Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A theoretical understanding of circular polarization memory in random media

Radiative transport theory describes the propagation of light in random media that absorb, scatter, and emit radiation. To describe the propagation of light, the full polarization state is quantified using the Stokes parameters. For the sake of mathematical convenience, the polarization state of light is often neglected leading to the scalar radiative transport equation for the intensity only. For scalar transport theory, there is a well-established body of literature on numerical and analytic approximations to the radiative transport equation. We extend the scalar theory to the vector radiative transport equation (vRTE). In particular, we are interested in the theoretical basis for a phenomena called circular polarization memory. Circular polarization memory is the physical phenomena whereby circular polarization retains its ellipticity and handedness when propagating in random media. This is in contrast to the propagation of linear polarization in random media, which depolarizes at a faster rate, and specular reflection of circular polarization, whereby the circular polarization handedness flips. We investigate two limits that are of known interest in the phenomena of circular polarization memory. The first limit we investigate is that of forward-peaked scattering, i.e. the limit where most scattering events occur in the forward or near-forward directions. The second limit we consider is that of strong scattering and weak absorption. In the forward-peaked scattering limit we approximate the vRTE by a system of partial differential equations motivated by the scalar Fokker-Planck approximation. We call the leading order approximation the vector Fokker-Planck approximation. The vector Fokker Planck approximation predicts that strongly forward-peaked media exhibit circular polarization memory where the strength of the effect can be calculated from the expansion of the scattering matrix in special functions. In addition, we find in this limit that total intensity, linear polarization, and circular polarization decouple. From this result we conclude, that in the Fokker-Planck limit the scalar approximation is an appropriate leading order approximation. In the strong scattering and weak absorbing limit the vector radiative transport equation can be analyzed using boundary layer theory. In this case, the problem of light scattering in an optically thick medium is reduced to a 1D vRTE near the boundary and a 3D diffusion equation in the interior. We develop and implement a numerical solver for the boundary layer problem by using a discrete ordinate solver in the boundary layer and a spectral method to solve the diffusion approximation in the interior. We implement the method in Fortran 95 with external dependencies on BLAS, LAPACK, and FFTW. By analyzing the spectrum of the discretized vRTE in the boundary layer, we are able to predict the presence of circular polarization memory in a given medium.
- 101-THE ROLE OF INNOVATION CAPABILITY ON BUSINESS PERFORMANCE AT SMALL MEDIUM ENTERPRISES

Small medium enterprises require strong innovation capability to achieve competitive advantage. Based on previous empirical researches, this study emphasizes the importance of innovation capability as the role on business performance. Data were collected from 228 of small medium enterprises in Kediri, East Java, Indonesia and analyzed using structural equation model. The major findings include first, innovation capability and entrepreneurship has significantly positive impact on business performance respectively. Second, learning orientation has a significant and positive effect on innovation capability. Third, IT resource has significantly positive impact on learning orientation and innovation capability respectively.
SFB 823 Government spending shocks and labor productivity

A central question in the empirical fiscal policy literature is the magnitude, in fact even the sign, of the fiscal multiplier. Standard identification schemes for fiscal VAR models typically imply positive output as well as labor productivity responses to expansionary government spending shocks. The standard macro assumption of decreasing returns to labor, however, implies that expansionary government spending shocks should lead to increasing output and hours, but to decreasing labor productivity. To potentially reconcile theory and empirical analysis we impose, amongst other sign restrictions, opposite signs of the impulse responses of output and labor productivity to government spending shocks in eightto ten-variable VAR models, estimated on quarterly US data. Doing so leads to contractionary effects of positive government spending shocks. This potentially surprising finding is robust to the inclusion of variable capital utilization rates and total factor productivity. JEL Classification: E32, E62, C32
1 Cross-border Earnings Information Transfers : Evidence from Profit Warnings Issued by European Firms 1

This paper reports evidence on cross-border accounting information transfers associated with profit warning announcements. Using a sample of firms from 28 European countries, we find that negative earnings surprises disclosed by firms in one country affect investors’ perceptions of comparable nonannouncing firms in other countries. Average returns for nonannouncing foreign firms are negative, suggesting that contagion effects dominate. Further analysis reveals that cross-border information transfer effects vary according to a range of firm-, industryand country-level characteristics.
Seroprevalence pattern among blood donors in a tertiary health care center

Although blood transfusion is a life-saving maneuver, it is associated with certain risks. In general, transfusion-related adverse events are categorized as infectious and noninfectious. Transfusion-transmissible infectious agents such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV) and syphilis are among the greatest threats to blood safety for the recipient. To assess the magnitude and dynamics of disease transmission and for its prevention and control, the study of its seroprevalence is important. Our institute, catering to the needs of a large population in the foothills of the Himalayas, represents an important center for serological surveys. This study aimed to determine the seroprevalence of HIV, HBV, HCV and syphilis infections among blood donors in a tertiary care center of this region. A retrospective analysis of medical records of blood donors who met the standard criteria for donor fitness were screened for HIV, HBS, HCV, Syphilis and Malaria, from January 2007 to December 2011 (5 years). Out of 7884 units collected, 83 (1.05%) units had seropositivity for HBsAg/anti-HCV Ab/anti-HIV Ab/anti-Treponemal Ab, 2 units each revealed dual infections with HIV-HBV and HIV-HCV. Seropositivity rates of HBsAg, anti-HCV Ab, anti-HIV Ab and anti-treponemal Ab were 0.63%, 0.20%, 0.19% and 0.02%, respectively. Even with the implementation of effective preventive strategies, there is significant risk of transmission of infectious agents in India. Efforts to ensure an adequate and safe blood supply should include proper screening and striving for optimal use of blood and its products. Keywords : Seroprevalence; HIV; Hepatitis B; Hepatitis C; Syphilis; Uttarakhand
CENTRO DE INVESTIGACIÓN Y DOCENCIA ECONÓMICAS, A.C. DETERMINING CAUSAL INFERENCE IN LINEAR AND NON-LINEAR TIME-SERIES USING CONVERGENT CROSS MAPPING

This study has two major purposes: (1) to identify causal inference in time-series using Granger causality tests and Convergent Cross Mapping (Sugihara et al., 2012) (2) to investigate the economic growth and government expenditure relation in Mexico. Convergent Cross Mapping (CCM) has shown a high potential to perform causal inference in complex systems and non-linear system and has been used as an alternative approach to Granger causality. One one hand, we show that CCM fails to infer causality direction in linear time-series and in time-series with structural breaks. On the other hand, we demonstrate that Toda-Yamamoto test (Toda and Yamamoto, 1995) successfully detects causal relation in linear systems and systems with structural breaks. Besides, we evaluate the causal relation between government expenditure and economic growth in Mexico then we evaluate the validity of Wagner’s law and the Keynesian view. The empirical results suggests that Wagner’s law holds for Mexico for the period 1980 to 2010.
Chapter 26 Models for Precession Electron Diffraction

Precession Electron Diffraction has become an increasingly popular method of obtaining crystallographic data, and may well replace older methods such as selected area diffraction or microdiffraction. While a full model has to involve a dynamical calculation, some approximations give some indication how the results vary as a function of thickness and precession angle. This note reviews some of the basic models, their advantages and failures as well as some of the open issues.
DETERMINANTS OF ON-FARM DIVERSIFICATION AMONG RURAL HOUSEHOLDS: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM NORTHERN ALGERIA

This study aims to analyze the determinants and patterns of the on-farm diversification among the agricultural producers in Algeria. The study uses a sample of agricultural pro-ducers randomly and proportionally selected from Northern Algeria and the data obtained was analyzed using three adequate regression models. Results indicate that, on the technical aspects, the farmers who have larger farm size, access to market information, more full land employment and an irrigation system, those who own machinery and livestock holdings are more likely to diversify, whereas those with off-farm income are likely to specialize. In order to promote crop diversification, providing farm machinery through easy loans and improv-ing access to market information and irrigation technologies should be given attention. Farmer’s experience and his age are the major socio-economic determinants of farm diversi-fication. The implication is drawn for provision of enabling socio-economic environment for the establishment of more diversification.
Title Apohorseradish peroxidase unfolding and refolding : Intrinsic tryptophan fluorescence studies Permalink

The unfolding and refolding of apohorseradish peroxidase, as a function of guanidinium chloride concentration, were monitored by the intrinsic fluorescence intensity, polarization, and lifetime of the single tryptophan residue. The unfolding was reversible and characterized by at least three distinct stages—the intensity and lifetime data, for example, were both characterized by an initial increase followed by a decrease and then a plateau region. The lifetime data, in the absence and presence of guanidinium chloride, were heterogeneous and fit best to a model consisting of a major Gaussian distribution component and a minor, short discrete component. The observed increase in intensity in the initial stage of the unfolding process is attributed to the conversion of this short component into the longer, distributed component as the guanidinium chloride concentration increases. Our results clarify and amplify previous studies on the unfolding of apohorseradish peroxidase by guanidinium chloride.
1 Income Smoothing and Idiosyncratic Volatility

The idea that managers do prefer smoothed earnings is widely extended among practitioners and academics alike. Managers prefer a smooth earnings path, since lower firm risk as perceived by investors, is one of the most popular motivations for income smoothing. Given CEO career concerns and costbenefit tradeoffs regarding the benefits of smoothing, we hypothesize that managers have incentives to smooth income in order to reduce idiosyncratic volatility. Our results are consistent with such a prediction. In a sample of about 88,577 observations for the period 1989-2006, we find that idiosyncratic risk is negatively and significantly correlated to income smoothing. Our results hold in a long-run changes specification, and also when the potential endogeneity in the association between income smoothing and idiosyncratic volatility is considered. Additionally, we show that the negative association between income smoothing and idiosyncratic volatility is strongest in firms with high operational risk, small firms, and loss firms. Our results are robust to governance characteristics, CEO equity holdings, firm-level information availability, liquidity, the use of various alternative measures of our risk and smoothing variables, and alternate statistical methods. Finally, we provide evidence that although income smoothing is also negatively correlated to systematic volatility, the idiosyncratic component of volatility dominates. *Corresponding author, please address all communication to: garen.markarian@ie.edu This paper has benefited from comments by Tashfeen Sohail, Marco Trombetta, Juan Manuel Garcia Lara, Salvador Carmona, Paul Laux, Nisreen Salti, Joaquim Gassen, Shivaram Rajgopal, Juan A. Lafuente, James Wahlen and Manuel Illueca. All errors remain our own.
Mathematik A General Framework for Portfolio Theory . Part I : theory and various models by S .

Utility and risk are two often competing measurements on the investment success. We show that efficient trade-off between these two measurements for investment portfolios happens, in general, on a convex curve in the two dimensional space of utility and risk. This is a rather general pattern. The modern portfolio theory of [Markowitz (1959)] and its natural generalization, the capital market pricing model [Sharpe (1964)], are special cases of our general framework when the risk measure is taken to be the standard deviation and the utility function is the identity mapping. Using our general framework we also recover and extend the results in [Rockafellar, Uryasev & Zabarankin (2006)] which were already an extension of the capital market pricing model to allow for the use of more general deviation measures. This generalized capital asset pricing model also applies to e.g. when an approximation of the maximum drawdown is considered as a risk measure. Furthermore, the consideration of a general utility function allows to go beyond the “additive” performance measure to a “multiplicative” one of cumulative returns by using the log utility. As a result, the growth optimal portfolio theory [Lintner (1965)] and the leverage space portfolio theory [Vince (2009)] can also be understood under our general framework. Thus, this general framework allows a unification of several important existing portfolio theories and goes much beyond.
TITLE EL 2-Medium Education in a Largely Monolingual Society : The Case of Hong Kong

English is used as a second-language (EL2) medium of instruction In a wide range of developing countries, notably in East and South Asia, the Middle East, and many parts of Africa, often in the face of a vigorous resurgence of indigenous and regional cultures and languages. A discussion of this situation illastrates some of the social, political, and educational factors that make the implementaton of EL2-medium educational policies problematic for develoF.ng countries. The discussion then looks into the case of Hong Kong, with its particular linguistic and socio-political situation, and the implications of an EL2-medium education system for an ostensibly egalitarian education policy. The discussion concludes by examining recent attempts by language planners and educators in Hong Kong, in both secondary and higher education, to make the education system more responsive to the sociolinguistic and educational requirements and realities in the territory while retaining a strong EL2-medium profile. (Author/MSE) ********************X************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * ******************************** **************************************
R ⊗ C ⊗ H ⊗ O-Valued Gravity as a Grand Uniﬁed Field Theory

It is argued how R ⊗ C ⊗ H ⊗ O -valued Gravity (real-complex-quaterno-octonionic Gravity) naturally can describe a Grand Uniﬁed Field theory of Einstein’s gravity with a Yang-Mills theory containing the Standard Model group SU (3) × SU (2) × U (1). In particular, it leads to a [ SU (4)] 4 symmetry group revealing the possibility of extending the standard model by introducing additional gauge bosons, heavy quarks and leptons, and an extra fourth family of fermions. We ﬁnalize by displaying the analog of the Einstein–Hilbert action for R ⊗ C ⊗ H ⊗ O valued gravity via the use of matrices, and which is based on “coloring” the graviton; i.e. by attaching internal indices to the metric g μν . In the most general case, U (16) arises as the isometry group, while U (8) is the isometry group in the split-octonion case.
Impact of mutual coupling in leaky wave enhanced imaging arrays

The impact of mutual coupling between neighboring radiators in an imaging array configuration in the presence of a dielectric super-layer is investigated. The super-layer generally aims at increasing the directivity of each element of the array. However, here it is shown that the directivity of the embedded element patterns are reduced by a high level of mutual coupling. Thus a trade off between directivity enhancement and close packing of the array elements must be found depending on the bandwidth and the pattern requirements.
HLA-B 27 : The Story Continues to Unfold

This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as an ‘Accepted Article’, doi: 10.1002/art.39566 © 2015 American College of Rheumatology Received: Dec 01, 2015; Revised: Dec 12, 2015; Accepted: Dec 29, 2015
Statistica Sinica Preprint No : SS-2016-0393 R 4 Title Wavelet

In nonparametric regression with errors in the explanatory variable, the regression function is typically assumed to be smooth, and in particular not to have a rapidly changing derivative. Not all real-data applications have this property. When the property fails, conventional techniques, usually based on kernel methods, have unsatisfactory performance. We suggest an adaptive, wavelet-based approach, founded on the concept of explained sum of squares, and using matrix regularisation to reduce noise. This non-standard technique is used because conventional wavelet methods fail to estimate wavelet coefficients consistently in the presence of measurement error. We assume that the measurement error distribution is known. Our approach enjoys very good performance, especially when the regression function is erratic. Pronounced maxima and minima are recovered more accurately than when using conventional methods, which tend to flatten peaks and troughs. We also show that wavelet techniques have advantages when estimating conventional, smooth functions since they require less sophisticated smoothing parameter choice. That problem is particularly challenging in the setting of measurement error. A real-data example is discussed, along with a simulation study. Statistica Sinica: Newly accepted Paper (accepted version subject to English editing)
Coaching in eHealth

4 INTRODUCTION . 5 METHODS . 10 DESIGN . 10 PARTICIPANTS . 10 MATERIALS . 10 A/B PREFERENCE TESTING: SCENARIOS, COACHING MESSAGES, AND CATEGORIES . 10 WORK ENGAGEMENT: UBES-15 . 17 RESEARCH ETHICS . 17 PROCEDURE . 18 DATA-ANALYSIS . 19 RESULTS . 21 DISCUSSION . 26 REFERENCES . 29 APPENDIX A – UBES (DUTCH) . 34 APPENDIX B – SCENARIOS AND COACHING MESSAGES . 35
J an 2 00 8 Scattering , determinants , hyperfunctions in relation to Γ ( 1 − s ) Γ ( s )

The method of realizing certain self-reciprocal transforms as (absolute) scattering, previously presented in summarized form in the case of the Fourier cosine and sine transforms, is here applied to the self-reciprocal transform f(y) 7→ H(f)(x) = R ∞ 0 J0(2 √ xy)f(y) dy, which is isometrically equivalent to the Hankel transform of order zero and is related to the functional equations of the Dedekind zeta functions of imaginary quadratic fields. This also allows to re-prove and to extend theorems of de Branges and V. Rovnyak regarding square integrable functions which are self-or-skew reciprocal under the Hankel transform of order zero. Related integral formulae involving various Bessel functions are all established internally to the method. Fredholm determinants of the kernel J0(2 √ xy) restricted to finite intervals (0, a) give the coefficients of first and second order differential equations whose associated scattering is (isometrically) the self-reciprocal transform H, closely related to the function Γ(1−s) Γ(s) . Remarkable distributions involved in this analysis are seen to have most natural expressions as (difference of) boundary values (i.e. hyperfunctions.) The present work is completely independent from the previous study by the author on the same transform H, which centered around the Klein-Gordon equation and relativistic causality. In an appendix, we make a simple-minded observation regarding the resolvent of the Dirichlet kernel as a Hilbert space reproducing kernel. keywords: Hankel transform; Scattering; Fredholm determinants. Université Lille 1 UFR de Mathématiques Cité scientifique M2 F-59655 Villeneuve d’Ascq France burnol@math.univ-lille1.fr February 19, 2006. January 2, 2008. : there was an i in (148c) and other equations leading to Theorem 15 which should not have been there. This only affected equation (156e). This is all folks. I could possibly have proposed other improvements if only the referee who kept my paper hostage for most of 2006 and 2007 had actually read it. Not reading it did not prevent from commenting upon it, unfortunately the substance of those inspired five lines is hard to transfer beneficially to my wide readership.
Slow Endogenous Fluctuations in Cortical fMRI Signals Correlate with Reduced Performance in a Visual Detection Task and Are Suppressed by Spatial Attention

Spatial attention improves performance on visual tasks, increases neural responses to attended stimuli, and reduces correlated noise in visual cortical neurons. In addition to being visually responsive, many retinotopic visual cortical areas exhibit very slow (<0.1 Hz) endogenous fluctuations in functional magnetic resonance imaging signals. To test whether these fluctuations degrade stimulus representations, thereby impairing visual detection, we recorded functional magnetic resonance imaging responses while human participants performed a target detection task that required them to allocate spatial attention to either a rotating wedge stimulus or a central fixation point. We then measured the effects of spatial attention on response amplitude at the frequency of wedge rotation and on the amplitude of endogenous fluctuations at nonstimulus frequencies. We found that, in addition to enhancing stimulus-evoked responses, attending to the wedge also suppressed slow endogenous fluctuations that were unrelated to the visual stimulus in topographically defined areas in early visual cortex, posterior parietal cortex, and lateral occipital cortex, but not in a nonvisual cortical control region. Moreover, attentional enhancement of response amplitude and suppression of endogenous fluctuations were dissociable across cortical areas and across time. Finally, we found that the amplitude of the stimulus-evoked response was not correlated with a perceptual measure of visual target detection. Instead, perceptual performance was accounted for by the amount of suppression of slow endogenous fluctuations. Our results indicate that the amplitude of slow fluctuations of cortical activity is influenced by spatial attention and suggest that these endogenous fluctuations may impair perceptual processing in topographically organized visual cortical areas.