Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Information, Expected Utility, and Portfolio Choice

Abstract We study the consumption-investment problem of an agent with a constant relative risk aversion preference function, who possesses noisy information about the future prospects of a stock. We also solve for the value of information to the agent in closed form. We find that information can significantly alter consumption and asset allocation decisions. For reasonable parameter ranges, information increases consumption in the vicinity of 25%. Information can shift the portfolio weight on a stock from 0% to around 70%. Thus, depending on the stock beta, the weight on the market portfolio can be considerably reduced with information, causing the appearance of underdiversification. The model indicates that stock holdings of informed agents are positively related to wealth, unrelated to systematic risk, and negatively related to idiosyncratic uncertainty. We also show that the dollar value of information to the agent depends linearly on his wealth and decreases with both the propensity to intermediate consumption and risk aversion.
A reexamination of the effects of creatine on muscle protein synthesis in tissue culture

Experiments designed to test the hypothesis that intracellular creatine level regulates the synthesis of muscle specific proteins have failed to demonstrate any creatine regulatory effect. Manipulation of the extracellular creatine in culture medium over a 5,700-fold range (1.3- 7.4 mM) was successful in altering intracellular total creatine by only a factor of 20 (1.4-42 mg creatine/mg protein), an indication that muscle cells are able to regulate intracellular creatine levels over a wide range of external creatine concentrations. Alterations of cell creatine had no effect on either total protein synthesis or synthesis of myosin heavy chain. Methods were perfected to measure total creatine, and incorporation of [3H]leucine into total protein and purified myosin heavy chain from the same culture dish to avoid the possibility of variation between dishes. The creatine analog 1- carboxymethyl-2-iminohexahydropyrimidine (CMIP) previously reported to stimulate myosin synthesis in culture was found to depress creatine accumulation by cells and depressed total protein synthesis and synthesis of myosin heavy chain. This inhibitory action of CMIP is consistent with the reported competitive inhibition of creatine kinase and presumed interference with energy metabolism.
CONSIDERATION OF THE PAST , PRESENT , AND FUTURE ROLES OF THE NEUROSCIENCES IN THE LINGUISTIC SCIENCES

For thousands of years, the human brain has caused both bewilderment and fascination. And although the brain is the ultimate source, arbiter, and conduit of human language, an understanding of even the rudiments of its role in language comprehension and production has been a relatively recent development, arguably dating to the latter half of the nineteenth century. In the present discussion, a review of significant approaches to the human brain will be considered from a dia-chronic perspective. Particular emphasis will be placed upon developments which have provided the foundation for interaction between the neurosciences and linguistic sciences. Consideration of emerging approaches to the study of the brain will also be made for, it is maintained , such approaches will be particularly fruitful in providing new and important insights into the brain/language relationship. 0. Introduction: Our universe within In his ambitiously compendious volume, How the Mind Works, Steven Pinker (1997:24) wryly notes that, while 'the 1990s have been named the Decade of the Brain, . there will never be a Decade of the Pancreas'. While the relative importance of the investigation of the brain versus the pancreas may be eminently obvious , Pinker's observation actually belies a truism about the human brain. That is, unlike any other organ, the brain has what Pinker terms 'special status' which derives 'from a special thing the brain does, which makes us see, think, feel, choose, and act. That special thing is information processing, or computation' (1997:24). Indeed, the brain's computational ability is one of the reasons why the multifarious functions of this organ have been difficult to understand. Even gaining rudimentary insights into how the nervous system transforms simple sensory inputs into complex mental constructs has taken decades of research. For example, in the auditory system, a word to be perceived begins (simply) as a series of sound waves causing vibrations which impinge upon the tympanic membrane (eardrum) of the hearer. These vibrations are transduced, transformed, and relayed to higher centers of the brain where they are ultimately interpreted as a lexical unit
(S)PEEC: Time- and frequency-domain surface formulation for modeling conductors and dielectrics in combined circuit electromagnetic simulations

The partial element equivalent circuit (PEEC) formulation is an integral-equation-based approach for the solution of combined circuit and electromagnetic (EM) problems. In this paper, a surface-based PEEC formulation is presented to complement the existing volume-based method. With the rise in the operating frequencies and the increasing complexity of test structures on boards, packages, and chips, a surface-based formulation is more efficient for many problems in terms of the number of unknowns generated. The composite conductor dielectric modeling is based on the PMCHWT formulation which is transformed into a PEEC representation using equivalent magnetic and electric circuits connected by mutual coupling. Both time- and frequency-domain analyses are discussed, similar to a Spice-type circuit solver. The new formulation is compared with the volume-based PEEC approach in terms of accuracy and the number of unknowns generated
Spread of Enterococcal Surface Protein in Antibiotic Resistant Entero-coccus faecium and Enterococcus faecalis isolates from Urinary Tract Infections

Enterococci rank among leading cause of nosocomial bacteremia and urinary tract infection in hospital and community acquired infections. Several traits that may contribute to enhanced virulence have been identified in Enterococci. Extracellular surface protein (Esp) is a virulence factor that contributes in biofilm formation and resistance to environmental stresses. In this study we aimed to determine occurrence of esp in E. faecium and E. faecalis isolates isolated from urinary tract infections and to investigate whether there is any correlation between presence of esp and antibiotic resistance. One hundred and sixty six isolates were collected from patients with UTI and after identification by biochemical and PCR, antibiotic resistances were examined. The presence of esp was investigated by primer-specific PCR. 43.3% of isolates identified as E. faecium and 56.7% as E. faecalis. The esp gene was found in 76.1% of E. faecium isolates and 77.9% of E. faecalis isolate. There were significant correlation between esp positive E. faecium and resistance to Vancomycin (p<0.01), also in E.faecalis we found correlation between esp positive and resistance to Ampicillin, Chloramphenicol and Tetracycline (p<0.01, p<0.01, p<0.01 respectively). Occurrence of esp in our isolates from urinary tract infection was high that indicates importance of this gene in urinary tract infections and shows importance of ability to forming biofilm and hydrophobicity of surface of Enterococci for causing urinary infection by Enterococci. Also, our finding showed significant correlation between resistance to antibiotics and presence of esp in Enterococci.
The Impact of Instructional Rounds on Teacher Learning

The Impact of Instructional Rounds on Teacher Learning by Katie Canon Brown MA, Seattle Pacific University, 2009 BA, Western Washington University, 2000 Project Study Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education Walden University December 2018 Abstract A suburban school district in northwest Washington State has invested in a teacher-led,A suburban school district in northwest Washington State has invested in a teacher-led, school-based model of instructional rounds to improve collaborative relationships among teachers and further teacher understanding of an instructional framework, but there is little formal evidence that instructional rounds is meeting its goals. The purpose of this study was to determine if instructional rounds is impacting teacher learning. The conceptual framework that grounded this study was Wenger’s construct of communities of practice, a social theory of learning. The key research questions were focused on how participation in instructional rounds impacts teacher collaboration and learning of the instructional framework. To address the research questions, a qualitative evaluative case study was conducted. Data were used collected by using individual, face-to-face interviews with 6 different teachers and reviewing program document. Teachers selected for interviews had participated in instructional rounds during the past 3 consecutive years, participated as an observer and as a host, and at least 2 participants had experience as a facilitator. Transcribed interviews and documents were coded, followed by a search for patterns and themes throughout the data. Results showed improvement in personal and professional relationships among teachers as well as improvement of teacher learning. Results also showed that the quality of teacher learning was dependent upon contextual factors. The findings of the study were used to develop a program evaluation report for the school district. This report helped school district administrators, principals and teachers determine whether to stop, start, expand, or refine the instructional rounds model in their schools. This professional learning model has the potential to change the way teachers learn to positively impact student improvement. The Impact of Instructional Rounds on Teacher Learning by
Experimental evaluation of a co-planar airborne separation display

An experiment was conducted to evaluate a concept for a co-planar self-separation display. The display shows performance and traffic constraints on maneuvering, as well as interactions of constraints between the two planar projections. In the experiment, a comparison was made between the new concept and a comparable display that did not show these interactions. Results showed that although pilots performed well with either display, performance was consistently better with the full display. Similar to previous studies, a preference for single-axis maneuvers was found, although this effect was smaller for difficult scenarios. A type of behavior persistent to constraint-based displays was also observed in this experiment: Pilots maneuver close to the constraint boundary, which can have an impact on safety when judgment errors are made.
The weak-type (1,1) of L \log L homogeneous convolution operators

We show that a homogeneous convolution kernel on an arbitrary homogeneous group which is L \log L on the unit annulus is bounded on L^p for 1 < p < \infty and is of weak-type (1,1), generalizing the result of Seeger. The proof is in a similar spirit to that of Christ and Rubio de Francia.
"Do languages die?" Promoting awareness of language and linguistic diversity in preschool

This chapter presents the results of an awakening to languages workshop entitled Do languages die? , carried out with a group of 21 Portuguese preschool children. In the workshop children listened to songs in endangered languages, created an invented writing system, and performed syllabic and phonemic suppression tasks. We gathered data through video and audio recordings of the workshop and phonological awareness tests, applied to the children and to a control group. After the implementation of the workshop, the experimental group increased their phonological awareness significantly. In contrast, the phonological abilities of the control group remained substantially unaltered. These findings suggest that early contact with linguistic diversity may develop children’s awareness of language both at micro and macro levels.
Fueled by desire: Sexual activation facilitates the enactment of relationship-initiating behaviors

Sexual desire has long been theorized to serve a relationship-initiation function by bringing partners together. Four studies addressed this possibility, examining whether activation of the sexual system encouraged the enactment of nonsexual behaviors that signal warmth and contact readiness. In Study 1, participants mimed together with an opposite-sex confederate to prerecorded music. Participant’s desire for the confederate was associated with coded immediacy behaviors toward the confederate (e.g., proximity seeking, synchronization). Study 2 extended these findings, showing that participants, who slow danced with a confederate perceived to be more desirable, were more synchronized with the confederate. Synchronization, in turn, was associated with greater interest in future interactions with the confederate. Studies 3 and 4 established a causal connection between sexual activation and engagement in relationship-promoting behaviors (provision of responsiveness and help, respectively). These findings suggest that intense desire, which attracts new partners to each other, elicits behaviors that support the attachment-bonding process.
s Happens : Relational Adaptation in Contracts , Firms , and Other Governance Structures

Economic performance depends crucially on how parties adapt to changing circumstances. We therefore study how the organization of economic activity can facilitate such adaptation. We focus on settings where spot transactions would produce inefficient adaptation, so we ask whether alternative governance structures (allocations of control) facilitate relational contracts that improve on spot adaptation. In a general model, we show that the optimal governance structure for implementing a given relational contract minimizes the maximum aggregate reneging temptation created by that relational contract. In specific settings, we solve for the optimal relational contract (and hence governance structure), including in a setting where adaptation can be achieved by formal contract but at a cost. Our models explore why and how parties use formal governance structures to support self-enforcing relationships. We study this issue principally in contracts between firms, but the model also sheds light on “forebearance” within firms and relational contracting in “hybrid” governance structures.
Risk Factors for the Progression of Coronary Artery Calcification in Asymptomatic Subjects: Results From the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA)

Background— The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) provides an opportunity to study the association of traditional cardiovascular risk factors with the incidence and progression of coronary artery calcium (CAC) in a large community-based cohort with no evidence of clinical cardiovascular disease. Methods and Results— Follow-up CAC measurements were available for 5756 participants with an average of 2.4 years between scans. The incidence of newly detectable CAC averaged 6.6% per year. Incidence increased steadily across age, ranging from <5% annually in those <50 years of age to >12% in those >80 years of age. Median annual change in CAC for those with existing calcification at baseline was 14 Agatston units for women and 21 Agatston units for men. Most traditional cardiovascular risk factors were associated with both the risk of developing new incident coronary calcium and increases in existing calcification. These included age, male gender, white race/ethnicity, hypertension, body mass index, diabetes mellitus, glucose, and family history of heart attack. Factors also existed that were related only to incident CAC risk, such as low- and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and creatinine. Diabetes mellitus had the strongest association with CAC progression for blacks and the weakest for Hispanics, with intermediate associations for whites and Chinese. Conclusions— This is the first large multiethnic study reporting on the incidence and progression of CAC. Standard coronary risk factors were generally related to both CAC incidence and progression. Whites had more incident CAC and CAC progression than the other 3 racial/ethnic groups. Except for diabetes mellitus, risk factor relationships were similar across racial/ethnic groups.
Challenges of Computational Processing of Code-Switching

This paper addresses challenges of Natural Language Processing (NLP) on non-canonical multilingual data in which two or more languages are mixed. It refers to code-switching which has become more popular in our daily life and therefore obtains an increasing amount of attention from the research community. We report our experience that cov- ers not only core NLP tasks such as normalisation, language identification, language modelling, part-of-speech tagging and dependency parsing but also more downstream ones such as machine translation and automatic speech recognition. We highlight and discuss the key problems for each of the tasks with supporting examples from different language pairs and relevant previous work.
A constraint-based presentation and generalization of rows

We study the combination of possibly conditional nonstructural subtyping constraints with rows. We give a new presentation of rows, where row terms disappear; instead, we annotate constraints with filters. We argue that, in the presence of subtyping, this approach is simpler and more general. In the case where filters are finite or cofinite sets of row labels, we give a constraint solving algorithm whose complexity is O(n/sup 3/m log m), where n is the size of the constraint and m is the number of row labels that appear in it. We point out that this allows efficient type inference for record concatenation. Furthermore, by varying the nature of filters, we obtain several natural generalizations of rows.
BL Lac Contribution to the Extragalactic Gamma-Ray Background

Very high energy gamma‐rays (Eγ > 20 GeV) from blazars traversing cosmological distances through the metagalactic radiation field can convert to electron‐positron pairs in photon‐photon collisions. The converted gamma rays initiate electromagnetic cascades driven by inverse‐Compton scattering off the microwave background photons. The cascades shift the injected gamma ray spectrum to MeV‐GeV energies. Randomly oriented magnetic fields rapidly isotropize the secondary electron‐positron beams resulting from the beamed blazar gamma ray emission, leading to faint gamma‐ray halos. Using a model for the time‐dependent metagalactic radiation field consistent with all currently available far‐infared‐to‐optical data, we compute (i) the expected gamma‐ray attenuation in blazar spectra, and (ii) the cascade contribution from faint, unresolved blazar to the extragalactic gamma‐ray background as measured by EGRET, assuming a generic emitted spectrum extending to an energy of 10 TeV. The latter cascade contribution to t.
Comparison of neural networks for solving the travelling salesman problem

The TSP deals with finding a shortest path through a number of cities. This seemingly simple problem is hard to solve because of the amount of possible solutions. Which is why methods that give a good suboptimal solution in a reasonable time are generally used. In this paper three methods were compared with respect to quality of solution and ease of finding correct parameters: the Integer Linear Programming method, the Hopfield Neural Network, and the Kohonen Self Organizing Feature Map Neural Network.
Information vs. knowledge: the role of intranets in knowledge management

Knowledge has widely been acknowledged as one of the most important factors for corporate competitiveness, and we have witnessed an explosion of IS/IT solutions claiming to provide support for knowledge management (KM). A relevant question to ask, though, is how systems and technology intended for information such as the intranet can be able to assist in the managing of knowledge. To understand this, we must examine the relationship between information and knowledge. Building on Polanyi's theories, the author argues that all knowledge is tacit, and what can be articulated and made tangible outside the human mind is merely information. However, information and knowledge affect one another. By adopting a multi perspective of the intranet where information, awareness, and communication are all considered, this interaction can best be supported and the intranet can become a useful and people-inclusive KM environment.
TQM implementation: An investigation of Critical Success Factors

Successful implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM) brings many benefits into the organization. However, in practice many enterprises fail to adopt and implement TQM. Therefore, there is need for a deeper and more systematic assessment of the factors affect on TQM implementation. With this background, this paper attempts to identify and analyze the TQM Critical Success Factors (CSFs) in Iranian context. Thus, a DEMATEL method is applied. The findings indicate that four factors, namely "top management commitment", "strategic quality planning", "process management" and "training" are driver factors and need serious attention.
Phenomenological theory to model leakage currents in metal–insulator–metal capacitor systems

A phenomenological model intended to provide a description of leakage behavior in metal–insulator–metal (MIM) capacitor devices is presented. The model is able to predict both transient and steady state leakage currents under constant voltage bias conditions (the J–t characteristics), as well as J–V characteristics for a given voltage sweep schedule. The electronic transport processes currently implemented in the model include trap assisted tunneling (TAT) of electrons from the electrode to defect or trap states in the dielectric, modified Poole–Frenkel (MPF) emission of part of the trapped electrons to the conduction band of the dielectric, and Schottky emission of Fermi level electrons directly from the electrode to the conduction band of the dielectric. The model is able to predict many of the observed features, including characteristic slopes in J–t and J–V plots, and dependences of the leakage current on dielectric thickness, temperature and the Schottky barrier height. (© 2003 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
Reduced T Regulatory Cell Response during Acute Plasmodium falciparum Infection in Malian Children Co-Infected with Schistosoma haematobium

Background Regulatory T cells (Tregs) suppress host immune responses and participate in immune homeostasis. In co-infection, secondary parasite infections may disrupt the immunologic responses induced by a pre-existing parasitic infection. We previously demonstrated that schistosomiasis-positive (SP) Malian children, aged 4–8 years, are protected against the acquisition of malaria compared to matched schistosomiasis-negative (SN) children. Methods and Findings To determine if Tregs contribute to this protection, we performed immunologic and Treg depletion in vitro studies using PBMC acquired from children with and without S. haematobium infection followed longitudinally for the acquisition of malaria. Levels of Tregs were lower in children with dual infections compared to children with malaria alone (0.49 versus 1.37%, respectively, P = 0.004) but were similar months later, during a period with negligible malaria transmission. The increased levels of Tregs in SN subjects were associated with suppressed serum Th1 cytokine levels, as well as elevated parasitemia compared to co-infected counterparts. Conclusions These results suggest that lower levels of Tregs in helminth-infected children correlate with altered circulating cytokine and parasitologic results which may play a partial role in mediating protection against falciparum malaria.