Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
FINANCIAL RISK MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES AND THE GROWTH OF MICROFINANCE SECTOR IN KENYA

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate how financial risk management strategies lead to growth of MFI sector in Kenya. Methodology: The study adopted a correlation survey research design. The population of this study was fifty seven (57) MFIs. The sampling frame was the list of MFIs provided in the AMFI website www.amfikenya. com. A sample of thirteen (17) MFIs was selected using the random sampling approach. A questionnaire and an interview schedule were the main data collection tools. Qualitative data was analyzed using content analysis whereas the quantitative data was analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) where descriptive and regression analysis were conducted to determine the relationship between enterprise risk management strategies and growth of MFIs. Findings: The findings indicated that MFIs had effective financial risk management strategies such as effective credit risk management practices, liquidity risk management practices, interest risk management practices and price risk management practices. In particular, MFIs took into consideration the conditions, characters, capacity, collateral and capital of borrowers. Strict debt collection practices were widely adopted by MFIs. In addition, the concept of Know Your Customer (KYC) policy, seem to have been adopted by MFIs. The relationship between financial risk management strategies and growth was positive and significant. It also shown that sources of funds for MFIs include external sources and internal sources and the most frequently used source of funds are bank loans. The use of banks loans may present various risk exposures to MFIs, the most significant being interest rate risk. However, the ability of MFIs to source funds from various sources indicates that MFIs can apply the pecking order by first exploiting internal sources of funds since they present a lower financial risks and then move on to external sources. However, despite the financial risk exposure accompanied by leverage from external sources, MFIs may also benefit as they may experience higher growth driven by the leverage. It was also found that MFIs had put in place a number of good practices that had emerged to promote responsible and inclusive lending. These include loan size limits, standardized (simple) loan terms, zero tolerance on delinquency, group-based lending. This finding implies that MFIs have put in place effective credit risk management policies which are part of an overall financial risk management strategy. The existence of effective financial risk management practices may have influenced the growth of MFIs Unique contribution to theory, practice and policy: The study recommends that the MFIs to continue practicing effective financial management practices as this would improve the growth of MFIs.
Conservative management of Achilles Tendinopathy: a case report.

OBJECTIVE To chronicle the conservative treatment and management of a 77-year old female patient presenting with chronic pain of 8 months duration in the midportion of the achilles tendon diagnosed as achilles tendinopathy. CLINICAL FEATURES The main clinical feature was pain in the midportion of the achilles tendon, 2 to 6 cm proximal to the calcaneal insertion. Symptom onset was gradual and unrelated to any acute trauma or overt injury mechanism. INTERVENTION AND OUTCOME The conservative treatment approach consisted of medical acupuncture with electrical stimulation, Graston Technique®, eccentric calf training, and rehabilitative exercise prescription. Outcome measures included verbal pain rating scale, lower extremity functional scale (LEFS), and a return to activities of daily living (ADLs). The patient attained long-term resolution of her complaint and at 12 month follow-up reported no recurrence of symptoms. CONCLUSION A combination of conservative rehabilitation strategies may be used by chiropractors to treat midportion achilles tendinopathy and allow an individual to return to pain free ADLs in a timely manner.
Amitriptyline and fluphenazine in the treatment of postherpetic neuralgia.

BACKGROUND Postherpetic neuralgia (PHN) is a vexing problem occurring in 10 to 20 percent of people with from herpes zoster (shingles). Anecdotal reports show that fluphenazine enhances the effects of amitriptyline for the treatment of PHN. The aim of this study was to determine, in a controlled manner, whether this was the case. METHODS In a double-blind placebo-controlled study, 49 patients with PHN were randomly assigned to four treatment groups: Group 1, amitriptyline; Group 2, amitriptyline and fluphenazine; Group 3, fluphenazine; Group 4, a placebo. An active placebo was used to mimic the anticholinergic side effects of dry mouth. The study lasted 8 weeks, with weekly progress evaluations with use of visual analog scales (VAS), the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ), and a side-effects scale. RESULTS A statistically significant decrease was seen in pain in Groups 1 and 2, and no significant changes were seen in Groups 3 and 4. There was no significant difference when fluphenazine was added to amitriptyline. CONCLUSION These data support the effectiveness of amitriptyline in treatment of PHN, but do not support the addition of fluphenazine.
Estimating the significance of sequence order in protein secondary structure and prediction

MOTIVATION How critical is the sequence order information in predicting protein secondary structure segments? We tried to get a rough insight on it from a theoretical approach using both a prediction algorithm and structural fragments from Protein Databank (PDB). RESULTS Using reverse protein sequences and PDB structural fragments, we theoretically estimated the significance of the order for protein secondary structure and prediction. On average: (1) 79% of protein sequence segments resulted in the same prediction in both normal and reverse directions, which indicated a relatively high conservation of secondary structure propensity in the reverse direction; (2) the reversed sequence prediction alone performed less accurately than the normal forward sequence prediction, but comparably high (2% difference); (3) the commonly predicted regions showed a slightly higher prediction accuracy (4%) than the normal sequences prediction; and (4) structural fragments which have counterparts in reverse direction in the same protein showed a comparable degree of secondary structure conservation (73% identity with reversed structures on average for pentamers). CONTACT jong@biosophy.org; dietmann@ebi.ac. uk; heger@ebi.ac. uk; holm@ebi.ac. uk
A digital atlas of breast histopathology: an application of web based virtual microscopy

Aims: To develop an educationally useful atlas of breast histopathology, using advanced web based virtual microscopy technology. Methods: By using a robotic microscope and software adopted and modified from the aerial and satellite imaging industry, a virtual microscopy system was developed that allows fully automated slide scanning and image distribution via the internet. More than 150 slides were scanned at high resolution with an oil immersion ×40 objective (numerical aperture, 1.3) and archived on an image server residing in a high speed university network. Results: A publicly available website was constructed, http://www.webmicroscope. net/breastatlas, which features a comprehensive virtual slide atlas of breast histopathology according to the World Health Organisation 2003 classification. Users can view any part of an entire specimen at any magnification within a standard web browser. The virtual slides are supplemented with concise textual descriptions, but can also be viewed without diagnostic information for self assessment of histopathology skills. Conclusions: Using the technology described here, it is feasible to develop clinically and educationally useful virtual microscopy applications. Web based virtual microscopy will probably become widely used at all levels in pathology teaching.
Accrual anomaly and accounting standards

Accrual anomaly was introduced to the financial market and accounting research by Sloan (1996). The anomaly consists of two empirical regularities. (1) The current accrual component of earnings predicts future earnings less well than the current cash flow component, in other words, the “earnings persistency” of the accrual component is lower than that of the cash flow component. (2) Contrary to the efficient market hypothesis, stock prices fail to fully reflect this information contained in the current earnings components; financial markets treat the accrual component of earnings as more persistent and the cash flow component as less persistent than they truly are. This thesis examines whether the accrual anomaly found mainly in the U.S. stock markets exists in Finland as well, and whether the adoption of IFRS has any positive or negative effects to this particular financial market anomaly. The empirical analysis employs an ordinary least squares regression analysis to discern any overor underweighting of the earnings components by the financial markets. The sample consists of Finnish publicly listed companies included in the OMX Helsinki Index (HEX), spanning the years 1993-2013. The preliminary results indicate accrual overweighting for the pre-IFRS sub-period, which vanishes by the introduction of IFRS. The introduction of IFRS to the Finnish institutional setting therefore increases the quality of financial statements, as evidenced by the elimination of accrual overweighting for the post-IFRS sub-period. The results after robustness testing however negate the preliminary results, as accrual overweighting vanishes for the pre-IFRS sub-period when running robust regressions. There is however disagreement among researchers on conducting robustness tests, and indeed most of the research on accrual anomaly does not conduct conventional robustness testing of the results. The interpretation of results and the conclusions to be drawn from them depend on the position taken towards robustness testing in accrual anomaly research. At the least it can be stated that the results of the empirical tests are contrary to establishing a positive connection between accrual anomaly and fair value accounting standards represented by IFRS.
An alternative solution to service delivery problems in developing countries

James, O. (2011). ‘Managing citizens’ expectations of public service performance: evidence from observation and experimentation in local government’, Public Administration, 89 (4), 1419–35, available at http://doi.wiley. com/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2011. 01962.x (accessed 15 August 2014).
The Economic Impact of Technology Infrastructure for Additive Manufacturing

Across an array of industries from aerospace to personalized medical devices, additive manufacturing (AM) technologies are used to make objects and parts by joining ultrathin layers of material layer by layer. A recent study1 commissioned by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) finds AM has great “potential to enable both sustaining and disruptive innovation but is held back by inadequate technology infrastructure needed to support the further development and application of AM technologies. ” Technology infrastructure2 is the broad base of public and quasi-public technologies and technical knowledge that support the research, development, production and diffusion activities of national laboratories, universities and firms alike. The unique contribution of this study is to identify AM technology needs closely aligned with NIST’s mission and estimate the impact of meeting these needs.
Compartilhamento de conhecimentos em uma feira livre: reflexões sobre os relacionamentos entre feirantes e fregueses

The fairs are spaces for both the business as leisure and meetings, becoming environments conducive to knowledge sharing. Despite its wealth to organizational studies, there have been no studies that deal with the sharing of knowledge in such contexts. In this sense, the present investigates how the vendors share knowledge with each other and with customers, emphasizing the nature of relationships between them. For this purpose, a qualitative research was conducted through semi-structured interviews with marketers and costumers of the Free Fair of Campina Grande-PB. The results show some knowledge sharing examples, besides indicating that relationships are permeated with friendship, loyalty and trust between merchants and customers. Already, between the vendors themselves, there was detachment, politeness and disloyalty.
A novel scheme for relay cooperation in interweave cognitive radio systems

In this paper, we investigate the benefits of using cooperative relays in interweave (opportunistic) cognitive radio systems. A novel distributed space frequency (DSF) code for relay cooperation is presented. The code is designed to be a multi-user multi-OFDM channels code. It achieves a cooperative diversity gain of order NL for all users, where N is the number of relays and L is the number of paths in the multi-path fading channel. Simulation results show that using this DSF code by relays in the proposed system significantly increases system throughput. This code depends on transmitting the signal of each secondary user on a number of channels. Hence, each source will be less sensitive to spatial and temporal variations in channels availability which is one of the main problems in interweave cognitive radio systems.
Cytochrome P450 Eicosanoids are Activators of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor α

Cytochrome P450 (P450) eicosanoids regulate vascular tone, renal tubular transport, cellular proliferation, and inflammation. Both the CYP4A ω-hydroxylases, which catalyze 20-hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acid (20-HETE) formation, and soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH), which catalyzes epoxyeicosatrienoic acid (EET) degradation to the dihydroxyeicosatrienoic acids (DHETs), are induced upon activation of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor α (PPARα) by fatty acids and fibrates. In contrast, the CYP2C epoxygenases, which are responsible for EET formation, are repressed after fibrate treatment. We show here that P450 eicosanoids can bind to and activate PPARα and result in the modulation of PPARα target gene expression. In transactivation assays, 14,15-DHET, 11,2-EET, and 20-HETE were potent activators of PPARα. Gel shift assays showed that EETs, DHETs, and 20-HETE induced PPARα-specific binding to its cognate response element. Expression of apolipoprotein A-I was decreased 70% by 20-HETE, whereas apolipoprotein A-II expression was increased up to 3-fold by 11,12-EET, 14,15-DHET, and 20-HETE. In addition, P450 eicosanoids induced CYP4A1, sEH, and CYP2C11 expression, suggesting that they can regulate their own levels. Given that P450 eicosanoids have multiple cardiovascular effects, pharmacological modulation of their formation and/or degradation may yield therapeutic benefits.
Treatment strategies for skeletal complications of cancer

Skeletal complications are a common result of many cancers, particularly of multiple myeloma and bone metastases of solid tumors originating in the breast, prostate, or lung. A number of treatment options are available, including radiotherapy, radiopharmaceuticals, surgery, and chemotherapy. Recently, bisphosphonates have emerged as a promising new treatment option for bone complications of cancer. These agents are potent inhibitors of osteoclast activity that bind to the bone matrix, are released during bone resorption, and are subsequently internalized by osteoclasts, where they interfere with biochemical pathways and induce osteoclast apoptosis. Bisphosphonates also antagonize osteoclastogenesis and promote the differentiation of osteoblasts. As a result, bisphosphonates inhibit tumor-induced osteolysis and reduce skeletal morbidity. Bisphosphonates are generally well tolerated, although they have recently been associated with osteonecrosis of the jaw, a painful and debilitating side effect that is only beginning to be understood. Despite this concern, bisphosphonates are an important tool in the management of skeletal complications of cancer, providing benefits for the treatment of hypercalcemia, osteolytic lesions, and fractures, as well as offering amelioration of pain and improvement in quality of life.
Activity regulates the levels of acetylcholine receptor a-subunit mRNA in cultured chicken myotubes ( allelic variants / restriction fragment-length polymorphism / control of mRNA accumulation / denervation hypersensitivity )

In vitro blocking the spontaneous activity of primary cultures of chicken embryo myotubes with tetrodotoxin increases ~2-fold their content in surface acetylcholine receptor. To investigate this effect at the level of gene expression, chicken genomic DNA sequences coding for the acetylcholine receptor a subunit were isolated and characterized. They were shown to belong to a single-copy, polymorphic gene with at least two alleles in the chicken strain utilized. Probes derived from these genomic clones were used to quantitate levels of a-subunit mRNA. In culture, a 2-day exposure to tetrodotoxin increased these mRNA levels up to 13-fold, a value similar to that observed after denervation of chick leg muscle (-17-fold). Actin mRNA levels varied little in any of these experiments. These results support the notion that membrane electrical activity affects acetylcholine receptor expression by regulating the accumulation ofthe corresponding
What is better: to be roughly right or exactly wrong? The role of quantitative methods in financial accounting

The aim of this commentary is to discuss whether quantitative techniques are relevant for the development of financial accounting practice. We focus on the use of quantitative techniques in financial accounting practice rather than financial accounting research because since Ball and Brown (1968) and Beaver (1968), the association with academic research has already received considerable attention and produced a broad range of manuscripts. Our focal point is particularly within the rules of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs), which allow or request the fair value measurement. Therefore, we aim to bridge this concept with quantitative techniques. We conclude that the use of quantitative methods in financial accounting is closely related to the development and use of fair value measurement in financial reports. Last but not least, some examples are given of how quantitative methods can improve the success of financial reports in the future.
DISCRETIONARY EXPENDITURES AND WEALTH CREATION IN INDIAN COMPANIES

Theoretical and empirical studies have modeled R&D and advertising expenditures as investments in intangible capital. This study involves an empirical analysis on the valuation effects of discretionary expenditures. The potential differences in the effectiveness of R&D and Advertisement on valuation according to firm size is examined. The study was carried out using a sample of 126 R&D intensive and 393 Advertisement intensive firms. Four regression models were used to examine the significance of valuation effects. The study finds that the size of a firm is an important variable in determining the amount invested in R&D expenses. As the size of the firm increases, greater is the investment in R&D expenses. High R&D intensive firms have higher excess valuation effects, which may lead to the creation of intangible capital. The study also suggests that lesser the investment opportunities for a firm greater will be its investment in R&D expenses. Higher advertisement investments will lead to greater profitability for the firm and vice versa. This research paper attempts to fill the gap with respect to valuation studies involving discretionary expenditures in Indian context.
The Effects of IFRS Adoption: A Review of the Early Empirical Evidence

This review documents the conceptual and methodological issues that relate to the domain of financial reporting research that attempts to examine whether there are measurable gains, (if any) stemming from the adoption of international financial reporting standards, (IFRS). It selects and reviews four recent papers from conceptual, research design and policy perspectives. Information content, uncertainty-disclosure, value relevance and earnings and accounting quality studies have all attempted to show the benefits of finer and increased information environments. Notwithstanding the early evidence, this review argues that the papers face both epistemological and research design problems, in that IFRS adoption effect studies do not take cognizance of the contributions of the literatures on financial integration, earnings sustainability and market microstructure.
Towards Network-Failure-Tolerant Web Content Delivery: A Path-Aware Peer-Assisted Approach

Popularly used to distribute a variety of multimedia content items in today's Internet, HTTP-based web content delivery still suffers from various content delivery failures, including server failures [1], network failures [2] and routing failures [3]. Hindered by the expensive deployment cost, the conventional CDN can not deploy as many edge servers as possible to successfully deliver content items to all users under these delivery failures. In this paper, we propose a joint CDN and peer-assisted web content delivery framework to address the delivery failure problem. Different from conventional peer- assisted approaches for web content delivery, which mainly focus on alleviating the CDN servers' bandwidth load, we study how to use a browser-based peer-assisted scheme, namely WebRTC, to resolve content delivery failures. To this end, we carry out large-scale measurement studies on how users access and view webpages. Our measurement results demonstrate the challenges (e.g., peers stay on a webpage extremely short) that can not be directly solved by conventional P2P strategies, and some important webpage viewing patterns (e.g., predictability of users' webpage viewing time). Due to these unique characteristics, WebRTC peers open up new possibilities for helping the web content delivery, coming with the problem of how to utilize the dynamic resources efficiently. We formulate the peer selection that is the critical strategy in our framework, as an optimization problem, and design a heuristic algorithm based on the mea- surement insights to solve it. Our simulation experiments driven by the traces from Tencent QZone, one of the most popular social service platforms in China, demonstrate the effectiveness of our design: compared with non-peer-assisted strategy and random peer selection strategy, our design significantly improves the successful relay ratio of web content items under network failures, e.g., our design improves the content download ratio up to 60% even when users located in a particular region (e.g., city) where none can connect to the regional CDN server.
Impact of Series Resistance on Bulk CMOS Current Matching Over the 5–300K Temperature Range

This letter presents the impact of source/drain series resistance on the matching of bulk nMOS and pMOS field-effect transistor current over the 5–300K temperature range. A new method to extract series resistance is introduced, and we show experimentally that current variations, considering series resistance, increase as temperature decreases. Moreover, we propose a new approach to calculate the current mismatch based on MOSFET parameters and series resistance. The approach predicts the current variation better than the conventional model over the examined temperatures.