Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of the Interaction Between Outdoor Air Pollution and Extreme Temperature on Daily Mortality in Shanghai, China

Background Both outdoor air pollution and extreme temperature have been associated with daily mortality; however, the effect of their interaction is not known. Methods This time-series analysis examined the effect of the interaction between outdoor air pollutants and extreme temperature on daily mortality in Shanghai, China. A generalized additive model (GAM) with penalized splines was used to analyze mortality, air pollution, temperature, and covariate data. The effects of air pollutants were stratified by temperature stratum to examine the interaction effect of air pollutants and extreme temperature. Results We found a statistically significant interaction between PM10/O3 and extreme low temperatures for both total nonaccidental and cause-specific mortality. On days with “normal” temperatures (15th–85th percentile), a 10-µg/m3 increment in PM10 corresponded to a 0.17% (95% CI: 0.03%, 0.32%) increase in total mortality, a 0.23% (0.02%, 0.44%) increase in cardiovascular mortality, and a 0.26% (−0.07%, 0.60%) increase in respiratory mortality. On low-temperature days (<15th percentile), the estimates changed to 0.40% (0.21%, 0.58%) for total mortality, 0.49% (0.13%, 0.86%) for cardiovascular mortality, and 0.24% (−0.33%, 0.82%) for respiratory mortality. The interaction pattern of O3 with lower temperature was similar. The interaction between PM10/O3 and lower temperature remained robust when alternative cut-points were used for temperature strata. Conclusions The acute health effects of air pollution might vary by temperature level.
Debt maturity, financial crisis and corporate performance in GCC countries: a dynamic-GMM approach

This study investigates the effect of debt financing and debt maturity on corporate performance, using evidence from Gulf Cooperation Council countries (GCC): Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. The study uses a dynamic GMM approach for an unbalanced sample of 400 firms for the period 2004-2012. The study also investigates the effects of the financial crisis on the significance of long-term and short-term debt financing as determinants of firms' performance. Our findings indicate that the long-term and short-term debt financing affect firms' performance negatively. The results also show that the economic importance of short-term debt increases as a determinant of firms' performance after crisis, while the effect of long-term debt decreases.
Predator efficiency reconsidered for a ladybird-aphid system

Some experiments indicate that ladybirds can significantly suppress aphid abundance. For example, exclusion of predators by caging aphid-infested plants repeatedly results in higher aphid populations and faster aphid population growth rates. However, aphidophagous ladybirds have never proved effective in controlling aphid populations in the field, which is consistent with the theoretical prediction that long-lived predators cannot be effective in controlling a short-lived prey (the generation time ratio hypothesis, GTR). To resolve this paradox, field experiments, involving two species of ladybirds, Coccinella septempunctata bruckii and Harmonia axyridis were used to determine their efficiency in suppressing populations of the aphid, Aphis gossypii, on small shrubs of Hibiscus syriacus under natural conditions. Instead of by caging, the effect of each ladybird species on aphid population dynamics was determined by removing all the eggs of C. septempunctata from 8 shrubs, those of H. axyridis from a further 8 shrubs, all those of both species from an additional 12 shrubs and leaving the eggs on 6 control shrubs. These predators did not have a negative effect on the peak numbers of the aphids. Thus one should be cautious when interpreting the results of cage experiments, used to assess the efficiency of predators in reducing the abundance of their prey.
Local solid-state modification of nanopore surface charges

Over the last decade, nanopores have emerged as a new and interesting tool for the study of biological macromolecules like proteins and DNA. While biological pores, especially alpha-haemolysin, have been promising for the detection of DNA, their poor chemical stability limits their use. For this reason, researchers are trying to mimic their behaviour using more stable, solid-state nanopores. The most successful tools to fabricate such nanopores use high energy electron or ions beams to drill or reshape holes in very thin membranes. While the resolution of these methods can be very good, they require tools that are not commonly available and tend to damage and charge the nanopore surface. In this work, we show nanopores that have been fabricated using standard micromachining techniques together with EBID, and present a simple model that is used to estimate the surface charge. The results show that EBID with a silicon oxide precursor can be used to tune the nanopore surface and that the surface charge is stable over a wide range of concentrations.
OSCAR: An Optimization Methodology Exploiting Spatial Correlation in Multicore Design Spaces

This paper presents OSCAR, an optimization methodology exploiting spatial correlation of multicore design spaces. This paper builds upon the observation that power consumption and performance metrics of spatially close design configurations (or points) are statistically correlated. We propose to exploit the correlation by using a response surface model (RSM), i.e., a closed-form expression suitable for predicting the quality of nonsimulated design points. This model is useful during the design space exploration (DSE) phase to quickly converge to the Pareto set of the multiobjective problem without executing lengthy simulations. To this end, we introduce a multiobjective optimization heuristic which iteratively updates and queries the RSM to identify the design points with the highest expected improvement. The RSM allows to consolidate the Pareto set by reducing the number of simulations required, thus speeding up the exploration process. We compare the proposed heuristic with state-of-the-art approaches [conventional, RSM-based, and structured design of experiments (DoEs)]. Experimental results show that OSCAR is a faster heuristic with respect to state-of-the-art techniques such as response-surface Pareto iterative refinement ReSPIR and nondominated-sorting genetic algorithm NSGA-II. In fact, OSCAR used a lower number of simulations to produce a similar solution, i.e., an average of 150 simulations instead of 320 simulations (NSGA-II) and 178 simulations (ReSPIR). When the number of design points is fixed to an average of 300, OSCAR achieves less than 0.6% in terms of average distance with respect to the reference solution while NSGA-II achieves 3.4%. Reported results also show that OSCAR can significantly improve structured DoE approaches by slightly increasing the number of experiments.
Fermions Coupled to Emergent Noncommutative Gravity

We study the coupling of fermions to Yang-Mills matrix models in the framework of emergent noncommutative gravity. It is shown that the matrix model action provides an appropriate coupling for fermions to gravity, albeit with a non-standard spin-connection. Integrating out the fermions in a nontrivial geometrical background induces indeed the Einstein-Hilbert action for on-shell geometries plus a dilaton-like term. This result explains UV/IR mixing as a gravity effect. It also illuminates why UV/IR mixing remains even in supersymmetric models, except in the N=4 case.
Determining the Influences of Macroeconomic Variables on Working Capital through Artificial Neural Network Modeling: The Case of Turkey

Finance and economics literature includes many attempts to determine the factors influential on working capital and working capital management. The present study aims to find out the relationships between working capital and macroeconomic variables. To this end, 11-year financial statement data of 128 companies traded at Borsa Istanbul from the 2003 to 2013 period were examined, and artificial neural network modeling was administered to the data obtained from these financial statements. The level of working capital, return on working capital, and cash conversion cycle were used as dependent variables and analyzed separately. Macroeconomic variables such as inflation, export index, import index, foreign exchange rate, interest rate, stock market index, gross domestic product, and gold prices were used as independent variables. The research findings show that there are relationships between working capital and macroeconomic variables; working capital is influenced by macroeconomic variables; the level of working capital is influenced most by export index and stock market index; return on working capital is influenced most by import index and stock market index; and cash conversion cycle, which represents working capital management, is influenced most by benchmark interest rate, gold prices, and foreign exchange rate.
Paradigm Depletion, Knowledge Production and Research Effort: Considering Thomas Kuhn's Ideas

This paper deals in a Stackelberg differential game with Kuhn (1962) ideas of paradigm depletion and resiliency. Paradigm is considered as potential knowledge, as a stock of ideas that can be harvested to produce science. The results are: (i) paradigm depletion can be optimal, (ii) the optimal editor's shadow price of potential knowledge must be non‐positive, if it is positive, the editor is a keeper of the orthodoxy rather than a scientist, (iii) editor's and/or researcher's impatience is bad for science, and (iv) in equilibrium editor's behavior does not matter for research effort, while only editor's behavior matter for the paradigm.
Friend-to-Friend Privacy Protection on Social Networking Sites: A Grounded Theory Study

Individual privacy settings allow members of Social Networking Sites (SNS) to share personal data with specifically selected contacts, such as close friends. This allows members to use SNS for sharing even more private data they would otherwise not want to share with all of their contacts. Although a considerable part of data sharing activities on SNS is limited to the direct contacts of its members, current research lacks insights on use and design of individual privacy settings. In this paper we investigate driving and inhibiting factors which explain the motivation of SNS members to use individual privacy settings. Thereby, we contribute a new facet to the general understanding of privacy protection behavior on SNS and also lay the ground for improving the design of individual privacy settings offered by SNS providers. We have drawn our results from a conducted grounded theory study based on 37 qualitative interviews with Facebook users.
Research on the Piezoelectric Properties of AlN Thin Films for MEMS Applications

In this paper, the piezoelectric coefficient d33 of AlN thin films for MEMS applications was studied by the piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) measurement and finite element method (FEM) simulation. Both the sample without a top electrode and another with a top electrode were measured by PFM to characterize the piezoelectric property effectively. To obtain the numerical solution, an equivalent model of the PFM measurement system was established based on theoretical analysis. The simulation results for two samples revealed the effective measurement value d33-test should be smaller than the intrinsic value d33 due to the clamping effect of the substrate and non-ideal electric field distribution. Their influences to the measurement results were studied systematically. By comparing the experimental results with the simulation results, an experimental model linking the actual piezoelectric coefficient d33 with the measurement results d33-test was given under this testing configuration. A novel and effective approach was presented to eliminate the influences of substrate clamping and non-ideal electric field distribution and extract the actual value d33 of AlN thin films.
Heuristics and Biases in Thinking About Tax

The principal findings of behavioral economics and cognitive psychology over the past several decades have been to show that human beings deviate from ideal precepts of rationality in many settings, showing inconsistent judgment in the face of framing and other formal manipulations of the presentation of problems. This paper summarizes the findings of original experiments about subjects' perceptions of various aspects of tax-law design. We show that in evaluating tax systems, subjects are vulnerable to a wide range of heuristics and biases, leading to inconsistent judgment and evaluation. The prevalence of these biases suggests that there is room for skillful politicians or facile political systems to manipulate public opinion, and that tax system design will reflect a certain volatility on account of the possibility of eliciting preference reversals through purely formal rhetorical means. More troubling, the findings suggest the possibility of a persistent wedge between observed and optimal public finance systems.
Plant Volatile Analogues Strengthen Attractiveness to Insect

Green leaf bug Apolygus lucorum (Meyer-Dür) is one of the major pests in agriculture. Management of A. lucorum was largely achieved by using pesticides. However, the increasing population of A. lucorum since growing Bt cotton widely and the increased awareness of ecoenvironment and agricultural product safety makes their population-control very challenging. Therefore this study was conducted to explore a novel ecological approach, synthetic plant volatile analogues, to manage the pest. Here, plant volatile analogues were first designed and synthesized by combining the bioactive components of β-ionone and benzaldehyde. The stabilities of β-ionone, benzaldehyde and analogue 3 g were tested. The electroantennogram (EAG) responses of A. lucorum adult antennae to the analogues were recorded. And the behavior assay and filed experiment were also conducted. In this study, thirteen analogues were acquired. The analogue 3 g was demonstrated to be more stable than β-ionone and benzaldehyde in the environment. Many of the analogues elicited EAG responses, and the EAG response values to 3 g remained unchanged during seven-day period. 3 g was also demonstrated to be attractive to A. lucorum adults in the laboratory behavior experiment and in the field. Its attractiveness persisted longer than β-ionone and benzaldehyde. This indicated that 3 g can strengthen attractiveness to insect and has potential as an attractant. Our results suggest that synthetic plant volatile analogues can strengthen attractiveness to insect. This is the first published study about synthetic plant volatile analogues that have the potential to be used in pest control. Our results will support a new ecological approach to pest control and it will be helpful to ecoenvironment and agricultural product safety.
A probabilistic approach to protein backbone tracing in electron density maps

One particularly time-consuming step in protein crystallography is interpreting the electron density map; that is, fitting a complete molecular model of the protein into a 3D image of the protein produced by the crystallographic process. In poor-quality electron density maps, the interpretation may require a significant amount of a crystallographer's time. Our work investigates automating the time-consuming initial backbone trace in poor-quality density maps. We describe ACMI (Automatic Crystallographic Map Interpreter), which uses a probabilistic model known as a Markov field to represent the protein. Residues of the protein are modeled as nodes in a graph, while edges model pairwise structural interactions. Modeling the protein in this manner allows the model to be flexible, considering an almost infinite number of possible conformations, while rejecting any that are physically impossible. Using an efficient algorithm for approximate inference--belief propagation--allows the most probable trace of the protein's backbone through the density map to be determined. We test ACMI on a set of ten protein density maps (at 2.5 to 4.0 A resolution), and compare our results to alternative approaches. At these resolutions, ACMI offers a more accurate backbone trace than current approaches.
Organizational commitment to employees and organizational performance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of organizational commitment to employees (OCE) on organizational performance through two different approaches – a configurative approach and a universalistic approach. The theoretical model formulated in this paper integrates both propositions with the aim of analyzing which has the most relevant impact on organizational performance.Design/methodology/approach – Structural equation models were applied to test these propositions by means of a survey of a random sample of 230 service firms.Findings – It was found that the configurational hypothesis is more important than the universalist hypothesis.Research limitations/implications – The study only included information from one member of executive management staff. This study is an initial attempt in the strategic human resource management literature to examine the configurative perspective as a covariation pattern.Practical implications – OCE by itself does not affect organizational performance.
Biases in arithmetic and geometric averages as estimates of

In considering a long-term investment in a common stock, an investor wants an estimate of the stock's long-run risk premia (and thus the long-run expected returns). Similarly, in evaluating a capital investment project, a firm seeks a reliable estimate of the required return on the proposed project. Given the empirical evidence of mean reversion in long-horizon common stock returns, we find that sample estimates based on the arithmetic or geometric averages of the past returns are biased.
Position Paper: Safety and Security Monitoring in ICS/SCADA Systems

Supervisory control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems play a core role in a nation's critical infrastructure, overseeing the monitoring and control of systems in electricity, gas supply, logistics services, banks and hospitals. Monitoring safety and security properties in industrial control system (ICS) and SCADA environments faces unique challenges not found in typical enterprise networks. Novel monitoring solutions are desirable that take into account these differences. This paper presents a new approach for monitoring safety and security properties in industrial control systems. The approach is based on verifying a formal specification of ICS/SCADA components during runtime that is capable of detecting abnormal system behaviours. The solution is miniaturised and can be deployed at various points throughout the SCADA network, making masquerading and man-in-the-middle attacks more difficult to execute successfully.
HIV-1 DIS stem loop forms an obligatory bent kissing intermediate in the dimerization pathway

The HIV-1 dimerization initiation sequence (DIS) is a conserved palindrome in the apical loop of a conserved hairpin motif in the 5′-untranslated region of its RNA genome. DIS hairpin plays an important role in genome dimerization by forming a ‘kissing complex’ between two complementary hairpins. Understanding the kinetics of this interaction is key to exploiting DIS as a possible human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) drug target. Here, we present a single-molecule Förster resonance energy transfer (smFRET) study of the dimerization reaction kinetics. Our data show the real-time formation and dissociation dynamics of individual kissing complexes, as well as the formation of the mature extended duplex complex that is ultimately required for virion packaging. Interestingly, the single-molecule trajectories reveal the presence of a previously unobserved bent intermediate required for extended duplex formation. The universally conserved A272 is essential for the formation of this intermediate, which is stabilized by Mg2+, but not by K+ cations. We propose a 3D model of a possible bent intermediate and a minimal dimerization pathway consisting of three steps with two obligatory intermediates (kissing complex and bent intermediate) and driven by Mg2+ ions.
A Study of Snack Consumption, Night-Eating Habits, and Nutrient Intake in Gestational Diabetes Mellitus

This study was performed to identify dietary behavior such as snack consumption, night-eating and nutrients intake associated with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). The study was conducted on 219 normal glucose tolerance (NGT) subjects and 44 GDM subjects by using a questionnaire including dietary behavior, food frequency and 3-day food record. The mean age, OGTT, and delivery weight of GDM subjects were statistically higher than those in NGT. A larger proportion of NGT subjects consumed black coffee (49.8%) while the majority of GDM subjects (61.4%) drank mixed coffee with sugar and cream. Dairy products were the most frequently consumed snack item in NGT subjects (40.7%), while fruits were most frequently consumed food item in GDM subjects (34.4%). Many of NGT subjects (49.8%) answered that they hardly took night-eating snacks whereas most of GDM subjects (61.4%) took night-eating snacks more than once a week. For change of taste preference, the proportion of NGT subjects who showed less preference for salty taste (33.3%) or greasy taste (16.9%) was higher than that of GDM subjects (11.4%). Nutrient intakes of energy, fat, cholesterol, saturated fatty acid (SFA), monounsaturated fatty acid (MUFA), polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA), carbohydrate, vitamin B1, vitamin B2, vitamin C, and vitamin E in GDM group were significantly higher than those in NGT group. Nutrient densities of SFA and vitamin C in GDM group were higher and nutrient density of calcium was lower than those in NGT group. Taken together, it is recommended to reduce night-eating snack and choose less salty and fatty foods, black-coffee rather than coffee with cream and sugar, and more dairy products to prevent GDM.
Anosov automorphisms on nilmanifolds in dimensions 9 and 10

We study 9 and 10-dimensional Anosov Lie algebras, by using the properties of very special algebraic numbers. We classify k-step complex Anosov Lie algebras for $k>2$ and in the two step case, we give an example in each possible type, or we give a non-existence result.
Reliability analysis of memories suffering MBUs for the effect of negative bias temperature instability

In this paper, the effect of negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) on MBUs sensitivity of 65 nm bulk technology memories is analyzed and simulated by Geant4. A MTTF reliability model including NBTI stress time is proposed for memories protected by error correction codes (ECCs). Both cases of scrubbing and nonscrubbing are considered. By using the proposed model, the predicted MTTF results align well with the simulation MTTF results in the radiation environment.