Development of a voice recognition based system to help physically disabled people use the facebook

Social network sites (SNSs) have become so popular that the number of people joining and actively participating on such sites is increasing on a daily basis. Although there are several SNSs, Facebook is currently the most popular and most commonly used. SNSs have primarily been developed with able-bodied people in mind and as a result of this, people with disabilities find it difficult to join and participate on these sites. Furthermore, this topic has received little attention by researchers around the world. Facebook pages usually consist of text, graphics, and sound where the users navigate through the pages using a mouse. As a step towards addressing this need and finding a possible elegant solution, the authors have developed a voice-activated PC-based system (called NEU-FACE) in the form of an interface to Facebook. With the aid of this system, a person with a physical disability can join and participate in Facebook by giving voice commands to manage the typical Facebook activities.

     

Mandatory disclosure,greenhouse gas emissions and the cost of equity capital: UK evidence of a U-shaped relationship

This paper examines the effects of disclosing greenhouse gas (GHG) information mandatorily on the cost of equity capital (COC) using a longitudinal unbalanced panel database of the United Kingdom's FTSE 350 firms for the period 2011–2016. We use a nonlinear panel quantile regression (PQR) model to examine the relationship between GHG disclosure (GHGD) and COC in the United Kingdom. This technique was supplemented by conducting a two-step generalised method of moment (GMM) estimation to address any concerns related to the potential existence of endogeneity problems. Our findings suggest that high-level GHGD appeared to be negatively associated with COC up to a certain level, which is known as the turning point; then, any increase in GHGD is likely to increase the COC. This means that the nonlinear association between GHGD and COC is evidenced in our study and takes a U shape. Likewise, our findings are associative of a moderating effect of the 2013 carbon disclosure regulation (CDR) on the GHGD–COC nexus. We argue that mandatory GHGD and GHG risk are linked so that those companies that are associated with higher GHG risk have a tendency to be better disclosers. Consequently, we urge regulators to design GHGD regulations in a way that mirrors corporate environmental risk and leads to a lower COC in order to align the interests of corporations with those of the society at large.     

The impact of traffic sign deficit on road traffic accidents in Nigeria

This study assesses the impact of traffic sign deficit on road traffic accidents in Nigeria. The participants were 720 commercial vehicle drivers. While simple random sampling was used to select 6 out of 137 federal highways, stratified random sampling was used to select six categories of commercial vehicle drivers. The study used qual-dominant mixed methods approach comprising key informant interviews; group interviews; field observation; policy appraisal and secondary literature on traffic signs. Result shows that the failure of government to provide and maintain traffic signs in order to guide road users through the numerous accident black spots on the highways is the major cause of road accidents in Nigeria. The study argues that provision and maintenance of traffic signs present opportunity to promoting safety on the highways and achieving the sustainable development goals.     

FORWARD RISK PREMIA AND THE MATURITY OF CONTRACTS: A NOTE

This paper examines the behavior of the risk premium component of currency forward rates. Analyzing forward rates of one, two and three-month maturity, we find that the power of forward rate as a predictor of future spot rate decreases with the length of contract maturity. Further, we find that the proportion of the variance of the forward premium which is due to the variation of the risk premium is larger than the proportion due to the expected spot rate change for all currencies except for the Canadian dollar. This proportion also increases with the length of maturity.     

On the Role of Futures Trading in Spot Market Fluctuations: Perpetrator of Volatility or Victim of Regret?

We examine the role of index futures trading in spot market volatility. We use the exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (EGARCH) approach to measure volatility, analyze causality and feedback relations between volatilities in the spot and futures markets, and test various hypotheses in the context of a multivariate model that incorporates other macrostate variables. Our empirical results suggest index futures trading may not be blamed for the observed volatility in the spot market. Rather, we find stronger and more consistent support for the alternative posture that volatility in the futures market is an outgrowth of a turbulent cash market. We use the regret (cognitive dissonance) theory to explain our results.     

Human capital,investment and growth: Some results from an endogenous growth model

Recent theoretical literature on the sources of economic growth has emphasized the role of human capital as an internal contributing force in the growth process. Empirical results reported in this paper provide support for this theoretical proposition. Cross-country data from 32 developing countries indicate that human capital (as alternatively measured by the primary school enrollment rate or the adult literacy rate) exerts a significant positive impact upon output growth.     

Corporate mergers and union wage premiums

Corporate mergers possibly enhance the labor negotiation advantage of employers. This study investigates the association between wage levels and merger activity to test the employer bargaining strength hypothesis. The results indicate significantly lower union wages as a consequence of merging. Merger activity, however, does not influence wage levels of non-union workers. These findings are supportive of the employer bargaining strength hypothesis.     

Mean–variance and mean–semivariance portfolio selection: a multivariate nonparametric approach

While univariate nonparametric estimation methods have been developed for estimating returns in mean-downside risk portfolio optimization, the problem of handling possible cross-correlations in a vector of asset returns has not been addressed in portfolio selection. We present a novel multivariate nonparametric portfolio optimization procedure using kernel-based estimators of the conditional mean and the conditional median. The method accounts for the covariance structure information from the full set of returns. We also provide two computational algorithms to implement the estimators. Via the analysis of 24 French stock market returns, we evaluate the in-sample and out-of-sample performance of both portfolio selection algorithms against optimal portfolios selected by classical and univariate nonparametric methods for three highly different time periods and different levels of expected return. By allowing for cross-correlations among returns, our results suggest that the proposed multivariate nonparametric method is a useful extension of standard univariate nonparametric portfolio selection approaches.     

Earnings quality,bankruptcy risk and future cash flows

Prior research suggests that the quality of accruals may be compromised where the magnitude of accruals is abnormally high, due to the presence of errors in the accruals‐estimation process (Dechow and Dichev, 2002; Richardson, 2003). A consequence of this is that abnormal accruals may not map into realised future cash flows to the extent that would normally be expected of accruals data. Indeed, the association may be insignificant if abnormal accruals consist primarily of estimation noise. Our study investigates whether abnormal accruals for UK firms provide incremental insight into future cash flows. In particular, our paper may be viewed as a development of Subramanyam (1996). We find a significant positive association between abnormal accruals and one‐year‐ahead operating cash flows. This provides a rationale for the pricing of abnormal accruals by the market (Subramanyam, 1996; Xie, 2001) and suggests that abnormal accruals are not merely the products of noise in the accruals‐estimation process. However, our results are conditional upon the probability of one‐year‐ahead bankruptcy risk (Charitou et al., 2004). We also find that abnormal accruals possess small but significant explanatory power for future cash flows even when controlling for the disaggregation of accruals into individual items (Barth et al., 2001).     

苹果中多菌灵的快速测定及方法评估

为评估苹果中多菌灵残留快检试剂盒的适应性,本文以《水果、蔬菜中多菌灵残留的测定高效液相色谱法》（GB/T 23380—2009）为参比方法,选择3家公司生产的快检试剂盒,以《食品快速检测方法评价技术规范》为依据,对快检方法在苹果中的适用性进行评估。结果表明,试剂盒1的灵敏度为66.67%,特异性为100%,假阴性率为33.33%,假阳性率为0,显著性差异为8.1,相对准确率为80%。试剂盒2的灵敏度为100%,特异性为66.67%,假阴性率为0,假阳性率为33.33%,显著性差异为8.1,相对准确率为80%。试剂盒3的灵敏度为100%,特异性为50%,假阴性率0,假阳性率为50%,显著性差异为8.1,相对准确率80%。