The impact of foreign trading information on emerging futures markets: a study of Taiwan's unique data set

Using a unique dataset from the Taiwan Futures Exchange, this paper investigates whether trading imbalances by foreign investors affect emerging Taiwan futures market in terms of returns and volatility. First, this evidence demonstrates a positive relation between contemporaneous futures returns and net purchases by foreign investors when other market factor effects are controlled. Second, this failure to detect price reversals is inconsistent with the price pressure hypothesis. Third, foreign investors do not exhibit positive feedback trading patterns. Fourth, a bi-directional Granger-causality relationship exists between futures volatility and foreign trading flows. As found for other stock or foreign exchange markets, our empirical results demonstrate that foreign trading flows do have impacts on the return and volatility of developing futures market, suggesting that trading by foreign investors may enhance the information flow of the local futures market.Foreign trading

ANALYSIS OF FIELDER STARTS AND BENCH ABILITY ON AMERICAN PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL PLAYERS

The development of athletes or players depends on two aspects: nature and nurture. The former is the talent and qualification of the players themselves, while the latter is the training that consumes human, material and financial resources. Take professional baseball players as an example. Matching the talents of players and referring to the relevant starting rules of the professional baseball league, when the up-and-coming players are first discovered, focused training are used on them. By doing so, the value of the players would be effectively enhanced and the players are helped to seek a better way out. This can form a virtuous circle: the pellets get quality players, and the players get better results. That is to say, strengthening the training for the shortcomings of the players with the potential of the starting players can avoid unnecessary training and huge training expenses behind them, and greatly reduce the risk of career, so that the players have higher security in their short career, and get a win-win-win situation. This study is aimed at the schedule information of the American Baseball League teams. Through feature selection of data mining, this study analyzes the main relationships and key differences between starting player and bench player of second baseman and shortstop in League of Nations teams. It is found that the on base percentage and speed of the infielders is an important ability indicator for the starting position; whereas, the second baseman emphasizes on the attack and the shortstop focuses on fielding. This feature is verified by comparing the opinions of experts and commentators.  Article visualizations

Examining Stakeholder Perspectives: Process, Performance and Progress of the Age-Friendly Taiwan Program.

Since Taiwans age-friendly city (AFC) program was launched in 2012, the central government has provided various resources to the countrys 22 local authorities, including budgetary support, policy advocacy, and consultation from a team of experts. This study examines stakeholder perspectives on the process, performance, and outcome of the AFC program. A 53-item questionnaire was developed based on the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline, including mechanisms and processes (20 items), outcome evaluations (23 items), and resource integration (10 items). There was a great difference found among scores between facilitators and experts for inter-exchange experience with local and international cities (40%) and monitor and revise indicators (37%) in mechanisms and processes, evaluate performance of indicators and action plans (37%) in outcome evaluations, and interaction between government and community (46%) and interaction between civil organization and senior society (39%) in resource integration. Clearly, facilitators showed overly optimistic assessments in AFC mechanisms and processes, outcome evaluation, and resource integration. The results showed disconnect between experts expectations versus actual practice conducted by facilitators. Implications of these findings are to integrate top down expectations with the realities of bottom up practice to design more realistic evaluations; continue to educate stakeholders about design, implementation and evaluation; and further integrate resources from government, civil organizations, and community

Estrogen receptor in diethylstilbestrol-induced mammary tumors of C3H mice.

Dept. of Biological Sciences. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis1978 .K96. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 40-07, page: . Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1978

Effort-reward imbalance and self-rated health among Gambian healthcare professionals

Questionnaire for the Investigation of Effort-reward Imbalance and Self-rated Health among Gambian Healthcare Professionals. (DOC 616 kb

Effects of different ceramic and dentin thicknesses on the temperature rise during photocuring

AbstractBackground/purposeThe aims of this investigation were to describe the effect of different ceramic and remaining dentin thicknesses on substrate temperature during photocuring, and investigate whether the temperature increased by >5.5°C for different dentin/ceramic combinations.Materials and methodsThree groups of dentin thicknesses of 1.0 (D1.0), 1.5 (D1.5), and 2.0 mm (D2.0), and three groups of ceramic thicknesses of 1.5 (C1.5), 2.5 (C2.5), and 3.5 mm (C3.5) were examined. Temperature changes and the maximum temperature were observed under a high-intensity halogen light (QTH-Atralis 10 ECS program at 1200mW/cm2 for 30 seconds, Ivoclar Vivadent AG, Schaan, Liechtenstein). Four groups, D1.0–C1.5 (+11°C), D1.5–C1.5 (+7.2°C), D1.0–C2.5 (+6.7°C), and D2–0C1.5 (+5.8°C), demonstrated temperature changes of >5.5°C.Results and ConclusionsA statistical analysis showed that separate individual thicknesses and combinations of dentin and ceramic had significant effects on temperature changes (P<0.01). It was observed that the ceramic exhibited a smaller temperature shielding effect than dentin. Clinically, it would be optimal to preserve the dentin to avoid damaging pulp tissues. Where there is insufficient overall thickness (≤3.5mm), continuous high-energy output photocuring should be avoided to protect pulp tissues from thermal injury

Sequence features involved in the mechanism of 3' splice junction wobbling

Background Alternative splicing is an important mechanism mediating the diversified functions of genes in multicellular organisms, and such event occurs in around 40-60% of human genes. Recently, a new splice-junction wobbling mechanism was proposed that subtle modifications exist in mRNA maturation by alternatively choosing at 5'- GTNGT and 3'- NAGNAG, which created single amino acid insertion and deletion isoforms. Results By browsing the Alternative Splicing Database information, we observed that most 3' alternative splice site choices occur within six nucleotides of the dominant splice site and the incidence significantly decreases further away from the dominant acceptor site. Although a lower frequency of alternative splicing occurs within the intronic region (alternative splicing at the proximal AG) than in the exonic region (alternative splicing at the distal AG), alternative AG sites located within the intronic region show stronger potential as the acceptor. These observations revealed that the choice of 3' splice sites during 3' splicing junction wobbling could depend on the distance between the duplicated AG and the branch point site (BPS). Further mutagenesis experiments demonstrated that the distance of AG-to-AG and BPS-to-AG can greatly influence 3' splice site selection. Knocking down a known alternative splicing regulator, hSlu7, failed to affect wobble splicing choices. Conclusion Our results implied that nucleotide distance between proximal and distal AG sites has an important regulatory function. In this study, we showed that occurrence of 3' wobble splicing occurs in a distance-dependent manner and that most of this wobble splicing is probably caused by steric hindrance from a factor bound at the neighboring tandem motif sequence

"An Econometric Analysis of SARS and Avian Flu on International Tourist Arrivals to Asia"

This paper compares the impacts of SARS and human deaths arising from Avian Flu on international tourist arrivals to Asia. The effects of SARS and human deaths from Avian Flu will be compared directly according to human deaths. The nature of the short run and long run relationship is examined empirically by estimating a static line fixed effect model and a difference transformation dynamic model, respectively. Empirical results from the static fixed effect and difference transformation dynamic models are consistent, and indicate that both the short run and long run SARS effect have a more significant impact on international tourist arrivals than does Avian Flu. In addition, the effects of deaths arising from both SARS and Avian Flu suggest that SARS is more important to international tourist arrivals than is Avian Flu. Thus, while Avian Flu is here to stay, its effect is currently not as significant as that of SARS.

Bridging the Digital Divide: A Case Study of Middle-age Women in Taiwan

This article reports a study of how middle-age and elder women adopt ICT through the social intervention and support from the non-profit organizations (NPOs) which they are associated with. By interviewing 30 participants of the Taiwan Women Up project, we reveal the barriers that may hinder women from learning ICT and the forces which can facilitate women in their adoption of ICT at three levels: individual, family and social group. Our findings show that, for our participants who are middle-class housewives over 40, their bonding with the NPOs serves as the main force for them to join the Taiwan Women Up project and adopt ICT. When ICT related difficulty occurs, they approach to the members of the NPOs and receive support from them while their families turn them down initially. After this project, the participants develop confidence and, accordingly, the digital divide is narrowed. Yet, there is little sign that any change of the traditional gender role has occurred