Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Is There a Solid Empirical Foundation for the IASB's Draft IFRS for SMEs?

In February 2007 the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) published its draft International Financial Reporting Standard for Small and Medium-sized Entities ('IFRS for SMEs'). It aims to provide a simplified, self-contained set of rules based on the present set of IFRS but adapted for entities without public accountability (called small and medium-sized entities (SMEs) by the IASB). The adaptation purports to be based exclusively on the common information needs of external users of SMEs' financial statements. As yet, there is little academic literature identifying what these information needs are. Had the IASB's "common information needs" been derived from serious empirical research worldwide, the empirical analyses would have formed part of the IASB due process that led to the publication of the draft standard. This paper, therefore, consists of an analysis of this due process. The conclusion is drawn that the IASB did not prepare serious worldwide empirical analyses. Moreover, it can be shown that the conclusions of the IASB incorporated in the draft standard are biased towards the opinions of auditors and accountants. International research is now essential. Otherwise it will be a matter of luck whether an IFRS for SMEs meets the common information needs of its targeted external users.
Credit Losses at Australian Banks: 1980-2013

Credit risk – the risk that borrowers will not repay their loans – is one of the main risks that financial intermediaries face, and has been the underlying driver of most systemic banking crises in advanced economies over recent decades. This paper explores the ex post credit risk experience – the 'credit loss' experience – of the Australian banking system. It does so using a newly compiled dataset covering bank-level credit losses over 1980 to 2013. The Australian credit loss experience is dominated by two episodes: the very large losses around the early 1990s recession and the losses during and after the global financial crisis. The available data indicate the above-average losses during both periods were on lending to businesses. Credit losses on housing loans during and after the global financial crisis were minimal in Australia. Consistent with this, an econometric panel-data model that properly accounts for portfolio composition indicates that conditions in the business sector, rather than those in the household sector, drove credit losses in Australia during the period studied. The data also indicate that the very worst credit loss outcomes – including those that led to the failure of several state government-owned banks in the early 1990s – were driven by poor lending standards.
Short-Range Quantum Magnetism of Ultracold Fermions in an Optical Lattice

Fermionic Quantum Magnetism Optical lattices loaded with cold atoms have been used successfully as quantum simulators of condensed matter systems; however, in the case of fermionic quantum magnetism, achieving low enough temperatures has been a major obstacle. Greif et al. (p. 1307, published online 23 May; see the Perspective by Porto) selectively tuned the exchange interactions in an optical lattice of fermions, forcing a redistribution of entropy such that in the low-entropy subsystem the effective temperature was sufficiently low enough to lead to magnetic correlations. A redistribution of entropy in an optical lattice loaded with atoms leads to magnetic correlations. [Also see Perspective by Porto] Quantum magnetism originates from the exchange coupling between quantum mechanical spins. Here, we report on the observation of nearest-neighbor magnetic correlations emerging in the many-body state of a thermalized Fermi gas in an optical lattice. The key to obtaining short-range magnetic order is a local redistribution of entropy, which allows temperatures below the exchange energy for a subset of lattice bonds. When loading a repulsively interacting gas into either dimerized or anisotropic simple cubic configurations of a tunable-geometry lattice, we observe an excess of singlets as compared with triplets consisting of two opposite spins. For the anisotropic lattice, the transverse spin correlator reveals antiferromagnetic correlations along one spatial axis. Our work facilitates addressing open problems in quantum magnetism through the use of quantum simulation.
The Eag Family of K+ Channels in Drosophila and Mammals

ABSTRACT: Mutations of eag, first identified in Drosophila on the basis of their leg‐shaking phenotype, cause repetitive firing and enhanced transmitter release in motor neurons. The encoded EAG polypeptide is related both to voltage‐gated K+ channels and to cyclic nucleotide‐gated cation channels. Homology screens identified a family of eag‐related channel polypeptides, highly conserved from nematodes to humans, comprising three subfamilies: EAG, ELK, and ERG. When expressed in frog oocytes, EAG channels behave as voltage‐dependent, outwardly rectifying K+‐selective channels. Mutations of the human eag‐related gene (HERG) result in a form of cardiac arrhythmia that can lead to ventricular fibrillation and sudden death. Electrophysiological and pharmacological studies have provided evidence that HERG channels specify one component of the delayed rectifier, IKr, that contributes to the repolarization phase of cardiac action potentials. An important role or HERG channels in neuronal excitability is also suggested by the expression of these channels in brain tissue. Moreover, mutations of ERG‐type channels in the Drosophila sei mutant cause temperature‐induced convulsive seizures associated with aberrant bursting activity in the flight motor pathway. The in vivo function of ELK channels has not yet been established, but when these channels are expressed in frog oocytes, they display properties intermediate between those of EAG‐ and ERG‐type channels. Coexpression of the K+‐channel b subunit encoded by Hk with EAG in oocytes dramatically increases current amplitude and also affects the gating and modulation of these currents. Biochemical evidence indicates a direct physical interaction between EAG and HK proteins. Overall, these studies highlight the diverse properties of the eag family of K+ channels, which are likely to subserve diverse functions in vivo.
Monopoly and Product Diversity: The Role of Retailer Countervailing Power

We analyse a monopolist’s choice of product diversity and the effects of retailer countervailing power on that choice. We show that monopoly causes distortion in product diversity even after we take into consideration the effects of monopoly pricing. Specifically, the number of differentiated goods produced by the monopolist is smaller than that of the constrained social optimum. Retailer countervailing power lowers consumer prices but reduces product diversity. Consequently, it alleviates the distortion in prices but exacerbates the distortion in product diversity. In our model the former is outweighed by the latter and countervailing power makes consumers worse off. Therefore, price changes do not tell the whole story about how consumers are affected by countervailing power.
The Impact on Domestic Productivity of Inward Investment in the UK

One of the basic tenets of UK industrial policy, that attracting inward investment into the UK stimulates domestic productivity growth, is examined. A model of productivity growth is developed for the indigenous sector of UK manufacturing, linking domestic productivity growth to theoretical explanations of inward investment. The paper demonstrates that inward investment does stimulate productivity growth in the domestic sector of around 0.75 per cent per annum. However, this cannot be attributed to investment or output spillovers, but is a result of the productivity advantage exhibited by the foreign firms.
Development and optimisation of a new linear programming model for production/distribution network of an edible vegetable oils manufacturer

Supply Chain Management (SCM) concerns with the optimal flow of materials and knowledge through overall production/distribution system from raw material suppliers to the last customers. Design and optimisation of production/distribution networks which includes sub problems such as assigning the numbers and the locations of entities of the network and determining the amount of physical distribution among the entities, has a strategic role in SCM. In this study, a novel linear programming model is developed for the production/distribution network of an edible vegetable oils manufacturer. The proposed model is solved and numerical results are analysed for various scenarios in order to identify some managerial insights.
Turnover Drivers and Retention Factors Affecting Hourly Workers: What is Important?

People are changing jobs in record numbers, resulting in the highest turnover rate in twenty years (Dobbs, 2001). Therefore, many companies are trying to determine how to retain their employees, including baby boomers with their institutional knowledge and Generation X and Y employees with their technological expertise. Previous research has identified organizational culture, supervision, compensation, and work environment coupled with pay and benefits as being related to employee turnover. An employee survey and interviews conducted at a large international wholesale bakery indicated health benefits, base pay, and life/work balance were most important to hourly workers. Suggestions on a retention strategy addressing employee’s needs are given.
Buffer modulation of menadione-induced oxidative stress in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Abstract The objective of this study was to compare, in vivo, the effects of bicarbonate and phosphate buffers on survival and menadione-induced oxidative stress in yeast cells. The latter were treated with different concentrations of menadione in the presence of these two buffers. At 25 mM concentration of buffers, menadione only slightly reduced yeast surviving; at 50 mM concentration, cell killing by menadione was much more pronounced in bicarbonate than in phosphate buffer. Although the content of protein carbonyl groups did not show development of oxidative stress under menadione-induced stress, inactivation of aconitase and decrease in glutathione level mirrored its induction. However, cellular glutathione and aconitase activity decrease did not correlate with yeast survival. In vitro, aconitase was more quickly inactivated in 50 mM carbonate, than in 50 mM phosphate buffer. The possible involvement of the carbonate radical in these processes is discussed.
Markdown policies for optimizing revenue, towards optimal pricing in retail

Due to inadequate initial allocation of supply, retail organizations are usually confronted with markdowns during a sales season. In this article the apparent paradox between the traditional Law of Demand and retailing pricing is solved. Through the use of Survival Analysis, as is commonly used in Biomedical Research, a framework is developed for determining optimal price paths in a retail context. When thought of in analogy to birth and death processes, sell through curves can be seen as life cycles of retail goods and can be applied in Revenue Optimization. We show that two significant events in calendar time exist: the moment a probable markdown occurs and the instance the underlying good is sold. Next, we apply convolution to define the markdown point in calendar time and estimate the price elasticity with an exhaustive search yielding the markdown moment that optimizes revenue
Communicating about Integrating Sustainability in Corporate Strategy: Motivations and Regulatory Environments of Integrated Reporting from a European and Dutch Perspective

Abstract Purpose The authors have examined the developments in law and in practice concerning integrated reporting. An integrated report combines the most material elements of information about corporate performance (re: financial, governance, social and environmental functioning) – currently reported in separate reports – into one coherent whole. The authors first explore the motivation of companies and legislators to introduce integrating reporting. Next, they analyse how integrated reporting can be supported by legislation thereby taking into account the existing regulatory environment. Methodology/approach Literature study; desk research, analysing integrated reports; organisation of an international academic conference (30 May 2012 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands). Findings EU law needs adjusting in the field of corporate annual reporting. Although integrated reporting is currently being explored by some frontrunners of the business community and is being encouraged by investors, the existing legal framework does not offer any incentive, nor is uniformity and credibility in the reporting of non-financial information stimulated. The law gives scant guidance to companies to that end. The authors argue that amending the mandatory EU framework can support the comparability and reliability of the corporate information. Moreover, a clear and sound EU framework on integrated corporate reporting will assist international companies in their reporting. Presently, companies have to comply with various regulations at an EU and a national level, which do not enhance a holistic view in corporate reporting. The authors provide options on how to do this. They suggest combining EU mandatory corporate reporting rules with the private regulatory reporting regime developed by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). Research limitations/implications Focus on EU and Dutch corporate reporting laws, non-legislative frameworks, and corporate practices of frontrunners. Practical and social implications and originality/value of the chapter The chapter can provide guidance to policymakers, companies and other stakeholders who want to form an opinion on how to legally support integrated reporting. It addresses important questions, especially concerning how European and domestic legislation could be adjusted in order to (i) reflect the newest insights regarding corporate transparency and (ii) become an adequate framework for companies with added benefits for financiers and investors. Moreover, it reports on the benefits of integrated reporting for reporting companies. The authors argue that integrated reporting can be a critical tool in implementing corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the main corporate strategy of a company.
Blog Annotation: From Corpus Analysis to Automatic Tag Suggestion

Nowadays, blogs cover a large audience and they raised from the underground to become part of mainstream media. Blogs contain information on diverse topics, personal opinions, and discussions between bloggers and readers. Tags and categories are structural elements of a blog post that increase the blog's visibility, enhance navigation and searching within the blog history. We suppose that those annotations are made on subjective grounds rather than in a systematic way. Even if there are tools to help bloggers to tag and categorize their posts, we still don't know to which extent these tools take into account information contained in previous posts. This paper presents a 11 million word corpus of blogs posts in French dedicated to study these questions, and an experiment in tag and category prediction. Preliminary results show that around 27% of the overall tags can be predicted from lexical frequency analysis of blog posts. However, a first comparison experience with an existing tag suggestion tool shows that an important proportion of the tags used for blog description are not present in the blog post. This shows that tag suggestion tools should exploit the diachronic analysis of blogs.
Performance Evaluation of Wireless Sensor Networks for Mobile Event and Mobile Sink

Extending lifetime and energy efficiency are important objectives and challenges in-Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). In large scale WSNs, when the nodes are near to the sink they consume much more energy than the nodes far from the sink. In our previous work, we considered that the sink node was stationary and only event node was moving in the observation field. In this work, we consider both cases when the sink node and event node are moving. For the simulations, we use TwoRayGround and Shadowing radio models, lattice topology and AODV protocol. We compare the simulation results for the cases when the sink node and event node are mobile and stationary. The simulation results have shown that the goodput of TwoRayGround is better than Shadowing in case of mobile event, but the depletion of Shadowing is better than TwoRayGround in case of mobile event. The goodput in case of mobile sink is better than stationary sink when the transmission rate is lower than 10pps. For TwoRayGround radio model, the depletion in case of mobile sink is better than stationary sink when the number of nodes is increased.
The interrelation of Liquidity Risk, Default Risk, and Equity Returns

As proxies for liquidity risk we consider the Pastor-Stambaugh measure, as well as the turnover and illiquidity measures. The default measure of choice is the one based on Merton’s (1974) contingent claims approach. The alternative liquidity measures contain very different information about liquidity and share low correlations. However, they are all related to our default measure. Vector autoregressive tests reveal the existence of a two-way causal relation between default risk and stock market returns. Liquidity risk does not affect the future path of stock market returns. These relations hold, even when we take into account the correlation of the default and liquidity measures with aggregate stock market volatility. Low liquidity stocks earn higher returns than high liquidity stocks, only if these stocks also have high default risk, but in no other case. In contrast, high default risk stocks always earn higher returns than low default risk stocks, independently of their liquidity level. The inclusion of default and liquidity variables in popular asset pricing specifications improves the model’s performance, but the improvement is larger in the case of the inclusion of the default variable. Finally, in the presence of the default variable, the inclusion of a liquidity proxy in the specification results in a marginal improvement of the model’s performance, but the opposite is not true. Our findings regarding the interrelation of default and liquidity risk and their effects on equity returns are independent of the liquidity proxy considered. JEL Classification: G11, G12.
Novel VIM Metallo-β-Lactamase Variant, VIM-24, from a Klebsiella pneumoniae Isolate from Colombia

ABSTRACT We report the emergence of a novel VIM variant (VIM-24) in a Klebsiella pneumoniae isolate in Colombia. The isolate displays MICs for carbapenems below the resistance breakpoints, posing a real challenge for its detection. The blaVIM-24 gene was located within a class 1 integron carried on a large plasmid. Further studies are needed to clarify its epidemiological and clinical impact.
Catechin Content of 18 Teas and a Green Tea Extract Supplement Correlates With the Antioxidant Capacity

Our literature review of currently available data in the area of tea and cancer prevention demonstrated that there is more conclusive evidence for the chemopreventive effect of green tea compared with black tea. We suggest that this is due to a large variation of the flavanol content in tea, which is not taken into consideration in most of the epidemiological studies. It was the purpose of this study to determine the flavanol content of various teas and tea products and to correlate it with their radical scavenging activity. A modified oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) assay at pH 5.5 was utilized. The total flavavol content varied from 21.2 to 103.2 mg/g for regular teas and from 4.6 to 39.0 mg/g for decaffeinated teas. The ORAC value varied from 728 to 1686 trolox equivalents/g tea for regular teas and from 507 to 845 trolox equivalents/g for decaffeinated teas. There was a significant correlation of flavanol content to ORAC value (r = 0.79, P = 0.0001) for the teas and green tea extract. The large variation in flavanol content and ORAC value among various brands and types of tea provides critical information for investigators using tea in studies of nutrition and cancer prevention.
A Boost CLLC Converter Controlled by PWM and PFM Hybrid Modulation for Photovoltaic Power Generation

When an input terminal is connected to a solar panel with a low voltage level and large power range fluctuation, a Boost type CLLC converter controlled by fixed frequency pulse width modulation (PWM) reduces the utilization of PV electric energy, and the synchronous drive of the secondary side and primary side ensures that the converter operates with low efficiency when the duty cycle is shifted by 0.5. To maximize the utilization of photovoltaic (PV) energy in a PV power generation system and improve the conversion efficiency, this paper studies a Boost CLLC converter with high gain and soft switching controlled by PWM-pulse frequency modulation (PFM) hybrid modulation for PV power generation. By controlling the duty cycle and switching frequency of the primary MOSFETs, the converter can stabilize the output voltage while tracking the PV maximum power point. Under such a hybrid control, the resonant gain of the converter is greater than 1, the voltage gain is large, one of the MOSFETs at the primary side is in a zero-voltage-switching-open (ZVS-ON) state, two diodes are used to realize zero-current-switching (ZCS) soft switching on the secondary side, and the efficiency of the converter is high. In addition, this paper studies the phenomenon of backflow power in the resonant circuit and the influence of a change in the switching frequency on the magnitude of the backflow power. Finally, a 500W experimental prototype was constructed to verify the accuracy of the theoretical analysis and the feasibility of the control method.
Bridging generality and specificity: The amusement park theoretical (APT) model of creativity

One of the most contentious areas in creativity theory is the question of domain specificity. How we conceptualize creativity — as something that transcends content domains, or as something that varies depending on the domain in question — has important implications for both creativity research and creativity training programs. The Amusement Park Theoretical (APT) model of creativity is the first creativity theory to successfully bridge the gap between these contrasting views of creativity. The APT model uses the metaphor of an amusement park to explore creativity. There are four stages: Initial requirements, general thematic areas, domains, and micro‐domains. The first level (initial requirements) is very general, and each subsequent level gets more and more domain‐specific. The APT model can provide a powerful framework for creativity assessment, selection of students for gifted education programs, and the development of creativity training programs.
Evaluating Social Media: Towards a Practical Model for Measuring Social Media Influence

Despite the widespread adoption and popularity of social media, research on measuring the quantifiable impact of popular social media platforms remains scarce. To this end, this study attempts to investigate how the influence of social media can be assessed in quantitative terms. The main objective is to develop a new assessment model able to integrate a broad range of criteria such as likes, subscribers, comments, posts, shares, and links. The authors extend previous assessment models focused on individual platforms such as blogs and propose a Social Media Influence Assessment model SMIA. The process of model development-criteria, dimensions, and formula-and its validation are discussed. The results indicate that social media's influence can be measured in a structured, quantifiable manner by utilising a set of nine criteria grouped into three dimensions: recognition, activity generation, and credibility.