Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Valuing Simple Multiple-Exercise Real Options in Infrastructure Projects

The revenue risk is considerable in infrastructure project financing arrangements such as build-operate-transfer BOT . A potential mitigation strategy for the revenue risk is a governmental revenue guarantee, where the government secures a minimum amount of revenue for a project. Such a guarantee is: 1 only redeemable at distinct points in time; and 2 more economical if the government limits the guarantee's availability to the early portions of a BOT's concession period. Hence, a guarantee characterized by this type of structure takes the form of either a Bermudan or a simple multiple-exercise real option, depending upon the number of exercise opportunities afforded. The multi-least-squares Monte Carlo technique is presented and illustrated as a promising approach to determine the fair value of this variety of real option. This method is far more flexible than prevailing approaches, so it represents an important step toward improving risk mitigation and facilitating contractual and financial negotiations in BOT projects.
Motion control of a wheel-leg-track compound mobile robot

A novel compound mobile robot named Jaguar is introduced, which is developed by our laboratory. Its mechanism and system component are presented, with the method of motion control as an emphasis. Modular design allows us to add and to change parts easily at the structural, hardware and software levels. To control different components of the robot, the embedded control system is used and the remote control makes the robot work practice. In order to overcome problems in motion control for robot Jaguar and parameter global tuning for PID controllers, fuzzy controllers are designed, and an angular velocity and course angle algorithm based on deflection angle of caster wheel and compass angle is presented. Experiments on the robot prove the effectiveness of the controller, which improves the operation, system adaptability and motion stability.
Catastrophic regime shifts in model ecological communities are true phase transitions

Ecosystems often undergo abrupt regime shifts in response to gradual external changes. These shifts are theoretically understood as a regime switch between alternative stable states of the ecosystem dynamical response to smooth changes in external conditions. Usual models introduce nonlinearities in the macroscopic dynamics of the ecosystem that lead to different stable attractors among which the shift takes place. Here we propose an alternative explanation of catastrophic regime shifts based on a recent model that pictures ecological communities as systems in continuous fluctuation, according to certain transition probabilities, between different micro-states in the phase space of viable communities. We introduce a spontaneous extinction rate that accounts for gradual changes in external conditions, and upon variations on this control parameter the system undergoes a regime shift with similar features to those previously reported. Under our microscopic viewpoint we recover the main results obtained in previous theoretical and empirical work (anomalous variance, hysteresis cycles, trophic cascades). The model predicts a gradual loss of species in trophic levels from bottom to top near the transition. But more importantly, the spectral analysis of the transition probability matrix allows us to rigorously establish that we are observing the fingerprints, in a finite size system, of a true phase transition driven by background extinctions.
A Whole Virus Pandemic Influenza H1N1 Vaccine Is Highly Immunogenic and Protective in Active Immunization and Passive Protection Mouse Models

The recent emergence and rapid spread of a novel swine-derived H1N1 influenza virus has resulted in the first influenza pandemic of this century. Monovalent vaccines have undergone preclinical and clinical development prior to initiation of mass immunization campaigns. We have carried out a series of immunogenicity and protection studies following active immunization of mice, which indicate that a whole virus, nonadjuvanted vaccine is immunogenic at low doses and protects against live virus challenge. The immunogenicity in this model was comparable to that of a whole virus H5N1 vaccine, which had previously been demonstrated to induce high levels of seroprotection in clinical studies. The efficacy of the H1N1 pandemic vaccine in protecting against live virus challenge was also seen to be equivalent to that of the H5N1 vaccine. The protective efficacy of the H1N1 vaccine was also confirmed using a severe combined immunodeficient (SCID) mouse model. It was demonstrated that mouse and guinea pig immune sera elicited following active H1N1 vaccination resulted in 100% protection of SCID mice following passive transfer of immune sera and lethal challenge. The immune responses to a whole virus pandemic H1N1 and a split seasonal H1N1 vaccine were also compared in this study. It was demonstrated that the whole virus vaccine induced a balanced Th-1 and Th-2 response in mice, whereas the split vaccine induced mainly a Th-2 response and only minimal levels of Th-1 responses. These data supported the initiation of clinical studies with the same low doses of whole virus vaccine that had previously been demonstrated to be immunogenic in clinical studies with a whole virus H5N1 vaccine.
Using color photometry to separate transiting exoplanets from false positives

The radial velocity technique is currently used to classify transiting objects. While capable of identifying grazing binary eclipses, this technique cannot reliably identify blends, a chance overlap of a faint background eclipsing binary with an ordinary foreground star. Blends generally have no observable radial velocity shifts, as the foreground star is brighter by several magnitudes and therefore dominates the spectrum, but their combined light can produce events that closely resemble those produced by transiting exoplanets. The radial velocity technique takes advantage of the mass difference between planets and stars to classify exoplanet candidates. However, the existence of blends renders this difference an unreliable discriminator. Another difference must therefore be utilized for this classification - the physical size of the transiting body. Due to the dependence of limb darkening on color, planets and stars produce subtly different transit shapes. These differences can be relatively weak, little more than 1/10th the transit depth. However, the presence of even small color differences between the individual components of the blend increases this difference. This paper shows that this color difference is capable of discriminating between exoplanets and blends reliably, theoretically capable of classifying even terrestrial-class transits, unlike the radial velocity technique.
Transformerless DC-to-DC Converters with Large Conversion Ratios

A new switching dc-to-dc converter is introduced in which large voltage step-down ratios can be achieved without a very small duty ratio and without a transformer. The circuit is an extension of the ¿uk converter to incorporate a multistage capacitor divider. A particularly suitable application would be a 50V to 5V converter in which dc isolation is not required. The absense of a transformer and a larger duty ratio permits operation at very high switching frequency, and makes the circuit amenable to partial integration and hybrid construction techniques. An experimental three-stage voltage divider ¿uk converter converts 50V to 5V at 50W with an efficiency of 77% at 500 kHz and 71% at 1 MHz, higher than for a basic ¿uk converter operated at the same conditions.
Patients' preference for olanzapine orodispersible tablet compared with conventional oral tablet in a multinational, randomized, crossover study

Abstract Objectives. The aim of this study was to compare patients' preference for olanzapine orodispersible tablet (ODT) with oral conventional tablet (OCT). Methods. A 12-week randomized, crossover, multinational, open-label study was conducted to estimate the proportion of patients preferring ODT or OCT. Outpatients with stable schizophrenia on OCT monotherapy were randomly assigned 1:1 to ODT or OCT. Compliance and drug attitude were measured using the Drug Attitude Inventory (DAI-10) and Medication Adherence Form (MAF) scales; tolerability and safety by Association for Methodology and Documentation in Psychiatry (AMDP-5) questionnaire and adverse event summary. Results. A total of 175 patients answered a preference question: 106 (61%) preferred ODT and 48 (27%) preferred OCT (P<0.001 adjusted for treatment sequence); 21 (12%) expressed no preference. There was no significant change in DAI-10 with either formulation. MAF was above 75% in 94% vs. 93% of patients on ODC and OCT, respectively. Compliance as measured by tablet count was above 98% on both formulations. The adverse event profiles did not differ between formulations. Mean weight increase over 6 weeks on ODT was 0.8 kg and on OCT was 0.6 kg. Conclusions. Given the importance of patients' preference for treatment planning and success, the ODT formulation should be routinely considered as a treatment option.
Effects of Neck and Trunk Stabilization Exercise on Balance in Older Adults

Korea Purpose: This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of neck and trunk stabilization exercise on static and dynamic balance in older adults. Methods: A total of 30 older adults participated in this study. Participants were randomly assigned to the neck and trunk stabilization exercise group (NTSG) (n=15) or the trunk stabilization exercise group (TSG) (n=15). The NTSG performed a trunk stabilization exercise added to a neck stabilization exercise that included biofeedback. Both groups received training for 30 minutes per day three times per week for eight weeks. The anterior, posterior limit of stability and sway length was used to measure static balance ability, while the timed up and go (TUG) test was used to measure dynamic balance ability. Results: Participants showed significant differences in sway length, anterior limit of stability, posterior limit of stability, and the results of the TUG test between their pre- and post mediation evaluations (p<0.05). The NTSG showed a more significant increase than the TSG (p<0.05). Conclusion: According to the results of this study, both exercises effectively improved static and dynamic balance ability. However, the neck and trunk stabilization exercise is more efficient for increasing the balance ability of older
Recent Trends in Regional Financial Integration and Trade Liberalization in Maghreb Countries: A Multivariate Threshold Autoregressive Analysis

Increased globalization over the last two decades has led to strong growth in international business activity and international financial integration. This phenomenon covers a wide array of economic activities, including regional and international integration, investment and trade, international financial shocks and disturbances. This paper takes stock of current trends in regional financial integration and trade liberalization processes for the case of Maghreb countries. It aims also to examine the effects of these recent trends on economic growth in an era of growing globalization and frequent financial shocks. Using Multivariate Threshold Vector Autoregressive (MVTAR) estimation with data from 1990 to 2012, this study argues that the greater and deeper regional financial integration and trade will have positive repercussions for each Maghreb country. In addition, estimation results show that the regional financial integration process plays a positive role in enlarging the borders of countries as well as the market size of each country and, consequently, in stimulating economic growth. Finally, we can assert that the study argues that political and structural impediments continue to hamper regional integration.
When Capital Inflows Come to a Sudden Stop: Consequences and Policy Options

In this paper we present evidence that capital account reversals have become more severe for emerging markets. Because policy options are limited in the midst of a capital market crisis and because so many countries have already had crises recently, we focus on some of the policies that could reduce the incidence of crises in the first place, or at least make the sudden stop problem less severe. In this regard, we consider the relative merits of capital controls and dollarization. We conclude that, while the evidence suggests that capital controls appear to influence the composition of flows skewing flows away from short maturities, such policies are not likely to be a long-run solution to the recurring problem of sudden capital flow reversals. Yet, because fear of floating, many emerging markets are likely to turn to increased reliance on controls. Dollarization would appear to have the edge as a more market-oriented option to ameliorate, if not eliminate, the sudden stop problem.
Endoplasmic reticulum stress in amelogenesis imperfecta and phenotypic rescue using 4-phenylbutyrate

Inherited diseases caused by genetic mutations can arise due to loss of protein function. Alternatively, mutated proteins may mis-fold, impairing endoplasmic reticulum (ER) trafficking, causing ER stress and triggering the unfolded protein response (UPR). The UPR attempts to restore proteostasis but if unsuccessful drives affected cells towards apoptosis. Previously, we reported that in mice, the p.Tyr64His mutation in the enamel extracellular matrix (EEM) protein amelogenin disrupts the secretory pathway in the enamel-forming ameloblasts, resulting in eruption of malformed tooth enamel that phenocopies human amelogenesis imperfecta (AI). Defective amelogenin post-secretory self-assembly and processing within the developing EEM has been suggested to underlie the pathogenesis of X chromosome-linked AI. Here, we challenge this concept by showing that AI pathogenesis associated with the p.Tyr64His amelogenin mutation involves ameloblast apoptosis induced by ER stress. Furthermore, we show that 4-phenylbutyrate can rescue the enamel phenotype in affected female mice by promoting cell survival over apoptosis such that they are able to complete enamel formation despite the presence of the mutation, offering a potential therapeutic option for patients with this form of AI and emphasizing the importance of ER stress in the pathogenesis of this inherited conformational disease.
Quantifying the Protection of Activating and Inhibiting NK Cell Receptors during Infection with a CMV-Like Virus

The responsiveness of natural killer (NK) cells is controlled by balancing signals from activating and inhibitory receptors. The most important ligands of inhibitory NK cell receptors are the highly polymorphic major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I molecules, which allow NK cells to screen the cellular health of target cells. Although these inhibitory receptor–ligand interactions have been well characterized, the ligands for most activating receptors are still unknown. The mouse cytomegalovirus (MCMV) represents a helpful model to study NK cell-driven immune responses. Many studies have demonstrated that CMV infection can be controlled by NK cells via their activating receptors, but the exact contribution of the different signaling potential (i.e., activating vs. inhibiting) remains puzzling. In this study, we have developed a probabilistic model, which predicts the optimal specificity of inhibitory and activating NK cell receptors needed to offer the best protection against a CMV-like virus. We confirm our analytical predictions with an agent-based model of an evolving host population. Our analysis quantifies the degree of protection of each receptor type, revealing that mixed haplotypes (i.e., haplotypes composed of activating and inhibiting receptors) are most protective against CMV-like viruses, and that the protective effect depends on the number of MHC loci per individual.
VRRW on complete-like graphs: Almost sure behavior

By a theorem of Volkov [12] we know that on most graphs with positive probability the linearly vertex-reinforced random walk (VRRW) stays within a finite “trapping” subgraph at all large times. The question of whether this tail behavior occurs with probability one is open in general. In his thesis, Pemantle [5] proved, via a dynamical system approach, that for a VRRW on any complete graph the asymptotic frequency of visits is uniform over vertices. These techniques do not easily extend even to the setting of complete-like graphs, that is, complete graphs ornamented with finitely many leaves at each vertex. In this work we combine martingale and large deviation techniques to prove that almost surely the VRRW on any such graph spends positive (and equal) proportions of time on each of its nonleaf vertices. This behavior was previously shown to occur only up to event of positive probability (cf. Volkov [12]). We believe that our approach can be used as a building block in studying related questions on more general graphs. The same set of techniques is used to obtain explicit bounds on the speed of convergence of the empirical occupation measure. (Less)
Purebloods and mudbloods: the continuum of Welshness and Basqueness and its implications for the development of a National consciousness*

ABSTRACT The contentious nature of national identity has been welldocumented, and the difficulties and challenges associated with self-understanding, particularly in a ‘stateless nation’ context, have undergone profound scholarly exploration. As part of this exploration, the idea of ‘multiple identities’ is prominent; one nation member can simultaneously hold a number of ideas, for example, Welsh and British. This had also led scholars to suggest that the same nominal identity, for example Welsh, may in itself have multiple meanings. Yet this accepted multiplicity of the same nominal identity often masks the hard truths: it is plausible that certain nation members may rank each other on a continuum, or sliding scale, of national identity, wherein some are considered more or less worthy of claiming that identity than others. This paper explores this concept in relation to Wales and the Basque Country. It begins by situating this phenomenon within the relevant theoretical context, subsequently exploring its analytical purchase through examination of focus group discussion in both nations. Finally, it considers the consequences of a continuum, or sliding scale, of identity for national unity, in particular its implications for the on-going development of a coherent national consciousness.
An Agreement Service for Implementing Fault Tolerant Distributed Software

Distributed systems includes a large number of processors which increases the risk of failures. Fault tolerance is of a key importance in such systems. Implementing fault tolerant distributed software (FTDS) is a di cult task [2]. Group communication services [8] such as group membership and reliable multicast has been proposed to solve some of the problems in implementing FTDS. In this paper we propose an agreement service build on top of a group communication layer which allows distributed applications to reach agreement. The service, using the underlying group communication layer, ensures that all correct application processes receive the same agreement result or failure noti cation. The proposed agreement service facilitates the development of FTDS by implementing agreement protocols transparently to the application programmer.
Learning Term Embeddings for Taxonomic Relation Identification Using Dynamic Weighting Neural Network

Taxonomic relation identiﬁcation aims to recognize the ‘is-a’ relation between two terms. Previous works on identifying taxonomic relations are mostly based on statistical and linguistic approaches, but the accuracy of these approaches is far from satisfactory. In this paper, we propose a novel supervised learning approach for identifying taxonomic relations using term embeddings. For this purpose, we ﬁrst design a dynamic weighting neural network to learn term embeddings based on not only the hypernym and hyponym terms, but also the contextual information between them. We then apply such embeddings as features to identify taxonomic relations using a supervised method. The experimental results show that our proposed approach signiﬁcantly out-performs other state-of-the-art methods by 9% to 13% in terms of accuracy for both general and speciﬁc domain datasets.
Multimodal reflection for creative facilitators: an approach to improving self-care

Abstract Creative and arts-based facilitators who work in the area of supporting others, such as youth workers, educators, counsellors and therapists, often do not prioritise their own well-being and self-care. This paper explores a study that focused on the utility of multimodal reflection for sustainable as well as satisfying practice for creative facilitators. Participants in the study were involved in a trial 10-week reflective programme called Stepping Outside the Circle. This programme was part of a larger research project that sought to understand the professional and reflective practices of creative facilitators, a term used within the study to encompass practitioners who use arts (both performative and visual) interventions to work within a variety of therapeutic and educational settings. During the programme, participants drew on their own personal knowledge of the disciplines in which they worked and reflected in and on this practice both professionally and personally. They also collaboratively supported each other through the process. We argue that engagement in multimodal reflection shared with others, particularly for creative facilitators, is integral for purposeful and effective self-care practice.
What Do We Know about the Linkage between Nonresponse Rates and Nonresponse Bias ?

Many surveys of the U.S. household population are experiencing higher refusal rates. Nonresponse can, but need not, induce nonresponse bias in survey estimates. Recent empirical findings illustrate cases when the linkage between nonresponse rates and nonresponse biases is absent. Despite this, professional standards continue to urge high response rates. Statistical expressions of nonresponse bias can be translated into causal models to guide hypotheses about when nonresponse causes bias. Alternative designs to measure nonresponse bias exist, providing different but incomplete information about the nature of the bias. A synthesis of research studies estimating nonresponse bias shows the bias often present. A logical question at this moment in history is what advantage probability sample surveys have if they suffer from high nonresponse rates. Since postsurvey adjustment for nonresponse requires auxiliary variables, the answer depends on the nature of the design and the quality of the auxiliary variables.