Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Understanding and Overcoming Biases in Customer Reviews

Our paper contributes to the literature recommending approaches to make online reviews more credible and representative. We analyze data from four diverse major online retailers and find that verified customers who are prompted (by an email) to write a review, submit, on average, up to 0.5 star higher ratings than self-motivated web reviewers. Moreover, these email-prompted reviews remain stable over time, whereas web reviews exhibit a downward trend. This finding provides support for the existence of social influence and selection biases during the submission of a web review, when social signals are being displayed. In contrast, no information about the current state of the reviews is displayed in the email promptings. Moreover, we find that when a retailer decides to start sending email promptings, the existing population of web reviewers is unaffected both in their volume as well as the characteristics of their submitted reviews. We explore how our combined findings can suggest ways to mitigate various biases that govern online review submissions and help practitioners provide more credible, representative and higher ratings to their customers.
Research article RESISTANCE PATTERN OF FECAL ESCHERICHIA COLI IN SELECTED BROILER FARMS OF EASTERN HARARGHE ZONE, ETHIOPIA.

A study was conducted to determine the pattern of antimicrobial resistance in Escherichia coli isolated from Cloacal swab of broiler chickens in selected farms of Eastern Harrarge zone of Ethiopia. Isolation and identification of Escherichia coli were done by using enrichment media, selective media, and biochemical tests. 65 selected isolates were subjected to 9 antimicrobial agents to determine their resistance by the disk diffusion method. Accordingly, the resistance of E.coli was tetracycline (90%), streptomycin (78%), ampicillin (60%), amoxicillin (56%), erythromycin (45%), ciprofloxacin (38%), and chloramphenicol (15%). None of the isolates showed resistance to gentamicin. Sensitivity was observed in case of 80%, 77%, 44%, 32%, 26%, 20%, 20%, 15%, and 10% of the isolates for chloramphenicol, gentamicin, ciprofloxacin, amoxicillin, ampicillin, streptomycin, erythromycin, and tetracycline, respectively. Intermediate resistance/susceptibility was recorded for 5-35% of the isolates. 92.3% of the isolates tested showed multidrug resistance for 2 or more antimicrobials and the highest levels (18.5%) of multidrug-resistant E. coli were observed for 3 antimicrobials accounting 7.7% for tetracycline-ampicillin-streptomycin and 10.8% for tetracycline-ampicillin-amoxicillin. This study showed resistance against the antibiotics that are commonly used in poultry. Furthermore, it was concluded that gentamicin, chloramphenicole and ciproflaxin will be the first drugs of choice to resist infections caused by E. coli in chicken in Ethiopia. These findings confirm significant increase in the incidence of antimicrobial resistance in the E. coli isolates which is most probably due to increased use of antibiotics as feed additives for growth promotion and prevention of diseases and use of inappropriate antibiotics for treatment of diseases. Hence, excess or abusive use of antimicrobials should be
Context identification of sentences in related work sections using a conditional random field: towards intelligent digital libraries

Identification of contexts associated with sentences is becoming increasingly necessary for developing intelligent information retrieval systems. This article describes a supervised learning mechanism employing a conditional random field (CRF) for context identification and sentence classification. Specifically, we focus on sentences in related work sections in research articles. Based on a generic rhetorical pattern, a framework for modelling the sequential flow in these sections is proposed. Adopting a generalization strategy, each of these sentences is transformed into a set of features, which forms our dataset. We distinguish between two kinds of features for each of these sentences viz., citation features and sentence features. While an overall accuracy of 96.51% is achieved by using a combination of both citation and sentence features, the use of sentence features alone yields an accuracy of 93.22%. The results also show F-Scores ranging from 0.99 to 0.90 for various classes indicating the robustness of our application.
Phosphodiesterase 10A Upregulation Contributes to Pulmonary Vascular Remodeling

Phosphodiesterases (PDEs) modulate the cellular proliferation involved in the pathophysiology of pulmonary hypertension (PH) by hydrolyzing cAMP and cGMP. The present study was designed to determine whether any of the recently identified PDEs (PDE7-PDE11) contribute to progressive pulmonary vascular remodeling in PH. All in vitro experiments were performed with lung tissue or pulmonary arterial smooth muscle cells (PASMCs) obtained from control rats or monocrotaline (MCT)-induced pulmonary hypertensive (MCT-PH) rats, and we examined the effects of the PDE10 inhibitor papaverine (Pap) and specific small interfering RNA (siRNA). In addition, papaverine was administrated to MCT-induced PH rats from day 21 to day 35 by continuous intravenous infusion to examine the in vivo effects of PDE10A inhibition. We found that PDE10A was predominantly present in the lung vasculature, and the mRNA, protein, and activity levels of PDE10A were all significantly increased in MCT PASMCs compared with control PASMCs. Papaverine and PDE10A siRNA induced an accumulation of intracellular cAMP, activated cAMP response element binding protein and attenuated PASMC proliferation. Intravenous infusion of papaverine in MCT-PH rats resulted in a 40%–50% attenuation of the effects on pulmonary hypertensive hemodynamic parameters and pulmonary vascular remodeling. The present study is the first to demonstrate a central role of PDE10A in progressive pulmonary vascular remodeling, and the results suggest a novel therapeutic approach for the treatment of PH.
Business Cycle Volatility and Openness: An Exploratory Cross-Section Analysis

This paper links business cycle volatility to barriers on international mobility of goods and capital. Theory predicts that capital market integration should lower consumption volatility while raising investment volatility, if most shocks are country-specific and transitory. The removal of barriers to trade in goods should enhance specialization and hence output volatility. We test these ideas using a unique panel data set which includes indicators of barriers to trade in both goods and capital flows. However, our empirical results indicate that neither the degree of capital mobility, nor the degree of goods mobility is strongly correlated with the volatility of consumption, investment or output. This may reflect the fact that many business cycle shocks are both persistent and common to many countries.
Tests for Liquidity Constraints: a Critical Survey

This paper surveys recent empirical work on tests for liquidity constraints.The focus of the survey is on the tests based on the Euler equation. After examining the technical aspects of the recent tests on aggregate time-series data and on micro data, the survey tries to evaluate their economic significance. The paper concludes that for a significant fraction of the population the behavior of consumption over time is affected in away predicted by credit rationing and differential borrowing and lending rates. However, the available evidence is shown to have failed in providing information necessary to calculate the response of consumption to changes in the time profile of income.The paper attributes the failure to the fact that not much attention in the literature has been paid to the cause of liquidity constraints.
Linking Firms and Workers: Heterogeneous Labor and Returns to Education

Accurate measurement of returns to education is particularly important in African countries where government resources are extremely limited, and education's competition for budget dollars is intense. This paper attempts to measure consistently the returns to education in Ghana. The chief problem to be handled in the measurement of returns to education in Mincerbased wage regressions is ability bias. This paper attempts to address this problem from a completely new perspective--that of the firm. It begins by specifying a production function that is consistent with the Mincerian wage equation. The production function is estimated consistently, taking into account the simultaneity of labor demand and output decisions. A result of including worker schooling, experience and ability in the production function specification is that a measure of worker ability, defined as the worker's contribution to firm product after controlling for schooling and experience, is acquired. This measure of worker ability can be used in a wage equation in order to control directly for worker ability to obtain consistent estimates of the returns to schooling. The model is estimated using data from the manufacturing sector in Ghana, but this technique is replicable to other countries and datasets, given the recent increase in available linked employer-employee datasets.
Institutional Quality, Trade, and the Changing Distribution of World Income

Conventional wisdom holds that institutional changes and trade liberalization are two main sources of growth in per capita income around the world. However, recent research (e.g., Rigobon and Rodrik 2004) suggests that the Frankel and Romer (1999) trade and growth finding is not robust to the inclusion of institutional quality. In this paper, the authors argue that this "trade and growth puzzle" can be explained once institutional quality is acknowledged as a determinant of the willingness to save and invest, and hence acknowledged as a determinant of long-run comparative advantage. The paper consists of two parts. First, the authors develop a theoretical model which predicts that institutions determine a country's underlying comparative advantage: countries that have good institutions will tend to export relatively more capital-intensive (or sophisticated) goods compared with countries that have poor institutions; trade can magnify the effect of institutional quality on income, leading to greater income divergence than if countries remain in autarky. Second, using a panel of over eighty countries and twenty years of data, the authors find empirical support for their hypotheses.
Endogenous Growth and Cycles

Schumpeter argued that economic downturns had positive effects, in the incentives that it provided for firms to increase their efficiency. Part 1. provides a simple model confirming Schwnpeter's insight At thesame time, the model shows that there are real costs to economic fluctuations which extend well beyond the temporary losses in output and the economic waste resulting from unused resources: the future productivity of the economy is adversely affected, e.g, because of reduced expenditures on R&D. These long run losses are likely to be far more significant than any temporary gains from any induced cost cutting. While traditional Schumpeterian analyses have focused on the relationships between market structure and innovation, they have paid less attention to the relationship between innovation and capital market imperfections (resulting, in many cases, from problems of costly and imperfect information which are particularly important in the context of innovation). It is these capital market imperfections which give result in the deleterious effect of economic downturns on technological progress. Part II. of the paper shows that the nexus between fluctuations and innovation goes in both directions: fluctuations in economic activity not only cause fluctuations in innovation, fluctuations in innovation may give rise to fluctuations in economic activity. The positive feedback relationship between innovation and economic activity may, under a variety of conditions, give rise to multiple equilibria. There is no presumption that the free market, left to itself, will choose the best among them. Moreover, it is shown that under certain circumstances, the only market equilibrium entails economic fluctuations. It is the structure of the economy, not exogenous disturbances (as in real business cycle theory) which give rise to cyclical behavior.
Dual Averaging and Proximal Gradient Descent for Online Alternating Direction Multiplier Method

We develop new stochastic optimization methods that are applicable to a wide range of structured regularizations. Basically our methods are combinations of basic stochastic optimization techniques and Alternating Direction Multiplier Method (ADMM). ADMM is a general framework for optimizing a composite function, and has a wide range of applications. We propose two types of online variants of ADMM, which correspond to online proximal gradient descent and regularized dual averaging respectively. The proposed algorithms are computationally efficient and easy to implement. Our methods yield O(1/√T) convergence of the expected risk. Moreover, the online proximal gradient descent type method yields O(log(T)/T) convergence for a strongly convex loss. Numerical experiments show effectiveness of our methods in learning tasks with structured sparsity such as overlapped group lasso.
Answer Sequence Learning with Neural Networks for Answer Selection in Community Question Answering

In this paper, the answer selection problem in community question answering (CQA) is regarded as an answer sequence labeling task, and a novel approach is proposed based on the recurrent architecture for this problem. Our approach applies convolution neural networks (CNNs) to learning the joint representation of question-answer pair firstly, and then uses the joint representation as input of the long short-term memory (LSTM) to learn the answer sequence of a question for labeling the matching quality of each answer. Experiments conducted on the SemEval 2015 CQA dataset shows the effectiveness of our approach.
The Development of Group Farming in Post-War Japanese Agriculture

The paper analyzes how Japanese group farming organizations have developed since World War II. In post-war Japanese agriculture, part-time farmers are increasing, and heirs and successors to the older farmers are leaving farms and rural areas as a consequence of rapid industrialization. About nine years after the emergence of post-war voluntary group farming, the government introduced the concept of corporate (group) farming, appealing in particular to young farmer-successors hoping that corporate (group) farming would help them get benefits similar to those offered by industries in urban areas. The study reveals that thanks to the government's special support and laws, the number of corporate (group) farming organizations has rapidly increased although it is still low as compared to the number of voluntary group farming organizations. Nowadays, however, group farming plays an important role in post-war Japanese agriculture. This paper also discusses briefly how Japanese group farming differs from, or is similar to, group farming in some other Asian countries, developed and developing.
Can NGOs Build States and Citizenship through Service Delivery? Evidence from HIV/AIDS Programmes in Rural Uganda

Service delivery NGOs (SD-NGOs) have long been criticised for promoting ? technocratic? and ? depoliticised? forms of development. However, some commentators have begun to argue that such agencies, and even their ? technocratic? interventions, can have positive impacts on political forms and processes. This study investigates these two opposing perspectives through the lens of state building and citizenship formation in the global South. Primary research into the activities of a prominent SD-NGO in Uganda called The AIDS Support Organisation (TASO), through its ? mini-TASO Project? (MTP), finds that the project delivered important citizenship gains for People with HIV/AIDS (PWAs). This was visible in four main areas, namely, enhanced ability of PWAs to exercise voice, increased associationalism among previously unorganised and marginalised PWAs, increased voluntarism and more participation of PWAs in political contests. Yet, the project? s state-capacity building effects were more uneven. On the one hand, the programme played an important role in strengthening the bureaucratic ability of targeted hospitals to deliver HIV/AIDS services, enhanced PWAs? legibility to the state as well as increased state? s embeddedness in society. On the other hand, however, it was less successful in expanding the infrastructural reach of the state in rural Uganda. The overall conclusion is that while SD-NGOs emerge as more political actors than critics claim, their potentially progressive effects are contingent on and remain limited by intervention and contextual factors. While intervention factors encompass issues such as the expertise of SD-NGOs, programme design and funding, the contextual ones include the pre-existing state-society relations, operating environment for civil society, influence of donors, and the character of both formal and informal political institutions, among others.
Specific Responses of Salmonella enterica to Tomato Varieties and Fruit Ripeness Identified by In Vivo Expression Technology

Background Recent outbreaks of vegetable-associated gastroenteritis suggest that enteric pathogens colonize, multiply and persist in plants for extended periods of time, eventually infecting people. Genetic and physiological pathways, by which enterics colonize plants, are still poorly understood. Methodology/Principal Findings To better understand interactions between Salmonella enterica sv. Typhimurium and tomatoes, a gfp-tagged Salmonella promoter library was screened inside red ripe fruits. Fifty-one unique constructs that were potentially differentially regulated in tomato relative to in vitro growth were identified. The expression of a subset of these promoters was tested in planta using recombinase-based in vivo expression technology (RIVET) and fitness of the corresponding mutants was tested. Gene expression in Salmonella was affected by fruit maturity and tomato cultivar. A putative fadH promoter was upregulated most strongly in immature tomatoes. Expression of the fadH construct depended on the presence of linoleic acid, which is consistent with the reduced accumulation of this compound in mature tomato fruits. The cysB construct was activated in the fruit of cv. Hawaii 7997 (resistant to a race of Ralstonia solanacearum) more strongly than in the universally susceptible tomato cv. Bonny Best. Known Salmonella motility and animal virulence genes (hilA, flhDC, fliF and those encoded on the pSLT virulence plasmid) did not contribute significantly to fitness of the bacteria inside tomatoes, even though deletions of sirA and motA modestly increased fitness of Salmonella inside tomatoes. Conclusions/Significance This study reveals the genetic basis of the interactions of Salmonella with plant hosts. Salmonella relies on a distinct set of metabolic and regulatory genes, which are differentially regulated in planta in response to host genotype and fruit maturity. This enteric pathogen colonizes tissues of tomatoes differently than plant pathogens, and relies little on its animal virulence genes for persistence within the fruit.
Bridging the Gap between Natural Language Requirements and Formal Specifications

In this paper, we discuss the problem of transforming a natural language requirements specification into a formal specification. We present several methods to support the process and implemented them in a commercial tool, the Requirements Quality Suite. We achieve this by enriching the requirement text with additional structure (using a knowledge base) and asking the requirement engineer to formulate the requirements in Boilerplates. The additional structure is used to analyze the requirements automatically or semi-automatically leading finally to a formal specification. The formal specification then enables verification activities, such as testing or formal analysis. We discuss our methods by examples from an industrial case study and report on our experiences.
ON ONE-SIDED ESTIMATION OF A SHARP CUSP USINGWAVELETSFelix

We consider the sharp cusp detection problem in the nonparametric regression setting. We assume that the mth derivative of the unknown function (the function itself for m = 0 in particular) is suuciently regular to the left of a cusp point , is-discontinuous (in HH older sense) at and is arbitrarily (ir)regular afterwards. We construct a one-sided wavelet estimator for and prove its asymptotic near-minimaxity. Then we consider the case of unknown cusp's order and derive an adaptive wavelet estimator with the uniform rate slower only by a log n factor than the corresponding rate for known. Simulation study demonstrates good performance of the proposed estimator for nite samples.
An analytical framework for interpreting appellate court data

The objective of this paper is to present a simple but flexible theoretical model of the adjudication process that can be used to derive implications of various hypotheses about the adjudicators and litigants for the trial win rates, appeal rates and the reversal rates. Such a model can serve as a helpful tool for guiding empirical work on attitudes and competency of adjudicators and litigants. We use the model to study how the appeal and reversal rates are affected by the litigants'' perception that the trial court has a pro-plaintiff bias. We find that such a perception can result in higher appeal and reversal rates for the defendants relative to the plaintiffs, a pattern that is observed in the data.
Implementing Employment Retention Services in Pennsylvania: Lessons from Community Solutions. Princeton, NJ: Mathematica Policy Research

Highlights operational lessons from a Pennsylvania initiative that operated from 1998 through early 2001 and contributed to the state's current program of pre- and postemployment services for TANF recipients. Notes implementation challenges, including lower than expected enrollment, job placement rates, and employment retention rates, possibly related to the use of performance-based contracting. Also documents program design and service delivery lessons.
Rogue Mode Shileding in NSLS-II Multipole Vacuum Chambers

Modes with transverse electric field (TE-modes) in the NSLS-II multipole vacuum chamber can be generated at frequencies above 450MHz due to its geometric dimensions. Since the NSLS-II BPM system monitors signals within 10 MHz band at RF frequency of 500 MHz, frequencies of higher-order modes (HOM) can be generated within the transmission band of the band pass filter. In order to avoid systematic errors in the NSLS-II BPM system, we introduced frequency shift of HOMs by using RF metal shielding located in the antechamber slot. We demonstrated numerical modeling and experimental studies of the spurious TE modes in the NSLS-II vacuum chambers with antechamber slot. Calculated frequencies of TE-modes in considered chambers with and without RF shielding were verified experimentally. Flexible BeCu RF shielding inside each chamber at proper location shifts frequencies of H{sub 10p}-modes above {approx}900MHz, except chambers S6 odd and even. These chambers need special attention because of synchrotron radiation from downstream magnets. S6 odd multipole vacuum chamber needs to be measured and the RF shielding length has to be optimized. RF shielding looks adequate for baseline design. Fifty percent of open space provides adequate pumping speed.