Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Essays on Prospect Theory and the Statistical Modeling of Financial Returns

This thesis consists of three self-contained essaysEssay 1 presents an empirical study of volatility spillover from oil prices to stock markets within an asymmetric BEKK model. Using weekly data on the aggregate stock markets of Japan, Norway, Sweden, the U.K., and the U.S., strong evidence of volatility spillover is found for all stock markets but the Swedish one, where only weak evidence is found. News impact surfaces show that, although statistically significant, the volatility spillovers are quantitatively small. The stock markets’ own shocks, which are related to other factors of uncertainty than the oil price, are more prominent than oil shocks.Essay 2 replicates the study of Benartzi and Thaler (1995), who suggest a behavioral explanation to the equity premium puzzle by myopic loss aversion. A technical extension to their methodology is suggested where conditional heteroskedasticity is incorporated when simulating returns, in place of the original temporal independence assumption. Swedish data is considered in addition to U.S. data. First, it is found that myopic loss aversion can explain the U.S. equity premium over bonds, although the obtained evaluation periods are somewhat shorter than a year. For example, over the full U.S. sample period from 1926 to 2003, evaluation periods of seven and ten months are found using the original and new approach to simulating returns, respectively. Second, myopic loss aversion suggestively explains the Swedish equity premium as well, which is new to the literature. Third, throughout the analysis of both data sets, longer evaluation periods are obtained under conditional heteroskedasticity. The last result indicates that myopic loss-averse and, in turn, cumulative prospect theory investors are sensitive to the distributional assumption made on returns.Essay 3 relates cumulative prospect theory to the moments of returns distributions, e.g. skewness and kurtosis, assuming returns are normal inverse Gaussian distributed. The normal inverse Gaussian distribution parameterizes the first- to fourth-order moments, making the investigation straightforward. Cumulative prospect theory utility is found to be positively related to the skewness. However, the relation is negative when probability weighting is aside. This shows that cumulative prospect theory investors display a preference for skewness through the probability weighting function. Furthermore, the investor’s utility is inverse hump-shape related to the kurtosis. Consequences for portfolio choice issues are studied. The findings, among others, suggest that optimal cumulative prospect theory portfolios are not mean-variance efficient under the normal inverse Gaussian distribution.
Modelling the role of immunity in reversion of viral antigenic sites

Antigenic sites in viral pathogens exhibit distinctive evolutionary dynamics due to their role in evading recognition by host immunity. Antigenic selection is known to drive higher rates of non-synonymous substitution; less well understood is why differences are observed between viruses in their propensity to mutate to a novel or previously encountered amino acid. Here, we present a model to explain patterns of antigenic reversion and forward substitution in terms of the epidemiological and molecular processes of the viral population. We develop an analytical three-strain model and extend the analysis to a multi-site model to predict characteristics of observed sequence samples. Our model provides insight into how the balance between selection to escape immunity and to maintain viability is affected by the rate of mutational input. We also show that while low probabilities of reversion may be due to either a low cost of immune escape or slowly decaying host immunity, these two scenarios can be differentiated by the frequency patterns at antigenic sites. Comparison between frequency patterns of human influenza A (H3N2) and human RSV-A suggests that the increased rates of antigenic reversion in RSV-A is due to faster decaying immunity and not higher costs of escape.
Immunogenicity of 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine administered according to 4 different primary immunization schedules in infants: a randomized clinical trial.

IMPORTANCE Immunization schedules with pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) differ among countries regarding the number of doses, age at vaccinations, and interval between doses. OBJECTIVE To assess the optimal primary vaccination schedule by comparing immunogenicity of 13-valent PCV (PCV13) in 4 different immunization schedules. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS An open-label, parallel-group, randomized clinical trial of healthy term infants in a general community in The Netherlands conducted between June 30, 2010, and January 25, 2011, with 99% follow-up until age 12 months. INTERVENTIONS Infants (N = 400) were randomly assigned (1:1:1:1) to receive PCV13 either at ages 2, 4, and 6 months (2-4-6); at ages 3 and 5 months (3-5); at ages 2, 3, and 4 months (2-3-4); or at ages 2 and 4 months (2-4), with a booster dose at age 11.5 months. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Primary outcome measure was antibody geometric mean concentrations (GMCs) against PCV13-included serotypes 1 month after the booster dose measured by multiplex immunoassay. Secondary outcomes included GMCs measured 1 month after the primary series, at 8 months of age, and before the booster. RESULTS The primary outcome, GMCs at 1 month after the booster dose, was not significantly different between schedules for 70 of 78 comparisons. The 2-4-6 schedule was superior to the 2-3-4 schedule for serotypes 18C (10.2 µg/mL [95% CI, 8.2-12.7] vs 6.5 µg/mL [95% CI, 5.4-7.8]) and 23F (10.9 µg/mL [95% CI, 9.0-13.3] vs 7.3 µg/mL [95% CI, 5.8-9.2]) and superior to the 2-4 schedule for serotypes 6B (8.5 µg/mL [95% CI, 7.1-10.2] vs 5.1 µg/mL [95% CI 3.8-6.7]), 18C (6.6 µg/mL [95% CI, 5.7-7.7]), and 23F (7.2 µg/mL [95% CI, 5.9-8.8]). For serotype 1, the 3-5 schedule (11.7 µg/mL [95% CI, 9.6-14.3]) was superior to the other schedules. Geometric mean concentrations for all 13 serotypes ranged between 1.6 and 19.9 µg/mL. Secondary outcomes demonstrated differences 1 month after the primary series. The 2-4-6 schedule was superior compared with the 3-5, 2-3-4, and 2-4 schedules for 3, 9, and 11 serotypes, respectively. Differences between schedules persisted until the booster dose. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE The use of 4 different PCV13 immunization schedules in healthy term infants resulted in no statistically significant differences in antibody levels after the booster dose for almost all serotypes. The choice of PCV schedule will require a balance between the need for early protection and maintaining protection between the primary series and the booster. TRIAL REGISTRATION trialregister.nl Identifier: NTR2316.
Interactive beliefs, epistemic independence and strong rationalizability

Abstract We use a universal, extensive form interactive beliefs system to provide an epistemic characterization of a weak and a strong notion of rationalizability with independent beliefs. The weak solution concept is equivalent to backward induction in generic perfect information games where no player moves more than once in any play. The strong solution concept is related to explicability (Reny, 22 ) and is outcome-equivalent to backward induction in generic games of perfect information.
Fundamental contribution of beta-oxidation to polyketide mycotoxin production in planta.

Seed contamination with polyketide mycotoxins, including aflatoxin (AF) and sterigmatocystin (ST) produced by Aspergillus spp. , is an agricultural, economic, and medical issue worldwide. Acetyl-CoA, the fundamental building block of all known fungal polyketides, is generated by a large number of biochemical pathways, including beta-oxidation of fatty acids and glycolysis of sugars. We present several lines of evidence to support a major role for seed fatty acids in formation of AF and ST in A. flavus, A. parasiticus, and A. nidulans. Aspergillus strains exhibiting canonical signs of oleic acid-induced peroxisome proliferation, including increased catalase activity, beta-oxidation gene expression, and peroxisomal clustering, also exhibited a marked increase in toxin gene expression and biosynthesis. Furthermore, microscopic observations showed that the ST and AF precursor norsolorinic acid accumulated in peroxisomes of all three Aspergilli. While a peroxisomal beta-oxidation mutation eliminated oleic acid-induced increases in ST in A. nidulans, a mitochondrial beta-oxidation mutation played a larger role in eliminating ST formation on oatmeal medium and on live corn kernels, implicating a fundamental role for both peroxisomal and mitochondrial beta-oxidation in toxin production.
The Safari Cat Data , Performance Indicators and Possibly Monotonic Population Proportions

Two applications are described of a hierarchical model that can express uncertainty regarding a pre-specified monotonicity hypothesis for binomial probabilities. The results relate to time series with possibly monotonic success rates, isotonic regression, and the evaluation of performance indicators. The model can alternatively be interpreted as a random effects over-dispersion formulation for beta-binomial observations, within which the population proportions definitely satisfy a monotonicity specification. Practical ways of choosing the prior parameters for a Bayesian analysis are recommended. The primary application relates to a study of early hematopoiesis, and revisits a time series of proportions of masked progenitor cells from the bone marrow of a hybrid safari cat. The data for this cat are shown to be reasonably consistent with an assumption of strictly decreasing population proportions. The experimental outcomes for the other cats in the study are reviewed. An introductory application results from a Veterans' Administration hospital quality monitor, and concerns the failure to return rates for psychiatric patients attending substance abuse clinics. While smoothed performance indicators are devised, estimated standard errors of the corresponding sample proportions, which measure their extra-binomial sampling variation, are also calculated .
Physiological Roles of Calpain 1 Associated to Multiprotein NMDA Receptor Complex

We have recently demonstrated that in resting conditions calpain 1, but not calpain 2, is specifically associated to the N-Methyl-D-Aspartate receptor (NMDAR) multiprotein complex. We are here reporting that in SKNBE neuroblastoma cells or in freshly isolated nerve terminals from adult rat hippocampus, the proteolytic activity of calpain 1 resident at the NMDAR is very low under basal conditions and greatly increases following NMDAR stimulation. Since the protease resides at the NMDAR in saturating amounts, variations in Ca2+ influx promote an increase in calpain 1 activity without affecting the amount of the protease originally associated to NMDAR. In all the conditions examined, resident calpain 1 specifically cleaves NR2B at the C-terminal region, leading to its internalization together with NR1 subunit. While in basal conditions intracellular membranes include small amounts of NMDAR containing the calpain-digested NR2B, upon NMDAR stimulation nearly all the receptor molecules are internalized. We here propose that resident calpain 1 is involved in NMDAR turnover, and following an increase in Ca2+ influx, the activated protease, by promoting the removal of NMDAR from the plasma membranes, can decrease Ca2+ entrance through this channel. Due to the absence of calpastatin in such cluster, the activity of resident calpain 1 may be under the control of HSP90, whose levels are directly related to the activation of this protease. Observations of different HSP90/calpain 1 ratios in different ultrasynaptic compartments support this conclusion.
Tracking Canadian Trend Productivity: A Dynamic Factor Model with Markov Switching

The author attempts to track Canadian labour productivity over the past four decades using a multivariate dynamic factor model that, in addition to the labour productivity series, includes aggregate compensation and consumption information. Productivity is assumed to switch between two regimes (the high-growth state and the low-growth state) with different trend growth rates according to a first-order Markov process. The author finds that labour productivity in Canada fell from the high-growth to the low-growth state towards the end of the 1970s, and that it has not yet reverted to the high-growth state. In particular, the model primarily attributes the resurgence of labour productivity growth in the late nineties to transitory effects.
[Malnutrition incidence in surgical diabetic and non diabetic patients in general surgery department].

OBJECTIVES The prevalence of hyponutrition among hospitalized patients varies between 30 to 50%, increasing both the morbidity and mortality rates. The aim of this study is to assess the incidence of hyponutrition in diabetic and non-diabetic patients at the General Surgery Department. METHODS Prospective, observation, and longitudinal study assessing the nutritional status by means of VGS, CONUT, and MNA. RESULTS 384 patients: 97 surgical diabetic patients, incidence of hyponutrition assessed by VGS 28.8%, by MNA among patients older than 65 years 54.28%. Two hundred and eighty seven non-diabetic surgical patients were assessed with an incidence of hyponutrition of 12.9%, and of 52.94% by MNA. CONCLUSIONS The incidence of hyponutrition in surgical diabetic patients is twofold higher than in non-diabetic patients. Elder diabetic and non-diabetic surgical patients show the same incidence of hyponutrition. Given the high incidence of hyponutrition in surgical patients admitted to the General Surgery Department, the nutritional status should be assessed by means of a protocolled method, at admission by VSG or MNA if they are older than 65 years, and admitted patients should be followed by using CONUT.
Identifying Cultural Design Requirements for an Australian Indigenous Website

This paper examines literature concerning the design of culture into websites and in particular indigenous websites. The intention is to identify design requirements as the first phase of building an indigenous website for the Wollotuka Institute located in the Awabakal nation and situated at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. The aim of the project is to produce a website that best reflects the identity, needs and culture of the local Wollotuka community. Wollotuka supports a broad range of indigenous programs incorporating administrative, academic and research activities and provides support and development services for indigenous staff and students. Unfortunately many existing frameworks and indeed Western conceptions about what knowledge is and how it should be captured, organised and presented do not necessarily meet the culture of the intended indigenous users. The work described in this paper focuses on the many issues of concern when attempting to design a website that is specific for a local cultural community such as Wollotuka. We review previous work in cultural design and discuss some generic issues related to the representation and capture of indigenous knowledge. This review provides us with some general considerations and more specific guidelines for culture-specific design. Of particular interest is that narrative and object are conceptualised as a duality in knowledge representations found in Australian Indigenous culture. We also examine issues of design process and use our findings to support the choice of a user-centric design method, where we localise the design, through an iterative, prototyping process.
Performance analysis and improvement of TCP proxy mechanism in TCP overlay networks

TCP overlay networks that control data transmission quality at the transport layer are being paid a lot of attention as users' demands for diversified Internet services increase. They are expected to enhance the end-to-end throughput of the TCP connection essentially because the round trip times and the packet loss ratios of each split TCP connection are reduced. However, performance degradation may occur due to undesired interactions among the split TCP connections. We introduce an analysis approach to estimate end-to-end throughput of data transmission with a TCP proxy mechanism considering performance degradation. Our analysis results reveal that we confirm the effect of the TCP proxy mechanism. We also find that we cannot ignore performance degradations due to interactions among split TCP connections, especially when the congestion level of the network they traverse is small. Further, we clarify that we should take into account the packet loss ratios, performance degradations and propagation delays of the network when we consider issues relating to the design of TCP overlay networks.
Accuracy of the International Terrestrial Reference Frame origin and Earth expansion

The International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF) is a fundamental datum for high‐precision orbit tracking, navigation, and global change monitoring. Accurately realizing and maintaining ITRF origin at the mean Earth system center of mass (CM) is critical to surface and spacecraft based geodetic measurements including those of sea level rise and its sources. Although ITRF combines data from satellite laser ranging (SLR), Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), Global Positioning System (GPS), and Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite (DORIS), its origin is currently realized by the single technique of SLR. Consequently, it is difficult to independently evaluate the origin accuracy. Also, whether the solid Earth is expanding or shrinking has attracted persistent attention. The expansion rate, if any, has not been accurately determined before, due to insufficient data coverage on the Earth's surface and the presence of other geophysical processes. Here, we use multiple precise geodetic data sets and a simultaneous global estimation platform to determine that the ITRF2008 origin is consistent with the mean CM at the level of 0.5 mm yr−1, and the mean radius of the Earth is not changing to within 1σ measurement uncertainty of 0.2 mm yr−1.
Residual Stacking of RNNs for Neural Machine Translation

To enhance Neural Machine Translation models, several obvious ways such as enlarging the hidden size of recurrent layers and stacking multiple layers of RNN can be considered. Surprisingly, we observe that using naively stacked RNNs in the decoder slows down the training and leads to degradation in performance. In this paper, We demonstrate that applying residual connections in the depth of stacked RNNs can help the optimization, which is referred to as residual stacking. In empirical evaluation, residual stacking of decoder RNNs gives superior results compared to other methods of enhancing the model with a fixed parameter budget. Our submitted systems in WAT2016 are based on a NMT model ensemble with residual stacking in the decoder. To further improve the performance, we also attempt various methods of system combination in our experiments.
Molecular Evidence for Multiple Origins of the European Spined Loaches (Teleostei, Cobitidae)

We present a phylogenetic investigation of the Northern Clade, the major monophyletic clade within the freshwater fish family Cobitidae, one of the most prominent families of freshwater fishes found in Asian and European waters. Phylogenetic reconstructions based on the cytochrome b and RAG-1 genes show the genera Microcobitis, Sabanejewia, Koreocobitis and Kichulchoia as monophyletic groups. These reconstructions also show a Cobitis sensu lato and a Misgurnus sensu lato group. The Cobitis sensu lato group includes all species of Cobitis, Iksookimia, Niwaella and Kichulchoia, while the Misgurnus sensu lato group includes Misgurnus, Paramisgurnus and Koreocobitis. Although the monophyly of both the Cobitis sensu lato and Misgurnus sensu lato groups is supported, relationships within the groups are incongruent with current generic definitions. The absence of monophyly of most genera included in the Cobitis sensu lato group (Cobitis, Iksookimia and Niwaella) or their low genetic differentiation (Kichuchoia) supports their consideration as synonyms of Cobitis. Molecular phylogenies indicate that the Asian species of Misgurnus experienced a mitochondrial introgression from a lineage of Cobitis. We also find two nuclear haplotypes in the same Cobitis species from the Adriatic area that, in the absence of morphological differentiation, may indicate molecular introgression. Most lineages within the Northern Clade consist of species found in East Asia. However, some lineages also contain species from Europe and Asia Minor. The phylogenetic relationships presented here are consistent with previous studies suggesting an East Asian origin of the Northern Clade. According to the current distributions and phylogenetic relationships of the Misgurnus sensu lato and Cobitis clade lineages, particularly of M. fossilis and C. melanoleuca, the range expansion of East Asian species into Europe was most likely via Siberia into Northern and Central Europe. Phylogenetic analyses also show that the Cobitis sensu lato group consists of two clear subgroups (I and II), each presenting geographical differences. Subgroup I is distributed exclusively in East Asian drainages with an Eastern European offshoot (C. melanoleuca), whereas Subgroup II includes species widespread throughout Europe (including the Mediterranean), Asia Minor, the Black Sea and the Caucasus, with some lineages related to species restricted to East Asia.
Stem Cell Modeling of Core Binding Factor Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Even though clonally originated from a single cell, acute leukemia loses its homogeneity soon and presents at clinical diagnosis as a hierarchy of cells endowed with different functions, of which only a minority possesses the ability to recapitulate the disease. Due to their analogy to hematopoietic stem cells, these cells have been named “leukemia stem cells,” and are thought to be chiefly responsible for disease relapse and ultimate survival after chemotherapy. Core Binding Factor (CBF) Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) is cytogenetically characterized by either the t(8;21) or the inv(16)/t(16;16) chromosomal abnormalities, which, although being pathognomonic, are not sufficient per se to induce overt leukemia but rather determine a preclinical phase of disease when preleukemic subclones compete until the acquisition of clonal dominance by one of them. In this review we summarize the concepts regarding the application of the “leukemia stem cell” theory to the development of CBF AML; we will analyze the studies investigating the leukemogenetic role of t(8;21) and inv(16)/t(16;16), the proposed theories of its clonal evolution, and the role played by the hematopoietic niches in preserving the disease. Finally, we will discuss the clinical implications of stem cell modeling of CBF AML for the therapy of the disease.