Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Does debt market timing increase firm value?

Survey evidence indicates that firm managers try to time debt markets when choosing the maturity of new debt issues, but we do not know whether these strategies increase firm value. This research examines differences in value across nontimers and timers, where timers are defined as firms that follow either a naïve strategy of choosing long-term debt when the term premium is low or a strategy from Baker et al. (2003) based on the predictability of future excess bond returns. After controlling for various determinants of firm value, the research finds no differences in value across timers and nontimers. It also documents that the timing strategies do not increase firm value and do not affect announcement effects of long-term debt offerings. The results suggest that corporate debt markets are efficient and well integrated with equity markets.
UNIVERSITY WOMEN IN AGRICULTURAL AND EXTENSION EDUCATION: COMMITTED TO THE PROFESSION AND SEEKING SOLUTIONS TO CHALLENGES

As agricultural and extension education at the university level revamps its image for the new millennium, it may be wise to recognize its growing diversity and seek more compatible options for women in the workforce. The purpose of this study was to describe the unique challenges regarding personal lives, barriers unique to women in the field, and mentoring and support systems available to women involved in agricultural and extension education at the university level. “Changes in education and societal thinking are key components in encouraging young women in non-traditional fields” (Johnson, 1997). The three themes reported in this study reflected a broad view of the issues facing women entering the profession of agricultural and extension education at the university level. 1) Women in the field who feel encouraged seem to be happy and have a strong commitment to their role in the profession. 2) Mentoring networks and support systems are too few and do not meet the needs of the women in the field. 3) Barriers to women in the profession are real and need to be addressed. The barriers perceived by women in agricultural and extension education may be far more real than we would like to think. This study gives insight into the experiences of women in the field of agricultural and extension education.
Competition, Regulation, and the Privatisation of British Rail

The privatisation programme pursued by successive Conservative administrations in the 1979–97 period was based on neoliberal values, and was aimed at the reduction of public sector involvement in industry by the promotion of a competitive ‘free’ market. However, despite this ideological objective, several large utility companies were privatised as regulated monopolies. Against this background, in a notable reorientation of privatisation policy, the Major administration attempted to secure a genuine movement towards market liberalisation when it divested British Rail (BR). An elaborate methodology was used to break BR's monopoly and establish a competitive market for the provision of passenger rail services. The authors argue that, notwithstanding the complexity of the rail sell-off, competition has not materialised and BR's monopoly has to ail intents and purposes been reconstituted in the private sector.
Evaluating the Performance of International Mutual Funds

In this paper, the authors examine the performance of a sample of fifteen U.S.-based internationally diversified mutual funds between 1982 and 1988. Two performance measures are used, the Jensen measure and the positive period weighting measure proposed by Mark Grinblatt and Sheridan Titman. They find no evidence that the funds, either individually or as a whole, provide investors with performance that surpasses that of a broad, international equity index over this sample period. Copyright 1990 by American Finance Association.
Old-age pensions: Individual or collective responsibility? An investigation of public opinion across European welfare states

The question of who should be responsible for the provision of retirement income is becoming increasingly important, given the general trend of ageing populations in many European countries. In this article, we study the determinants of popular preferences concerning individual or collective responsibilities in the context of old-age pensions. Using data from the Eurobarometer survey series, we investigate whether - and to what extent - people's views about who should be responsible for the provision of pensions are related to market selectivist and collectivist features of the particular welfare state regimes in Europe. Moreover, the impact of structural characteristics of pension systems and social characteristics of individuals on public preferences is investigated. The cross-national patterns of popular views on responsibilities for the provision of pensions suggest a link to the specifics of welfare state regimes, but not as decisively as one would expect. Structural characteristics of pension systems also appear to be important determinants of public opinion. However, effects of contextual variables are only found when measurements of public opinion are used, which refer to specific institutional arrangements for pension provision. Finally, the results show important divisions among social categories.
FACTORS INFLUENCING IMPLEMENTATION OF BUILDING POLICY AT THE CITY COUNCIL OF NAIROBI

Strategy implementation is an iterative process of implementing strategies, policies, programs and action plans that allows a firm to utilize its resources to take advantage of opportunities in the competitive environment. Implementation is the process that turns plans into action assignments and ensures that such assignments are executed in a manner that accomplishes the plan’s stated objectives. Good strategies alone will not work, appropriate implementation processes to produce intended results have to be put in place. Putting strategy into place and getting individuals and organization units to execute their part of the strategic plan is essentially an administrative task. Although effective implementation of strategy is important it is not easy. Once an organization has chosen a strategy to achieve its goals, it has to be put into action by selecting appropriate organizational structure and managing its execution through tailoring the management systems of the organization to the requirements of the strategy. There have been frequent disasters and calamities that have befallen the country and the City of Nairobi in the recent past. The proliferation of slums, dangerous buildings, incompatible land uses, dilapidated and risky houses, collapse of buildings under construction, strain over social amenities and congestion are just but a few glaring indications of the problem facing the built sector. Thus this research is aimed at investigating factors influencing implementation of building policy at the City Council of Nairobi.
Shaping Foreign Policy Opinions

Increasing evidence of connections between public opinion and U.S. foreign policy-making suggests the importance of determining what influences shape the collective foreign policy preferences of the public. A data set involving repeated measures of public opinion and content analyses of TV news broadcasts before and between opinion surveys is used to estimate the impact of news stories from various sources on opinion. Reported statements and actions by media commentators, allegedly nonpartisan “experts,” opposition party figures, and popular (but not unpopular) presidents have the largest estimated effects, while the impact of other sources is negligible. Despite ideas about the “two presidencies” and the like, the process of shaping opinion on foreign policy does not appear substantially different from that affecting domestic policy preferences. Some implications for the democratic control of foreign policy are discussed.
Outcome measures of a chronic pain program: a prospective statistical study.

OBJECTIVE To provide outcome data measuring objective and subjective variables of an individualized, multidisciplinary, comprehensive pain management program. DESIGN The study is a prospective evaluation of 50 consecutive patients who completed the pain management program. Objective measures were medication use and return to work. Subjective measures included self-reports of pain levels and completion of a Personal Concerns and Goals Assessment (PCGA) examining issues of lifestyle and emotional well-being. These measures were compared at program onset and completion by using appropriate statistical analyses. RESULTS Objective measures: Medication use by the study subjects decreased overall by 72% within all drug categories. Opioid use was eliminated. Regarding return to work, the study subjects increased their work hours by twofold overall. Of patients working fewer than 30 h per week at program onset, representing 62% of the study population, a fivefold return to work was observed. Subjective measures: Overall pain levels improved by 33%, with an 18 to 47% improvement in all descriptors (average pain levels on good or bad days, average number of good or bad days). Of the PCGA factors, patients improved 24 to 46% in all categories concerning lifestyle and emotional well-being. Correlative analysis of the data produced prognostic information as well as insights into chronic pain development. CONCLUSIONS This study of objective and subjective outcome measures demonstrates that a comprehensive program employing specific principles and methods produces an effective approach for the management of chronic pain. Patients disabled by chronic pain regain a quality of life that allows them to resume a functioning, productive role.
The Capricious Character of Nature

The on-going whole genome sequencing and whole cell assays of metabolites and proteins imply that complex systems could ultimately be mastered by perfecting knowledge into great detail. However, courses of nature are inherently intractable because flows of energy and their driving forces depend on each other. Thus no data will suffice to predict precisely the outcomes of e.g., engineering experiments. All path-dependent processes, most notably evolution in its entirety, display this capricious character of nature.
Explaining Exit to Work among Social Assistance Recipients in Norway Heterogeneity or Dependency

In this paper we ask why some Norwegian social assistance recipients move to work, while others do not. The aim is to shed new light on the heterogeneity/dependency issue in welfare research by defining work as the destination of interest, adopting methods that allow for assessment of the effect of time, and that take into account observed variables as well as unobserved heterogeneity. The sample includes all first time recipients aged 30-60 years in 1995 (n=15,837). This entry cohort is followed up for 5 years, i.e. through 1999. About 10 per cent of the social assistance recipients experience a first transition to work (n=1563). Individual characteristics like education and ethnicity, and structural factors like national unemployment rates are important predictors of exit to work. The adjusted effect of time on exit to work has a bell-like shape: first it increases sharply and then declines slowly. Thus, the 'time dependency' hypothesis that assumes a steadily declining hazard rate, is not supported. Our interpretation of the bell-shaped exit rate focuses on the labour market conditions, job search efforts, and (changing) characteristics of the long-term social assistance recipients
Approaches and requirements to develop and improve the standard processes for a research and development organization

With the increased complexity of man‐made systems and software and the higher quality R&D results that are expected in today's R&D environment, it has become increasingly necessary to effectively define and improve the R&D standard processes specifically tailored for our organization and projects. To meet these needs, we have defined R&D standard processes based on international standards for systems and software engineering and on our existing traditional work methods, and then applied them to our ongoing projects. Now, we are improving our defined R&D standard processes continuously by monitoring of our processes and products and checking feedback from application results. In this paper, we introduce the R&D standard processes developed by our organization, the E Research Institute in Korea, and define the requirements and approaches used for their development and improvement. We compare our defined R&D standard processes with ISO/IEC 15288, which is the international standards for systems engineering, and summarize what we have learned through the development and improvement of our processes. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Eng 9: 35–44, 2006
Moving Transparent Statistics Forward at CHI

Transparent statistics is a philosophy of statistical reporting whose purpose is scientific advancement rather than persuasion. We ran a SIG at CHI 2016 to discuss problems and limitations in statistical practices in HCI and options for moving the field towards clearer and more reliable ways of writing about experiments, and received an overwhelming response. This SIG resulted in rough drafts of reviewer guidelines, resources for authors, and other suggestions for advancing a vision of transparent statistics within the field; this year, we propose a concentrated one-day writing workshop to develop those documents into a polished state with input from a diverse cross-section of the CHI community.
Combined Application of SEDC and GTSDC for SSR Mitigation and Its Field Tests

The subsynchronous resonance (SSR) problem may become more serious with the continuous evolvement of a series-compensated power system. Consequently, the existing SSR mitigation scheme might no longer keep the system stable. This issue has been encountered by Shangdu Power Plant, where the deployed supplementary excitation damping controllers (SEDCs) that well stabilized the system before cannot maintain torsional stability after the recent change occurred in the power system. Therefore, a combined mitigation scheme of SEDC and generator terminal subsynchronous damping controller (GTSDC) is proposed in this paper to regain system stability. SEDC provides electrical damping by modulating the excitation voltage at the rotor side. Meanwhile, GTSDC can damp SSR via injecting super-synchronous and subsynchronous currents into the generator stator. Field tests have proven the effectiveness of this combined scheme in addressing the deteriorated SSR issue. Eigenvalue analysis indicates that the combined scheme can provide enough positive damping for the system under any operating condition. Thanks to the low investment of SEDC and the flexibility of GTSDC, this combined scheme provides an economical and scalable solution for SSR mitigation, especially when the target system changes constantly.
Counter propagation ANN based massive adaptive array antenna beamforming for mmWave communication system

Next-generation cellular standard will use millimeter wave (mmWave) frequencies to provide higher throughput. The base station will use massive array antenna to ensure better transmission to multiple users. We propose a power and an adaptive beamforming algorithm based on Counter Propagation Artificial Neural Networks (CP-ANNs). The hidden layer is a Kohonen network which categorizes the input pattern and the output layer reproduces the correct output pattern for the category. An optimization problem has been formed that adapts the angle of arrival of array antenna to maximize the throughput by saving node energy. With the partial channel state information (CSI), the proposed antenna allocate different beam widths for multiple users for reducing the interference between users and thereby improve user capacity. Simulation results show the efficiency of the proposed scheme.
Econometric Policy Evaluation and Inverse Control

The traditional approach to monetary policy evaluation entails a first step in which structural parameters are estimated and a second in which the performance of alternative policy rules is studied. This paper combines the two steps of the traditional approach into one by estimating a structural model subject to the restriction that the central bank chooses the policy rule that minimizes expected loss. The structure is a forward-looking New Keynesian model in which equilibrium values of output and inflation depend on expectations of future values of those variables. Analysis of U.S. data between 1965 and 2001 support the hypotheses that the sample contains two policy regimes, that the Fed placed far greater weight on stabilizing inflation after 1980, and that improvements in policy were available in both regimes. The unified approach also sharpens estimates of structural parameters.
Discovery and Barcoding by Analysis of Spliced Leader RNA Gene Sequences of New Isolates of Trypanosomatidae from Heteroptera in Costa Rica and Ecuador

ABSTRACT. Trypanosomatid diversity in Heteroptera was sampled using a culture‐independent approach based on amplification and sequencing of Spliced Leader RNA gene repeats from environmental samples. By combining the data collected herein with that of previous work, the prevalence of parasites was found to be 22%–23%. Out of approximately 170 host species investigated nearly 60 were found to harbor trypanosomatids. The parasites found were grouped by cluster analysis into 48 typing units. Most of these were well separated from the known groups and, therefore, likely represent new trypanosomatid species. The sequences for each typing unit serve as barcodes to facilitate their recognition in the future. As the sampled host species represent a minor fraction of potential hosts, the entire trypanosomatid diversity is far greater than described thus far. Investigations of trypanosomatid diversity, host‐specificity, and biogeography have become feasible using the approach described herein.
Acupuncture for Headache. It's Still All Placebo

The recent Cochrane review, “Acupuncture for the prevention of episodic migraine,” was a metaanalysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing acupuncture with no acupuncture, with migraine prophylactic therapy and with sham acupuncture. There was a similar review regarding tension-type headache. Comments based upon these reviews were recently published in this journal. The Cochrane review found that acupuncture was associated with a moderate reduction of headache frequency when compared to no therapy and that migraine frequency was reduced significantly more with acupuncture than with prophylactic drug therapy. In contrast with the last Cochrane review (2009), the current review found that verum acupuncture showed a small but statistically significant reduction in headache frequency compared to sham acupuncture. This discussion will concentrate on the recent Cochrane review comparing verum to sham acupuncture. Although limited, the conclusions can be generalized.
Quantifying Expected Ecological Response to Natural Resource Legislation: a Case Study of Riparian Buffers, Aquatic Habitat, and Trout Populations

Regulations governing the management of streamside vegetation (riparian buffers) lie at a nexus between environmental, social, and land development interests, and can yield especially contentious debates among stakeholders. In 2001, the State Legislature of Georgia, USA, took up this debate; the Legislature reduced the minimum width of mandatory-forested riparian buffers along designated trout streams from ~30 m (100 ft) to ~15 m (50 ft), and commissioned this study to assess the expected response of existing trout populations. Because our research was designed to provide rigorous and accessible data for informing this management debate, this research may serve as a general template for other studies designed to inform regulatory and management decisions. We established and quantified relationships among riparian forests, aquatic habitat (stream temperature and riffle embeddedness), and trout reproductive success (biomass of young trout). We used these relationships to determine the expected impacts of the buffer width reduction on aquatic habitat and trout reproductive success at the stream segment and stream network scales, and assessed associated uncertainty. When compared with stream segments having 30-m wide buffers, our analysis indicated that individual stream segments with 15-m wide buffers have: 1) higher peak temperatures (average peak stream temperatures during the warmest week of the year increase by ~2.0 ± 0.3°C, depending on summertime climate conditions); and 2) more fine sediments (fines in riffle habitats increase by approximately 25% of the observed inter-study-site range). The data show that trout populations will respond markedly to these habitat changes. Linear regression models and an associated Monte Carlo uncertainty assessment document an expected 87% reduction in young trout biomass, with a 95% confidence interval ranging from a 66% reduction to a 97% reduction. A landscape assessment showed that 63% of Georgia's 2nd- to 5th-order trout stream segments could maintain stream temperatures likely (>50% probability) to support young trout in streams bordered by 30-m wide forested riparian buffers. Less than 9% of those streams (only those at the highest elevations) would maintain such temperatures with 15-m wide riparian buffers. As young trout are indicative of trout reproductive success, our results portend substantial reductions or elimination of trout populations in northern Georgia streams where vegetated riparian buffer widths are reduced to 15 m.
An Innovative Look, a Recalcitrant Reality: The Politics of Principal Preparation Reform

Concerns about the effectiveness of traditional preparation programs have yielded a wide-ranging debate about new approaches to recruiting and preparing leaders. The resulting policy debate features two general camps: those who wish to refine and bolster the existing system of preparation and licensure and those who advocate a move away from licensure and the attendant notions of leadership that hold sway today. The proponents of conventional preparation have shown a remarkable willingness to compromise, giving rise to modified training programs and blunting the political appetite for rethinking the gate keeping arrangements that regulate who can become, approve, or train future school leaders. Ultimately, both innovative programs and for-profit providers will acclimate themselves to the institutional arrangements in place, so the degree of real change depends more on statutory and regulatory change than the emergence of particular new programs.
Common features of the NAD‐binding and catalytic site of ADP‐ribosylating toxins

Computer analysis of the three‐dimensional structure of ADP‐ribosylating toxins showed that in all toxins the NAD‐binding site is located in a cavity. This cavity consists of 16 contiguous amino acids that form an a‐helix bent over β‐strand. The tertiary folding of this structure is strictly conserved despite the differences in the amino acid sequence. Catalysis is supported by two spatially conserved amino acids, each flanking the NAD‐binding site. These are: a glutamic acid that is conserved in all toxins, and a nucleophillc residue, which is a histidine in the diphtheria toxin and Pseudomonas exotoxin A, and an arginine in the cholera toxin, the Escherichia coli heat‐labile enterotoxins, the pertussis toxin and the mosquitocidal toxin of Bacillus sphaericus. The latter group of toxins presents an additional histidine that appears important for catalysis. This structure suggests a general mechanism of ADP‐ribosylation evolved to work on different target proteins.