Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Update on Evolutionary and Ecological Genomics of Arabidopsis Evolutionary and Ecological Genomics of Arabidopsis 1

Why are some plants self-pollinating? What determines the timing of flowering and germination? Why do resistant and susceptible alleles of pathogenresistant genes coexist in populations? These are just a few questions traditionally asked in the domain of ecology and evolutionary biology, and comprehensive answers to these and other questions are beginning to be addressed by molecular analyses. Increasingly, ecologists and evolutionists have been turning to Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), the favored system for the study of plant molecular genetics and development (Mitchell-Olds, 2001; Pigliucci, 2002; Shimizu, 2002). Arabidopsis research has taken on an interdisciplinary focus, facilitating the integration of ecology, molecular genetics, and evolutionary genomics (Fig. 1). Genes, which were previously utilized in evolutionary and ecologicalresearchasmeremolecularmarkers,arenow being dissected to study the genetic basis of ecologically and evolutionarily important traits. Population genomic analyses of such genes can reveal molecular signatures associated with the pressures of natural selection, providing a glimpse of historical forces that may explain patterns of genetic and phenotypic variation observed in contemporary populations. At the heart of these studies are attempts to understand traits in their broad ecological and evolutionary contexts. Ecology, which examines interactions among individuals, species, and their abiotic environment, requires knowledge of the response of plants to their natural environments. Evolutionary studies examine how selection, genetic drift, and evolutionary history have shaped patterns of variation at both the molecular and phenotypiclevels. Inthis article, we will illustrate thepowerof Arabidopsis asamodel plant for the study of ecology and evolutionary genomics, and the approaches that have led to key insights not only for these fields but also for plant biology in general (Mitchell-Olds, 2001; Shimizu, 2002).
Superlinear speedup for matrix multiplication

Amdahl has shown that multiprocessor execution performance is not proportional to the number of processors. Gustafson has found a way to show that there are algorithms which can have almost linear speedup. In this article we have found algorithms which can achieve a superlinear speedup. The idea is not based on changing the algorithm or executing smaller number of operations like in the parallel search. It is based on characteristics of using an structure persistent algorithm which efficiently exploits the cache in a shared multiprocessor and avoids cache misses as much as possible. Our experimental research shows results of superlinear speedup for algorithms which run on modern multicore and multi-chip architectures and perform beyond expectations of maximum linear speedup.
Fiscal and Generational Imbalances: An Update

This paper provides an update of the U.S. fiscal and generational imbalances that we originally calculated in Gokhale and Smetters (2003) and presents the calculations in several alternative ways. We find that a lot has changed in just a few years. In particular, the nation's fiscal imbalance has grown from around $44 trillion as of fiscal year-end 2002 to about $63 trillion, mostly due to the recent adoption of the prescription drug bill (Medicare, Part D). The imbalance also grows by more than $1.5 trillion (in inflation adjusted terms) each year that action is not taken to reduce it. This imbalance now equals about 8 percent of all future gross domestic product (GDP) and it could, in theory, be eliminated by more than doubling the employer-employee payroll tax from 15.3 percent of wages to over 32 percent immediately and forever--assuming, quite critically, no reduction in labor supply or national saving and capital formation. Massive cuts in government spending would also be required to achieve fiscal balance: the total federal fiscal imbalance now equals 77.8 percent of non-Social Security and non-Medicare outlays.
The characteristics of dual header pulse interval modulation (DH-PIM) in indoor optical wireless systems

In this paper DH-PIM modulation scheme and its properties are discussed. Expressions for, symbol length, transmission capacity, bandwidth requirements, photocurrent, power spectral density and slot and packet error rates are presented. Results obtained for the packet error rate are compared with OOK and PIM. It offers the same performance as PIM but considerably better performance compared with OOK.
What Incentives to Learn at the Bottom End of the Labour Market

UK policymakers desire to see more and better jobs in the labour market mirrors deepening concern that the quality of much employment is poor, wages are low and opportunities to progress are limited. The result is social inequality, growing and highly persistent income inequality and a lack of social mobility. The focus of current policy is on the need to ensure that those at the lower end of the labour market invest in their human capital through re-engaging with learning, which is assumed to enable progress into better-paid employment. This paper argues that a set of mutually reinforcing factors reduces the incentives acting on individuals and in many cases employers, to participate and invest in education and training. Each of these factors, on their own, would be sufficient to cause problems at the lower end of the labour market. Acting in concert, as a mutually reinforcing matrix, they produce powerful reasons why many individuals perceive that the incentives to learn are weak. Our argument suggests that the fundamental causes of low pay and rotten jobs have been misdiagnosed and policy interventions that inject more workers supplied with lower level vocational qualifications into the labour pool are unlikely to produce a shock to the system that would be sufficient to engender lasting and widespread change.
Investigation on Properties of Concrete with Palm Oil Fuel Ash as Cement Replacement

Pozzolanic materials in concrete works are increasing, and are expected to continuously increase in the years ahead because of technological advancement and the desire for sustainable development. This study presents some experimental results on the behavior of Palm Oil Fuel Ash (POFA) in concrete. Specimens containing 5, 15, 25, 35 and 45% POFA were prepared at constant water-cement ratios of 0.5 with superplasticizer content of 0.5% with cement. Workability in terms of slump and strength properties were studied, and compared with control specimen. The Study discovered that the workability of POFA concrete was quite satisfactory in the expected range, while the compressive, tensile and flexural strengths increased with POFA replacement up to 25%, 15% and 15%. Consequently the general optimum strength for all variable hardening tests was found at 15% POFA replacement.
Pro-Active Multi-Agent System in Virtual Education

As virtual education becomes more and more widespread, its’ application provides a unique opportunity for us to develop new applications in adaptive or intelligent agent technology. Adaptive or intelligent agent technologies allow education methods to be identified on a case-by-case basis, and undertaken regardless of location, time, age and life lifelong. There are many different distant education (DE) models developed to take into account modern tendencies of distributed system ideas and intelligent agent technology. The last strengthens the ontological features of DE system and move up the users from passive knowledge recipient role into active actors in the educational process. Therefore the main priority for the development of a modern virtual education system is to provide each student with an individual program, and to allow them to choose courses to fit their level of knowledge as well as make information searchable in accordance to the query criteria and within existing user skill sets. New methods and methodologies are being developed to solve this problem, as well as many others associated with virtual education, distant education, and e-learning. An adaptation to a learner’s personal interests, characteristics and goals is a key challenge in e-learning. In this chapter we discuss the architecture of web-based learning systems that addresses the learners’ need for activities and content based on their preferences and equally considers the designer’s and tutor’s needs for the efficiency. The system aims to develop new methods and services for pro-active and adaptive e-learning. Proactive means the system involves acting in advance of a future situation, rather than just reacting. It means taking control and making things happen rather than just adjusting to a situation or waiting for something to happen. Adaptive means the learners are provided with a learning design that is adapted to their personal characteristics, interests and goals as well as the current context. Currently, two approaches to adaptation are common within e-learning. In the first, dominated by a strong tradition in instructional design, a team produces a detailed design of content, interaction and presentation. Within the design different options may be worked out for different learners based on user data, e.g. level, interest or learning style. The options for adaptation are prepared at design time and require limited, if any, interaction of tutors at runtime. The second approach is based on the assumption that author and tutor is the same
Bargaining in Stationary Networks

We study an infinite horizon game in which pairs of players connected in a network are randomly matched to bargain. Players who reach agreement are replaced by new players at the same positions in the network. We show that all equilibria are payoff equivalent. The payoffs and the set of agreement links converge as players become patient. Several new concepts—mutually estranged sets, partners, and shortage ratios—provide insights into the relative strengths of the positions in the network. We develop a procedure to determine the limit equilibrium payoffs for all players. Characterizations of equitable and nondiscriminatory networks are also obtained. (JEL C78, D85)
Intervention as Information: A Survey

Research has generally failed to find reliable connections between official exchange-market interventions and exchange rates that are consistent with either a monetary or a portfolio-balance theory of exchange-rate determination. Recently economists have suggested that intervention might sometimes influence exchange rates through its effects on agents? expectations. This survey discusses newer research that analyzes informational aspects of intervention.
Regions within a single epidermal cell of Drosophila can be planar polarised independently

Planar cell polarity (PCP), the coordinated and consistent orientation of cells in the plane of epithelial sheets, is a fundamental and conserved property of animals and plants. Up to now, the smallest unit expressing PCP has been considered to be an entire single cell. We report that, in the larval epidermis of Drosophila, different subdomains of one cell can have opposite polarities. In larvae, PCP is driven by the Dachsous/Fat system; we show that the polarity of a subdomain within one cell is its response to levels of Dachsous/Fat in the membranes of contacting cells. During larval development, cells rearrange (Saavedra et al., 2014) and when two subdomains of a single cell have different types of neighbouring cells, then these subdomains can become polarised in opposite directions. We conclude that polarisation depends on a local comparison of the amounts of Dachsous and Fat within opposing regions of a cell's membrane. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.06303. 001
Applications of Laplace transform for evaluating occupation time options and other derivatives

The present thesis provides an analysis of possible applications of the Laplace Transform (LT) technique to several pricing problems. In Finance this technique has received very little attention and for this reason, in the first chapter we illustrate with several examples why the use of the LT can considerably simplify the pricing problem. Observed that the analytical inversion is very often difficult or requires the computation of very complicated expressions, we illustrate also how the numerical inversion is remarkably easy to understand and perform and can be done with high accuracy and at very low computational cost. In the second and third chapters we investigate the problem of pricing corridor derivatives, i.e. exotic contracts for which the payoff at maturity depends on the time of permanence of an index inside a band (corridor) or below a given level (hurdle). The index is usually an exchange or interest rate. This kind of bond has evidenced a good popularity in recent years as alternative instruments to common bonds for short term investment and as opportunity for investors believing in stable markets (corridor bonds) or in non appreciating markets (hurdle bonds). In the second chapter, assuming a Geometric Brownian dynamics for the underlying asset and solving the relevant Feynman-Kac equation, we obtain an expression for the Laplace transform of the characteristic function of the occupation time. We then show how to use a multidimensional numerical inversion for obtaining the density function. In the third chapter, we investigate the effect of discrete monitoring on the price of corridor derivatives and, as already observed in the literature for barrier options and for lookback options, we observe substantial differences between discrete and continuous monitoring. The pricing problem with discrete monitoring is based on an appropriate numerical scheme of the system of PDE's. In the fourth chapter we propose a new approximation for pricing Asian options based on the logarithmic moments of the price average.
Schools, Markets and Choice Policies

Part 1: Introduction to the debates 1. Markets in public policy: the case of school composition 2. Introducing two debates about markets in education Part 2: School choice and equity 3. What is social segregation and how do we measure it? 4. Changes in the social composition of schools Part 3: School choice and standards 5. What is school performance and how do we measure it? 6. Describing trends in school performance Part 4: Explanation and case studies 7. The role of geography 8. The impact of school organisation 9. The role of the LEA 10. Market frustration for families and schools? 11. Re-appraising the impact of markets
Respondent Lobbying in the Australian Accounting Standard‐setting Process: ED49 – A Case Study

Aims to contribute to the understanding of the Australian standard‐setting due process. Analyses submissions made on Exposure Draft 49 Accounting for Identifiable Intangible Assets (ED49) as a case study of the strategies employed by lobbyists in their attempt to influence the accounting standard setters. Previous studies on respondents′ submissions have ignored the possibility that, in responding to exposure drafts, lobbyists are provided with a means of persuasion in excess of casting votes. Employs a form of content analysis to study the political process of standard setting. The results suggest that respondents on ED49 attempted to weight their lobby positions with the use of supporting arguments that utilized conceptual and/or economic consequences rationale and presented positions of differing strengths.
A penalized exponential risk bound in parametric estimation

The paper offers a novel unified approach to studying the accuracy of parameter estimation by the quasi likelihood method. Important features of the approach are: (1) The underlying model {is not assumed to be parametric}. (2) No conditions on parameter identifiability are required. The parameter set can be unbounded. (3) The model assumptions are quite general and there is no specific structural assumptions like independence or weak dependence of observations. The imposed conditions on the model are very mild and can be easily checked in specific applications. (4) The established risk bounds are {nonasymptotic} and valid for large, moderate and small samples. (5) The main result is the concentration property of the quasi MLE giving an nonasymptotic exponential bound for the probability that the considered estimate deviates out of a small neighborhood of the "true" point. In standard situations under mild regularity conditions, the usual consistency and rate results can be easily obtained as corollaries from the established risk bounds. % The approach and the results are illustrated on the example of generalized linear and single-index models.
Is low worker mobility evidence for monopsony power

In this study, an assessment of the degree of worker mobility in the Portuguese Labor Market is performed by building on the dynamic monopsony literature. By producing rm-level estimates of the elasticity of the labor supply facing the rm, it is possible to conclude that workers have little sensitivity to real wage changes and, thus, that rms enjoy considerable wage-setting power. However, the extend to which one can relate such low worker mobility to monopsony power is severely questioned by rst estimating the impact of the estimated measures of the labor supply elasticity on wages and by then assessing how such estimates correlate with three high-dimensional xed e ects worker, rm and job title taken from the standard Mincer equation.
Operations optimization and contracting coordination for behavioral supply chain with typical social preferences

This thesis studies how to incorporate typical social preferences, such as fairness concerns and reciprocity, into the context of supply chain. The impacts of theses social preferences on the supply chain’s decisions, channel efﬁciency and coordination are investigated. Speciﬁcally, it focuses on three important questions as follows: 1, what are the differences between the conventional channel and the behavioral channel (e.g., fairness-concerned channel and reciprocal channel)? 2, how do these behavioral factors inﬂuence the decisions of the supplier and the retailer in the supply chain? 3, what effects have these social preferences on the coordination of the channel and its efﬁciency? In order to answer these questions, two models of behavioral operations are formulated. A newsvendor model for a dyadic supply chain with Nash bargaining fairness concerns is built ﬁrst. In this model, a supplier plays Stackelberg game with a retailer who faces stochastic demand. Nash bargaining solution is used as fairness reference to formally depict perceptively fair compromise, which is a new perspective to study fairness concerns in a supply chain. Then a similar dyadic channel in which a retailer and/or a supplier have a preference for reciprocity is investigated, but the retailer is facing deterministic demand. In this model, the impact of intention is studied within the context of supply chain for the ﬁrst time. Some interesting and valuable managerial insights are drawn by analyzing the two behavioral models. For example, fairness concern does have great impact on the difﬁculty of coordinating a channel. In addition, the dyadic channel with reciprocity can be coordinated by using a constant wholesale price, which implies that the problem of double marginalization is not necessary to be present all the time.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions Policies: Attitudinal and Social Network Influences On Employee Acceptability

1 List of Figures . 3 List of Tables . 5 Abbreviations and Acronyms . 9 Chapter 1 Research context . 11 1.1 The problem of greenhouse gas emissions . 11 1.2 The UK higher education sector . 13 1.3 Regulatory policies . 15 1.4 Explaining policy acceptability . 15 1.5 Social Network Analysis . 17 1.6 Research setting . 17 1.7 Research overview . 18 1.8 Research aim and objectives . 19 1.8. 1 Aim . 19 1.8. 2 Objectives . 19 1.9 Thesis structure. 20 Chapter 2 Factors affecting acceptability of policy . 21 2.
A Comparative Study of the Effects of Task-Based Writing under Different Pre-Task Planning Conditions on Intermediate EFL Learners ’ Written Performance in Personal and Decision-Making Tasks

During the last two decades, there have been some attempts to revitalize language teaching and move towards meaning-focused instructions including task-based syllabuses. Such practices believe in engaging learners in real language use in the classroom through transacting various tasks involving implicit learning processes. As the quality of task performance can be promoted by having planning opportunities prior to their completion, the present study scrutinized the effects of task-based writing under different pre-task planning conditions on intermediate EFL (English as a foreign language) learners’ written performance in personal and decision-making tasks. 120 intermediate learners served as the participants who were randomly assigned to three experimental groups and one control group. While the former planned individually, in pairs or groups, the latter did not have any planning opportunity. Prior to the treatment, they received two personal and decision-making pretests whose results were compared with the two post-tests belonging to the same task types to investigate the efficiency of task-based instruction in improving learners’ general writing ability. Following a factorial design, the data were analyzed, and it was indicated that pre-task planning was an effective writing strategy and cooperative planning, specifically, played a crucial role in boosting EFL learners’ general writing ability when completing personal and decision-making tasks.
Adaptive guard channel based CAC scheme in a 3G-WLAN integrated network

In wireless networks, guard channel based Call Admission Control (CAC) schemes are widely used to protect handoff calls for seamless wireless services. However, the introduction of the guard channels in wireless networks results in the increase in the new call blocking probability. This general situation also occurs in a 3G-WLAN integrated network. To solve this problem in a 3G-WLAN integrated network for QoS support, we propose an adaptive guard channel based Call Admission Control (CAC) scheme in this paper. The main objective of our guard channel based CAC scheme is to alleviate the increase in the new call blocking probability due to guard channels while it can still protect the handoff calls. For the design of our adaptive guard channel based CAC scheme, we first develop and analyze a performance model for a general guard channel based CAC scheme based on a non-homogeneous quasi birth and death model. The analytic results are used to design our adaptive guard channel based CAC scheme. Numerical studies show that our adaptive guard channel based CAC scheme can achieve its objective.
Size, competition, and innovative activities: a developing world perspective

The impact of size and competition on firm-level innovative activities has obtained considerable attention in developed countries, but the focus is still lacking in developing world. This paper is an attempt to contribute in this direction by including 14 Latin American countries, and by using Enterprise Survey data of the World Bank. We consider both input and output innovation to observe the influence of firm size and of market concentration on innovative activities, and to interrogate the differences in influences of innovation determinants in different size classes and competition statuses. Our analysis reveals that employment increases the likelihood of RD however, for product innovation, competition is a more significant stimulus for large firms compared to small ones. Our results suggest that firms' R&D productivity is independent of size classes and competition environments. All of the determinants (of innovation) are jointly observed to have different effects, for large and small firms, as explanatory factors of both R&D intensity and product innovation, and for different competition environments only for product innovation.