Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Does renewable energies' usage act as a shield against oil price changes?

The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to the existing literature on equity markets and energy prices by studying the impact of oil price changes on several American and European companies, taking into consideration their level of renewable energies’ usage within the total energy consumption. The results show that in fact there is an overall negative impact of oil price changes. However, when we split the oil price changes in positive and negative ones, it seems that their impact is symmetric, being positive (negative) when the change is negative (positive). Using the level of renewable energies in the estimation models, the conclusion that arrives is that there could be an optimal maximum level of green energies’ usage, for which the companies can somewhat benefit from a protection against oil price changes, thus hedging against its risk.
Summary a C Ta a C Ta a – Study Design B – Data Collection C – Statistical Analysis D – Data Interpretation E – Manuscript Preparation F – Literature Search G – Funds Collection Cluttering: Specific Communication Disorder

The article presents cluttering as understood as a specific communication disorder. Cluttering has received less coverage in the subject literature than stuttering and is comparatively poorly understood. Defining cluttering presents us with a problem due to differences of opinion as to which of the behaviours associated with the disorder are crucial to its diagnosis and which are rather peripheral. Modern approaches to the understanding of cluttering should be based on a neuro-developmental concept, which has pointed out the importance of understanding the whole symptom formation from genes to behavior. This model has microgenetic theory itself in the backround. It includes distal interactive factors (genes, environment), main interactive factors (speech planning and speech production), modeling factors (cognitive processes and awareness), and behaviour itself (cluttering). The article discusses these factors against the basis of the global subject literature. Particular attention has been devoted to the development of the process of becoming aware of mistakes in utterances within the perspective of the state of the brain/ mind in time. The section ends with a discussion of the diagnostic criteria including that of differential diagnostics.
From Inference to Physics

Entropic dynamics, a program that aims at deriving the laws of physics from standard probabilistic and entropic rules for processing information, is developed further. We calculate the probability for an arbitrary path followed by a system as it moves from given initial to final states. For an appropriately chosen configuration space the path of maximum probability reproduces Newtonian dynamics.
Improved exponential stability criteria for uncertain stochastic systems with time delay

This paper is concerned with the robust exponential stability in mean square for uncertain stochastic systems with time delay. Based on Itô calculus rules, a more general Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional is constructed and the action of the infinitesimal generator of Itô diffusion on it is computed explicitly. Then, a novel delay-dependent stability criterion is obtained in terms of linear matrix inequalities, which is much less conservative than some existing results. Numerical examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Thermal Impact of an Active 3-D Microelectrode Array Implanted in the Brain

A chronically implantable, wireless neural interface device will require integrating electronic circuitry with the interfacing microelectrodes in order to eliminate wired connections. Since the integrated circuit (IC) dissipates a certain amount of power, it will raise the temperature in surrounding tissues where it is implanted. In this paper, the thermal influence of the integrated 3-D Utah electrode array (UEA) device implanted in the brain was investigated by numerical simulation using finite element analysis (FEA) and by experimental measurement in vitro as well as in vivo. The numerically calculated and experimentally measured temperature increases due to the UEA implantation were in good agreement. The experimentally validated numerical model predicted that the temperature increases linearly with power dissipation through the UEA, with a slope of 0.029degC/mW over the power dissipation levels expected to be used. The influences of blood perfusion, brain metabolism, and UEA geometry on tissue heating were also investigated using the numerical model.
Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race

Charles Mills makes visible in the world of mainstream philosophy some of the crucial issues of the black experience. Ralph Ellison's metaphor of They demonstrate what exciting new philosophical, base founded on class. There are posited as one of issues black jewish relations gender and political! Office of philosophical sensibility similar to, minorities racial identity look at black experience. He works are written erudite essays by mills makes visible? Love it expounds on racial contract cornell university of frederick douglass's famous july prognosis.
Does dexmedetomidine reduce postoperative pain after laparoscopic cholecystectomy with multimodal analgesia?

Background Pain after laparoscopy is multifactorial and different treatments have been proposed to provide pain relief. Multimodal analgesia is now recommended to prevent and treat post-laparoscopy pain. Dexmedetomidine, an α2 agonist, has well-known anesthetic and analgesic-sparing effects. We evaluated the analgesic effect of perioperative dexmedetomidine infusion during laparoscopic cholecystectomy with multimodal analgesia. Methods Forty-two patients aged 20 to 60 years old were allocated randomly into one of 2 groups (n = 21, in each). All patients underwent laparoscopic cholecystectomy under multimodal analgesia. The patients in group P received dexmedetomidine 1 µg/kg during 10 min before induction and then 0.5 µg/kg/h continuously until the removal of the gall bladder while the patients in the group C received saline by the same methods as group P. Total analgesic consumption and VAS score were recorded for the first 24 hr. Results There were no significant differences in VAS scores between group P and group C during 24 hr after laparoscopic cholecystectomy. VAS scores of group P were lower than that of group C during the 1st hr after operation. The amount of ketorolac required during the 24 hr after the operation was significantly less in group P compared to group C. Conclusions The administration of dexmedetomidine during laparoscopic cholecystectomy with multimodal analgesia has minimal benefits on the reduction of the postoperative pain score. The amount of ketorolac requirements during 24 hr after the operation showed significant difference. Dexmedetomidine might be helpful for the postoperative pain after laparoscopic cholecystectomy with multimodal analgesia.
Learning to Rank with Pairwise Regularized Least-Squares

Learning preference relations between objects of interest is one of the key problems in machine learning. Our approach for addressing this task is based on pairwise comparisons for estimation of overall ranking. In this paper, we pro-pose a simple preference learning algorithm based on regularized least squares and describe it within the kernel meth-ods framework. Our algorithm, that we call RankRLS, minimizes a regularized least-squares approximation of a ranking error function that counts the number of incorrectly ranked pairs of data points. We consider both primal and dual versions of the algorithm. The primal version is preferable when the dimensionality of the feature space is smaller than the number of training data points and the dual one is preferable in the opposite case. We show that both versions of RankRLS can be trained as eﬃciently as the corresponding versions of standard regularized least-squares regression, despite the fact that the number of training data point pairs under consideration grows quadratically with respect to the number of individual points. As a representative example of a case where the data points outnumber features we choose the Letor dataset. For the opposite case, we choose the parse ranking task. We show that on the Letor dataset the primal RankRLS performs comparably to RankSVM and RankBoost algorithms that are used as baselines. More-over, we show that the dual RankRLS notably outperforms the standard regularized least-squares regression in parse ranking. We suggest that the main advantage of RankRLS is the computational eﬃciency both in the primal and the dual versions, especially since the eﬃcient implementation of the latter is not straightforward, for example, for the support vector machines.
Establishment Wage Differentials

Economists have long known that individual wages depend on a combination of employee and employer characteristics, as well as the interaction of the two. Although it is important to understand how employee and employer characteristics are related to wages, little is known about the magnitude and relation of these wage effects. This is primarily due to the lack of microdata which links individuals to the establishments where they work, but also due to technical difficulties associated with separating out employee and employer effects. This paper uses data from the Occupational Employment Statistics program at the Bureau of Labor Statistics that permit both of these issues to be addressed. Our results show that employer effects contribute substantially to earnings differences across individuals. We also find that establishments that pay well for one occupation also pay well for others. This paper contributes to the growing literature that analyzes firms’ compensation policies, and specifically the topic of employer effects on wages.
The outgrowth of micrometastases is enabled by the formation of filopodium-like protrusions.

UNLABELLED Disseminated cancer cells that have extravasated into the tissue parenchyma must interact productively with its extracellular matrix components to survive, proliferate, and form macroscopic metastases. The biochemical and cell biologic mechanisms enabling this interaction remain poorly understood. We find that the formation of elongated integrin β(1)-containing adhesion plaques by cancer cells that have extravasated into the lung parenchyma enables the proliferation of these cells via activation of focal adhesion kinase. These plaques originate in and appear only after the formation of filopodium-like protrusions (FLP) that harbor integrin β(1) along their shafts. The cytoskeleton-regulating proteins Rif and mDia2 contribute critically to the formation of these protrusions and thereby enable the proliferation of extravasated cancer cells. Hence, the formation of FLPs represents a critical rate-limiting step for the subsequent development of macroscopic metastases. SIGNIFICANCE Although the mechanisms of metastatic dissemination have begun to be uncovered, those involved in the establishment of extravasated cancer cells in foreign tissue microenvironments remained largely obscure. We have studied the behavior of recently extravasated cancer cells in the lungs and identified a series of cell biologic processes involving the formation of filopodium-like protrusions and the subsequent development of elongated, mature adhesion plaques, which contribute critically to the rapid proliferation of the micrometastatic cells and thus are prerequisites to the eventual lung colonization by these cells.
Financing Experimentation

Entrepreneurs must experiment to learn how good they are at a new activity. What happens when the experimentation is financed by a lender? Under common scenarios, i.e., when there is the opportunity to learn by "starting small" or when "no-compete" clauses cannot be enforced ex-post, we show that financing experimentation can become harder precisely when it is more profitable, i.e., for lower values of the known-arm and for more optimistic priors. Endogenous collateral requirements (like those frequently observed in micro-credit schemes) are shown to be part of the optimal contract.
Dynamics of labor demand and supply of rural households : a theoretical and empirical analysis

In this dissertation I develop and test a dynamic, stochastic model of labor demand and supply of farm households in a developing country. Existing estimates of labor demand and supply parameters are usually derived from separable/recursive agricultural household models within a static, perfect foresight framework. It is demonstrated that the introduction of risk results in nonseparability, since the preferences of the household affect the input decisions on the production side. More explicitly, agricultural production is formulated as a dynamic two-stage process with sequential dependence of decisions, where the uncertainty about the level of output is an important determinant of behavior. The demand for hired labor in the first stage is shown to be dependent on the fixed inputs utilized in that stage, the current and future prices of the variable inputs and a latent variable summarizing the influence of preferences and uncertainty on the production decisions. Similarly labor supply is dependent on that same latent variable and current wages and is modeled separately for males and females within the life-cycle context. Finally both labor demand and supply are influenced by demographic and institutional factors that vary across households. The conditions that allow separate estimation of the production decision rules independently from the consumption decisions are explored. It is shown that estimation of the labor demand functions via fixed effect methods may yield consistent wage elasticity estimates provided consumption enters the utility function linearly. Given the restrictiveness of these conditions it is argued that it is preferable to directly estimate the parameters of the agricultural technology and then derive the implied input demand elasticities. In this manner one can derive estimates of the change in labor utilized on the farm caused by a perfectly anticipated seasonal changes in wage rates. The above model is tested by using microeconomic panel data from India. Consistent estimates of the parameters of the utility function and the production technology are derived by choosing appropriate functional forms and using fixed effect econometric techniques.
Effective Factors for Increasing University Publication and Citation Rate

Despite the vital role of paper publication and citation in higher education institutions (HEIs), literature on publication exercises is relatively scarce. There are a number of factors which influence the rate of university publications and citations. Accordingly, with a focus on policy perspectives, this paper discusses publication exercises by addressing the factors that can increase or decrease the rate of publication and citation in HEIs. The investigated zones are divided into two macro and micro levels, in which macro level deals with global policy and micro level is related to local and university policies. The effective factors and their relevant criteria are traced in all the aforementioned policies.
Tracking Community College Transfers Using National Student Clearinghouse Data. Professional File. Number 94, Winter 2005.

Accurate measures of transfer are important to the assessment of community college outcomes. This article uses a relatively new database from the National Student Clearinghouse to assess transfer rates at the State University of New York community colleges. Past studies only tracked students within the public sector of a given state. Once transfers to out-of-state and private college are considered, the results of this study indicate that we may be underestimating the transfer rate by as much as 25%.
Price Setting and Exhange Rate Pass-Through

There has been a considerable recent debate on the causes of low pass-through from exchange rates to consumer prices. This paper develops a simple model of a small open economy in which exchange rate pass-through is determined by the frequency of price changes of importing firms. But this, in turn,is determined by the monetary policy rule of the central bank. i¥Looseri¦ monetary policy, which implies a higher mean inflation rate, and a higher volatility of the exchange rate, will lead to more frequent price changes and a higher rate of pass-through. The model implies that there should be a positive, but nonlinear, relationship between pass-through and mean inflation, and a positive relationship between passthrough and exchange rate volatility. In a sample of 122 countries, this is strongly supported by the data. Our conclusion is that, at least partly, low exchange rate pass-through is a result of short-term price rigidities.
Investigating the Behavior of Idiosyncratic Volatility

This article studies the behavior of idiosyncratic volatility for the postWorld War II period. Using aggregate idiosyncratic volatility statistics constructed from the Fama and French (1993) three-factor model, we find that the volatility of individual stocks appears to have increased over time. This trend is not solely attributed to the increasing prominence of the NASDAQ market. We go on to suggest that the idiosyncratic volatility of individual stocks is associated with the degree to which their shares are owned by financial institutions. Finally, we show that idiosyncratic volatility is also positively related to expected earnings growth.
Deletion of galectin-3 exacerbates microglial activation and accelerates disease progression and demise in a SOD1G93A mouse model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Galectins are pleiotropic carbohydrate‐binding lectins involved in inflammation, growth/differentiation, and tissue remodeling. The functional role of galectins in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is unknown. Expression studies revealed increases in galectin‐1 mRNA and protein in spinal cords from SOD1 G93A mice, and in galectin‐3 and ‐9 mRNAs and proteins in spinal cords of both SOD1 G93A mice and sporadic ALS patients. As the increase in galectin‐3 appeared in early presymptomatic stages and increased progressively through to end stage of disease in the mouse, it was selected for additional study, where it was found to be mainly expressed by microglia. Galectin‐3 antagonists are not selective and do not readily cross the blood–brain barrier; therefore, we generated SOD1 G93A/Gal‐3 −/− transgenic mice to evaluate galectin‐3 deletion in a widely used mouse model of ALS. Disease progression, neurological symptoms, survival, and inflammation were assessed to determine the effect of galectin‐3 deletion on the SOD1 G93A disease phenotype. Galectin‐3 deletion did not change disease onset, but resulted in more rapid progression through functionally defined disease stages, more severely impaired neurological symptoms at all stages of disease, and expiration, on average, 25 days earlier than SOD1 G93A/Gal‐3 +/+ cohorts. In addition, microglial staining, as well as TNF‐α, and oxidative injury were increased in SOD1 G93A/Gal‐3 −/− mice compared with SOD1 G93A/Gal‐3 +/+ cohorts. These data support an important functional role for microglial galectin‐3 in neuroinflammation during chronic neurodegenerative disease. We suggest that elevations in galectin‐3 by microglia as disease progresses may represent a protective, anti‐inflammatory innate immune response to chronic motor neuron degeneration.
Essays on asset pricing and portfolio choice

The first chapter offers an explanation for the properties of the nominal term structure of interest rates and timevarying bond risk premia based on a model with rare consumption disaster risk. In the model, expected inflation follows a mean reverting process but is also subject to possible large (positive) shocks when consumption disasters occur. The possibility of jumps in inflation increases nominal yields and the yield spread, while time-variation in the inflation jump probability drives time-varying bond risk premia. Predictability regressions offer independent evidence for the model's ability to generate realistic implications for both the stock and bond markets. The second chapter studies the cross-section of stock returns. Why do value stocks have higher expected returns than growth stocks, in spite of having lower risk? Why do these stocks exhibit positive abnormal performance while growth stocks exhibit negative abnormal performance? This paper offers a rare-events based explanation, that can also account for facts about the aggregate market. Patterns in time-series predictability offer independent evidence for the model's conclusions. The third chapter studies an asset allocation problem. It shows that learning about the parameters of the return process induces a large negative hedging demand in an investor who is optimally rebalancing her portfolio, even after she has observed 83 years of market asset data. For example, an investor with a 5-year investment horizon decreases the percentage of wealth she allocates to the stock index by over 20 percent when she takes learning into account. Furthermore, I show that the initial estimation sample length needs to be at least 500 years in order for the effect of learning to vanish. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Finance First Advisor Jessica A. Wachter Subject Categories Finance and Financial Management This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn. edu/edissertations/811 ESSAYS ON ASSET PRICING AND PORTFOLIO CHOICE Hsin-hung Jerry Tsai A DISSERTATION in Finance For the Graduate Group in Managerial Science and Applied Economics Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2013 Supervisor of Dissertation Jessica A. Wachter, Professor of Finance Graduate Group Chairperson Eric Bradlow, Professor of Marketing, Statistics and Education Dissertation Committee Nikolai Roussanov, Assistant Professor of Finance Ivan Shaliastovich, Assistant Professor of Finance Jessica A. Wachter, Professor of Finance Amir Yaron, Robert Morris Professor of Banking, Professor of Finance
BCG vaccination scar associated with better childhood survival in Guinea-Bissau.

BACKGROUND Recent studies have suggested that Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccination may have a non-specific beneficial effect on infant survival and that a BCG scar may be associated with lower child mortality. No study has previously examined the influence of BCG vaccination on cause of death. METHODS Two cohorts (A and B) were used to describe the mortality pattern for children with and without BCG scar and to determine specific causes of death. In cohort A (n = 1813), BCG scar was assessed at 6 months of age and as previously described children with a BCG scar had lower mortality over the next 12 months than children with no BCG scar. In cohort B, 1617 children aged 3 months to 5 years of age had their BCG scar status assessed in a household-based survey and mortality was assessed during a 12-month period. Causes of death were determined by verbal autopsy (VA) and related to BCG scar status in a cause-specific hazard function. RESULTS Controlling for background factors associated with mortality, there was lower mortality for children with a BCG scar than without in cohort B, the mortality ratio (MR) being 0.45 (95% CI 0.21-0.96). Exclusion of children exposed to TB did not have any impact on the result. In a combined analysis of cohorts A and B, the MR was 0.43 (95% CI 0.28-0.65) controlling for background factors. There were no large differences in distribution of the five major causes of death (malaria, pneumonia, acute diarrhoea, chronic diarrhoea, and meningitis/encephalitis) according to BCG scar status in the two cohorts. Having a BCG scar significantly reduced the risk of death from malaria [MR 0.32 (95% CI 0.13-0.76)]. CONCLUSIONS A BCG scar is a marker of better survival among children in countries with high child mortality. BCG vaccination may affect the response to several major infections including malaria.