Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Option Pricing in the Cross-Section of Stock Returns

This paper explicitly derives the cross-sectional predictions of an intertemporal equilibrium asset pricing model when aggregate consumption volatility is stochastic and investors have aversion to both risk and expected downside losses. We show that an asset risk premium is not only determined by covariation of returns with the market return and changes in market volatility, but also by covariation of returns with three option payoffs: a cash-or-nothing option, a put option on the market return and a call option on changes in market volatility. These options provide a straightforward way for investors to act on their views of two of the most closely followed market variables, the market return and changes in market volatility. We show that the cross-section of stock returns reflects a premium for bearing undesirable exposures to these options, which we also show are rational interpretations for downside risks. The model provides a unified framework for understanding the various channels through which downside risks may affect asset prices. Our empirical results shed light on the total and relative economic significance of these channels. Preliminary and incomplete. Please, do not circulate.
Advances in Career Theory and Research: A Critical Review and Agenda for Future Exploration

In this review the authors critically examine the nature of contemporary careers and the direction in which careers research has developed over the past decade. Specifically, career concepts that emerged in the 1990s, including the protean and boundaryless career frameworks, as well as the next generation of career concepts, including integrative frameworks, hybrid careers, and the kaleidoscope career model, are discussed. The authors examine conceptualizations and measures of these models as well as related research. This review aims to improve our understanding of careers in today’s dynamic work environment, provide a comprehensive discussion of current discourse, and offer major directions for future research.
Robust visual tracking via discriminative sparse point matching

This paper present a discriminative sparse point matching method (DSPM) for tracking generic objects in vision applications. Different from the conventional tracking methods that involves the construction of high-level or self-learning features, DSPM particularly focuses on a optical flow based point matching optimization method for overcoming the variation of object deformation in motion. The algorithm contains two key issues: a stable point matching method based on the global smoothing constraint with optical flow correspondence and a discriminative sparse point selection strategy for distinguishing the object from its surrounding background. Due to the efficient sparse point matching method, the algorithm is able to track objects that undergo fast motion and considerable shape or appearance variations. The proposed tracking method has been thoroughly evaluated on challenging benchmark video sequences and performs a excellent experimental result.
Regularizing fractional Brownian motion with a view towards stock price modelling

There have been several attempts to remedy some of the shortcomings of the Samuelson model for stock price movements using fractional Browman mo¬ tion In the first part of this thesis we construct arbitrage strategies for two dif¬ ferent models based on fractional Browman motion and show how arbitrage can be ruled out by putting restrictions on the trading strategies Since these models with the restricted trading strategies are incomplete, it is not clear how to price derivatives withm them Alternatively, arbitrage can be excluded from fractional Browman motion models by regularizing the local path behaviour of fractional Browman mo¬ tion We introduce two different ways of regularizing fractional Browman motion and discuss the pricing of a European call option in regularized frac¬ tional Samuelson models
Experimental study of link and transport protocols in interference-prone wireless LAN environments

As wireless networks are deployed widely and user expectations grow, it is important to study the trade-offs among goodput, latency and loss rates that exist in link and transport protocols. Under low residual loss rates, retransmissions can be effective in bringing down the loss rate. However, at high loss rates, current links trade-off goodput and low latency for a small loss rate which diminishes overall performance. We look at the performance at the link and transport layers in the presence of raw loss and see how current protocols make an unattractive trade-off at the link layer. We also show high ARQ on the link can cause high per-packet latency on the link which can lead to interactions with TCP mechanisms leading to spurious retransmissions and timeouts and reduced TCP-layer goodput. Our measurements results, based on experiments conducted on the ORBIT testbed, show the need for modifications to the link layer to obtain a favorable three-way trade-off. In prior work, we have developed link and transport protocols that are designed to work under high loss rates. Our link design LL-HARQ (hybrid FEC/ARQ) is designed to minimize the link delay while exporting a very small residual loss rate and high goodput while our transport protocol Loss-Tolerant TCP is designed to operate over a wide range of residual loss rates. We provide insights about the balance between error-protection functions at the two layers and examine the case for cross-layer co-operation. The measurement traces were used as inputs to our simulations on the ns-2 simulator. Our results show the favorable trade-offs among goodput/latency/loss rate obtained with our approach over traditional approaches.
Culture and negotiation : the resolution of water disputes

Culture -- along with many other variables -- often impacts international negotiations. This book offers a unique contribution by focusing on the distinctive impact of culture, both in creating unexpected opportunities for dispute settlement and in imposing obstacles to agreement. The first part of this book presents expert views on the nature and limits of culture's influence on negotiation. Part II comprises the core of the book, and contains a wealth of case studies and analyses of international disputes regarding water resources. Each case asks the following key questions: What are the different cultural components that made a difference in the outcome? How did culture play a role in the negotiation process? What are some specific illustrations of culture's contributing role, both to the dispute and to the ways in which it was handled? Part III includes implications for practitioners and policymakers, along with new directions for future studies. "Culture and Negotiation" is an essential resource for international relations practitioners in both the private and public sectors, as well as scholars and researchers interested in either culture or the theory and practice of negotiation and dispute resolution.
Early Diagnosis and Surgical Treatment for Necrotizing Fasciitis: A Multicenter Study

Background Necrotizing fasciitis (NF) is a group of relatively rare infections, usually caused by two or more pathogens. It affects the skin and subcutaneous tissues of lower and upper limbs, perineal area (Fournier’s gangrene), and the abdominal wall. Early diagnosis and aggressive surgical management are of high significance for the management of this potentially lethal disease. Methods We conducted a retrospective study in patients who presented, during the last decade, at four University Surgical Departments in the area of Athens, Greece, with an admission diagnosis of NF. Demographic, clinical, and laboratory data were gathered, and the preoperative and surgical treatment, as well as the postoperative treatment was analyzed for these patients. Results A total of 62 patients were included in the study. The mean age of patients was 63.7 (47 male patients). Advanced age (over 65 years) (P < 0.01) and female sex (P = 0.04) correlated significantly with mortality. Perineum was the mostly infected site (46.8%), followed by the lower limbs (35.5%), the upper limbs, and the axillary region (8.1%). Diabetes mellitus was the most common coexisting disease (40.3%), followed by hypertension (25.8%) and obesity (17.7%). The most common symptom was local pain and tenderness (90.3%). Septic shock occurred in eight patients (12.9%) and strongly correlated with mortality (P < 0.01). Laboratory data were used to calculate the LRINEC score of every patient retrospectively; 26 patients (41.9%) had LRINEC score under 6, 20 patients (32.3%) had LRINEC score 6–8, and 16 patients (25.8%) had LRINEC score >9. Surgical debridement was performed in all patients (mean number of repeated debridement 4.8), and in 16 cases (25.8%) the infected limb was amputated. The mean length of hospital stay was 19.7 days, and the overall mortality rate of our series was 17.7%. Conclusion Diagnosis of NF requires high suspect among clinicians, as its clinical image is non-specific. Laboratory tests can depict the severity of the disease; therefore, they must be carefully evaluated. Urgent surgical debridement is the mainstay of treatment in all patients; the need of repetitive surgical debridement is undisputed.
The European Union as a Small Power: After the Post-Cold War

Foreword Introduction and basic arguments The Anatomy of EU Security The European Union as a Historical Phenomenon European Defence: the State of the Union The European Security Strategy Revisited Lessons from the Field A Question of Political Will The Making of a Small Power Conclusion: After the post-Cold War Small-power politics The purpose of EU power References
Optimizing student success in school with the other three Rs : reasoning, resilience, and responsibility

Despite increased spending and efforts at reform since the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, wide achievement gaps persist between groups of students and these gaps increase with each year of schooling. Obstacles to student achievement can be found in schools and at home, and finding innovative solutions for students to overcome these obstacles is a motivating force behind this volume. Inside, the authors argue that The Other Three Rs," reasoning, resilience, and responsibility can promote achievement and the realization of full academic potential, especially for students who are labeled as under performers. "The Other Three Rs" (TOTRs) are universal learning skills available to all students. Although each of TOTRs is related to school and life success, they are most effective when they are used in combination. For example, in the course problem solving, reasoning skills offer the ability to judge which strategies best address the needs of a particular situation. Responsibility provides understanding of the consequences (for oneself and others) of employing or not employing different problem solving strategies, and taking ownership of the results. And resilience produces the patience to work through the problem solving process, by capitalizing on lessons learned, until achieving desired outcomes. The Other Three R's model began as an American Psychological Association (APA) initiative, sponsored by Robert J. Sternberg, IBM Professor of Psychology and Education at Yale University and Past President of the APA. For the initiative and this edited volume, Sternberg and Subotnickassembled a diverse team of experts who identified reasoning, resilience and responsibility as three learnable skills that, when taken together, have great potential for increasing academic success. The authors of this volume present in detail their evidence- based arguments for promoting TOTRs in schools as a way to optimize student success
Intrinsic galaxy shapes and alignments – II. Modelling the intrinsic alignment contamination of weak lensing surveys

Intrinsic galaxy alignments constitute the major astrophysical systematic of forthcoming weak gravitational lensing surveys but also yield unique insights into galaxy formation and evolution. We build analytic models for the distribution of galaxy shapes based on halo properties extracted from the Millennium Simulation, differentiating between early- and late-type galaxies as well as central galaxies and satellites. The resulting ellipticity correlations are investigated for their physical properties and compared to a suite of current observations. The best-faring model is then used to predict the intrinsic alignment contamination of planned weak lensing surveys. We find that latetype galaxy models generally have weak intrinsic ellipticity correlations, marginally increasing towards smaller galaxy separation and higher redshift. The signal for earlytype models at fixed halo mass strongly increases by three orders of magnitude over two decades in galaxy separation, and by one order of magnitude from z = 0 to z = 2. The intrinsic alignment strength also depends strongly on halo mass, but not on galaxy luminosity at fixed mass, or galaxy number density in the environment. We identify models that are in good agreement with all observational data, except that all models over-predict alignments of faint early-type galaxies. The best model yields an intrinsic alignment contamination of a Euclid-like survey between 0.5−10% at z > 0.6 and on angular scales larger than a few arcminutes. Cutting 20% of red foreground galaxies using observer-frame colours can suppress this contamination by up to a factor of two.
Speech recognition and dysarthria: a single subject study of two individuals with profound impairment of speech and motor control

This study investigated the use of the speech recognition system Dragon Dictate as an augmentative method of computer access for two individuals with cerebral palsy, including severe motor dysfunction and dysarthria. Single subject design was used and measures of computer access system effectiveness and speech production were used before, during and after intervention. The users' original switch access system was compared to a combination of their switch access system and speech recognition, by counting the number of correct entries. Adding speech recognition increased the number of correct entries by 40% for one of the participants. The other participant did not complete the intervention protocol. An independent judge rated speech production. No changes in speech were observed. Dragon Dictate is time-consuming to learn and demands a high level of motivation, but can be beneficial to a person who has profound dysarthria and great difficulties in accessing the computer.
THE DETERMINANTS OF JOB SATISFACTION AMONG TEACHERS IN VIETNAM

ii ORIGINALITY DECLARATION . iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . iv LIST OF TABLES . ix LIST OF FIGURES . xii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION . 1 1.1 Background . 1 1.2 The Study Site . 4 1.2.1 Lam Dong Province. 4 1.2.2 Education system in Lam Dong Province . 6 1.2. 3 Educational policy . 10 1.2. 4 Educational structure in Vietnam . 12 1.2. 4.1 Early childhood care and education . 12 1.2. 4.2 General education . 13 1.2. 4.3 Vocational education. 17 1.2. 4.4 Higher education . 19 1.2. 5 Teachers’ pre-service and in-service training . 21 1.2. 6 Teaching jobs in Vietnam . 22 1.3 Problem Statement . 23 1.4 Research Objectives . 27 1.5 Research Questions . 28 1.6 The Significance of the Study . 28 1.7 Overview of Research Methodology . 30 1.8 Organization of the Dissertation . 32 Chapter Summary . 33 CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK . 34 2.1 The Concept of Job Satisfaction . 34 2.2 Theories of Job Satisfaction and Work Motivation . 35 2.2.1 Content Theories . 36 2.2.1.1 Hackman and Oldham’s Job Characteristics Model . 36
Influenza B viruses with site-specific mutations introduced into the HA gene

We have succeeded in engineering changes into the genome of influenza B virus. First, model RNAs containing the chloramphenicol acetyltransferase gene flanked by the noncoding sequences of the HA or NS genes of influenza B virus were transfected into cells which were previously infected with an influenza B helper virus. Like those of the influenza A viruses, the termini of influenza B virus genes contain cis-acting signals which are sufficient to direct replication, expression, and packaging of the RNA. Next, a full-length copy of the HA gene from influenza B/Maryland/59 virus was cloned. Following transfection of this RNA, we rescued transfectant influenza B viruses which contain a point mutation introduced into the original cDNA. A series of mutants which bear deletions or changes in the 5' noncoding region of the influenza B/Maryland/59 virus HA gene were constructed. We were able to rescue viruses which contained deletions of 10 or 33 nucleotides at the 5' noncoding region of the HA gene. The viability of these viruses implies that this region of the genome is flexible in sequence and length.
Syntactic Islands and Learning Biases: Combining Experimental Syntax and Computational Modeling to Investigate the Language Acquisition Problem

The induction problems facing language learners have played a central role in debates about the types of learning biases that exist in the human brain. Many linguists have argued that some of the learning biases necessary to solve these language induction problems must be both innate and language-specific (i.e., the Universal Grammar (UG) hypothesis). Though there have been several recent high-profile investigations of the necessary learning bias types for different linguistic phenomena, the UG hypothesis is still the dominant assumption for a large segment of linguists due to the lack of studies addressing central phenomena in generative linguistics. To address this, we focus on how to learn constraints on long-distance dependencies, also known as syntactic island constraints. We use formal acceptability judgment data to identify the target state of learning for syntactic island constraints and conduct a corpus analysis of child-directed data to affirm that there does appear to be an induction problem when learning these constraints. We then create a computational learning model that implements a learning strategy capable of successfully learning the pattern of acceptability judgments observed in formal experiments, based on realistic input. Importantly, this model does not explicitly encode syntactic constraints. We discuss learning biases required by this model in detail as they highlight the potential problems posed by syntactic island effects for any theory of syntactic acquisition. We find that, although the proposed learning strategy requires fewer complex and domain-specific components than previous theories of syntactic island learning, it still raises difficult questions about how the specific biases required by syntactic islands arise in the learner. We discuss the consequences of these results for theories of acquisition and theories of syntax.
Improving analogy software effort estimation using fuzzy feature subset selection algorithm

One of the major problems with software project management is the difficulty to predict accurately the required effort for developing software applications. Analogy Software effort estimation appears well suited to model problems of this nature. The analogy approach may be viewed as a systematic development of the expert opinion through experience learning and exposure to analogue case studies. The accuracy of such model depends on characteristics of datasets. This paper examines the impact of feature subset selection algorithms on improving the accuracy of analogy software effort estimation model. We proposed a feature subset selection algorithm based on fuzzy logic for analogy software effort estimation models. Validation using two established datasets (ISBSG, Desharnais) shows that using fuzzy features subset selection algorithm in analogy software effort estimation contribute to significant results as other algorithms: Hill climbing, Forward subset selection, and backward subset selection do.
Gastric myoelectrical activity in patients with inflammatory bowel disease

Aim: Inflammatory bowel disease is characterized by the presence of gastrointestinal motility disturbances; however alterations in the gastric myoelectrical activity have not been characterized. In this study we have recorded the gastric myoelectrical activity in patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease (CD) during their clinical remission. Materials and Methods: Gastric activity was assessed using electrogastrography (EGG) in patients with UC (n = 60), CD (n = 40) and healthy controls (n = 40). In each case, their response to water load test, as well as the dominant frequency (DF), dominant power (DP) and the power ratio (PR) of the electrical activity were recorded. Results: In healthy controls, the resting DF was 2.57 ± 1.05 cycles per minute (cpm), which decreased after water ingestion (2.34 ± 0.99 cpm; P = 0.001). Compared to healthy controls, patients with UC had low resting DF (bradygastria) (2.57 ± 1.05 vs. 1.86 ± 1.28 cpm; P = 0.01). The change in DF after water ingestion was insignificant in patients with UC and CD. Post-water ingestion, healthy controls exhibited an increase in the DP as compared to the resting state, (7.1 [2.93, 102.56] vs. 15.94 [3.92, 133.41] µV2; P = 0.02). Patients with UC (1.26 [0.14, 9.83] vs. 3.27 [0.61, 42.12] µV2) and CD (2.54 [0.44, 47.06] vs. 15.8 [0.1, 126.68] µV2) also showed a significant increase in the DP post-water ingestion. Conclusions: Patients with ulcerative colitis have altered resting gastric myoelectrical activity during the remission phase of the disease.
The Composition of Government Expenditure in an Overlapping Generations Model

This paper examines the choice of government expenditure on public goods and transfer payments (in the form of pension) in an overlapping generations model, in which individuals live for two ‘periods’ and expenditure is financed on a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) basis. The condition required for majority support of the social contract involved in the PAYG scheme is established and shown to be independent of tax rates and expenditure levels. The choice of expenditure composition can thus be made conditional on acceptance of the social contract. Two decision mechanisms regarding the choice of government expenditure are considered. The first is positive and involves majority voting and the second is normative and involves maximizing a social welfare function. In each case the ratio of the transfer payment to public goods expenditure depends, among other things, on the ratio of median to mean income. A reduction in the skewness of the income distribution is associated with a reduction in this ratio, at a decreasing rate.
Strong Motion Deficits in Dyslexia Associated with DCDC2 Gene Alteration

Dyslexia is a specific impairment in reading that affects 1 in 10 people. Previous studies have failed to isolate a single cause of the disorder, but several candidate genes have been reported. We measured motion perception in two groups of dyslexics, with and without a deletion within the DCDC2 gene, a risk gene for dyslexia. We found impairment for motion particularly strong at high spatial frequencies in the population carrying the deletion. The data suggest that deficits in motion processing occur in a specific genotype, rather than the entire dyslexia population, contributing to the large variability in impairment of motion thresholds in dyslexia reported in the literature.