization policy are the main obstacles facing financial sector performance. Therefore, the policy makers can reduce inflation through the use of appropriate fiscal and monetary policies.
Current Situations and Solutions for Renewable Energy Development in Vietnam

The development potential for renewable energy in Vietnam is very huge and divergence. Unfortunately, at present, this energy source has been used for commercial electricity production is very low in which it takes within 1% in total energy used. The target for next years is commercial electricity generated by renewable energy try to take 5% and 11% in 2020 and 2050, respectively. This paper reviews the current situation of renewable used in Viet Nam and analyzes some important issues related to the national policies development for renewable energy such as legal framework, financial supports, and renewable energy consumption prices and so on. These policies shall help to promote investment in renewable energy; to increase the structure used renewable energy, and to develop renewable energy in Vietnam. Keywords: Renewable energy, energy policy, sustainable development in Vietnam
Dependent default and recovery: MCMC study of downturn LGD credit risk model

There is empirical evidence that recovery rates tend to go down just when the number of defaults goes up in economic downturns. This has to be taken into account in estimation of the capital against credit risk required by Basel II to cover losses during the adverse economic downturns; the so-called "downturn LGD" requirement. This paper presents estimation of the LGD credit risk model with default and recovery dependent via the latent systematic risk factor using Bayesian inference approach and Markov chain Monte Carlo method. This approach allows joint estimation of all model parameters and latent systematic factor, and all relevant uncertainties. Results using Moody's annual default and recovery rates for corporate bonds for the period 1982-2010 show that the impact of parameter uncertainty on economic capital can be very significant and should be assessed by practitioners.
Costs of Oil Dependence: A 2000 Update

Oil dependence remains a potentially serious economic and strategic problem for the United States. This report updates previous estimates of the costs of oil dependence to the U.S. economy and introduces several methodological enhancements. Estimates of the costs to the U.S. economy of the oil market upheavals of the last 30 years are in the vicinity of $7 trillion, present value 1998 dollars, about as large as the sum total of payments on the national debt over the same period. Simply adding up historical costs in 1998 dollars without converting to present value results in a Base Case cost estimate of $3.4 trillion. Sensitivity analysis indicates that cost estimates are sensitive to key parameters. A lower bound estimate of $1.7 trillion and an upper bound of $7.1 trillion (not present value) indicate that the costs of oil dependence have been large under almost any plausible set of assumptions. These cost estimates do not include military, strategic or political costs associated with U.S. and world dependence on oil imports.
Inflation Targeting, Exchange Rate Pass-Through and 'Fear of Floating'

The paper presents evidence on exchange rate pass-through and the "Fear of Floating" hypothesis before and after Inflation Targeting for a set of developed and emerging market economies. We use a structural VAR model to estimate the effect of depreciations on prices. The results support the view of the previous literature that the pass-through is higher for emerging than for developed economies, and that it has decreased after the adoption of Inflation Targeting. We then use several different methodologies to examine the existence of "Fear of Floating" practices. We observe a drastic reduction in direct foreign exchange market intervention after the adoption of Inflation Targeting. As the exchange rate pass-through still matters for the attainment of the inflation targets, "Fear of Floating" seems to play only a minor role for most economies in our sample.
A control method for voltage source inverter without dc link capacitor

Voltage source inverter plays an important role in modern industry. Conventional voltage source inverter has a large electrolytic capacitor as energy store element in order to keep the dc link voltage constant. However, a large electrolytic capacitor increases the input current distortion. Replacing the large electrolytic capacitor by a small film capacitor the input current quality is improved but the output currents are distorted by low order harmonics. This paper proposes a simple current control method for a voltage source inverter without the use of a large electrolytic capacitor in the dc link in order to compensate the low order harmonics in the output currents. The proposed current control scheme employs just one PI regulator and since that the space vector modulation is used in this control the switching frequency of the converter is kept constant.
An Iterative Black Top Hat Transform Algorithm for the Volume Estimation of Lunar Impact Craters

Volume estimation is a fundamental problem in the morphometric study of impact craters. The Top Hat Transform function (TH), a gray-level image processing technique has already been applied to gray-level Digital Elevation Model (DEM) to extract peaks and pits in a nonuniform background. In this study, an updated Black Top Hat Transform function (BTH) was applied to quantify the volume of lunar impact craters on the Moon. We proposed an iterative BTH (IBTH) where the window size and slope factor were linearly increased to extract craters of different sizes, along with a novel application of automatically adjusted threshold to remove noise. Volume was calculated as the sum of the crater depth multiplied by the cell area. When tested against the simulated dataset, IBTH achieved an overall relative accuracy of 95%, in comparison with only 65% for BTH. When applied to the Chang’E DEM and LOLA DEM, IBTH not only minimized the relative error of the total volume estimates, but also revealed the detailed spatial distribution of the crater depth. Therefore, the highly automated IBTH algorithm with few input parameters is ideally suited for estimating the volume of craters on the Moon on a global scale, which is important for understanding the early processes of impact erosion.
The role of testosterone in the pathogenesis of prostate cancer

Abstract: Relationships between androgenic hormones and prostatic tissue growth are complex. It is certainly true that the prostate will not develop without androgens and the gland will atrophy if androgen support is withdrawn. The hormonal hypothesis remains one of the most important hypotheses in the etiology of prostate cancer (PCa), and efforts are continuing to improve the understanding of androgen actions in PCa. Although evidence from epidemiological studies of associations between circulating levels of androgens and PCa risk has been inconsistent, the traditional view that higher testosterone (T) levels represent a risk factor for PCa appears to have little evidentiary support. Reinvestigation of the relationship between T and PCa seems important and necessary if a new, clinically and scientifically rewarding concept is to be constructed. The present review considers the metabolism and intraprostatic action of T, epidemiological evidence, and the association between T and PCa risk.
The Effect of Investment Banking Relationships on Financial Analysts' Earnings Forecasts and Investment Recommendations*

Abstract. This study shows that financial analysts of brokerage firms that provide investment banking services to a company (investment banker analysts) are optimistic, relative to other (noninvestment banker) analysts, in their earnings forecasts and investment recommendations. Returns earned by following the investment recommendations of investment banker analysts, however, are not significantly different from those of nonâ€ investment banker analysts. Given that information regarding the investment banking relationships of brokerage firms is publicly available, we find evidence that capital market participants rely relatively less on the investment banker analysts in forming their earnings expectations. Although we find a significant capital market reaction around the noninvestment banker analysts' research report dates and not around the investment banker analysts' research report dates, the difference between the two market reactions is not statistically significant. Finally, we find that investment banker analysts' earnings forecasts are, on average, as accurate as those of noninvestment banker analysts. RA©sumA©. Les auteurs mettent en A©vidence le fait que les analystes financiers des maisons de courtage qui offrent des services de prise ferme aux entreprises (les analystes de courtiers preneurs ferme) sont optimistes dans leurs prA©visions de bA©nA©fices et leurs recommandations de placements, par comparaison aux autres analystes (c'estâ€ A â€ dire aux analystes de courtiers qui ne sont pas preneurs ferme). Les rendements obtenus par les investisseurs qui observent les recommandations de placements des analystes de courtiers preneurs ferme ne sont cependant pas sensiblement diffA©rents de ceux qu'obtiennent les investisseurs qui se fient aux analystes des courtiers qui ne sont pas preneurs ferme. Compte tenu du fait que l'information relative aux relations qu'entretiennent les maisons de courtage en matiA¨re de prise ferme est du domaine public, les constatations des auteurs confirment que les participants au marchA© financier s'appuient relativement moins sur le verdict des analystes des courtiers preneurs ferme dans le calcul de leur espA©rance de gains. Bien que les auteurs observent une rA©action marquA©e du marchA© financier A proximitA© des dates de publication des rapports de recherche des analystes des courtiers qui ne sont pas preneurs ferme, ce qui n'est pas le cas A proximitA© des dates de publication des rapports de recherche des analystes des courtiers preneurs ferme, la diffA©rence entre ces deux rA©actions n'est pas statistiquement significative. Enfin, les auteurs constatent que les prA©visions de bA©nA©fices des analystes des courtiers preneurs ferme sont, en moyenne, aussi exactes que celles des analystes des courtiers qui ne sont pas preneurs ferme.
Country risk, multimarket contacts and MNEs’ competitive action

In light of the lack of empirical evidence on discussing international business issue by integrating MNEs competitive dynamics. This study investigates the moderating role that multimarket contact play in MNEs' country risk and competitive action. Examining a sample of top 20 container shipping MNEs in terms of collecting 2,117 competitive actions from Shipping Digest, this study finds that when MNEs face higher country risks, they undertake fewer competitive actions. On the other hand, this study also shows that MNEs with higher degrees of multimarket contact between MNEs weaken the negative relationship between country risk and a focal firm's competitive actions. This study extends mutual forbearance theory to international context by investigating how multimarket contact impacts the relationship between country risk and a focal firm's competitive actions. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.
Distinct Xp11.2 breakpoints in two renal cell carcinomas exhibiting X;autosome translocations

Several human renal cell carcinomas with X;autosome translocations have been reported in recent years. The t(X;1)(p11.2;q21) appears to be a specific primary anomaly, suggesting that tumors with this translocation form a distinct subgroup of RCC. Here we report two new cases, one with a t(X;10)(p11.2;q23), the other with a t(X;1)(p11.2;p34). The common breakpoint in Xp11.2 suggests that they belong to the above‐mentioned subset of RCC. Using FISH in conjunction with X‐specific YAC clones, we demonstrate that the two new cases exhibited distinct breakpoints within Xp11.2.
Sequential adhesion of platelets and leukocytes from flowing whole blood onto a collagen-coated surface: Requirement for a GpVI-binding site in collagen

Summary The adhesion of leukocytes to immobilised platelets may contribute to inflammatory and thrombotic responses in damaged tissue. To investigate the conditions under which platelets and leukocytes might be deposited together in vessels, we perfused fluorescently-labelled whole blood through glass capillaries coated with various collagen preparations. Video-microscopic observations of the surface showed that platelets formed numerous, individual, rolling and stationary attachments to surfaces coated with acid-soluble, monomeric collagen. However, leukocyte interactions with the deposited platelets were rare. If the blood was washed out, the adherent platelets became more activated, and many rolling adherent leukocytes were observed if a second bolus of blood was perfused over them. This suggested that platelet activation had initially been inadequate to support leukocyte capture. Next, fibrillar collagen was adsorbed to the capillaries to present an ordered array of peptide motifs to platelet receptor glycoprotein (Gp)VI and transduce an activating signal. In this case, platelets were deposited in discrete, stable aggregates and the bound platelets captured many flowing leukocytes.Alternatively, acid-soluble collagen was seeded with collagen-related peptide (CRP) known to contain a GpVI-binding motif.Again, platelet adhesion became stable, and numerous flowing leukocytes were captured.Addition of antibody against GpVI or against P-selectin greatly reduced leukocyte adhesion to the platelets. Thus, in whole blood, platelets binding to exposed collagen need to be activated through GpVI in order to expose sufficient P-selectin to allow efficient capture of flowing leukocytes to take place.
[Etiology of enteritis in a university general hospital in Barcelona (1992-1995)].

BACKGROUND The aim of the study was to describe the etiology of enteropathogenic agents over a four-year period (1992-1995) in a University Hospital in Barcelona. METHODS We studied 12,793 stool samples, 4519 were obtained from patients under 15 years and 8274 were obtained from patients over 14 years. The specimens were examined for bacteriological, parasitological and virological enteropathogens. RESULTS In 3380 specimens of 12,793 stool samples studied were identified an enteropathogen (26.4%). Polymicrobial associations were observed in the 6.8% of the cases. Pathogens were identified in 45% of children samples and 16.3% of adults samples. The etiological enteritis agents more frequently detected in the paediatric patients were Campylobacter (13.5%), rotavirus (11.3%) and Salmonella (10.2%); and Salmonella (4.9%), Campylobacter (3.1%) and Giardia intestinalis (2.1%) in adults. Cryptosporidium (13.5%) was the most frequent cause of gastrointestinal tract infections in HIV-infected subjects. In the children with stools positives, the presence of red and white blood cells were more frequent than the adults with stools positives (73% versus 26.6%). CONCLUSIONS The enteropathogenic agents such as Campylobacter, Salmonella, and Giardia were the most frequent cause of gastroenteritis in our environment. In the children, rotavirus infections predominated during the cold months. The most frequent cause of gastroenteritis in HIV-infected patients was Cryptosporidium followed by Campylobacter.
The hidden impact of diabetes on male sexual dysfunction and fertility

Diabetes affects an increasingly large number of young men of reproductive age. Erectile and ejaculatory difficulties arise due to vascular and neuropathic problems. The treatment of these may have effects on fertility potential. Erectile dysfunction can be treated with mechanical devices and intracavernosal injections. Although these have not been shown to affect fertility directly, they may result in poor compliance and hence reduced frequency of ejaculation with subsequent deterioration in sperm quality. Other medical treatments may have a more direct effect. The phosphodiesterase (PDE) inhibitor pentoxifylline has been shown to affect sperm quality and early embryo development. Therefore, Viagra, also a PDE inhibitor, may affect sperm quality. There is conflicting evidence about this in the literature. Ejaculatory difficulties are also more common in diabetics although treatments such as Trucut testicular biopsy and intracytoplasmic sperm injection have improved the outlook for these patients. There is also some evidence that spermatogenesis is affected by diabetes and that patients have a reduced sperm motility and semen volume. Therefore, diabetes has a significant impact on the fertility of men with this disease both directly and indirectly. The extent of iatrogenic influence on the reduced fertility potential of these patients needs to be researched as a matter of urgency.