Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Patterns of Behavior of Professionally Managed and Independent Investors

In this paper, we analyze the investment patterns of a large number of clients of a major Israeli brokerage house during 1994. We compare the behavior of clients making independent investment decisions to that of investors whose accounts were managed by brokerage professionals. Our main objective is to investigate whether the disposition effect (i.e., the tendency to sell winners quicker than losers), demonstrated in the US only for individual investors, also holds for professional investors. This analysis is important, as accepted financial theory predicts that prices are determined mainly by decisions made by professionals. We show that both professional and independent investors exhibit the disposition effect, although the effect is stronger for independent investors. The second objective of our study is the comparison of trade frequency, volume and profitability between independent and professionally managed accounts. We believe that these comparisons not only provide insights of their own, but also help to put the differences in the disposition effect in a wider perspective. We demonstrate that professionally managed accounts were more diversified and that round trips were both less correlated with the market and slightly more profitable than those of independent accounts.
Pleistocene Climate, Phylogeny, and Climate Envelope Models: An Integrative Approach to Better Understand Species' Response to Climate Change

Mean annual temperature reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change increases at least 1.1°C to 6.4°C over the next 90 years. In context, a change in climate of 6°C is approximately the difference between the mean annual temperature of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and our current warm interglacial. Species have been responding to changing climate throughout Earth's history and their previous biological responses can inform our expectations for future climate change. Here we synthesize geological evidence in the form of stable oxygen isotopes, general circulation paleoclimate models, species' evolutionary relatedness, and species' geographic distributions. We use the stable oxygen isotope record to develop a series of temporally high-resolution paleoclimate reconstructions spanning the Middle Pleistocene to Recent, which we use to map ancestral climatic envelope reconstructions for North American rattlesnakes. A simple linear interpolation between current climate and a general circulation paleoclimate model of the LGM using stable oxygen isotope ratios provides good estimates of paleoclimate at other time periods. We use geologically informed rates of change derived from these reconstructions to predict magnitudes and rates of change in species' suitable habitat over the next century. Our approach to modeling the past suitable habitat of species is general and can be adopted by others. We use multiple lines of evidence of past climate (isotopes and climate models), phylogenetic topology (to correct the models for long-term changes in the suitable habitat of a species), and the fossil record, however sparse, to cross check the models. Our models indicate the annual rate of displacement in a clade of rattlesnakes over the next century will be 2 to 3 orders of magnitude greater (430-2,420 m/yr) than it has been on average for the past 320 ky (2.3 m/yr).
Immature House Fly (Musca domestica) Control in Breeding Sites With a New Brevibacillus laterosporus Formulation

Abstract A bacterial formulation containing spores of a Brevibacillus laterosporus strain from Sardinia, known to be toxic by ingestion to the house fly (Musca domestica), was assayed in laboratory, outdoor, and field conditions for the control of immature stages of this pest. In all laboratory assays, the bacterial formulation exhibited toxicity against house fly larvae. A concentration of 1 × 108 spores of B. laterosporus/g of diet caused 100% mortality of house fly immature stages. The same formulation, applied at a concentration of 1 × 108 spores/ml, equivalent to a dose of 2 liters/m2, caused a reduction in adult emergence from laboratory and natural breeding substrates (outdoor cage experiments) up to 80.3 and 57.8%, respectively. Similarly, this formulation applied in the cow pen of a diary farm at a dose of 2 liters/m2 produced a significant reduction (30%) in immature fly development. Therefore, the use of this bacterial preparation in microbiological control strategies for the integrated pest management of this species is promising.
Making a place for seniors on the Net: SeniorNet, senior identity, and the digital divide

The most recent edition of the annual “Falling Through the Net” report from the U.S. Department of Commerce says that people aged 50 and older are among those groups who are least likely to be Internet users [1]. While we might question whether demographic categories are the most useful way to track Internet use, it’s clear that these categories are dominant in conversations about the digital divide. In this paper, we will follow that thread to look at the digital divide for the category of seniors, based on our year-long study of SeniorNet, an organization that supports seniors in learning about technology. By focusing on seniors as a group, we conform to the discourse of the digital divide. At the same time, we want to open up this discourse, to move outside of its conventional story lines and categories. We are both speaking the language of the digital divide and questioning some of its assumptions.
Multilevel covariance component models

SUMMARY A straightforward extension to the multilevel linear model with nested covariance components is described. This allows the specification and efficient estimation of a very general mixed linear model with both crossed and nested covariance components. Goldstein (1986) describes the analysis of the multilevel mixed effects linear model with random coefficients, where the variance and covariance components have a nested structure across levels. The purpose of the present note is to show how a simple extension to the formulae in that paper can accommodate cross-classifications of the components within any level of the nesting, thus enabling quite general covariance component models to be specified and efficient parameter estimates obtained. For simplicity the 3-level model is used, with the extension to 4 or more levels being straightforward. We write the random part of the 3-level model as
Learning from Limited Demonstrations

We propose a Learning from Demonstration (LfD) algorithm which leverages expert data, even if they are very few or inaccurate. We achieve this by using both expert data, as well as reinforcement signals gathered through trial-and-error interactions with the environment. The key idea of our approach, Approximate Policy Iteration with Demonstration (APID), is that expert's suggestions are used to define linear constraints which guide the optimization performed by Approximate Policy Iteration. We prove an upper bound on the Bellman error of the estimate computed by APID at each iteration. Moreover, we show empirically that APID outperforms pure Approximate Policy Iteration, a state-of-the-art LfD algorithm, and supervised learning in a variety of scenarios, including when very few and/or suboptimal demonstrations are available. Our experiments include simulations as well as a real robot path-finding task.
Supervised Hierarchical Dirichlet Processes with Variational Inference

We present an extension to the Hierarchical Dirichlet Process (HDP), which allows for the inclusion of supervision. Our model marries the non-parametric benefits of HDP with those of Supervised Latent Dirichlet Allocation (SLDA) to enable learning the topic space directly from data while simultaneously including the labels within the model. The proposed model is learned using variational inference which allows for the efficient use of a large training dataset. We also present the online version of variational inference, which makes the method scalable to very large datasets. We show results comparing our model to a traditional supervised parametric topic model, SLDA, and show that it outperforms SLDA on a number of benchmark datasets.
The role of emotions and individual differences in the trust repair process

Organizational trust and trust repair are topics that have primarily been considered from a cognitive perspective. Although a number of scholars have called for further investigation into the role of emotions and individual differences in these processes, little empirical research has been conducted. A reason for this may concern how trust is usually measured in the organizational literature, through measures relating to the trustworthiness characteristics of others. This thesis argues against such a “perceived trustworthiness paradigm” (Mollering, 2013a) and empirically tests the approach conceptualised by Dietz and Den Hartog (2006) which asserts that that trust is a process consisting of attitudinal and behavioural processes comprising of belief, decision, and action. It primarily investigates the influence of emotion and emotion-related individual differences in repairing trust, and whether they are integral to the proposed process model. Three studies are conducted to investigate these questions. Studies 1 (N = 82) and 2 (N = 253) are experiments carried out to determine to what extent change in affect influenced participants’ change in perceptions of a coach company from post-violation (a coach crash) to post-trust repair effort (CEO’s response), and their willingness to trust in it. Study 3 (N = 135) is a cross-sectional survey of Volkswagen vehicle owners in the aftermath of the 2015 Emissions Scandal undertaken to measure the trust process in its entirety with people actively involved in a trust violation. Results indicate that negative emotions are influential predictors of trust repair effects and relate strongly to distrusting acts. Individual difference effects were generally not found, but the proposed process model of trust was supported, with willingness to trust mediating the relationship between perceptions of trustworthiness and distrusting acts. Emotions appeared to become more influential as the trust process developed, and findings imply that purely cognitive models are not sufficient to fully understand the nature of trust and its repair.
Identification of Susceptibility Variants in ADIPOR1 Gene Associated with Type 2 Diabetes, Coronary Artery Disease and the Comorbidity of Type 2 Diabetes and Coronary Artery Disease

Objective Adiponectin receptor 1 (encoded by ADIPOR1) is one of the major adiponectin receptors, and plays an important role in glucose and lipid metabolism. However, few studies have reported simultaneous associations between ADIPOR1 variants and type 2 diabetes (T2D), coronary artery disease (CAD) and T2D with CAD. Based on the “common soil” hypothesis, we investigated whether ADIPOR1 polymorphisms contributed to the etiology of T2D, CAD, or T2D with CAD in a Northern Han Chinese population. Methods Our multi-disease comparison study enrolled 657 subjects, including 165 with T2D, 173 with CAD, 174 with both T2D and CAD (T2D+CAD), and 145 local healthy controls. Six ADIPOR1 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were genotyped and their association with disease risk was analyzed. Results Multi-case-control comparison identified two ADIPOR1 variants: rs3737884-G, which was simultaneously associated with an increased risk of T2D, CAD, and T2D+CAD (P-value range, 9.80×10−5−6.30×10−4; odds ratio (OR) range: 1.96–2.42) and 16850797-C, which was separately associated with T2D and T2D+CAD (P-value range: 0.007–0.014; OR range: 1.71–1.77). The risk genotypes of both rs3737884 and 16850797 were consistently associated with common metabolic phenotypes in all three diseases (P-value range: 4.81×10−42−0.001). We observed an increase in the genetic dose-dependent cumulative risk with increasing risk allele numbers in T2D, CAD and T2D+CAD (P trend from 1.35×10−5−0.002). Conclusions Our results suggest that ADIPOR1 risk polymorphisms are a strong candidate for the “common soil” hypothesis and could partially contribute to disease susceptibility to T2D, CAD, and T2D with CAD in the Northern Han Chinese population.
Structural maximum a posteriori linear regression for fast HMM adaptation

Transformation-based model adaptation techniques have been used for many years to improve robustness of speech recognition systems. While the estimation criterion used to estimate transformation parameters has been mainly based on maximum likelihood estimation (MLE), Bayesian versions of some of the most popular transformation-based adaptation methods have been recently introduced, like MAPLR, a maximum a posteriori(MAP) based version of the well-known maximum likelihood linear regression (MLLR) algorithm. This is in fact an attempt to constraint parameter estimation in order to obtain reliable estimation with a limited amount of data, not only to prevent overfitting the adaptation data but also to allow integration of prior knowledge into transformation-based adaptation techniques. Since such techniques require the estimation of a large number of transformation parameters when the amount of adaptation data is large, it is also required to define a large number of prior densities for these parameters. Robust estimation of these prior densities is therefore a crucial issue that directly affects the efficiency and effectiveness of the Bayesian techniques. This paper proposes to estimate these priors using the notion of hierarchical priors, embedded into the tree structure used to control transformation complexity. The proposed algorithm, called structural MAPLR (SMAPLR), has been evaluated on the Spoke3 1993 test set of the WSJ task. It is shown that SMAPLR reduces the risk of overtraining and exploits the adaptation data much more efficiently than MLLR, leading to a significant reduction of the word error rate for any amount of adaptation data.
Internal Capital Markets, Non-Cash Divestitures and Managerial Incentives

Management compensation contracts are postulated to alleviate the principal-agent conflict in widely-held firms. This paper studies the efficiency of managerial incentives in internal capital markets. The incentives, measured as stock option delta and stock option vega, are estimated based on the entire holdings of manager’s stock and stock options including all the new and previously made grants. Consistent with the finance theory, I find that in internal capital markets the incentives are designed and administered in a sub-optimal way. Moreover, I find that a break-up does not constitute a solution to the agency conflicts that arise inside a complex firm. To the contrary, the evidence suggests that a break-up may be used as a vehicle to derive private benefits of control. This last result contradicts the theoretical predictions found in Scharfstein and Stein (2000).
Quantification of lincomycin resistance genes associated with lincomycin residues in waters and soils adjacent to representative swine farms in China

Lincomycin is commonly used on swine farms for growth promotion as well as disease treatment and control. Consequently, lincomycin may accumulate in the environment adjacent to the swine farms in many ways, thereby influencing antibiotic resistance in the environment. Levels of lincomycin-resistance genes and lincomycin residues in water and soil samples collected from multiple sites near wastewater discharge areas were investigated in this study. Sixteen lincomycin-resistance and 16S rRNA genes were detected using real-time PCR. Three genes, lnu(F), erm(A), and erm(B), were detected in all water and soil samples except control samples. Lincomycin residues were determined by rapid resolution liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, with concentrations detected as high as 9.29 ng/mL in water and 0.97 ng/g in soil. A gradual reduction in the levels of lincomycin-resistance genes and lincomycin residues in the waters and soils were detected from multiple sites along the path of wastewater discharging to the surrounding environment from the swine farms. Significant correlations were found between levels of lincomycin-resistance genes in paired water and soil samples (r = 0.885, p = 0.019), and between lincomycin-resistance genes and lincomycin residues (r = 0.975, p < 0.01). This study emphasized the potential risk of dissemination of lincomycin-resistance genes such as lnu(F), erm(A), and erm(B), associated with lincomycin residues in surrounding environments adjacent to swine farms.
How does love grow? : attachment processes in older adoptees and foster children as illustrated by fictional stories

Although there has been an abundance of research on attachment, few studies have researched the treatment o f attachment difficulties or have used qualitative methods. This study explores how older adoptive/foster children with attachment difficulties form attachments with their adoptive/foster parents. The method o f inquiry is fictional stories. I show how children in the context o f new relationships with healthy attachment figures who do not abandon or hurt them, modify their inferred internal constmctions of attachment figures. This study has four parts: In the first part, I introduce the subject o f attachment and the research method o f fiction. In the second part, I discuss how I came to choose fiction as the method of inquiry. I explore the matter of the ethics o f doing research with children, including the difficulty o f gaining informed consent and the inherent dangers o f a dual relationship o f counsellor-researcher. I deconstruct the authority o f the Human Research Ethics Committee and explore the relationship of fiction to truth in terms o f the assumptions that there is no one true set o f facts, but rather multiple constmcted realities or "fictions". In part 3 ,1 present 5 fictional stories, featuring composites o f various children with attachment difficulties I have worked with as a psychotherapist. They are all children who have been able to overcome many internal barriers to attach to their parents. There is a first person account o f an 11 year old adoptive child who spent his infancy in a Romanian orphanage; a radio play o f a 5 year old black child who spent part o f his infancy in an orphanage in Haiti; a didactic-descriptive account o f a foster parent as attachment figure with 4 hard-to-reach youth; a short story o f a 15 year old adopted teenager who rejects her
Generating Domain-Specific Visual Language Editors from High-level Tool Specifications

Domain-specific visual language editors are useful in many areas of software engineering but developing such editors is challenging and time-consuming. We describe an approach to generating a wide range of these graphical editors for use as plug-ins to the Eclipse environment. Tool specifications from an existing meta-tool, Pounamu, are interpreted to produce dynamic, multi-view, multiuser Eclipse graphical editors. We describe the architecture and implementation of our approach, examples of its use realizing domain-specific modelling tools, and strengths and limitations of the approach
Development and Initial Validation of a Measure of Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness in Exercise: The Basic Psychological Needs in Exercise Scale

The development process and initial validation of the Basic Psychological Needs in Exercise Scale (BPNES) are presented in this study. The BPNES is a domain-specific self-report instrument designed to assess perceptions of the extent to which the innate needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness (Deci & Ryan, 2000) are satisfied in exercise. Two separate samples of 508 and 504 participants were employed from private fitness centers for scale calibration and validation purposes, respectively. The results demonstrated an adequate factor structure, internal consistency, generalizability of the factor dimensionality across the calibration and the validation samples, discriminant validity and predictive validity; acceptable stability of the BPNES scores over 4 weeks also was found. In addition, the scale scores were found to be largely unaffected by socially desirable responding and specifically the tendency for impression management.
Linear-time compression of bounded-genus graphs into information-theoretically optimal number of bits

This extended abstract summarizes a new result for the <i>graphcompression</i> problem, addressing how to <i>compress</i> a graph<i>G</i> into a binary string <i>Z</i> with the requirement that<i>Z</i> can be <i>decoded</i> to recover <i>G. </i> Graphcompression finds important applications in 3D model compression ofComputer Graphics [12, 17-20] and compact routing table of ComputerNetworks [7]. For brevity, let a ¦Ð-<i>graph</i> standfor a graph with property ¦Ð. The<i>information-theoretically optimal</i> number of bits required torepresent an <i>n</i>-node ¦Ð-graph is⌈log<sub>2</sub><i>N</i><sub>¦Ð</sub>(<i>n</i>)⌉, where<i>N</i><sub>¦Ð</sub>(<i>n</i>) is the number ofdistinct <i>n</i>-node ¦Ð-graphs. Although determiningor approximating the close forms of<i>N</i><sub>¦Ð</sub>(<i>n</i>) for nontrivial classesof ¦Ð is challenging, we provide a linear-timemethodology for graph compression schemes that are<i>information-theoretically optimal with respect to continuoussuper-additive functions</i> (abbreviated as <i>optimal</i> for therest of the extended abstract). Specifically, if ¦Ðsatisfies certain properties, then we can compress any<i>n</i>-node <i>m</i>-edge ¦Ð-graph <i>G</i> into abinary string <i>Z</i> such that <i>G</i> and <i>Z</i> can becomputed from each other in <i>O</i>(<i>m + n</i>) time, and thatthe bit count of <i>Z</i> is at most ¦Â(<i>n</i>) +<i>o</i>(¦Â(<i>n</i>)) for any continuoussuper-additive function ¦Â(<i>n</i>) withlog<sub>2</sub><i>N</i><sub>¦Ð</sub>(<i>n</i>)¡Ü ¦Â(<i>n</i>) +<i>o</i>(¦Â(<i>n</i>)). Our methodology is applicableto general classes of graphs; this extended abstract focuses ongraphs with sublinear genus. For example, if the input<i>n</i>-node ¦Ð-graph <i>G</i> is equipped with anembedding on its genus surface, which is a reasonable assumptionfor graphs arising from 3D model compression, then our methodologyis applicable to any ¦Ð satisfying the followingstatements: F1. The genus of any <i>n</i>-node ¦Ð-graph is<i>o</i>(<i>n</i>/log<sup>2</sup> <i>n</i>); F2. Any subgraph of a ¦Ð-graph remains a¦Ð-graph; F3. log <i>N</i> <sub>¦Ð</sub>(<i>n</i>) =¦¸(<i>n</i>); and F4. There is an integer <i>k</i> = <i>O</i>(1) such that ittakes <i>O</i>(<i>n</i>) time to determine whether an<i>O</i>(log<sup>(<i>k</i>)</sup> <i>n</i>)-node graph satisfiesproperty ¦Ð. For instance, ¦Ð can be the property of being adirected 3-colorable simple graph with genus no more than ten. Theresult is a novel application of planarization algorithm forbounded-genus graphs [5] and separator decomposition tree of planargraphs [9]. Rooted trees were the only known nontrivial class ofgraphs with linear-time optimal coding schemes. He, Kao, and Lu[11] provided <i>O</i>(<i>n</i> log <i>n</i>)-time compressionschemes for planar and plane graphs that are optimal. Our resultssignificantly enlarge the classes of graphs that admit efficientoptimal compression schemes. More results on various versions ofgraph compression problems or succinct graph representations can befound in [1-4, 6, 8, 10, 14, 15] and the references therein.