Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Financial markets' imperfections and technology adoption

This thesis examines information imperfections in asset markets and its impact on economic performance through technology adoption and innovation. In a rational setting, where equity market participants take into account common public information in addition to their private signals about fundamentals, equity prices are persistently biased towards the public signals. Chapter 2 investigates the real effect of such mis-pricing, when R&D producing firms rely on equity finance. Relating to the recent technology stocks boom, the model shows how market's optimism causes more innovations. Furthermore, such optimism can generate gains in aggregate consumption. Chapter 3 analyzes equity markets' role in facilitating ownership transfer from entrepreneurs investing in adopting technology to managers running these firms once technology is adopted. Information imperfections in equity market affect entrepreneurs' willingness to invest in frontier technology in two ways. First, uncertainty about equity price or lack of market liquidity discourages technology adoption. This can explain slow technology adoption and limited venture capitalists' participation in under-developed equity markets. Second, imperfectly informed market participants take fast adoption as a positive signal. The resulting increase of expected market value encourages technology adoption. Probability of fast technology adoption is highest at an intermediate number of informed investors. Chapter 4 looks more closely into the extent of asset mis-pricing by endogenizing the variance of investors' private signals. Better quality of freely available public information reduces incentives to invest in private information and can magnify the extent of asset mis-pricing. Furthermore, in a dynamic setting, investors' react more slowly on changes of the fundamentals because incentives to invest in research are low in early trading periods. The chapter also shows that availability of longer price history might not bring asset prices closer to the fundamentals, as investors choose to free-ride on other investors' research efforts.
Fat Grafting with Adipose Stem Cells: The Successes and Challenges

In recent years, fat grafting has become a popular method for clinically correcting soft tissue deformities. In order to increase fat graft viability a variety of modifications have been made to current grafting procedures including cell-assisted lipotransfer (CAL), structural fat grafting, fat grafting mixed with adipose stem cells (ASCs), fat grafting mixed with platelet rich plasma (PRP) and fat grafting mixed with both ASCs and PRP; however, the persistence of the grafts after transplantation remains inconsistent. In this review, the biological fundamentals of lipotransfer procedures are discussed, the current progress of clinical fat grafting applications in plastic and reconstructive surgery is summarized, and the challenges facing fat transplantation are outlined.
Bergmann's rule and climate change revisited: Disentangling environmental and genetic responses in a wild bird population

Ecological responses to on-going climate change are numerous, diverse, and taxonomically widespread. However, with one exception, the relative roles of phenotypic plasticity and microevolution as mechanisms in explaining these responses are largely unknown. Several recent studies have uncovered evidence for temporal declines in mean body sizes of birds and mammals, and these responses have been interpreted as evidence for microevolution in the context of Bergmann's rule—an ecogeographic rule predicting an inverse correlation between temperature and mean body size in endothermic animals. We used a dataset of individually marked red-billed gulls (Larus novaehollandiae scopulinus) from New Zealand to document phenotypic and genetic changes in mean body mass over a 47-year (1958–2004) period. We found that, whereas the mean body mass had decreased over time as ambient temperatures increased, analyses of breeding values estimated with an “animal model” approach showed no evidence for any genetic change. These results indicate that the frequently observed climate-change-related responses in mean body size of animal populations might be due to phenotypic plasticity, rather than to genetic microevolutionary responses.
Value Creation in the Context of Sustainable Corporate Social Responsibility

Under the influence of the new rules of the economy and the society, companies are achieving a notional line of a necessary change in the approach to creating new value, wealth. Implementation of changes in the system of wealth creation requires a review of existing assumptions of unlimited growth of the global economy and wealth creation in the environment accepting economic interests, society and the environment as a holistic unit. The main purpose of this paper is the clarification of a new requirements for business, presentation of the questionnaire survey Sustainable Corporate Social Responsibility and inform on value creation in the context of Sustainable Corporate Social Responsibility.
Resurgent current of voltage‐gated Na+ channels

Resurgent Na+ current results from a distinctive form of Na+ channel gating, originally identified in cerebellar Purkinje neurons. In these neurons, the tetrodotoxin‐sensitive voltage‐gated Na+ channels responsible for action potential firing have specialized mechanisms that reduce the likelihood that they accumulate in fast inactivated states, thereby shortening refractory periods and permitting rapid, repetitive, and/or burst firing. Under voltage clamp, step depolarizations evoke transient Na+ currents that rapidly activate and quickly decay, and step repolarizations elicit slower channel reopening, or a ‘resurgent’ current. The generation of resurgent current depends on a factor in the Na+ channel complex, probably a subunit such as NaVβ4 (Scn4b), which blocks open Na+ channels at positive voltages, competing with the fast inactivation gate, and unblocks at negative voltages, permitting recovery from an open channel block along with a flow of current. Following its initial discovery, resurgent Na+ current has been found in nearly 20 types of neurons. Emerging research suggests that resurgent current is preferentially increased in a variety of clinical conditions associated with altered cellular excitability. Here we review the biophysical, molecular and structural mechanisms of resurgent current and their relation to the normal functions of excitable cells as well as pathophysiology.
Robust Sampled-Data Control for Vehicle Active Suspension Systems

This brief investigates the problem of robust sampled-data control for active vehicle suspension systems. By using an input delay approach, the active vehicle suspension system with sampling measurements is transformed into a continuous-time system with a delay in the state. The transformed system contains non-differentiable time-varying state delay and polytopic parameter uncertainties. A Lyapunov functional approach is employed to establish the performance, and the controller design is cast into a convex optimization problem with linear matrix inequality (LMI) constraints. A quarter-car model is considered in this brief and the effectiveness of the proposed approach is illustrated by a realistic design example.
Prediction of moving objects in dynamic environments using Kalman filters

In this work, we describe a framework for predicting future positions and orientation of moving obstacles in a time-varying environment using Kalman filtering techniques. No constraint are placed on the obstacles motion. The proposed algorithm can be used in a variety of applications, one of which is robot motion planning in time varying environments. The advantage of using this model compared to reported ones in the literature is it's ability to start the prediction process from the first time step without the need to wait for few time steps before starting the prediction process. Early experimental results are very encouraging.
Preliminary Results of a Multiagent Traffic Simulation for Berlin

This paper provides an introduction to multiagent traffic simulation. It includes some description of where we are with respect to the implementation of a real-world Berlin scenario. It turns out that the difficulties there, because of data availability and because of the special situation of Berlin after the reunification, are considerably larger than in previous scenarios that we have treated.
Turn of The Month Effect: Evidence From The Nairobi Securities Exchange

This study sought to investigate if Turn of the Month effect exists at the Nairobi Securities Exchange. In carrying out the study, the days of the month were divided into two, the Turn of the Month (TOM) which included the last trading day of the month and the first three trading days of the following month. The other trading days of the month were categorized as Rest of the Month (ROM). The 20 share index was used as the sampling frame and the daily indices were used to compute the daily returns. Secondary data was obtained from the Nairobi Securities Exchange data base. The TOM coefficient was not significant to confirm TOM effect. It is therefore concluded that there is no TOM effect at the Nairobi Securities Exchange. To practice, the study will give vital information to brokerage firms as they will advise their clients on the best time of the month to sell or buy securities. The findings of the study will also be of benefit to policy formulation aimed at improving capital market efficiency. Keywords: Turn of the Month, Rest of the Month, Twenty Share Index, Market Efficiency and Nairobi Securities Exchange.
LLC-MAC analysis of general packet radio service in GSM

General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is one of the major services currently standardized by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) for Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) Phase 2+. GPRS has been introduced to support bursty packet-switched traffic such as e-mail, World Wide Web traffic, and telemetry. This paper presents a unified analytical model of two GPRS protocols, namely, logical link control (LLC) and radio link control/medium access control (RLC/MAC). The interaction between selective automatic repeat-request (ARQ) schemes at the two layers is investigated. In order to save scarce radio resources, we calculate a finite optimal number of RLC/MAC retransmissions per LLC frame as a function of the number of radio link errors and the LLC frame size. A novel channel-dependent ARQ mechanism is introduced at the LLC layer. Finally, throughput and delay performances of the two ARQ stacks are presented.
Exploring the role of housing type, neighborhood characteristics, and lifestyle factors in the community integration of formerly homeless persons diagnosed with mental illness

Background: Little is still known about what community, individual and program factors contribute to the successful community integration of formerly homeless persons diagnosed with severe mental illness (SMI). Aims: The goal of this study was to use blended quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the impact of housing type (independent apartments and congregate settings) and neighborhood characteristics on physical, social and psychological aspects of community integration in this population. Method: Forty-four persons who had been stably housed for at least one year completed quantitative and qualitative assessments examining different aspects of community integration. Neighborhood structural variables were also examined using census data. Results: Quantitative findings confirm that community integration is multidimensional, and that different aspects of housing and neighborhood influence different dimensions of community integration. The concept of “locus of meaningful activity” (a lifestyle characteristic) emerged as an important construct from qualitative analyses. Locus of meaningful activity was associated with greater psychological integration and was linked to housing type. Conclusions: Findings offer direction for future studies seeking to understand the factors that influence the community integration of formerly homeless persons with SMI. Declaration of interest: Two authors are affiliated with Pathways to Housing, which provides services to homeless persons with SMI.
Alternative tactics and individual reproductive success in natural associations of the burying beetle, Nicrophorus vespilloides

Alternative reproductive tactics can be maintained through different evolutionary avenues. They can be genetically or stochastically determined, in which case they must yield equal fitness, or their use can be conditional, in which case the fitness payoff of alternatives may differ. We attempted to assess the reproductive success of alternative reproductive tactics employed by wild male and female burying beetles in natural associations on carcasses placed in the field. A beetle's reproductive tactic was defined by its potential involvement in care of larvae, and parentage was assessed using oligolocus DNA fingerprinting of offspring and potential parents. Both in males and in females, alternative tactics yielded significantly different reproductive benefits: subordinate females (brood parasites) and males (satellite males) had considerably lower reproductive success than dominant or uncontested individuals. Joint breeding was too infrequent for statistical inferences, generating intermediate offspring numbers. About 15% of offspring were sired by males not present on the carcass, suggesting that mating away from reproductive resources can produce reproductive benefits to males. Our results, in concert with the observation that beetles using one tactic can be manipulated into employing the alternative, support the notion that Nicrophorus vespilloides uses alternatives conditionally, opportunistically employing lower-benefit tactics when more profitable tactics are not available, or as additional "on-the-side" tactics to bolster reproductive success. Copyright 2007.
Computational and experimental studies for probe ring radius in MIMO OTA test systems

The effect of the probe ring size in OTA test systems was studied based on simulations and OTA measurements in the anechoic chamber of the University of Oulu. The results are presented for two methodologies: Prefaded Synthesis (PFS) and Plane Wave Synthesis (PWS). Each size and synthesis type was validated for UMI and Uma radio channel models and for the cases the DUT in free space and in phantom hand.
Baseline Management Practices at Providers in Better Jobs Better Care

Abstract High turnover and difficult recruitment of direct care workers are challenges for long-term care providers. This study reports the extent and variation of the use of management practices for direct care workers and their supervisors across four long-term care settings in the Better Jobs Better Care demonstration. Overall, there is limited use of direct care worker training, career advancement opportunities, and mentoring programs. Participation in care planning, communication about tasks, and direct care worker supervisor training and development practices vary significantly across long-term care settings. The paucity of training, career advancement opportunities, and mentoring programs suggests that government policies may be needed to encourage their use.
Feature Weight Optimization Mechanism for Email Spam Detection based on Two-step Clustering Algorithm and Logistic Regression Method

This research proposed an improved filtering spam technique for suspected emails, messages based on feature weight and the combination of two-step clustering and logistic regression algorithm. Unique, important features are used as the optimum input for a hybrid proposed approach. This study adopted a spam detector model based on distance measure and threshold value. The aim of this model was to study and select distinct features for email filtering using feature weight method as dimension reduction. Two-step clustering algorithm was used to generate a new feature called “Label” to cluster and differentiate the diversity emails and group them based on the inter samples similarity. Thereby the spam filtering process was simplified using the Logistic regression classifier in order to distinguish the hidden patterns of spam and non-spam emails. Experimental design was conducted based on the UCI spam dataset. The outcome of the findings shows that the results of the email filtering are promising compared to other modern spam filtering methods.
An Empirical Analysis of Audited Financial Statements Reliability: Mediating Role of Auditor Quality

Current study seeks to analyze the impact of corporate governance mechanism on audited financial statements reliability by analysing mediating effect of auditor quality. Study based on primary data which was collected from 188 respondents of Libyan banking industry through convenience sampling. Multiple regression analysis was used to determine the relationship among independent variables and mediating variable and bivariate regression analysis used to analyze the relationship among mediating variable and dependent variable. The current study used reliability of audited financial statement as a dependent variable and auditor quality as mediating variables. The independent variables in current study are; non- audit services, auditor rotation, measures of audit firm size, measures of audit firm fees and measures of audit committee characteristics. Result of current study stated that there is a direct positive relationship between corporate governance practices and auditor quality. The results also reveal a direct strong positive relationship between auditor quality and the reliability of audited financial statements. In terms of mediation, the findings of the study show that auditor quality partially mediates the relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and the reliability of audited financial statements.
Digital pathology image analysis: Challenges and opportunities

Fatty liver disease (FLD) is the most prevalent form of liver disease worldwide. Overnutrition can induce nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), a spectrum of conditions ranging from simple steatosis [or nonalcoholic fatty liver (NAFL)] to nonalcoholic steatohepatitis and cirrhosis. Some of the epidemiological and pathological studies have also suggested an association between the presence of fatty liver and sudden death. A 37-year-old man was found dead when he was asleep in the bed at home. According to his family, he was single and a costermonger. He was not an athlete, and there was no history of any physical and mental disorder. He was not addicted and did not use any drugs or alcohol. The positive points, in this case, were: a large heart with mild coronary stenosis and steatohepatitis in autopsy and sudden death. Since steatohepatitis did not have any complication such as fat embolism, it can be concluded that the combination of steatohepatitis and cardiovascular disorder led to sudden unexpected death. Heart more than 450 gr is susceptible to arrhythmia, and fatty liver disease can cause cardiovascular changes.
Mantle Cell Lymphoma: Non-Myeloablative Versus Dose-intensive Therapy

Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is now recognized as an aggressive lymphoma, in which there is frequent development of resistance to chemotherapy and a median survival period of 3 – 4 years. In recent years, the use of the chimeric monoclonal antibody rituximab, which is directed against the CD20 antigen, has provided new possibilities for the treatment of MCL. Rituximab alone produces overall response rates of 30 – 33% in patients with MCL, and is also effective at inducing complete responses in combination with CHOP (cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, prednisone). Furthermore, the addition of rituximab to the regimen of fractionated Hyper-CVAD/MTX-AraC (cyclophosphamide/doxorubicin/vincristine/dexamethasone alternated with methotrexate/cytarabine) has been found to produce responses and relapse-free and overall survival in younger patients that are comparable to those seen with Hyper-CVAD/MTX-AraC plus stem cell transplantation. Despite these promising results, patients aged > 65 years have a poor prognosis, and further studies are required to improve outcomes in this population.
The Development and Performance of the Bankruptcy System in Contemporary Russia

This paper investigates the working of the Russian bankruptcy system. The Russian bankruptcy system does not succeed in accelerating the withdrawal of inefficient enterprises from the market or reinforcing payment discipline. However, this is not entirely due to the faults of the bankruptcy system. A large share of debt owed to the state and the large influence of the state as an owner of strategic enterprises seriously distort a functioning of the bankruptcy system. Besides, the high rate of loss-making enterprises and the resistance of regional governments make the bankruptcy system difficult to work more effectively. Although these conditions are basically originated in state control of the economy under the Soviet Union, the Russian government also deliberately exploits its position as a creditor or an owner in relation to a lot of enterprises. All these conditions are characteristics peculiar to Russia, than common to transition countries.
Estimating Returns Under Standard Reinsurance Agreement

The present paper describes the assumptions and modeling structure behind the SRA simulator, a user-friendly computer program developed in cooperation with RMA as a tool to assist policymakers in assessing the economic impact of the Standard Reinsurance Agreement. The simulator uses the historical data on yields, prices, and insurance losses for each district, crop, and insurance product in order to simulate a distribution of the book of business resulting from underwriting crop insurance either in aggregate or for a specific company.
Regulating accounting in foreign invested firms in China: From Mao to Deng

The study recognises the importance of political ideology on the development of accounting and the impact which the rapid increase in foreign direct investment has had on the need for international accounting harmonisation. The interaction between accounting regulations for foreign invested firms, domestic firms and IFRS is also considered, highlighting the need to recognise the cultural peculiarities of China. The authors conclude with important and far reaching policy implications.
Mycoplasma genital tract infections in cattle.

DEAR SIR: From July to November 1973, I have had eleven positive isolates of mycoplasma infection associated with genital tract infections and infertility in Holstein-Friesian cattle. Nine of these isolates were identified as T-strain mycoplasma and two as M. bovigenitalium. I became suspicious of transmission of infection from frozen semen when I observed a clean cow at estrus showed a very purulent vaginai discharge post-breeding. Mycoplasma (T-strain) was isolated from this discharge. A sample of frozen semen from the same bull was cultured. T-strain mycoplasma was isolated. The semen was imported into Canada. Treatments that I have found most beneficial are oxytetracycline hydrochloride (a 10 mgm/ml solution) and Reverin suspension (Hoechst) as uterine infusions during the estral phase of the reproductive cycle; Reverin as a post-breeding infusion and oxytetracycline solution as a douche used when a persistent purulent vaginitis existed. Questions obviously arise from these observations. The potential importance of this condition to the dairy (and beef) industry must be determined. I hope this report will stimulate further interest in this condition across Canada and that bovine practitioners, research workers, the A.I. industry and provincial and federal regulatory veterinarians will assist in determining the incidence and importance of mycoplasma genital tract infections.