Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Aerobic scope does not predict the performance of a tropical eurythermal fish at elevated temperatures

Climate warming is predicted to negatively impact fish populations through impairment of oxygen transport systems when temperatures exceed those which are optimal for aerobic scope (AS). This concept of oxygen- and capacity-limited thermal tolerance (OCLTT) is rapidly gaining popularity within climate change research and has been applied to several fish species. Here, we evaluated the relevance of aerobic performance of juvenile barramundi (Lates calcarifer) in the context of thermal preference and tolerance by (1) measuring standard and maximum metabolic rates (SMR and MMR, respectively) and AS of fish acclimated to 29°C and acutely exposed to temperatures from 23 to 38°C, (2) allowing the fish to behaviourally select a preferred temperature between 29 and 38°C, and (3) quantifying alterations to AS after 5 weeks of acclimation to 29 and 38°C. SMR and MMR both increased continuously with temperature in acutely exposed fish, but the increase was greater for MMR such that AS was highest at 38°C, a temperature approaching the upper lethal limit (40–41°C). Despite 38°C eliciting maximum AS, when given the opportunity the fish selected a median temperature of 31.7±0.5°C and spent only 10±3% of their time at temperatures >36°C. Following acclimation to 38°C, AS measured at 38°C was decreased to the same level as 29°C-acclimated fish measured at 29°C, suggesting that AS may be dynamically modulated independent of temperature to accommodate the requirements of daily life. Together, these results reveal limited power of the OCLTT hypothesis in predicting optimal temperatures and effects of climate warming on juvenile barramundi.
Costs and correlates of storage in visual working memory

Acknowledgements Parts of this work are included in articles submitted to journals. Experiment 1 and 2 are currently submitted with the title " Costs of storing colour and complex shape in visual working memory: insights from pupil size and slow waves " by Kursawe & Zimmer. Data from Experiment 5 are currently submitted as " Correlates of information mismatch in visual working memory as a function of task-relevance " by Kursawe & Zimmer. Passages included in these articles are not marked in the text explicitly. To simplify the writing and reading process I consistently used " we " instead of " I ". Several people gave their support to the successful completion of this dissertation project. First of all, I would like to deeply thank my supervisor Professor Dr. Hubert Zimmer for his unique support and the many hours he spent in fruitful scientific discussions. I'm grateful for his steady encouragement to develop new ideas and I could profit a lot from his expertise. for great discussions and much assistance. Many student assistants were involved in data collection without their help this project would never have been realized. Thank you, Julia Osmachka, and Michael Mauderer who helped programming scripts for data analyses. I would like to thank all German and Chinese participants who brought all their patience and did a good job while working on the experiments. Colleagues are important for the daily mood and I'm therefore very thankful to Nina and Corina who often encouraged me and were always available for a short discussion. Last but not least there is one person who always supported me in scientific questions, in proofreading, and in any other field of the daily life: thank you Anna.
The effect of real exchange rates and their volatilities on the selected agricultural commodity exports: A case study on Turkey, 1971-2010

After the collapse of the Brettonwood system in 1973, most of the countries have abandoned to use solely the fixed exchange rate regime, and different countries have adapted different exchange rate regimes. Then, the impact of both the exchange rate level and the exchange rate volatility or variability especially on exports, the bilateral trade flows and the volumes of trade have been empirically and theoretically discussed. A large number of studies examine both the effect of the exchange rate and its volatility on agricultural trade. However, no consensus was reached yet on the relationship between the exchange rate and agricultural trade. As discussed in the literature, it is important to use disaggregated data and/or data on the individual commodities to get more meaningful results on the size and magnitude of the effects of the real exchange rates on agricultural commodities trade. (Awokuse and Yuan 2006; Byrne et al. 2008; Bahmani-Oskooee and Hegerty 2009; Karemera et al. 2011). Byrne et al. (2008) discuss the possibility of finding a negative effect of the exchange rate volatility on trade by pooling the data of all industries together, and claim that the disaggregation of the data such as firm, industry or commodity level could provide more appropriate and meaningful results. Considering the individual sectors and/or commodities is vitally important to understand the exact nature of the relation and to further tailor effective policy measures based on these fine results. Thus, we investigate the relationship between the real exchange rates and several of the most important Turkish agricultural commodities. They represent almost a quarter of the overall Turkish agricultural exports.
Standardised mortality rates in females and males with COPD and asthma

Mortality studies of males and females with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma have suggested that females have a poorer prognosis than males, but the results are either not unanimous or based on poorly characterised patients. The current study analysed the mortality of 279 asthma patients and 869 COPD patients, who were seeking pension due to disability, and compared mortality rates with expected rates derived from the general population. The mean follow-up period was 13.3 yrs (range 2.5–22.4 yrs) during which time 96 (34.4%) and 671 (77.2%) deaths were identified among asthma and COPD patients, respectively. The average age at study entry was 46.8 and 56.6 yrs, and the average forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) was 68.8 and 44.1 % predicted in the two diagnostic groups. After adjustment for predictors of survival (age, FEV1 % predicted, chronic bronchitis, body mass index, smoking status, oral prednisolone, ischaemic heart disease, and cor pulmonale), the relative risk of death was 1.21 (95% confidence interval: 0.77–1.89) and 0.98 (0.83–1.16) in females compared with males, in asthma and COPD patients, respectively. The standardised mortality rate (SMR) for males was 1.54 (1.10–2.09) and 2.7 (2.5–3.0), and for females 1.91 (1.44–2.49) and 4.8 (4.2–5.4), in asthma and COPD patients, respectively. Direct comparison of the SMR of males and females showed that females had higher mortality than males, with a rate ratio of 1.24 (0.82–1.84) and 1.8 (1.5–2.0), in asthma and COPD patients, respectively. Poisson regression analysis with control for the confounders did not change this result. Females and males with the same level of obstructive lung disease appear to have the same level of mortality. However, using standardised mortality rates, females have a higher mortality than males, suggesting that the protective effect of being female is lost in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients.
Surface and Column-Integrated Aerosol Properties of Heavy Haze Events in January 2013 over the North China Plain

ABSTRACTHeavy haze events were recorded over the North China Plain (NCP) during January 2013. The meteorological condition, in-situ measurement, and ground remote sensing of aerosol size distributions and aerosol optical properties were analyzed to study the meteorological effects on surface and column-integrated aerosol loading. Besides special terrain, analysis of meteorological parameters showed that such a long-standing pollution event was attributable to stagnant weather with high humidity, frequent inversion and low wind speed. The monthly average mass concentration of particulate matter smaller than 1.0 µm (PM1), 2.5 µm (PM2.5), and 10 µm (PM10) was 169, 190, and 233 µg/m3, respectively. High mass fraction of PM1 (73%) and PM2.5 (82%) in PM10 indicated the domination of fine mode particles. Increase of the fraction of PM1–2.5 during haze events was attributed to the increase of secondary aerosol under high humidity. Two polluted aerosol types (A1, A3) and one background aerosol (A2) were classified based on aerosol optical depth at 440 nm (AOD440) and column-integrated size distributions. The AOD440 of cloud/fog processed aerosol (1.43) was about two and seven times larger than that of A1 and A2, respectively. The single scattering albedo at 675 nm (SSA675) of A3 was ~0.93, which was larger than that of A1 (0.85) and A2 (0.80) due to hygroscopic growth under humid environment.
Can Environmental Regulations Be Compatible with Higher International Competitiveness? Some New Theoretical Insights

Recently, the conventional view that stricter environmental regulations at home will affect the international competitiveness of the domestic firms negatively, has been challenged under the conditions that the regulated firms engage in innovation and that the environmental regulation is incentive-based. (This revisionist idea is known as the Porter hypothesis.) The considerable amount of empirical work in this literature as summarised in Jaffe and et al (1995) has not been able to generate evidence for either of these two views. Theoretical work is relatively limited and does not give much credit to the Porter hypothesis. We present some pro-revisionist theoretical evidence in a two-country model which incorporates Tradable Emissions Permit as environmental regulatory regime. In such a model, firms subject to stricter environmental regulation can offset regulatory costs through innovation and/or permit revenues by abating more and selling extra permits. Finally, as a new idea, we suggest that consumers may have preference for the good that is produced in a relatively cleaner way, and thus, imposition of higher environmental standards at home can increase the demand for domestic production, and opens up a road towards increased competitiveness. Incorporation of this idea into our model brings further evidence for revisionist school.
Neural Oscillations & Consciousness: Attention as a Litmus Test for the Quantum Mind Hypothesis

The “quantum mind” hypothesis, the notion that quantum phenomena are causal and perhaps even essential in mentation and particularly consciousness, has met with fierce resistance. This has been particularly the case over the past 20 years, and the first task of this paper is to show that while there are indeed strong - mainly empirical - arguments against the thesis, the ‘in principle arguments published to date evince premature closure. The burgeoning field of “Quantum cognition” has established that quantum models are appropriate for decision-making, and that of “Quantum biology” has now made the notion of quantum effects at physiological temperatures plausible. If quantum effects are relevant to consciousness, they are likely to be seen in the contrast between attended to and not attended to streams of information. An exciting confirmation of this theme is the fact that attended to streams involve a decorrelation of the informational fluctuations in streams not so attended to. This gives rise to the idea that perhaps what enters our consciousness is the result of such a decorrelation from a superposed state. Decorrelation for the purposes of sparsification is prevalent in the brain; what may enter consciousness in the schema proposed here is mental processes with a duration greater than the sampling rate of consciousness (about 80ms) the wave function of which is undergoing state-vector reduction in a manner described by the Quantum Zeno effect. This allows also for truly voluntary action in the manner Von Neumann suggested. This is distinct from the situation with binocular resolution dichoptic stimuli which is a mixture, and is an example of what Fodor calls a “vertical” module with its operation mandatory. There is nothing to be gained by making binocular synthesis subject to voluntary choice. Likewise, it is realistic to propose that attention in lower animals with their less complex brains involves a much simpler mechanism than human consciousness. A model of the individual neuron as a harmonic oscillator is outlined, with a causal role for ion channels in the generation of the oscillations. It is clear that ion channels are critical for attention. Moreover, at a mesoscopic level, it is demonstrated that the brain enters a quiet “shutter” mode several times a second in which quantum effects may be appropriately amplified. If quantum effects exist in the brain, it is likely that this complex of phenomena will be central to them. The de Barros and Suppes models, in addition to the similar formalism due to Henry Stapp, are also briefly described.
Re-Interpreting the Failure of Foreign Exchange Market Efficiency Tests:Small Transaction Costs, Big Hysteresis Bands

Small transaction costs and uncertainty imply that optimal cross-currency interest rate speculation is marked by a first-order hysteresis band. Consequently uncovered interest parity does not hold and market efficiency tests based on it are misspecified. Indeed measured prediction errors are a combination of true prediction errors and a wedge that consists of the "option value" of being in foreign currency and either plus or minus the transaction cost. Due to the nature of this wedge, we should expect measured prediction errors to be serially correlated, correlated with the current forward rate and perhaps have a non-zero mean, if the interest differential itself is serially correlated. The existence of the wedge helps account both for the failure of market efficiency tests and the difficulties in finding an empirically successful model of the risk premium.
Performance Evaluation of a Convex Relaxation Approach to the Quadratic Assignment of Relational Object Views

We introduce a recently published convex relaxation approach for the quadratic assignment problem to the field of computer vision. Due to convexity, a favourable property of this approach is the absence of any tuning parameters and the computation of high–quality combinatorial solutions by solving a mathematically simple optimization problem. Furthermore, the relaxation step always computes a tight lower bound of the objective function and thus can additionally be used as an efficient subroutine of an exact search algorithm. We report the results of both established benchmark experiments from combinatorial mathematics and random ground-truth experiments using computer-generated graphs. For comparison, a recently published deterministic annealing approach is investigated as well. Both approaches show similarly good performance. In contrast to the convex ap- proach, however, the annealing approach yields no problem relaxation, and four parame- ters have to be tuned by hand for the annealing algorithm to become competitive.
Democracy at Risk: How Terrorist Threats Affect the Public

How do threats of terrorism affect the opinions of citizens? Speculation abounds, but until now no one had marshaled hard evidence to explain the complexities of this relationship. Drawing on data from surveys and original experiments they conducted in the United States and Mexico, Jennifer L. Merolla and Elizabeth J. Zechmeister demonstrate how our strategies for coping with terrorist threats significantly influence our attitudes toward fellow citizens, political leaders, and foreign nations. The authors reveal, for example, that some people try to restore a sense of order and control through increased wariness of others - especially of those who exist outside the societal mainstream. Additionally, voters under threat tend to prize 'strong leadership' more highly than partisan affiliation, making some politicians seem more charismatic than they otherwise would. The authors show that a wary public will sometimes continue to empower such leaders after they have been elected, giving them greater authority even at the expense of institutional checks and balances. Having demonstrated that a climate of terrorist threat also increases support for restrictive laws at home and engagement against terrorists abroad, Merolla and Zechmeister conclude that our responses to such threats can put democracy at risk.
Power versus Prudence

In Power versus Prudence Paul develops a prudential-realist model, arguing that a nation's national nuclear choices depend on specific regional security contexts: the non-great power states most likely to forgo nuclear weapons are those in zones of low and moderate conflict, while nations likely to acquire such capability tend to be in zones of high conflict and engaged in protracted conflicts and enduring rivalries. He demonstrates that the choice to forbear acquiring nuclear weapons is also a function of the extent of security interdependence that states experience with other states, both allies and adversaries. He applies the comparative case study method to pairs of states with similar characteristics - Germany/Japan, Canada/Australia, Sweden/Switzerland, Argentina/Brazil - in addition to analysing the nuclear choices of South Africa, Ukraine, South Korea, India, Pakistan, and Israel. Paul concludes by questioning some of the prevailing supply side approaches to non-proliferation, offering an explication of the security variable by linking nuclear proliferation with protracted conflicts and enduring rivalries. Power versus Prudence will be of interest to students of international relations, policy-makers, policy analysts, and the informed public concerned with the questions of nuclear weapons, non-proliferation, and disarmament.
The link between regional integration agreements, trade flows and economic crisis: A static and dynamic gravity model

Purpose - – This paper aims to use the approach based on the application of the law of gravity for the study of the flows of export and the effects of the RTAs. Design/methodology/approach - – In this paper, the authors evaluate the effects of RTAs on exports between members and non-members taking into account the Vinerian specification. The authors also try to estimate the impact of the recent economic crisis on the flows of export and the success of the RTAs. The authors use a model of static and dynamic gravity for 40 countries and six RTAs during the period 1980-2011. Findings - – Definitely the proliferation of RTAs will continue to be one of the driving forces that will constitute the political system and the global economy in the following years. It indicates a process that implies the merger of economies separated in bigger regions of free trade. Regional integration is seen as beneficial in many senses and is the major economic objectives in addition to presenting a stabilizing factor in international relations. Originality/value - – The gravity model is estimated using the last techniques of panel data which takes into account the endogeneity of the effects of integration and the existence of dynamic effect.
A DATA-COMPRESSED TECHNIQUE OF A REFERENCE GOVERNOR IN A PIECEWISE AFFINE FUNCTION

Abstract This paper demonstrates how to construct a reference governor for which the size of its implemented data can be adjusted with an integer parameter v, ensuring fulfillment of a pointwise-in-time constraint. Using a technique called “blocking,” a management method is established that changes the external reference every vT s period, where T s denotes a sampling period of a constrained system. Constraint fulfillment for an infinite time is achieved by satisfying a terminal condition using a maximal output admissible set. The reference governor is finally obtained with an explicit solution to the convex quadratic programming problem. Simulation and experimental evaluations demonstrate its effectiveness at constraint fulfillment and data compression.
Forecasting Euro Area Inflation By Aggregating Sub-components

The aim of this paper is to see whether one can improve on the naiveforecast of Euro Area inflation, where by naive forecast we mean theyear-over-year inflation rate one-year ahead will be the same as the past year.Various model selection procedures are employed on anautoregressive-moving-average model and several Phillips curvebasedmodels. We test also whether we can improve on the Euro Area inflation forecastby first forecasting the sub-components and aggregating them. We manage tosubstantially improve on the forecast by using a Phillips curve based model. Wealso find further improvement by forecasting the sub-components first andaggregating them to Euro Area inflation
Some Results on Non-deterministic Graph Searching in Trees

Non-deterministic graph searching was introduced by Fomin et al. to provide a unified approach for pathwidth, treewidth, and their interpretations in terms of graph searching games. Given q>=0, the q-limited search number, s_q(G), of a graph G is the smallest number of searchers required to capture an invisible fugitive in G, when the searchers are allowed to know the position of the fugitive at most q times. The search parameter s_0(G) corresponds to the pathwidth of a graph G, and s_{\infty}(G) to its treewidth. Determining s_q(G) is NP-complete for any fixed q>=0 in general graphs and s_0(T) can be computed in linear time in trees, however the complexity of the problem on trees has been unknown for any q>0. We introduce a new variant of graph searching that we call restricted non-deterministic. The corresponding parameter is denoted by rs_q and is shown to be equal to s_q for q=0,1, and at most twice s_q for any q>=2 (for any graph G). Our main result is the design of a polynomial time algorithm that computes rs_q(T) for any tree T and any q>= 0. This provides a 2-approximation of s_q(T) for any tree T, and shows that the decision problem associated to s_1 is polynomial in the class of trees. Our proofs are based on a new decomposition technique for trees which might be of independent interest. We also prove that the number of queries required to search a tree with two searchers can be computed in linear time. Tight upper bounds on the minimum number of queries for an arbitrary fixed number of searchers are also provided.
Electromyography signal analysis using wavelet transform and higher order statistics to determine muscle contraction

Abstract: Electromyography gives an electrical representation of neuromuscular activation associated with a contracting muscle. The electromyography signal acquires noise while travelling though different media. The wavelet transform is employed for removing noise from surface electromyography (SEMG) and higher order statistics are applied for analysing the signal. With the appropriate choice of wavelet, it is possible to remove interference noise (denoise) effectively in order to analyse the SEMG. Daubechies wavelets (db2, db4, db5, db6, db8), symmlet (sym4, sym5) and the orthogonal Meyer (dmey) wavelet can efficiently remove noise from the recorded SEMG signals. However, the most effective wavelet for SEMG denoising is chosen by calculating the root mean square difference and signal‐to‐noise ratio values. Results for both root mean square difference and signal‐to‐noise ratio show that wavelet db2 performs denoising best out of the wavelets. Furthermore, the higher order statistics method is applied for SEMG signal analysis because of its unique properties when applied to random time series, such as parameter estimation, testing of Gaussianity and linearity, deterministic and non‐deterministic signal detection etc. Gaussianity and linearity tests as part of higher order statistics are conducted to understand changes in muscle contraction and to quantify the effectiveness of the noise removal process. According to the results, the SEMG signal becomes less Gaussian and more linear with increased force.