bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Neural Mechanisms Underlying Risk and Ambiguity Attitudes
Authors: Blankenstein Neeltje E. , Peper Jiska S. , Crone Eveline A. , van Duijvenvoorde Anna C. K. 
Published: July 2017

Abstract
Individual differences in attitudes to risk (a taste for risk, known probabilities) and ambiguity (a tolerance for uncertainty, unknown probabilities) differentially influence risky decision-making. However, it is not well understood whether risk and ambiguity are coded differently within individuals. Here, we tested whether individual differences in risk and ambiguity attitudes were reflected in distinct neural correlates during choice and outcome processing of risky and ambiguous gambles. To these ends, we developed a neuroimaging task in which participants (n = 50) chose between a sure gain and a gamble, which was either risky or ambiguous, and presented decision outcomes (gains, no gains). From a separate task in which the amount, probability, and ambiguity level were varied, we estimated individuals' risk and ambiguity attitudes. Although there was pronounced neural overlap between risky and ambiguous gambling in a network typically related to decision-making under uncertainty, relatively more risk-seeking attitudes were associated with increased activation in valuation regions of the brain (medial and lateral OFC), whereas relatively more ambiguity-seeking attitudes were related to temporal cortex activation. In addition, although striatum activation was observed during reward processing irrespective of a prior risky or ambiguous gamble, reward processing after an ambiguous gamble resulted in enhanced dorsomedial PFC activation, possibly functioning as a general signal of uncertainty coding. These findings suggest that different neural mechanisms reflect individual differences in risk and ambiguity attitudes and that risk and ambiguity may impact overt risk-taking behavior in different ways.
Satellite Rainfall Estimates for Debris Flow Prediction: An Evaluation Based on Rainfall Accumulation–Duration Thresholds
Authors: Nikolopoulos E. I. , Destro E. , Maggioni V. , Marra F. , Borga M. 
Published: July 2017

Abstract
Rainfall thresholds are often used in early warning systems to identify rainfall conditions that, when reached or exceeded, are likely to result in debris flows. Rain gauges are typically used for the definition of these thresholds. However, in mountainous areas in situ observations are often sparse or nonexistent. Satellite-based rainfall estimates offer a solution to overcome the coverage problem at the global scale but are associated with significant estimation uncertainty. Evaluating satellite-based rainfall thresholds is thus necessary to understand their potential and limitations. In this work, an intercomparison among satellite-based precipitation products is presented in the context of estimating rainfall thresholds for debris flow prediction. The study is performed for the upper Adige River basin in the eastern Italian Alps during 2000–10. Large differences are observed between event-based characteristics (event duration and magnitude) derived from rain gauge and satellite-based estimates, revealing considerable interproduct variability in the debris flow–triggering rainfall characteristics. The parameters of the satellite-based thresholds differ less than 30% from the corresponding rain gauge–based parameters. Results further suggest that the adjustment of satellite-based estimates (either gauge based or by applying an error model) together with spatial resolution has an important impact on the estimation of the accumulation–duration thresholds.
Il romanticismo italiano e la poesia popolare maltese
Authors: Friggieri Oliver 
Published: July 2017

La tradizione letteraria più antica di Malta, scritta in italiano, faceva parte integrante della letteratura italiana. Per vari secoli, almeno dal primo Cinquecento in poi, gli scrittori dell'isola si consideravano maltesi tramite la loro completa e continua adesione ai modi di pensare e di scrivere della penisola vicina, con la quale Malta ha sempre avuto stretti contatti di natura politica e culturale. Il maltese, l'antica lingua della comunità isolana, di origine araba ma scritta nell'alfabeto latino, non godeva di una sua tradizione scritta, ed era completamente ignorata nei campi dell'amministrazione e della cultura. Il rapporto con l'Italia ha eventualmente condotto al riconoscimento dell'idioma parlato. La diffusione dei principi romantici di democrazia e di rispetto per il patrimonio popolare ha dato luogo alla scoperta del maltese come forma espressiva adatta ad essere scritta e coltivata. La nascita della poesia in lingua maltese risultò dalla diretta partecipazione di Malta all'esperienza romantica dell'Italia. Le forme e i contenuti della nuova poesia mettono in rilievo la dinamica con cui due diverse culture, semitica e latina, si fondono in un unico insieme entro i limiti del carattere assimilativo dello spirito maltese. Il riconoscimento della tradizionale poesia popolare maltese come parte del patrimonio nazionale (1895–1964) e la nuova diffusione di versi popolari nella forma scritta (1791–1839) sono aspetti essenziali di un unico fenomeno italo-maltese. Si tratta anche di un documento dell'influsso della cultura romantica maltese fuori Italia.
In their own words: Stories from HIV-positive African American women
Authors: Robillard Alyssa G , Reed Cymone , Larkey Linda , Kohler Connie , Ingram Lucy A , Lewis Kaleea , Julious Carmen 
Published: July 2017

Objectives: African American women are disproportionately impacted upon by HIV, particularly in the Southern states of the USA where the percentage of new cases of HIV and the percentage of people living with HIV in the USA are highest. This study describes the lived experiences of HIV-positive African American women based on their written stories. Design: Naturalistic qualitative design. Setting: Three organisations serving people living with HIV in a Southern state in the USA. Method: HIV-positive African American women 18 years of age and older ( N = 23) recruited from organisations working with people living with HIV were given the opportunity to write their own story following their participation in a semi-structured individual private interview. Content analysis was conducted on the written accounts. Results: Analysis of narratives written by HIV-positive African American women revealed themes of self-actualisation and self-worth. While some stories highlighted experiences of helplessness/hopelessness, most stories were more optimistic in nature, offering advice for prevention and highlighting individual efforts of advocacy and education. Stories also touched on risk/protective behaviour and women’s acknowledgement of their own responsibility in their HIV status. Conclusion: Strengths and resources are expressed in stories, as well as the acknowledgement of stressors associated with HIV. These within-culture narratives may be useful in programmes and interventions to inform culturally resonant prevention efforts and promote self-management activities among women living with HIV.
Pronunciation by Analogy: Impact of Implementational Choices on Performance
Authors: Damper R. I. , Eastmond J. F. G. 
Published: July 2017

Pronunciation by analogy (PbA) is an emerging, data-driven technique with potential application in text-to-speech (TTS) systems, as well as being an influential psychological model of reading aloud. The underlying idea is that a pronunciation for an unknown word (i.e., one not in the dictionary, or lexicon, of the human or machine “reader”) is assembled by matching substrings of the input to substrings of known, lexical words, hypothesizing a partial pronunciation for each matched substring from the lexical knowledge of the “reader,” and concatenating the partial pronunciations. This paper assesses the capability of PbA to derive pronunciations for unknown words of English. As a psychological model, PbA is “under-specified,” that is, the implementor of a simulation of the process faces detailed choices which can only be resolved by trial and error. One goal for this paper is to explore the impact of certain basic implementational choices on the performance of PbA systems. The variables studied are the specific lexical database used as the basis of the analogy process, the way of ranking/scoring candidate pronunciations, and the effect of manual versus automatic alignment of letters and phonemes. When tested with short (monosyllabic) pseudowords previously used in experimental psychology studies, the lowest error rate achieved is 14.3% (for a test set of size 70). We conclude that current PbA systems are at best poor models of pseudoword pronunciation by humans. To assess their suitability for use in a TTS application, in which multisyllabic words will be encountered, the implementations have also been tested with lexical words temporarily removed from the dictionary. The best performance obtained was 93.5% phonemes correct (corresponding to 67.9% words correct) for a 16,280-word dictionary. This is vastly superior to the 25.7% words correct obtained using a set of popular letter-to-sound rules, indicating considerable scope for analogy methods to be exploited in future TTS systems.
Processing of Natural Gas to Synthetic Gasoline – The New Zealand Synfuel Experience
Authors: Hooper R.J. , Jones K.W. 
Published: July 2017

The New Zealand Synthetic Fuels Corporation Limited (Synfuel) began operation of its Gas to Gasoline plant in October 1985. The Plant has since successfully demonstrated the technology and engineering upon which the project was based. The process by which natural gas is first synthesised to methanol and then subsequently convened to a premium gasoline blend stock is outlined. Operational history since startup is described with particular emphasis on natural gas quality and its effect both operationally and commercially on the Synfuel Plant. Future options for optimisation of the Plant's feedstock are discussed.
Natural Gas Processing in Mexico and its Influence in the Petrochemical Industry
Authors: Penilla Rodolfo Navarro 
Published: July 2017

This general out line for Petroleos Mexicanos describes the natural gas production and processing in Mexico, and the influence that natural gas products and condensate have on petrochemicals production. Since about 80% of natural gas production comes from the off-shore oil-fields in the Gulf of Campeche and from the in-land oil fields of the Chiapas-Tabasco mesozoic region, the Petroleos Mexicanos four largest natural gas processing centres are located in the south-east part of Mexico: Cactus, Nuevo Pemex, Ciudad Pemex and la Venta petrochemical complexes. The first one is located in Chiapas and the others in Tabasco. The impact of natural gas processing over the basic and secondary petrochemical industries is shown through its growing and sustained development since Mexico increased its natural gas availability.
Quantitative Three-Dimensional Evolutionary Carbonate Models: Forward and Inverse Methods
Authors: Lerche I. 
Published: July 2017

The following notes provide a quantitative mathematical basis from which a three-dimensional (in space), time-dependent, numerical algorithm can be constructed to incorporate the basic processes of carbonate accumulation and diagenesis in relation to sea level variations, basement subsidence, wave base erosion, and fluid transportation (by bed load and suspended load) of eroded carbonates. There are two major components to the modeling. First is to set up a geometry so that one has a basis from which to consider the problem. The geometry must include extraneous influences on carbonates such as: sea level variations, basement shape and motion, wind directions and current directions, etc. The second component is to provide dynamical process equations for carbonate growth, diagenesis, erosion, and transport within the framework of the geometric picture. Once these two major components are addressed, one has then constructed a forward model, which allows one to insert parameter values and functional variations (with time and space) of basement, sea level, etc., in order to construct carbonate accumulations with time. The third part of the problem is to use the forward model to: (a) predict observed carbonate accumulations accurately; and (b), once (a) is satisfied, to use the model patterns to suggest new observations that could then be made as a consequence of modeled behaviors consistent with observations. This last part of the problem requires that: (c) an inverse method be used to determine parameters (and to find out which parameters are not well-determined): and (d) once minimal discord between predictions and observations is achieved, to then determine what new observations could be made to provide further confirmation and/or modification of model behaviors. All four of these aspects are addressed here.
Discussion—Innovation, Future Earnings, and Market Efficiency
Authors: Seethamraju Chandra 
Published: July 2017

This study considers patent citation impact as a proxy for a leading indicator of technology firms' innovation capabilities. The author examines whether patent citation impact is associated with future earnings and whether this association is appropriately reflected in stock prices and analysts' earnings forecasts of patent-rich companies. The author reports results which indicate that change of patent citation impact is positively associated with future earnings up to five years in the future, particularly in the computer, electronics, and medical equipment industries. These are industries with relatively short time lags between technological advances and profit realization. The author also reports that investors and analysts do not seem to fully incorporate the implication of enhanced innovation capabilities for future earnings into stock prices and earnings forecasts. Based on this information, the paper develops a trading strategy that generates future abnormal stock returns. In my view, this paper asks an important question. If a researcher could come up with an appropriate leading measure of innovation, then examining the reliability of that measure through its association with future benefits, and whether the implications of the measure are understood by market participants, is an interesting exercise. In my discussion, I will focus on (a) some of the issues with the patent citation index (the measure of innovation capabilities), (b) problems with the databases used to construct this measure which suggest that the results should be interpreted with caution, and (c) some additional comments on the mispricing and portfolio tests.
The Valuation Consequence of Accounting Changes: A Multi-Year Examination
Authors: Dharan Bala G. , Lev Baruch 
Published: July 2017

We examine the valuation impact of changes in the accounting procedures and estimates underlying reported financial data in the year of the change as well as in the postchange years. Since most accounting changes have undisclosed effect on financial variables in subsequent years in addition to the earnings impact disclosed in the year of the change, an accounting change might be motivated by its long-term valuation effect, even if investors are cognizant of the initial earnings impact and fully account for it in the year of the change. This conjecture is empirically examined for the first time in this study. Our tests are based on a cross-sectional examination of the valuation impact of the earnings effect of accounting changes in the year of the change and a longitudinal examination of the behavior of returns in the postchange years. We also provide descriptive evidence indicating that earnings management is a managerial motive for changing accounting techniques. Cross-sectionally, for income-increasing accounting changes, our results show that investors' valuations seem to reflect a concern for the reduced quality of earnings, as reflected by smaller earnings response coefficients and R2s. However, the decline is not attributable specifically to the earnings effect of the accounting change. Similarly, the earnings effect of income-decreasing changes does not have valuation impact in the year of the accounting change. Although investors appear to largely ignore the accounting changes in the year they are made, our longitudinal test does show that firms undertaking accounting changes experience different long-term returns relative to other firms in the postchange period. However, income-increasing accounting changes are associated with negative valuation changes in the postchange period, rather than the positive impact expected from the conjecture stated above. Over the five years following the year of the accounting change, abnormal returns of income-decreasing firms exceed those of income-increasing firms substantially, with the latter firms experiencing large negative returns over the period. We demonstrate a trading rule that, ex post, exploits the information contained in the accounting changes to yield large abnormal stock returns. The results suggest that income-increasing accounting changes are perhaps the first visible sign indicating other hidden, fundamental problems that get revealed in subsequent years.
The Distribution of Outcomes from Corporate Mergers: Evidence from Commercial Bank Acquisition Strategies
Authors: Rose Peter S. 
Published: July 2017

Bank mergers in the United States have reshaped the structure of American banking into an increasingly consolidated industry. Yet the merger literature in banking, like the literature for most other industries, reaches sharply conflicting conclusions regarding the outcomes for merging banking firms, their shareholders, and the public, due perhaps to variable agency cost exposures and competitive market structures. Drawing on a random sample of more than 1,200 acquiring and acquired U.S. banking firms from 1970 through 1988, the study finds a nearly symmetric distribution of increasing and decreasing ex post returns to equity capital in the post-merger period. The acquiring banking firms experiencing increasing equity-capital returns displayed evidence of superior labor productivity in asset and revenue generation as well as enjoying postmerger increases in market concentration. Acquiring institutions also benefitted from faster ex post capital growth when they acquired banking firms operating in more concentrated banking markets. The positive market-concentration, post-merger-return relationship found in the study highlights the importance of a continuing active role for antitrust policy in protecting the public interest from an excessive concentration of market power in the hands of a few banks. Some takeovers enhance economic efficiency, some degrade it, and the balance of effects, though not fully known, is most likely a close one. Scherer (1988)
A Randomized Prospective Comparison of Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy and Nasogastric Tube Feeding After Acute Dysphagic Stroke B. NORTON, M. HOMER‐WARD, M. T. DONNELLY, ET AL Br med J 312:13–16, 1996
Authors: Kearns Patrick J. 
Published: July 2017

Methods: This randomized prospectively controlled trial compared outcome in dysphagic stroke patients based on route of feeding. Patients were recruited over 1 year from general medical and geriatric practices in Britain. Inclusion criteria required an acute cerebrovascular accident in a patient to have resulted in 8 or more days of dysphagia. Patients exclusion required a contraindication to gastrostomy because of gastrointestinal disease or endoscopy. Patients were entered over a 1‐year period. Standard methods were used to place nasoenteric tubes or a gastrostomy by a pull through percutaneous technique. A protocol standardized feedings and patient positioning. Outcome measures included mortality at 6 weeks and success in delivering nutritional goals as set by a dietitian.Results: Thirty patients were recruited: percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) group (n = 16) and nasogastric tube (NG) group (n = 14). All patients were comatose at the time of referral. The mortality rate was high in the NG fed group (57%), consistent with both groups'poor prognosis on entry to the study. The PEG group in contrast had a 6‐week mortality of 13% (p <.05). Contributing to the reduction in overall mortality were improved characteristics in the PEG group compared with the NG group: a greater delivery of nutrients, a significant improvement in serum albumin (+0.3 vs ‐0.9 g/dL, p <.03), midarm circumference (+1 vs ‐3 cm, p <.03), and weight gain (2.2 vs ‐2.6 kg, p <.03). Finally, discharge rates at 6 weeks were better in the gastrostomy patients (37%) than in the NG patients (0). All 14 NG patients either died or required ongoing hospitalization at 6 weeks. Two conditions caused the deaths: bronchopneumonia in one and four patients and fatal sequelae of the CVA in one and four patients in the PEG and NG groups, respectively.
Characterization of Supported Silver Catalysts II. Adsorption Studies of Well-Dispersed Ag on η-Al2O3
Authors: Seyedmonir S. R. , Strohmayer D. E. , Geoffroy G. L. , Vannice M. A. 
Published: July 2017

Chemisorption of H2, O2, and N2O at 443 K as well as XRD and TEM techniques were used to characterize small (3–4 nm) silver crystallites supported on η-Al2O3. The effects of different pretreatment procedures were also examined. The amounts of chemisorbed H2 on reduced Ag surfaces were insignificant (<10% of the O-monolayer). Adsorption-decomposition of N2O according to the following reaction: [Formula: see text] provides oxygen coverages similar to those obtained using O2 as the adsorbate. In either case, the adsorbed oxygen layer can be stoichiometrically titrated with H2 at 443 K by the reaction: [Formula: see text] after correction for the small amount of hydrogen adsorption which occurs on reduced silver surfaces. This titration reaction provides significant advantages for characterizing silver catalysts, which are discussed.
Analysis of Laminated Cylindrical Shells with Pre-Loads
Authors: Mohamed Essam A. , Bower Mark V. 
Published: July 2017

A new closed form analytical solution for a laminated cylindrical shell with lateral pressure and axial load is presented. The solution includes nonlinear effects due to large deformations after the manner of Timoshenko. The solution also includes the effects of pre-stress such as is encountered with the filament winding of composite pressure vessels. The solution allows the analysis of symmetric and asymmetric stacking sequences. The derivation of the solution is presented. Special cases for the solution are discussed. Several examples are presented for two different stacking sequences; the effects of length, loading conditions, and pre-stress are studied.