The reals as rational Cauchy filters

We present a detailed and elementary construction of the real numbers from the rational numbers a la Bourbaki. The real numbers are defined to be the set of all minimal Cauchy filters in $\mathbb{Q}$ (where the Cauchy condition is defined in terms of the absolute value function on $\mathbb{Q}$) and are proven directly, without employing any of the techniques of uniform spaces, to form a complete ordered field. The construction can be seen as a variant of Bachmann's construction by means of nested rational intervals, allowing for a canonical choice of representatives

THE EFFECT OF FINANCIAL RATIO IN PREDICTING THE CONDITION OF FINANCIAL POLICY WITH FIRM SIZE AS A VARIABLE MODERATING IN MANUFACTURING COMPANIES LISTED IN INDONESIA STOCK EXCHANGE (IDX) PERIOD 2012-2017

The objective of this study was to identify and analyse the effect of financial ratios in predicting financial distress conditions in manufacturing companies listed on the Indonesian stock exchange (IDX) for the period 2012-2017. The variables in this study are return on assets, current ratio, debt to equity ratio, total asset turnover and firm size. The population in this study were all manufacturing companies listed on the Indonesia stock exchange for the period 2012-2017. Sampling in this study used purposive sampling, so sample of 384 companies that met the criteria was obtained. The analytical method used in this research is descriptive statistical analysis using logistic regression analysis and interaction test to test the moderating variable. The results of this study indicate that simultaneous return on assets, current ratio, debt to equity ratio, and total asset turnover have a significant effect on predict financial distress, and firm size can moderate the effect of return on assets, current ratio, debt to equity ratio, and total asset turnover in predicting financial distress. Partially, return on assets, current ratio and total asset turnover have a negative and significant effect in predicting financial distress conditions. While the variable debt to equity ratio has a positive and significant influence in predicting the condition of financial distress. Firm Size is able to moderate the effect of Total Asset Turnover in predicting the condition of Financial Distress. However Firm Size weakens the influence of Return On Asset, Current Ratio and Debt to Equity Ratio in predicting the condition of Financial Distress

A new theory driven model of authentic leadership

In recent years, the concept of Authentic Leadership has become an important area of interest and study, encompassing, as it does, personal beliefs and values and how they are aligned and lived in one’s everyday leadership experience, (Cooper et al. 2005; Avolio & Gardner, 2005; Luthans & Avolio, 2003). However, whilst the literature surrounding it is ever-increasing, the concept and construct of Authentic Leadership is fragmented; complicated by different theorists’ perspectives and compounded by a lack of empirical research, particularly within the UK, (Gardner et al. 2011).Based on Novicevic et al.’s (2006) conceptualization, differentiating Authentic Leadership between its psychological and philosophical components, this research presents a new theoretical model of Authentic Leadership. A 4-factor model was developed and empirically tested using a classic psychometric approach, (Nunnally, 1978; Kline, 1979), and a 360° feedback design, as leaders have been shown to over-estimate their self-reported scores compared to subordinate and peer feedback ratings, (Atkins & Wood, 2002).Critically, the model was developed and tested using real leaders rather than students, who are generally more accessible to researchers, (Lagan, 2007). It is hypothesized that the resulting model and statistical data may therefore have greater validity and applied relevance than other comparative research in the field completed utilizing student populations with little or no, real-world leadership experience. Three UK leadership populations were employed: two business leader samples and, for the validation study, senior serving Royal Air Force officers. A 3-factor model emerged which both simplifies and unifies previous theoretical conceptualisations of Authentic Leadership.Whilst not a direct part of the research study, the author suggests that potentially, all modern leadership failures may be traced back to a deficiency in any one of these 3 ‘Pillars’ of Authentic Leadership: Self-Awareness, Self-Regulation or Ethics. Implications for Authentic Leadership Development are identified and some suggestions for future research into the field made

Accommodating Death: An Examination of the Role of Scientific Accommodation in Forensic Anthropology

Scientists have strong motivations to communicate with the public, yet this communication is often ineffective. As Ann Penrose and Steven Katz explain in Writing in the Sciences, there are three major reasons why scientists communicate with the public: moral, economic, and political (177). Despite these reasons for scientists to communicate with the public, it is not always easy for this communication to take place, due to divisions of audience and discourse community, as well as the scientists’ biases against communicating with the public. Scientific accommodation helps to bridge this gap. In some fields, like forensic anthropology, scientists write their own accommodation. This analysis, unlike others, will include these accommodations and seeks to determine the role the author plays in accommodation. If the scientist is the accommodator, does the text still undergo the same changes? With a combination of Fahnestock\u27s analysis of scientific communication, Latour and Woolgar’s Statement Types, and Toulmin et al.’s method of diagramming scientific arguments, this analysis examines the discourse of forensic anthropology to determine what effect the author and the accommodator (or author/accommodator), have on the text and how these changes relate to forensic anthropology as a discipline

Arabic named entity recognition

En esta tesis doctoral se describen las investigaciones realizadas con el objetivo de determinar las mejores tecnicas para construir un Reconocedor de Entidades Nombradas en Arabe. Tal sistema tendria la habilidad de identificar y clasificar las entidades nombradas que se encuentran en un texto arabe de dominio abierto. La tarea de Reconocimiento de Entidades Nombradas (REN) ayuda a otras tareas de Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural (por ejemplo, la Recuperacion de Informacion, la Busqueda de Respuestas, la Traduccion Automatica, etc.) a lograr mejores resultados gracias al enriquecimiento que a~nade al texto. En la literatura existen diversos trabajos que investigan la tarea de REN para un idioma especifico o desde una perspectiva independiente del lenguaje. Sin embargo, hasta el momento, se han publicado muy pocos trabajos que estudien dicha tarea para el arabe. El arabe tiene una ortografia especial y una morfologia compleja, estos aspectos aportan nuevos desafios para la investigacion en la tarea de REN. Una investigacion completa del REN para elarabe no solo aportaria las tecnicas necesarias para conseguir un alto rendimiento, sino que tambien proporcionara un analisis de los errores y una discusion sobre los resultados que benefician a la comunidad de investigadores del REN. El objetivo principal de esta tesis es satisfacer esa necesidad. Para ello hemos: 1. Elaborado un estudio de los diferentes aspectos del arabe relacionados con dicha tarea; 2. Analizado el estado del arte del REN; 3. Llevado a cabo una comparativa de los resultados obtenidos por diferentes tecnicas de aprendizaje automatico; 4. Desarrollado un metodo basado en la combinacion de diferentes clasificadores, donde cada clasificador trata con una sola clase de entidades nombradas y emplea el conjunto de caracteristicas y la tecnica de aprendizaje automatico mas adecuados para la clase de entidades nombradas en cuestion. Nuestros experimentos han sido evaluados sobre nueve conjuntos de test.Benajiba, Y. (2009). Arabic named entity recognition [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/8318Palanci

The Relationship Between Leadership Behavior of Academic Deans in Public Universities and Job Satisfaction of Department Chairpersons

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between perceptions of academic deans and department chairpersons regarding the leadership behavior of deans; and, to determine the relationship between perceived leadership behavior of deans and job satisfaction of department chairpersons in the public institutions of higher education. The study involved a random sample of 50 academic deans and 285 department chairpersons at public universities in Tennessee. Testing of five null hypotheses was based upon responses of 42 academic deans (84%) and 173 department chairpersons (60%). The Leadership behavior of academic deans was measured by the Leadership Practices Inventory (Kouzes & Posner, 1987). The job satisfaction of department chairpersons was determined through the Index of Job Satisfaction. A combination of means difference tests and correlational methods was used to answer questions concerning the relationship between leadership behavior of academic deans and job satisfaction of department chairpersons. Of the five null hypotheses tested, two were found to be significant at the level of.05. The conclusions drawn from the rejected hypotheses were: There was a significant difference between deans and department chairpersons in the perception of leadership behavior of deans. The overall mean score of LPI-Self was significantly higher than that of LPI-Other. The deans perceived their leadership behavior, as described in LPI, to be more effective than did department chairpersons. In addition, there was a significant relationship between the leadership behavior of deans perceived by department chairpersons and their job satisfaction. The more effective the department chairpersons perceived the deans\u27 leadership behavior to be, the more they were satisfied with their jobs. Finally, the total number of years in the department chairpersons\u27 position had a significant impact on how they perceived deans\u27 leadership behavior. Department chairpersons in the position for a total of less than a year perceived deans\u27 leader behavior as more effective than those who had been in the position for 7-9 years

Investigating features and techniques for Arabic authoriship attribution

Authorship attribution is the problem of identifying the true author of a disputed text. Throughout history, there have been many examples of this problem concerned with revealing genuine authors of works of literature that were published anonymously, and in some cases where more than one author claimed authorship of the disputed text. There has been considerable research effort into trying to solve this problem. Initially these efforts were based on statistical patterns, and more recently they have centred on a range of techniques from artificial intelligence. An important early breakthrough was achieved by Mosteller and Wallace in 1964 [15], who pioneered the use of ‘function words’ – typically pronouns, conjunctions and prepositions – as the features on which to base the discovery of patterns of usage relevant to specific authors. The authorship attribution problem has been tackled in many languages, but predominantly in the English language. In this thesis the problem is addressed for the first time in the Arabic Language. We therefore investigate whether the concept of functions words in English can also be used in the same way for authorship attribution in Arabic. We also describe and evaluate a hybrid of evolutionary algorithms and linear discriminant analysis as an approach to learn a model that classifies the author of a text, based on features derived from Arabic function words. The main target of the hybrid algorithm is to find a subset of features that can robustly and accurately classify disputed texts in unseen data. The hybrid algorithm also aims to do this with relatively small subsets of features. A specialised dataset was produced for this work, based on a collection of 14 Arabic books of different natures, representing a collection of six authors. This dataset was processed into training and test partitions in a way that provides a diverse collection of challenges for any authorship attribution approach. The combination of the successful list of Arabic function words and the hybrid algorithm for classification led to satisfying levels of accuracy in determining the author of portions of the texts in test data. The work described here is the first (to our knowledge) that investigates authorship attribution in the Arabic knowledge using computational methods. Among its contributions are: the first set of Arabic function words, the first specialised dataset aimed at testing Arabic authorship attribution methods, a new hybrid algorithm for classifying authors based on patterns derived from these function words, and, finally, a number of ideas and variants regarding how to use function words in association with character level features, leading in some cases to more accurate results

USING THE QBEST EQUATION TO EVALUATE ELLAGIC ACID SAFETY DATA: GENERATING A QNOAEL WITH CONFIDENCE LEVELS FROM DISPARATE LITERATURE

QBEST, a novel statistical method, can be applied to the problem of estimating the No Observed Adverse Effect Level (NOAEL or QNOAEL) of a New Molecular Entity (NME) in order to anticipate a safe starting dose for beginning clinical trials. The NOAEL from QBEST (called the QNOAEL) can be calculated using multiple disparate studies in the literature and/or from the lab. The QNOAEL is similar in some ways to the Benchmark Dose Method (BMD) used widely in toxicological research, but is superior to the BMD in some ways. The QNOAEL simulation generates an intuitive curve that is comparable to the dose-response curve. The NOAEL of ellagic acid (EA) is calculated for clinical trials as a component therapeutic agent (in BSN476) for treating Chikungunya infections. Results are used in a simulation based on nonparametric cluster analysis methods to calculate confidence levels on the difference between the Effect and the No Effect studies. In order to evaluate the statistical power of the algorithm, simulated data clusters with known parameters are fed into the algorithm in a separate study, testing the algorithm’s accuracy and precision “Around the Compass Rose” at known coordinates along the circumference of a multidimensional data cluster. The specific aims of the proposed study are to evaluate the accuracy and precision of the QBEST Simulation and QNOAEL compared to the Benchmark Dose Method, and to calculate the QNOAEL of EA for BSN476 Drug Development

Understanding the New York rabies epizootic 1985-2005

Surveillance data are an important part of medical geography. These data are used to produce much of the analyses that define the subdiscipline. It is understood that surveillance data may contain biases, but there have only been limited studies devoted to determining in what ways the data are not representative of actual disease prevalence. New York was selected for this research for several reasons. First, it has a strong rabies data set. Second, it has a centralized system of licensing animal and dog control officers. Third, it is well-represented in terms of local media. This dissertation attempts to better understand the New York rabies epizootic, using not only rabies surveillance data, but also data collected from animal control officers and media reports, particularly newspaper articles. These data can help provide a fuller picture of the function of a rabies epizootic within a state, particularly in terms of the relationship of the disease to the society at large. The generation of surveillance data itself is not often the subject of investigation. One part of that system that receives little attention from researchers is the part that physically collects animals- animal and dog control officers. As the lowest level in the surveillance system, control officers are often overlooked in terms of their contribution to the system. The media presentation of the rabies epizootic is the other subject of this work. The relationship between a disease and media reports of a disease are often not clear. In New York, reporting of rabies in local newspapers often reflected the submissions of suspicious animals for rabies testing. This research found that the levels of training found in animal and dog control officers in New York were low considering that this was a state with epizootic rabies. The attitudes of the control officers revealed that as a group they considered themselves part of the public health system, but they were often not treated as such. The media investigation revealed that articles about rabies in small, local newspapers can reflect rabies submissions in the adjacent area. This was not true for larger newspapers