Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Empirical Testing of Capital Asset Pricing Model on Bahrain Bourse

The study is undertaken to find out the relationship between portfolio returns and market returns and test the empirical validity of the standard CAPM model on Bahrain Bourse. The study is based on 39 companies listed in the Bahrain Bourse, Bahrain All Share Index as market proxy and yield of Government of Bahrain securities as risk free rate of return. The study covers period from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2014. The analysis of the results of the study revealed that many of the independent variables together with beta can explain the portfolio returns. However, the intercept test reveals that the portfolio returns are equal to the risk-free rate of return. Therefore, we can conclude that the results of intercept test of standard CAPM proves the theory and the beta test results goes against the standard theory.
Current research and clinical trials for a vaccine against Chikungunya virus

Correspondence: Mala Chhabra National Centre for Disease Control, 22-Sham Nath Marg, New Delhi 110054, India Tel +91 11 2390 9236 Fax +91 11 2392 2677 Email malachhabra@yahoo.co.in Abstract: Chikungunya infection is a self-limiting Aedes mosquito-borne arboviral disease with variable clinical manifestations, ranging from asymptomatic illness to a very severe and crippling arthralgia. Until recently, Chikungunya was a little known disease that re-emerged in 2005–2006, leading to major outbreaks on the Indian Ocean Islands and in South East Asia, and eventually extending its range to temperate regions. It drew global attention due to its explosive onset, extensive geographic distribution, and high morbidity. Since re-emergence, an estimated one million symptomatic cases with 0.1% fatality per year have been reported globally. A lack of herd immunity, vector control, and globalization and trade are clearly a problem in the spread of this disease. The Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) has also acquired biologically important mutations during its evolution, increasing its geographic reach. This disease has resulted in a loss of productivity in affected communities. The absence of a vaccine or an effective antiviral therapy makes dealing with this disease challenging for those involved in public health. There is an emergent need for an effective vaccine against CHIKV infection. The candidates that have been tested include attenuated living, nonliving and genetically engineered vaccines. Several of these vaccine candidates are in preclinical and clinical trials. This review outlines the current knowledge about chikungunya infection and vaccine development.
Estimation of the Salmonella spp. prevalence in pig farms with dry and wet feeding

Human salmonellosis originating from pork is an important zoonotic disease, and the objective of this study was to determine whether the Salmonella shedding was lower for pigs herds provided wet-feed compared to those on traditional dry rations. Four wet-feeding farms and six dry-feeding farms were selected. Individual faecal and feed samples were collected (faces 30, feed 10 from pigs per farm), and analysed for the presence of Salmonella. The results showed a low level of on-farm Salmonella shedding (overall prevalence from faecal samples 2.0% as well as 1.0% of the feed samples). The overall prevalence was 30% in studied farms (3 out of 10). Two of the dry-feeding farms (33.33%) tested positive compared to only one of the wet-feeding farms (25%). Salmonella was isolated in 5 of 180 faecal samples from farms with dry-feeding, compared to farms with wet-feeding where it was isolated in only one sample out of 120. Salmonella was also recovered from the feed on one dry-feeding farms but were not isolated from the farms using wet-feeding. These findings indicate that farms with wet-feeding are associated with lower (p<0.01) prevalence of Salmonella.
Stakeholder Power In Destination Branding: A Methodological Discussion

This paper presents a methodology to assess stakeholder power within the context of destination branding that triangulates the positional, reputational and decision-making approaches to power. Power is everywhere in tourism and the study of power in tourism has been examined from different perspectives. From a macro perspective, power has been studied as an essential component of public policies and planning analysis as well as a critical issue that relates tourism to political economy and development From a micro or image centred perspective, power in tourism has been discussed in Foucaldian terms as one of the major forces that shapes the construction of a tourist gaze. Stakeholder literature describes power as an attribute of a stakeholder together with legitimacy and urgency and stakeholder power is conceptualized in terms of the ability of a stakeholder to threaten an organization. The ability to characterize the stakeholders in terms of their relative power is a problematic issue and different measurement methods are available for assessing stakeholder power such as the positional method, the reputational method and the decision-making method. Following Westerheijden's conceptualization, the positional, reputational and decision-making approaches to assess stakeholder power within the study of the process of destination branding may be combined. The use of the three methods together allows triangulation of results therefore providing greater generalizability in the study of stakeholder power in the process of destination branding.
Perspective BUT YOU ’ RE NOT A TEACHER : BRIDGING THE DIVIDE BETWEEN ADULT AND TEACHER EDUCATION

In this autobiographical essay I discuss my role as an adult educator teaching in a teacher education program. I begin with an outline of my serendipitous pathway into the field of adult education, noting some moments in that journey that continue to inform my orientation to adult and lifelong learning. I then offer some reflections of my experiences teaching courses in a teacher education program, including moments of connection as well as disconnection.
Determination of deoxynivalenol and nivalenol producing chemotypes of Fusarium graminearum isolated from durum wheat in different Italian regions

Determination of deoxynivalenol and nivalenol producing chemotypes of Fusarium graminearum isolated from durum wheat in different Italian regions Durum wheat production in Italy is economically of great importance. Fusarium graminearum is the main fusarium head blight (FHB) causal agent in wheat, reducing both yield and grain quality. F. graminearum produces several mycotoxins and, among trichothecenes, deoxynivalenol (DON) and nivalenol (NIV) are the most studied for their toxicity towards humans and animals. DON-producing isolates can be further distinguished on the basis of the predominant acetyl-DON derivative in 3-acetyldeoxynivalenol (3-ADON) or 15-acetyldeoxynivalenol (15-ADON). In order to evaluate possible mycotoxin contamination risks in food, it is very important to know which chemotype is the prevalent in a F. graminearum population. F. graminearum sensu stricto strains were collected from symptomatic durum wheat heads and grains of several naturally infected fields located mostly in Emilia - Romagna, The Marche, Lazio, Tuscany and Umbria. A multiplex PCR in the region of genes Tri12, located in the terminal gene cluster of trichothecenes, was used to characterize 187 single-spore isolates of F. graminearum as NIV, 3-ADON and 15-ADON chemotypes. All the three chemotypes were present in the F. graminearum population studied. The most frequent chemotype was 15-ADON (83.4%), followed by 3-ADON (10.7%) and NIV (5.9%). NIV-producing isolates were found only in Emilia-Romagna (3.5%), Umbria (33.3%) and The Marche (5.7%).
Relationships Between Content Experience and the Development of Seriation Skills in First Grade Children. Final Report.

DOCUMENT RESUME 24 SP 004 047 Bonney, Lewis Alfred Relationships Between Content Experience and the Development of Seriation Skills in First Grade Children. Final Report. Arizona Univ., Tucson. Office of Education (DHEW), Washington, D.C. Bureau of Research. BR-0-1-024 70 OEG-9-700019(057) 75p. My/ EDRS Price MF-$0.50 HC-$3.85 *Early Childhood Education, Elementary School Students, Intellectual Development, Intelligence Tests, *Learning Experience, *Predictive Ability (Testing), *Preschool Evaluation, Preschool Tests, Primary Grades, *Student Ability This study is concerned with the manner in which experience with concrete, quantitative, interpersonal, and verbal content influences the development of ability patterns.in first grade children. The literature related to theoretical models of intellectual development indicates that abilities develop in response to experiential variables, such as content, and that content specific instruction may experimentally produce changes in the ability patterns of six-year-olds. Pilot studes were conducted and data to test the experimental hypotheses were collected from 240 first grade children. A Seriation Skills Test, which is included in the document, was prepared from these. A Solomon Four Group Designs used to ensure internal validity of the study and the effect of instruction on subtest scores and total scores Was assessed by performing an analysis of variance of group means observed on posttest. The results revealed high pretest intercorrelations among some seriation abilities and low pretest intercorrelations among others, and instruction did not significantly alter the relationships. The results suggest that to improve the reliability of infant and preschool scales and to select materials for home intervention and Head Start programs, Structure of Intellect content categories should be used as guides. (MBM)
Probabilistic Lexicalized Tree-Insertion Grammars in Automatic Speech Recognition

We evaluate probabilistic lexicalized tree-insertion grammars (PLTIGs) on a classification task relevant for automatic speech recognition. The baseline is a trigram model, smoothed through absolute discounting. Both language models are trained on an unannotated corpus, consisting of 10 000 sentences collected from the English section of Wikipedia. For the evaluation, an additional 150 random sentences were selected from the same source, and for each of these, approx. 3 200 variations were generated. Each variated sentence was obtained by replacing an arbitrary word by a similar word, chosen to be at most 2 edits from the original. In our experiments, the N -gram model preferred one of these alternative sentences in 43.1 percent of the cases, while the PLTIG was only mistaken in 3 percent of the cases.
The Application of Memetics applied in college English teaching

This study attempts from the perspective of memetics, conducts a empirical research of teaching College English . This study hopes to fne out how to apply memetics to College English teaching. This paper first introduces the current situation and teaching mode of memetics and College English . The author researches on the process of input and output of memetics and the theory of second language acquisition and memetics, as well as the ways to induce memetics into College English .
THE MORPHOLOGY AND I-V CHARACTERISTICS OF OMgZn XX 1 THIN FILMS DEPOSITED BY SPRAY PYROLYSIS TECHNIQUE

Mg doped ZnO thin films were deposited on a glass substrate by spray pyrolysis technique at a substrate temperature equal to under ambient atmosphere. The energy-dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX) spectra of the O Mg Zn X X 1 thin films reveals that all the films contain the elements (Zn, Mg, O) as expected, indicating formation of the O Mg Zn X X 1 films with high purity. From the (SEM) images the grain size values of the O Mg Zn X X 1 thin films deposited by (SP) technique are found to be in the ranges of (59-83)nm, (35-59)nm, (47-71)nm, (47-59)nm, (35-47)nm corresponding to the Mg-concentrations (x = 0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4) respectively. The I-V characteristics of Si n O Mg Zn X X / 1 heterojunction for dark and illuminated conditions have been investigated.
Rac 1 localization , activation and signaling is regulated by sequence and position of the hypervariable C-terminus 5

Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva. nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible.
Self-consistency requirements of the renormalization group for setting the renormalization scale

In conventional treatments, predictions from fixed-order perturbative QCD calculations cannot be fixed with certainty due to ambiguities in the choice of the renormalization scale as well as the renormalization scheme. In this paper we present a general discussion of the constraints of the renormalization group (RG) invariance on the choice of the renormalization scale. We adopt the RG based equations, which incorporate the scheme parameters, for a general exposition of RG invariance, since they simultaneously express the invariance of physical observables under both the variation of the renormalization scale and the renormalization scheme parameters. We then discuss the self-consistency requirements of the RG, such as reflexivity, symmetry, and transitivity, which must be satisfied by the scale-setting method. The Principle of Minimal Sensitivity (PMS) requires the slope of the approximant of an observable to vanish at the renormalization point. This criterion provides a scheme-independent estimation, but it violates the symmetry and transitivity properties of the RG and does not reproduce the Gell-Mann-Low scale for QED observables. The Principle of Maximum Conformality (PMC) satisfies all of the deductions of the RG invariance - reflectivity, symmetry, and transitivity. Using the PMC, all non-conformal {βRi}-terms (R stands for an arbitrary renormalization scheme) in themore » perturbative expansion series are summed into the running coupling, and one obtains a unique, scale-fixed, scheme-independent prediction at any finite order. The PMC scales and the resulting finite-order PMC predictions are both to high accuracy independent of the choice of initial renormalization scale, consistent with RG invariance. « less
Title Pension funding problem with regime-switching geometricbrownian motion assets and liabilities

This paper extends the pension funding model in Gerber and Shiu (2003) to a regime-switching case. The market mode is modeled by a continuous-time stationary Markov chain. The asset value process and liability value process are modeled by Markov-modulated geometric Brownian motions. We consider a pension funding plan in which the asset value is to be within a band that is proportional to the the liability value. The pension plan sponsor is asked to provide sufficient funds to guarantee the asset value stays above the lower barrier of the band. The amount by which the asset value exceeds the upper barrier will be paid back to the sponsor. By applying differential equation approach, this paper calculates the expected present value of the payments to be made by the sponsor as well as that of the refunds to the sponsor. In addition, we study the effects of different barriers and regime switching on the results using some numerical examples. The optimal dividend problem is studied in our examples as an application of our theory.
VIP methods for Sports Video - an Analysis

Video Annotation has become challenging process in the field of Sports Video. An every event with respect to the game requires the precise gloss. This has been done with different Video Image Processing(VIP) Techniques using MATLAB tool. This paper elaborates the all efficient video processing methods applied on the different sports videos and these analyzed results will be tested for Kabaddi Game for image mosaicking in the current case study.
Investigation of graph edit distance cost functions for detection of network anomalies

Computer networks are becoming ubiquitous. Accurately monitoring and managing the behaviour of these complex and dynamic networks is a challenging task. It has become crucial to develop and employ good network monitoring techniques that assist in identifying and correcting abnormalities that affect network reliability, performance, security and future planning. There has been significant research in the detection of change and anomalous events in computer networks. A recent novel approach represents the logical communications of a periodically observed network as a time series of graphs and applies the graph matching technique, graph edit distance, to monitor and detect anomalous behaviour in the network. To date, only simple cost functions for graph edit operations have been used in application to computer network monitoring. This article investigates simple normalisation and non-linear techniques in the graph edit distance cost function, to improve detection of specific traffic related network anomalies in the computer network domain.
National Surveys Via Rdd Telephone Interviewing Versus the Internet Comparing Sample Representativeness and Response Quality

In a national field experiment, the same questionnaires were administered simultaneously by RDD telephone interviewing, by the In- ternet with a probability sample, and by the Internet with a nonprobability sample of people who volunteered to do surveys for money. The probabil- ity samples were more representative of the nation than the nonprobability sample in terms of demographics and electoral participation, even after weighting. The nonprobability sample was biased toward being highly engaged in and knowledgeable about the survey's topic (politics). The telephone data manifested more random measurement error, more survey satisficing, and more social desirability response bias than did the Inter- net data, and the probability Internet sample manifested more random error and satisficing than did the volunteer Internet sample. Practice at completing surveys increased reporting accuracy among the probability Internet sample, and deciding only to do surveys on topics of personal interest enhanced reporting accuracy in the nonprobability Internet sam- ple. Thus, the nonprobability Internet method yielded the most accurate self-reports from the most biased sample, while the probability Internet sample manifested the optimal combination of sample composition ac- curacy and self-report accuracy. These results suggest that Internet data collection from a probability sample yields more accurate results than do
Industrial relations in European hypermarkets: Home and host country influences

In this article we examine the industrial relations practices of three large European food retailers when they transfer the hypermarket format to other countries. We ask, first, how industrial relations in hypermarkets differ from those in other food retailing outlets. Second, we examine how far the approach characteristic of each company’s country-of-origin (Germany, France and the UK) shapes the practices adopted elsewhere. Third, we ask how they respond to the specific industrial relations systems of each host country (Turkey, Poland, Ireland and Spain).
Bridging the gap between aquatic and terrestrial ecology Idea and coordination :

Although terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems differ in various respects (e.g. Carr et al. 2003), they are also strongly linked (e.g. Polis & Hurd 1995, Gende et al. 2002, Brashares et al. 2004, Knight et al. 2005, Orr et al. 2005). Unfortunately, ecologists working on these 2 eco-domains are, at best, only weakly linked. Steele (1995, p. 16) states: ‘I have emphasized the separation between marine and terrestrial ecological studies because there are major differences in concepts, in organization, and in funding‘. Analyses referring to the ‘conservation’ part of ecology (Irish & Norse 1996, Kochin & Levin 2003, Ormerod 2003) show that Steele’s remark is supported by quantitative evidence. Not only this, but ‘Unfortunately, ecologists who specialize in certain types of ecosystem tend to favor particular hypotheses and observations, and discount hypotheses and observations noted in other ecosystems. ‘ (Chase 2000, p. 412). Such barriers to communication, whether real or perceived, undoubtedly slow down progress in ecology as a discipline, and have profound implications for its advancement and effectiveness. Comparisons across eco-domains allow us to (1) identify the need for developing new theories and/or models for particular ecotypes (e.g. marine food webs: Link 2002; epidemiology: McCallum et al. 2004); (2) identify widely applicable ecological processes and develop nomothetic approaches to address critical ecological issues (see also Steele 1991, 1995, Chase 2000); and (3) design conservation plans and policies that
Focused Model Selection in Quantile Regression

We consider the problem of model selection for quantile regression analysis where a particular purpose of the modeling procedure has to be taken into account. Typical examples include estimation of the area under the curve in pharmacokinetics or estimation of the minimum eff ective dose in phase II clinical trials. A focused information criterion for quantile regression is developed, analyzed and investigated by means of a simulation study and data analysis.
EFFECTS ON THE SURFACE QUALITY IN THE MACHINING PROCESSES OF THE TOOL VIBRATIONS

The problem of surface quality and cutting stability in the machining processes is very important and is strictly connected with the final quality of the product. Therefore, this paper describes a new theoretical model for the dynamic cutting forces of orthogonal cutting in turning. A specific advantage for the presented model is the convenience for vibration prediction. The presented dynamic force model is used to predict variable cutting forces with dynamic cutting between cutting tool and workpiece. This model is considered two degree of freedom complex dynamic model of turning with orthogonal cutting system. The complex dynamic system consists of dynamic cutting system force model which is based on the shear angle (φ) oscillations and the penetration forces which are caused by the tool flank contact with the wavy surface.
Argument Representation for Dependable Computer-Based Systems

Society is becoming increasingly reliant upon the dependability of computerbased systems. Achieving and demonstrating the dependability of systems requires the construction and review of valid and coherent arguments. This paper discusses the need for a variety of classes of arguments in dependable systems and reviews existing approaches to the representation of arguments in each of these classes. The issues surrounding the certification of safety critical systems demonstrate the current need for richer representations of dependability arguments which support tools for their construction and review. The paper discusses how a meta-logical framework, informed by aspects of both formal and informal logic, offers a rich and unified means of representing dependability arguments and of thus addressing this need.