Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Stock Price Reaction to Investment News: New Evidence from Modeling Optimal Capex and Capex Guidance

Extant literature documents a weak positive stock price reaction to the announcement of new investments. A weak reaction is likely due to the lack of identification for the optimal investment levels and an omission of concurrent investment guidance. To address the lack of identification, I develop an accounting-variable-based model to proxy for optimal capital expenditures (capex) at the firm-year level. To address the omission of concurrent investment guidance, I employ recently available data on capex guidance. I hypothesize and find that when a firm’s capex diverges from the estimated optimal level, its stock price declines. Given divergence, the stock price decline is more severe when the firm overinvests. Moreover, controlling for self-selection, there is a positive market reaction to the issuance of capex guidance. Lastly, I hypothesize that capex guidance reduces information asymmetry between management and investors. I find that the negative stock price reaction to divergence disappears when a firm issues capex guidance, consistent with investors aligning their views about the optimal capex level with a manager’s guidance.
Hemolytic Porcine Intestinal Escherichia coli without Virulence-Associated Genes Typical of Intestinal Pathogenic E. coli

ABSTRACT Testing 1,666 fecal or intestinal samples from healthy and diarrheic pigs, we obtained hemolytic Escherichia coli isolates from 593 samples. Focusing on hemolytic E. coli isolates without virulence-associated genes (VAGs) typical for enteropathogens, we found that such isolates carried a broad variety of VAGs typical for extraintestinal pathogenic E. coli.
Double MAC: Doubling the performance of convolutional neural networks on modern FPGAs

This paper presents a novel method to double the computation rate of convolutional neural network (CNN) accelerators by packing two multiply-and-accumulate (MAC) operations into one DSP block of off-the-shelf FPGAs (called Double MAC). While a general SIMD MAC using a single DSP block seems impossible, our solution is tailored for the kind of MAC operations required for a convolution layer. Our preliminary evaluation shows that not only can our Double MAC approach increase the computation throughput of a CNN layer by twice with essentially the same resource utilization, the network level performance can also be improved by 14∼84% over a highly optimized state-of-the-art accelerator solution depending on the CNN hyper-parameters.
Corneal Biomechanical Changes after Crosslinking for Progressive Keratoconus with the Corneal Visualization Scheimpflug Technology

Purpose. To evaluate the effect of corneal crosslinking in progressive keratoconus by applying in vivo corneal visualization Scheimpflug technology. Design. Longitudinal retrospective study. Subjects and Controls. Seventeen eyes of patients treated with corneal crosslinking for progressive keratoconus. Methods. Corneal visualization Scheimpflug technology analyses (research software version 6.07r08) of subjects with progressive keratoconus before and 3 months after corneal crosslinking (CXL) were reviewed retrospectively. t-test (for normal distribution) and Wilcoxon matched-pairs test (if not normally distributed) were used to test for statistically significant differences between pre- and post-CXL analyses. Results. We demonstrated statistically significant differences for the intraocular pressure (median: +3 mmHg, P = 0.004), the central corneal pachymetry (pachy; mean: −35 µm, P < 0.001), the timespan between the air impulse release and the first applanation of the cornea (A1time; median: +0.12 ms, P < 0.05), and the timespan between the air impulse release and the second applanation of the cornea (A2time; median: −37 ms, P < 0.05). Conclusions. With the A1time and the A2time, we identified two parameters that demonstrated a statistically significant improvement of the biomechanical properties of the cornea after CXL. Despite the known initial decrease of the pachymetry after CXL, none of the analyzed parameters indicated a progression of the keratoconus.
Meis1 Is Required for the Maintenance of Postnatal Thymic Epithelial Cells

Most epithelial tissues retain stem/progenitor cells to maintain homeostasis of the adult tissues; however, the existence of a thymic epithelial cell (TEC) progenitor capable of maintaining homeostasis of the postnatal thymus remains unclear. Here, we show that a cell population expressing high levels of Meis1, a homeodomain transcription factor, is enriched in TECs with an immature cellular phenotype. These TECs selectively express genes involved in embryonic thymic organogenesis and epithelial stem cell maintenance, and also have the potential to proliferate and differentiate into mature TEC populations. Furthermore, postnatal inactivation of Meis1 in TECs caused disorganization of the thymic architecture, which ultimately leads to premature disappearance of the thymus. There was an age-associated reduction in the proportion of the TEC population expressing high levels of Meis1, which may also be related to thymic involution. These findings indicate that Meis1 is potentially involved in the maintenance of postnatal TECs with progenitor activity that is required for homeostasis of the postnatal thymus.
Multiple QTL‐effects of wheat Gpc‐B1 locus on grain protein and micronutrient concentrations

Micronutrient malnutrition afflicts over three bill ion people worldwide and the numbers are continuously increasing. Developing genetically micronutrient-enriched cereals, which are the predominant source of human dietary, is essential to alleviate malnutrition worldwide. Wheat chromosome 6B derived from wild emmer wheat [Triticum turgidum ssp. dicoccoides (Korn.) Thell] was previously reported to be associated with high Zn concentration in the grain. In the present study, recombinant chromosome substitution lines (RSLs), previously constructed for genetic and physical maps of Gpc-B1 (a 250-kb locus affecting grain protein concentration), were used to identify the effects of the Gpc-B1 locus on grain micronutrient concentrations. RSLs carrying the Gpc-B 1 allele of T. dicoccoides accumulated on average 12% higher concentration of Zn, 18% higher concentration of Fe, 29% higher concentration of Mn and 38% higher concentration of protein in the grain as compared with RSLs carrying the allele from cultivated wheat (Triticum durum). Furthermore, the high grain Zn, Fe and Mn concentrations were consistently expressed in five different environments with an absence of genotype by environment interaction. The results obtained in the present study also confirmed the previously reported effect of the wild-type allele of Gpc-B1 on earlier senescence of flag leaves. We suggest that the Gpc-B1 locus is involved in more efficient remobilization of protein, zinc, iron and manganese from leaves to the grains, in addition to its effect on earlier senescence of the green tissues.
Prothrombotic Effects of Hyperhomocysteinemia and Hypercholesterolemia in ApoE-Deficient Mice

Objective—We tested the hypothesis that hyperhomocysteinemia and hypercholesterolemia promote arterial thrombosis in mice. Methods and Results—Male apolipoprotein E (Apoe)-deficient mice were fed one of four diets: control, hyperhomocysteinemic (HH), high fat (HF), or high fat/hyperhomocysteinemic (HF/HH). Total cholesterol was elevated 2-fold with the HF or HF/HH diets compared with the control or HH diets (P<0.001). Plasma total homocysteine (tHcy) was elevated (12 to 15 &mgr;mol/L) with the HH or HF/HH diets compared with the control or HF diets (4 to 6 &mgr;mol/L; P<0.001). Aortic sinus lesion area correlated strongly with total cholesterol (P<0.001) but was independent of tHcy. At 12 weeks of age, the time to thrombotic occlusion of the carotid artery after photochemical injury was >50% shorter in mice fed the HF diets, with or without hyperhomocysteinemia, compared with the control diet (P<0.05). At 24 weeks of age, carotid artery thrombosis was also accelerated in mice fed the HH diet (P<0.05). Endothelium-dependent nitric oxide–mediated relaxation of carotid artery rings was impaired in mice fed the HF, HH, or HF/HH diets compared with the control diet (P<0.05). Conclusions—Hyperhomocysteinemia and hypercholesterolemia, alone or in combination, produce endothelial dysfunction and increased susceptibility to thrombosis in Apoe-deficient mice.
Memory organization for invariant object recognition and categorization

Using distributed representations of objects enables artificial systems to be more versatile regarding inter- and intra-category variability, improving the appearance-based modeling of visual object understanding. They are built on the hypothesis that object models are structured dynamically using relatively invariant patches of information arranged in visual dictionaries, which can be shared across objects from the same category. However, implementing distributed representations efficiently to support the complexity of invariant object recognition and categorization remains a research problem of outstanding significance for the biological, the psychological, and the computational approach to understanding visual perception. The present work focuses on solutions driven by top-down object knowledge. It is motivated by the idea that, equipped with sensors and processing mechanisms from the neural pathways serving visual perception, biological systems are able to define efficient measures of similarities between properties observed in objects and use these relationships to form natural clusters of object parts that share equivalent ones. Based on the comparison of stimulus-response signatures from these object-to-memory mappings, biological systems are able to identify objects and their kinds. The present work combines biologically inspired mathematical models to develop memory frameworks for artificial systems, where these invariant patches are represented with regular-shaped graphs, whose nodes are labeled with elementary features that capture texture information from object images. It also applies unsupervised clustering techniques to these graph image features to corroborate the existence of natural clusters within their data distribution and determine their composition. The properties of such computational theory include self-organization and intelligent matching of these graph image features based on the similarity and co-occurrence of their captured texture information. The performance to model invariant object recognition and categorization of feature-based artificial systems equipped with each of the developed memory frameworks is validated applying standard methodologies to well-known image libraries found in literature. Additionally, these artificial systems are cross-compared with state-of-the-art alternative solutions. In conclusion, the findings of the present work convey implications for strategies and experimental paradigms to analyze human object memory as well as technical applications for robotics and computer vision.
Lateral distribution of nonendometriotic benign ovarian cysts

To investigate the left‐ and right‐sided distribution of nonendometriotic benign ovarian cysts, data were collected on 406 women undergoing first‐line surgery for tumours with various histotypes. Considering the unilateral cysts, the observed proportion of left lesions was 65/129 (50.4%) in the serous, 38/79 (48.1%) in the mucinous, 59/134 (44.0%) in the dermoid, 11/21 (52.4%) in the parovarian, and 3/7 (42.9%) in the miscellaneous cysts group, without significant differences from the expected 50%. This contrasts with the finding of a significantly more frequent development of endometriomas on the left ovary, and suggests that the pathogenesis of endometriotic and nonendometriotic cysts is different.
Background estimation from non-time sequence images

We address the problem of reconstructing the background of a scene from a set of photographs featuring several occluding objects. We assume that the photographs are obtained from the same viewpoint and under similar illumination conditions. Our approach is to define the background as a composite of the input photographs. Each possible composite is assigned a cost, and the resulting cost function is minimized. We penalize deviations from the following two model assumptions: background objects are stationary, and background objects are more likely to appear across the photographs. We approximate object stationariness using a motion boundary consistency term, and object likelihood using probability density estimates. The penalties are combined using an entropy-based weighting function. Furthermore, we constraint the solution space in order to avoid composites that cut through objects. The cost function is minimized using graph cuts, and the final result is composed using gradient domain fusion. We demonstrate the application of our method to the recovering of clean, unoccluded shots of crowded public places, as well as to the removal of ghosting artifacts in the reconstruction of high dynamic range images from multi-exposure sequences. Our contribution is the definition of an automatic method for consistent background estimation from multiple exposures featuring occluders, and its application to the problem of ghost removal in high dynamic range image reconstruction.
Recording human evoked potentials that follow the pitch contour of a natural vowel

We investigated whether pitch-synchronous neural activity could be recorded in humans, with a natural vowel and a vowel in which the fundamental frequency was suppressed. Small variations of speech periodicity were detected in the evoked responses using a fine structure spectrograph (FSS). A significant response (P/spl Lt/0.001) was measured in all seven normal subjects even when the fundamental frequency was suppressed, and it very accurately tracked the acoustic pitch contour (normalized mean absolute error <0.57%). Small variations in speech periodicity, which humans can detect, are therefore available to the perceptual system as pitch-synchronous neural firing. These findings suggest that the measurement of pitch-evoked responses may be a viable tool for objective speech audiometry.
Immunodominance of Lytic Cycle Antigens in Epstein-Barr Virus-Specific CD4+ T Cell Preparations for Therapy

Background Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is associated with a number of human malignancies. EBV-positive post-transplant lymphoproliferative disease in solid organ and hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients has been successfully treated by the adoptive transfer of polyclonal EBV-specific T cell lines containing CD4+ and CD8+ T cell components. Although patients receiving T cell preparations with a higher CD4+ T cell proportion show better clinical responses, the specificity of the infused CD4+ component has remained completely unknown. Methodology/Principal Findings We generated LCL-stimulated T cell lines from 21 donors according to clinical protocols, and analyzed the antigen specificity of the CD4+ component in EBV-specific T cell preparations using a genetically engineered EBV mutant that is unable to enter the lytic cycle, and recombinantly expressed and purified EBV proteins. Surprisingly, CD4+ T cell lines from acutely and persistently EBV-infected donors consistently responded against EBV lytic cycle antigens and autoantigens, but barely against latent cycle antigens of EBV hitherto considered principal immunotherapeutic targets. Lytic cycle antigens were predominantly derived from structural proteins of the virus presented on MHC II via receptor-mediated uptake of released viral particles, but also included abundant infected cell proteins whose presentation involved intercellular protein transfer. Importantly, presentation of virion antigens was severely impaired by acyclovir treatment of stimulator cells, as currently performed in most clinical protocols. Conclusions/Significance These results indicate that structural antigens of EBV are the immunodominant targets of CD4+ T cells in LCL-stimulated T cell preparations. These findings add to our understanding of the immune response against this human tumor-virus and have important implications for the improvement of immunotherapeutic strategies against EBV.
Game-Theoretic Agent Programming in Golog

We present the agent programming language GTGolog, which integrates explicit agent programming in Golog with game-theoretic multi-agent planning in Markov games. It is a generalization of DTGolog to a multi-agent setting, where we have two competing single agents or two competing teams of agents. The language allows for specifying a control program for a single agent or a team of agents in a high-level logical language. The control program is then completed by an interpreter in an optimal way against another single agent or another team of agents, by viewing it as a generalization of a Markov game, and computing a Nash strategy. We illustrate the usefulness of this approach along a robotic soccer example.
Optimization of Welding Process Parameters for 9Cr-1Mo Steel Using RSM and GA

Optimization of A-TIG welding process parameters for 9Cr-1Mo steel has been carried out using response surface methodology (RSM) and genetic algorithm (GA). RSM has been used to obtain the design matrix for generating data on the influence of process parameters on the response variables. A second-order response surface model was developed for predicting the response for the set of given input variables. Then, numerical and graphical optimization was performed using RSM to obtain the target depth of penetration (DOP) and heat-affected zone (HAZ) width using desirability approach. Multiple regression models were developed based on the generated data, and then the models were used in GA to determine the optimum process parameters for achieving the target DOP and HAZ width. GA-based models employed two different selection processes. Both the RSM- and GA-based models suggested a number of solutions in terms of process parameters, and the identified solutions were validated by experiments. GA-based model employing tournament selection has been found to be a more accurate method for determining the optimum A-TIG welding process parameters.
HURP Expression-Assisted Risk Scores Identify Prognosis Distinguishable Subgroups in Early Stage Liver Cancer

Background Hepatoma up-regulated protein (HURP) is a component of the chromatin-dependent pathway for spindle assembly. We examined the prognostic predictive value of HURP in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods HURP expression was evaluated by immunocytochemistry of fine needle aspirated hepatoma cells in 97 HCC patients with Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC) stage A. Subsequently, these patients underwent partial hepatectomy (n = 18) or radiofrequency ablation (n = 79) and were followed for 2 to 35 months. The clinicopathological parameters were submitted for survival analysis. Results HURP expression in aspirated HCC cells was detected in 19.6% patients. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed that positive HURP expression (P = 0.023), cytological grading ≥3 (P = 0.008), AFP ≥35 ng/mL (P = 0.039), bilirubin ≥1.3 mg/dL (P = 0.010), AST ≥50 U/L (P = 0.003) and ALT ≥35 U/L (P = 0.005) were all associated with a shorter disease-free survival. A stepwise multivariate Cox proportional hazard model revealed that positive HURP expression (HR, 2.334; 95% CI, 1.165–4.679, P = 0.017), AST ≥50 U/L (HR, 3.697; 95% CI, 1.868–7.319, p<0.001), cytological grade ≥3 (HR, 4.249; 95% CI, 2.061–8.759, P<0.001) and tumor number >1 (HR, 2.633; 95% CI, 1.212–5.722, P = 0.014) were independent predictors for disease-free survival. By combining the 4 independent predictors, patients with different risk scores (RS) showed distinguishable disease-free survival (RS≤1 vs. RS = 2, P = 0.001; RS = 2 vs. RS = 3, P<0.001). In contrast, the patients cannot be separated into prognosis distinguishable subgroups by using AJCC/UICC TNM staging system. Conclusion HCC patients with BCLC stage A can be separated into three prognosis-distinguishable groups by use of a risk score that is based upon HURP expression in aspirated HCC cells, ALT, cytological grade and tumor number.
Slightly Frequency-Shifted Reference Ultra-Wideband (UWB) Radio

A promising ultra-wideband (UWB) radio technique being widely considered for low-data-rate applications, such as those often encountered in sensor networks, is the transmitted reference (TR) UWB scheme. However, the standard TR-UWB scheme, while often motivated by the simplicity of its receiver, is still dogged by implementation concerns. In particular, the receiver requires an extremely wideband delay element, which is difficult to incorporate into low-power integrated systems. In this paper, a TR scheme is proposed in which the separation between the data and reference signals, rather than being a time delay, is a slow rotation over the symbol interval. This provides a (slightly) frequency-shifted reference that, while orthogonal to the data-bearing pulse, still goes through a nearly equal channel. A detailed analysis of the proposed scheme is provided. Simulation results demonstrate the expected result that frequency shifting of the reference in the proposed manner is not effective for high-data-rate systems that experience appreciable intersymbol interference. However, for the targeted low-to-moderate data-rate applications, numerical results demonstrate that the proposed system not only achieves the primary goal of providing a much simpler receiver architecture, but also that it outperforms the standard TR-UWB system
Neurobehavioral Comorbidities in Children With Active Epilepsy: A Population-Based Study

BACKGROUND: In addition to recurrent epileptic seizures, children with epilepsy can have coexisting cognitive and behavioral difficulties but the spectrum and prevalence of such difficulties are uncertain. METHODS: The Children with Epilepsy in Sussex Schools study is a prospective, community-based study involving school-aged children (5–15 years) with active epilepsy in a defined geographical area in the United Kingdom. Participants underwent comprehensive psychological assessment, including measures of cognition, behavior, and motor functioning. Consensus neurobehavioral diagnoses were made with respect to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fourth Edition-Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR) criteria. RESULTS: A total of 85 children (74% of eligible population) were enrolled; 80% of children with active epilepsy had a DSM-IV-TR behavioral disorder and/or cognitive impairment (IQ <85). Intellectual disability (ID) (IQ <70) (40%), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (33%), and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (21%) were the most common neurobehavioral diagnoses. Of those who met criteria for a DSM-IV-TR behavioral disorder, only one-third had previously been diagnosed. Logistic regression revealed that seizures in the first 24 months compared with first seizures at 24 to 60 or 61+ months (odds ratio [OR] 13, 95% confidence interval 2.2–76.9; OR 21.3, 3.2–148.9) and polytherapy (OR 7.7, 1.6–36.3) were independently associated with ID and the presence of ID was associated with a diagnosis of ASD (OR 14.1, 2.3–87.1) after Bonferroni adjustment. Epilepsy-related factors did not independently predict the presence of behavioral disorders. CONCLUSIONS: Screening for neurobehavioral comorbidities should be an integral part of management in children with “active” epilepsy. There is a need for research to identify neurobiological mechanisms underpinning neurobehavioral impairments and studies to evaluate possible treatments.