Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
When Does the Recommendation of Other People Matter in Social Commerce Even Though They Have Not Purchased Either?

Owing to the lack of human bandwidth online, feedback systems have been introduced as a means of providing information on quality. Existing studies on the effects of ratings systems have had conflicting results. With this in mind, this study investigates the relative contribution of information according to search cost. It focuses on Groupon, based on its unique provision of daily deals, most of which are local and unique services not sold elsewhere and limited to a single day. In cases like that of Groupon, in which usable information for evaluating product quality is limited and search costs are high, consumers may rely on less persuasive information, such as others’ preferences and ratings. Using Groupon data, this paper confirms that under conditions of high search cost, pure preference can positively influence actual sales. It also finds that this effect is magnified as search cost increases.
The Gibbs–Thomson relation for non homogeneous anisotropic phase transitions

Abstract In this paper we prove the Gibbs–Thomson relation between the coarse grained chemical potential and the non homogeneous and anisotropic mean curvature of a phase interface within the gradient theory of phase transitions thus proving a generalization of a conjecture stated by Gurtin and proved by Luckhaus and Modica in the homogeneous and isotropic case.
NEW PERSPECTIVES ON DEPRECIATION SHOCKS AS A SOURCE OF BUSINESS CYCLE FLUCTUATIONS

In this paper we study the transmission of capital depreciation shocks. The existing literature in the real business cycle tradition has concluded that these shocks are irrelevant to business cycle fluctuations. We show that they are potentially important drivers of aggregate fluctuations in a new Keynesian model. Nominal rigidities and some persistence in the shock process are the key ingredients that generate co-movement across real variables.
Shape sensitivity analysis of time-dependent flows of incompressible non-Newtonian fluids

We study the shape differentiability of a cost function for the flow of an incompressible viscous fluid of power-law type. The fluid is confined to a bounded planar domain surrounding an obstacle. For smooth perturbations of the shape of the obstacle we express the shape gradient of the cost function which can be subsequently used to improve the initial design.
Estimation of Probability Density Function by Dependence Tree Methods for Pattern Recognition Systems

Estimation of probability density function is inevitable in some engineering systems, specially in statistical pattern recognition systems. One category of methods applied for estimation is tree dependence methods, which could be classified under nonparametric estimation approaches. In this paper, we surveyed important tree dependence methods. To do this, we pursued a mathematically rigorous manner and in this respect, many mathematical details is added to what is available in literature 1 . Furthermore, connection of studied tree dependence methods is addressed completely, which can be a source of valuable information for future works in this area.
Pressure and Perverse Flights to Familiarity

Under pressure, people often prefer what is familiar, which can seem safer than the unfamiliar. We show that such favoring of familiarity can lead to choices precisely contrary to the source of felt pressure, thus exacerbating, rather than mitigating, its negative consequences. In Experiment 1, time pressure increased participants’ frequency of choosing to complete a longer but incidentally familiar task option (as opposed to a shorter but unfamiliar alternative), resulting in increased felt stress during task completion. In Experiment 2, pressure to reach a performance benchmark in a chosen puzzle increased participants’ frequency of choosing an incidentally familiar puzzle that both augured and delivered objectively worse performance (i.e., fewer points obtained). Participants favored this familiar puzzle even though familiarity was established through unpleasant prior experience. This “devil you know” preference under pressure contrasted with disfavoring of the negatively familiar option in a pressure-free situation. These results demonstrate that pressure-induced flights to familiarity can sometimes aggravate rather than ameliorate pressure, and can occur even when available evidence points to the suboptimality of familiar options.
Towards a Human Proof of Gessel's Conjecture

We interpret walks in the first quadrant with steps {(1,1),(1,0),(−1,0),(−1, −1)} as a generalization of Dyck words with two sets of letters. Using this language, we give a formal expression for the number of walks using the steps above, beginning and ending at the origin. We give an explicit formula for a restricted class of such words using a correspondence between such words and Dyck paths. This explicit formula is exactly the same as that for the degree of the polynomial satisfied by the square of the area of cyclic n-gons conjectured by Robbins, although the connection is a mystery. Finally we remark on another combinatorial problem in which the same formula appears and argue for the existence of a bijection.
Priming for T-cell-mediated rejection of established tumors by cutaneous DNA immunization.

DNA immunization has been shown to elicit both antibody and CTL responses against antigens expressed by infectious organisms. Because CTL responses have been implicated in rejection of cancer, we investigated whether DNA immunization by particle bombardment using a gene gun could induce CTL responses that were capable of rejecting tumors in mice. DNA immunization by particle bombardment using genes encoding beta-galactosidase and ovalbumin primed mice to generate CTLs in two genetic backgrounds (DBA/2 and C57BL/6 strains, respectively). DNA immunization was more potent in inducing CTLs than immunization with an optimized regimen of ovalbumin peptide plus immune adjuvant. Immunity induced by DNA immunization protected mice against s.c. challenge with tumors expressing the beta-galactosidase antigen. Tumors were rejected even when DNA immunization was started 3 or 7 days after tumor challenge as tumors were becoming established. Tumor rejection required CD8(+) T cells, confirming a role for CTLs in vivo. These studies show that DNA immunization by particle bombardment can efficiently induce CTL responses that are capable of rejecting even established tumors.
The lead‐lag relationship between stock index options and the stock index market: Model, moneyness, and news

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the price discovery role of the Korea Composite Stock Price Index 200 (KOSPI 200) stock index options market in contrast to other developed options markets. Design/methodology/approach - The price discovery roles of the stock and options markets using the error-correction model derived from the co-integration relationship are examined. Various analyses are conducted. First, Heston's stochastic volatility option pricing model is employed to confirm its usefulness, and compare the results with the Black and Scholes (BS) model. Second, whether the out of the money (OTM) options purchased by individual investors have a stronger price discovery role than options with other moneyness is examined. Finally, whether options have a stronger price discovery role in bullish or bearish markets than in normal markets is tested. Findings - It is found that stock index prices lead implied index prices estimated from option prices using both BS and Heston models. In regards to the OTM options, the lead-effect of real stock index to implied index prices holds. Also it is shown that there is a weak rise in the lead effect of the options to the stock index, but the lead effect of stock index market rules over that of the options market. Originality/value - The paper examines the price discovery role of the KOSPI 200 stock index options market in contrast to other developed options markets and the results indicate that the consensus on the Korean financial markets may be incorrect.
Phenotypic and Genotypic Characterization of Enteroaggregative Escherichia coli Strains Isolated From Diarrheic Children in Iran

Background: Several studies performed in developed and developing countries have identified enteroaggregative Escherichia coli (EAEC) as the emerging cause of pediatric diarrhea. Objectives: This study investigated the phenotypic and genetic characteristics of EAEC strains isolated from children with diarrhea between 2007 - 2008 in Tehran, Iran. Materials and Methods: EAEC strains were examined for virulence plasmid genes (aap, aggR, and aatA), biofilm formation, and drug resistance. In addition, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) profiles of these strains were determined. Results: Significant percentage of local EAEC strains carried the virulence plasmid genes and formed biofilms. In addition, these strains showed high resistance to ampicillin (100%), tetracycline (65.7%), streptomycin (58.7%), chloramphenicol (52.6%), and trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole (51.7%) and had different PFGE patterns. Conclusions: These results indicated that EAEC strains isolated from Iranian children with diarrhea were heterogeneous and showed high resistance rates against commonly used antibiotics, which was similar to that reported in studies performed in other countries.
Inadequate progress for women in academic medicine: findings from the National Faculty Study.

BACKGROUND Women have entered academic medicine in significant numbers for 4 decades and now comprise 20% of full-time faculty. Despite this, women have not reached senior positions in parity with men. We sought to explore the gender climate in academic medicine as perceived by representatives to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Group on Women in Medicine and Science (GWIMS) and Group on Diversity and Inclusion (GDI). METHODS We conducted a qualitative analysis of semistructured telephone interviews with GWIMS and GDI representatives and other senior leaders at 24 randomly selected medical schools of the 1995 National Faculty Study. All were in the continental United States, balanced for public/private status and AAMC geographic region. Interviews were audiotaped, transcribed, and organized into content areas before an inductive thematic analysis was conducted. Themes that were expressed by multiple informants were studied for patterns of association. RESULTS Five themes were identified: (1) a perceived wide spectrum in gender climate; (2) lack of parity in rank and leadership by gender; (3) lack of retention of women in academic medicine (the "leaky pipeline"); (4) lack of gender equity in compensation; and (5) a disproportionate burden of family responsibilities and work-life balance on women's career progression. CONCLUSIONS Key informants described improvements in the climate of academic medicine for women as modest. Medical schools were noted to vary by department in the gender experience of women, often with no institutional oversight. Our findings speak to the need for systematic review by medical schools and by accrediting organizations to achieve gender equity in academic medicine.
Automatic annotation of unique locations from video and text

Given a video and associated text, we propose an automatic annotation scheme in which we employ a latent topic model to generate topic distributions from weighted text and then modify these distributions based on visual similarity. We apply this scheme to location annotation of a television series for which transcripts are available. The topic distributions allow us to avoid explicit classification, which is useful in cases where the exact number of locations is unknown. Moreover, many locations are unique to a single episode, making it impossible to obtain representative training data for a supervised approach. Our method first segments the episode into scenes by fusing cues from both images and text. We then assign location-oriented weights to the text and generate topic distributions for each scene using Latent Dirichlet Allocation. Finally, we update the topic distributions using the distributions of visually similar scenes. We formulate our visual similarity between scenes as an Earth Mover’s Distance problem. We quantitatively validate our multi-modal approach to segmentation and qualitatively evaluate the resulting location annotations. Our results demonstrate that we are able to generate accurate annotations, even for locations only seen in a single episode.
Effect of level of wet distillers grains on feedlot performance of finishing cattle and energy value relative to corn

Two hundred eighty-eight crossbred yearling steers (BW = 351 ± 11 kg) were utilized in a completely randomized design to evaluate the effect of level of wet distillers grains plus solubles (WDGS) on feedlot performance and carcass characteristics. Dietary treatments consisted of 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50% dietary inclusion (DM basis) of WDGS, replacing corn. Basal ingredients consisted of high-moisture and dry-rolled corn, fed at a constant 1:1 ratio (DM basis), plus ground alfalfa hay and dry supplement each fed at 5% of diet (DM basis). Steers were stratified by weight and assigned randomly to pen. Pen, serving as the experimental unit, included eight steers, was assigned randomly to treatment, and was replicated six times. Steers were fed for 125 d, and were slaughtered on d 126 at a commercial abattoir. Results indicate a significant quadratic response (P < 0.0001) for DMI, final BW, ADG, and G:F, as level of WDGS in the diet increased. However, with the exception of HCW, there were no significant differences (P > 0.05) for carcass characteristics (i.e. liver score, REA, 12th rib fat, marbling, and yield grade). Further, utilizing G:F, an improvement above the 0% WDGS diet was calculated for each pen/treatment, considering the inclusion rate of WDGS. Results from these calculations generated a significant quartic response (P = 0.0003). These data clearly demonstrate the performance improvements achievable when WDGS are utilized in finishing diets. In conclusion, feeding WDGS in this trial up to 50% of the diet in place of corn resulted in improved performance compared to feeding high-moisture/dry-rolled corn.
Direct Comparison of Induction Motor and Line-Start IPM Synchronous Motor Characteristics for Semi-Hermetic Compressor Drives

Motors in semi-hermetic compressor drives are mostly fed from line. Because of good cooling conditions, the motors are heavily loaded and employ a specific rotor structure with “C” bore. In the field of semi-hermetic drives, the use of induction motors (IMs) is still dominant, although different motor types with line-starting capabilities, as for example line-start interior permanent magnet synchronous motors (LSIPMSMs), can be used. This work presents the direct performance comparison of a family of commercially available three-phase four-pole IMs for semi-hermetic compressor drives with the equal size prototypes of LSIPMSMs. The motors were rated as 1, 2.5, 3.8, 5.5, 7.5, and 20 hp. The presence of “C” bore in rotor structure can degrade LSIPMSM steady-state performance; therefore, the LSIPMSM designs steady-state performances are evaluated by FEA as well by the experimental method. The motors' dynamic performance is experimentally evaluated as well. The ultimate goal of this study is to reveal the improvement of LSIPMSMs characteristics in comparison to IMs characteristics and to check the possibility for the immediate replacement of existent IMs with LSIPMSMs in the target semi-hermetic compressor application.
On the Behaviour of Deviant Communities in Online Social Networks

On-line social networks are complex ensembles of inter-linked communities that interact on different topics. Some communities are characterized by what are usually referred to as deviant behaviours, conducts that are commonly considered inappropriate with respect to the society’s norms or moral standards. Eating disorders, drug use, and adult content consumption are just a few examples. We refer to such communities as deviant networks. It is commonly believed that such deviant networks are niche, isolated social groups, whose activity is well separated from the mainstream social media life. According to this assumption, research studies have mostly considered them in isolation. In this work we focused on adult content consumption networks, which are present in many on-line social media and in the Web in general. We found that few small and densely connected communities are responsible for most of the content production. Differently from previous work, we studied how such communities interact with the whole social network. We found that the produced content flows to the rest of the network mostly directly or through bridge-communities, reaching at least 450 times more users.We also show that a large fraction of the users can be inadvertently exposed to such content through indirect content resharing. We also discuss a demographic analysis of the producers and consumers networks. Finally, we show that it is easily possible to identify a few core users to radically uproot the diffusion process. We aim at setting the basis to study deviant communities in context.
AGN Dusty Tori. II. Observational Implications of Clumpiness

Clumpy torus models with dusty clouds along radial equatorial rays successfully explain AGN infrared observations. The dust has standard Galactic composition, with individual cloud optical depth τV ∼ 30–100 at visual. The models naturally explain the observed behavior of the 10 μm silicate feature, in particular the lack of deep absorption features in AGNs of any type, and can reproduce the weak emission feature tentatively detected in type 2 QSOs. The clouds' angular distribution must have a soft edge, e.g., Gaussian, and the radial distribution should decrease as 1/r or 1/r2. In line with recent interferometry, the ratio of the torus outer to inner radius can be as small as ~5-10. The models can produce nearly isotropic IR emission together with highly anisotropic obscuration, as required by observations. Clumpiness implies that the viewing angle determines an AGN classification only probabilistically; a source can display type 1 properties even from directions close to the equatorial plane. The fraction of obscured sources depends not only on the torus angular thickness but also on the cloud number , and this fraction's observed decrease with luminosity can be explained with a decrease of either parameter. X-ray obscuration, too, is probabilistic; resulting from both dusty and dust-free clouds, it might be dominated by the latter, giving rise to the observed QSOs that are X-ray obscured. Observations indicate that the torus and broad-line-emitting clouds form a seamless distribution, with the transition between the two caused by dust sublimation. Torus clouds may have been detected in the outflow component of H2O maser emission from two AGNs. Proper-motion measurements of outflow masers, especially in Circinus, are a promising method for probing the morphology and kinematics of torus clouds.
Nutritional quality and tannin astringency of browse in clear-cuts and old-growth forests.

We compared nutritional quality and morphology of 4 browse forages of black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus) and Roosevelt elk (Cervus elaphus roosevelti) in clear-cuts and old-growth forests on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington. Browse in old-growth forests had a greater proportion of leaves, was more succulent, and had higher percent crude protein than browse in clear-cuts. There was no consistent pattern of difference in fiber content and digestibility between forest types. Tannin astringency was greater in clear-cuts than in old growth. Because tannins decrease digestible protein (DP), DP was more available in shrubs grown in old growth than in clear-cuts, little DP was available to cervids browsing in clear-cuts. Retention of patches of old growth in the Pacific Northwest will provide optimum year-round habitat for cervid foraging
Germany's economic performance : from unification to Euroization

Introduction J.Hoelscher Keynote Address: The Post-Reunification Economy of Germany - Past, Present and Future S.F. Frowen Aftermath of the Reunification of Germany: Remarks on the Keynote Address of Stephen F. Frowen N.Kloten PART 1: MONETARY ISSUES Monetary Policy Transparency: A Comparison between Bundesbank/ECB and the Bank of England I.Biefang-Frisancho Mariscal & P.Howells Bad for Euroland, Worse for Germany: The ECB's Record J.Bibow Monetary Targeting by the German Bundesbank W.W. Heering Comment K.Soufani PART 2: MACROECONOMIC PERFORMANCE From Initiating to Breaching to Diluting the Stability and Growth Pact H.Feldmann Wages, Macroeconomic Policies and Germany's Stagnation E.Hein & A.Truger Comment W.Schelkle PART 3: STRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENTS Collective Bargaining and Labour Markets L.Funk Comment E.Owen Smith PART 4: EAST GERMANY Firm-Specific Determinants of the Productivity Gaps between East and West J.Stephan East Germany's Economic Transition in Comparative Perspective M.Kaser PART 5: CONCLUSION Investment Location Germany N.Walter
Conditional Cooperation: new evidence from a public goods experiment

We extend Fischbacher et al.’s (2001) work on conditional cooperation, comparing the results obtained by means of the Strategy Method with behaviour in a classic linear public goods environment. We find that the Strategy Method is roughly adequate as a classification device, but underestimates the contribution of conditional cooperators in the public goods game.
First Generation Graz Cycle Power Plant for Near-Term Deployment

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a recognized technology pathway to curb the increasing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) from the power generation sector. But most available technologies are still on the study or laboratory-scale level, so that considerable R&D efforts are needed to achieve commercialization level. The Graz Cycle originally presented in 1995 by Jericha [1] is an oxyfuel technology and promises highest efficiency using state-of-the-art turbine materials and improved thermodynamic developments in a comparatively complex interaction of rotating machinery, condensers and heat exchanger components. But although detailed conceptual design for all main components has been presented, there is still a large step towards a Graz Cycle pilot demonstration plant. In order to facilitate construction of a demonstration plant we consider the performance of a near-term Graz Cycle process design based on modest cycle data and available turbomachinery components using a simplified flow scheme. The work is supported by on-going development work for a first generation oxyfuel turbine that has already been undertaken by Clean Energy Systems, Inc. [2]. Their further work on a second generation oxyfuel turbine received $30 million funding support from the U.S. Department of Energy in September 2010 [3]. Two near-term Graz Cycle plants are presented based on basic and advanced operating conditions of the proposed commercially available turbine. Besides the turbine the additional equipment for a first-generation cycle is discussed. The predicted optimum net efficiency is 23.2% (HHV). A near-term zero-emission power plant can only be commercially attractive if it will be deployed in a niche market. Therefore an economic analysis commensurate with an early pre-FEED conceptual study is carried out for the U.S. Gulf Coast where revenue from multiple product streams that could include power, steam, CO2 and water, as well as argon and (potentially) nitrogen from the ASU is provided. The economic analysis suggests that a capital investment of $94 million can secure construction of a 13.2 MWe zero emission oxyfuel power plant and yield a 14.5% (unlevered) return on capital invested.Copyright © 2011 by ASME