Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Battle of Insider Trading vs. Market Efficiency

K err studied the performance of 120 stocks 88 si that displayed unusual insider activity during 1976. He concluded that ”non-insiders cannot use the information in the Official Summary to earn excess economic profits. ” Dr. Kerr’s analysis is like using a series of tosses to determine whether or not a coin is fairly weighted. Let’s say I tossed the coin and it came up heads. No matter what kind of statistical test I devised, I would find it impossible to reject the null hypothesis that the coin was fair. Even if I tossed the coin 12 times and it came up heads 11 times, I would have been unable to reject the null hypothesis after each toss. You can be sure, however, that I wouldn’t bet even money on the thirteenth toss coming up tails! One can treat the relative performance of “insider” and S&P portfolios as a binomial process, with P as the probability that the “insider” porifolio beats ’ the S&P. A simple sign test of the null hypothesis:
Effectiveness of a childhood obesity prevention programme delivered through schools, targeting 6 and 7 year olds: cluster randomised controlled trial (WAVES study)

Several acknowledgments and funding details were omitted from this paper (BMJ 2018;360:k211, doi:10.1136/bmj.k211) by Adab and colleagues. The authors would like to thank their collaborators at the Institute of Metabolic Science at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit (University of Cambridge) for their support and assistance, particularly Soren Brage, Kate Westgate, and Stefanie Hollidge, for training of field staff on use and maintenance of Actihearts, for overseeing data preparation, and for analysis and interpretation of the physical activity data; Timo Lakka (principal investigator of the PANIC study, University of Eastern Finland) for sharing exercise data in a similarly aged cohort of children to allow translation of observed heart rate into activity energy expenditure; staff who are working, or have previously worked, at the Nutrition Epidemiology Group in Leeds, who have supported the trial team in terms of administration of the CADET food tick list and processing of the data to enable us to undertake dietary intake analysis, in particular Neil Hancock, Cristina Cleghorn, Meagan Christian, Jayne Hutchinson, Holly Rippin, and Catherine Rycroft. Ulf Ekelund, Soren Brage, Kate Westgate, and Stefanie Hollidge were funded in part by the MRC (MC_UU_12015/3) and the National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre, Cambridge (IS-BRC-1215-20014).
Effect of dynamic algorithm selection of Alltoall communication on environments with unstable network speed

As the HPC systems increase their size, performance of collective communications is becoming an important issue. Usually, decisions for which algorithm of those communications to be used are done based on statically specified thresholds of the size of messages and the number of processes. However, on recent HPC systems that are hiring Fat Tree or Torus topology as their interconnect, the network speed has become unpredictable. The main reason is the effect of contentions. This effect depends heavily on the relative locations of the compute nodes. On the other hand, to reduce the number of idle nodes, there are attempts for building job schedulers to attach compute nodes flexibly, without considering their relative positions among each other. With this policy, the network performance becomes unstable. As an approach for finding an appropriate algorithm even on such environment, a dynamic method, STAR-MPI, has been proposed. This method examines each algorithm at runtime, and uses the empirical data to choose the suitable one for the given situation. This paper first examined the effect of STAR-MPI on an environment with unstable network speed. The results of experiments on this environment showed that the dynamic approach was effective, but the cost for testing slow algorithms limited the effect. Then, the authors proposed an enhancement, in which algorithms that have been predicted relatively slow were discarded from the list of candidates. The predictions were done by using the performance models of the algorithms with the latency and the bandwidth measured at the first call of the collective communication. At this point, the effect of this enhancement shown in experimental results was not significant. However, the results showed that there was a possibility for achieving better performance by using more cost-effective way of prediction and tuning thresholds and factors used in the enhancement.
Endocrine Aspects of High Altitude Acclimatization and Acute Mountain Sickness

The acute acclimatization to high altitude is underpinned by a diuresis (and to a lesser extent a natriuresis) that facilitates a reduction in plasma volume. This allows a haemoconcentration to occur that increases the oxygen carrying capacity of a given volume of blood, a vital effect in the presence of a reduced partial pressure of oxygen. This critical acclimatization process is orchestrated by the endocrine system. This review will present the key evidence regarding the changes in several important hormones that affect this process.
Resource allocation and power control in a TDD OFDM-based system for 4G cellular networks

Time division duplex (TDD) systems based on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) have recently been proposed as potential candidates for next generation (4G) cellular networks. In this paper, as a multiple access scheme we propose an adaptive frequency division multiple access (AFDMA), where resources are assigned to users exploiting channel knowledge at the transmitter. In order to reduce the system overhead, the algorithm can also work on group of sub-carriers and OFDM symbols. The proposed solution is shown, through numerical results, to be superior to conventional allocation strategies, namely time division multiple access (TDMA) and FDMA. Furthermore, we also investigate a new power control algorithm based on a single-user discrete bit loading technique. Numerical results are reported for both downlink and uplink transmissions in a multi-cell environment supporting real-time traffic
Latin American stock markets’ volatility spillovers during the financial crises: a multivariate FIAPARCH-DCC framework

The main purpose of this paper is to analyse the volatility spillovers in Latin American emerging stock markets. A multivariate Fractionally Integrated Asymmetric Power ARCH model with dynamic conditional correlations of Engle (1982) with a Student-t distribution is employed. We examine whether considering for long memory and asymmetry in emerging stock markets behaviour may provide more insights into the volatility spillovers phenomenon. In this paper we select daily frequency stock indexes covering four emerging countries in Latin America for the period (January 1995–September 2009). Our results point out the importance of volatility spillovers in these countries. Moreover, long memory and asymmetry in emerging stock market dynamics seem to provide more insights into the transmission of volatility shocks. More interestingly, the analysis of the DCCEs behaviour over time via multivariate cointegration, vector error correction model and the Cholesky variance decomposition shows shifts behaviour around major Latin American financial crisis and recent subprime crisis. On the practical side, these results may be useful for international portfolio managers and Latin American stock market authorities.
Pre-bid building price forecasting accuracy: price intensity theory

A theory of pre‐bid building price forecasting accuracy is proposed, based on the heuristic bias framework and with reference to the common practice of basing building price forecasts on the price per square metre of floor area, termed here as Price Intensity (PI). The main prediction of the theory, that high PI contracts will be underestimated and low PI contracts will be overestimated, is tested by a re‐analysis of a set of Singapore data and in comparison with previous work.
Streptococcal tetracycline resistance mediated at the level of protein synthesis

The mechanism of tetracycline resistance was examined in strains containing each of the three previously identified resistance determinants in Streptococcus spp. Uptake of tetracycline was measured in tetracycline-sensitive cells as well as in cells containing each of the three resistance determinants. In cells containing tetL, uptake was not observed. However, in sensitive cells and cells containing either tetM or tetN, tetracycline was accumulated approximately 25-fold against a concentration gradient. Furthermore, there was no evidence for modification of intracellular tetracycline recovered from sensitive, tetM, or tetN cells. Protein synthesis in extracts derived from organisms containing tetM or tetN was resistant to tetracycline. In contrast, extracts of sensitive and tetL cells were sensitive to tetracycline.
Liberalisation and Jobless Growth in Developing Economy

This paper explains why a developing country may experience a jobless growth in the organised sectors during liberalised regime within the framework of a three-sector mobile capital version of Harris-Todaro type general equilibrium model describing rural-urban migration with agricultural dualism and a non-traded intermediate input. Main findings support the fact that as a consequence of different trade reform policies, organised sectors have experienced increased competition from foreign markets which has forced them to lax labour laws, with the freedom to switch towards more capital-intensive techniques of production, resulting retrenchment of relatively less productive workers and ending up with a jobless growth under the liberalised regime. These results are particularly interesting for their contradiction to the predictions of the standard Harris-Todaro model.
Direct and indirect contact rates among beef, dairy, goat, sheep, and swine herds in three California counties, with reference to control of potential foot-and-mouth disease transmission.

OBJECTIVE To estimate direct and indirect contact rates on livestock facilities and distance traveled between herd contacts. SAMPLE POPULATION 320 beef, dairy, goat, sheep, and swine herds, 7 artificial insemination technicians, 6 hoof trimmers, 15 veterinarians, 4 sales yard owners, and 7 managers of livestock-related companies within a 3-county region of California. PROCEDURE A questionnaire was mailed to livestock producers, and personal and telephone interviews were conducted with individuals. RESULTS Mean monthly direct contact rates were 2.6, 1.6, and 2.0 for dairies with < 1,000, 1,000 to 1,999, and > or = 2,000 cattle, respectively. Mean indirect contact rates on dairies ranged from 234 to 743 contacts/mo and increased by 1 contact/mo as herd size increased by 4.3. Mean direct monthly contact rate for beef herds was 0.4. Distance traveled by personnel and vehicles during a 3-day period ranged from 58.4 to 210.4 km. Of livestock arriving at sales yards, 7% (500/7,072) came from > or = 60 km away, and of those sold, 32% (1,180/3,721) were destined for a location > or = 60 km away. Fifty-five percent (16/29) of owners of large beef herds observed deer or elk within 150 m of livestock at least once per month. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE Direct and indirect contacts occur on livestock facilities located over a wide geographic area and at a higher frequency on larger facilities. Knowledge of contact rates may be useful for planning biosecurity programs at the herd, state, and national levels and for modeling transmission potential for foot-and-mouth disease virus.
Costs of e‐participation: the management challenges

Purpose – This paper aims to discuss the cost of e‐participation from the managerial perspective.Design/methodology/approach – The use of digital media to consult and engage citizens and companies in the decision‐making process is a way of improving the design and legitimatization of decisions, as well as potentially increasing the likelihood of successful implementation of policies. This paper discusses if the potential economic benefits from increased or qualitatively improved involvement inherently are long term and have to compete with other activities undertaken by government.Findings – There are great uncertainties regarding the magnitude of the positive effects on governance since there are not only positive, but also negative externalities of e‐participation; thus, there are major challenges in measuring and capitalizing on the e‐participation. Part of the reason for the uncertainty is the lack of explicit awareness of the choice of technology, communication style and institutional approach to imp.
Putting Firms into Optimal Tax Theory

Firms are, for the most part, absent from the modern theory of optimal taxation. Their disappearance dates from the foundational models developed by Peter A. Diamond and James A. Mirrlees (1971) in which firms are simply mechanical vehicles for combining productive inputs into output in cost-minimizing proportions. In contrast, firms play a central role in all modern tax systems, mostly for a reason stated by Richard M. Bird (1996): “The key to effective taxation is information, and the key to information in the modern economy is the corporation. ” In most countries, firms remit the majority of tax revenues to the government, either with regard to taxes legally owed by businesses or through withholding of taxes legally owed by employees or other businesses. Even when businesses are not required to remit taxes, they are often required to file information reports that can facilitate monitoring of tax liabilities. The lack of a theoretical framework that features firms impedes rigorous welfare analysis of a number of important policy issues. One such example is the comparative evaluation of a uniform retail sales tax (RST) versus a value added tax (VAT). In the standard model, these two taxes—both remitted entirely by businesses— are equivalent consumption taxes, but most experts consider the VAT to be clearly superior on administrative grounds, a view echoed in the recent report of the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform (2005). We propose a simple framework in which these and other issues can be analyzed. The new framework recognizes that a tax code must be backed up by an administrative and enforcement structure.
House Price Diffusion: An Application of Spectral Analysis to the Prices of Irish Second-Hand Dwellings

The aim of this paper is to examine whether evidence for a ripple effect in house prices can be found across residential property markets of Irish cities. The house price dynamics are considered in the frequency domain using spectral analysis. This entails the estimation of power spectra, cospectrum, coherence, gain and phase of ‘region–nation’ relationships. The power spectrum highlights a dominant 6-year cycle, common to all of Ireland's city markets. Eire conforms to neither a city system nor a ripple thesis well. Dublin is a dominant node, whilst Dublin, Galway and Cork lead the national cycle, which is indicative of an olicentric city structure.
City Politics in an Era of Federal Devolution

The author reports on the current status of cities in the devolving federal system and the resulting implications for city politics. In particular, he examines the strength of the fiscal link between the federal government and municipal governments and the implications of growing interest in federal devolution for city government. He concludes by arguing that growing local fiscal and administrative self-reliance create pressures on local politicians to focus on public management skills rather than on the pursuit of social and racial agendas that were the focus two decades ago. The result is a deep change in the moral tenor of city politics.
Minors in graphs of large ${\theta}_r$-girth

For every $r \in \mathbb{N}$, let $\theta_r$ denote the graph with two vertices and $r$ parallel edges. The $\theta_r$-girth of a graph $G$ is the minimum number of edges of a subgraph of $G$ that can be contracted to $\theta_r$. This notion generalizes the usual concept of girth which corresponds to the case $r=2$. In [Minors in graphs of large girth, Random Structures & Algorithms, 22(2):213--225, 2003], K\"uhn and Osthus showed that graphs of sufficiently large minimum degree contain clique-minors whose order is an exponential function of their girth. We extend this result for the case of $\theta_{r}$-girth and we show that the minimum degree can be replaced by some connectivity measurement. As an application of our results, we prove that, for every fixed $r$, graphs excluding as a minor the disjoint union of $k$ $\theta_{r}$'s have treewidth $O(k\cdot \log k)$.
Complexity and institutional diversity in global health governance: implications for Asia

In an era of rapid and extensive globalisation, the world faces a wide range of transboundary problems that require effective collective action. Key among these are threats to human health that do not recognise national borders, and include emerging and re-emerging infections, rising rates of chronic diseases, inadequate access to affordable and safe medicines, spreading anti-microbial resistance and the health effects of climate change. These threats require a transnational response and thus pose significant challenges to global health governance, as well as to long established notions of national sovereignty. This book investigates the neglected question of the impact of a rising Asia on the management of transboundary health problems. The chapters examine the role played by Asia in the governance of a range of global health issues, from development assistance in health, to global health instruments dealing with tobacco control and disease outbreaks, to health research and knowledge products, and the book concludes by examining the broad themes of a rising Asia's role in the complexity of global health governance. The various analyses are tied together by a common focus on Asian countries' use of the sovereignty principle, and seek to understand how traditional notions of national sovereignty can both clash with, and enhance, governance objectives in global health. In addition, the contributors examine the interaction between global, regional and domestic institutions, and present current ideas in Asia on the challenge of governing global health. With an inter-disciplinary approach that combines international relations, public policy and public health, this book will be invaluable to both scholars and policy makers working in these fields, as well as Asian politics, social policy and governance more generally.
The Performance Evaluation of Hedge Funds: Are Investors Mislead by Standard Mean-Variance Statistics?

In this paper we show that hedge fund returns may suffer from excess smoothness, positive kurtosis and negative skewness. We argue that these distribution properties cause standard mean-variance statistics to underestimate the true variability and beta, and overrate the true performance. We discuss alternatives that do take into account excess smoothness, kurtosis and skewness, such as unsmoothed returns, summed betas and VaR modifications based on the Cornish-Fisher expansion. We conclude that the investor is, partly, mislead by standard mean-variance statistics as the performance of the hedge funds under consideration turns out to be significantly lower if higher moments and excess smoothness are taken into account. We end with a short digression on the hidden risks of hedge funds that are, to our knowledge, not taken into account by any performance model at the moment.
Gathering Point-Aided Viral Marketing in Decentralized Mobile Social Networks

Viral marketing is a technique that spreads advertisement information through social networks. Recently, viral marketing through online social networks has achieved huge commercial success. However, there are still very little research reported on viral marketing in decentralized mobile social networks (MSNs). Comparing with online viral marketing, viral marketing in decentralized MSNs faces many challenges, such as unreliable information diffusion and limited network knowledge. To address these problems, we propose the gathering point-aided mobile viral marketing (GP-MVM) scheme, which contains two major components, i.e., seed selection and information diffusion. Seed selection is responsible to select a set of seed nodes from which information diffusion begins. Based on a new metric called integrated contact strength (ICS), we propose two distributed seed selection schemes, i.e., ratio seeding and threshold seeding, while, for information diffusion, we propose the GP-aided diffusion algorithm, which utilizes user GPs to promote information propagation. Continuous-time Markov chain-based analytical model shows that GP-MVM has a good scalability. Simulations indicate that GP-MVM outperforms two state-of-the-art information diffusion methods designed for MSNs, in terms of both diffusion proportion and diffusion speed.
Animal models of obsessive compulsive disorder: recent findings and future directions

Introduction: Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a debilitating condition with limited treatment options. OCD is heterogeneous with respect to the content of obsessions and compulsions and their underlying motivation, among other characteristics. Animal models have provided important insights into the pathophysiology of OCD. Areas covered: The phenomenology of OCD is discussed, with emphasis on clinically-relevant subgroups. The paper also discusses the advantages and limitations of animals as models of OCD, along with considerations on assessing their validity. A PubMed database search using the terms ‘animal model’ and ‘obsessive compulsive disorder’ revealed ongoing studies in several models, including stereotypy in the deer mouse, quinpirole-induced checking, spontaneous alternation, compulsive lever pressing, genetic models, pathogenic models and models involving normal compulsive-like behavioral patterns. These models are presented with respect to their similarity to specific features of OCD and the information gained from them. Studies in many of these models point to the participation of corticostriatal thalamocortical circuitry and corticostriatal glutamate neurotransmission in the pathophysiology of compulsive-like behavior. Expert opinion: The use of animal models takes us beyond simple serotonin- or dopamine-based models of OCD that are founded on the often limited, and still unexplained, response of OCD symptoms to serotonin reuptake inhibitors or antipsychotic therapy. Pharmacological challenges that selectively target neurochemical systems that modulate either corticostriatal glutamate or striatal dopamine neurotransmission, or indeed both, should be investigated in animal models of compulsive-like behavior. Such systems include metabotropic glutamate, adenosine and endocannabinoid receptors, among others.