Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comovement of international real estate securities returns: a wavelet analysis

The comovement of equity markets is of crucial importance for portfolio diversification and risk management. In this study, we utilise the wavelet analysis to examine the comovement among international securitised real estate markets as well as the cross‐market comovement between the stock and securitised real estate markets. As a novel approach, wavelet analysis has not yet been applied to the real estate field. Its advantage lies in that it allows us to assess the comovement in the time and frequency domains simultaneously. Using it, we carry out the study for six countries, namely US, UK, Japan, Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore. Our findings highlight the importance of considering both the time‐ and frequency‐varying features of the comovement in designing international portfolios.
The paths of relative steady states of several economies

In this paper, an economy means a national economy; an economy's relative steady state means an economy's steady state of per-capita output relative to the mean of those of a broad set of economies. This paper provides a method used not only to get the path of an economy's relative steady state, but also to assess whether an economy's relative steady state changed between two given periods and whether an economy's relative steady state in a given period differed from another economy's in the same or a different given period. This paper also shows the paths of relative steady states of six economies (China, India, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and USA) using the estimates of their relative steady states in four successive periods (1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s). A comparison of the paths gives valuable information.
Anticyclic citrullinated peptide antibodies in patients with mixed connective tissue disease

The clinical significance of anticyclic citrullinated peptide (CCP) antibodies in patients with mixed connective tissue disease (MCTD) was assessed. Altogether, 86 sera from MCTD patients, 96 from rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients, 42 from systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients, 23 from systemic sclerosis (SSc) patients, 21 from poymyositis/dermatomyositis (PM/DM) patients, and 17 from those with Sjögren’s syndrome (SjS) were tested for anti-CCP antibodies using an enzyme-lined immunosorbent assay. Among the 96 RA patients, anti-CCP antibodies were detected in 85%, with the frequency being significantly higher than in MCTD, SLE, SSc, PM/DM, and SjS patients (9%, 14%, 13%, 14%, and 18%, respectively; P < 0.001). Among eight MCTD patients who fulfilled the diagnostic criteria for RA, only 50% had anti-CCP antibodies, and the prevalence was significantly lower than for all RA patients (p < 0.01). All eight patients who fulfilled the criteria for RA had overlap of SLE and SSc, except one patient, whereas the four anti-CCP-positive patients who did not fulfill the criteria for RA had SjS without overlapping features of SLE and SSc; moreover, most of their antibody titers were low. These results suggested that anti-CCP antibodies are associated with RA in MCTD patients, but careful diagnosis of RA is required if patients with low titers of anti-CCP antibodies lack overlapping SLE and SSc.
Apples in action: Territoriality and land use politics of mountain agriculture in Taiwan

This essay outlines the symbolic and material transformation of mountain agriculture in Taiwan by tracing the historical trajectories of temperate fruit production, and of apple growing in particular. Specifically, we look at the area of Lishan, a major production centre for apples and other temperate fruits in Taiwan’s Central Mountain Range in order to explore the relationship between the mountain agriculture and the politics of territorialisation. Focusing on the post-war era, we argue that the development of mountain agriculture in Taiwan, and upland fruit growing in particular, has operated as a ‘more-than-human political technology’. The territory of Lishan is not just a passive geographical space, but engaged in a process of becoming, which re-makes the mountain areas of Taiwan into ‘apple zones’ both spatially and socially. The spatial dimension centres on processes of political territorialisation, economic deterritorialisation and combined reterritorialisations whereby apple plantations have transformed the landscape from one focused on strategic politics to one embedded within development and market frameworks which entail their own particular forms of politics. The social dimensions are centred on the politics of forging connections among different elements circulating through the mountain areas of Taiwan, including apples, soldiers, transport infrastructures and agricultural policies.
INTERNET USE AND PROTEST POLITICS IN SOUTH KOREA AND TAIWAN

Abstract This study examines the association between Internet use and protest politics in South Korea and Taiwan, using secondary data from the sixth wave (2010–14) of the World Values Survey. The data show that Internet use is positively associated with low-cost protest acts, like signing a petition. Internet use is also correlated with the willingness to consider higher-cost actions such as attending demonstrations and joining in boycotts. But it does not appear to consistently increase actual protests of this sort. Discussion is made to address comparable opportunity structures for protest politics in the two East Asian democracies, where the Internet is deeply integrated into the country's political landscape.
Stressful life events preceding the onset of depression in Asian patients with major depressive disorder

Background: Previous studies have identified the significant role of stressful life events in the onset of depressive episodes. However, there is a paucity of cross-national studies on stressful life events that precede depression. Aims: We aimed to compare types of stressful life events associated with the onset of depressive episodes in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) in five Asian countries. Method: A total of 507 outpatients with MDD were recruited in China (n = 114), South Korea (n = 101), Malaysia (n = 90), Thailand (n = 103) and Taiwan (n = 99). All patients were assessed with the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview and the List of Threatening Experiences. The prevalence of each type of stressful life events was calculated and compared between each country. Results: The type of stressful life event that preceded the onset of a depressive episode differed between patients in China and Taiwan and those in South Korea, Malaysia and Thailand. Patients in China and Taiwan were less likely to report interpersonal relationship problems and occupational/financial problems than patients in South Korea, Malaysia and Thailand. Conclusion: Understanding the nature and basis of culturally determined susceptibilities to specific stressful life events is critical for establishing a policy of depression prevention and providing effective counseling services for depressed patients.
Foreign Exchange Market Spillovers: Evidence from Taiwan and China

A Bayesian econometric approach and threshold variables have been employed in this study to investigate how Chinese yuan and New Taiwan dollar affect each other after the delicate interrelationship in trade and finance between Taiwan and China. Evidence shows that both commodities bring about significant effects on each other through the U.S. dollar and may thus be used for the government authorities and traders of Taiwan and China in implementing appropriate policies and portfolio diversification strategies. Moreover, Chinese Reminbi affects New Taiwan dollar through the U.S. dollar pre- and post-subprime mortgage crisis, but a reverse effect is not detected.
Wisdom of fusion: Prediction of 2016 Taiwan election with heterogeneous big data

Using social media for political discourse has received much attention due to its real-time and interactive nature, especially around election time. Recent studies have explored the power of a single social media platform, such as Google or twitter, on recording current social trends and predicting the voting outcomes in a particular region. These pilot studies, though being very interesting, fail to integrate more of the heterogeneous information available online, nor do they consider the demographical bias of online users most of whom are young people. In this work, by aggregating online data from social media and offline data from pollsters, we achieve accurate prediction of candidates' votes in 2016 Taiwan presidential election, with error rates ranging from 0.30% to 2.85%. Our main contributions are summarized as follows. First, to our best knowledge, we are among the earliest studies to fuse heterogeneous information for election prediction. Three types of online information as signals of online public opinion are obtained from social networking sites (e.g. Facebook and Twitter), search engines (e.g. Google), and campaign homepages. To avoid voter bias, we further introduce offline demographical information to weight online and offline voting for a final prediction. Second, by taking election prediction as an unsupervised sequential prediction task, we introduce Kalman filter, a widely used signal processing method, to automatically select reliable information sources and fuse them for daily prediction. Finally, by taking into account the sensitivity of tweet volumes on Twitter, the Moving Average model is applied for real-time burst detection. Our work provides unique values to identifying important online information sources as well as their valid periods for election prediction, and shows great potentials for event influence analytics.
ASYMMETRIC VOLATILITY , RISK AND RETURN TRADEOFF IN ASIAN PACIFIC STOCK MARKETS

In this study we examined the asymmetric volatility, leverage effect hypothesis, disposition effect and the existence of positive risk, return tradeoff in the Asian Pacific Stock markets consisting of Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea Malaysia Pakistan and Taiwan. This study constituted of the daily return data of stock indices for all the countries for the period of five years from December 2007 to December 2012. We deduced significant results supporting the existence of asymmetric effect in all Asian pacific stock exchanges. Our results conclude that among Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, India and Pakistan there is no evidence of positive risk and return tradeoff hence there is strong evidence of disposition effect and loss aversion bias. Where in case of china, Malaysia and Indonesia the positive risk and return trade is expected to be less influenced by loss aversion and disposition effect. The results of asymmetric volatility confirm the existence of leverage effect in all Asian pacific Stock Exchanges hence confirm the disposition effect.
Gender Differences in Parents’ Communication With Their Adolescent Children about Sexual Risk and Sex-Positive Topics

A healthy sexual self-concept that captures an understanding of the risky and the positive aspects of sexuality is imperative to life-long well-being. Parents have a unique opportunity to instill knowledge of sexual risk as well as confidence and comfort around sexuality in their adolescents. Although parent–child communication about sexual risk is fairly common, less is known regarding the frequency of parent–child communication about sex-positive topics, such as sexual desire and satisfaction. This study examined the frequency of parents’ communication with their children about sexual risk and sex-positive topics among a sample of 901 parents of 13–17-year-old adolescents (parent Mage= 40.61; 71% mothers) from across the U.S. Parents reported on sexual communication with their adolescent children (child Mage = 14.68; 50% daughters). We examined gender differences in communication patterns. Few parents communicated with their adolescents about sex-positive topics. Only 38% discussed sexual satisfaction, 38% discussed different types of sexual practices (e.g., oral sex), and 55% discussed sexual desire. Parents communicate more about sexual risk than sex-positive topics with their adolescents and this discrepancy was largest for mothers of daughters. Fathers of daughters communicate the least about sex-positive topics. Implications for intervention development and future research on sexual communication are discussed.
Diagnostic accuracy of anti-cyclic citrullinated Peptide antibodies in rheumatoid arthritis

Objective: To determine the diagnostic accuracy of anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibodies (Anti-CCP) in the diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in patients of joint pain keeping rheumatoid factor (RF) analysis, clinical and radiological features as the gold standard. Methods: A cross sectional study was performed at the Department of Chemical Pathology/Biochemical Laboratory Services, Liaquat National Hospital and Medical College, Karachi from January 2018 to June 2018. Over a period of six months, 363 samples of patients in the age group of 20–60 years having joint pain and suspected of suffering from rheumatoid arthritis were included after fulfilling inclusion and exclusion criteria. Patient demographics, age, sex, Anti-CCP results and RF levels were recorded. Results: There were 87 males and 283 females in the study. Sensitivity, specificity, Positive Predictive Value (PPV), Negative Predictive Value (NPV) and diagnostic accuracy were 69.2%, 98.5%, 97.8%, 77% and 84.2% respectively. Likelihood Ratio (LR)+ and LR- were 47 and 0.31 respectively. As per Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, the Area Under the Curve (AUC) is 0.839. The two-tailed test showed p<0.0001. The diagnostic accuracy of Anti-CCP antibodies in the diagnosis of Rheumatoid Arthritis in patients of joint pain was found to be 89.4%. The cutoff of anti-CCP was calculated by the Youden’s J. formula and was found to be 14 U/ml. Conclusion: Anti-CCP has a high sensitivity and specificity so it can be used for the diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis in RF positive patients, which are common in Pakistan due to the high prevalence of Hepatitis C.
Constructive Journalism in the Face of a Crisis: The Effects of Social Media News Updates About COVID-19

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic brought along with it concerns about anxiety, racial bias, and pushback against public health recommendations, all of which are intensified by the news and social media. This study investigated the effects of constructive journalism in the context of this crisis, by randomly assigning 492 subjects to view simulated social media news updates with different headlines and images. The results showed positive and constructive headlines led to less anger and anxiety than negative headlines. The sanitization of graphic images decreased anger, anxiety, COVID-19 risk perceptions, and anti-Chinese sentiment—a relationship that was mediated by anger and anxiety. These findings suggest constructive journalism can be useful in times of crisis, and that its visual aspect warrants more scholarly attention. Further, these results shed new light on the effects of news exposure via social media in times of crisis, and how this impact depends on specific attributes of the headlines and images of the content being shared. The findings are discussed in relation to the theory of affective intelligence and recent concerns about how news and social media influence the public in times of crisis.
Bibliometric analysis of the scientific production found in Scopus and Web of Science about business administration

Introduction: This study analyzes the scientific production in business administration in scientific articles based on modeling partial least squares structural equations (Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling PLS-SEM) in the 2011-2020 period. Methodology: The study is exploratory - descriptive and has three phases: a) Selection of keywords and search criteria; (b) Search and refinement of information; c) information analysis. A method of bibliometric review of the specific literature has been used based on the analysis of predefined indicators and completed with a qualitative content synthesis. Results: A total of 167 publications were analyzed, making correlations from the year, search criteria, authors, impact factor by quartile, and by citation variables. More outstanding scientific production comes from Scopus under the search criteria ((pls AND sem) OR"partial least squares") AND (business OR management), being the figure of 4,870 scientific articles, while Web of Science accumulates 3,946 articles Conclusion: There has been a progressive growth in scientific articles with the PLS-SEM technique from 2011 to 2020. Scopus, compared to WoS, presents a more significant number of scientific productions with this statistical approach. The authors who register scientific articles demonstrate a high H index; in addition, there is an important number of scientific articles with a PLS-SEM approach in universities in Malaysia that could be related to the expansion of higher education in that country, as well as in Singapore, Taiwan, and Indonesia. Finally, business administration, accounting, and economics are outstanding scientific production.
The evolution of charcoal-burning suicide: A systematic scoping review

Introduction: Suicide by charcoal burning has accounted for more than 100,000 deaths. It has become an increasingly common suicide method in Hong Kong since first reported in 1998, and it has spread into South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and other countries. This systematic scoping review aimed to explore current evidence on trends, risk factors, impact of media and prevention strategies for this suicide method, and to identify research gaps. Methods: A search for articles published from January 1998 to June 2021 was conducted through electronic databases (MEDLINE, EMBASE, SCOPUS and PsycINFO) with the keywords (suicide*) AND (charcoal). Articles describing prevalence, trends, characteristics, risk factors and prevention strategies of charcoal burning suicide deaths were included. Non-peer-reviewed articles, non-English articles, commentaries/editorials/letters, poster abstracts, reviews, meta-analyses and studies that documented only charcoal burning suicide attempters/survivors were excluded. Results: Eighty-eight studies were identified, most from East Asia. Charcoal burning suicide rates in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan has passed the peak, while continuing to increase in South Korea. Risk factors are changing and not static. Media appears to play an important role in triggering and spreading information. Restricting access to charcoal, and raising public awareness have been effective in the short term in preventing charcoal burning suicide, but there is little information on their long-term effectiveness or sustainability. Discussion: More research is required to update the development and dynamic changes of charcoal burning suicide and the contributing factors. The evidence from this review may assist in detecting and intervening early for future novel suicide methods.
Genetic Diversity and Geographic Distribution of Cucurbit-Infecting Begomoviruses in the Philippines

Cucurbits are important economic crops worldwide. However, the cucurbit leaf curl disease (CuLCD), caused by whitefly-transmitted begomoviruses constrains their production. In Southeast Asia, three major begomoviruses, Tomato leaf curl New Delhi virus (ToLCNDV), Squash leaf curl China virus (SLCCNV) and Squash leaf curl Philippines virus (SLCuPV) are associated with CuLCD. SLCuPV and SLCCNV were identified in Luzon, the Philippines. Here, the genetic diversity and geographic distribution of CuLCD-associated begomoviruses in the Philippines were studied based on 103 begomovirus detected out of 249 cucurbit samples collected from 60 locations throughout the country in 2018 and 2019. The presence of SLCCNV and SLCuPV throughout the Philippines were confirmed by begomovirus PCR detection and viral DNA sequence analysis. SLCuPV was determined as a predominant CuLCD-associated begomovirus and grouped into two strains. Interestingly, SLCCNV was detected in pumpkin and bottle gourd without associated viral DNA-B and mixed-infected with SLCuPV. Furthermore, the pathogenicity of selected isolates of SLCCNV and SLCuPV was confirmed. The results provide virus genetic diversity associated with CuLCD for further disease management, especially in developing the disease-resistant cultivars in the Philippines as well as Southeast Asia.
A Novel Electro-Fenton Process for Water Treatment : Reaction-controlled pH Adjustment and Performance Assessment

H O N G L I U , * , † C H U A N W A N G , † X I A N G Z H O N G L I , ‡ X I A O L I X U A N , † , ‡ C H E N G C H U N J I A N G , § A N D H U A ’ N A N C U I † Institute of Optoelectronic and Functional Composite Materials, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China, Department of Civil and Structural Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China, and School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Shenzhen Polytechnic, Shenzhen, 518055, China
Early Psychosocial Stress Predicts Extra-Pair Copulations

Cheating on a mate, known as an extra-pair copulation (EPC), is considered unacceptable by most individuals. Nonetheless many individuals engage in such risky behaviors. Because individuals with high, as opposed to low, levels of early psychosocial stress are more risk prone and more likely to engage in opportunistic matings, we predicted that individuals reporting EPCs, one of many types of opportunistic mating (e.g., one-night stand, consecutive short-term relationships etc), have higher levels of early psychosocial stress than those who do not. Two types of EPCs were examined: EPC-self (EPC-S), having sex with someone other than one's mate, and EPC-other (EPC-O), having sex with someone else's mate. In a sample of 229 women and 161 men, significantly higher levels of early psychosocial stress were found amongst those reporting an EPC-S than those reporting none, irrespective of EPC-Os. Furthermore, the more EPC-Ss men, but not women, reported the higher their early psychosocial stress. Early psychosocial stress was not associated with EPC-Os irrespective of EPC-Ss. Participants were also classified into one of four groups (no EPCs, EPC-O only, EPC-S only, or EPC-S&O) which significantly interacted with early psychosocial stress. Results are discussed from adaptationist and mechanist perspectives and why early psychosocial stress was higher in individuals reporting EPC-Ss irrespective of EPC-Os, but not EPC-Os irrespective of EPC-Ss, than those not reporting the EPC of interest.
Structural vulnerability of quantum networks

Ang-Kun Wu,1,2,3 Liang Tian ,4 Bruno Coelho Coutinho,5 Yasser Omar,5,6 and Yang-Yu Liu 1,7,* 1Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA 2Department of Physics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310027, China 3Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA 4Department of Physics and Institute of Computational and Theoretical Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China 5Instituto de Telecomunicações, Physics of Information and Quantum Technologies Group, Lisbon, Portugal 6Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal 7Center for Cancer Systems Biology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA