Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Accounting Standards and Global Convergence Revisited: Social Norms and Economic Concepts

The leitmotifs underlying accounting standards setting have undergone changes over time, from best practices to a normative approach and then to global convergence. In the process, accounting standards have gradually lost their character as a set of informal social norms based on market practices. This trend, combined with the pursuit of a formal framework not amenable to adjustment through feedback from market tests, has unavoidably brought about a top-down approach. Under this approach, the uniformity of standards from the viewpoint of regulators has been given priority over the usefulness of income information for users of financial statements. Consequently income information, which plays an essential role in the valuation of companies in capital markets, has been aff ected by a mechanical application of the asset-liability approach and fair value measurement with scant attention to a marked diff erence in business transactions. Because investors today almost disregard national borders, the homogenization of accounting information is certainly an important goal. To achieve this goal, however, it is necessary to facilitate the spontaneous homogenization of norms based on an evolutionary market process which enables standards setters to incorporate vox populi into accounting standards themselves rather than decide on the direction and degree of convergence on an a priori basis.
Selling Patents at Auction: An Empirical Analysis of Patent Value

This article analyzes the impact of patent bibliographic indicators and patent characteristics on the economic value of patents put on sale in an auction, considering different typologies of sellers and buyers. A unique data set covering all patent auctions held until the end of 2008 by Ocean Tomo is used. We employ two measures of patent value drawn from the auction process: the offer price (ex ante value set by the seller) and the closing price (the market value determined by the buyers) of patent lots. We find a positive correlation between forward citations and the economic value of patents (in terms of both the lot offer price and the lot closing price), while backward citations have a positive and significant impact only on the lot offer price. The number of claims is positively related to the lot closing price and the effect is significant only for the fraction of buyers who are nonpracticing entities. The degree of technological congruence of the patents included in a lot turns out to be positively associated with the probability that the lot is sold and has a positive effect on both the lot offer price and the lot closing price. We also find a significant impact of the extent of the residual life of patents on the lot closing price. The effect is driven by the subsample of nonpracticing entities as buyers. Finally, the extension of patent protection to other jurisdictions, as captured by the size of the patent family, is positively associated with both the lot offer price and the lot closing price.
Latin America's Populist Revival

Latin American populism was widely thought to have run its course by the 1980's as the region embraced far-reaching market reforms. In recent years, however, new and strikingly diverse populist movements have returned to political prominence, reopening historic debates about the meaning of populism and its political and economic correlates. This article suggests that populism should be understood as a top-down process of political mobilization that is directed by a dominant personality, and it traces the resurgence of populist movements to the political and economic limitations of Latin America's "dual transitions" to democracy and market liberalism at the end of the 20th century. In particular, populism's revival is rooted in the institutional frailties and market insecurities of contemporary Latin American democracies, conditions that have made the region prone to new patterns of social and political mobilization.
Geographic and Seasonal Variation in the Concentration of Travel in the United States

Several tourism and related studies have used length of stay in their survey instruments and have reported related findings in the context of travel expenditures and visitor behavior. However, they have not provided much information regarding the destination's importance and seasonal variation in relation to the amount of vacation time spent. This study is an attempt to examine the relative importance and seasonal variation of length of stay in the 48 contiguous United States. The results of this study show that there are substantial differ ences among states in the degree to which they attract destination-oriented travel.
The Evolution of European Central Bank Independence: An Updating of the Masciandaro and Spinelli Index

In an earlier paper in this journal, D. Masciandaro and F. Spinelli computed an index of central bank independence for a number of countries on the basis of the institutional arrangements in place in 1990. Since then the situation has changed and therefore that work needs an updating. This shows that the Bundesbank remains the most independent central bank, but several other central banks have increased their independence: see the cases of Spain, Italy, France, the Netherlands, and Great Britain. The Bank of Spain has registered the biggest improvement and the Bank of Portugal remains the least independent. Copyright 1998 by Scottish Economic Society.
Microvessel endothelial cells and pericytes increase proliferation and repress osteoblast phenotypic markers in rat calvarial bone cell cultures

To investigate the influence of microvessel cells on osteoblasts, we exposed osteoblast‐enriched cultures of rat calvarial cells to cultured endothelial cells and pericytes using feeder‐layer co‐cultures, co‐culture dish inserts, and conditioned media experiments. When co‐cultured with growth‐arrested feeder‐layers of endothelial cells or pericytes for 10 days, bone cell cultures showed an increase in cell number and reduction in alkaline phosphatase activity. The response of bone cells to endothelial cells was nearly twice their response to pericytes. A similar response was demonstrated by exposure to microvessel cells in co‐culture dish inserts and by exposure to media conditioned by microvessel cells. In long‐term cultures of bone cells, the levels of osteocalcin and the number of mineralized nodules both were reduced by exposure to media conditioned by the microvessel cells. Transient exposure to conditioned media from the microvessel cell cultures for 3 days, during the period from initial plating to cell confluence, produced nearly the same effect on the cultures of bone cells as did continuous exposure to these conditioned media. The influence of isolated microvessel cells on osteoblast‐enriched calvarial cells was found to be primarily mitogenic, mediated by soluble factors, independent of cell contact, and a cause of prolonged reduction in the expression of early and late markers of the osteoblast phenotype.
Liquidity and Market Efficiency

Market efficiency, the timely incorporation of information into prices, remains a central and controversial issue in finance. The short-horizon predictability of returns from past order flows is an inverse indicator of efficiency. We analyze this predictability for NYSE stocks that traded every day from 1993 through 2002. Mid-quote return predictability is diminished when bid-ask spreads are narrower. Such predictability has declined over time with the minimum tick size. Variance ratios of five-minute and daily returns suggest that prices were closer to random walk benchmarks during decimal regimes than during regimes with higher tick sizes (and wider spreads). These findings support the notion that liquidity stimulates arbitrage activity, which, in turn, enhances market efficiency. Further, as the tick size decreased, open-close/close-open return variance ratios increased, while return autocorrelations decreased. This suggests an increased incorporation of private information into prices during more liquid regimes.
Labor Contracts as Partial Gift Exchange

This paper explains involuntary unemployment in terms of the response of firms to workers' group behavior. Workers' effort depends upon the norms determining a fair day's work. In order to affect those norms, firms may pay more than the market-clearing wage. Industries that pay consistently more than the market-clearing wage are primary, and those that pay only the market-clearing wage are secondary. Thus, this paper also gives a theory for division of labor markets between primary and secondary.
There Is Still Room for a Footprint Family without a Life Cycle Approach—Comment on “Towards an Integrated Family of Footprint Indicators”

In their recent article, Ridoutt and Pfister (2013; further abbreviated as RP) called for an integrated family of footprint indicators, for which they highlighted the imperative of life cycle assessment (LCA) to be the basis. We acknowledge the wide application and good performance of LCA in footprint studies and, conversely, of the usefulness of footprint principles in LCA studies. Indeed, it is widely accepted that the product carbon footprint (PCF) or a broader product environmental footprint (PEF) should be based on LCA (Wiedmann and Minx 2008). LCA is typically an integrative approach in two ways: It covers many types of impact, and it covers the full life cycle. The full life cycle is analyzed to make sure there is no problem shifting from the use phase to the production phase or the disposal phase. The same is true for the broad spectrum of impacts: It is needed to ensure a more complete picture and prevent suboptimization. Restricting an LCA to a PCF potentially creates blind spots where problem shifting can occur. Extending a PCF with more impact categories to obtain a full PCF is therefore a natural step. We believe that RP overestimated the necessity of LCA to support the establishment of footprints in general or of a footprint family. There are more footprints than product and national footprints. An important and upcoming type is the footprint of an organization (such as a company or an enterprise). In a policy context, the organization environmental footprint (OEF) has been described as based on a life cycle (Chomkhamsri and Pelletier 2011; European Commission [EC] 2013a), without any motivation. We are concerned that such unfounded claims are reinforced by RP, again without a proper justification. It is our conviction that a life-cycle–based OEF is likely subject to overcounting. We will illustrate this with a brief example. Suppose we calculate the life-cycle–based OEF of a copper wire manufacturer. It will be based on cradle-to-gate impacts of its copper wire. Just a few street blocks further, a manufacturer of electrical equipment is using copper wire from the first company. The life-cycle–based OEF of the second company will include all cradle-to-gate impacts of its materials, so also of the copper wire. This means that the OEFs of the two plants add to a too big number, because we are double counting the impacts of copper wire. The sum of the parts is bigger than the total; that is a truly holistic LCA! A similar argument was made in the context of product LCAs by Cullen and Allwood (2009). If one includes the upstream impacts in an organization’s footprint, a retailer’s footprint will be very high. Likewise, a
A multimodal human-machine interface enabling situation-adaptive control inputs for highly automated vehicles

Intelligent vehicles operating in different levels of automation require the driver to fully or partially conduct the dynamic driving task (DDT) and to conduct fallback performance of the DDT, during a trip. Such vehicles create the need for novel human-machine interfaces (HMIs) designed to conduct high-level vehicle control tasks. Multimodal interfaces (MMIs) have advantages such as improved recognition, faster interaction, and situation-adaptability, over unimodal interfaces. In this study, we developed and evaluated a MMI system with three input modalities; touchscreen, hand-gesture, and haptic to input tactical-level control commands (e.g. lane-changing, overtaking, and parking). We conducted driving experiments in a driving simulator to evaluate the effectiveness of the MMI system. The results show that multimodal HMI significantly reduced the driver workload, improved the efficiency of interaction, and minimized input errors compared with unimodal interfaces. Moreover, we discovered relationships between input types and modalities: location-based inputs-touchscreen interface, time-critical inputs-haptic interface. The results proved the functional advantages and effectiveness of multimodal interface system over its unimodal components for conducting tactical-level driving tasks.
Effects of temperature and cadmium exposure on the mitochondria of oysters (Crassostrea virginica) exposed to hypoxia and subsequent reoxygenation

SUMMARY Intertidal bivalves are commonly exposed to multiple stressors including periodic hypoxia, temperature fluctuations and pollution, which can strongly affect energy metabolism. We used top-down control and elasticity analyses to determine the interactive effects of intermittent hypoxia, cadmium (Cd) exposure and acute temperature stress on mitochondria of the eastern oyster Crassostrea virginica. Oysters were acclimated at 20°C for 30 days in the absence or presence of 50 μg l−1 Cd and then subjected to a long-term hypoxia (6 days at <0.5% O2 in seawater) followed by normoxic recovery. Mitochondrial function was assessed at the acclimation temperature (20°C), or at elevated temperature (30°C) mimicking acute temperature stress in the intertidal zone. In the absence of Cd or temperature stress, mitochondria of oysters showed high resilience to transient hypoxia. In control oysters at 20°C, hypoxia/reoxygenation induced elevated flux capacity of all three studied mitochondrial subsystems (substrate oxidation, phosphorylation and proton leak) and resulted in a mild depolarization of resting mitochondria. Elevated proton conductance and enhanced capacity of phosphorylation and substrate oxidation subsystems may confer resistance to hypoxia/reoxygenation stress in oyster mitochondria by alleviating production of reactive oxygen species and maintaining high aerobic capacity and ATP synthesis rates during recovery. Exposure to environmental stressors such as Cd and elevated temperatures abolished the putative adaptive responses of the substrate oxidation and phosphorylation subsystems, and strongly enhanced proton leak in mitochondria of oysters subjected to hypoxia/reoxygenation stress. Our findings suggest that Cd exposure and acute temperature stress may lead to the loss of mitochondrial resistance to hypoxia and reoxygenation and thus potentially affect the ability of oysters to survive periodic oxygen deprivation in coastal and estuarine habitats.
The determinants of line management internalisation of HRM practices in MNC subsidiaries

In this study, we investigated factors that influence the attitudes of line managers towards HRM. Using a sample of the general managers of 123 subsidiaries, we tested whether the general manager's level of HRM internalisation – the extent to which he or she values and is committed to the subsidiary's HRM practices – is influenced by two sets of factors: the professional experience of the subsidiary HR manager and the external networking activities and perceived strategic HRM capabilities of the subsidiary HR department. The findings supported the hypotheses relating to the professional experience of the subsidiary HR manager. Furthermore, an inverted U-shaped relationship was found between the tenure of the HR manager in his or her current position and the HRM internalisation of the general manager. The level of perceived strategic HRM capabilities of the subsidiary HR department was also shown to have a positive influence.
Safety of a new, ultrafiltrated whey hydrolysate formula in children with cow milk allergy: a clinical investigation

The purpose of this study was to determine whether a new ultrafiltrated whey hydrolysate infant formula, Profylac®, could be administered safely to children with cow milk protein allergy/intolerance. Profylac has a stated molecular weight of < 8 kD and at least 30, 000 times reduced antigenicity which is controlled by a combination of ELISA‐techniques and immunochemical methods. The study comprised 66 children with cow milk protein allergy/intolerance diagnosed by controlled elimination/ challenge procedures. The children were aged 1 month‐14. 5 years, median 1% years and 15 were below 1 year. Thirty‐five of these children had proven IgE‐mediated reactions (cow milk protein allergy). Sixty‐one of the children had at least two different symptoms and 31 had concomitant allergies to other foods and/or inhalants. All 66 children underwent and tolerated open, controlled challenges with Profylac. A total of 64 children continued having Profylac daily for at least 3 months and 58 for at least 6 months after challenge. Nine of the children older than 1 year did not like the taste and only had Profylac in minor amounts. No side effects were registered. Fifteen of the infants were below 1 year of age, and this group was compared with an age matched group of 16 infants challenged with and fed an extensively hydrolysed casein hydrolysate, Nutramigen®. All the infants in these two groups accepted and tolerated Profylac and Nutramigen, respectively, and no side effects were registered. Among the 35 patients with IgE‐mediated reactions 6% (2/35) had positive skin prick tests and 11% (3/28) had specific IgE class 2 against Profylac, 2 of the latter before intake of Profylac. None of the patients with non‐IgE‐mediated reactions had a positive skin prick test or specific IgE against Profylac. The study provides 95% confidence that this product is tolerated by at least 95% of children with cow milk protein allergy/intolerance and by 90% with IgE‐mediated reactions. We conclude, that this ultrafiltrated whey hydrolysate is generally safe to feed to children with verified adverse reactions to cow milk protein, including children with IgE‐mediated reactions. The taste of the product was widely accepted, also by older children.
Variable-ordering induced problems of impulse-response analysis and other difficulties: the dividend policy of Austrian firms

Orthogonalised impulses are the standard way to isolate shocks to variables in a vector error correction model. While using the Cholesky decomposition to adjust interdependencies of the shocks, the ordering of the variables on the stage of estimation has a great impact on the resulting impulse response functions. It is shown how the variable ordering affects the empirical evaluation of the dividend policy of Austrian firms examining corporate earnings, dividends and inflation. Additional problems are discussed (e.g., bootstrapped confidence intervals and seasonal adjustment procedures, missing variables). The paper has two messages: it is a fatal flaw of any economic model to omit important variables. Moreover, it is also of major importance to use appropriate econometric modelling techniques.
Das Social Web Cockpit: Ein Assistent für virtuelle Gemeinschaften

Das Social Web Cockpit ist ein Assistent, der verschiedene Dienste zur Unterstützung kooperativen Wissensmanagements integriert und Benutzer aktiv bei der Kooperation in virtuellen Gemeinschaften unterstützt. Die Anwendungsbereiche reichen von der Unterstützung von Projektgruppen beim Aufbau aufgabenspezifischer Portale und Informationssammlungen, über Lerngemeinschaften bis zur Unterstützung von Kunden-Communities bei E-commerce Anwendungen.
Out With the Old-In With the New: Thoughts on the Future of Educational Productivity Research

The purpose of this article is to present a review of-and to provide insight into future directions for research on-the literature surrounding the efficient production of educational outcomes. Research studies on educational productivity and efficiency generally support 2 dominant paradigms within the field of school finance: (a) Money Does Not Matter and (b) Money Does Matter. After a brief historical review, the article critiques the cost-minimization assumptions implicit to both paradigms, using public choice theory as a basis to acknowledge that nonmarket forces influence educational productivity. Next, suggestions are made surrounding normative economics concepts that need to be expanded, explored, and operationalized to measure educational efficiency more appropriately. Finally, it is suggested that researchers investigate at least 3 nontraditional methods to measure levels of economic efficiency in public educational organizations: (a) modified quadriform analysis, (b) data envelopment analysis, and (c) stochastic frontier analysis.
Acute renal artery constriction increases renal prostaglandin I2 biosynthesis and renin release in the conscious dog.

The relationship between renal prostaglandin (PG)I2 biosynthesis and renin release was examined in conscious dogs before and during renal artery constriction. Dogs were chronically instrumented with femoral vein, femoral artery and left renal vein catheters and an inflatable cuff and electromagnetic flow probe were positioned on the left renal artery. After 2 days, mean arterial blood pressure, heart rate, renal blood flow and renal secretion rates of renin and 6-keto-PGF1 alpha were determined before and 10 min after a reduction in renal blood flow. Plasma levels of 6-keto-PGF1 alpha, measured by a gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric assay, were used as an index of PGI2 synthesis. A 38% reduction in renal blood flow did not significantly alter mean arterial blood pressure, heart rate or arterial levels of plasma renin activity or 6-keto-PGF1 alpha. In contrast, renal artery constriction increased renal venous plasma levels of both renin activity and 6-keto-PGF1 alpha by 308% (P less than .002) and 132% (P less than .05), respectively. As a consequence, the renal secretion rate of renin was increased from 80 +/- 40 to 917 +/- 231 ng of angiotensin I . min-1 . hr-1 (P less than .02) and the renal secretion rate of 6-keto-PGF1 alpha was increased from -2.1 +/- 1.1 to 9.0 +/- 3.6 ng/min (P less than .05). In addition, there was a significant correlation between the renal secretion rates of renin and 6-keto-PGF1 alpha (r = 0.688; P less than .013; n = 12). These data indicate a close association between the renal biosynthesis and PGI2 and renin release and are consistent with the concept that PGI2 participates in the release of renin.
Hardware/software implementation of an on-line machine learning algorithm

Online learning is a machine learning paradigm that is useful when data is not available all at once. In this paper we focus in real time applications for which data is being collected as the algorithm executes. The forgetron Algorithm [1] is an online learning algorithm that works under a limited memory constraint while guaranteeing a bound on the number of total mistakes. We have proposed a specific architecture for the forgetron algorithm using hardware/software based design in order to improve computation time in the training process. Experiments on real world data show the advantages of this implementation compared to an exclusive software implementation using a Xilinx Virtex II Pro FPGA with an embedded Power PC. These experiments validate the performance of the proposed architecture.