Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Investors with Too Many Options?

During the last decade, markets for covered warrants (bank-issued options) have flourished in Europe and Asia. In these markets, investors often face a choice between many instruments that differ only slightly from each other. Based on retail trades in call options on the German DAX index, this paper documents substantial price dispersion across securities that are close substitutes. Moreover, investors generally fail to identify attractively priced options. The results suggest that the observed product proliferation imposes a substantial search cost on investors even though the products are homogenous and their pricing is well understood. The search cost is estimated to average 1% of the amount invested, the same order of magnitude as the average spread. JEL Classification: G11, G13, D83
The Costs of Urban Sprawl - Physical Activity Links to Healthcare Costs and Productivity

This is one of three companion papers taken from a study that assesses the comparative costs of urban redevelopment with the costs of greenfield development. The first paper, GEN 83: The Costs of Urban Sprawl – Infrastructure and Transportation, shows that substantial costs would be saved in infrastructure and transport if urban redevelopment were the focus. The second paper GEN 84: The Costs of Urban Sprawl – Predicting Transport Greenhouse Gases from Urban Form Parameters discusses the costs that can be linked to the transport carbon emissions that arise from suburban living.
AC 2012-3808: SELF-REGULATED LEARNING STRATEGIES OF GRADES 9-12 STUDENTS IN DESIGN PROJECT: VIEWED FROM PERFORMANCE AND GENDER PERSPECTIVES

Exploring self-regulated learning skills in grades 9-12 students' design activities promotes a better understanding of how students deal with problem solving. This study focuses on students’ understanding of task demand and Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) strategies including planning, and cognitive and monitoring/fix-up strategies. A mixed-methods approach to research was applied to gather comprehensive and valid information about students’ SRL strategies. The objectives of this preliminary study were to investigate high school students' design activities that reflect their understanding of task demand and SRL strategies to accomplish the design task from the perspective of design performance (i.e., highand lowperforming students) and gender. A better understanding of these issues will specifically benefit technology and preengineering educators as well as the high school curriculum developer. Students at a high school in Colorado participated in this preliminary study (n = 29); 22 students participated in a robotics project and 7 students conducted an architecture project. Based upon a data review process, the researchers accepted 27 data sets for data analysis. Butler and Cartier's SRL model was used to frame a survey questionnaire and design journal. Because SRL is contextual, Dym and Little’s prescriptive model of design process was also used to frame the questionnaire items for this study. Two subsections of survey questionnaire were used at the early and middle stages of the design projects, respectively. Each subsection assessed different SRL strategies. The SRL mean values of each design sub-phase were calculated and compared between highand low-performing students, and also between males and females. For the design journal, participant responses were categorized and tabulated according to SRL features. The class instructor was asked to score the students’ journal based upon clarity and specificity of the journal writing. The findings of the design journal were used to confirm the results of the questionnaire analysis. The results suggested that high-performing students exhibited a better awareness than did lowperforming ones on task interpretation, cognitive strategies, and monitoring/fix-up strategies during the design project. On the other hand, the low-performing students performed very well on planning strategies. From a gender perspective, while males reported a good awareness on task interpretation and planning strategies, females showed a good awareness on cognitive and monitoring/fix-up strategies. The analysis of the design journals confirmed that high-performing students outperformed the low-performers. The findings from design journals also revealed that female students had a good awareness in understanding task demand, executing plans and monitoring and regulating their strategies. In addition, limitations and suggestions for further work on this study will also be discussed.
Egg Production and Economic Response of Laying Pullets Fed Urea- Fermented Brewer’s Dried Grains Groundnut Cake Based Diets

The effect of urea-fermented brewer’s dried grains at 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100% graded levels in place of groundnut cake in pullet layers diets was investigated. Five treatment diets were formulated to be isonitrogenous and isocaloric to provide 17% crude protein and 2600kcal/kg metabolizable energy. One hundred and twenty pullet layers (Goldline hybreed) were randomly allotted into five treatment groups of 24 birds each and replicated three times with 8 birds per replicate. They were fed ad libitum in deep litter for eight weeks. Daily feed intake, total eggs produced for the period, total eggs weight per bird and feed conversion ratio were not significantly (P>0.05) different, while significant (P<0.5) differences were observed in final body weight, body weight gain, total eggs produced per bird per week, average egg weight and hen day production. Hen day was similar for the control and up to 75% replacement levels. It was more economical and profitable to use urea-fermented brewer’s dried grains in replacing GNC in pullet layer’s diets. Keywords: Egg weight, Groundnut cake, Hen day production, pullet layers, Urea-fermented BDG.
Analogue earthquakes and seismic cycles: experimental modelling across timescales

Earth deformation is a multi-scale process ranging from seconds (seismic deformation) to millions of years (tectonic deformation). Bridging short- and long-term deformation and developing seismotectonic models has been a challenge in experimental tectonics for more than a century. Since the formulation of Reid's elastic rebound theory 100 years ago, laboratory mechanical models combining frictional and elastic elements have been used to study the dynamics of earthquakes. In the last decade, with the advent of high-resolution monitoring techniques and new rock analogue materials, laboratory earthquake experiments have evolved from simple spring-slider models to scaled analogue models. This evolution was accomplished by advances in seismology and geodesy along with relatively frequent occurrences of large earthquakes in the past decade. This coincidence has significantly increased the quality and quantity of relevant observations in nature and triggered a new understanding of earthquake dynamics. We review here the developments in analogue earthquake modelling with a focus on those seismotectonic scale models that are directly comparable to observational data on short to long timescales. We lay out the basics of analogue modelling, namely scaling, materials and monitoring, as applied in seismotectonic modelling. An overview of applications highlights the contributions of analogue earthquake models in bridging timescales of observations including earthquake statistics, rupture dynamics, ground motion, and seismic-cycle deformation up to seismotectonic evolution.
Urbanization-induced urban heat island and aerosol effects on climate extremes in the Yangtze River Delta region of China

Abstract. The WRF-Chem model coupled with a single-layer urban canopy model (UCM) is integrated for 5 years at convection-permitting scale to investigate the individual and combined impacts of urbanization-induced changes in land cover and pollutant emissions on regional climate in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region in eastern China. Simulations with the urbanization effects reasonably reproduced the observed features of temperature and precipitation in the YRD region. Urbanization over the YRD induces an urban heat island (UHI) effect, which increases the surface temperature by 0.53 °C in summer and increases the annual heat wave days at a rate of 3.7 d yr−1 in the major megacities in the YRD, accompanied by intensified heat stress. In winter, the near-surface air temperature increases by approximately 0.7 °C over commercial areas in the cities but decreases in the surrounding areas. Radiative effects of aerosols tend to cool the surface air by reducing net shortwave radiation at the surface. Compared to the more localized UHI effect, aerosol effects on solar radiation and temperature influence a much larger area, especially downwind of the city cluster in the YRD. Results also show that the UHI increases the frequency of extreme summer precipitation by strengthening the convergence and updrafts over urbanized areas in the afternoon, which favor the development of deep convection. In contrast, the radiative forcing of aerosols results in a surface cooling and upper-atmospheric heating, which enhances atmospheric stability and suppresses convection. The combined effects of the UHI and aerosols on precipitation depend on synoptic conditions. Two rainfall events under two typical but different synoptic weather patterns are further analyzed. It is shown that the impact of urban land cover and aerosols on precipitation is not only determined by their influence on local convergence but also modulated by large-scale weather systems. For the case with a strong synoptic forcing associated with stronger winds and larger spatial convergence, the UHI and aerosol effects are relatively weak. When the synoptic forcing is weak, however, the UHI and aerosol effects on local convergence dominate. This suggests that synoptic forcing plays a significant role in modulating the urbanization-induced land-cover and aerosol effects on individual rainfall event. Hence precipitation changes due to urbanization effects may offset each other under different synoptic conditions, resulting in little changes in mean precipitation at longer timescales.
Global implications of the indigenous epistemological system from the east

Purpose – The author argues and explains that the indigenous Eastern epistemological system of Yin-Yang balancing should be taken as a novel system or frame of thinking, which is deeply rooted in the indigenous Eastern culture traditions, but it has significant global implications, especially in the domain of paradox management. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to provide a detailed elaboration of the indigenous Eastern epistemological system of Yin-Yang balancing in contrast to the Western logic systems; and second, to provide a roadmap for applying the system of Yin-Yang balancing to complex issues in the area of management, in general, and paradoxical issues, in particular. Design/methodology/approach – This is a conceptual paper with a focus on theory-building. Findings – The author elaborates on the indigenous features of Yin-Yang balancing, in contrast to Aristotle’s formal logic and Hegel’s dialectical logic in the West, to further explore the former’s global implications for the increa.
Repeated E-Book Reading and Its Contribution to Learning New Words among Kindergartners.

The contribution of repeated e-book reading with and without word explanation support and its effect on receptive and expressive word learning among preschoolers was examined. Seventy-eight kindergartners were randomly divided into an experimental and a control group. The experimental group received two individual reading sessions of an e-book with a dictionary that provided word explanations. The children clicked on hotspots which provided the explanation two more times. The children thus heard the meaning of the word three times in each session, with a total of six times. Not all difficult words received a dictionary explanation. The control group received the regular kindergarten program. The children's receptive word learning, word explanation and production of focal words were tested pre and post intervention. An improvement in all dependent measures was found post-intervention, compared to the control group. The dictionary in the e-book supported not only receptive word learning, but also word explanation. Words that received a dictionary explanation supported word learning better than words which were not included in the dictionary. Furthermore, receiving support six times was more effective than three times. Educational implications are discussed.
The Mediating Effects of Germane Cognitive Load on the Relationship between Instructional Design and Students' Future Behavioral Intention.

Instructional design is an important aspect of the learning experience within formal online courses. One way in which online instructional design may benefit students is by increasing their future behavioral intention to use educational materials. This is important because research has revealed that students’ use of educational resources is strongly connected with academic success. Additionally, higher quality instructional design will increase students’ levels of germane cognitive load, which is a powerful indicator of learning. This study surveyed a group of students (n = 1314) who participated in formal online classes in South Korea to investigate the relationships between instructional design and germane load, germane load and future behavioral intention, as well as instructional design and future behavioral intention. Results showed positive correlation among each of these relationships. Furthermore, a mediation model was used, and results showed that germane load completely mediates the relationship between instructional design and future behavioral intention. These relationships are examined to better understand learning and future behavioral intention in relation to instructional design within online learning environments.
Multiplication Theory for Prediction of the Scattering Grating-lobe of Array Antenna

─ Experimental results reported in many literature have demonstrated that an antenna array should have two or more grating lobes in its scattering pattern; however, it is not clear how these grating lobes occur and vary. In this paper, we propose a new method to predict the number and location of scattering grating lobes generated by an array antenna. In the proposed method, the radar cross section (RCS) of array antenna can be decomposed into multiplication of the array RCS factor and the element RCS factor. The array RCS factor bears universal applicability so that it can be used to directly determine scattering properties of array antenna. Compared with the full-wave simulation techniques, the new method requires much less computation time and memory storage so that it is more suitable to be employed as the basis of a synthesis method to predict the desired RCS pattern of a large array antenna. As examples, the scattering properties of the dipole antenna arrays are investigated to validate the new method, numerical results demonstrate that the number and location of scattering grating lobes predicted by using the proposed method coincide with those simulated by using a MoM based commercial; software FEKO. Index Terms ─ Array antenna, array factor, decomposition, Radar Cross Section (RCS), scattering grating lobe.
Noise Robust Automatic Speech Recognition Scheme with Histogram of Oriented Gradient Features

In this paper, we propose a novel technique for noise robust automatic speech recognition (ASR). The development of ASR techniques has made it possible to recognize isolated words with a near perfect word recognition rate. However, in a highly noisy environment, a distinct mismatch between the trained speech and the test data results in a significantly degraded word recognition rate (WRA). Unlike conventional ASR systems employing Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) and a hidden Markov model (HMM), this study employ histogram of oriented gradient (HOG) features and a Support Vector Machine (SVM) to ASR tasks to overcome this problem. Our proposed ASR system is less vulnerable to external interference noise, and achieves a higher WRA compared to a conventional ASR system equipped with MFCCs and an HMM. The performance of our proposed ASR system was evaluated using a phonetically balanced word (PBW) set mixed with artificially added noise.
Morphology and chemistry of placer gold grains – indicators of the origin of the placers: an example from the East Sudetic Foreland, Poland

The gold in the vicinity of Glucholazy – Prudnik (the East Sudetic Foreland) is associated with Pliocene piedmont fans and Pre-Pleistocene river systems, primarily with the paleobeds of the Prudnik river and its tributaries. The morphology (roundness, flatness index and particles folding), surface textures and chemical composition of the gold particles suggest that the placer gold occurrences in the East Sudetic Foreland are multicycled (recycled paleoplacers) and multisourced. The most significant primary gold source was the sedimentary and epimetamorphic cover of the Żulova granitoids, eroded and removed during the Neogene. The majority of the gold was transported (redeposited) in a suspended form as flakes, scales, small grains and gold dust. This entered the river directly as a result of erosion of auriferous sediments. The homogeneous, porous, gold particles were formed in the weathering zones of polymetallic veins and other types of mineralization. Coatings of both crystalline and amorphous gold on particle surfaces suggest chemical accretion of authigenic gold on to pre-existing grains. Some porous gold particles may have been formed post-depositionally as the result of precipitation from colloidal solutions.
Competitiveness, Income Distribution, and Growth in Thailand: What Does the Long-run Evidence Show?

The paper addresses three fundamental issues under a long-run perspective : (1) growth and productivity, (2) competitiveness, and (3) income distribution. Unit labor costs (ulcs) and unit capital cost (ukcs) are calculated as the indicators of competitiveness in Thailand. Both series explain that Thailand did not gain in competitiveness during its boom period. However, during the 1997 financial crisis, when the Baht currency depreciated, both series dropped significantly. The paper also discusses the dynamics of labor share and capital share in national income as well as the functional distribution of income. Some major features of Thailands long-run economy are the following : (i) increasing average wage rates, (ii) stabilizing profit rates (slightly increasing during the boom decade after having dropped sharply during the 1997 crisis), (iii) substantially increasing capital-labor ratio, (iv) decreasing capital productivity and increasing capital-output ratio, (v) increasing labor productivity, and (vi) increasing mark-up.Functional income distribution can be determined during the periods studied. The gains in labor were greater than that of capital in the Thai economy, especially during the period of crisis when profit rates dropped substantially. The paper also documents the growth in income per capita decomposed by ranges of labor market indicators. Labor productivity is observed as the only factor contributing to per capita output. Overall, to achieve the medium to long-term growth potential projected by the National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB), Thailand needs to improve capital productivity and increase its capital stock. This paper is organized as follows : after the Introduction, Sections II-III construct labors shares, capital share, and ulc series, and observe the long-run pattern of the variables. Section IV analyzes the determinants of long-run competitiveness and growth. The determinants include wage rate, profit rate, capital-output ratio, capital-labor ratio, labor productivity, and capital productivity. Section V observes the degree of functional income distribution including its longterm evolution during the last 20 years. Section VI computes the degree of markup, which also implies the dynamism of the monopoly power of business in the Thai economy. Section VII analyzes the sources of growth in per capita income categorized by different labor compositions. Section IX estimates the medium-term growth potential as projected by the NESDB. Section X concludes the report.
Geodynamic constraints on the steady and time-dependent inner core axial rotation

SUMMARY In this work, constraints on the steady and time-dependent rates of axial inner core rotation are established based on the angular momentum balance between the inner core, fluid core and mantle. It is shown that the rate of a steadily rotating inner core is limited by the torque on the mantle from surface forces at the core‐mantle boundary (CMB). The rate of rotation of an oscillating inner core is constrained by the changes in mantle rotation induced by gravitational coupling, which must not exceed the observed changes in length of day. Assuming that the largest torque at the CMB is from electromagnetic forces, our results suggest that the maximum amplitude of an inner core oscillating at a period of 60 yr is ∼0.03 ◦ yr −1 , while the maximum amplitude of a steadily rotating inner core is ∼0.3 ◦ yr −1 . This implies that the largest inner core rotation rate compatible with the ensemble of seismic studies, 0.2 ◦ yr −1 , may be explained by a steady rotation but cannot be explained by a decadal oscillation. Though a steady rotation of 0.2 ◦ yr −1 is possible, it constrains the conductance of the lower mantle to be in the range of 1.6‐2.5 × 10 9 S and the viscous relaxation timescale of the inner core to be in the range of 5‐8 yr (i.e. a bulk inner core viscosity of 2.5‐4 × 10 17 Pa s). Larger steady and oscillating rotation rates may be possible if the inner core can deform on a timescale shorter than ∼ 5y r or if the conductance of the lower mantle is larger than ∼2.5 × 10 9 S, though this would then contradict constraints on these two quantities derived from other observations. Finally, we note that a steadily rotating inner core is compatible with the westward motions of magnetic field features at the CMB, as the latter provide the electromagnetic torque on the mantle that balances the gravitational torque from the rotating inner core. In addition, these westward motions must be predominantly due to advection by flow rather than to the propagation of hydromagnetic waves, as the electromagnetic torque at the CMB is otherwise too small to allow an inner core rotation rate as large as 0.2 ◦ yr −1 .
The effects of cash holdings on R&D smoothing: evidence from Korea 1

This study provides evidence that the young firms use more cash holdings to smooth R&D investment than the mature ones in the existence of financial constraints. The firms use more cash holdings to smooth R&D investment during a bear market than a bull market. They build cash holdings during the bull market when internal finance and stock issues are plentiful and then draw them down during the bear market when equity issues are less available. The firms also use more cash holdings to fund asset-counted R&D investment than the cost-counted R&D investment, because the intangible assets created by asset-counted R&D investment may act as an innovative driver that can have a greater multiplier effect on the firm value. These findings suggest policy implications that financial constraints and market timing of stock market have important effects on the R&D smoothing of the firms.