Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
RDP9204 The Term Structure of Interest Rates, Real Activity and Inflation

This paper examines, both theoretically and empirically, the relationship between the slope of the yield curve and future changes in real activity and inflation. It argues that the existence of sticky prices allows current and expected future monetary shocks to affect the slope of both the nominal and the real yield curves. Changes in real money balances brought about by monetary policy cause a strong liquidity effect at the short end of the yield curve. This results in changes in real output in the short/medium term which eventually get translated into changes in prices. The empirical results show that the spread between the 10 year Treasury bond and the 180 day bank bill predict the rate of change, over the subsequent one to two years, of a number of measures of real activity. Over both longer and shorter forecast horizons the spread has little predictive power. On the inflation front, the 10 year-180 day yield spread provides significant information about changes in inflation over the medium term (that is between one year and two and three years). Yield spreads between shorter dated securities are found to contain little information concerning future changes in inflation. This supports the view that at the shorter end of the yield curve changes in nominal rates often reflect changes in real rates.
Races of Puccinia striiformis f. sp. hordei, the pathogen of barley stripe rust in the United States in 2004

Stripe rust of barley, caused by Puccinia striiformis f. sp. hordei (PSH), occurred mainly in California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington and caused localized damage to barley crops. Growing cultivars with high-temperature, adult-plant resistance and the cropping system contributed to the low level of stripe rust. Stripe rust samples were collected from the four states and tested under controlled greenhouse conditions on seedlings of a set of 12 barley genotypes used to differentiate races of the fungal pathogen. A total of 15 races were detected, of which three were new. PSH-72, a new race, was virulent on all 12 differential genotypes. The most predominant race was PSH-71 that was virulent on differential genotypes Topper, Emir, Hiproly, Varunda, Abed Binder 12, Trumpf, Mazurk, Bigo, and
Nonparametric Goodness-of-Fit Tests for Discrete Null Distributions

Methodology extending nonparametric goodness-of-fit tests to discrete null distributions has existed for several decades. However, modern statistical software has generally failed to provide this methodology to users. We offer a revision of R’s ks.test() function and a new cvm.test() function that fill this need in the R language for two of the most popular nonparametric goodness-of-fit tests. This paper describes these contributions and provides examples of their usage. Particular attention is given to various numerical issues that arise in their implementation.
MEMS Gyroscopes Based on Acoustic Sagnac Effect †

This paper reports on the design, fabrication and preliminary test results of a novel microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) device—the acoustic gyroscope. The unique operating mechanism is based on the “acoustic version” of the Sagnac effect in fiber-optic gyros. The device measures the phase difference between two sound waves traveling in opposite directions, and correlates the signal to the angular velocity of the hosting frame. As sound travels significantly slower than light and develops a larger phase change within the same path length, the acoustic gyro can potentially outperform fiber-optic gyros in sensitivity and form factor. It also promises superior stability compared to vibratory MEMS gyros as the design contains no moving parts and is largely insensitive to mechanical stress or temperature. We have carried out systematic simulations and experiments, and developed a series of processes and design rules to implement the device.
The Lyα forest around high-redshift galaxies

Motivated by the relative lack of neutral hydrogen around Lyman-break galaxies deduced from recent observations, we investigate the properties of the Lya forest around high-redshift galaxies. The study is based on improved numerical SPH simulations implementing, in addition to standard processes, a new scheme for multiphase and outflow physics description. Although on large scales our simulations reproduce a number of statistical properties of the intergalactic medium (because of the small filling factor of shock-heated gas), they underpredict the Lyα optical depth decrease inside 1 Mpc h - 1 of the galaxies by a factor of 15. We interpret this result as arising from the combined effect of infal occurring along the filaments, which prevents efficient halo gas clearing by the outflow, and the insufficient increase of (collisional) hydrogen ionization produced by the temperature increase inside the hot, outflow-carved bubble. Unless either feedback is not properly modelled in cosmological simulations or an observational selection bias is present, we speculate that local photoionization could be a viable explanation to solve the puzzle.
Multiple endocrine neoplasia similar to human subtype 2A in a dog: Medullary thyroid carcinoma, bilateral pheochromocytoma and parathyroid adenoma

Human multiple endocrine neoplasia subtype 2A (MEN 2A) is characterized by medullary thyroid carcinoma, pheochromocytoma and parathyroid hyperplasia or adenoma in the same individual. In this report, a case of a female Rottweiler with medullary thyroid carcinoma, bilateral pheochromocytoma and parathyroid adenoma was described. Clinical manifestations of muscle weakness, polydipsia, polyuria, diarrhea and weight loss were observed. Two adrenal neoplasms were identified incidentally by ultrasonography, and tumor in the left thyroid lobe was identified by palpation. Primary hyperparathyroidism was diagnosed by biochemical testing. Histopathology report was consistent with diagnosis of bilateral pheochromocytoma and parathyroid adenoma. Immunohistochemical staining was positive for calcitonin and synaptophysin, and negative for thyroglobulin, which confirmed medullary thyroid carcinoma. This case in a dog is presenting neoplastic characteristics similar to human MEN 2A and emphasizing the importance of using immunohistochemistry for confirmation.
Advertising , Searching , Blogging and New-Product Sales

This paper presents new findings about how advertising and online word-of-mouth influence product sales by examining the relationship between advertising, blog volume, search volume, and revenue of theatrically released movies. To study the relationship over three different phases of a movie’s life cycle—i.e., prelaunch period, opening week and post-launch period, we develop three separate models and estimate them by correcting for endogeneity. We find that the majority of advertising effect on revenue is realized without consumers’ online search activity, while the effect of blogs on revenue is materialized only indirectly, through online search. Moreover, advertising is about three times more effective than blog volume in generating movie revenue. Other findings include, but not limited to the followings. Search volume has better predictive power than blog volume: Pre-launch blog volume does not explain the variation in opening-week revenue once pre-launch search volume is controlled for; after opening week, weekly blog volume does not explain variation in weekly revenue once weekly search volume is included. In pre-launch period, consumers respond to advertising by online searching and blogging, but searching is five times more responsive than blogging. Our findings indicate the importance of monitoring online search activity of consumers.
Keeping the connectivity and saving the energy in the internet

Nowadays a big effort is spent to reduce the Internet energy consumption. Actual Internet topologies have space to power off some links and devices to reduce the energy consumed in off-peak periods still guaranteeing connectivity among terminals. In this work we leverage the algebraic connectivity of the graph modeling an ISP network in order to define the ESACON (Energy Saving based on Algebraic CONnectivity) algorithm. We then consider the network connectivity as a first target performance to be assured. To this aim we identify a metric based on the algebraic connectivity that, on one side, allows to switch off several links with the consequent significant energy saving and, on the other side, still preserves network connectivity and network performance for efficiently supporting the Internet traffic. We find that ESACON achieves better performance with respect to similar topology-aware approaches; moreover ESACON performance are comparable with ones of a complex traffic-aware solution.
In Between Markets and Hierarchies - Networking Through the Life Cycle of New Biotechnology Firms

Resource dependence and transaction cost theories focus on organizations as mitigating their dependence on the task environment through various strategies. However, these theories have contradicting predictions as to the conditions under which network alliances are formed. New Biotechnology Firms (NBFs) provide an example of knowledge-organizations, operating under uncertainty and competitive environmental constraints, yet highly dependent on external resources. The event history analysis (EVA) of NBFs (N=554) shows that although avoidance of formation of alliances is associated with death, the formation of at least one inter-organizational alliance for each age year of the firm has an inverse U shape. The life cycle dependence argument is further supported when an analysis conducted on only self-standing NBFs shows a higher and longer dependency on external alliances. These findings suggest an integration of the two theories into a firm life cycle network theory within the domain of population ecology survival theories.
Clinicopathologic Features of Metachronous or Synchronous Gastric Cancer Patients with Three or More Primary Sites

Purpose We investigated the clinicopathologic information of patients with gastric cancer with multiple primary cancers (GC-MPC) of three or more sites. Materials and Methods Between 1995 and 2009, 105,908 patients were diagnosed with malignancy at Severance Hospital, Yonsei University Health System. Of these, 113 (0.1%) patients with MPC of three or more sites were registered, and 41 (36.3%) of these were GC-MPC. We retrospectively reviewed the clinical data and overall survival using the medical records of these 41 GC-MPC patients. We defined synchronous cancers as those occurring within 6 months of the first primary cancer, while metachronous cancers were defined as those occurring more than 6 months later. Results Patients with metachronous GC-MPC were more likely to be female (p=0.003) and young than patients with synchronous GC-MPC (p=0.013). The most common cancer sites for metachronous GC-MPC patients were the colorectum, thyroid, lung, kidney and breast, while those for synchronous GC-MPC were the head and neck, esophagus, lung, and kidney. Metachronous GC-MPC demonstrated significantly better overall survival than synchronous GC-MPC, with median overall survival durations of 4.7 and 14.8 years, respectively, and 10-year overall survival rates of 48.2% and 80.7%, respectively (p<0.001). Conclusion Multiplicity of primary malignancies itself does not seem to indicate a poor prognosis. The early detection of additional primary malignancies will enable proper management with curative intent.
Monetary Policy Action and Inflation in South Africa: An Empirical Analysis

This paper examines the impact of the monetary policy instrument, the repo rate, mainly on output gap and inflation rate in South Africa, over the period 1998– 2008. Use is made of a simple structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) framework in assessing the impulse response functions (IRFs) of output gap and inflation rate to monetary policy shocks. The VAR includes output gap, rather than output, to control for the price puzzle. The results of the IRFs show that monetary policy instrument, the repo rate, did not impact on inflation in South Africa over the sample period covered by the paper.
High Frequency Market Microstructure Noise Estimates and Liquidity Measures

Using recent advances in the econometrics literature, we disentangle from high frequency observations on the transaction prices of a large sample of NYSE stocks a fundamental component and a microstructure noise component. We then relate these statistical measurements of market microstructure noise to observable characteristics of the underlying stocks and, in particular, to different financial measures of their liquidity. We find that more liquid stocks based on financial characteristics have lower noise and noise-to-signal ratio measured from their high frequency returns. We then examine whether there exists a common, market-wide, factor in high frequency stock-level measurements of noise, and whether that factor is priced in asset returns.
THE ROLE OF AFFECTIVE EXPECTATIONS IN SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE AND DECISION-MAKING

Two studies explored the extent to which prior affective expectations shape people's evaluations of experiences and decisions about repeating those experiences. Study 1 found that students' prior expectations about an upcoming vacation accounted for a significant portion of the variance in their post-vacation evaluations, as did students' recall of specific experiences. In Study 2, both prior expectations and actual experiences of watching a movie were manipulated in a 2 × 2 design. People's affective expectations made more of a difference than the objective experience when assessing people's willingness to participate in the study again. A reinterpretation hypothesis—that people discount or reweigh memories of expectation-inconsistent events—accounted for the results of these studies better than a selective memory or initial effects hypothesis.
Supportive Interactions , Negative Interactions , and Depressed Mood 1

Research on the association between social relationships and emotional functioning has emphasized the health-promoting effects o f social support. Yet there is reason to believe that the absence o f negative social interactions may be more important for mental health than the presence o f supportive interactions. In this investigation we clarify important characteristics concerning the source, the recipient, and the combined influence o f support and negativity. Data are presented regarding supportive and negative interactions with spouse, relatives, and friends; regression analyses suggest that negative interactions are more predictive o f depressed mood than supportive interactions (specifically with spouse and friends). We also document several specifications suggesting directions for future research on the special importance o f interactions in intimate relationships and the synergistic effects o f situations in which supportive and negative interactions both occur.
Biogeosciences Estimating carbon emissions from African wildfires

We developed a technique for studying seasonal and interannual variation in pyrogenic carbon emissions from Africa using a modelling approach that scales burned area estimates from L3JRC, a map recently generated from remote sensing of burn scars instead of active fires. Carbon fluxes were calculated by the novel fire model SPITFIRE embedded within the dynamic vegetation model framework LPJGUESS, using daily climate input. For the time period from 2001 to 2005 an average area of 195.5±24×104 km2 was burned annually, releasing an average of 723±70 Tg C to the atmosphere; these estimates for the biomass burned are within the range of previously published estimates. Despite the fact that the majority of wildfires are ignited by humans, strong relationships between climatic conditions (particularly precipitation), net primary productivity and overall biomass burnt emerged. Our investigation of the relationships between burnt area and carbon emissions and their potential drivers available litter and precipitation revealed uni-modal responses to annual precipitation, with a maximum around 1000 mm for burned area and emissions, or 1200 mm for litter availability. Similar response patterns identified in savannahs worldwide point to precipitation as a chief determinant for short-term variation in fire regime. A considerable variability that cannot be explained by fire-precipitation relationships alone indicates the existence of additional factors that must be taken into account. Correspondence to: V. Lehsten (veiko.lehsten@nateko.lu.se)
An Efficient Track Management Scheme for the Gaussian-Mixture Probability Hypothesis Density Tracker

The Gaussian mixture probability hypothesis density (GM-PHD) filter is a closed-form solution for the probability hypothesis density (PHD) filter, which was proposed for jointly estimating the time-varying number of targets and their states from a sequence of noisy measurement sets in the presence of data association uncertainty, clutter and miss-detections. Recently, a GM-PHD tracker based on the GM-PHD filter has been proposed to correctly maintain temporal association amongst target estimates by tagging individual Gaussian components, and to provide estimates of individual target trajectories and their identities. In this paper, we propose a tag and a track management scheme for the GM-PHD tracker, which is computationally efficient and provides a framework for parallel processing of data. Based on the proposed scheme, we also present a number of simpler and efficient pruning schemes for Gaussian components.
Selection of the Best Module Design for Ultrafiltration ( UF ) Membrane in Dairy Industry : An Application of AHP and PROMETHEE

Membrane with a type module has been expressed one of the key area of interest in dairy industry. Although recent publications have given a chance academics and practitioners to prove successful applications of membrane processes to the vast areas; a small number of publications have been devoted attention to the problem of capital equipment decision-making. To facilitate decision-making process in the membrane separation, this report focuses on the application of analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluations (PROMETHEE), from a group decision-making viewpoint; it uses the Delphi technique to evaluate available alternatives according the criteria elicited from expert's opinions. A real case study on the ultrafiltration membrane area is put forward to determine the best module design based on the five criteria expressed by decision-makers: sanitation design, clean–in-place, packing density, resistance to fouling and shear stress, and relative cost. Finally, the paper utilizes Expert Choice and DECISION LAB software’s to facilitate calculations.
Japanese Capital Structure During a Turbulent Period: 1984-2000

For Japan, 1984-2000 includes a major financial liberalization, a stock and real estate market boom followed by a crash, plus the subsequent weakness of most Japanese banks. We examine how Japanese corporations responded in terms of overall leverage, its determinants, and the mix of bank versus market debt. The analysis also considers the behavior of keiretsu firms with close bank ties versus that of non-keiretsu firms. Both sets of firms display substantially different behavior regarding market debt versus bank loans. We find considerable evidence that financial liberalization and market access played a major role in capital structure decisions during the later 1980's. There is also evidence of some changes in the 1990's which may relate to bank weakness; however, it appears that the 1980's capital structure adjustments headed off more serious impacts from Japanese bank weakness.
Dietary Organic and Inorganic Selenium on Liver Glycogen and Lactate, pHu, Color and Drip Loss of Chicken Pectoralis and Gastrocnemius Muscles

The effect of selenium supplementation in finishing broiler diets on meat quality was studied. A corn soya based diet was supplemented with 0.3 ppm of Se from an organic (Seleno methionine; Se-Met) or inorganic source (sodium selenite; Se-Na) and offered to Rossmale chickens from thirty five to fifty two days old. Body weight and feed consumption were recorded during the experimental period. Immediately post sacrifice liver was removed and weight was recorded. The liver glycogen and lactate content was measured. Carcass yield and abdominal fat were determined. At 24 hours post mortem, pHu, colour L*, a*, b*, H°, C*, and drip loss of the Pectoralis and Gastrocnemius muscles were determined. Se-Met supplementation significantly decreases daily food intake. Se-Na significantly increases liver glycogen and lactate content at 3 minutes post mortem. Se-Met and Se-Na significantly increase pHu as compared to the control diet. Also a Se-Met provoked a darker (lower L*) and a redder (higher a*) and a decreased tone (lower H°) in Pectoralis. Se-Met and Se-Na significantly decrease the drip loss in Pectoralis and Gastrocnemius at 24 hours post mortem. We conclude that selenium supplementation decreases food intake and improves meat quality by improving colour and decreasing drip loss, likely by a modulation of reserve of glycogen in liver. The difference among the organic and inorganic sources is not clear and requires further investigation.
Influences of Environmental Chemicals on Atopic Dermatitis

Atopic dermatitis is a chronic inflammatory skin condition including severe pruritus, xerosis, visible eczematous skin lesions that mainly begin early in life. Atopic dermatitis exerts a profound impact on the quality of life of patients and their families. The estimated lifetime prevalence of atopic dermatitis has increased 2~3 fold during over the past 30 years, especially in urban areas in industrialized countries, emphasizing the importance of life-style and environment in the pathogenesis of atopic diseases. While the interplay of individual genetic predisposition and environmental factors contribute to the development of atopic dermatitis, the recent increase in the prevalence of atopic dermatitis might be attributed to increased exposure to various environmental factors rather than alterations in human genome. In recent decades, there has been an increasing exposure to chemicals from a variety of sources. In this study, the effects of various environmental chemicals we face in everyday life - air pollutants, contact allergens and skin irritants, ingredients in cosmetics and personal care products, and food additives - on the prevalence and severity of atopic dermatitis are reviewed.
On the Convergence of Decentralized Gradient Descent

Consider the consensus problem of minimizing $f(x)=\sum_{i=1}^n f_i(x)$, where $x\in{\mathbb{R}}^p$ and each $f_i$ is only known to the individual agent $i$ in a connected network of $n$ agents. To solve this problem and obtain the solution, all the agents collaborate with their neighbors through information exchange. This type of decentralized computation does not need a fusion center, offers better network load balance, and improves data privacy. This paper studies the decentralized gradient descent method [A. Nedic and A. Ozdaglar, IEEE Trans. Automat. Control, 54 (2009), pp. 48--61], in which each agent $i$ updates its local variable $x_{(i)}\in{\mathbb{R}}^n$ by combining the average of its neighbors' with a local negative-gradient step $-\alpha \nabla f_i(x_{(i)})$. The method is described by the iteration $ x_{(i)}(k+1) \gets \sum_{j=1}^n w_{ij} x_{(j)}(k) - \alpha \nabla f_i(x_{(i)}(k)),\ \text{for each agent}~i, $ where $w_{ij}$ is nonzero only if $i$ and $j$ are neighbors or $i=j$ and the matrix.