Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improving the accuracy: volatility modeling and forecasting using high-frequency data and the variational component

In this study, we predict the daily volatility of the S&P CNX NIFTY market index of India using the basic ‘heterogeneous autoregressive’ (HAR) and its variant. In doing so, we estimated several HAR and Log form of HAR models using different regressor. The different regressors were obtained by extracting the jump and continuous component and the threshold jump and continuous component from the realized volatility. We also tried to investigate whether dividing volatility into simple and threshold jumps and continuous variation yields a substantial improvement in volatility forecasting or not. The results provide the evidence that inclusion of realized bipower variance in the HAR models helps in predicting future volatility.
Persons with multiple disabilities exercise adaptive head responses with the support of microswitch-aided programs

The present two studies were aimed at extending evidence on the effectiveness of microswitch-aided programs for promoting exercise of head movements through contingent stimulation with three participants (i.e., a man and two children) with multiple disabilities. The man and the child involved in Study I were to exercise head rotation movements from a lying or sitting position. The child involved in Study II was to exercise brief head lifting movements from a supine and a prone position. Tilt, optic, and pressure microswitches were used for the three participants, respectively. Performance of the target movements led to brief periods of preferred stimulation during the intervention phases of the studies. Data showed that the intervention frequencies of those movements increased for all three participants. Implications of the studies were discussed.
A second generation transgenic mouse model expressing both hemoglobin S (HbS) and HbS-Antilles results in increased phenotypic severity.

We report on a second generation of transgenic mice produced by crossing a transgenic mouse line expressing high levels of human alpha and beta S chains (alpha H beta S [beta MDD]) with a line expressing human alpha and beta S-Antilles (beta SAnt). We hypothesized that mice expressing both hemoglobins (Hbs) would have a more severe phenotype because the reduced oxygen affinity and solubility of the beta S-Antilles might enhance the rate and extent of polymer formation. We obtained mice that expressed both beta S and beta S-Antilles. The doubly transgenic mice that are heterozygous for deletion of mouse beta Major (beta MD) occurred with reduced frequency and those that are homozygous for deletion of mouse beta Major (beta MDD) occurred at a much reduced frequency and suffered early mortality. Human alpha was 58% of all alpha globin for all animals, whereas beta S and beta S-Antilles were 34% and 28% of all beta globins for beta MD mice and 42% and 36% for beta MDD mice. Hematocrit, Hb, and mean corpuscular Hb were normal for all transgenic mice, but reticulocyte levels were higher for the doubly transgenic mice versus alpha H beta S [beta MDD] mice older than 30 days (10.0% +/- 1.0% v 4.3% +/- 0.4%; P < .001, mean +/- SE, n = 20 and n = 10, respectively) and control mice (3.9% +/- 0.4%). Reticulocytosis was more severe in mice less than 30 days old ( > 20% for alpha H beta S beta S-Ant[beta MDD] mice). The median mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration of doubly transgenic mice was higher than that of alpha H beta S[beta MDD] mice with a variable number of very dense cells. Delay times for polymerization of Hb in red blood cells from alpha H beta S beta S-Ant[beta MDD] mice were shorter than those of alpha H beta S[beta MDD] mice, and there were fewer cells with delay times greater than 100 seconds. Urine-concentrating ability in control mice under ambient conditions is 2,846 +/- 294 mOsm and was reduced 30% to 1,958 +/- 240 mOsm, P < 4 x 10(-8) in all mice expressing both transgenes. We conclude that doubly transgenic mice have a more severe phenotype than either of the two parental lines. These mice may be suitable for validating therapeutic intervention in sickle cell disease.
Identifying Predictors of Unwanted Online Sexual Conversations Among Youth Using a Low Self-Control and Routine Activity Framework

The development of the Internet and computer-mediated communications (CMC), such as email and instant messaging, has transformed the lives of young people. The ability to communicate in near real time with others provides beneficial social impact, though it has also created unique opportunities for victimization. Research has focused on certain forms of sexual activity online, such as sexting, but little study has been devoted to coercion to engage in sexual conversations as a form of sexual harassment. This study examined this phenomenon in a sample of middle and high school youth in Kentucky, applying an integrated low self-control and routine activity framework. The findings demonstrated that youth who were victimized were more likely to have low levels of self-control, view pornography, have peers who engaged others in sexual conversation online, and be female. The relationship between gender and victimization was examined in depth, along with the implications of this study for our understanding of the utility of routine activity theory and the general theory of crime.
Long-run prices of primary commodities and oil prices

Acutely volatile movements in primary commodity prices have drawn considerable interest from empirical researchers. Exports of these commodities account for the bulk of export earnings of developing countries. The traditional demand-based framework was unable to explain the marked deterioration in these prices during the 1980s. This paper tries to ascertain the role played by real oil prices in explaining the extremely volatile movements in real prices of primary commodities by taking into account oil price shocks over the period 1973–1996, using monthly data. Real primary commodity prices and real oil prices are cointegrated. Additionally, the error in the cointegrating relation stimulates real commodity price adjustment, not real oil price adjustment.
SVMs for the Blogosphere: Blog Identification and Splog Detection

Weblogs, or blogs have become an important new way to publish information, engage in discussions and form communities. The increasing popularity of blogs has given rise to search and analysis engines focusing on the 'blogosphere'. A key requirement of such systems is to identify blogs as they crawl the Web. While this ensures that only blogs are indexed, blog search engines are also often overwhelmed by spam blogs (splogs). Splogs not only incur computational overheads but also reduce user satisfaction. In this paper we first describe our experiments on blog identification using Support Vector Machines (SVM). We compare results of using different feature sets and introduce new features for blog identification. We then report preliminary results on splog detection and identify future work.
Why Do Interest Rate Options Smile?

We address three questions relating to the interest rate options market: What is the shape of the smile? What are the economic determinants of the shape of the smile? Do these determinants have predictive power for the futures shape of the smile and vice versa? We investigate these issues using daily bid and ask prices of euro (¬) interest rate caps/floors. We find a clear smile pattern in interest rate options. The shape of the smile varies over time and is affected in a dynamic manner by yield curve variables and the future uncertainty in the interest rate markets; it also has information about future aggregate default risk. Our findings are useful for the pricing, hedging and risk management of these derivatives.
Relationship between dissociation, childhood sexual abuse, childhood physical abuse, and mental illness in a general population sample.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between childhood sexual abuse, childhood physical abuse, current psychiatric illness, and measures of dissociation in an adult population. METHOD The authors used a randomly selected sample of 1,028 individuals. Each subject completed a semistructured face-to-face interview that included measures of childhood sexual abuse, childhood physical abuse, DSM-III-R psychiatric diagnoses, and selected items from the Dissociative Experiences Scale. RESULTS Many individuals experienced occasional dissociative symptoms, and 6.3% of the population suffered from three or more frequently occurring dissociative symptoms. Among these individuals, the rate of childhood sexual abuse was two and one-half times as high, the rate of physical abuse was five times as high, and the rate of current psychiatric disorder was four times as high as the respective rates for the other subjects. Logistic regression modeling showed that physical abuse and current psychiatric illness were directly related to a high rate of dissociative symptoms but sexual abuse was not. The influence of sexual abuse was due to its associations with current psychiatric illness and with childhood physical abuse. Childhood physical abuse was not directly related to current psychiatric illness. Its association appeared to be mediated by its link to childhood sexual abuse. CONCLUSIONS This study confirms that a small proportion (approximately 6%) of the general population suffer from high levels of dissociative symptoms. It calls into question the hypothesized direct relationship between childhood sexual abuse and adult dissociative symptoms.
Value Diversity and Affective Conflict Reduction Model: Reducing Value Diversity through Servant

Conflict literature reveals value diversity influences team member satisfaction mediated through affective conflict. When the level of affective conflict increases to moderate or higher levels, teams experience unhealthy relational outcomes. This paper illustrates the value diversity and affective conflict reduction (VDACR) model can moderate the negative influence of affective conflict by introducing an internalized moderating variable, servant leadership. Leaders employing a servant leadership approach encourage the harmonization of follower and leader interests resulting in a long-term solution to blend demographically heterogeneous followers without experiencing the negative consequences such as members’ dissatisfaction and poor performance because of evaluated levels of affective conflict.
How to increase and sustain positive emotion: The effects of expressing gratitude and visualizing best possible selves

A 4-week experimental study (N = 67) examined the motivational predictors and positive emotion outcomes of regularly practicing two mental exercises: counting one's blessings (“gratitude”) and visualizing best possible selves (“BPS”). In a control exercise, participants attended to the details of their day. Undergraduates performed one of the three exercises during Session I and were asked to continue performing it at home until Session II (in 2 weeks) and again until Session III (in a further 2 weeks). Following previous theory and research, the practices of gratitude and BPS were expected to boost immediate positive affect, relative to the control condition. In addition, we hypothesized that continuing effortful performance of these exercises would be necessary to maintain the boosts (Lyubomirsky, S., Sheldon, K. M., & Schkade, D. (2005a). Pursuing happiness: The architecture of sustainable change. Review of General Psychology, 9, 111–131). Finally, initial self-concordant motivation to perform the exercise was expected to predict actual performance and to moderate the effects of performance on increased mood. Results generally supported these hypotheses, and suggested that the BPS exercise may be most beneficial for raising and maintaining positive mood. Implications of the results for understanding the critical factors involved in increasing and sustaining positive affect are discussed.
A gesture processing framework for multimodal interaction in virtual reality

This article presents a gesture detection and analysis framework for modelling multimodal interactions. It is particulary designed for its use in Virtual Reality (VR) applications and contains an abstraction layer for different sensor hardware. Using the framework, gestures are described by their characteristic spatio-temporal features which are on the lowest level calculated by simple predefined detector modules or nodes. These nodes can be connected by a data routing mechanism to perform more elaborate evaluation functions, therewith establishing complex detector nets. Typical problems that arise from the time-dependent invalidation of multimodal utterances under immersive conditions lead to the development of pre-evaluation concepts that as well support their integration into scene graph based systems to support traversal-type access. Examples of realized interactions illustrate applications which make use of the described concepts.
Religion and Violent Offenders in Boot Camp: A Structural Equation Model

This is the first study to examine the direct, indirect, and reciprocal relationships between religion and crimes against persons. The study's theoretical model was of males aged 15 to 24 in a boot camp for first admissions to the department of corrections in a southern state. Self-report data indicate that 44 percent of the 600 participants had committed at least five crimes against persons. The hypothesized model represents a theoretical elaboration of social control theory using elements of social learning theories. The pattern of interrelationships comprising the model consists of several reciprocal relationships tested with structural equation modeling procedures. Twenty-seven of the 33 hypothesized relationships are supported. For example, religion is inversely related to carrying a weapon, violence, use of illicit drugs, and selling of illicit drugs. Implications of the study are discussed in terms of measures of religion and the use of religion in formulating explanatory models.
Novel Pixel-Level and Subpixel-Level Registration Algorithms for Multi-Modal Imagery Data

Image registration is an important pre-processing operation to be performed before many image exploitation and processing functions such as data fusion, super-resolution frame reconstruction, change detection, image mosaicing, etc. Given two image frames, obtained from the same sensor or from different sensors, the registration problem involves determining the transformation that most nearly maps (or aligns) one image frame into the other. Due to the tremendous practical importance of this problem in several applications, both military (surveillance, tracking, missile guidance, etc.) and non-military (medical imaging, HDTV, homeland security, etc.), many sophisticated image processing algorithms are presently being developed which provide varying degrees of registration accuracy and robustness to scene characteristics. Typically, image registration requires intensive computational effort and the developed techniques are scene dependent. Furthermore, the problems of multimodal image registration (i.e. problem of registering images acquired from dissimilar sensors) and sub-pixel image registration (i.e. registering two images at sub-pixel accuracy) are highly challenging and no satisfactory solutions exist. This dissertation introduces novel techniques to solve the image registration problem both at the pixel-level and at the sub-pixel level. For pixel-level registration, a procedure is offered that enjoys the advantages that it is not scene dependent and provides the same level of accuracy for registering images acquired from different types of sensors. The new technique is based on obtaining the local frequency content of an image and using this local frequency representation to extract control points for establishing correspondence. To extract the local frequency representation of an image, a computationally efficient scheme based on minimizing the latency of a Gabor filter bank by exploiting certain biological considerations is presented. The dissertation also introduces an extension of using local frequency to solve the sub-pixel image registration problem. The new algorithm is based on using the scaled local frequency representation of the images to be registered, with computationally inexpensive scaling of the local frequency of the images prior to correlation matching. Finally, this dissertation provides a novel approach to solve the problem of multi-modal image registration. The principal idea behind this approach is to employ Computer Aided Design (CAD) models of man-made objects in the scene to permit extraction of regions-of-interest (ROI) whose local frequency representations are computed for extraction of stable matching points. Detailed performance evaluation results from an extensive set of experiments using diverse types of images are presented to highlight the strong points of the proposed registration algorithms.
The Effects of Time-Compressed Speech on Native and Efl Listening Comprehension

The experiment reported here used time-compressed speech to handicap the process of listening comprehension in an attempt to observe aural processing strategy differences among groups of native English speakers and high- and medium-level skill groups learning the language. The participants were asked to immediately recall 5 time-compressed recordings each of 16 simple English sentences; the 5 replays represented decreasing rates of time-compression ranging from 40% to 90% normal playing time. Group performances were compared for the 5 rates of compression with regard to overall sentence recall as well as to the recall of specific parts of speech. Results showed both quantitative and qualitative differences among the three test groups. Overall recall of the time-compressed sentences decreased with decreasing proficiency in the language. Furthermore, whereas native listeners demonstrated a strategy of concentrating on key content words in the stimulus, both learner groups tended to recall more words they had heard in initial or final sentence position.
Link to Leeds Beckett Repository record:

While progress has been made in understanding the friendships of children with autism, research on the friendships of children with additional learning disabilities remains extremely limited. In this research, a qualitative case study approach provided a rich description of the friendship concepts and capabilities of Ben, a ten year old boy with autism and severe learning disabilities within the context of a mainstream primary classroom in the United Kingdom. An innovative activity based strategy was used to gain Ben’s own perspectives in relation to friendship. Findings revealed that Ben exhibited a strong desire to have friends, believed himself to have some, demonstrated some understanding in respect of degrees of friendship, and displayed a commitment to friendships over relatively long periods of time. Methodological, developmental and capacity perspectives informed the discussion, with a case being made both for a greater focus on the friendship capabilities of children with autism and learning disabilities and their more direct inclusion in the research process.
The School Performance of Children From Single-Mother and Single-Father Families:

Very little is known about the academic performance of children from single-father families. How do they achieve in school relative to children from single-mother and two-parent families? Do the same processes posited to explain the school performance of children from single-mother households account for the educational performance of children in single-father homes? These questions are addressed using a nationally representative sample of 8th graders from the National Longitudinal Study of 1988. Eight different educational outcomes are compared for 409 children in single-father, 3,483 in single-mother, and 14,269 children in biological two-parent families. Children from single-father and single-mother families perform roughly the same in school, but both are outperformed by children from two-parent families. The intervening processes explaining school performance for children from single-father and single-mother families are somewhat different, however. Economic deprivation, or the lack of economic resources, is more useful for understanding the school difficulties of children from single-mother families, whereas interpersonal deprivation, or the lack of interpersonal parental resources, provide a more accurate description for why children from single-father families do poorly in school.
BRIEF REPORT The Emergence of Probabilistic Reasoning in Very Young Infants: Evidence From 4.5- and 6-Month-Olds

Human learners are capable of making large inductive leaps in the face of data that are limited and often stochastic. It is an important and ubiquitous ability. For example, imagine people from the hunter–gatherer age trying to determine which types of trees produce berries that are good for eating. Let’s say they sample five berries from each of a couple of trees and find that one tree produces four good tasting berries and the other only produces one or two. They may make the inference that berries from the former tree tend to be edible and that the latter tree type should be avoided. Or, picture a toddler attempting to learn her first words. She hears the word doggie in the presence of her family dog a few times and quickly generalizes the word to other dogs but not a stray cat or her pet hamster. What are the cognitive mechanisms that allow human learners to
Ontogeny of swimming movements in the catfish Clarias gariepinus

The swimming movements of C. gariepinus larvae were recorded with a high-speed camera (400, 500 and 800 fps) from 0 to 336 hours post-hatching. Movements of adult fish were also recorded to provide information on the last developmental stage. Seven landmarks positioned on the fish midline were used during tail beating to determine various parameters during ontogeny and, on the basis of these parameters, to describe the first appearance of swimming move- ments and their development and efficiency during growth. Larvae were unable to swim at hatching (4 mm total length). Swimming movements were established at 48 hours post- hatching when the fish measured between 7 and 8 mm total length and the yolk sac was more than 95% absorbed. At this stage, lateral excursion of the head appeared strongly reduced (from 13% to 6% of the total length). The efficiency of swimming movements increased throughout ontogeny, as did the homogeneity of the speed of the propulsive wave. Spon- taneous swimming speed of 1 to 10 TLs -1 were observed in early stage (8-12 hPH). The various speed induced significant variations in parameters such as the amplitude of lateral head movements, swimming efficiency, and body rigidity. No major change was observed at the theoretical flow-regime transition.