Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Weakly Supervised RBM for Semantic Segmentation

In this paper, we propose a weakly supervised Restricted Boltzmann Machines (WRBM) approach to deal with the task of semantic segmentation with only image-level labels available. In WRBM, its hidden nodes are divided into multiple blocks, and each block corresponds to a specific label. Accordingly, semantic segmentation can be directly modeled by learning the mapping from visible layer to the hidden layer of WRBM. Specifically, based on the standard RBM, we import another two terms to make full use of image-level labels and alleviate the effect of noisy labels. First, we expect the hidden response of each superpixel is suppressed on the labels outside its parent image-level label set, and a non-image-level label suppression term is formulated to implicitly import the image-level labels as weak supervision. Second, semantic graph propagation is employed to exploit the cooccurrence between visually similar regions and labels. Besides, we deal with the problems of label imbalance and diverse backgrounds by adapting the block size to the label frequency and appending hidden response blocks corresponding to backgrounds respectively. Extensive experiments on two real-world datasets demonstrate the good performance of our approach compared with some state-of-the-art methods.
Error estimates with smooth and nonsmooth data for a finite element method for the Cahn-Hilliard equation

A finite element method for the Cahn-Hilliard equation (a semilinear parabolic equation of fourth order) is analyzed, both in a spatially semidiscrete case and in a completely discrete case based on the backward Euler method. Error bounds of optimal order over a finite time interval are obtained for solutions with smooth and nonsmooth initial data. A detailed study of the regularity of the exact solution is included. The analysis is based on local Lipschitz conditions for the nonlinearity with respect to Sobolev norms, and the existence of a Ljapunov functional for the exact and the discretized equations is essential. A result concerning the convergence of the attractor of the corresponding approximate nonlinear semigroup (upper semicontinuity with respect to the discretization parameters) is obtained as a simple application of the nonsmooth data error estimate.
Union organizing activity, firm growth and the business cycle

This paper analyzes the relationship between changes in unionization and firm growth. Average growth is significantly low er in manufacturing firms that experience successful union elections bu t these strong "effects" are largely illusory. The authors find no evidence of a significant relationship between unionization and firm growth, despite a strong cyclical pattern in election activity. Thei r results suggest that the significant negative effect of organizing activity on a firm's market value is not accompanied by any growth changes. The authors, therefore, cannot reject the hypothesis that t he equity losses from union election activity represent a simple transf er of wealth from shareholders to workers. Copyright 1993 by American Economic Association.
Dynamical Friction and Cooling Flows in Galaxy Clusters

We investigate a model of galaxy clusters in which the hot intracluster gas is efficiently heated by dynamical friction (DF) of galaxies. We allow for both subsonic and supersonic motions of galaxies and use the gravitational drag formula in a gaseous medium presented by Ostriker. The energy lost by the galaxies is either redistributed locally or into a Gaussian centered on the galaxy. We find that the condition of hydrostatic equilibrium and strict energy balance yields a trivial isothermal solution Tiso, independent of radius, or rising temperature distributions, provided Tiso/γ < T < Tiso, where γ is the adiabatic index of the gas. The isothermal temperature corresponds to the usual scaling relation between the gas temperatures and the velocity dispersions of galaxies. However, the minimal temperature associated with the rising solutions is ~ Tvir, larger than that inferred from observations, the radial distribution of galaxy masses notwithstanding. Heating by supersonically moving galaxies cannot suppress thermal instability, although it can lengthen the growth time up to the level comparable to the ages of clusters when the Mach number of galaxies is less than about 2. We show using numerical hydrodynamic simulations that DF-induced heating is generally unable to produce stable equilibrium cores by evolving arbitrary nonequilibrium clusters, although it can lengthen the cooling time. We conclude that DF-induced heating alone is an unlikely solution to the cooling flow problem, although it can still be an important heat supplier, considerably delaying the cooling catastrophe. We discuss other potential consequences of DF of galaxies in galaxy clusters.
FDI, Employment and Economic Growth in Nigeria

The study examines the links between Nigerian economic growth, employment and foreign direct investment (FDI) in the manufacturing and servicing sectors between 1990 and 2009. The significant results of the Johansen cointegration technique and the vector error correction model reveal that FDI in the servicing sector has a positive relationship with economic growth while FDI in the manufacturing sector has a negative relationship. FDI in the manufacturing sector has a positive relationship with employment rate while FDI in the servicing sector has a negative relationship with employment rate. Granger causal relationships among these variables exist. In the growth equation, causality runs from growth to FDI in the service sector while growth and FDI in the manufacturing sector have bidirectional causal effect. For the employment equation, unidirectional causality runs from FDI in the service and manufacturing sectors to employment rate.
Macroeconomic Volatility and International Integration

type="main"> This paper explores the effects that varying degrees of international openness have on macroeconomic volatility. The analysis is conducted for a two-symmetric-country world under three levels of international integration: that of a closed economy, a financial autarky, and full financial integration. Different degrees of trade openness are considered in the form of home biases, while the economy is left vulnerable to total factor productivity and innovation shocks. Full financial integration is found to reduce firm-size volatility and volatility in the mass of operative firms following a productivity shock and to increase them after an innovation shock. Moreover, the interaction between international sharing of profits and terms of trade transmissions determines the non-linear behaviour of consumption-to-output ratio volatility found in empirical studies.
Perception and Strategy Learning in Robot Soccer

Soccer robots need to reason efficiently and make real-time decisions in an uncertain game. However, with more objects of interest being changed to white and games being pushed towards variable lighting conditions, advanced vision algorithms are crucial for robot’s ability to perceive new surroundings in real-time. Upon accurately perceiving a dynamic game environment, intelligent role switching, team positioning, and path planning methods are also key to winning the game. We explored some novel techniques in lighting-invariant perception and high-level team strategies which allowed our team UPennalizers to stay competitive in the Standard Platform League (SPL).
On optimal portfolio trading strategies for an investor facing transactions costs in a continuous trading market

Modern asset pricing theory generally assumes frictionless trading. Under this assumption, an investor would revise his portfolio holdings at every date on which he could trade. However, in models where an investor faces financial market frictions such as transactions costs, the portfolio is optimally rebalanced less frequently. This paper examines the portfolio trading problem for an investor who faces transactions costs and short sales constraints in a continuous time economy with general specifications of ask and bid prices. Our principal results state that the existence of the optimal trading strategy and solution to the investor problem implies the existence of two supermartingales whose ratio is bounded by the ask and bid prices and we can identify supporting prices which, in an economy with no transactions costs, would yield the trading strategy and optimal solution of the original economy. This leads to explicit representations of the value function for utility functions commonly analyzed in financial economics. q 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.
Massive Lyman Break Galaxies at z ~ 3 in the Spitzer Extragalactic First Look Survey

We investigate the properties of 1088 Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) at z ~ 3 selected from a ~2.63 deg2 subregion of the First Look Survey field using the ground-based multicolor data and the Spitzer Space Telescope mid-infrared data at 3-8 and 24 μm. With the wide area and the broad wavelength coverage, we sample a large number of "rare" u-band dropouts that are massive (M* > 1011 M☉), allowing us to perform a statistical analysis of these subsets of LBGs which have not been studied in detail. Optically bright (RAB ≤ 24.5 mag) LBGs detected in mid-infrared (S3.6 μm ≥ 6 μJy) reside at the most massive and dusty end of the LBG population, with relatively high and tight M/L in rest-frame near-infrared. Most infrared-luminous LBGs (S24 μm ≥ 100 μJy) are dusty star-forming galaxies with star formation rates of 100-1000 M☉ yr-1, total infrared luminosity of >1012 L☉. By constructing the UV luminosity function of massive LBGs, we estimate that the lower limit for the star formation rate density from LBGs more massive than 1011 M☉ at z ~ 3 is ≥3.3 × 10-3 M☉-1 yr-1 Mpc-3, showing for the first time that the UV-bright population of massive galaxies alone contributes significantly to the global star formation rate density at z ~ 3. When combined with the star formation rate densities at z < 2, our result reveals a steady increase in the contribution of massive galaxies to the global star formation from z = 0 to z ~ 3, providing strong support to the downsizing of galaxy formation.
Slot Machine Stopping Decisions: Evidence for Prospect Theory Preferences?

This paper examines the stopping decisions of individual slot machine players using a unique casino dataset, asking whether the relationship between quitting behavior and winnings can be most easily reconciled using neoclassical expected utility theory (EU) or a prospect theory value function (PT) (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979). I assume that slot machine players have a utility of gambling (Conlisk, 1993) which motivates their visit to the casino, and preferences over winnings which may (PT) or may not (EU) depend on a reference-point level of winnings. Using the fact that outcomes of individual slot machine bets are independent draws, the central limit theorem is applied to assess whether gamblers quit approximately randomly as EU predicts, or whether quitting was concentrated disproportionately at some reference level of winnings as PT predicts. By comparing the data to simulations which match broad features in the data, statistical tests find substantial excess kurtosis (4 th moment) in final stopping distributions, thus rejecting that winnings are distributed normally and providing support for PT preferences. In addition, winnings distributions are positively skewed (3 rd moment) – this implies that people are more likely to quit with winnings above the reference point than below it, providing support for diminishing sensitivity of the PT value function’s gains and loss segments.
Collaboration Structure and Information Dilemmas in Biotechnology: Organizational Boundaries as Trust Production

Scientists who make breakthrough discoveries can receive above- normal returns to their intellectual capital, with returns depending on the degree of natural excludability - that is, whether necessary techniques can be learned through written reports or instead require hands-on experience with the discovering scientists or those trained by them in their laboratory. Privatizing discoveries, then, only requires selecting trusted others as collaborators, most often scientists working in the same organization. Within organizational boundaries, incentives become aligned based on repeat and future exchange, coupled with third-party monitoring and enforcement. We find that high value intellectual capital paradoxically predicts both a larger number of collaborators and more of that network contained within the same organization. Specifically, same-organization collaboration pairs are more likely when the value of the intellectual capital is high: both are highly productive 'star' scientists, both are located in top quality bioscience university departments, or both are located in a firm (higher ability to capture returns). Collaboration across organization boundaries, in contrast, is negatively related to the value of intellectual capital and positively related to the number of times the star scientist has moved. Organizational boundaries act as information envelopes: The more valuable the information produced, the more its dissemination is limited. In geographic areas where a higher proportion of coauthor pairs come from the same organization, diffusion to new collaborators is retarded.
Stochastic Trends and Stock Prices in Emerging Markets: The Case of Middle East and North Africa Region

In this paper, the individual stochastic structure of a log of weekly stock indices from Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Morocco and Jordan of MENA markets are investigated. Results from different unit root tests indicate that all five series seem to contain a stochastic trend and thus are nonstationary in levels. Presence of a unit root implies that shocks to stock prices are permanent and consequently, stock prices may not be predictable. Tests are also conducted to examine the common stochastic trends in a system of these emerging stock prices. No evidence of cointegration is detected in these emerging markets. Therefore, the stock markets of MENA region are segmented and do not exhibit any long-run co-movements. This in turn implies the existence of potential gains from international stock market diversification.
The Role of Alpha-Band Brain Oscillations as a Sensory Suppression Mechanism during Selective Attention

Evidence has amassed from both animal intracranial recordings and human electrophysiology that neural oscillatory mechanisms play a critical role in a number of cognitive functions such as learning, memory, feature binding and sensory gating. The wide availability of high-density electrical and magnetic recordings (64–256 channels) over the past two decades has allowed for renewed efforts in the characterization and localization of these rhythms. A variety of cognitive effects that are associated with specific brain oscillations have been reported, which range in spectral, temporal, and spatial characteristics depending on the context. Our laboratory has focused on investigating the role of alpha-band oscillatory activity (8–14 Hz) as a potential attentional suppression mechanism, and this particular oscillatory attention mechanism will be the focus of the current review. We discuss findings in the context of intersensory selective attention as well as intrasensory spatial and feature-based attention in the visual, auditory, and tactile domains. The weight of evidence suggests that alpha-band oscillations can be actively invoked within cortical regions across multiple sensory systems, particularly when these regions are involved in processing irrelevant or distracting information. That is, a central role for alpha seems to be as an attentional suppression mechanism when objects or features need to be specifically ignored or selected against.
A systematic review of usability techniques in agile methodologies

In this paper, we present the results of a systematic review involving the use of usability techniques in software developments where agile methodologies were used. The search strategy identified 307 studies, where only 32 were finally selected for the review. We found that complementary techniques are the most frequent techniques used with agile methodologies. In addition, most studies performed usability evaluations only during the implementation phase, and these evaluations were mostly constructed as elaborations of case studies.
Factor Intensity and Price Rigidity: Evidence and Theory

This paper establishes a new empirical finding: the degree of labor intensity and the degree of price flexibility are negatively correlated across industrial sectors. I model this in an economy with staggered nominal wage contracts and production sectors that differ in labor and capital intensities. Nominal disturbances affect capital-intensive and labor-intensive sectors asymmetrically: prices of labor-intensive goods change less than do prices of capital-intensive goods. In addition, when prices are costly to adjust, more firms in the capital-intensive sectors optimally choose to update their prices than firms in the labor-intensive sectors. Thus, varying factor intensity generates different degrees of price stickiness across sectors that face the same degree of wage rigidity.
The asymptotic distribution of randomly weighted sums and self-normalized sums

We consider the self-normalized sums $T_{n}=\sum_{i=1}^{n}X_{i}Y_{i}/\sum_{i=1}^{n}Y_{i}$, where $\{ Y_{i} : i\geq 1 \}$ are non-negative i.i. d. ~random variables, and $\{ X_{i} : i\geq 1 \} $ are i.i. d. random variables, independent of $\{ Y_{i} : i \geq 1 \}$. The main result of the paper is that each subsequential limit law of $T_n$ is continuous for any non-degenerate $X_1$ with finite expectation, if and only if $Y_1$ is in the centered Feller class.
Affirmative Action is Dead; Long Live Affirmative Action

Americans still argue over the merits of affirmative action. This important book explains why. Affirmative action is a much-debated policy, in employment as well as in education, in the Supreme Court as well as on the street. Yet as this book shows, affirmative action is both sensible and effective, differing little from many other government programmes that evoke no controversy. Why don't Americans wholeheartedly support affirmative action? In this timely and accessible book, Faye J. Crosby analyses several different explanations offered by social scientists to answer this important question. Some explanations suggest that opposition stems from a belief that affirmative action functions as a governmentally sanctioned form of reverse racism or sexism, or that it is ineffective or socially disruptive. Other explanations locate the problem in the ignorance or prejudice of the people who oppose the policy. Crosby concludes by offering a different explanation, proposing that the American failure to endorse wholeheartedly what is a fair and effective policy arises, ironically, from Americans' infatuation with justice. Smitten with the concept of merit, says Crosby, we are perturbed by a policy that invites us to recognise the complications of social justice.
A Sceptic's Comment on the Study of Economics

A survey was carried out among two groups of undergraduate economics students and four groups of students in mathematics, law, philosophy and business administration. The main survey question involved a conflict between profit maximisation and the welfare of the workers who would be fired to achieve it. Significant differences were found between the choices of the groups. The results were reinforced by a survey conducted among readers of an Israeli business newspaper and PhD students of Harvard. It is argued that the overly mathematical methods used to teach economics encourage students to lean towards profit maximisation.
Oracle inequalities for inverse problems

We consider a sequence space model of statistical linear inverse problems where we need to estimate a function f from indirect noisy observations. Let a finite set A of linear estimators be given. Our aim is to mimic the estimator in A that has the smallest risk on the true f. Under general conditions, we show that this can be achieved by simple minimization of an unbiased risk estimator, provided the singular values of the operator of the inverse problem decrease as a power law. The main result is a nonasymptotic oracle inequality that is shown to be asymptotically exact. This inequality can also be used to obtain sharp minimax adaptive results. In particular, we apply it to show that minimax adaptation on ellipsoids in the multivariate anisotropic case is realized by minimization of unbiased risk estimator without any loss of efficiency with respect to optimal nonadaptive procedures.
Influence of site-specific nutrient management on growth and yield of maize (Zea mays) under conservation tillage

A field experiment was conducted at New Delhi during rainy (kharif) season of 2013, to study the effect of nutri- ent management on growth and development behaviour of maize (Zea mays L.) hybrids. Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), SPAD value, dry-matter accumulation, leaf-area index, crop growth rate (CGR) and rela- tive growth rate (RGR) were significantly higher with site-specific nutrient management (SSNM) over the recom- mended dose of fertilizer (RDF) under conservation agriculture. Of the maizegenotypes CMH 08-292 recorded significantly highest dry-matter accumulation at various stages and CGR, while PMH 1 recorded higher NDVI, SPAD, leaf-area index and RGR. Cobs/plot, cob length and girth, grain rows/cob, grains/row, cob yield, shelling, harvest index and grain yield were significantly higher with SSNM over RDF. PMH 3 recorded significantly higher cobs/plot, cob length and girth, grains/row, cob yield and grain yield, whereas S 6217 recorded significantly higher grain rows/cob and harvest index, while significantly higher shelling was recorded with CMH 08-292.
Resilience Among Immigrant Adult Learners: Experiences in Postsecondary Education - A Mixed-Methods Study

Resilience Among Immigrant Adult Learners: Experiences in Postsecondary Education—A Mixed-Methods Study by Sandra L. Samuels MA, Saint Stephen College, 2008 BS, California Coast University, 2006 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy General Educational Psychology
Angiographic Lesion Complexity Score and In-Hospital Outcomes after Percutaneous Coronary Intervention

Objective We devised a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) scoring system based on angiographic lesion complexity and assessed its association with in-hospital complications. Background Although PCI is finding increasing application in patients with coronary artery disease, lesion complexity can lead to in-hospital complications. Methods Data from 3692 PCI patients were scored based on lesion complexity, defined by bifurcation, chronic total occlusion, type C, and left main lesion, along with acute thrombus in the presence of ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (1 point assigned for each variable). Results The patients’ mean age was 67.5 +/- 10.8 years; 79.8% were male. About half of the patients (50.3%) presented with an acute coronary syndrome, and 2218 (60.1%) underwent PCI for at least one complex lesion. The patients in the higher-risk score groups were older (p < 0.001) and had present or previous heart failure (p = 0.02 and p = 0.01, respectively). Higher-risk score groups had significantly higher in-hospital event rates for death, heart failure, and cardiogenic shock (from 0 to 4 risk score; 1.7%, 4.5%, 6.3%, 7.1%, 40%, p < 0.001); bleeding with a hemoglobin decrease of >3.0 g/dL (3.1%, 11.0%, 13.1%, 10.3%, 28.6%, p < 0.001); and postoperative myocardial infarction (1.5%, 3.1%, 3.8%, 3.8%, 10%, p = 0.004), respectively. The association with adverse outcomes persisted after adjustment for known clinical predictors (odds ratio 1.72, p < 0.001). Conclusion The complexity score was cumulatively associated with in-hospital mortality and complication rate and could be used for event prediction in PCI patients.