Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multiattribute Call Markets

Multiattribute auctions support automated negotiation in settings where buyers and sellers have valuations for alternate configurations of a good, as defined by configuration attributes . Bidders express offers to buy or sell alternate configurations by specifying configuration-dependent reserve prices, and the auction determines both the traded goods and transaction prices based on these offers. While multiattribute auctions have been deployed in single-buyer procurement settings, the development of double-sided multiattribute auctions—allowing the free participation of both buyers and sellers—has received little attention from academia or industry. In this work I develop a multiattribute call market, a specific type of double auction in which bids accumulate over an extended period of time, before the auction determines trades based on the aggregate collection of bids. Building on a polynomial-time clearing algorithm, I contribute an efficient algorithm for information feedback. Supporting the implementation of market-based algorithms, information feedback support extends the range of settings for which multiattribute call markets achieve efficiency. Multiattribute auctions are only one of many auction variants introduced in recent years. The rapidly growing space of alternative auctions and trading scenarios calls for both a standardized language with which to specify auctions, as well as a computational test environment in which to evaluate alternate designs. I present a novel auction description language and deployment environment that supports the specification of a broad class of auctions, improving on prior approaches through a scripting language that employs both static parameter settings and rule-based behavior invocation. The market game platform, AB3D, can execute these auction scripts to implement multi-auction and multi-agent trading scenarios. The efficiency of multiattribute call markets depends crucially on the underlying valuations of participants. I analyze the expected performance limitations of multiattribute call markets, using existing analytical results where applicable. Addressing a lack of theoretical guidance in many natural settings, I introduce a computational metric on bidder valuations, and show a correlation between this metric and the expected efficiency of multiattribute call markets. As further validation, I integrate multiattribute markets into an existing supply chain simulation, demonstrating efficiency gains over a more conventional negotiation procedure.
Degradation of GaN high-electron mobility transistors in voltage step stress

Voltage step-stress tests on GaN-on-SiC HEMT showed that electric field is a driving factor for degradation. The position of localized damage is corresponding to the high electric field region. A degradation mode different from previous reports is observed, which led to an increase of drain current after stress in certain conditions. We attribute this to the collection of the positive mobile charge under the gate during the stress.
categoryCompare, an analytical tool based on feature annotations

Assessment of high-throughput—omics data initially focuses on relative or raw levels of a particular feature, such as an expression value for a transcript, protein, or metabolite. At a second level, analyses of annotations including known or predicted functions and associations of each individual feature, attempt to distill biological context. Most currently available comparative- and meta-analyses methods are dependent on the availability of identical features across data sets, and concentrate on determining features that are differentially expressed across experiments, some of which may be considered “biomarkers. ” The heterogeneity of measurement platforms and inherent variability of biological systems confounds the search for robust biomarkers indicative of a particular condition. In many instances, however, multiple data sets show involvement of common biological processes or signaling pathways, even though individual features are not commonly measured or differentially expressed between them. We developed a methodology, categoryCompare, for cross-platform and cross-sample comparison of high-throughput data at the annotation level. We assessed the utility of the approach using hypothetical data, as well as determining similarities and differences in the set of processes in two instances: (1) denervated skin vs. denervated muscle, and (2) colon from Crohn's disease vs. colon from ulcerative colitis (UC). The hypothetical data showed that in many cases comparing annotations gave superior results to comparing only at the gene level. Improved analytical results depended as well on the number of genes included in the annotation term, the amount of noise in relation to the number of genes expressing in unenriched annotation categories, and the specific method in which samples are combined. In the skin vs. muscle denervation comparison, the tissues demonstrated markedly different responses. The Crohn's vs. UC comparison showed gross similarities in inflammatory response in the two diseases, with particular processes specific to each disease.
The High Price of 'free' Trade Nafta's Failure Has Cost the United States Jobs across the Nation False Promises

Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed in 1993, the rise in the U.S. trade deficit with Canada and Mexico through 2002 has caused the displacement of production that supported 879,280 U.S. jobs. Most of those lost jobs were high-wage positions in manufacturing industries. The loss of these jobs is just the most visible tip of NAFTA's impact on the U.S. economy. In fact, NAFTA has also contributed to rising income inequality, suppressed real wages for production workers, weakened workers' collective bargaining powers and ability to organize unions, and reduced fringe benefits. NAFTA is a free trade and investment agreement that provided investors with a unique set of guarantees designed to stimulate foreign direct investment and the movement of factories within the hemisphere, especially from the United States to Canada and Mexico. Furthermore, no protec-tions were contained in the core of the agreement to maintain labor or environmental standards. As a result, NAFTA tilted the economic playing field in favor of investors, and against workers and the environment, resulting in a hemispheric " race to the bottom " in wages and environmental quality. Proponents of new trade agreements that build on NAFTA, such as the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), have frequently claimed that such deals create jobs and raise incomes in the United States. When the Senate recently approved President Bush's request for fast-track trade
Keratinocyte Detachment-Differentiation Connection Revisited, or Anoikis-Pityriasi Nexus Redux

Epidermis, a continuously self-renewing and differentiating organ, produces a protective stratum corneum that shields us from external chemical, physical and microbial threats. Epidermal differentiation is a multi-step process regulated by influences, some unknown, others insufficiently explored. Detachment of keratinocytes from the basement membrane is one such pro-differentiation stimulus. Here, we define the transcriptional changes during differentiation, especially those caused by detachment from the substratum. Using comprehensive transcriptional profiling, we revisited the effects of detachment as a differentiation signal to keratinocytes. We identified the genes regulated by detachment, the corresponding ontological categories and, using metaanalysis, compared the genes and categories to those regulated by other pro-differentiating stimuli. We identified 762 genes overexpressed in suspended keratinocyte, including known and novel differentiation markers, and 1427 in attached cells, including basal layer markers. Detachment induced epidermis development, cornification and desmosomal genes, but also innate immunity, proliferation inhibitors, transcription regulators and MAPKs; conversely the attached cells overexpressed cell cycle, anchoring, motility, splicing and mitochondrial genes, and both positive and negative regulators of apoptosis. Metaanalysis identified which detachment-regulated categories overlap with those induced by suprabasal location in vivo, by reaching confluency in vitro, and by inhibition of JUN kinases. Attached and in vivo basal cells shared overexpression of mitochondrial components. Interestingly, melanosome trafficking components were also overexpressed in the attached and in vivo basal keratinocytes. These results suggest that specific pro-differentiation signals induce specific features of the keratinization process, which are in vivo orchestrated into harmonious epidermal homeostasis.
Implementing a Bayes Filter in a Neural Circuit: The Case of Unknown, Nonlinear Stimulus Dynamics

In order to interact intelligently with objects in the world, animals must first transform neural population responses into estimates of the unknown stimuli which caused them. The Bayesian solution to this problem is known as a Bayes filter, and previous work has shown how to exactly implement a Bayes filter in a theoretical neural circuit when the stimulus dynamics are known and linear. In this paper we develop a method for approximating a Bayes filter when the stimulus dynamics are unknown and nonlinear, by training a recurrent neural network to approximate the predictions of the Bayes filter. To train the network, we use a combination of contrastive divergence minimization and backpropagation, in order to maximize the likelihood of the parameters of the network given the population responses. We demonstrate this method on a problem where the stimulus is a stochastic pendulum, and show how the learned network displays many of the characteristic properties found in research on populations of neurons.
Some optimal stopping problems with nontrivial boundaries for pricing exotic options

We solve the following three optimal stopping problems for different kinds of options, based on the Black-Scholes model of stock fluctuations. (i) The perpetual lookback American option for the running maximum of the stock price during the life of the option. This problem is more difficult than the closely related one for the Russian option, and we show that for a class of utility functions the free boundary is governed by a nonlinear ordinary differential equation. (ii) A new type of stock option, for a company, where the company provides a guaranteed minimum as an added incentive in case the market appreciation of the stock is low, thereby making the option more attractive to the employee. We show that the value of this option is given by solving a nonalgebraic equation. (iii) A new call option for the option buyer who is risk-averse and gets to choose, a priori, a fixed constant l as a ‘hedge’ on a possible downturn of the stock price, where the buyer gets the maximum of l and the price at any exercise time. We show that the optimal policy depends on the ratio of x/l, where x is the current stock price.
Estimating the Sensitivity and Specificity of Real‐Time Quantitative PCR of Fecal Samples for Diagnosis of Rhodococcus equi Pneumonia in Foals

Background Real‐time, quantitative PCR (qPCR) methods for detecting Rhodococcus equi in feces have been developed as a noninvasive, rapid diagnostic test for R. equi pneumonia, but have not been evaluated in a large population of foals. Objective The objective of this study was to evaluate the clinical utility of fecal PCR as a diagnostic test for R. equi pneumonia in foals using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) methods. Animals 186 foals born in 2011 at an R. equi‐endemic ranch in Texas. Methods Fecal samples were collected at the time of onset of clinical signs for pneumonic foals (n = 31). Foals with pneumonia were matched by age and birth date to healthy (n = 31) and subclinical (n = 124) control foals; fecal samples were collected from these controls. DNA was extracted from feces using commercial kits and concentration of virulent R. equi in feces was determined by qPCR. Results Concentration of R. equi in feces differed significantly (P < .05) among groups. The area under the ROC curve for fecal qPCR for diagnosis of R. equi pneumonia was 89% (95% CI, 83–99), with a sensitivity of 94% and specificity of 72%. Conclusions and Clinical Importance qPCR of feces can be useful as an alternative to tracheobronchial aspiration for the diagnosis of R. equi in foals with clinical signs of pneumonia. Caution should be used in extrapolating results of this study to other populations because fecal concentration of R. equi might vary by geographic location or management practices.
Programmed death-ligand 1 overexpression is a prognostic marker for aggressive papillary thyroid cancer and its variants

Programmed death-ligand 1(PD-L1) expression on tumor cells is emerging as a potential predictive biomarker in anti-PD-L1 directed cancer immunotherapy. We analyzed PD-L1 expression in papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) and its variants and determined its prognostic potential to predict clinical outcome in these patients. This study was conducted at an academic oncology hospital which is a prime referral centre for thyroid diseases. Immunohistochemical subcellular localization (IHC) analyses of PD-L1 protein was retrospectively performed on 251 archived formalin fixed and paraffin embedded (FFPE) surgical tissues (66 benign thyroid nodules and 185 PTCs) using a rabbit monoclonal anti-PD-L1 antibody (E1L3N, Cell Signaling Technology) and detected using VECTASTAIN rapid protocol with diaminobenzidine (DAB) as the chromogen. The clinical-pathological factors and disease outcome over 190 months were assessed; immunohistochemical subcellular localization of PD-L1 was correlated with disease free survival (DFS) using Kaplan Meier survival and Cox multivariate regression analysis. Increased PD-L1 immunostaining was predominantly localized in cytoplasm and occasionally in plasma membrane of tumor cells. Among all combined stages of PTC, patients with increased PD-L1 membrane or cytoplasmic positivity had significantly shorter median DFS (36 months and 49 months respectively) as compared to those with PD-L1 negative tumors (DFS, both 186 months with p < 0.001 and p < 0.01 respectively). Comparison of PD-L1+ and PD-L1− patients with matched staging showed increased cytoplasmic positivity in all four stages of PTC that correlated with a greater risk of recurrence and a poor prognosis, but increased membrane positivity significantly correlated with a greater risk of metastasis or death only in Stage IV patients. In conclusion, PD-L1 positive expression in PTC correlates with a greater risk of recurrence and shortened disease free survival supporting its potential application as a prognostic marker for PTC.
Prolonged oestrogen treatment does not correlate with a sustained increase in anterior pituitary mitotic index in ovariectomized Wistar rats

Oestrogen is a powerful mitogen that is believed to exert a continuous, dose-dependent trophic stimulus at the anterior pituitary. This persistent mitotic effect contrasts with corticosterone and testosterone, changes in the levels of which induce only transient, self-limiting fluctuations in pituitary mitotic activity. To further define the putative long-term trophic effects of oestrogen, we have accurately analysed the effects of 7 and 28 days oestrogen treatment on anterior pituitary mitotic activity in ovariectomized 10-week-old Wistar rats using both bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) and timed colchicine-induced mitotic arrest. An oestrogen dose-dependent increase in mitotic index was seen 7 days after the start of treatment as expected, representing an acceleration in gross mitotic activity from 1·7%/day in ovariectomized animals in the absence of any oestrogen replacement to 3·7%/day in the presence of a pharmacological dose of oestrogen (50 mcg/rat per day: ∼230 mcg/kg per day). Despite continued exposure to high-dose oestrogen and persistence of the increase in pituitary wet weight, the increase in mitotic index was unexpectedly not sustained. After 28 days of high-dose oestrogen treatment, anterior pituitary mitotic index and BrdU-labelling index were not significantly different from baseline. Although a powerful pituitary mitogen in the short term, responsible, presumably, for increased trophic variability in oestrus cycling females, these data indicate that in keeping with other trophic stimuli to the pituitary and in contrast to a much established dogma, the mitotic response to longer-term high-dose oestrogen exposure is transient and is not the driver of persistent pituitary growth, at least in female Wistar rats.
Factorization Techniques for Predicting Student Performance

Recommender systems are widely used in many areas, especially in ecommerce. Recently, they are also applied in e-learning for recommending learning objects (e.g. papers) to students. This chapter introduces state-of-the-art recommender system techniques which can be used not only for recommending objects like tasks/exercises to the students but also for predicting student performance. We formulate the problem of predicting student performance as a recommender system problem and present matrix factorization methods, which are currently known as the most effective recommendation approaches, to implicitly take into account the prevailing latent factors (e.g. “slip” and “guess”) for predicting student performance. As a learner’s knowledge improves over time, too, we propose tensor factorization methods to take the temporal effect into account. Finally, some experimental results and discussions are provided to validate the proposed approach.
How Do Prior Outcomes Affect Risky Choice? Further Evidence on the House-Money Effect and Escalation of Commitment

In an experiment we study the influence of prior outcomes on risky choice. We document a strong framing effect. By manipulating the presentation format of the decision problem we can induce increased risk taking following a gain, i.e. the house-money effect (Thaler and Johnson 1990) or, alternatively, increased risk taking following a loss, i.e. escalation of commitment (Staw 1976). Maximization of a value function from prospect theory can explain some of our results. Escalation of commitment in our experiment does not appear to be driven by a need to justify or rationalize the initial decision.
Bangla handwritten digit recognition using autoencoder and deep convolutional neural network

Handwritten digit recognition is a typical image classification problem. Convolutional neural networks, also known as ConvNets, are powerful classification models for such tasks. As different languages have different styles and shapes of their numeral digits, accuracy rates of the models vary from each other and from language to language. However, unsupervised pre-training in such situation has shown improved accuracy for classification tasks, though no such work has been found for Bangla digit recognition. This paper presents the use of unsupervised pre-training using autoencoder with deep ConvNet in order to recognize handwritten Bangla digits, i.e., 0–9. The datasets that are used in this paper are CMATERDB 3.1. 1 and a dataset published by the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI). This paper studies four different combinations of these two datasets-two experiments are done against their own training and testing images, other two experiments are done cross validating the datasets. In one of these four experiments, the proposed approach achieves 99.50% accuracy, which is so far the best for recognizing handwritten Bangla digits. The ConvNet model is trained with 19,313 images of ISI handwritten character dataset and tested with images of CMATERDB dataset.
Impact of Daily Thermocycles on Hatching Rhythms, Larval Performance and Sex Differentiation of Zebrafish

In the wild, water temperature cycles daily: it warms up after sunrise, and cools rapidly after sunset. Surprisingly, the impact of such daily thermocycles during the early development of fish remains neglected. We investigated the influence of constant vs daily thermocycles in zebrafish, from embryo development to sexual differentiation, by applying four temperature regimens: two constant (24°C and 28°C) and two daily thermocycles: 28:24°C, TC (thermophase coinciding with daytime, and cryophase coinciding with night-time) and 24:28°C, CT (opposite to TC) in a 12:12 h light:dark cycle (LD). Embryo development was temperature-dependent but enhanced at 28°C and TC. Hatching rhythms were diurnal (around 4 h after lights on), but temperature- and cycle-sensitive, since hatching occurred sooner at 28°C (48 hours post fertilization; hpf) while it was delayed at 24°C (96 hpf). Under TC, hatching occurred at 72 hpf, while under CT hatching displayed two peaks (at 70 hpf and 94 hpf). In constant light (LL) or darkness (DD), hatching rhythms persisted with tau close to 24 h, suggesting a clock-controlled “gating” mechanism. Under 28°C or TC, larvae showed the best performance (high growth and survival, and low malformations). The sex ratio was strongly influenced by temperature, as the proportion of females was higher in CT and TC (79 and 83% respectively), contrasting with 28°C and 24°C, which led to more males (83 and 76%). Ovarian aromatase (cyp19a) expression in females was highest in TC and CT (6.5 and 4.6 fold higher than at 28°C, respectively); while anti-müllerian hormone (amh) expression in males increased in testis at 24°C (3.6 fold higher compared to TC) and particularly at 28°C (14.3 fold increase). Taken together, these findings highlight the key role of environmental cycles during early development, which shaped the daily rhythms in fish embryo and larvae, and ultimately influenced sex differentiation.
Beyond Efficiency or Justice: The Structure and Measurement of Public Servants’ Public Values Preferences

The public values preferences of public servants play an increasingly important role in understanding their administrative behaviors in the era of public value management. Researchers, however, tend to choose proxy or simplified variables to measure public values preferences, resulting in incomplete understanding of the underlying structure. Based on survey data in China, this study develops a five-dimensional scale of public servants’ public values preferences and verifies the scale’s predictive validity by adopting public service motivation and work performance as the criteria. From this study, we call for the establishment of a public values-based public personnel management system.
Rhodopsin from the fish, Astyanax: role of tyrosine 261 in the red shift.

PURPOSE To isolate and characterize the rhodopsin cDNA from the fish, Astyanax fasciatus, and to determine the effect of tyrosine 261 on its spectral tuning. METHODS The rhodopsin cDNA was cloned using reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction amplification and then sequenced. A mutant, Y261F, was generated by site-directed mutagenesis. Both wild type and mutant were transiently expressed in COS-1 cells, regenerated with 11-cis retinal, and purified by immunoaffinity chromatography. Ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometry was used to determine wavelength of maximum absorption. RESULTS A fasciatus rhodopsin cDNA exhibits 80% amino acid identity with bovine rhodopsin. In contrast to all known rhodopsins, this rhodopsin contains a tyrosine instead of a phenylalanine at amino acid position 261. Indeed, this particular amino acid replacement has been implicated in the long wavelength absorption of the red cone pigment. Site-directed mutagenesis was used to change the Astyanax amino acid 261 to phenylalanine (Y261F). Expression of the Y261F mutant in COS-1 cells showed an absorbance maximum of 496 nm, compared to 504 nm for the wild type pigment. CONCLUSIONS A naturally occurring fish rhodopsin is red shifted about 8 nm due to one critical amino acid substitution.