Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Factors affecting performance of mutual funds in Kenya

The mutual Fund industry in Kenya has developed rapidly over the past two decades. This can be attributed to the various advantages associated with mutual funds as opposed to other investment instruments. Survival if the fund is purely determined by its performance in the market. This is determined by growth of fund investments and amount of periodic returns to investors for growth and value funds respectively. Furthermore, the growth in the mutual funds market in Kenya has led to great interest in the risk – return relationship in the market. Various asset pricing models can be utilized in empirical testing to determine the dominant risk factors affecting funds in the market. Kenyan fund market is still budding and of late it has not been performing well when compared to other developed fund markets in the world. Despite this, little research has been done to determine the reasons for poor performance and especially in studying the fundamentals that determine the fund performance. They included risk and return, size, investment styles, fund characteristics, behavioural patterns of investors, managerial capabilities and persistence of returns. The study also adopted the arbitrage pricing model to identify these factors. The Treasury bill, GDP growth rate, inflation size and the fund size were the independent variables selected for the model whose beta parameters were analysed. The research results will be of utmost importance to the fund managers, investors, government and the academic fraternity. The study involved the registered fund managers in Kenya, which stands at 16, according to the Retirements Benefit Authority (RBA). The research design was descriptive and the researcher employed the census method of study where each registered fund manager was issued with two questionnaires; one to the investment manager and the other to the fund administrator. 28 out of 32 questionnaires issued were duly completed and returned. The data collected was first subjected to descriptive statistics including frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations. The study found that a positive relationship existed between mutual funds’ returns and the Treasury bill rate and the market interest rates. A negative beta was computed for GDP growth rate, inflation rate and fund size factors. These factors represent risk in the mutual funds market and a positive risk return relationship as computed from the model. Inflation rate, market interest rates and GDP growth rate were observed to have the greatest impact on mutual fund returns. The fund size had a lower but significant coefficient while the beta for Treasury bill rate factor was insignificant. It was also found that there is a negative relationship between fund performance and behavioural patterns of investors. The study recommends that Kenyan fund managers be exposed to the best investment practices including adopting the appropriate styles and changing them frequently, holding the right size of fund, cleverly selecting the funds to invest in, methods of assessing fund performance among other investment style characteristics.
Probing the blow-off criteria of hydrogen-rich 'super-Earths'

The discovery of transiting “super-Earths” with inflated radii and known masses such as Kepler-11b-f, GJ 1214b and 55 Cnc e, indicates that these exoplanets did not lose their nebula-captured hydrogen-rich, degassed or impact-delivered protoatmospheres by atmospheric escape processes. Because hydrodynamic blow-off of atmospheric hydrogen atoms is the most efficient atmospheric escape process we apply a time-dependent numerical algorithm which is able to solve the system of 1-D fluid equations for mass, momentum, and energy conservation to investigate the criteria under which “super-Earths” with hydrogen-dominated upper atmospheres can experience hydrodynamic expansion by heating of the stellar XUV (soft X-rays and extreme ultraviolet) radiation and thermal escape via blow-off. Depending on orbit location, XUV flux, heating efficiency and the planet’s mean density our resultsindicate that the upper atmospheres of all “super-Earths” can expand to large distances, so that besides of Kepler-11c all of them experience atmospheric mass-loss due to Roche lobe overflow. The atmospheric mass-loss of the studied “super-Earths” is one to two orders of magnitude lower compared to that of “hot Jupiters” such as HD 209458b, so that one can expect that these exoplanets cannot lose their hydrogen-envelopes during their remaining lifetimes.
Assessment of the effectiveness of soil and water conservation measures in reducing runoff and soil loss: establishment of a European database

Soil erosion by water is recognised as a major soil degradation process that requires a global approach. Large regions all over the world are in need of integrated conservation strategies that sustainably prevent and remediate soil erosion. Therefore, quantitative and globally interpretable data are needed in support of models and decision making. The effects of various soil and water conservation techniques (SWCT) on runoff and soil loss in Europe have been extensively studied over the last 60 years. Runoff plots are the most widely used measurement technique to study the effects of SWCT on runoff and soil loss by water erosion. Hence, many data are available. However, the insights gained hereby remain mostly local and often qualitative whereas the full potential of the available data is not exploited yet. This is mainly due to the fragmentation of knowledge and extrapolation difficulties inherently linked with this type of data. This study addresses the issue of the availability of quantitative runoff and soil loss data from plot measurements in Europe and the quantitative assessment of the effectiveness of various SWCT in reducing runoff and soil loss. In the framework of the EU-DESIRE project, a database is currently compiled. The database currently contains 3175 plot-year data on runoff and soil loss measurements from 108 study sites in Europe and the Mediterranean. The SWCT documented herein include crop rotations, conservation tillage, cover cropping, mulching, vegetated buffer strips and terraces. From this dataset, an evaluation can be made of the effectiveness of various SWCT in reducing runoff and soil loss by water for a range of environmental conditions in Europe. A first example, regarding the effectiveness of SWCT in olive orchards, is discussed in this paper.
THE IMPACT OF EARNINGS MANAGEMENT ON THE VALUE RELEVANCE OF EARNINGS: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM TURKEY

This empirical study focus on demonstrating the relation between of earnings and stock returns by using data from Istanbul Stock Exchange of Turkey (Borsa Istanbul-BIST). This study analyzes the presence of earnings management practices by using financial information of the Turkish listed manufacturing companies. For this purpose, it was tested that low performance companies are prone to apply income increase practices than high performance companies. It was first approved that companies with low performance employ these practices. Thereafter it was examined if these earnings management practices decrease the value relevance of earnings. To test the hypothesis a model is created to present the relation between reported earnings and stock returns. Our findings display that low performance companies tend to increase their earnings so that they can hide their low performance. Our results point out that there is significant and positive relationship between earnings and market adjusted stock returns for whole sample, however there is no significant difference between adjusted market returns of high and low performance companies. In the literature, earnings management and value relevance studies are mostly based on US data. This study is the first paper that examines the relationship between earnings management, value relevance and financial performance in Turkish manufacturing companies.
CONSTRAINED BIG BANG-BIG CRUNCH ALGORITHM FOR OPTIMAL SOLUTION OF LARGE SCALE RESERVOIR OPERATION PROBLEM

A constrained version of the Big Bang-Big Crunch algorithm for the efficient solution of the optimal reservoir operation problems is proposed in this paper. Big Bang-Big Crunch (BB-BC) algorithm is a new meta-heuristic population-based algorithm that relies on one of the theories of the evolution of universe; namely, the Big Bang and Big Crunch theory. An improved formulation of the algorithm named Constrained Big Bang-Big Crunch (CBB-BC) is proposed here and used to solve the problems of reservoir operation. In the CBB-BC algorithm, all the problems constraints are explicitly satisfied during the solution construction leading to an algorithm exploring only the feasible region of the original search space. The proposed algorithm is used to optimally solve the water supply and hydro-power operation of “Dez” reservoir in Iran over three different operation periods and the results are presented and compared with those obtained by the basic algorithm referred to here as Unconstrained Big Bang–Big Crunch (UBB–BC) algorithm and other optimization algorithms including Genetic Algorithm (GA), Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and those obtained by Non-Linear Programming (NLP) technique. The results demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of the proposed method to solve reservoir operation problems compared to alternative algorithms.
Fabrication of 850 nm Implanted VCSELs with Characterization of Slope Efficiencies in L-I Curves

We fabricated the implanted VCSELs with SiO2 deposited before implantation to evaporate the metal contacts and pads at the same time and the wafer-level testing was performed under continuous-wave operation at room temperature. The devices are different in SiO2 thickness with various implant and contact aperture sizes through the mask design. A thinner SiO2 deposition before ion implantation has less affect to ion projection range and provides a better device performance. The basic L-I-V characteristics of the devices with different implant and contact apertures are performed with the results conforming to the related current spreading and thermal properties. The general behavior of emission spectrum for implanted VCSELs in relation to the wavelengths of transverse modes is also applied. The transverse mode formation in implanted VCSELs corresponding to the spatial hole burning and thermal lens effects is related to the kink phenomenon in L-I curves with variant slope efficiency and the results are reasonable for the implant aperture size problem. Finally, the estimated fundamental mode width compared with the contact aperture sizes implies that reducing the diameter of the contact opening in VCSEL devices not only extends the operating current range for the output with lower order modes but also provides more linear output characteristic. The contact opening with smaller diameter suppresses the output with higher order modes and it alleviates the kink problem in an L-I curve originated from the higher-order mode formation.
Assessment and Comparison of Quality of Solar Tunnel Dried Bombay Duck and Silver Pomfret with Traditional Sun Dried Samples

Traditional sun drying methods are widely used in Bangladesh to dry fish, though the quality is not satisfactory. The aim of this study was to assess the quality of solar tunnel dried Bombay duck and Siler pomfret, and to compare it with traditional sun dried Bombay duck and Silver pomfret. Raw fish samples of Bombay duck and Silver pomfret was collected and dried using solar tunnel dryer. The quality of the dried product was analyzed measuring moisture, protein, fat, ash, peroxide value and Total Volatile Base Nitrogen (TVB-N) content and analyzing water reconstitution properties. Traditional sun dried Bombay duck and Silver pomfret were also collected from different area, and the same measurement was also performed and compared with solar tunnel dried fish samples. Microbial quality was also analyzed using standard methods. Organoleptic quality of solar tunnel dried fish samples was found very well without any objectionable flavor and odor, compared with traditional sun dried fish samples. Moisture content was also observed (15.25 % in Bombay duck and 13.43 % in Silver pomfret) within the acceptable range. Protein content of solar dried fish samples was also found higher than that of traditional sun dried samples and water reconstitution power was also found better. Peroxide and TVB-N value of the solar tunnel dried studied samples were found within the normal limit of 10-20meq/kg of oil and up to 30 mg/100gm, respectively. Aerobic Plate Count was found lower, however Salmonella and Coliform was not found in both dried samples. The quality of solar tunnel dried Bombay duck and Silver pomfret samples were of excellent compared with samples dried by traditional sun drying method.
PRC-Latin America Economic Cooperation: Going beyond Resource and Manufacturing Complementarity

Despite the rapid development of economic interaction between the Peopleâ€™s Republic of China (PRC) and Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries, their trade and investment ties are still in their very early stages, and the complementarily of factor endowments dominates their bilateral trade pattern. By examining the determinants of trade performance of the PRC and LAC economies, and stimulating alternative scenarios for their economic opening and cooperation , the PRC and LAC economies need to move beyond their traditional focus on resource complementarity to more dynamic, foreign direct investment(FDI) based intra-industry trade. Policies that encourage deep economic integration would help Latin America firms integrate into the value chains of global production and enable Chinese and other East Asian firms to have greater and more stable access to resources and markets. Further liberalization of trade, FDI regimes and regulatory policies should be of high priority for most LAC countries, while the PRC and other East Asian economies could make a great contribution to trade ties by investing in manufacturing sectors and infrastructure in Latin America. [WP 137]
Alternative Title: A comparative study of feature level fusion strategies for Multimodal Biometric Systems based on Face and Iris

Com o avanço da tecnologia, novas abordagens para o reconhecimento automático da identidade de uma pessoa têm sido propostas e tal fato tem encorajado o emprego de Sistemas Biométricos. Essa abordagem utiliza caracteŕısticas f́ısicas ou comportamentais de uma pessoa para realizar a sua identificação. Os Sistemas Biométricos podem ser classificados como Unimodais ou Multimodais. Sistemas Biométricos Unimodais utilizam apenas uma modalidade biométrica para realizar o reconhecimento, ao passo que os Sistemas Biométricos Multimodais empregam duas ou mais modalidades. A construção de um Sistema Biométrico Multimodal pode ser realizada de diferentes formas, as quais são categorizadas de acordo com a sua arquitetura, ńıvel de fusão e estratégia de fusão. O objetivo deste trabalho é investigar diferentes formas de fusão de modalidades biométricas no ńıvel de caracteŕıstica, visando projetar um sistema multimodal com alto poder de reconhecimento. Neste artigo, nós utilizamos a Transformada Wavelet para extrair um conjunto de caracteŕısticas de imagens de face e ı́ris. Os resultados obtidos mostram que os Sistemas Biométricos Multimodais apresentam melhor desempenho que os Sistemas Biométricos Unimodais, em termos de taxa de reconhecimento calculada sobre a sáıda produzida pela Máquina de Vetores Suporte usada como classificador.
A Framework for Extracting the Probability of Default from Listed Stock Option Prices

This paper develops a framework to estimate the probability of default (PD) implied in listed stock options. The underlying option pricing model measures PD as the intensity of a jump diffusion process, in which the underlying stock price jumps to zero at default. We adopt a two-stage calibration algorithm to obtain the precise estimator of PD. In the calibration procedure, we improve the fitness of the option pricing model via the implementation of the time inhomogeneous term structure model in the option pricing model. Since the term structure model perfectly fits the actual term structure, we resolve the estimation bias caused by the poor fitness of the time homogeneous term structure model. It is demonstrated that the PD estimator from listed stock options can provide meaningful insights on the pricing of credit derivatives like credit default swap.
Evaluation of Patients with Gastrectomy for Malignity of Anastomosis Line

DOI: 10.4328/JCAM.1305 Received: 25.09. 2012 Accepted: 08.11. 2012 Printed: 01.07. 2014 J Clin Anal Med 2014;5(4): 276-9 Corresponding Author: Serden Ay, Konya Eğitim ve Araştırma Hastanesi, Necip Fazıl Mah. Ateşbazı Sok. Meram Yeniyol, 42040, Meram, Konya, Türkiye. T. : +90 3323236709 E-Mail: serdenay@yahoo.com Özet Amaç: Mide ameliyatı geçirmiş hastaların anastomoz hattından alınan biyopsilerin histopatolojik inceleme sonuçlarını malignite açısından değerlendirmeyi amaçladık. Gereç ve Yöntem: Ocak 2009 ile Aralık 2011 tarihleri arasında Konya Eğitim ve Araştırma Hastanesi Genel Cerrahi Endoskopi Ünitesinde üst gastrointestinal sistem (GİS) endoskopisi yapılan hastalardan mide ameliyatı geçirmiş 23 hastanın endoskopik bulguları ve anastomoz hattından alınan biyopsi kayıtları, Helicobacter pylori varlığı, intestinal metaplazi (İM), displazi ve kanser açısından geriye dönük olarak incelendi. Bulgular: Hastaların yaş ortalaması 63 (30-82) olup 17’si (%74) erkek, 6’sı (%26) kadındı. Bunların 15’i (%65) malign nedenle, 8’i (%35) benign nedenle mide ameliyatı geçirmişti. Ameliyattan sonra geçen süre ortalama 46 (12-144) ay idi. Ameliyatların 17’si (%74) Billroth II, 3’ü (%13) rezeksiyonsuz gastroenterestomi, 2’si (%9) total gastrektomi, 1’i (%4) Billroth I idi. Endoskopik değerlendirmede 14 (%61) hastada alkalen reflü gastrit, 6 (%26) hastada anastomoz ülseri, 2 (%9) hastada polip, 1 (%4) hastada kanser tanımlandı. Biyopsi sonuçlarının histopatolojik incelenmesinde 5 (%22) reaktif hiperplazik değişiklikler, 5 (%22) kronik aktif gastrit, 5 (%22) displazi, 3 (%13) İM, 2 (%9) kanser tespit edildi. Tartışma: Mide ameliyatlı hastalarda, ameliyattan sonra geçen süreyle paralel olarak anastomoz hattında İM ve ardından displazi görülmektedir. Endoskopi ile takip, displazi evresinde teşhisi ve uygun tedaviyi mümkün kılacaktır.
The effect of refining process on the conjugated dienes in soybean oil.

The present study was carried out to investigate the effect of various refining processes’ conditions on conjugated dienes in soybean oil. Conjugated dienes contents of soybean oil were found to undergo reduction in neutralization and bleaching steps while being increased in deodorization. It was observed that alkali refining (neutralization) through 12 and 14 °Be, bleaching with either acid activated clay or a mixture of acid activated clay plus activated carbon at 110uC along with deodorization at 220uC and at 4 or 8 mbar had the highest effect on reduction of conjugated dienes in soybean oil. Conjugated dienes were in good correlation with peroxide value, free fatty acids, Totox value and as well with p-anisidine value in each step. Overall, alkali refining proved to be the most effective step in reduction of conjugated dienes, free fatty acids and oxidative stability index. Peroxide value, p-anisidine and Totox values changed during refining and got significantly decreased in deodorization.
A Novel Detection Scheme with Multiple Observations for Sparse Signal Based on Likelihood Ratio Test with Sparse Estimation

Recently, the problem of detecting unknown and arbitrary sparse signals has attracted much attention from researchers in various fields. However, there remains a peck of difficulties and challenges as the key information is only contained in a small fraction of the signal and due to the absence of prior information. In this paper, we consider a more general and practical scenario of multiple observations with no prior information except for the sparsity of the signal. A new detection scheme referred to as the likelihood ratio test with sparse estimation (LRT-SE) is presented. Under the Neyman-Pearson testing framework, LRT-SE estimates the unknown signal by employing the -minimization technique from compressive sensing theory. The detection performance of LRT-SE is preliminarily analyzed in terms of error probabilities in finite size and Chernoff consistency in high dimensional condition. The error exponent is introduced to describe the decay rate of the error probability as observations number grows. Finally, these properties of LRT-SE are demonstrated based on the experimental results of synthetic sparse signals and sparse signals from real satellite telemetry data. It could be concluded that the proposed detection scheme performs very close to the optimal detector.
Grey Wolf Algorithm for Requirements Prioritization

Requirement prioritization is one of the most important approach in the process of requirement engineering due to use it in order to prioritize the execution sort of requirements with taking into account the viewpoints of stakeholders. Thus, in this study, grey wolf optimization (GWO) algorithm is applied in order to prioritize the requirements of a software project. GWO imitates the hunting behavior of grey wolves in nature. Which distinct from others that it has dominant leadership hierarchy which contains four main types; alpha, beta delta and omega wolves. In this paper, a proposed algorithm is presented to prioritize the requirements into ordered list. Furthermore, it is compared and evaluated with analytical hierarchy process (AHP) technique in terms of average running time and dataset size. The findings display that the RP-GWO performs better than AHP mechanism by approximately (30%).
Identification of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Epidermidis (MRSE) in Mild, Moderate and Severe Acne Patients

Acne cases caused by Staphylococcus epidermidis bacteria have been reported previously. This study identified methicillin resistant Staphylococcus epidermidis (MRSE) directly from pus speciment from acne patients at various degree of severity. There were 61% positive samples detected by Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) for MRSE using target gene mecA for PCR amplification of acne samples. Significant correlation between the severity of acne and its causative agent (MRSE) was not found.
Refinement of a previous hypothesis of the Lyapunov analysis of isotropic turbulence

The purpose of this brief comunication is to improve a hypothesis of the previous work of the author (de Divitiis, Theor Comput Fluid Dyn, doi:10.1007/s00162-010-0211-9) dealing with the finite--scale Lyapunov analysis of isotropic turbulence. There, the analytical expression of the structure function of the longitudinal velocity difference $\Delta u_r$ is derived through a statistical analysis of the Fourier transformed Navier-Stokes equations, and by means of considerations regarding the scales of the velocity fluctuations, which arise from the Kolmogorov theory. Due to these latter considerations, this Lyapunov analysis seems to need some of the results of the Kolmogorov theory. This work proposes a more rigorous demonstration which leads to the same structure function, without using the Kolmogorov scale. This proof assumes that pair and triple longitudinal correlations are sufficient to determine the statistics of $\Delta u_r$, and adopts a reasonable canonical decomposition of the velocity difference in terms of proper stochastic variables which are adequate to describe the mechanism of kinetic energy cascade.