Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Partitioning Algorithm for Markov Decision Processes with Applications to Market Microstructure

We propose a partitioning algorithm to solve a class of linear-quadratic Markov decision processes with inequality constraints and non-convex stagewise cost; within each region of the partitioned state space, the value function and the optimal policy have analytical quadratic and linear forms, respectively. The algorithm is applied to two applications. In the main application, we present a model for limit order books with stochastic market depth to study the optimal order execution problem. Stochastic market depth is consistent with empirical studies and necessary to accommodate various order activities, such as limit order submission at and outside the best quotes and order cancellation, which may account for a large proportion of limit order activities. The optimal execution policy obtained by the algorithm significantly outperforms that of a deterministic market depth model in numerical examples. In the second application, we use the algorithm to compute the exact optimal solution to the renewable electricity management problem, for which previously only an approximate solution is known. As a comparison, we show that the approximate solution can be quite inaccurate for some initial states and thus demonstrate the advantage of the exact solution in this application.
Health benefits of nuts: potential role of antioxidants

A diet rich in fruits, vegetables and minimally refined cereals is associated with lower risk for chronic degenerative diseases. Since oxidative stress is common in chronic degenerative disease, it has been assumed that dietary antioxidants may explain this protective effect. Every dietary plant contains numerous types of antioxidants with different properties. Many of these antioxidants cooperate in oxidative stress reduction in plants, and we hypothesize that many different antioxidants may also be needed for the proper protection of animal cells. To test this hypothesis, it is useful to identify dietary plants with high total antioxidant content. Several nuts are among the dietary plants with the highest content of total antioxidants. Of the tree nuts, walnuts, pecans and chestnuts have the highest contents of antioxidants. Walnuts contain more than 20 mmol antioxidants per 100 g, mostly in the walnut pellicles. Peanuts (a legume) also contribute significantly to dietary intake of antioxidants. These data are in accordance with our present extended analysis of an earlier report on nut intake and death attributed to various diseases in the Iowa Women's Health Study. We observed that the hazard ratio for total death rates showed a U-shaped association with nut/peanut butter consumption. Hazard ratio was 0·89 (CI =0·81–0·97) and 0·81 (CI =0·75–0·88) for nut/peanut butter intake once per week and 1–4 times per week, respectively. Death attributed to cardiovascular and coronary heart diseases showed strong and consistent reductions with increasing nut/peanut butter consumption. Further studies are needed to clarify whether antioxidants contribute to this apparent beneficial health effect of nuts.
A seed-growth heuristic for graph bisection

We investigate a family of algorithms for graph bisection that are based on a simple local connectivity heuristic, which we call seedgrowth. We show how the heuristic can be combined with stochastic search procedures and a postprocess application of the KernighanLin algorithm. In a series of time-equated comparisons against largesample runs of pure Kernighan-Lin, the new algorithms nd bisections of the same or superior quality. Their performance is particularly good on structured graphs representing important industrial applications. An appendix provides further favorable comparisons to other published results. Our experimental methodology and extensive empirical results provide a solid foundation for further empirical investigation of graphbisection algorithms.
Effect of Economic Growth, Trade Openness, Urbanization, and Technology on Environment of Selected Asian Countries

The aim of this study is to examine the impact of trade openness, urban population, technology and economic growth on environment of Asian economies i.e. Bangladesh, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. The specific objectives of this study are tend to evaluate the effect of trade openness, technology, urbanization and economic growth on surroundings and environment (CO2 and SO2 emission). This study measures environmental effect through Stochastic Impact by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology framework in selected Asian developing countries. Data covers the time period from 1980 to 2014. This study utilize panel unit root, panel cointegration, DOLS estimator and causality tests in order to establish the association between environment and selected macro-economic variables. The results obtain from carbon dioxide emissions model show the significant impact of growth and technology on carbon emissions. While results of sulfur dioxide emissions model indicates the existence of inverted U-shaped EKC hypothesis. The study concluded that there should be research and development programs at public and private level to control pollution through new technologies.
Cannabidiol Reduces Leukemic Cell Size – But Is It Important?

The anti-cancer effect of the plant-derived cannabinoid, cannabidiol, has been widely demonstrated both in vivo and in vitro. However, this body of preclinical work has not been translated into clinical use. Key issues around this failure can be related to narrow dose effects, the cell model used and incomplete efficacy. A model of acute lymphoblastic disease, the Jurkat T cell line, has been used extensively to study the cannabinoid system in the immune system and cannabinoid-induced apoptosis. Using these cells, this study sought to investigate the outcome of those remaining viable cells post-treatment with cannabidiol, both in terms of cell size and tracking any subsequent recovery. The phosphorylation status of the mammalian Target of Rapamycin (mTOR) signaling pathway and the downstream target ribosomal protein S6, were measured. The ability of cannabidiol to exert its effect on cell viability was also evaluated in physiological oxygen conditions. Cannabidiol reduced cell viability incompletely, and slowed the cell cycle with fewer cells in the G2/M phase of the cell cycle. Cannabidiol reduced phosphorylation of mTOR, PKB and S6 pathways related to survival and cell size. The remaining population of viable cells that were cultured in nutrient rich conditions post-treatment were able to proliferate, but did not recover to control cell numbers. However, the proportion of viable cells that were gated as small, increased in response to cannabidiol and normally sized cells decreased. This proportion of small cells persisted in the recovery period and did not return to basal levels. Finally, cells grown in 12% oxygen (physiological normoxia) were more resistant to cannabidiol. In conclusion, these results indicate that cannabidiol causes a reduction in cell size, which persists post-treatment. However, resistance to cannabidiol under physiological normoxia for these cells would imply that cannabidiol may not be useful in the clinic as an anti-leukemic agent.
Orbits and emission spectra from the 2014 Camelopardalids

We have analysed the meteor activity associated with meteoroids of fresh dust trails of Comet 209P/LINEAR, which produced an outburst of the Camelopardalid meteor shower (IAU code #451, CAM) in 2014 May. With this aim, we have employed an array of high-sensitivity CCD video devices and spectrographs deployed at 10 meteor observing stations in Spain in the framework of the Spanish Meteor Network. Additional meteoroid flux data were obtained by means of two forward-scatter radio systems. The observed peak zenithal hourly rate was much lower than expected, of around 20 meteors h −1 . Despite of the small meteor flux in the optical range, we have obtained precise atmospheric trajectory, radiant and orbital information for 11 meteor and fireball events associated with this stream. The ablation behaviour and low tensile strength calculated for these particles reveal that Camelopardalid meteoroids are very fragile, mostly pristine aggregates with strength similar to that of the Orionids and the Leonids. The mineral grains seem to be glued together by a volatile phase. We also present and discuss two unique emission spectra produced by two Camelopardalid bright meteors. These suggest a non-chondritic nature for these particles, which exhibit Fe depletion in their composition.
Private Commercial Law in the Cotton Industry: Creating Cooperation Through Rules, Norms, and Institutions

The cotton industry has almost entirely opted out of the public legal system, replacing it with one of the oldest and most complex systems of private commercial law. Most contracts for the purchase and sale of domestic cotton, between merchants or between merchants and mills, are neither consummated under the Uniform Commercial Code nor interpreted and enforced in court when disputes arise. Rather, most such contracts are concluded under one of several privately drafted sets of contract default rules and are subject to arbitration in one of several merchant tribunals. Similarly, most international sales of cotton are governed neither by state-supplied legal rules, nor by the Convention on the International Sale of Goods, but rather by the rules of the Liverpool Cotton Association. This Article draws on a detailed case study of contractual relations in the cotton industry to examine the ways that the rules, norms and institutions that constitute the industry's private legal system ("PLS") create value for transactors. It begins by describing the formal operation of the PLS and discussing the ways that its substantive rules, adjudicative approaches and arbitral procedures improve on those provided by the Uniform Commercial Code and the public legal system. It then describes the many steps taken by cotton industry institutions to strengthen the social and informational infrastructures of trade and analyzes how these efforts combine to make reputation-based nonlegal sanctions a powerful force in the industry. The paper then draws on this discussion to suggest that the availability of such sanctions may enable transactors to create value-enhancing contract governance structures that might be either unavailable or prohibitively expensive if their transactions were governed by the public legal system. The paper also discusses in great detail how the industry's efforts to support the legal and extralegal aspects of contracting relationships, together with certain other features of cotton institutions, have succeeded in creating conditions that are conducive to the creation, maintenance and restoration of cooperative contracting relationships. It concludes by suggesting that understanding how the cotton industry's institutions create value for transactors may help identify other industries and other contexts in which private institutions can play a positive role in supporting trade.
Mechanisms of exclusion of native coastal marsh plants by an invasive grass

1 Determining the mechanisms by which invasive species exclude natives is critical for conserving and restoring native populations in impacted habitats. In recent decades the grass Phragmites australis has been aggressively invading coastal marshes of North America, with monocultures often replacing diverse assemblages of plants. 2 Our objective was to quantify how P. australis modifies the abiotic (soil and light conditions) and biotic (litter and shoots) environment and to determine the mechanisms by which it excludes two common forbs, the annual chenopod Atriplex patula var. hastata and the perennial aster Solidago sempervirens, from the highest tidal elevations of a brackish marsh in southern New England, USA. 3 In a 3‐year field experiment we added seeds of both forb species to stands of P. australis, where we manipulated shoots and litter in an orthogonal design, and to uninvaded marsh areas dominated by the rush Juncus gerardi, where we manipulated the shoots of the marsh vegetation. In general, seedling establishment and the number of plants surviving until the end of the growing season were substantially greater in areas not invaded by P. australis, and both shoots and litter limited the abundance of forbs within stands. 4 Forbs surviving within stands of P. australis grew larger and produced more seeds than those in uninvaded areas, indicating that changes to the soil resulting from invasion do not preclude the survival of established forbs. This was confirmed by a glasshouse study where the performance of forbs in soil collected from within stands of P. australis was better than in soil from areas dominated by J. gerardi. 5 Similar to many invasive grasses in terrestrial communities, P. australis excludes native forbs through competition, modifying the biotic environment of the marsh at both the ground (litter) and above‐ground (shoots) levels. Our results suggest that successful invaders, such as P. australis, are likely to be the ones that can engineer habitats in multiple ways and limit populations of native species across several critical stages of their life history.
Untangling Intra- and Interspecific Effects on Body Size Clines Reveals Divergent Processes Structuring Convergent Patterns in Anolis Lizards

Bergmann’s rule—the tendency for body size to increase in colder environments—remains controversial today, despite 150 years of research. Considerable debate has revolved around whether the rule applies within or among species. However, this debate has generally not considered that clade-level relationships are caused by both intra- and interspecific effects. In this article, we implement a novel approach that allows for the separation of intra- and interspecific components of trait-environment relationships. We apply this approach to body size clines in two Caribbean clades of Anolis lizards and discover that their similar body size gradients are constructed in very different ways. We find inverse Bergmann’s clines—high-elevation lizards are smaller bodied—for both the cybotes clade on Hispaniola and the sagrei clade on Cuba. However, on Hispaniola, the inverse cline is driven by interspecific differences, whereas intraspecific variation is responsible for the inverse cline on Cuba. Our results suggest that similar body size clines can be constructed through differing evolutionary and ecological processes, namely, through local adaptation or phenotypic plasticity (intraspecific clines) and/or size-ordered spatial sorting (interspecific clines). We propose that our approach can help integrate a divided research program by focusing on how the combined effects of intra- and interspecific processes can enhance or erode clade-level relationships at large biogeographic scales.
Controlled pore formation on mesoporous single crystalline silicon nanowires: threshold and mechanisms

Silicon nanowires are prepared by the method of the two-step metal-assisted wet chemical etching. We analyzed the structure of solid, rough, and porous nanowire surfaces of boron-doped silicon substrates with resistivities of ρ > 1000 Ωcm, ρ = 14-23 Ωcm, and ρ < 0.01 Ωcm by scanning electron microscopy and nitrogen gas adsorption. Silicon nanowires prepared from highly doped silicon reveal mesopores on their surface. However, we found a limit for pore formation. Pores were only formed by etching below a critical H2O2 concentration (cH2O2 < 0.3 M). Furthermore, we determined the pore size distribution dependent on the etching parameters and characterized the morphology of the pores on the nanowire surface. The pores are in the regime of small mesopores with a mean diameter of 9-13 nm. Crystal and surface structure of individual mesoporous nanowires were investigated by transmission electron microscopy. The vibrational properties of nanowire ensembles were investigated by Raman spectroscopy. Heavily boron-doped silicon nanowires are highly porous and the remaining single crystalline silicon nanoscale mesh leads to a redshift and a strong asymmetric line broadening for Raman scattering by optical phonons at 520 cm-1. This redshift, λSi bulk = 520 cm-1 → λSi nanowire = 512 cm-1, hints to a phonon confinement in mesoporous single crystalline silicon nanowires.
Evaluation of the Knowledge and Attitudes of Dental Students toward Occupational Blood Exposure Accidents at the End of the Dental Training Program

Aims and Objectives: This study was conducted to assess knowledge, attitudes, and behavior regarding occupational blood exposure accidents (OBEA) among dental students at the end of the whole dental education program. Materials and Methods: The survey was performed using a student self-administered questionnaire during July 2015 in the dental teaching hospital in Rabat. It was conducted on 117 dental students registered in the 5th year. The results were analyzed by SPSS Software, Version 13.0. Univariate analysis was performed by descriptive statistics, and bivariate analysis was used to identify correlations between different variables. Results: Eighty-three students answered the questionnaire (participation rate: 70%). Most participants had incomplete knowledge about the management and the risks of OBEA. Thirty-five participants (42%) experienced at least one occupational exposure to patients' blood. Needle recapping has been the main cause of such injuries (41%). Most accidents occurred, respectively, in the oral surgery (51%) and the restorative dentistry (17%) departments. According to many participants, they had received insufficient education concerning this topic. Conclusions: More effective education on prevention and management of OBEA is highly recommended to reduce the prevalence of such injuries. Dental schools should set up a local management unit for following and supporting the exposed students.
A Measure of the Hurst Exponent Variability on Ground Based Magnetometer Data for Quiet and Active Magnetospheric Periods

Author: Dario O. Cersosimo Title: A measure of the Hurst exponent variability on ground based magnetometer data for quiet and active magnetospheric periods Institution: Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Degree: Master of Science in Space Sciences Year: 2005 Ground-based magnetometer data were analyzed for the period of 1991-2001. The data were classified into periods of quiet and active magnetospheric activity. Those periods classified as quiet required that Kp < 1 for not less than 48 consecutive hours and active periods required a Kp > 4 for not less than 24 consecutive hours. Detrended fluctuation analysis was employed to analyze 40 events. A monofractal approach was used to identify differences in the Hurst exponent of quiet and active events. No statistical differences were found using this approach since both types of events displayed quasirandom walk behavior. A second approach determined the temporal variations in the Hurst exponent for each event. The Hurst exponent is temporally dynamic — active events are more correlated than quiet events suggesting a multifractional rather than monofractal behavior. The results are useful to suggest an appropriate model of magnetic field fluctuations.
Performance Characterization of State-Of-The-Art Deep Learning Workloads on an IBM "Minsky" Platform

Deep learning algorithms are known to demand significant computing horsepower, in particular when it comes to training these models. The capability of developing new algorithms and improving the existing ones is in part determined by the speed at which these models can be trained and tested. One alternative to attain significant performance gains is through hardware acceleration. However, deep learning has evolved into a large variety of models, including but not limited to fully-connected, convolutional, recurrent and memory networks. Therefore, it appears difficult that a single solution can provide effective acceleration for this entire deep learning ecosystem. This work presents detailed characterization results of a set of archetypal state-of-the-art deep learning workloads on a last-generation IBM POWER8 system with NVIDIA Tesla P100 GPUs and NVLink interconnects. The goal is to identify the performance bottlenecks (i.e. the accelerable portions) to provide a thorough study that can guide the design of prospective acceleration platforms in a more effective manner. In addition, we analyze the role of the GPU (as one particular type of acceleration engine) and its effectiveness as a function of the size of the problem. This research was developed, in part, with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The views, opinions and/or findings expressed are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official views or policies of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.
Biased Reasoning: Adaptive Responses to Health Risk Feedback

The present study examined reactions toward repeated selfrelevant feedback. Participants in a community health screening received feedback about their cholesterol level on two separate occasions. Reactions to the first feedback were examined with regard to feedback valence and expectedness. The findings showed that negative feedback was devalued, but only when it was unexpected. Feedback consistency was incorporated into analyses of the second feedback. Again, results showed that negative feedback was not always devalued—only when it was inconsistent with the first feedback. Furthermore, positive feedback was not unconditionally accepted. When receiving unexpected positive feedback of low consistency, recipients were doubtful about its accuracy. Conversely, expected positive feedback was accepted regardless of its consistency. These results suggest that negative or unexpected positive feedbacks evoke greater sensitivity to feedback consistency, indicating elaborate cognitive processing. Theoretical accounts of these findings are discussed.
Novel uses of SiO2 nanolubrication in end milling of medium carbon steel for higher compressive residual stress measured by high-energy X-ray diffraction data

Milling is a machining process that removes any desired material from the surface by using relative motion between a work piece and a rotating cutter where the cutting tool intermittently enters and leaves the work piece. The milling process operates in two modes, namely, conventional (up) mode and climb (down) mode. Both modes are known for their significant effects on surface integrity due to the entering movement of the cutting tool and the formation of the chips during cutting process. Use of flood lubrication can improve the residual stress and surface quality of the component. It controls the temperature in cutting zone, reduces the power required, washes away chips, and reduces friction between chips, tools, and workpieces. Moreover, it has a great effect on the environment too. Minimum quantity lubrication can be used as an alternative of lubrication for clean machining. With an addition of nanoparticles into the minimum quantity lubrication, it is expected to enhance the machining performance that meets the environmental friendly purposes. Residual stresses remain in a solid material in the absence of external loading or thermal gradients, which is sometimes undesirable. The presence of compressive residual stresses is beneficial, while the presence of tensile stresses is detrimental. In order to study the residual stress and its relation with the surface quality (after milling process), the effects of reduced oil consumption in minimum quantity lubrication and the addition of SiO2 nanoparticles in minimum quantity lubrication for clean machining are presented in this research. Results indicate that there is an improvement in residual stresses and surface quality especially during conventional (up) milling under minimum quantity lubrication and minimum quantity lubrication–SiO2 nanolubrication condition.