Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Product Innovation and the Complementarities of External Interfaces

This paper investigates the relationship between new product introduction, and three constructs (search, collaboration and external R&D) developed to capture the different means by which firms link internal R&D to external inputs. By including interaction effects and applying detailed marginal effects analysis, it sheds new light on a research question, which has generated much empirical ambiguity. Search diversity and collaboration diversity measure the extent to which different types of information sources and collaboration partners are used. Both affect innovation performance positively, and are complementary to each other. External R&D measures the relative importance of contract R&D, and is found to have a conditional negative impact which is reduced by search and reinforced when combined with collaboration. When including interaction effects involving the overall R&D intensity of firms, our findings suggest the existence of two competing ideal types of open innovation strategy and organization.
Optimization and convergence of observation channels in stochastic control

This paper studies the optimization of observation channels (stochastic kernels) in partially observed stochastic control problems. In particular, existence, continuity, and convexity properties are investigated. Continuity properties of the optimal cost in channels are explored under total variation, setwise convergence and weak convergence. Sufficient conditions for sequential compactness under total variation and setwise convergence are presented. It is shown that the optimization is concave in observation channels. This implies that the optimization problem is non-convex in quantization/coding policies for a class of networked control problems. Furthermore, the paper explains why a class of decentralized control problems, under the non-classical information structure, is non-convex when signaling is present.
Normativity in Language and Law

This chapter develops an account of the meaning and use of various types of legal claims, and uses this account to inform debates about the nature and normativity of law. The account draws on a general framework for implementing a contextualist theory, called Discourse Contextualism (Silk 2015a, 2016, 2017). The aim of Discourse Contextualism is to derive the apparent normativity of claims of law from a particular contextualist interpretation of a standard semantics for modals, along with general principles of interpretation and conversation. Though the semantics is descriptivist, it avoids Dworkin’s influential criticism of so-called “semantic theories of law,” and elucidates the nature of “theoretical disagreements” about the criteria of legal validity. The account sheds light on the social, interpersonal function of normative uses of language in legal discourse. It also gives precise expression to Hart’s and Raz’s intuitive distinctions among types of legal claims (internal/external, committed/detached). The proposed semantics and pragmatics of legal claims provides a fruitful framework for further theorizing about the nature and metaphysics of law, the relation between law and morality, and the apparent practical character of legal language and judgment. Discourse Contextualism provides a solid linguistic basis for a broader account of legal discourse and practice.
Inference of Splicing Regulatory Activities by Sequence Neighborhood Analysis

Sequence-specific recognition of nucleic-acid motifs is critical to many cellular processes. We have developed a new and general method called Neighborhood Inference (NI) that predicts sequences with activity in regulating a biochemical process based on the local density of known sites in sequence space. Applied to the problem of RNA splicing regulation, NI was used to predict hundreds of new exonic splicing enhancer (ESE) and silencer (ESS) hexanucleotides from known human ESEs and ESSs. These predictions were supported by cross-validation analysis, by analysis of published splicing regulatory activity data, by sequence-conservation analysis, and by measurement of the splicing regulatory activity of 24 novel predicted ESEs, ESSs, and neutral sequences using an in vivo splicing reporter assay. These results demonstrate the ability of NI to accurately predict splicing regulatory activity and show that the scope of exonic splicing regulatory elements is substantially larger than previously anticipated. Analysis of orthologous exons in four mammals showed that the NI score of ESEs, a measure of function, is much more highly conserved above background than ESE primary sequence. This observation indicates a high degree of selection for ESE activity in mammalian exons, with surprisingly frequent interchangeability between ESE sequences.
Angiogenesis-Related Pathways in the Pathogenesis of Ovarian Cancer

Ovarian Cancer represents the most fatal type of gynecological malignancies. A number of processes are involved in the pathogenesis of ovarian cancer, especially within the tumor microenvironment. Angiogenesis represents a hallmark phenomenon in cancer, and it is responsible for tumor spread and metastasis in ovarian cancer, among other tumor types, as it leads to new blood vessel formation. In recent years angiogenesis has been given considerable attention in order to identify targets for developing effective anti-tumor therapies. Growth factors have been identified to play key roles in driving angiogenesis and, thus, the formation of new blood vessels that assist in “feeding” cancer. Such molecules include the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), the platelet derived growth factor (PDGF), the fibroblast growth factor (FGF), and the angiopoietin/Tie2 receptor complex. These proteins are key players in complex molecular pathways within the tumor cell and they have been in the spotlight of the development of anti-angiogenic molecules that may act as stand-alone therapeutics, or in concert with standard treatment regimes such as chemotherapy. The pathways involved in angiogenesis and molecules that have been developed in order to combat angiogenesis are described in this paper.
Calabi-Yau components in general type hypersurfaces

For a one-parameter family of general type hypersurfaces with bases of holomorphic n-forms, we construct open covers using tropical geometry. We show that after normalization, each holomorphic n-form is approximately supported on a unique open component and such a pair approximates a Calabi-Yau hypersurface together with its holomorphic n-form as the parameter becomes large. We also show that the Lagrangian fibers in the fibration constructed by Mikhalkin are asymptotically special Lagrangian. As the holomorphic n-form plays an important role in mirror symmetry for Calabi-Yau manifolds, our results is a step toward understanding mirror symmetry for general type manifolds.
The effect of peatland drainage and rewetting (ditch blocking) on extracellular enzyme activities and water chemistry

Extensive areas of European peatlands have been drained by digging ditches in an attempt to improve the land, resulting in increased carbon dioxide fluxes to the atmosphere and enhanced fluvial dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations. Numerous peatland restoration projects have been initiated which aim to raise water tables by ditch blocking, thus reversing drainage‐induced carbon losses. It has been suggested that extracellular hydrolase and phenol oxidase enzymes are partly responsible for controlling peatland carbon dynamics and that these enzymes are affected by environmental change. The aim of this study was to investigate how drainage and ditch blocking affect enzyme activities and water chemistry in a Welsh blanket bog, and to study the relationship between enzyme activity and water chemistry. A comparison of a drained and undrained site showed that the drained site had higher phenol oxidase and hydrolase activities, and lower concentrations of phenolic compounds which inhibit hydrolase enzymes. Ditch blocking had little impact upon enzyme activities; although hydrolase activities were lowered 4–9 months after restoration, the only significant difference was for arylsulphatase. Finally, we noted a negative correlation between β‐glucosidase activity and DOC concentrations, and a positive correlation between arylsulphatase activity and sulphate concentration. Phenol oxidase activity was negatively correlated with DOC concentrations in pore water, but for ditch water phenol oxidase correlated negatively with the ratio of phenolics to DOC. Our results imply that drainage could exacerbate gaseous and fluvial carbon losses and that peatland restoration may not reverse the effects, at least in the short term.
SMALL DIAMETER CUTANEOUS AFFERENT STIMULATION AND ITS EFFECT ON BEHAVIOR IN HUMANS

Sensation and behavior are linked dimensions in human lives. Experiencing a gentle caress from a loved one is very different than getting our hand burnt on a hot stove. However both those stimuli are signaled in small diameter cutaneous afferents and have an inherent affective valence that modulates our actions. Pain is transmitted by thinly myelinated A∂ fibers and unmyelinated C fibers, and affective touch is mediated by unmyelinated C-Tactile mechanoreceptors (CT). Both critical for survival, pain and pleasure sit on opposite ends, with pain serving avoidance and pleasure eliciting approach motivation. This thesis investigates the impact of painful and pleasant stimuli on our behavior and the brain mechanisms involved in these processes. Our research population includes healthy subjects and a group of carriers with a rare hereditary sensory and autonomic neuropathy type V (HSAN-V), causing a selective loss of small diameter afferents. In Paper I we addressed whether in healthy subjects part of the activation during pain can be accounted for motor processing, supporting the idea of a central multidimensionality of pain. Areas including the cingulate, motor cortex, thalamus and cerebellum serve a motoric role during pain. In Paper II we focused our attention on the perception and reaction to thermal pain in a group of HSAN-V patients. Using the same design as in Paper I, we addressed the effects of lower density of small diameter cutaneous fibers on the experience of pain. The patients showed difficulties in recognizing and reacting to pain suggesting that their peripheral fiber loss resulted in unreliable and less adaptive responses to acute pain. In Paper III we addressed the patients’ ability to appreciate affective touch, conveyed by CT fibers. The critical characteristic of CT fibers is their velocity dependent response pattern for stroking stimuli, with higher firing for intermediate speeds (~3 cm s) compared to very fast or very slow ones. This firing pattern matches linearly with the touch pleasantness ratings in healthy subjects. The patients did not show the same pleasantness ratings pattern across velocities suggesting an alternative route for affective touch processing. In Paper IV we investigated the relationship of CT fibers to the reward system in the brain by creating a feedback-based task in which healthy subjects could decide to receive the stimulation they preferred the most. CT optimal speeds were the most preferred and elicited activation in reward related areas like the caudate, insula and prefrontal cortex. In conclusion, this thesis provides an understanding of the cerebral and behavioral mechanisms underlying the experience of painful and pleasant somatosensory stimuli in healthy individuals and following thin fiber neuropathy.
Escolaridade e o diferencial de rendimentos entre o setor privado e o setor público no Brasil

We study the determinants of the public-private earnings gap for different levels of schooling of Brazilian workers. First, using the current earnings as the variable of interest, we estimate that less educated people receive higher earnings in the public sector (i.e., the earnings gap is favorable to the public sector). On the other hand, for workers with higher schooling, the earnings gap disappears or becomes favorable to the private sector. In addition, we consider the different retirement regimes in Brazil by creating the variable Present Value of Work Contract (PVWC). This variable is a measure of the lifetime earnings for each individual in our database. In contrast to the results from the current earnings analysis, we found that the PVWC gap is favorable to the public sector even for the highest educated group of workers.
Compact correlation coding for visual object categorization

Spatial relationships between local features are thought to play a vital role in representing object categories. However, learning a compact set of higher-order spatial features based on visual words, e.g., doublets and triplets, remains a challenging problem as possible combinations of visual words grow exponentially. While the local pairwise codebook achieves a compact codebook of pairs of spatially close local features without feature selection, its formulation is not scale invariant and is only suitable for densely sampled local features. In contrast, the proximity distribution kernel is a scale-invariant and robust representation capturing rich spatial proximity information between local features, but its representation grows quadratically in the number of visual words. Inspired by the two abovementioned techniques, this paper presents the compact correlation coding that combines the strengths of the two. Our method achieves a compact representation that is scaleinvariant and robust against object deformation. In addition, we adopt sparse coding instead of k-means clustering during the codebook construction to increase the discriminative power of our method. We systematically evaluate our method against both the local pairwise codebook and proximity distribution kernel on several challenging object categorization datasets to show performance improvements.
War, Peace, and Integrative Complexity

UN General Assembly speeches concerning the Middle East conflict made by representatives of Israel, Arab countries (Egypt and Syria), the USA, and the USSR were scored for integrative complexity. Speeches were sampled from twenty years between 1947 and 1976. Complexity of information-processing was significantly reduced in speeches made in months preceding the outbreak of war (1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973), except in the case of the USSR. Israel, which with the United States exhibited the highest levels of complexity during peacetime, showed the greatest reductions prior to war. The low level of complexity characteristic of Israeli and Arab speeches during 1976 may reflect the escalation of the Lebanese civil war or may be a predictor of a major outbreak of hostilities in the near future.
Hétérogénéité des croyances et équilibre des marchés financiers

In this thesis, we propose to test a new behavioral explanation of the equity premium puzzle. This work is based on the heterogeneous beliefs model of Jouini and Napp (2007) according to which, pessimism of investors at the aggregate level leads to very important risk premiums. In this model, agents’ pessimism refers to an underestimation of the average rate of return of assets: while pessimistic agents require a market price of risk identical to the standard agent one, they overestimate the risk associated with assets and the resulting equity premium is therefore increased. There is no need, in this setting, for all investors to be pessimistic. Pessimism at the aggregate level is sufficient in order to ensure an increase in the equity premium. Even if the average belief is neutral, it’s possible to have pessimism at the aggregate level through a positive correlation between optimism and risk aversion. Based on this conclusion, we identify the conditions under which the excess returns of securities are consistent with agents’ pessimism. Our aim is to investigate if there is a positive correlation between optimism and risk aversion through a survey and laboratory experiments.
Carbohydrate Polymers

Bacterial cellulose/polyaniline (BC/PANi) blends present a great potential for several applications. The current study evaluates the impact of using different BC matrixes (drained, freeze-dried and regenerated) and different synthesis conditions (in situ and ex situ) to improve the inherent properties of BC, which were monitored through FTIR-ATR, EDX, XRD, SEM, AFM, swelling, contact angle measurement and IGC. The employment of in situ polymerization onto drained BC presented the most conductive membrane (1.4×10 S/cm). The crystallinity, swelling capacity, surface energy and acid/base behavior of the BC membranes is substantially modified upon PANi incorporation, being dependent on the BC matrix used, being the freeze-dried BC blends the ones with highest crystallinity (up to 54%), swelling capacity (up to 414%) and surface energy (up to 75.0 mJ/m). Hence, this work evidenced that the final properties of the BC/PANi blends are greatly influenced by both the BC matrixes and synthesis methods employed.
The Behavior of the Aromatic Features in M101 H II Regions: Evidence for Dust Processing

The aromatic features in M101 were studied spectroscopically and photometrically using observations from all three instruments on the Spitzer Space Telescope. The global SED of M101 shows strong aromatic feature (commonly called PAH feature) emission. The spatially resolved spectral and photometric measurements of the aromatic feature emission show strong variations with significantly weaker emission at larger radii. We compare these variations with changes in the ionization index (as measured by [Ne III]/[Ne II] and [S IV/S III], which range from 0.03 to 20 and 0.044 to 15, respectively) and metallicity [expressed as log (O/H) + 12, which ranges from 8.1 to 8.8]. Over these ranges, the spectroscopic equivalent widths of the aromatic features from seven H II regions and the nucleus were found to correlate better with ionization index than metallicity. This implies that the weakening of the aromatic emission in massive star-forming regions is due primarily to processing of the dust grains in these environments, not to differences in how they form. The behavior of the aromatic feature versus ionization index correlation can be described as a constant equivalent width until a threshold in ionization index is reached ([Ne III]/[Ne II] ∼ 1), above which the equivalent widths decrease with a power-law dependence. This behavior is also seen for the starburst galaxy sample presented in the companion study by Engelbracht and coworkers, which expands the range of [Ne III]/[Ne II] ratios to 0.03-25 and log (O/H) + 12 values to 7.1-8.8. The form of the correlation explains seemingly contradictory results present in the literature. The behavior of the ratios of different aromatic features versus ionization index does not follow the predictions of existing PAH models of the aromatic features, implying a more complex origin of the aromatic emission in massive star-forming regions.
Risk Factors for Neonatal Sepsis in Public Hospitals of Mekelle City, North Ethiopia, 2015: Unmatched Case Control Study

Objectives Neonatal sepsis is a leading cause of neonatal morbidity and mortality, particularly in the developing countries. Delays in the identification and treatment of neonatal sepsis are among the main contributors to the high mortality. The aim of this study was to determine the risk factors of neonatal sepsis in public hospitals of Mekelle City, Tigray Region, North Ethiopia, 2015. Methods A hospital based case control study was done in public hospitals of Mekelle City, Tigray region. Cases were neonates who had sepsis with their index mothers and controls were neonates who hadn’t had sepsis with their index mothers. Hematologic findings were used to diagnose sepsis once the neonates were being clinically suspected. Cases and controls were selected using the systematic sampling technique. Data were entered using Epi info version 7 and then analyzed using SPSS window 20. The binary logistic regression model was used to test the association between dependent and independent variables and multivariable logistic regression was used to identify the associated risk factors to neonatal sepsis. Findings A total of 78 cases and 156 controls were included in this study. More than three quarters (76.8%) of cases had early onset sepsis. The multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that the possible risk factors of neonatal sepsis in this study were; history of maternal urinary tract infection or sexually transmitted infection [AOR = 5. 23; 95% CI (1.82, 15.04)], prolonged rupture of membrane [AOR = 7. 43; 95% CI (2.04, 27.1)], Place of delivery; health center delivery [AOR = 5. 7; 95% CI (1.71, 19.03)], intrapartum fever [AOR = 6. 1 95% CI (1.29, 28.31)], APGAR score <7 at 5th minute [AOR = 68. 9; 95% CI (3.63, 1308)] and not crying immediately at birth [AOR = 124. 0; 95% CI (6.5, 2379)]. Conclusion Both maternal and neonatal factors had contributed to the risk of neonatal sepsis. Strengthening of the existing risk based prevention strategies as well as improvement of institutional delivery practices are crucial.
Determining the Independent Risk Factors and Mortality Rate of Nosocomial Infections in Pediatric Patients

The objective of this study was to determine the rate, independent risk factors, and outcomes of healthcare-associated infections in pediatric patients. This study was performed between 2011 and 2014 in pediatric clinic and intensive care unit. 86 patients and 86 control subjects were included in the study. Of 86 patients with nosocomial infections (NIs), there were 100 NIs episodes and 90 culture growths. The median age was 32.0 months. The median duration of hospital stay of the patients was 30.0 days. The most frequent pathogens were Coagulase-negative Staphylococcus, Acinetobacter spp. , Klebsiella spp. , and Candida spp. Unconsciousness, prolonged hospitalization, transfusion, mechanical ventilation, use of central venous catheter, enteral feeding via a nasogastric tube, urinary catheter, and receiving carbapenems and glycopeptides were found to be significantly higher in NIs patients. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed prolonged hospitalization, neutropenia, and use of central venous catheter and carbapenems as the independent risk factors for NIs. In the univariate analysis, unconsciousness, mechanical ventilation, enteral feeding, use of enteral feeding via a nasogastric tube, H2 receptor blockers, and port and urinary catheter were significantly associated with mortality. In the multiple logistic regression analysis, only mechanical ventilation was found as an independent predictor of mortality in patients with NIs.