Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Market misvaluation and earnings management. Evidence from Italian financial market

Classical and behavioural finance theory overview. Classical finance theory. Market Inefficiencies. Behavioural Finance Theory. Investors’ Sentiment. Stock market overvaluation and undervaluation. Earnings management. Earnings management definition. The relationship between earnings and stock market. The relation between earnings management and stock market incentives. Detecting Earnings Management. The agency theory of overvalued equity and earnings management. Empirical evidences supporting the Jensen’s agency cost of overvalued equity and earnings management. Hypothesis Development. The Italian Insider System. The Italian institutional contest. Earnings management in Italy. Sample, Data and Variables’ Description. Sample description and data gathering. Variables’ description. Dependent variable: Change in Current Accruals and Change in Discretionary Accruals. Independent variable: Change in Market to Book Ratio. Control Variables. Model Specification and Descriptive Statistics. Model Specification. Descriptive statistics. Primary test – Changes in Total Accruals as a Dependent Variable. Robustness checks. Alternative sample composition. Alternative model specification.
CRYOPRESERVATION OF RAT BONE MARROW DERIVED MESENCHYMAL STEM CELLS BY TWO CONVENTIONAL AND OPEN-PULLED STRAW VITRIFICATION METHODS

Received: 9/Mar/2009, Accepted: 22/Aug/2009 Objective: Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are obtained from a variety of sources, mainly the bone marrow. These cells have a great potential for clinical research, however they cannot stay alive for long periods in culture. The aim of this study is to determine whether vitrification can be a useful freezing method for the storage of MSCs. Materials and Methods: Mesenchymal stem cells were isolated from rat bone marrow based on their capacity to adhere to plastic culture surfaces. MSCs were cryopreserved using both the vitrification method and open-pulled straw (OPS) vitrification and stored in liquid nitrogen with ethylene glycol ficoll (EFS) as a cryoprotectant for two months. The morphology and viability of thawed MSCs were evaluated by trypan blue staining. Furthermore, pre and post cryopreserved MSCs were induced to osteocyte and adipocyte with corresponding osteogenic and adipogenic medium. Results: After thawing, the viability rates were 81.33% ± 6.83 for the vitrification method and 80.83% ± 6.4 for OPS vitrification, while the values in the pre-vitrification control group were 88.16% ± 6.3 (Mean ± SD, n = 6). Post-cryopreserved cells from both the vitrification method and OPS vitrification also had a similar cellular morphology and colony-formation that was indistinguishable from non-vitrified fresh MSCs. In addition, the resuscitated cells cultured in induction medium showed osteogenesis. Mineral production and deposition was detectable by alizarine red S staining. Moreover, by applying an adipogenic differentiation condition, both pre and post cryopreserved cells differentiated into adipocyte and lipid vacuole accumulation that was stained by oil red O. Conclusion: Vitrification is a reliable and effective method for the cryopreservation of MSCs.
Effects of Dexamethasone on Rat Dendritic Cell Function

Glucocorticoids have been reported to affect immunity at varying concentrations. While glucocorticoids have shown profound effects on innate immunity, their effects on rat dendritic cells have not been fully examined. In this study, we evaluated the effects of the synthetic glucocorticoid dexamethasone on cultured rat dendritic cells (DCs) from spleen and derived from bone marrow cells to determine whether responsiveness to dexamethasone varies between DCs from different organ sites. Cells were analyzed for expression of glucocorticoid receptor (GR), the primary receptor through which dexamethasone exerts its effects and was found to be primarily located in the cytoplasm of immature DCs. Bone marrow-derived DCs showed more sensitivity to dexamethasone treatment compared to splenic DCs. Dexamethasone treatment of LPS-matured DCs had profound dose-dependent effects on cytokine production. Dexamethasone treatment also led to a dose-dependent downregulation of expression of costimulatory molecules by mature DCs. Dexamethasone modified immature DC uptake of antigen (FITC-Dextran), with slightly higher numbers of splenic DCs taking up antigen compared to bone marrow-derived DCs. These data suggest that dexamethasone is able to similarly affect both bone marrow-derived and splenic DC function at the immature and mature DC states and could contribute to exacerbation of infection by hindering DC-mediated immune responses.
Optimal spare utilization for reliability and mean lifetime improvement of logic built-in self-repair

Reliability and the mean lifetime are major aspects in today's semiconductor device manufacturing. The continuous downscaling of transistor sizes and power supplies are the root causes of higher vulnerabilities of integrated circuits against time zero process variation, time dependent degradation and random faults induced by environmental influences like particle strikes. Handling permanent faults becomes inevitably a suitable solution to guarantee high reliabilities as well as increased lifetimes. Built-in self-repair is a possible solution, which exchanges faulty units with spare parts at the costs of extra hardware. In this paper, we evaluate the influence of different replacement strategies and their resulting additional hardware structures on reliability and mean lifetime. This analytical process allows to find the optimal replacement strategy for a given system, without implementing and synthesizing each case.
CDOs: Are They Still Relevant?

The subprime debacle of 2007 has caused deep and wide-spread losses in the global financial system and has brought ‘innovative’ structured credit products such as CDOs under bitter criticism. It is argued that while such ‘innovative’ products provided liquidity which fuelled subprime lending, they also led to a wide dispersion of credit risk which exacerbated the contagion effect of the subprime crisis which originated in the U.S but spread across the global financial markets. Given this backdrop, it is useful to understand the technologies used in structuring ‘innovative’ credit product such as CDO and the theoretical motivations underlying these technologies. Using a typical CDO structure, this paper investigates into the motivations underlying the three essential technologies - pooling, securitization and tranching - used in structured credit products, and argues that there are sound motivations which justify the relevance of CDOs as a structured credit product.
Contrast inversion in non-contact atomic force microscopy imaging of C60 molecules

Non-contact atomic force microscopy (NC-AFM) was applied to study C60 molecules on rutile TiO2(110). Depending on the tip–sample distance, distinctly different molecular contrasts are observed. Systematically decreasing the tip–sample distance results in contrast inversion that is obtained reproducibly on the C60 islands. This change in contrast can be related to frequency shift versus distance (df(z)) curves at different sample sites, unraveling crossing points in the df(z) curves in the attractive regime. We have performed simulations based on a simple Morse potential, which reproduce the experimental results. This combined experimental and simulation study provides insight into the mechanisms responsible for molecular contrast in NC-AFM imaging. Moreover, this work demonstrates the importance of distance-dependent measurements for unambiguously identifying molecular positions within a molecular island using NC-AFM.
Credit risk analysis using a hybrid data mining model

Credit risk analysis is an important topic in financial risk management. Owing to recent financial crises, credit risk analysis has been the major focus of the financial and banking industry. An accurate estimation of credit risk could be transformed into a more efficient use of economic capital. To this end, a number of experiments have been conducted using representative learning algorithms, which were tested using two publicly credit datasets. The decision of which particular method to choose is a complicated problem. A good alternative to choosing only one method is to create a hybrid forecasting system incorporating a number of possible solution methods as components (an ensemble of classifiers). For this purpose, we have implemented a hybrid decision support system that combines the representative algorithms using a selective voting methodology and achieves better performance than any examined simple and ensemble method.
Adequacy of financial facilities for small business in Malaysia: preliminary findings

SMEs are highly viewed as crucial towards achieving a more equal income distribution and regional economic development, an upgrading skills of managers and workers, strengthening linkages in the economically diverse activities, transferring technology know-how, and complementary role to large and multinational corporations. Even though, there are as many as over 14 ministries and more than 36 government agencies and institutions that are involved in providing support programmes out of which some focus specifically for small businesses, the accessibility of these supports to the targeted businesses and how far small businesses make use of them are indeed difficult to ascertain. In this regard, a survey was carried out on 201 small businesses across all economic sectors in Klang Valley, Malaysia from June to December 2007. The study reveals a number of interesting findings: the majority of businesses receive the assistance; the assistance received by businesses is also quite diverse. The finding also indicates that among small businesses whose received the financial facilities, huge proportion of them acknowledged that financial facilities provided were inadequate to their need. These funds and schemes should be catered in the market for various needs of small businesses, i.e. at each stage of their life span i.e. start-up, expansion and rehabilitation.
A mapping algorithm for embedded coarse-grained reconfigurable processor

This paper proposes a novel VLSI architecture of an embedded coarse-grained reconfigurable processor, which consists of a general processor and a coarse-grained reconfigurable cell array (RCA). This processor can be reconfigured dynamically targeted at different media-processing applications. An algorithm based on loop pipeline technology is presented to address the compilation issue for the proposed architecture, which can effectively maps the computation intensive loops onto the RCA. The proposed VLSI architecture and the mapping algorithm have been verified with integer discrete cosine transform (DCT) and motion estimation of H.264 in FPGA. The performance of the reconfigurable processor is 3.81 times better than TI DSP TMS320DM642.
Revisiting Static Analysis of Android Malware

The mobile malware threat is fought by both static and dynamic analysis, two complementary approaches in need of constant sharpening. In this paper, static analysis is revisited to update and deepen knowledge about Android malware, correlate malicious samples through common artifacts, and further understand malware developers’ modus operandi. By looking at more than 200,000 malware samples, our study revealed interesting new insights such as: the presence of duplicated permissions in the manifest, the variation of the certificate validity period between malware and benign applications, the pertinence of looking at each sample’s certificate file name, and the presence of Android applications nested inside other applications (APKs inside APKs). We also seek to revisit previous findings from related work on Android static analysis in order to confirm or refute them. In some cases, our findings are significantly different from previous work (e.g., diversity of certificates used to sign malware). Therefore, since the Android malware landscape is evolving, we conclude that our overall knowledge must be kept up-to-date.
Social polarisation and housing careers Exploring the interrelationship of labour and housing markets in Australia

Since the turn of the twentieth century, the institutional design of the ‘wage earners welfare state’ in Australia has included broad access to, and state subsidies for, home ownership (Castles 1997). Private saving for home ownership over the life course led to low housing costs in retirement and an increased likelihood of avoiding poverty (Henderson et al. 1970). Reduced poverty in retirement and the broad social base to home ownership in Australia have, overall, meant greater economic equality (Whiteford and Kennedy 1995). Thus, home ownership has ameliorated inequalities arising from the labour market. Through the 1980s and 1990s, however, significant social and demographic changes have prompted debate about an emerging social polarisation (Saunders 1994). This paper draws upon data, from a 1996 survey of a national random sample of 25–70 year olds, to examine access to home ownership in the context of changing labour market opportunities. By exploring the interrelationship of labour and housing markets, the paper investigates whether home ownership in Australia continues to play a role in social redistribution. Working Paper No.13, March 1998 Australian Institute of Family Studies vii Australian Institute of Family Studies Working Paper No.13, March 1998 viii Acknowledgements For their constructive comments on earlier versions of this paper, thanks are due to Trevor Batrouney and Harry McGurk of the Australian Institute of Family Studies, and participants in the urban sociology stream of the 1997 Australian Sociological Association Conference, University of Wollongong. A version of this paper will be included in a memorial volume dedicated to the late Professor Chris Maher, to be published in 1998 by Monash University.
A Self-Guiding Catheter for Cardiac and Pulmonary Arterial Catheterization and Occlusion.∗∗

Summary 1. A self-guiding catheter has been described for placement in the right heart or pulmonary arteries of dogs. 2. This technic does not require a fluoroscope and localization is determined from the pressure recording. 3. The same catheter has likewise been used routinely for occlusion of the left pulmonary artery.
Estimation of HBV transfusion risk

1. Schroeder ML. Transfusion-associated graft-versus-host disease. Br J Haematol 2002;117:275-87. 2. Williamson LM, Stainsby D, Jones H, Love E, Chapman CE, Navarrete C, Lucas G, Beatty C, Casbard A, Cohen H. The impact of universal leukodepletion of the blood supply on hemovigilance reports of posttransfusion purpura and transfusion-associated graft-versus-host disease. Transfusion 2007;47:1455-67. 3. Guidance for industry—pre-storage leukocyte reduction of whole blood and blood components intended for transfusion. Rockville (MD): US Department of Health and Human Services, Food and Drug Administration, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research; 2001. 4. Miller J, Soignier Y, Panoskaltsis-Mortari A, McNearney SA, Yun GH, Fautsch SK, McKenna D, Le C, Defor TE, Burns LJ, Orchard PJ, Blazar BR, Wagner JE, Slungaard A, Weisdorf DJ, Okazaki IJ, McGlave PB. Successful adoptive transfer and in vivo expansion of human haploidentical NK cells in patients with cancer. Blood 2005;105:3051-7. 5. McKenna D, Sumstad D, Bostrom N, Kadidlo DM, Fautsch S, McNearney S, Dewaard R, McGlave PB, Weisdorf DJ, Wagner JE, McCullough J, Miller JS. Good manufacturing practices production of natural killer cells for immunotherapy: a six-year single-institution experience. Transfusion 2007;47:520-8. 6. Dudley ME, Yang JC, Sherry R, Hughes MS, Royal R, Kammula U, Robbins PF, Huang J, Citrin DE, Leitman SF, Wunderlich J, Restifo NP, Thomasian A, Downey SG, Smith FO, Klapper J, Morton K, Laurencot C, White DE, Rosenberg SA. Adoptive cell therapy for patients with metastatic melanoma: evaluation of intensive myeloablative chemoradiation preparative regimens. J Clin Oncol 2008;26: 5233-9. 7. Lundqvist A, McCoy JP, Samsel L, Childs R. Reduction of GVHD and enhanced antitumor effects after adoptive infusion of alloreactive ly49-mismatched NK cells from MHCmatched donors. Blood 2007;109:3603-6.
Fast 3D Ray Tracing for Indoor Coverage Solutions

Optimal wireless indoor network planning requires huge number of iterations and evaluations of indoor coverage for each antenna location until an optimal solution is reached. Consequently, accurate and scalable calculation of power strength for indoor scenarios becomes necessary. The contribution in this paper is to reduce the complexity of 3D ray tracing for deterministic indoor power prediction. In order to achieve that while preserving the accuracy, image theory with feasible reflection volume as preprocessing approach is introduced. This proposed algorithm stores the image, its feasible reflection volume and valid area of receiving points. Significant complexity reduction is achieved by calculating the received power using these stored preprocessing data. The preprocessing algorithm is tested for different 3D indoor layouts. Simulation results show the reduction of the complexity of the proposed algorithm compared to image theory based with tracing back algorithm.
A neural network approach to interference mechanism for logic programming language

It is known that the Hopfield-type neural network can solve the combinatorial optimization problem with a high speed. In order to realize that advantage, however, the energy function must be constructed for each problem, and there is no general framework to be applied to various problems. This paper notes that the logic programming language Prolog can be represented as the logical operation of facts and the rules, and proposes an algorithm, which converts the logical operation network to the Hopfield-type neural network. Using this conversion algorithm, the power of the Hopfield-type network as an optimization machine can be utilized in the logic inference described by Prolog. Then, it is expected that the range of its application will be enlarged greatly. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 35(13): 63–70, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (). DOI 10.1002sscj. 10102
HLT modules scalability within the NESPOLE! project

The spoken dialogue translation project NESPOLE! proposed two showcases in order to focus on two important issues: scalability-namely, the capability of a system to progressively handle larger portions of a given domain and cross-domain portability. Those concerns were rather new when the project was proposed. ShowCase-1 dealt with limited tourism, while ShowCase-2 consisted of ShowCase-2a on extended tourism (thus focusing on scalability) and ShowCase-2b on a medical domain (thus focusing on cross-domain portability). In this article, we address the issue of scalability for the French analysis and generation modules in the tourism domain. We discuss ShC-1 and ShC-2a evaluations results and evaluate our progress.
Existence and Stability of Standing Pulses in Neural Networks: I. Existence

We consider the existence of standing pulse solutions of a neural network integro-differential equa- tion. These pulses are bistable with the zero state and may be an analogue for short term memory in the brain. The network consists of a single layer of neurons synaptically connected by lateral inhibition. Our work extends the classic Amari result by considering a nonsaturating gain function. We consider a specific connectivity function where the existence conditions for single pulses can be reduced to the solution of an algebraic system. In addition to the two localized pulse solutions found by Amari, we find that three or more pulses can coexist. We also show the existence of nonconvex "dimpled" pulses and double pulses. We map out the pulse shapes and maximum firing rates for different connection weights and gain functions.
Innovation Behaviour andProductivity Performance in the Nordic RegionDoes Foreign Ownership Matter

This paper addresses the involvement of foreign companies in domestic economies; the relative engagement offoreign-owned companies in RD the relative embeddedness in various national innovation systemsand the relative output performance from RD the studyconfirms previous findings, presents new results and identifies country, corporate style and corporate governancedifferences. Some new lights is also shed on a seemingly paradoxical relationship between R&D and innovation,and between R&D and productivity.
Quantification of trabecular spatial orientation from low-resolution images

No accepted methodology exists to assess trabecular bone orientation from clinical CT scans. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that the distribution of grey values in clinical CT images is related to the underlying trabecular architecture and that this distribution can be used to identify the principal directions and local anisotropy of trabecular bone. Fourteen trabecular bone samples were extracted from high-resolution (30 μm) micro-CT scans of seven human femoral heads. Trabecular orientations and local anisotropy were calculated using grey-level deviation (GLD), a novel method providing a measure of the three-dimensional distribution of image grey values. This was repeated for different image resolutions down to 300 μm and for volumes of interest (VOIs) ranging from 1 to 7 mm. Outcomes were compared with the principal mechanical directions and with mean intercept length (MIL) as calculated for the segmented 30-μm images. For the 30-μm images, GLD predicted the mechanical principal directions equally well as MIL. For the 300-μm images, which are resolutions that can be obtained in vivo using clinical CT, only a small increase (3°–6°) in the deviation from the mechanical orientations was found. VOIs of 5 mm resulted in a robust quantification of the orientation. We conclude that GLD can quantify structural bone parameters from low-resolution CT images.
Koala: A Historical Biography

The koala is both an Australian icon and an animal that has attained ‘flagship’ status around the world. Yet its history tells a different story. While the koala figured prominently in Aboriginal Dreaming and Creation stories, its presence was not recorded in Australia until 15 years after white settlement. Then it would figure as a scientific oddity, despatched to museums in Britain and Europe, a native animal driven increasingly from its habitat by tree felling and human settlement, and a subject of relentless hunting by trappers for its valuable fur. It was not until the late 1920s that slowly emerging protective legislation and the enterprise of private protectors came to its aid. This book surveys the koala’s fascinating history, its evolutionary survival in Australia for over 30 million years, its strikingly adaptive physiognomy, its private life, and the strong cultural impact it has had through its rich fertilisation of Australian literature. The work also focuses on the complex problems of Australia’s national wildlife and conservation policies and the challenges surrounding the environmental, economic and social questions concerning koala management. Koala embraces the story of this famous marsupial in an engaging historical narrative, extensively illustrated from widely sourced pictorial material.