Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Understanding Household Water Demand for Metro Cebu

Due to the rapid population growth in cities and the rising cost of developing new sources of water supply, Metro Cebu has experienced an increasing demand and supply gap. This has been exacerbated by the current drought and the pollution on bodies of water surrounding the city. Efficient water utilization entails the adoption of an optimal pricing framework to mitigate the externalities imposed by production and consumption of water. This study examines the nature and determinants of water demand in the Metro Cebu households. Estimates show that optimal pricing strategy can be an effective means of addressing the scarcity of freshwater supply. The relatively high water prices reflect the cost of distribution and monopoly profits, both of which can be reduced through expanding and making accessible the central distribution system.
A techno-economic approach to telecommunications: the case of service migration

The evolution of telecommunications technology has always challenged the industry to cope with the rapid pace of innovation and demand. The actual panorama offers a view of network operators constantly pushed to minimize their expenses while keeping profitability. Due to that, a keen interest on applying business intelligence methods has appeared an approach that encompasses the particularities of technology, thus named techno-economic analysis. Based on this framework, this work proposes a novel approach to modeling and studying a particular process, the service migration between platforms. The need for migration of telecommunication platforms stems from the constant technological progress and has become a focus of savings and new business opportunities. The proposed service migration model uses the hill climbing solution to find the best scenario for a given number of involved employees. The paper presents a collection of case studies, which cover the most important aspects of the migration process and suggest how network operators can increase their benefits. Additionally, the network dismantling the very end of a network lifecycle is also analyzed and simulated. Our approach aims at a deeper look into the operation of a telecommunications company, identifies the main cost drivers and extracts recommendations to an improved network management.
Locational Pricing to Mitigate Voltage Problems Caused by High PV Penetration

In this paper, a locational marginal pricing algorithm is proposed to control the voltage in unbalanced distribution grids. The increasing amount of photovoltaic (PV) generation installed in the grid may cause the voltage to rise to unacceptable levels during periods of low consumption. With locational prices, the distribution system operator can steer the reactive power consumption and active power curtailment of PV panels to guarantee a safe network operation. Flexible loads also respond to these prices. A distributed gradient algorithm automatically defines the locational prices that avoid voltage problems. Using these locational prices results in a minimum cost for the distribution operator to control the voltage. Locational prices can differ between the three phases in unbalanced grids. This is caused by a higher consumption or production in one of the phases compared to the other phases and provides the opportunity for arbitrage, where power is transferred from a phase with a low price to a phase with a high price. The effect of arbitrage is analyzed. The proposed algorithm is applied to an existing three-phase four-wire radial grid. Several simulations with realistic data are performed.
Long-Horizon Regressions: Theoretical Results and Applications to the Expected Returns/Dividend Yields and Fisher Effect Relations

We analyze several ways of conducting long-horizon regressions, taken from the empirical literature. Asymptotic arguments are used to show that, in all cases, the t-statistics do not converge to well-defined distributions, thus explaining the tendency of long-horizon regressions to find ‘significant” results, where previous short-term approaches have failed. Moreover, in some cases, the ordinary least squares estimator is not consistent, and the R^2 cannot be interpreted as a measure of the goodness of fit. Those results cast doubt on the conclusions reached by most previous long-horizon regression studies. We propose a rescaled t-statistic, whose asymptotic distribution is easy to simulate, and re-visit some of the evidence on the long-horizon predictability of returns and the long-horizon tests of the Fisher Effect.
A Dynamic Principal-Agent Model with Hidden Information: Sequential Optimality Through Truthful State Revelation

The principal-agent paradigm has been extensively studied in economics and attracted attention in operations research. A dynamic principal-agent model with an underlying Markov decision process (MDP) is especially useful in operations research because MDP is one of the most mature modeling tools in this field. In this model, the principal delegates the control of the system to the agent and the agent has access to private information, either of the state of the system or of the agent's actions. These two cases correspond to the two types of the principal-agent models: the hidden information (adverse selection) models and the hidden action (moral hazard) models. While the literature on the hidden information models is vast, most of the existing results can be viewed as special cases of a more general model. However, the study of the general model is absent from the literature. This dissertation develops a theory to analyze a general dynamic principal-agent model with hidden information. The state of the system is unobserved by the principal while the actions are both observable and verifiable. The principal's problem is to design a compensation mechanism for the agent that utilizes public verifiable history and that maximizes the principal's objective. It can be shown that there exists an optimal compensation mechanism in which the agent truthfully reports the underlying system state. Furthermore, this mechanism is sequentially efficient: there does not exist another mechanism that offers the agent the same utility as the original mechanism and improves the principal's utility in at least one state in one period. The second result implies that the principal can obtain an optimal mechanism by dynamic programming, based on the agent's expected future utility from each period. The solution of the dynamic programming recursion can be formulated as a sequence of multi-stage optimization problems with constraints that capture the truth-telling requirement. There are many interesting managerial problems where state variables are private information as in this model. Therefore, the model analyzed in this dissertation is not only of significant theoretical interest but can also shed light on significant real-world problems.
Constraints in sustainable smallholder rubber farming in the Moneragala district

This study was focused on the Moneragala district which is one of the districts in the Uva Province. Rubber cultivation, being a new initiative there is a high risk of resource wastage in these areas which necessitated a detail study for proper planning of this exercise. Hence, the objective of this study was to assess the existing status of rubber cultivation in this area together with socio-economic conditions of rubber farmers. A questionnaire survey was done to collect relevant information from 255, 248 and 143 respondents in the respective categories of farmers who are prepared to cultivate rubber (potential farmers) and those who own immature and mature rubber plantations. Participatory studies were also done to assess the awareness on technical recommendations of rubber. The technical efficiency of rubber farmers was studied employing a stochastic frontier approach. More than 50% of the farmers had only primary level education. Hence, education needs to be considered as a constraint in improving the awareness of rubber farmers. Higher percentage of farmers with a monthly income of less than Rs. 10,000 should also be regarded as a bottleneck for the adoption of recommended technologies. Awareness on recommendations in immature phase ranged from 19% to 55% which was not at a satisfactory level. The awareness on tapping related activities was also not adequate since the awareness scores for both general and technical knowledge on tapping were below 40%. The production efficiency levels of mature rubber lands ranged from 17% to 96%, with an average value of 59%. The lands with smaller extent have lower efficiency levels. Those who practice the recommended tapping intensity had high efficiency levels. The average efficiency observed in the virgin panel was 62% while it was 52% with the renewed panels. The average efficiency in the lands tapped by owners themselves was 61% while when tappers were hired it was only 55%.
Hashimoto's encephalopathy

We report a case of Hashimoto’s encephalopathy with atypical and partially reversible MRI findings. T2-weighted MRI images revealed bilaterally symmetric areas of increased signal in the mesial temporal lobes and basal ganglia. Despite clinical and imaging improvement after steroid therapy, some memory deficits and MRI abnormalities persisted.
The Good, the Bad, and the Tiny: A Simple, Mechanistic-Probabilistic Model of Virus-Nutrient Colimitation in Microbes

For phytoplankton and other microbes, nutrient receptors are often the passages through which viruses invade. This presents a bottom-up vs. top-down, co-limitation scenario; how do these would-be-hosts balance minimizing viral susceptibility with maximizing uptake of limiting nutrient(s)? This question has been addressed in the biological literature on evolutionary timescales for populations, but a shorter timescale, mechanistic perspective is lacking, and marine viral literature suggests the strong influence of additional factors, e.g. host size; while the literature on both nutrient uptake and host-virus interactions is expansive, their intersection, of ubiquitous relevance to marine environments, is understudied. I present a simple, mechanistic model from first principles to analyze the effect of this co-limitation scenario on individual growth, which suggests that in environments with high risk of viral invasion or spatial/temporal heterogeneity, an individual host’s growth rate may be optimized with respect to receptor coverage, producing top-down selective pressure on short timescales. The model has general applicability, is suggestive of hypotheses for empirical exploration, and can be extended to theoretical studies of more complex behaviors and systems.
Exploiting Comparable Corpora with TER and TERp

In this paper we present an extension of a successful simple and effective method for extracting parallel sentences from comparable corpora and we apply it to an Arabic/English NIST system. We experiment with a new TERp filter, along with WER and TER filters. We also report a comparison of our approach with that of (Munteanu and Marcu, 2005) using exactly the same corpora and show performance gain by using much lesser data. Our approach employs an SMT system built from small amounts of parallel texts to translate the source side of the non-parallel corpus. The target side texts are used, along with other corpora, in the language model of this SMT system. We then use information retrieval techniques and simple filters to create parallel data from a comparable news corpora. We evaluate the quality of the extracted data by showing that it significantly improves the performance of an SMT systems.
Suppress to Forget: The Effect of a Mindfulness-Based Strategy during an Emotional Item-Directed Forgetting Paradigm

Forgetting is a common phenomenon in everyday life. Although it often has negative connotations, forgetting is an important adaptive mechanism to avoid loading the memory storage with irrelevant information. A very important aspect of forgetting is its interaction with emotion. Affective events are often granted special and priority treatment over neutral ones with regards to memory storage. As a consequence, emotional information is more resistant to extinction than neutral information. It has been suggested that intentional forgetting serves as a mechanism to cope with unwanted or disruptive emotional memories and the main goal of this study was to assess forgetting of emotional auditory material using the item-method directed forgetting (DF) paradigm using a forgetting strategy based on mindfulness as a means to enhance DF. Contrary to our prediction, the mindfulness-based strategy not only did not improve DF but reduced it for neutral material. These results suggest that an interaction between processes such as response inhibition and attention is required for intentional forgetting to succeed.
In vivo and in vitro development of somatostatin-like-immunoreactivity in the peripheral nervous system of quail embryos

The appearance and development of somatostatin-like immunoreactivity (SLI) in the peripheral nervous system of quail embryos were studied using radioimmunoanalysis and immunocytochemistry. In vivo, no SLI is observed in neural crest cells before or during migration. SLI appears between days 3 and 4 of incubation in sympathetic ganglia, immediately following ganglion formation, and between days 4 and 5 of incubation in the adrenal gland, soon after the adrenal gland primordium first appears. The development of SLI in the adrenal gland differs from that in the sympathetic ganglia. While in the former the amount of SLI and the number of SLI-containing cells increase as the embryo ages, in the sympathetic ganglia the amount of SLI and the percentage of SLI- containing cells decrease. When migrating neural crest cells are obtained from the sclerotomal part of 3-day embryos and grown in culture, they first display SLI after 48 hr, and the amount of SLI increases thereafter. When the sympathoadrenal precursors are removed at 4 days of incubation and grown in vitro, SLI appears after 24 hr in culture and increases during the next few days. Our results demonstrate that SLI is present very early in the quail embryo and that its appearance parallels the differentiation of neural crest cells into autonomic sympathetic ganglionic cells. We also show that the differentiation of neural crest into SLI-containing cells can be reproduced in culture, thus permitting the study of peptide production and expression in vitro.
Share Price Reactions to Sporty Performances of Soccer Clubs listed on the London Stock Exchange and the AIM

This paper investigates whether or not the share prices of soccer clubs listed on the London Stock Exchange and the Alternative Investment Market are influenced by the soccer teams' weekly sporty performances. Event studies corrected for thin trading and with Baysian updating reveal that at the first day of trading after a game, positive abnormal returns almost 1% were realised expected following a soccer victory. In contrast, defeats or draws are penalised, respectively, by negative abnormal returns of 1.4% and 0.6%. Cumulatively over the week, defeats and draws trigger abnormal losses of 2.5% and 1.7%. These findings are consistent across the English and Scottish, national Cup and European competitions. Much larger abnormal returns are generated subsequent to promotion and relegation games as the Premier League and European games guarantee substantially higher (future) income in terms of television broadcasting rights and sponsoring income. Whereas victories seem to be more rewarded by share price increases for those clubs listed on the LSE in comparison to those listed on the AIM, defeats lead to larger price reductions for AIM listed clubs. In spite of the sporty performance sensitivity of listed soccer clubs and the excellent share price performance of certain clubs like Manchester United, Sunderland and Celtic, Jensen's alpha and the Sharpe ratio of an equally weighted investment in listed soccer clubs since 1996 points out that such an investment has substantially underperformed the market index.
Is Generation X the new Civic Generation? An exploratory analysis of social capital, environmental attitudes and behaviours in an Australian community

This study investigated generational differences and similarities in social capital, environmental attitudes and behaviours in an affluent Australian community, comparing the Civic Generation (60 years+) with the independent youth of today, the "Generation X-ers" (18-30 years). Interest in social capital, an indicator of community wellbeing succinctly defined as social connectedness, has grown exponentially as researchers link social capital with the success of environmental and sustainable initiatives. Environmental researchers, struggling to encourage individuals and communities to adopt environmentally sustainable behaviours, believe that by fostering social capital, people will be encouraged to act at a community level to preserve the natural environment. Unfortunately, social capital has steadily declined as the Civic Generation has been replaced by generations less involved in the community, creating communities of isolated residents. This study is the first to explicitly test these assumptions, comparing social capital, environmental attitudes and everyday water-usage reported by the youngest and oldest Australian citizens. Unexpectedly, Generation X-ers reported the highest level of social capital, with both generations displaying reasonably high levels of environmentally friendly attitudes and behaviours. The implications and limitations of these unexpected findings are discussed in detail, with the results suggesting that the resurgence of social capital in our research, led by the Generation X-ers, bodes well for both the natural environment and the community.
CUCS: A Web Page Classification Algorithm for Large Training Set

This paper presents a new algorithm of Web page classification, CUCS(Combined UC and SVM), for large training set. CUCS combines the advantages of SVM (Support Vector Machine) and UC (Unsupervised Clustering), achieving high precision and fast speed. In the training stage, CUCS gets clustering centers, which include positive example centers and negative ones, by means of UC. Then CUCS prunes training set to produce classifier by SVM. In the classifying stage, the minimum distance from a Web page to the positive centers, as well as to the negative centers, is calculated. If the difference between the two distances is large enough, the Web page will be classified by UC. Otherwise, the Web page will be classified by pruned SVM. Through experiments, CUCS manifests precision that is much higher than UC and a little higher than SVM. As to time consumed, CUCS costs more time than UC and far less than SVM.
Unhealthy Retirement?

We investigate the causal effect of retirement on health and cognitive abilities by exploiting the panel dimension of the first two waves of the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and the variation between and within European countries in old age retirement rules. We show evidence of substantial heterogeneity in the effect of retirement across occupational groups. In particular, we find that retirement increases the age-related decline of health and cognitive abilities for most workers. On the other hand, we find evidence of a positive immediate effect of retirement for those employed in jobs characterized by a high level of physical burden.
Court-Ordered Desegregation

This paper uses a new methodology to assess the effects of court-ordered desegregation plans on segregation and white enrollment. I then assess what characteristics of districts are predictive of having more or less white flight when desegregation plans are implemented. I exploit the wide variation in the timing of implementation of desegregation plans to identify their effects. I find strong evidence that segregation fell when districts implemented desegregation plans; plans were also associated with significant white enrollment losses that offset about one-third of the within-district reductions in segregation. White flight was particularly severe in districts with more public school districts in the same metropolitan area.
On the Co-orbital Corotation Torque in a Viscous Disk and Its Impact on Planetary Migration

We evaluate the co-orbital corotation torque on a planet on a fixed circular orbit embedded in a viscous protoplanetary disk for the case of a steady flow in the planet frame. This torque can be evaluated just from the flow properties at the separatrix between the librating (horseshoe) and circulating streamlines. A stationary solution is searched for the flow in the librating region. When used to evaluate the torque exerted by the circulating material of the outer and inner disk on the trapped material of the librating region, this solution leads to an expression of the co-orbital corotation torque in agreement with previous estimates. An analytical expression is given for the corotation torque as a function of viscosity. Last, we show that additional terms in the torque expression can play a crucial role. In particular, they introduce a coupling with the disk density profile perturbation (the "dip" that surrounds the planet) and add to the corotation torque a small, positive fraction of the one-sided Lindblad torque. As a consequence, the migration could well be directed outward in very thin disks (aspect ratio smaller than a few percent). This two-dimensional analysis is especially relevant for mildly embedded protoplanets (sub-Saturn-sized objects).
Retrieving risk neutral moments and expected quadratic variation from option prices

This paper derives exact formulas for retrieving risk neutral moments of future payoffs of any order from generic European-style option prices. It also provides an exact formula for retrieving the expected quadratic variation of the stock market implied by European option prices, which nowadays is used as an estimate of the implied volatility, and a formula approximating the jump component of this measure of variation. To implement the above formulas to discrete sets of option prices, the paper suggests a numerical procedure and provides upper bounds of its approximation errors. The performance of this procedure is evaluated through a simulation and an empirical exercise. Both of these exercises clearly indicate that the suggested numerical procedure can provide accurate estimates of the risk neutral moments, over different horizons ahead. These can be in turn employed to obtain accurate estimates of risk neutral densities and calculate option prices, efficiently, in a model-free manner. The paper also shows that, in contrast to the prevailing view, ignoring the jump component of the underlying asset can lead to seriously biased estimates of the new volatility index suggested by the Chicago Board Options Exchange.
A Review of Factors Predicting Outcome of Pneumatic Dilation in Patients With Achalasia Cardia

Pneumatic dilation (PD) is an effective treatment for achalasia cardia. Outcome of PD, however, varies among different studies. Recently, some groups started considering laparoscopic myotomy to be competitive to PD in treatment of achalasia considering dreaded complication like perforation following the latter therapeutic approach. Therefore, there is need to predict outcome of PD for achalasia, so that appropriate therapy, both for treatment naïve and for treatment failed patients can be chosen. Apart from age and gender, 2 investigations, namely post-PD manometry and timed barium esophagogram are most often used to predict outcome after PD. Even though there are studies available in the literature with regard to these modalities to predict outcome of PD, these are quite few in number, including small number of patients, primarily because of rarity of the disease. In this article, we review the literature predicting outcome of PD for achalasia.