Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Three Essays on International Financial Market Linkages

This thesis investigates three cutting edge issues in empirical finance. The first, examined in Chapter 2, is an investigation of the hypothesis that macroeconomic uncertainty is a significant risk factor in explaining deviations from the uncovered interest parity (UIP) condition (or time-varying risk premium) using data from the G7 countries. To analyze the relationship between the risk premium and macroeconomic risk factors, we employ VAR-GARCH-in-mean models. The results show that the currency risk premium may be due to macroeconomic volatility. The second issue (Chapter 3) concerns the causal linkages between monetary and financial market returns of the New Member States (NMS) with the euro zone following the introduction of the euro. To measure monetary convergence we employ UIP deviations and stock market integration is proxied by the differential of the risk-adjusted returns of the NMS countries versus a euro zone stock index. We look for a causal relationship between excess currency and excess stock market returns of the aforementioned countries. We employ Granger causality in mean and variance tests to assess this relationship. The main finding is that the excess currency return is a significant leading indicator of the excess stock market return, with stronger evidence of causality in the variance of the process. Finally, the third issue (Chapter 4) examines the time-varying co-movements of equity returns within major sectors, for a number of developed and developing countries. In particular, we ask the question if the conditional return correlations have increased excessively by historical standards during the recent financial crisis. We utilize asymmetric multivariate GARCH models. The main finding is that correlations have increased over the recent period, but the levels of co-movements are not excessive by historical standards. There is little difference between the co-movements of financial and non-financial stocks across countries, implying that this shock is largely undiversifiable.
Genre-based music language modelling with latent hierarchical Pitman-Yor process allocation

—In this work we present a new Bayesian topic model: latent hierarchical Pitman-Yor process allocation (LH-PYA), which uses hierarchical Pitman-Yor process priors for both word and topic distributions, and generalizes a few of the existing topic models, including the latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), the bigram topic model and the hierarchical Pitman-Yor topic model. Using such priors allows for integration of n -grams with a topic model, while smoothing them with the state-of-the-art method. Our model is evaluated by measuring its perplexity on a dataset of musical genre and harmony annotations 3 Genre Database (3GDB) and by measuring its ability to predict musical genre from chord sequences. In terms of perplexity, for a 262-chord dictionary we achieve a value of 2.74, compared to 18.05 for trigrams and 7.73 for a unigram topic model. In terms of genre prediction accuracy with 9 genres, the proposed approach performs about 33% better in relative terms than genre-dependent n -grams, achieving 60.4% of accuracy.
European Conference on Information Systems ( ECIS ) Summer 10-6-2011 TEMPORAL DISSONANCE IN IT WORKERS

IT projects continue to fail too frequently. One reason for these failures is interpersonal and motivational issues in IT workers. One possible cause for these issues is increased temporal dissonance, which causes stress and the ill effects associated with that stress. In this study, we develop a measure of temporal dissonance, and place it in the nomological net. With this measure, temporal dissonance and its possible remedies can be quantified.
AA spectral space warping approach to cross-lingual voice transformation in HMM-based TTS

This paper presents a new approach to cross-lingual voice transformation in HMM-based TTS with only the recordings from two monolingual speakers in different languages (e.g. Mandarin and English). We aim to synthesize one speaker's speech in the other language. We regard the spectral space of any speaker to be composed of universal elementary units (i.e. tied-states) of speech in different languages. Our approach first forces the spectral spaces of the two speakers to have the same number of tied-states. Then we find an optimal one-to-one tied-state mapping between the two spectral spaces. Hence, the mapped speech trajectory in the spectral space of the target speaker can be found according to that generated in the spectral space of the reference speaker. Consequently, we can synthesize high-quality speech for the target monolingual speaker's voice in the other language. This can also be used as training data for a new TTS system.
Providing variable TXOP for IEEE 802.11e HCCA real-time networks

Quality of Service (QoS) provided by the IEEE 802.11e amendment and by the proposed HCF Controlled Channel Access (HCCA) reference scheduler is tailored for Constant Bit Rate traffic streams. Moreover the numerous alternative scheduling algorithms are not suitable to serve Variable Bit Rate (VBR) traffic streams with the required QoS and real-time guarantees. This paper presents Immediate Dynamic TXOP HCCA (IDTH), a new scheduling algorithm based on a bandwidth reclaiming mechanism suitable to cooperate with a HCCA real-time scheduler. IDTH recovers the portion of the transmission time unused by the scheduled stations to provide a further capacity for the next variable bit rate traffic streams. The transmission opportunity of the next scheduled station is assigned considering the available spare resources and the previously used ones. The scheduling analysis and the simulations results show that IDTH is suitable to reduce the delay experienced by VBR traffic streams, to efficiently deal with the variability of multimedia traffic and to avoid waste of resources.
Low Oxygen Enhances Primitive and Definitive Neural Stem Cell Colony Formation by Inhibiting Distinct Cell Death Pathways

Neural stem cells (NSCs) can be derived from single mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs) in the absence of instructive factors. Clonal primitive NSC (pNSC) colonies are formed first, and then give rise to clonal, fibroblast growth factor‐dependent definitive neural stem cells (dNSCs). We tested low‐oxygen culture as a potential method of alleviating the extensive cell death seen in pNSCs and dNSCs. Culture in low (4%) oxygen promoted survival of pNSCs by inhibiting apoptosis‐inducing factor (AIF)‐dependent cell death, although pNSCs undergo both AIF‐ and caspase‐mediated cell death in 20% oxygen. In contrast, survival of dNSCs in low oxygen was increased by inhibition of caspase‐dependent cell death. In normoxia, AIF is implicated in promoting dNSC survival. Neither survival effect was dependent on the main transcriptional effector of hypoxia, hypoxia‐inducible factor 1. Low‐oxygen concentrations may be involved in expansion of early NSC populations by inhibiting cell death through different pathways in these sequential pNSC and dNSC populations. STEM CELLS 2009;27:1879–1886
Virtual Network Allocation for Fault Tolerance with Bandwidth Efficiency in a Multi-tenant Data Center

In a multitenant data center, nodes and links of tenants' virtual networks (VNs) share a single component of the physical substrate network (SN). A failure of the single SN component can thereby cause simultaneous failures of multiple nodes and links in a VN, this complex of failures must significantly disrupt the services offered on the VN. In the present paper, we clarify how the fault tolerance of a VN is affected by a SN failure, especially from the perspective of VN allocation in the SN. We propose a VN allocation model for multitenant data centers and formulate a problem that deals with the bandwidth loss in the VN due the SN failure. We conduct numerical simulations with the setting that has 1.7 × 108 bit/s bandwidth demand on each VN. The results show that the bandwidth loss can be reduced to 5.3 × 102 bit/s per VN, but the required bandwidth between physical servers in the SN increases to 1.0 × 109 bit/s per VN when each node in the VN is mapped to an individual physical server. The balance between the bandwidth loss and the required bandwidth between physical servers can be optimized by assigning every four nodes of the VN to each physical server, meaning that we minimize the bandwidth loss without providing too sufficient bandwidth in the core area of the SN.
Pulmonary manifestations of immunoglobulin G4-related sclerosing disease

Immunoglobulin (Ig)G4-related sclerosing disease (ISD) (also called IgG4-related systemic disease, IgG4-related disease or hyper-IgG4 disease) is a recently described systemic fibroinflammatory disease associated with elevated circulating levels of IgG4. Although initial descriptions of this disorder focused on its pancreatic presentation (autoimmune pancreatitis), it has become apparent that ISD is a systemic disease with many facets. The lesion of ISD is characterised by lymphoplasmacytic inflammation, fibrosis, phlebitis and increased numbers of IgG4-positive plasma cells. The disease can either be localised to one or two organs, or be present with diffuse multi-organ disease. Furthermore, lesions in different organs can present simultaneously or metachronously. In the thorax, lesions associated with ISD have been described in the lung parenchyma, airways and pleura, as well as the mediastinum. Data published to date suggest that ISD may account for a portion of various fibroinflammatory conditions of unknown cause encountered in the chest, including inflammatory pseudotumours, idiopathic interstitial pneumonias, fibrosing mediastinitis, inflammatory pleural lesions and, occasionally, airway disease. Some aspects of pulmonary manifestations attributed to ISD remain controversial and additional studies are needed to clarify the relationship along with the increasing relevance of this disorder to pulmonary medicine.
Arsenic and Heavy Metal Contamination in Soils under Different Land Use in an Estuary in Northern Vietnam

Heavy metal contamination of soil and sediment in estuaries warrants study because a healthy estuarine environment, including healthy soil, is important in order to achieve ecological balance and good aquaculture production. The Ba Lat estuary of the Red River is the largest estuary in northern Vietnam and is employed in various land uses. However, the heavy metal contamination of its soil has not yet been reported. The following research was conducted to clarify contamination levels, supply sources, and the effect of land use on heavy metal concentrations in the estuary. Soil samples were collected from the top soil layer of the estuary, and their arsenic (As), chromium (Cr), cadmium (Cd), copper (Cu), lead (Pb), and zinc (Zn) concentrations were analyzed, as were other soil properties. Most soils in the estuary were loam, silt loam, or sandy loam. The pH was neutral, and the cation exchange capacity ranged from 3.8 to 20 cmol·kg−1. Manganese and iron concentrations averaged 811 µg·g−1 and 1.79%, respectively. The magnitude of the soil heavy metal concentrations decreased in the order of Zn > Pb > Cr > Cu > As > Cd. The concentrations were higher in the riverbed and mangrove forest than in other land-use areas. Except for As, the mean heavy metal concentrations were lower than the permissible levels for agricultural soils in Vietnam. The principal component analyses suggested that soil As, Pb, Zn, Cd, and Cu were of anthropogenic origin, whereas Cr was of non-anthropogenic origin. The spatial distribution of concentration with land use indicated that mangrove forests play an important role in preventing the spread of heavy metals to other land uses and in maintaining the estuarine environment.
Coupled Use of BSP and BVH Trees in Order to Exploit Ray Bundle Performance

The use of SIMD ray packets has been an important step forward in ray tracing performance. It is the first significant acceleration process based on a strategy that deals with "small" ray bundles. In order to improve the outcome for wider bundles, very powerful data structures have been used. However, these new data structures are not the most powerful when dealing with single rays or SIMD rays. They are therefore unsuitable, and this incompatibility raised the problem of incoherent rays which, such as secondary rays or global illumination rays (i.e. most the rays traced in real life ray tracing) are impossible to process efficiently. An original coupled use of BSP and BVH trees is proposed to overcome this disadvantage. Each tree, used individually, can efficiently boost both small ray bundles and wide ray bundles. Used together in a coupled strategy, they can achieve a global speedup of +50%.
Genetically Determined Measures of Striatal D2 Signaling Predict Prefrontal Activity during Working Memory Performance

Background Variation of the gene coding for D2 receptors (DRD2) has been associated with risk for schizophrenia and with working memory deficits. A functional intronic SNP (rs1076560) predicts relative expression of the two D2 receptors isoforms, D2S (mainly pre-synaptic) and D2L (mainly post-synaptic). However, the effect of functional genetic variation of DRD2 on striatal dopamine D2 signaling and on its correlation with prefrontal activity during working memory in humans is not known. Methods Thirty-seven healthy subjects were genotyped for rs1076560 (G>T) and underwent SPECT with [123I]IBZM (which binds primarily to post-synaptic D2 receptors) and with [123I]FP-CIT (which binds to pre-synaptic dopamine transporters, whose activity and density is also regulated by pre-synaptic D2 receptors), as well as BOLD fMRI during N-Back working memory. Results Subjects carrying the T allele (previously associated with reduced D2S expression) had striatal reductions of [123I]IBZM and of [123I]FP-CIT binding. DRD2 genotype also differentially predicted the correlation between striatal dopamine D2 signaling (as identified with factor analysis of the two radiotracers) and activity of the prefrontal cortex during working memory as measured with BOLD fMRI, which was positive in GG subjects and negative in GT. Conclusions Our results demonstrate that this functional SNP within DRD2 predicts striatal binding of the two radiotracers to dopamine transporters and D2 receptors as well as the correlation between striatal D2 signaling with prefrontal cortex activity during performance of a working memory task. These data are consistent with the possibility that the balance of excitatory/inhibitory modulation of striatal neurons may also affect striatal outputs in relationship with prefrontal activity during working memory performance within the cortico-striatal-thalamic-cortical pathway.
Achieving Maximal Speed of Solution Exchange for Patch Clamp Experiments

Background Resolving the kinetics of agonist binding events separately from the subsequent channel gating processes requires the ability of applying and removing the agonist before channel gating occurs. No reported system has yet achieved pulses shorter than 100 µs, necessary to study nicotinic ACh receptor or AMPA receptor activation. Methodology/Principal Findings Solution exchange systems deliver short agonist pulses by moving a sharp interface between a control and an experimental solution across a channel preparation. We achieved shorter pulses by means of an exchange system that combines a faster flow velocity, narrower partition between the two streams, and increased velocity and bandwidth of the movement of the interface. The measured response of the entire system was fed back to optimize the voltage signal applied to the piezoelectric actuator overcoming the spurious oscillations arising from the mechanical resonances when a high bandwidth driving function was applied. Optimization was accomplished by analyzing the transfer function of the solution exchange system. When driven by optimized command pulses the enhanced system provided pulses lasting 26 ± 1 µs and exchanging 93 ± 1% of the solution, as measured in the open tip of a patch pipette. Conclusions/Significance Pulses of this duration open the experimental study of the molecular events that occur between the agonist binding and the opening of the channel.
A Software Requirements Change Source Taxonomy

Requirements changes during software development pose a risk to cost, schedule and quality while at the same time providing an opportunity to add value. Provision of a generic change source taxonomy which makes the distinction between factors contributing to requirements uncertainty and events that trigger change will support requirements change risk visibility, and also facilitate richer recording of change data. In this paper we present a collaborative study to investigate and support the management of software requirements volatility within the development lifecycle. Previously published change ‘causes’ are elicited from the literature, consolidated using expert knowledge and classified using card sorting. The resulting change trigger taxonomy constructs were initially validated using a small set of requirements change data, and deemed sufficient and practical as a means to collect common requirements change source statistics across multiple projects.
Quadratic Optimal Control of Regular Well-Posed Linear Systems, with Applications to Parabolic Equations

We study the nonstandard in nite horizon quadratic cost minimization problem in a particular subclass of Salamon's and Weiss' wellposed linear systems, more general than the Pritchard-Salamon class. In particular, instead of just working with controls that are L 2 in time, we also investigate how the system behaves under the action of continuous controls. The additional structure has been modelled after existing results for parabolic equations, and it provides a uni ed framework for many of these results. We prove that in this setting all possible input/output maps (both open and closed loop; both original output and feedback output) are regular together with their adjoints in the sense of Weiss, and that the recently discovered correction term in the algebraic Riccati equation is absent in this case. AMS Subject Classi cation 49J27, 49J20, 93A05.
Trilling Field Crickets in a Zone of Overlap (Orthoptera: Gryllidae: Gryllus)

A bimodal distribution of pulse rates in field recordings of calling songs suggests that the ranges of the morphologically similar field crickets Gryllus rubens Scudder and G. nr. integer Scudder (5"integer") overlap for at least 300 km in western Florida. When sons were reared from 42 females collected at 5 sites on 7 trips to this region during 1977—1978, those within a sibship had similar modal pulse rates. At Milton, the westernmost site, 28 of 31 females produced sons with mean modal pulse rates typical of G. rubens; the other 3 were among 6 females collected 1 October 1977 and 30 September 1978 and had modal pulse rates in or near the "integer" range. None of the 11 females from other sites had sons with a mean modal pulse rate indicative of "integer. " Most progenies of females collected at Milton on 25 September 1982 were reared as 2 cohorts of contrasting initial density, and each son was recorded on 2 dates. The mean, temperature-adjusted modal pulse rates of the 39 recorded cohorts, from 22 females, showed no effect of initial density but fell nearly evenly into 2 discrete groups: 46—60 pulses s 21 with a mean of 52 (G. rubens) and 64—78 pulses s 21 with a mean of 71 ("integer"). Lack of intermediate sibships indicates that G. rubens and "integer" remain distinct in their zone of overlap. A spring-adult generation of "integer" in western Florida is postulated but not confirmed. Reared under the same conditions, G. rubens males from fall females had a significantly lower mean modal pulse rate than males from spring females (52 versus 55), indicating a parental effect. G. rubens males reared from fall females had a significantly higher mean modal pulse rate than captured spring-adult males (52 versus 49), and males reared from spring females had a significantly lower modal pulse rate than captured fall-adult males (55 versus 59). Because G. rubens is bivoltine, both of these comparisons indicate that developmental conditions affect calling-song pulse rate. Fall males of "integer" had a significantly higher mean modal pulse rate than males reared from fall females (79 versus 70), indicating one or both effects. These are the 1st parental and developmental effects on pulse rates reported for crickets.
Integration of Metamodel and Acoustic Model for Dysarthric Speech Recognition

We investigated the speech recognition of a person with articulation disorders resulting from athetoid cerebral palsy. The articulation of the first words spoken tends to be unstable due to the strain placed on the speech-related muscles, and this causes degradation of speech recognition. Therefore, we proposed a robust feature extraction method based on PCA (Principal Component Analysis) instead of MFCC, where the main stable utterance element is projected onto low-order features and fluctuation elements of speech style are projected onto high-order features. Therefore, the PCA-based filter will be able to extract stable utterance features only. The fluctuation of speaking style may invoke phone fluctuations, such as substitutions, deletions and insertions. In this paper, we discuss our effort to integrate a Metamodel and an Acoustic model approach. Metamodels have a technique for incorporating a model of a speaker’s confusion matrix into the ASR process in such a way as to increase recognition accuracy. The integration of metamodels and acoustic models enables fluctuation suppression not only in feature extraction but also in recognition. The proposed method resulted in an improvement of 9.9% (from 79.1% to 89%) in the recognition rate compared to the conventional method.
In vitro activity of Citrus bergamia (bergamot) oil against clinical isolates of dermatophytes.

OBJECTIVES Recently, bergamot oil was shown to be a potent antifungal agent in vitro against clinically important Candida species. In this study, the activities of bergamot natural essence and its furocoumarin-free and distilled extracts on dermatophytes such as Trichophyton, Microsporum and Epidermophyton species were investigated. METHODS In vitro susceptibility testing assays on 92 clinical isolates of dermatophytes (Trichophyton mentagrophytes n = 20, Trichophyton rubrum n = 18, Trichophyton interdigitale n = 15, Trichophyton tonsurans n = 2, Microsporum canis n = 24, Microsporum gypseum n = 1 and Epidermophyton floccosum n = 12) were performed using the CLSI M38-A broth microdilution method, except for employing an inoculum of 1-3 x 10(3) cfu/mL. MICs were determined at a visual endpoint reading of 80% inhibition compared with the growth control. RESULTS MICs (v/v) of all fungi ranged from 0.156% to 2.5% for the natural essence, from 0.02% to 2.5% for the distilled extract, and from 0.08% to 1.25% for the furocoumarin-free extract. The three isolates of T. tonsurans and M. gypseum exhibited the highest MIC values. CONCLUSIONS Data from this study indicate that bergamot oil is active in vitro against several common species of dermatophytes, suggesting its potential use for topical treatment of dermatophytoses.