Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How Does Language Impact Foreign Investing in a Multilingual Country?

Several papers have already highlighted that retail investors tend to favor stocks listed in countries that share a common language. In this paper, we investigate whether the language difference within the same country matters to understand foreign investing. Using a database coming from a Belgian brokerage house, we confirm the language effect at a national level and furthermore provide evidence that the difference of languages between French- and Dutch-speakers in Belgium induces differences in their foreign investment behavior. Our results show that French(Dutch)-speaking investors tend to overweight more their allocation in French(Dutch) stocks. We also show that the language effect varies across investors' characteristics. The level of education and financial literacy seem to be key drivers: investors who report a higher level of education and a higher level of financial literacy tend to be less subject to the langue effect. Finally, we find that the preference for stocks listed in countries that share the same language does not seem to be information-driven. Excess allocation in French and Dutch stocks does not seem to be due to better information-processing but well due to an exposure to a behavioral bias.
Ecotourism certification criteria and procedures: implications for ecotourism planning and environmental management

• Overview the certification process, and how it relates to ecotourism • Outline of the meaning of ecotourism certification and the benefits from a stakeholder’s perspective • Discuss how the ecotourism industry is engaging in the certification debate • Provide evidence that well managed ecotourism certification in a favourable context can be beneficial to the planning and management of a tourism destination
Evolution of a Collusive Price in a Networked Market

This paper studies evolution of firms’ behavior in a networked Bertrand oligopoly market, in which firms who are located on vertices of a network compete in price with their neighbors. This network model is also applied to a market with multi-dimensionally differentiated products. In a non-networked market, it is known that the Bertrand–Nash equilibrium pricing is evolutionarily stable. We show, however, that in our large networked market, the Bertrand–Nash equilibrium price is not stable but a collusive price is evolutionarily stable under weak selection. As the magnitude of transportation cost increases, firms charge a more collusive price in the long run. The results suggest that collusive pricing prevails in a large market if and only if it is networked.
Using a Parking Assist System Over Time: Insights on Acceptance and Experiences

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, such as parking assist systems, are designed to support the driver in his/her driving task. To date, only a few studies exist that investigate the driver's experiences and acceptance while using such systems over time. In this paper, we present the results from a long-term study regarding drivers' experiences with and acceptance of a parking assist system in a newly bought car. We found that there is a change of the drivers' experiences in terms of trust and of certain acceptance factors such as performance expectancy, effort expectancy, attitude towards technology, and social influence over time, highly depending on how certain characteristics of the system (e.g., the auditive signals) are perceived by the driver. Our study confirms the need to take expectations of the drivers, concerning the usefulness of the system, into account when designing parking assist systems. We further conclude that assistance should be given only in situations that really need assistance. Therefore, the situational context (e.g., the size of the parking slot), but also the capabilities of the driver (e.g., his parking skills), should be taken into account.
Commercial Homes in Tourism : An International Perspective

This volume is the first to examine the commercial home from an international perspective, paying attention to the frequently occurring but often neglected forms of commercial accommodation including farmstays, historic houses, and self-catering accommodation. Conceptually, it helps to explain a range of behaviours and practices, for example the importance of setting and the nature of the hostâguest exchange. The idea of home provides a conceptual bridge to related themes, for example identity, gender, emotional management and cultural mobilities whose investigation in a commercial home context offers fascinating insights into hospitality, tourism and society.This book is structured around three themes. The first is dimensions of the commercial home and includes discussion of issues pertaining to forms and characteristics and female entrepreneurship. The second theme considers the commercial home as an investigative lens to examine wider issues of society, hospitality and tourism such as the commercial home as a tool for rural economic development. The third theme, extending the commercial home paradigm, looks at new areas of development, including the Malaysian Muslim home as a site for economic and political action and the use of the home in marketing regional localities.Commercial Homes in Tourism is the first book to give recognition to this distinct, economically important and expanding form of tourism business by bringing together recent, international research on this common form of commercial tourism accommodation. Given the global nature of the commercial home phenomenon, and owing to the originality of its theoretical contributions and practical insights, this book will be of interest across a broad range of subjects and disciplines interested in the examination of the home phenomenon, including students, academics and business practitioners.
Realizing Maps between Modules over Tate Cohomology Rings

Let G be a finite group and k be a field. Given two representations A and B of G, we investigate when all homomorphisms b H (G,A) ! b H (G,B) over the Tate cohomology ring b H (G,k) are of the form b H (G, ) for some mor- phism : A! B. We construct an extended Milnor sequence which computes the obstruction for homomorphisms b H (G,A)! b H (G,B) to be realizable.
A general hippocampal computational model combining episodic and spatial memory in a spiking model

The hippocampus, in humans and rats, plays crucial roles in spatial tasks and nonspatial tasks involving episodic-type memory. This thesis presents a novel computational model of the hippocampus (CA1, CA3 and dentate gyrus) which creates a framework where spatial memory and episodic memory are explained together. This general model follows the approach where the memory function of the rodent hippocampus is seen as a “memory space” instead of a “spatial memory”. The innovations of this novel model are centred around the fact that it follows detailed hippocampal architecture constraints and uses spiking networks to represent all hippocampal subfields. This hippocampal model does not require stable attractor states to produce a robust memory system capable of pattern separation and pattern completion. In this hippocampal theory, information is represented and processed in the form of activity patterns. That is, instead of assuming firing-rate coding, this model assumes that information is coded in the activation of specific constellations of neurons. This coding mechanism, associated with the use of spiking neurons, raises many problems on how information is transferred, processed and stored in the different hippocampal subfields. This thesis explores which mechanisms are available in the hippocampus to achieve such control, and produces a detailed model which is biologically realistic and capable of explaining how several computational components can work together to produce the emergent functional properties of the hippocampus. In this hippocampal theory, precise explanations are given to why mossy fibres are important for storage but not recall, what is the functional role of the mossy cells (excitatory interneurons) in the dentate gyrus, why firing fields can be asymmetric with the firing peak closer to the end of the field, which features are used to produce “place fields”, among others. An important property of this hippocampal model is that the memory system provided by the CA3 is a palimpsest memory: after saturation, the number of patterns that can be recalled is independent of the number of patterns engraved in the recurrent network. In parallel with the development of the hippocampal computational model, a simulation environment was created. This simulation environment was tailored for the needs and assumptions of the hippocampal model and represents an important component of this thesis.
Structuring Interaction in Group Decision Making on Tabletops

Group Decision Support Systems allow users to faster reach a consensus and help to improve the overall decision quality by structuring and directing group discussions. We present MTEatsplore, a multitouch tabletop application designed to structure interaction and guide group discussion, and thus improve the decision quality when cooperatively selecting an eating opportunity in a group.
Material parameters for the structural dynamic simulation of electrical machines

Acoustic noise and vibration of electrical machines becomes increasingly relevant. The determination of equivalent mechanical material parameters of electrical steel is therefore necessary to bound the computational costs of the structural dynamic simulation to practical levels. An analytical model based on fundamental laws of mixture is compared to three different experimental approaches to from test objects. The following approaches are reviewed and compared: Static pressure test, ultrasonic measurements and the fitting of eigenfrequencies between measurement and Finite Element analysis. The forced vibration spectra show good agreement for the FEM fit and the ultrasonic approach. It verified that the FEM fit gives physically correct values.
On the value of european options on a stock paying a discrete dividend at uncertain date

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of uncertainty about the dividend date on the value of European options in the context of the Black-Scholes model. We use an arbitrarily accurate numerical approximation for the value of this type of instrument on a stock paying a discrete dividend, considering different probability distributions over the date of dividend payment, and comparing with the deterministic case. We find that the main determinant is the skewness of the probabilistic distribution. For positive skewness, uncertainty about the dividend payment day decreases the value of the option, and negative skewness has the opposite effect for standard parameters. However, if interest rates are negative, volatility is small enough and the option is sufficiently in the money, the impact of uncertainty is reverted. The understanding of this mechanism may have practical implications for hedging strategies.
Myocardial Ischemia Reperfusion Injury

Myocardial ischemia reperfusion injury contributes to adverse cardiovascular outcomes after myocardial ischemia, cardiac surgery or circulatory arrest. Primarily, no blood flow to the heart causes an imbalance between oxygen demand and supply, named ischemia (from the Greek isch, restriction; and haema, blood), resulting in damage or dysfunction of the cardiac tissue. Instinctively, early and fast restoration of blood flow has been established to be the treatment of choice to prevent further tissue injury. Indeed, the use of thrombolytic therapy or primary percutaneous coronary intervention is the most effective strategy for reducing the size of a myocardial infarct and improving the clinical outcome. Unfortunately, restoring blood flow to the ischemic myocardium, named reperfusion, can also induce injury. This phenomenon was therefore termed myocardial ischemia reperfusion injury. Subsequent studies in animal models of acute myocardial infarction suggest that myocardial ischemia reperfusion injury accounts for up to 50% of the final size of a myocardial infarct. Consequently, many researchers aim to understand the underlying molecular mechanism of myocardial ischemia reperfusion injury to find therapeutic strategies ultimately reducing the final infarct size. Despite the identification of numerous therapeutic strategies at the bench, many of them are just in the process of being translated to bedside. The current review discusses the most striking basic science findings made during the past decades that are currently under clinical evaluation, with the ultimate goal to treat patients who are suffering from myocardial ischemia reperfusion–associated tissue injury.
Orchidectomy Upregulates While Testosterone Treatment Downregulates the Expression of Ornithine Aminotransferase Gene in the Mouse Kidney

Ornithine aminotransferase (L-ornithine: 2-oxoacid aminotransferase, OAT, EC 2.6.1.13) plays crucial physiological roles in amino acid metabolism because this enzyme is at the crossroad of several pathways including those of L-arginine, L-ornithine, L-glutamate, Lglutamine, and L-proline. Specifically, OAT catalyzes the transamination of L-ornithine in the presence of α-ketoglutarate to produce one molecule of L-glutamate and the unstable compound glutamate-γ-semialdehyde that is spontaneously converted into ∆1-pyrroline-5carboxylate. This latter molecule is further metabolized by the enzyme pyrroline-5carboxylate dehydrogenase into a second molecule of L-glutamate (Wakabayashi, 2004). The enzyme is expressed in many mammalian tissues including the liver, the kidney, and the intestine which exhibit the highest OAT activities (Peraino & Pitot, 1963; Herzfeld & Knox, 1968; Sanada et al., 1970; Kasahara et al., 1986; Alonso & Rubio, 1989; Levillain et al., 2007; Ventura et al., 2009). These enzymes may not only display diverse tissue-specific physiological roles, but demonstrate marked sexual differences in expression and activity. In rat kidneys, estrogen dramatically increased the expression of OAT and is responsible for the higher levels of OAT in female than in male rat kidney (Herzfeld & Knox, 1968; Lyons & Pitot, 1977; Mueckler & Pitot, 1983; Mueckler et al., 1984; Levillain et al., 2004). The presence of thyroid hormone is required for estrogen induction. These hormones exert a synergistic effect on the expression of OAT gene (Mueckler & Pitot, 1983). The expression of OAT gene during the rat postnatal development strongly supports the sexual dimorphism of OAT in kidney, but not in liver (Herzfeld & Knox, 1968; Herzfeld & Greengard, 1969). Taken together, the expression of OAT gene in the female rat kidney is naturally upregulated in the presence of estrogen. The expression of OAT gene in the mouse kidney has been reported by different authors who independently measured OAT mRNA and protein levels or OAT activity (Alonso & Rubio, 1989; Natesan & Reddy, 2001; Yu et al., 2003; Levillain et al., 2005; ManteuffelCymborowska et al., 2005; Levillain et al., 2007; Ventura et al., 2009). Strong evidences
Advances in Brief Elevated and Biallelic Expression of p 73 Is Associated with Progression of Human Bladder Cancer

p73, a member of the p53 family at 1p36.3, has been demonstrated to be expressed monoallelically and induce apoptosis or G 1 arrest of the cell cycle. To explore the candidacy ofp73as a suppressor in bladder tumorigenesis, we examined expression level, allelic origin, and mutation of p73 mRNA in 45 primary bladder carcinomas. Quantitative PCR analysis showed no allelic loss of the gene but showed various levels of mRNA expression in both carcinoma and noncancerous tissues. Elevated expression of p73 was frequently observed in carcinoma tissues [18 (40.0%) of 45] and showed a strong correlation with tumor stage or grade. Allotyping analysis using aStyI polymorphism detected biallelic expression in 12 (52.2%) of 23 heterozygous carcinomas but none in 4 noncancerous tissues. Tumor-specific biallelic expression was also identified from one matched set. In addition, 8 (66.7%) of these 12 expressed high levels of p73 mRNA, whereas only 2 (18.2%) of 11 monoallelic expressors showed high expression, which suggests that the increased expression of p73 might be caused by the transcriptional activation of a silent allele in carcinomas. Single-strand conformational polymorphism analysis of the entire coding region of p73 revealed no mutation, whereas 12 (26.7%) of the same set showedp53alterations. No relationship between expression of p73and p53 mutation or expression of p21 or MDM2 was identified. Taken together, our data argue thatp73does not play a role as a tumor suppressor in bladder carcinogenesis and suggest that the activation of a silent allele may contribute to the progression of bladder tumors.
Direct teaching and automatic program generation for the hybrid control of robot manipulators

A methodology for the automatic generation. of robot programs for hybrid position/force control is presented. While hybrid control allows a robot to perform skillful manipulations, its programing is more complex and intricate than simple position control schemes. In hybrid control, control modes must be designated to individual C-frame axes, in such a way that the robot motion conform to geometrical or natural constraints. Both position and force reference inputs must be provided as artifical constraints. This is difficult , since it requires the interpretation of a given task and the translation into a set of commands used in the hybrid position/force control. In this paper, an efficient method is developed to eliminate manual programming and task interpretation/translation. The operator teaches a given task by "teaching-by-showing", in which the operator contacts the robot end effector to the environment, and accommodates the contact force. During the operator's motion, the force applied by the operator as well as the position of the end effector are measured, The acquired motion data are then processed and interpreted so that necessary information to generate robot programs is obtained. The choice of control modes as well as reference inputs to the robot controller are derived from the motion data. Then the result is translated into a robot program. First, the principle of this method is described. The algorithm to interpret motion data is then developed for a simple palletizing job. The method is implemented on a force-controlled direct-drive arm using a personal computer.
Non-Market-Based Transfers of Wealth and Power: A Research Framework for Family Businesses

Family businesses are basically owner-managed enterprises with the family Involved within the business. When, to family ties within the business, is added the biological inevitability of an eventual transfer of power, family succession becomes an alternative to selling the business–-a transfer based on non-market considerations. A framework for studying family businesses is proposed which has succession as its anchor. The succession process is where changes in management, in strategy, and in control are planned for and executed. The framework is built upon stages of the family enterprise which emanate from the biological reality of parent and offspring being separated by age and business experience but wedded together by “blood” and a shared family experience.
How to Associate Users with Access Points in a Small Cell Network?

Associating users with small cell access points using Gale-Shapley’s “stable marriage matching” algorithm can deliver 100% to more than 400% increase for the 95% likely per user throughput than an ad hoc method used in current literature. Gale-Shapley association is fast (quadratic time) and does not depend on power controls employed, thus suitable for real world applications.
Endotoxin-Mediated Endothelial Cell Injury and Activation: Role of Soluble CD14

Vascular endothelial cell (EC) injury by lipopolysaccharides (LPS) plays a major role in the pathogenesis of gram-negative bacterial sepsis and endotoxic shock. The studies described here were performed to define further the molecular mechanisms involved in the EC responses to LPS. We showed that serum was required for LPS-mediated cytotoxicity for bovine brain microvessel, pulmonary, and aortic ECs and that anti-human CD14 antibodies completely blocked LPS-mediated cytotoxicity for ECs in the presence of human serum. The addition of a recombinant soluble form of human CD14 to serum-free medium restored the LPS-mediated cytotoxicity, whereas the addition of LPS binding protein (LBP), a serum protein that potentiates LPS-induced responses to monocytes, had no effect. A similar dependency on serum or recombinant soluble CD14 (under serum-free conditions) was observed for LPS-induced secretion of interleukin-6 by human umbilical vein ECs. These findings indicate that soluble CD14 is required for LPS-mediated EC responses independently of LPB, suggesting that serum soluble CD14 represents a naturally occurring agonist for EC responses to LPS.
Leukoreduction of blood transfusions does not diminish transfusion‐associated microchimerism in trauma patients

BACKGROUND: Transfusion of trauma patients can result in long‐term survival of donor white blood cells (WBCs) or “transfusion‐associated microchimerism” (TA‐MC). The aim was to determine whether leukoreduction of blood transfusions, advocated to reduce the immunomodulatory effect of transfusion, decreases the likelihood of developing TA‐MC.
Reproducibility of retinal thickness measurements in normal eyes using optical coherence tomography.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE To determine the reproducibility of retinal thickness measurements in normal eyes using optical coherence tomography (OCT). PATIENTS AND METHODS Multiple 3.20-mm vertical cross-sectional images through the center of fixation of consecutive patients with normal results on ocular examinations were obtained. Each image was divided into seven 320-micron segments. Regional retinal thicknesses for each section were measured using both the manually assisted (requiring observer localization of reflectivity peaks) and the automated modes (observer-independent measurement) of the computer software. RESULTS Eighteen right eyes were studied. The mean coefficient of variation was less than 10% for all locations using the manually assisted method (average standard deviation less than 17 microns [range 9 to 16 microns]). The automated method was less reliable, with a coefficient of variation greater than 10% for locations within 500 microns of fixation. Automated measurements at fixation were the least reproducible because of poor internal limiting membrane reflectivity. CONCLUSION OCT is capable of reproducible measurement of retinal thickness in normal eyes. Computer-driven, automated measurement of retinal thickness within 500 microns of fixation needs to be refined and its reproducibility reassessed in this region.
Welcome to the club: Designing the inventory of semantic roles for adjectives

The argument constructions of adjectives has largely been out of the scope of research on semantic roles both in theoretical and IT fields. Before adding the roles of adjectival arguments to the network of semantic roles it is important to determine whether the adjectival roles form a separate list or whether they can be seen as an extension of roles assigned to the patterns of verbs and nominalizations. We discuss the general principles of how the inventory of adjectival roles should be organized in comparison with the existing inventories of verbal roles. In order to verify our statements, we carry out an experimental survey aimed at measuring the similarity between adjectival and verbal roles. The results have shown that both semantic interpretation of roles and their typical morpho-syntactic expression are significant for the evaluation and should be taken into account in working out the inventory. Besides, the specificity of adjectives lies in their prototypical stative semantics, which favors some differences in assigning a semantic role as compared to verbs. The results of the survey also provide some evidence for verification and development the inventory of verbal semantic roles.