Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evolution in the bias of faint radio sources to z 2.2

Quantifying how the baryonic matter traces the underlying dark matter distribution is key to both understanding galaxy formation and our ability to constrain the cosmological model. Using the cross-correlation function of radio and near-inf rared galaxies, we present a largescale clustering analysis of radio galaxies to z � 2.2. We measure the angular auto-correlation function of Ks 90 µJy to infer linear bias of radio galaxies in four redshift bins. We find that the bias evolves from b = 0.57 ± 0.06 at z � 0.3 to 8.55 ± 3.11 at z � 2.2. Furthermore, we separate the radio sources into subsamples to determine how the bias is dependent on the radio luminosity, and find a bias which is significantly higher than predicted by the simulations of Wilman et al., and consistent with the lower luminosity but more abundant FR-I population having a similar bias to the highly luminous but rare FR-IIs. Our results are suggestive of a higher mass, particularly for FR-I sources than assumed in simulations, especially towards higher redshift.
Time Consistent Recursive Risk Measures Under Regime Switching and Factor Models and Their Application in Dynamic Portfolio Selection

The proper description of dynamic information correlation among individual stages is very important for the construction of multi-period risk measure and the selection of optimal investment strategy. To overcome the limitations of existing random frameworks, we initially introduce a ”two-level” structure to describe the dynamic information evolution: the outer-level describes endogenous marcomarket factors under the regime switching framework; the inner-level describes exogenous random events by the multi-factor model, where the time-varying factors are modeled by a time series model. Under the new random framework, we define the convex conditional risk measure and then derive the recursive multiperiod risk measure, which satisfies dynamic monotonicity, convexity and time consistency. We show how to establish the corresponding multi-stage portfolio selection model. Take the conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) measure as an example, we deduce the corresponding recursive CVaR measure and derive its explicit This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Numbers 70971109 and 71371152). The corresponding author: zchen@mail.xjtu. edu.cn 1 expression when conditional factors and residual terms follow the joint student’s t distribution. More importantly, we show that the resulting multi-stage portfolio selection problems under the recursive CVaR measure are second-order cone programming, which can be efficiently solved in polynomial time. As a way to show the reasonability and efficiency of our new random framework, we carry out a series of empirical tests to demonstrate the superior performance and robustness of the optimal portfolio obtained with our multi-stage portfolio selection model. Keyword: Time consistency, recursive risk measure, regime switching, dynamic portfolio selection, conditional value-at-risk, factor model
Population Computation of Vectorial Transformations

Many neurons of the central nervous system are broadly tuned to some sensory or motor variables. This property allows one to assign to each neuron a preferred attribute (PA). The width of tuning curves and the distribution of PAs in a population of neurons tuned to a given variable define the collective behavior of the population. In this article, we study the relationship of the nature of the tuning curves, the distribution of PAs, and computational properties of linear neuronal populations. We show that noise-resistant distributed linear algebraic processing and learning can be implemented by a population of cosine tuned neurons assuming a nonuniform but regular distribution of PAs. We extend these results analytically to the noncosine tuning and uniform distribution case and show with a numerical simulation that the results remain valid for a nonuniform regular distribution of PAs for broad noncosine tuning curves. These observations provide a theoretical basis for modeling general nonlinear sensorimotor transformations as sets of local linearized representations.
Does Outsourcing Always Benefit Skilled Labor?

This paper builds a dynamic product cycle model with three kinds of labor inputs — scientists, white‐collar workers, and blue‐collar workers — and producer heterogeneity to find an explanation for why outsourcing did not cause wage inequality in the 1970s. According to the theoretical model, outsourcing decreases the wages of white‐collar workers and the relative wages of white‐collar workers to blue‐collar workers in the outsourcing home country if outsourcing industries are blue‐collar worker intensive compared with non‐outsourcing industries. Scientists who conduct research and development always benefit from outsourcing.
Imprint of Inhomogeneous Hydrogen Reionization on the Temperature Distribution of the Intergalactic Medium

We study the impact of inhomogeneous hydrogen reionization on the thermal evolution of the intergalactic medium (IGM) using hydrodynamic + radiative transfer simulations where reionization is completed either early (z ∼ 9) or late (z ∼ 6). In general, we find that low-density gas near large-scale overdensities is ionized and heated earlier than gas in the large-scale, underdense voids. Furthermore, at a later time the IGM temperature is inversely related to the reionization redshift because gas that is heated earlier has more time to cool through adiabatic expansion and Compton scattering. Thus, at the end of reionization the median temperature-density relation is an inverted power law with slope γ − 1 ∼ − 0.2, in both models. However, at fixed density there is up to order unity scatter in the temperature due to the distribution of reionization redshifts. Because of the complex equation of state, the evolved IGM temperature-density relations for the redshift range 4 ≲ z ≲ 6 can still have significant curvature and scatter. These features must be taken into account when interpreting the Lyα absorption in high-redshift quasar spectra.
Determinants of efficiency in child care provision

This article analyzes the efficiency in the provision of child care services at the municipal level and identifies the main determinants of inefficiency. We use a unique data set on the local child care expenditures in the eastern German State of Saxony. The analysis is performed in two stages. First, we measure the efficiency by using a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Second, we consider political, fiscal and demographic variables in a truncated regression to identify the determinants of inefficiency. We find substantial differences in efficiency; the median municipality is up to 28% inefficient in expenditures on child care. Explanatory variables such as an uncompensated mayor or a larger share of over 65-year olds significantly increases inefficiency.
High Diversity Revealed in Leaf‐Associated Protists (Rhizaria: Cercozoa) of Brassicaceae

The largest biological surface on earth is formed by plant leaves. These leaf surfaces are colonized by a specialized suite of leaf‐inhabiting microorganisms, recently termed “phyllosphere microbiome”. Microbial prey, however, attract microbial predators. Protists in particular have been shown to structure bacterial communities on plant surfaces, but virtually nothing is known about the community composition of protists on leaves. Using newly designed specific primers targeting the 18S rDNA gene of Cercozoa, we investigated the species richness of this common protist group on leaves of four Brassicaceae species from two different locations in a cloning‐based approach. The generated sequences revealed a broad diversity of leaf‐associated Cercozoa, mostly bacterial feeders, but also including known plant pathogens and a taxon of potential endophytes that were recently described as algal predators in freshwater systems. This initial study shows that protists must be regarded as an integral part of the microbial diversity in the phyllosphere of plants.
Can Book-to-Market, Size and Momentum be Extra Risk Factors that Explain the Stocks Rate Of Return?: Evidence from Emerging Market

The main objective of this study is to test the ability of different asset pricing models Fama & French three factor model and the augmented Fama & French Four Factor model, to explain the variation in stocks rate of return over the period from June 1999 to June 2010. The study also investigates the existence of the size and value Momentum effects in ASE. The study found a strong size and strong positive value effects in ASE. The study results indicate that the Fama & French three factor model provide better explanation to the variation in stocks rates of return for some portfolios and is better than the augmented Fama – French Four – Factor model.
Environmental Policy in the Nordic Wood Product Industry: Insights Into Firms’ Strategies and Communication

The purpose of our study is to explore how companies operating in the Nordic wood products value chains currently use environmental performance measures in their environmental policy and communication with stakeholders. Apart from the regularly-used environmental management certificates, the ability of wood material to store carbon and the use of sustainable forest management certificates open up interesting strategic options for firms in the implementation of their environmental policy. The primary was collected through thematic managerial interviews in 2011 from 37 companies in Finland, Sweden and Norway, of varying size, roles in the value chain, conditions for green business practices and exports. Forest certification and environmental management systems were frequently used, but managers did not always perceive them to be useful, particularly for raising environmental awareness at the final consumer level. Nevertheless, the general attitude towards using environmental performance measures was seen as positive. Companies with a business-to-business orientation were the most proactive in terms of environmental communication, whereas companies in consumer markets were more reactive. The key stakeholders targeted for environmental communication were value chain partners and the authorities, and only to a lesser degree employees and environmental non-governmental organisations. The key strategic role of environmental management and communication appeared to be securing the firms against negative environmental claims. The Nordic wood industry could improve their communication if the strategic orientation is shifted from the forest certification to the use of generic eco-labels, and most of all, to the adoption of quantitative measures like carbon footprints and environmental product declarations. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
FISCAL DEFICITS AND INFLATION DYNAMICS IN NIGERIA: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF CAUSAL RELATIONSHIPS by

Government expenditure in Nigeria has consistently exceeded revenue for most of the years beginning from 1980. This paper investigates the causal relationship between inflation and fiscal deficit in Nigeria from 1970 to I 994. It was empirically confirmed that although fiscal deficit causes inflation, there was no feedback between inflation and fiscal deficit. However the findings showed that feedback existed between inflation and fiscal deficit deflated by the GDP The Structural model of inflation revealed that, it takes about two years for the fiscal deficit to impact on inflation in Nigeria. The study concluded that what should be of paramount concern -to policy makers as regards inflation should not so much be the level of fiscal deficits but the sources of its financing as well as the absorptive capacity of the economy. Thus, policies to tame inflation should have inbuilt ability to increase the productive capacity of the economy.
War, resilience and political engagement in Africa

We test whether early-life war exposure influences later-life political engagement in Africa. We combine data on the location and intensity of conflicts since 1945 with nationally representative data on political attitudes and behaviors from 17 sub-Saharan African countries. Exposure from ages 0 to 14 has a very small (standardized) impact on later attitudes and behaviors. Our results are robust to migration, and hold across several definitions, specifications, and sources of data. Our results are consistent with recent studies demonstrating that, on average, individuals and localities recover quickly from the destructive effects of conflict, though those most exposed experience large and prolonged effects.
Drugs and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro: Trafficking, Social Networks, and Public Security

Taking an ethnographic approach to understanding urban violence, Enrique Desmond Arias examines the ongoing problems of crime and police corruption that have led to widespread misery and human rights violations in many of Latin America's new democracies. Employing participant observation and interview research in three favelas (shantytowns) in "Rio de Janeiro" over a nine-year period, Arias closely considers the social interactions and criminal networks that are at the heart of the challenges to democratic governance in urban Brazil. Much of the violence is the result of highly organized, politically connected drug dealers feeding off of the global cocaine market. Rising crime prompts repressive police tactics, and corruption runs deep in state structures. The rich move to walled communities, and the poor are caught between the criminals and often corrupt officials. Arias argues that public policy change is not enough to stop the vicious cycle of crime and corruption. The challenge, he suggests, is to build new social networks committed to controlling violence locally. Arias also offers comparative insights that apply this analysis to other cities in Brazil and throughout Latin America.
Fertilization and Colors of Plastic Mulch Affect Biomass and Essential Oil of Sweet-Scented Geranium

Sweet-scented geranium (Pelargonium graveolens L'Hér), a plant belonging to the Geraniaceae family, has medicinal and aromatic properties and is widely used in the cosmetic, soap, perfume, aromatherapy, and food industries. The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of fertilization and the use of different colors of plastic mulch on sweet-scented geranium biomass and essential oil. Three colors of plastic mulch (black, white, and silver-colored) and a control without plastic mulch were assessed along with three fertilizers (20,000 L·ha−1 of cattle manure; 1,000 kg·ha−1 of NPK 3-12-6; and 20,000 L·ha−1 of cattle manure + 1,000 kg·ha−1 of NPK 3-12-6 fertilizer) and a control without fertilizer. The absence of a soil cover negatively influenced the agronomical variables, while coverage with plastic mulch was associated with increased biomass. The use of fertilizer had no effect on the evaluated agronomic variables. When cattle manure and NPK 3-12-6 were used together, combined with white or black plastic mulch, the highest yields of essential oil were obtained. For the silver-colored plastic mulch, higher amounts of essential oil (6,9-guaiadien) were obtained with mineral fertilizer.
Industry-academia collaboration in undergraduate test engineering unit development

There is a permanent shortage of qualified test engineers in the electronic industry and R&D organizations, thus leading to a high demand for such staff. Addressing the issue, leading electronic companies have started to cooperate closely with universities in the area of training future test and failure analysis engineering specialists. Malaysia is a home of large semiconductor fabrication facilities representing a number of major multinational corporations. Freescale Semiconductor Malaysia is among the largest IC fabrication companies in the country. Responding to the needs of the semiconductor sector, Monash University Malaysia and Freescale Semiconductor have jointly developed and implemented an undergraduate unit (subject) on Electronic Test Technology. The unit is available to the 4th year students of BE degrees in Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering and Mechatronics. The successful collaboration between the university and company covers also a number of other areas such as industrial attachments and final year (graduate) project development at Freescale Semiconductor with joint company-university supervision, joint postgraduate supervision, participation in industry-academia advisory committees, joint research publications and presentations, organising seminars and conferences, etc.
Immunomodulatory and Antioxidant Effects of Polysaccharides from Gynostemma pentaphyllum Makino in Immunosuppressed Mice

The immunomodulatory and antioxidant activities of crude polysaccharides extracted from Gynostemma pentaphyllum Makino (GPMPP) were investigated. GPMPP was composed of rhamnose, arabinose, xylose, mannose, glucose and galactose in the molar ratio of 1.39:3.76:1.00:1.64:4.98:5.88. In vivo studies showed GPMPP significantly increased the spleen and thymus indices, activated the macrophage phagocytosis and NK cells, and exhibited activity on none or Con A/LPS-stimulated splenocytes in a dose-dependent manner in C57BL/6 mice. Moreover, GPMPP elevated CD4+ T lymphocyte counts as well as the CD4+/CD8+ ratio dose-dependently, and it increased IL-2 level in the sera and spleen of Cy-immunosuppressed mice. Furthermore, GPMPP significantly increased the SOD, GSH-Px, T-AOC, GSH and CAT level, and decreased the MDA level. The results showed that GPMPP might play an important role in prevention of oxidative damage in immunological system. These findings indicate GPMPP has immunomodulatory activity in vivo and seems to be an effective natural immunomodulatory agent.
How to show that 9 > 221 : Collect judgments in a between-subjects design

In between-subje cts (BS) designs, different groups may be asked to make judgments on numerical rating scales. According to judgment theory, judgments obtained BS are not an ordinal scale of subjective value. This article illustrates how BS designs can lead to strange conclusions: When different groups judge the subjective size of numbers, 9 is judged significantly larger than 221. The theory is that 9 brings to mind a context of small numbers, among which 9 seems "average" or even "large"; however, 221 invokes a context of 3-digit numbers, among which 221 seems relatively "small. " Within-subjects, however, judges would not have said 9 > 221. Implications of this problem and suggestions for dealing with it are discussed. The purpose of this article is to illustrate how between-subjects (BS) experiments, in which the dependent variable is a judgment, can lead to dubious conclusions. Although this point has been made previously (Birnbaum, 1974, 1982, 1992; Birnbaum & Mellers, 1983; Greenwald, 1976; Grice, 1966), the implications of this thesis may not yet be fully appreciated by researchers. This article uses a simple example lo illustrate how difficult it is to compare judgments between subjects. When different groups of people judge a stimulus, the response by a given person on a specific occasion is theorized to be a function of subjective value: R(i,k) = Jk(s,)
EVIDENCE-BASED PROGRAMS TO PREVENT CHILDREN FROM ENTERING

The Washington State Institute for Public Policy was directed by the 2007 Washington Legislature to estimate whether “evidence-based” programs and policies can “reduce the likelihood of children entering and remaining in the child welfare system, including both prevention and intervention programs. ” In this report, we study three basic questions. Is there credible evidence that specific programs “work” to improve these outcomes? If so, do benefits outweigh program costs? Finally, what would be the total net gain to Washington if these evidence-based programs were implemented more widely?
How does the life insurance business perform and behave: the case of the UK industry

This thesis reviews the UK life insurance industry comprehensively in terms of performance and business behaviour. One major contribution of the thesis is to challenge the conventional view on evaluation of investment funds from a shareholders’ perspective. The accounting valuation techniques to evaluate investment from the policyholder’s perspective have not been advanced to the same extent as methods designed to evaluate investment from the shareholder’s perspective, due partly to the accounting complexity of the investment management. Against this context, the thesis develops a valuation method on the basis that policyholders’ basic expectation that their saved funds shall be invested with value growth higher than inflation in the real goods market, and the thesis takes this as the benchmark to assess the reported value of policyholders’ assets. The thesis employs this valuation to assess the performance of different life assurance products (conventional vs. modern) and examine whether the transformation (from conventional to modern) has any impact on insurer performance and behaviour. The thesis also examines whether product diversification impacts realised and unrealised investment income homogenously; the result suggests that the effect of product diversification on performance varies across different measurements of realised and unrealised gain. The second major contribution of the thesis is to test the validity of different output proxies and compare efficiency scores based ranking for competitive firms to the value creation based ranking. Overall, the thesis suggests that different output proxies give consistently similar ranking for competitive firms, and cost efficiency based on different proxies are closely related to conventional measurers of firm performance and value creation in terms of value and ranking.
Generic Fourier descriptor for shape-based image retrieval

Shape description is one of the key parts of image content description in MPEG-7. Most existing shape descriptors are usually either application dependent or non-robust, making them undesirable for generic shape description. A generic Fourier descriptor (GFD) is proposed to overcome the drawbacks of existing shape representation techniques. The proposed shape descriptor is derived by applying a 2D Fourier transform on a polar raster sampled shape image. The acquired shape descriptor is application independent and robust. Experimental results show the GFD outperforms the Zernike moment descriptor (ZMD) which has been proposed as the shape descriptor for MPEG-7.
Aboriginal University Student Success in British Columbia, Canada: Time for Action

Abstract Educational outcomes for Aboriginal students in British Columbia, and Canada in general, are a cause for considerable concern. High dropout rates, low participation, completion and success rates at educational institutions have challenged educators for decades. Solutions have included lowering admission requirements for Aboriginal candidates and establishing alternative programmes that improve attendance and remedy learning problems. However, most of these policies have not offered a lasting solution to challenges facing Aboriginal students. This study presents findings from interviews conducted with 20 Aboriginal undergraduate students, seven professors, and five non-academic staff at four universities in British Columbia, namely: Malaspina University College, University of Victoria, University of British Columbia, and Simon Fraser University. It presents their definitions of student success and how this could be improved. Four policy options are proposed. These are then tested against six criteria to determine the potential consequences of their implementation. Recommendations are made to British Columbia’s universities based on the multicriteria analysis.