Analyzing frequent acquires in emerging markets and futures markets linkage

The first chapter of this dissertation examines the returns to frequent acquirers from emerging markets and analyzes the cross-country variations in cumulative abnormal returns. The sample consists of 5,147 transactions carried out by firms from 17 common and civil-law countries during the period of January 1985 to June 2008. I find that the cumulative abnormal returns decline over the deal order and it is more pronounced in civil-law countries than in common-law countries. There is also evidence that the premiums paid by acquirers from civillaw countries with a first successful acquisition are higher than those from common-law countries. These findings are consistent with agency problems and the hubris hypothesis, first introduced by Roll (1986). The second chapter examines the information links across futures markets in different nations, using Vector Autoregressive (VAR)-Dynamic Conditional Correlation (DCC) model. The data comprise a large set of commodity and financial futures traded in U.S., U.K., China, Japan, Canada, and Brazil during the period from August 1998 to December 2008. The primary finding is that market interactions are relatively high for commodities for which information production generally is more diverse (metal commodities), while moderate for commodities for which information is more concentrated (agricultural commodities). Furthermore, the strength and persistence of interactions among futures markets decline after excluding the most informative markets. These findings indirectly support the breadth of information being a relevant factor in the extent of information linkage. The results also indicate that the dynamic correlation in futures markets is high in most commodity and financial futures if there is a significant bi-directional return and volatility spillover. Additionally, I estimate a market’s contribution to the price discovery process. In general, the market that has a stronger price impact and a stronger volatility spillover tends to be the market that has greater contribution or leadership in price discovery

Impact of Using WhatsApp and Facebook on Learners' Performance in ESP Contexts at Private Yemeni Universities

The present study aimed at exploring the extent to which WhatsApp (WA) and Facebook (FB) are used in ESP (English for Specific Purposes) contexts and their impact on ESP students' learning performance. To achieve this objective, two questionnaires and a semi-structured interview were developed. Due to Covid-19 restrictions, the questionnaires were administered online to a sample of 13 ESP male and female teachers and 406 ESP male and female students from eight Private Yemeni universities in Amanat Al Asimah and from four disciplines: engineering, computing and information technology, business, and medicine. The interviews with the teachers were also conducted via phone due to the restrictions imposed because of Covid-19.While SPSS was used to analyse the quantitative data, thematic analysis was used to analyse the qualitative data. The results of the study revealed that teachers' use and students' use of WA and FB in ESP contexts was moderate. The impact of WA and FB on students' learning performance was moderate from teachers' perspective while it was high from students' perspective. There was also a strong correlation between using WA and FB in ESP contexts and their impact on students' learning performance. The study recommended that universities train their teachers to use these applications and add a requirement course focusing on using technology tools for teaching and learning English language

A variational framework for multi-scale defect modeling in strained electronics and processing of composite materials

With the recent advances in material processing technologies and the introduction of the material genome initiative, material processing has gained an increased level of attention in the research community. Primary challenges in most material processing technologies and specifically in composite materials are the uncertainties concerning the material’s performance under loading whether it be static, dynamic or cyclic. That is due to the variabilities in these technologies that may lead to the formation of defects within the material parts at critical location during processing. This dissertation presents a deterministic defect modeling framework based on a system of variationally consistent formulations that allow for the modeling of the material processing stage and incorporate multi-physics coupling for multi-constituent materials. A stabilized and novel discontinuity capturing formulation is developed to model multi-phase flow of the materials and their defect while sharply capturing the jumps in material properties, material compressibility and kinetic reaction across the multi-phase interfaces. The method is based on employing structured non-moving meshes to solve the Navier-Stokes equations employing a finite element method (FEM) stabilized via the Variational Multiscale Method (VMS). Within VMS framework a discontinuity capturing method is derived that allows for sharp discontinuity capturing of the physical discontinuities of across phases within a single numerical element allowing for highly accurate and discrete representation of the interfacial physical phenomena. In addition, surface tension is incorporated into the formulation to discretely model jumps in the pressure field. The multi-phase interface is evolved employing a stabilized level-set method allowing for intricate motion of the two phases and the discontinuities within the Eulerian mesh. The formulation is then expanded to incorporate discontinuities in the governing system of equations allowing for modeling adjacent compressible-incompressible fluids within a unified formulation. Coupled with the thermal evolution within the constituents of the material and accounting for phase change and mass leading to mass transfer across the interface the materials, kinetic evolution of the material viscosities is modeled at the material points accounting for variability in the flow behavior as a function of kinetic curing. Finally, a previously developed isogeometric FEM method is expanded to model quantum defect evolution of strained electronics and the effect of straining on the electronic properties of these materials. Representative numerical tests involving complex multi-phase flows of physical instabilities, hydrodynamic collapse of bubbles and convective mass transfer along with electronic band-gap structures with strain effects are presented as validations and applications for the framework’s robustness. Finally, the chemo-thermo-mechanical coupling and real-life application is presented via a fully coupled problem involving processing of a composite bracket during the early curing stages

Sustainability Analysis of the Company Financial Reports

In this paper, we analyze financial reports to measure the degree of harmonization between the disclosure in financial statements and sustainability reports. Content analysis has been employed to measure the harmonization degree to reveal the extent of complying with the sustainability reports. The sample contains thirteen Iraqi companies listed in the Iraqi stock exchange. It is shown that a low level of harmonization between financial statements disclosure and the sustainability reports. Nevertheless, the study found real interest by the Iraqi companies to adopt a standard of sustainable reports

Impact of pharmacist interventions on patients’ adherence to antidepressants and patient-reported outcomes: a systematic review

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Graph-based data management system for efficient information storage, retrieval and processing

Data management systems rely on a correct design of data representation and software components. The data representation scheme plays a vital role in how the data are stored, which influences the efficiency of its processing and retrieval. The system components design realizes software engineering concepts to enable performance metrics such as scalability, efficiency, flexibility, maintainability, and extendibility. This paper presents a data management system that uses a graph-based data representation scheme to achieve an efficient data retrieval when using graph-based databases. Input data are transformed into vertices, edges, and labels while inserting them into the database. The proposed system consists of three layers which are: system beans layer, data access layer, and the database engine. Healthcare data are used to evaluate the system in comparison with resource description framework (RDF) semantics. Extensive experiments are conducted to compare different scenarios of data storage and retrieval using Neo4J, OrientDB, and RDF4J. Experimental results show that the performance of the proposed graph-based approach outperforms RDF4J framework in terms of insertion and retrieval time

A Scheduling Algorithm to Enhance the Performance and the Cost of Cloud Services

Cloud computing is based on the pay-per-use; hence, the price of usage is one of the main factors for cloud services’ customers when selecting the cloud provider to rent the service from. Hence, cloud providers need to provide competitive costs of the services for the users. Therefore, the cloud providers, in addition to optimize the utilization of the resources, aim to provide the service with the competitive cost at the same time. In order to achieve this, there is a need for a new set of economical task scheduling algorithms for the cloud. This paper introduces an algorithm for task scheduling based on assigning priorities for tasks according to their profits, where we provided examples of usage of the algorithm and compared it to some of the traditional cloud scheduling algorithms. Keywords: Cloud Computing, Scheduling, Priority, Resource Utilization

Visual Search Elicits the Electrophysiological Marker of Visual Working Memory

Background: Although limited in capacity, visual working memory (VWM) plays an important role in many aspects of visually-guided behavior. Recent experiments have demonstrated an electrophysiological marker of VWM encoding and maintenance, the contralateral delay activity (CDA), which has been shown in multiple tasks that have both explicit and implicit memory demands. Here, we investigate whether the CDA is evident during visual search, a thoroughly-researched task that is a hallmark of visual attention but has no explicit memory requirements. Methodology/Principal Findings: The results demonstrate that the CDA is present during a lateralized search task, and that it is similar in amplitude to the CDA observed in a change-detection task, but peaks slightly later. The changes in CDA amplitude during search were strongly correlated with VWM capacity, as well as with search efficiency. These results were paralleled by behavioral findings showing a strong correlation between VWM capacity and search efficiency. Conclusions/Significance: We conclude that the activity observed during visual search was generated by the same neura

A Study of Delay and Data Traffic of IEEE 802.15.4 ZigBee-Based WSN in a Smart Home

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) play a key role in modern applications, for instance, in smart homes as will be demonstrated in this paper. ZigBee technology provides better support when compared with WiFi, Bluetooth and Ultra Wide Band (UWB) standards regarding transmission range. This paper deals with the use of ZigBee WSN in a domestic application, namely smart home control. This model comprises a smart home with multiple rooms, designed in such a way that each room has sensors comprise for a varied environment. The sensor nodes will be presented by ZigBee end device which transmits the traffic to a master node in the form of a ZigBee coordinator. An OPNET modeler V14.5 was used in this simulation study. This paper presents seven models related to delay and data traffic received to improve WSN performance. Seven different WSN designs variations were utilized according to the number of rooms, sensors, coordinators, and routers. The outcomes demonstrate that one coordinator model causes more delay when compared with multiple coordinator models. Conversely, the presence of a router causes additional delay. This model should help electrical engineers when designing smart homes that utilize WSNs