14,039 research outputs found
Ownership structures and dividend policy: Evidence from listed plantation companies in Malaysia / Sami RM Musallam and Coral Choo Pei Lin.
This research analyzed the relationship of ownership structures with dividend policy using a sample of 43 plantation companies listed on Bursa Malaysia from 2013 to 2015. The results of the Ordinary Least Square (OLS)analysis find that foreign ownership has a positive and significant influence on dividend policy while state ownership has a negative and significant influence on dividend policy. Furthermore, it was also found that Government Linked Investment Companies (GLICs) ownership has an insignificant influence on dividend policy. This study provides evidence to policymakers of government through their GLICs and states in selecting and deciding their dividend policies. Furthermore, it also provides evidence to shareholders and managers that companies with foreign ownership pay higher dividends while companies with state ownership pay lower dividends. This study is among the early studies that contributes to the finance and corporate governance literature by examining the relationship between GLICs as whole and foreign ownerships with a dividend policy in Malaysia
Relationship between children's oral health-related behaviors and their caregiver's sense of coherence
published_or_final_versio
Factors related to children's caries: a structural equation modeling approach
published_or_final_versio
Consistency of cruise data of the CARINA database in the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean
Initially a North Atlantic project, the CARINA carbon synthesis was extended to include the Southern Ocean. Carbon and relevant hydrographic and geochemical ancillary data from cruises all across the Arctic Mediterranean Seas, Atlantic and Southern Ocean were released to the public and merged into a new database as part of the CARINA synthesis effort. Of a total of 188 cruises, 37 cruises are part of the Southern Ocean, including 11 from the Atlantic sector. The variables from all Southern Ocean cruises, including dissolved inorganic carbon (TCO2), total alkalinity, oxygen, nitrate, phosphate and silicate, were examined for cruise-to-cruise consistency in one collective effort. Seawater pH and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are also part of the database, but the pH quality control (QC) is described in another Earth System Science Data publication, while the complexity of the Southern Ocean physics and biogeochemistry prevented a proper QC analysis of the CFCs. The area-specific procedures of quality control, including crossover analysis between stations and inversion analysis of all crossover data (i.e. secondary QC), are briefly described here for the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean. Data from an existing, quality controlled database (GLODAP) were used as a reference for our computations â however, the reference data were included into the analysis without applying the recommended GLODAP adjustments so the corrections could be independently verified. The outcome of this effort is an internally consistent, high-quality carbon data set for all cruises, including the reference cruises. The suggested corrections by the inversion analysis were allowed to vary within a fixed envelope, thus accounting for natural variability. The percentage of cruises adjusted ranged from 31% (for nitrate) to 54% (for phosphate) depending on the variable
Management of rice straw with relay cropping of Chinese milk vetch improved double-rice cropping system production in southern China
Integrated multiple mediation analysis: A robustnessâspecificity trade-off in causal structure
Recent methodological developments in causal mediation analysis have addressed several issues regarding multiple mediators. However, these developed methods differ in their definitions of causal parameters, assumptions for identification, and interpretations of causal effects, making it unclear which method ought to be selected when investigating a given causal effect. Thus, in this study, we construct an integrated framework, which unifies all existing methodologies, as a standard for mediation analysis with multiple mediators. To clarify the relationship between existing methods, we propose four strategies for effect decomposition: two-way, partially forward, partially backward, and complete decompositions. This study reveals how the direct and indirect effects of each strategy are explicitly and correctly interpreted as path-specific effects under different causal mediation structures. In the integrated framework, we further verify the utility of the interventional analogues of direct and indirect effects, especially when natural direct and indirect effects cannot be identified or when cross-world exchangeability is invalid. Consequently, this study yields a robustnessâspecificity trade-off in the choice of strategies. Inverse probability weighting is considered for estimation. The four strategies are further applied to a simulation study for performance evaluation and for analyzing the Risk Evaluation of Viral Load Elevation and Associated Liver Disease/Cancer data set from Taiwan to investigate the causal effect of hepatitis C virus infection on mortality
Generalized Painleve-Gullstrand descriptions of Kerr-Newman black holes
Generalized Painleve-Gullstrand metrics are explicitly constructed for the
Kerr-Newman family of charged rotating black holes. These descriptions are free
of all coordinate singularities; moreover, unlike the Doran and other proposed
metrics, an extra tunable function is introduced to ensure all variables in the
metrics remain real for all values of the mass M, charge Q, angular momentum
aM, and cosmological constant \Lambda > - 3/(a^2). To describe fermions in
Kerr-Newman spacetimes, the stronger requirement of non-singular vierbein
one-forms at the horizon(s) is imposed and coordinate singularities are
eliminated by local Lorentz boosts. Other known vierbein fields of Kerr-Newman
black holes are analysed and discussed; and it is revealed that some of these
descriptions are actually not related by physical Lorentz transformations to
the original Kerr-Newman expression in Boyer-Lindquist coordinates - which is
the reason complex components appear (for certain ranges of the radial
coordinate) in these metrics. As an application of our constructions the
correct effective Hawking temperature for Kerr black holes is derived with the
method of Parikh and Wilczek.Comment: 5 pages; extended to include application to derivation of Hawking
radiation for Kerr black holes with Parikh-Wilczek metho
A state-of-the-art review on theory and engineering applications of eigenvalue and eigenvector derivatives
Eigenvalue and eigenvector derivatives with respect to system design variables and their applications have been and continue to be one of the core issues in the design, control and identification of practical engineering systems. Many different numerical methods have been developed to compute accurately and efficiently these required derivatives from which, a wide range of successful applications have been established. This paper reviews and examines these methods of computing eigenderivatives for undamped, viscously damped, nonviscously damped, fractional and nonlinear vibration systems, as well as defective systems, for both distinct and repeated eigenvalues. The underlying mathematical relationships among these methods are discussed, together with new theoretical developments. Major important applications of eigenderivatives to finite element model updating, structural design and modification prediction, performance optimization of structures and systems, optimal control system design, damage detection and fault diagnosis, as well as turbine bladed disk vibrations are examined. Existing difficulties are identified and measures are proposed to rectify them. Various examples are given to demonstrate the key theoretical concepts and major practical applications of concern. Potential further research challenges are identified with the purpose of concentrating future research effort in the most fruitful directions.Ministry of Education (MOE)The first and third authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Singapore Ministry of Education through the award of research project grant AcRF Tier 1 RG183/17
Dynamic Role-Based Access Control for Decentralized Applications
Access control management is an integral part of maintaining the security of
an application. Although there has been significant work in the field of cloud
access control mechanisms, however, with the advent of Distributed Ledger
Technology (DLT), on-chain access control management frameworks hardly exist.
Existing access control management mechanisms are tightly coupled with the
business logic, resulting in governance issues, non-coherent with existing
Identity Management Solutions, low security, and compromised usability. We
propose a novel framework to implement dynamic role-based access control for
decentralized applications (dApps). The framework allows for managing access
control on a dApp, which is completely decoupled from the business application
and integrates seamlessly with any dApps. The smart contract architecture
allows for the independent management of business logic and execution of access
control policies. It also facilitates secure, low cost, and a high degree of
flexibility of access control management. The proposed framework promotes
decentralized governance of access control policies and efficient smart
contract upgrades. We also provide quantitative and qualitative metrics for the
efficacy and efficiency of the framework. Any Turing complete smart contract
programming language is an excellent fit to implement the framework. We expect
this framework to benefit enterprise and non-enterprise dApps and provide
greater access control flexibility and effective integration with traditional
and state of the art identity management solutions.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl
A microchip optomechanical accelerometer
The monitoring of accelerations is essential for a variety of applications
ranging from inertial navigation to consumer electronics. The basic operation
principle of an accelerometer is to measure the displacement of a flexibly
mounted test mass; sensitive displacement measurement can be realized using
capacitive, piezo-electric, tunnel-current, or optical methods. While optical
readout provides superior displacement resolution and resilience to
electromagnetic interference, current optical accelerometers either do not
allow for chip-scale integration or require bulky test masses. Here we
demonstrate an optomechanical accelerometer that employs ultra-sensitive
all-optical displacement read-out using a planar photonic crystal cavity
monolithically integrated with a nano-tethered test mass of high mechanical
Q-factor. This device architecture allows for full on-chip integration and
achieves a broadband acceleration resolution of 10 \mu g/rt-Hz, a bandwidth
greater than 20 kHz, and a dynamic range of 50 dB with sub-milliwatt optical
power requirements. Moreover, the nano-gram test masses used here allow for
optomechanical back-action in the form of cooling or the optical spring effect,
setting the stage for a new class of motional sensors.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figure
- âŠ