Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
BiLQ: An Iterative Method for Nonsymmetric Linear Systems with a Quasi-Minimum Error Property

We introduce an iterative method named BiLQ for solving general square linear systems Ax = b based on the Lanczos biorthogonalization process defined by least-norm subproblems, and that is a natural companion to BiCG and QMR. Whereas the BiCG (Fletcher, 1976), CGS (Sonneveld, 1989) and BiCGSTAB (van der Vorst, 1992) iterates may not exist when the tridiagonal projection of A is singular, BiLQ is reliable on compatible systems even if A is ill-conditioned or rank deficient. As in the symmetric case, the BiCG residual is often smaller than the BiLQ residual and, when the BiCG iterate exists, an inexpensive transfer from the BiLQ iterate is possible. Although the Euclidean norm of the BiLQ error is usually not monotonic, it is monotonic in a different norm that depends on the Lanczos vectors. We establish a similar property for the QMR (Freund and Nachtigal, 1991) residual. BiLQ combines with QMR to take advantage of two initial vectors and solve a system and an adjoint system simultaneously at a cost similar to that of applying either method. We derive an analogous combination of USYMLQ and USYMQR based on the orthogonal tridiagonalization process (Saunders, Simon, and Yip, 1988). The resulting combinations, named BiLQR and TriLQR, may be used to estimate integral functionals involving the solution of a primal and an adjoint system. We compare BiLQR and TriLQR with Minres-qlp on a related augmented system, which performs a comparable amount of work and requires comparable storage. In our experiments, BiLQR terminates earlier than TriLQR and MINRES-QLP in terms of residual and error of the primal and adjoint systems.
Coverage of Infertility Treatment and Fertility Outcomes 1

Policy interventions that increase insurance coverage for infertility treatments may a¤ect fertility trends, and ultimately, population age structures. However, such policies have ignored the overall impact of coverage on fertility. We examine short-term and long-term e¤ects of increased insurance coverage for infertility on the timing of rst births and on womens total fertility rates. Our main contribution is to show that infertility mandates enacted in the United States during the 80s and 90s did not increase the total fertility rates of women by the end of their reproductive lives. We also show evidence that these mandates induced women to put o¤ motherhood. Keywords: assisted reproductive technologies, infertility insurance mandates, completed fertility, delay of motherhood, synthetic control method JEL Classi cation: I18, J13.
Working Paper 2009 / 3 Has Mercantilism Reduced Urban Poverty in SSA ? Perceptions of boom , bust and the China-Africa trade in Lomé and Bamako

This paper addresses the immediate impacts of the China-Africa trade on Africa’s informal traders and its longer term impact on urban poverty, based on a comparison of the major cities of two West African countries and drawing on semi-structured interviews with traders and on schedule-based interviews with key informants in government, business and the informal trade sector. Findings are that the increase in imports from China initially broadened access to trading for the poor, creating short-term improvements in livelihoods, but competition is driving down profit margins and restricting the trade to a survival mechanism for many today. Thus it has provided limited long-term potential as an economic platform for national development and poverty reduction. The findings are discussed in terms of structuration theory and in terms of alternative conceptualizations of informal trade in Africa.
COLLOIDS Colloidal matter : Packing , geometry , and entropy

BACKGROUND: Colloids consist of solid or liquid particles, each about a few hundred nanometers in size, dispersed in a fluid and kept suspended by thermal fluctuations. Whereas natural colloids are the stuff of paint, milk, and glue, synthetic colloidswithwell-controlled size distributions and interactions are a model system for understanding phase transitions. These colloids can form crystals and other phases of matter seen in atomic and molecular systems, but because the particles are large enough to be seen under an opticalmicroscope, the microscopic mechanisms of phase transitions can be directly observed. Furthermore, their ability to spontaneously form phases that are ordered on the scale of visible wavelengths makes colloids useful building blocks for optical materials such as photonic crystals. Because the interactions between particles can be altered and the effects on structure directly observed, experiments on colloids offer a controlled approach toward understanding and harnessing self-assembly, a fundamental topic in materials science, condensed-matterphysics, andbiophysics.
Screening of Metarhizium Anisopliae ( Metsch . ) Sorok . Strains against the Sugarcane Root Spittlebug Mahanarva Fimbriolata ( Stål ) ( Hemiptera : Cercopidae ) in Laboratory

The accumulated mulch on the soil resultant from the mechanized cutting of sugarcane promotes favorable temperature and moist to Mahanarva fimbriolata (Stål), a pest that causes serious problems due to its widespread occurrence and high populations. Seventy nine isolates of Metarhizium anisopliae (Metsch.) Sorok. from different hosts and regions were tested for their pathogenicity. Ten spitlebugs were put in petri dishes (9 cm of diameter) containing sugarcane leaves sprayed with 1 ml of a suspension containing 5 x 107 conidia/ml. Five replicates were used per treatment. The petri dishes were kept at 25 ± 1°C, 70 ± 10% RH and 12h photophase. Insects were monitored daily to calculate total cumulative mortality, as well as corrected and confirmed mortality for each treatment. The best tested isolates were: IBCB 348, IBCB 351, IBCB 363, IBCB 408, IBCB 410, IBCB 418, IBCB 425 and IBCB 482, which showed confirmed mortality equal or higher than 70%, six days after spraying.
DIRECTORATE GENERAL FOR INTERNAL POLICIES POLICY DEPARTMENT B: STRUCTURAL AND COHESION POLICIES TRANSPORT AND TOURISM

12 million EU inhabitants are affected by railway noise during the day and 9 million during the night. This study lists measures, funding and regulations to reduce it. The introduction of modern rolling stock will lower noise most significantly. In the short run, the replacement of cast iron by composite brake blocks on rail freight cars is most important. Developing a regulation scheme for a staged process towards low-noise rolling stock is the heart of a rail noise abatement strategy. IP/B/TRAN/FWC/2010-006/LOT4/C1/SC2 2012
Liquid-liquid capillary replacement in a horizontal geometry: universal dynamics and replacement time

Capillary invasion of a liquid into an empty tube, which is called capillary rise when the tube axis is in the vertical direction, is one of the fundamental phenomena representing capillary effects. Usually, the tube is actually filled with another pre-existing fluid, air, whose viscosity and inertia can be practically neglected. In this study, we considered the effect of the pre-existing fluid, when its viscosity is non-negligible, in a horizontally geometry. This geometry is free from gravity and thus simpler than the geometry of capillary rise. We observed the dynamics when a capillary tube that is submerged horizontally in a liquid gets in contact with a second liquid. An appropriate combination of liquids allowed us to observe that the second liquid replaces the first without any prewetting process, thanks to a careful cleaning of capillary tubes. Furthermore, we experimentally observed three distinct viscous dynamics: (i) the conventional slowing-down dynamics, (ii) an unusual accelerating dynamics, and (iii) another unusual dynamics, which is linear in time. We developed a theory in viscous regimes, which accounts well for the observations through a unified expression describing the three distinct dynamics. We also demonstrated a thorough experimental confirmation on the initial velocity of the replacement. We further focused on the replacement time, the time required for the invading fluid to replaces completely the pre-existing fluid in the horizontal geometry, which is again well explained by the theory.
Characterizations of several convergence structures on fuzzy sets

In this paper, we discuss the characterizations and the relations of the $\Gamma$-convergence, the endograph metric and the sendograph metric on the realm of normal and upper semi-continuous fuzzy sets on metric space. It is found that both the $\Gamma$-convergence and the endograph metric have level decomposition property on fuzzy sets with their positive $\al$-cuts being compact. On the basis of these results, we give the characterizations of total boundedness, relative compactness and compactness in the space of compact positive $\al$-cuts fuzzy sets equipped with the endograph metric, and in the space of compact support fuzzy sets equipped with the sendograph metric, respectively.
Solving unsolvable problems in stratigraphy

In this study we analyze the importance of new magnetostratigraphic data on the Nordvik section for solving the problem of detailed Tethyan–Boreal correlation around the Jurassic–Cretaceous boundary with a special emphasis on the aspects of interpretation of the paleomagnetic data in magnetostratigraphic studies and the need for the integrated (paleontological and paleomagnetic) approach to recognition of the base of the Berriasian. © 2013, V.S. Sobolev IGM, Siberian Branch of the RAS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Underinvestment and Value Relevance of Earnings Management ( Terkurang Pelaburan dan Kerelevanan Nilai Pengurusan Perolehan )

The aim of this study is to examine whether earnings management among underinvestment firms is positively related to share price. Firms are said to have high growth opportunity but is unable to fund investment projects due to liquidity constraints because of the information asymmetry between the firm and the investors. As a result, firms have to provide high quality accounting information (i.e. value relevant information) to reduce information asymmetry and hence be free from liquidity constraints. One type of accounting information that can be provided is discretionary accrual (proxy for earnings management). The sample of this study is firms listed on the Main Board of Bursa Malaysia from year 2001 to 2007. We use Ohlson’s model to examine the value relevance of earnings management. We separate earnings into managed and unmanaged earnings. Panel data regression analyses were performed to examine the role of underinvestment on the relationship between earnings management and share price. We also examine the value relevance of earnings management using the return model. The results from the panel data regression analysis indicate that earnings management increases the value relevance of accounting information. Further, underinvestment moderates the relationship between earnings management and share price. Nevertheless, the results suggest that earnings management among firms can decrease the value relevance of accounting information. In general, it is concluded that underinvestment weakens the relationship between earnings management and share price/return, hence it motivates managers to convey opportunistic earnings management.
Personal identity among adolescents from transnational families

background Parents’ labour migration generates new types of families – transnational family, where one parent or both parents migrate and leave their children behind. Separation with parents could influence the child’s psychosocial functioning. The aim of this study was to analyse the situation of adolescents who experience separation from their parent/ parents caused by labour migration, especially how temporary absence of the parent is associated with the adolescents’ personal identity.
Using similarity ratings and the pathfinder algorithm for evaluating students' cognitive structures in Newtonian mechanics /

Learning involves either the incorporation of new fact into prior knowledge or the modification of the old knowledge structure. Therefore, the construction and organization of structure of a domain knowledge should help the understanding of the student's learning. If the student's cognitive structure in memory can be represented externally, then the instructor can better assess the student's learning difficulty, and remedial instruction can be more effective. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship of high school students' mechanics misconceptions, achievement, and their cognitive structures Two instruments were used in this study, a Force Concept Inventory (FCI) was administered to test students' misconceptions on mechanics, and a similarity rating task developed by the researcher was used to derive the students proximity data on mechanics concepts. The sample included high school students (grade 11) in middle Taiwan. Similarity ratings were transformed into a network (cognitive structure) by the Pathfinder algorithm. Students were divided into three groups according to their performance levels on classroom achievement tests. Three high school teachers were also asked to rate the similarity pairs, and the median of their ratings represents the content/teachers' structure. The data shows that there were more perceived connections among concepts in content/teachers' structure than students', and high achievers' cognitive structures were more similar to that of content/teachers than low achievers. In addition, some similarity pairs were found to have predictive power to students' correct and incorrect responses to FCI items. However, data analyses show no significant difference in cognitive structure between students with and without misconceptions. To Ya-Ying, for her love and support
Comparison Between Position and Rate Control Using a Foot Interface

There has been a recent increase in research related to supernumerary robotic arms. A challenge with supernumerary robotic arms is how to operate them effectively. One solution is to use the foot to teleoperate the arm. That frees the person to use their arms for other tasks. However, unlike hand interfaces, it is not known how to create effective foot control for robotic teleoperation. This paper presents an experiment to compare position and rate control methods for foot interfaces. A foot interface is presented that can be used for both position and rate control. A human subject experiment uses 2D positioning tasks to evaluate the effectiveness of each control method. These same tasks are tested with a hand interface to provide a baseline for comparison. Results show that, similar to the hand, position control performs faster than rate control when using the foot.
From blueprints to brain maps: the status of the Lemma Model in cognitive neuroscience

ABSTRACT When Levelt’s pioneering book about the Lemma Model of speech production appeared in 1989, cognitive neuroscience was just starting to take off. During the 30 years since then, this influential framework has undergone many refinements, and extensive efforts have been made to relate it to the brain. This paper provides a broad overview of these developments. The first section briefly describes the main claims of the theory. Then the next section presents multiple forms of evidence that, in keeping with these claims, spoken word generation depends on a predominantly left-hemisphere circuit in which the different levels of representation and computation postulated by the theory are subserved by mostly non-overlapping cortical regions, and the flow of information between them is largely sequential. Finally, the last section focuses on a number of other findings from cognitive neuroscience that appear to challenge the theory and hence must be addressed in future research.
Longevity in the Drosophila virilis Species Group. I. The D. virilis Phylad

Adult longevity of Drosophila is dependent upon many factors. In this study, the differences in longevity due to species, strain, and sex were examined for members of the D. virilis species phylad: D. virilis, lummei, texana, americana, and novamexicana. Newly eclosed adults from 12 laboratory strains representing diverse geographical localities were analyzed as to their longevity on standard cornmeal medium in order to discover interspecific, intraspecific, and sexual differences. The Texmelucan strain of D. virilis lived the longest. Males of this strain had an average longevity of 69 days, but females survived nearly 90 days. In contrast, the Chinook strain of D. americana was the shortest-lived with males surviving for 24 days, whereas the females lived 34 days. The other strains had mean longevities between these two extremes with there being significant interspecific differences. Drosophila virilis and D. lummei were not significantly different from each other but both lived significantly longer than the other three species; however, D. texana, D. americana, and D. novamexicana were not significantly different from each other. Significant intraspecific variation was found within D. virilis, D. texana, and D. americana. Females usually lived longer than males although the differences were not significant. Variation in the adult longevity of members of this phylad may be at least partially due to, although not limited to, differences in species, strain, and sex.
Reply to Li, Zhi et al.

1) Udali S, Guarini P, Moruzzi S, Ruzzenente A, Tammen S, Guglielmi A, et al. Global DNA methylation and hydroxymethylation differ in hepatocellular carcinoma and cholangiocarcinoma and relate to survival rate. HEPATOLOGY 2015;62:496-504. 2) Sch€ubeler D. Function and information content of DNA methylation. Nature 2015;517:321-326. 3) Lim U, Song MA. Dietary and lifestyle factors of DNA methylation. Methods Mol Biol 2012;863:359-376. 4) Jung AY, van Duijnhoven FJ, Nagengast FM, Botma A, HeineBr€oring RC, Kleibeuker JH, et al. Dietary B vitamin and methionine intake and MTHFR C677T genotype on risk of colorectal tumors in Lynch syndrome: the GEOLynch cohort study. Cancer Causes Control 2014;25:1119-1129. 5) Yara S, Lavoie JC, Levy E. Oxidative stress and DNA methylation regulation in the metabolic syndrome. Epigenomics 2015;7:283-300. 6) Bae JH, Kim JG, Heo K, Yang K, Kim TO, Yi JM. Identification of radiation-induced aberrant hypomethylation in colon cancer. BMC Genomics 2015;16:56. 7) Delpu Y, Cordelier P, Cho WC, Torrisani J. DNA methylation and cancer diagnosis. Int J Mol Sci 2013;14:15029-15058.
A New Rendition of an Old Classic: The Young Writers Program as a Writing Workshop.

The Young Writers Program (YWP) is the latest writing workshop to be developed for the classroom. It challenges students to choose a topic and write a novel-length piece based on that topic, without worrying about spelling or grammar. While the foundation of this philosophy is solid, the support and structure of the Young Writers Program website does not make up for the lack of structure and routine that is instrumental to the implementation and success of other writing workshops. Until it creates a framework that teachers can implement in their classroom, the Young Writers Program has very little direction and very few benefits when compared to other, more successful, writing workshops.
Indexing and query processing in RDF quad-stores

RDF data management has received a lot of attention in the past decade due to the widespread growth of Semantic Web and Linked Open Data initiatives. RDF data is expressed in the form of triples (as Subject Predicate Object), with SPARQL used for querying it. Many novel database systems such as RDF-3X, TripleBit, etc. – store RDF in its native form or within traditional relational storage – have demonstrated their ability to scale to large volumes of RDF content. However, it is increasingly becoming obvious from the knowledge representation applications of RDF that it is equally important to integrate with RDF triples additional information such as source, time and place of occurrence, uncertainty, etc. Consider an RDF fact (BarackObama, isPresidentOf, UnitedStates). While this fact is useful for finding information regarding president of United States, it does not provide sufficient information for answering many challenging questions like what is the temporal validity of this fact? , where did this fact come from? , etc. Annotations like confidence, geolocation, time, etc. can be modeled in RDF through a techniques called reification, which is also a W3C recommendations. Reification, retains the triple nature of RDF and associates annotations using blank nodes. The focus of this thesis is on database aspects of storing and querying RDF graphs containing annotations like confidence, etc. on RDF triples. In this thesis, we start by developing an RDF database, named RQ-RDF-3X for efficiently querying these RDF graphs containing annotations over native RDF triples. Next, we noticed that more than 62% facts in real-world RDF datasets like YAGO, DBpedia, etc. have numerical object values. Suggesting the use of queries containing ORDER-BY clause on traditional graph pattern queries of SPARQL. State-of-the-art RDF processing systems such as Virtuoso, Jena, etc. handle such queries by first collecting the results and then sorting them in-memory based on the userspecified function, making them not very scalable. In order to efficiently retrieve results of top-k queries, i.e. queries returning the top-k results ordered by a user-defined scoring function, we developed a top-k query processing database named Quark-X. In Quark-X we propose indexing and query processing techniques for making top-k querying efficient. Motivated by the importance of geo-spatial data in critical applications such as emergency response, transportation, agriculture etc. In addition to its widespread use in knowl-
Fishing power and standardized catch rates: implications of missing vessel-characteristic data from the Australian eastern king prawn (Melicertus plebejus) fishery

Standardized time series of fishery catch rates require collations of fishing power data on vessel characteristics. Linear mixed models were used to quantify fishing power trends and study the effect of missing data encountered when relying on commercial logbooks. For this, Australian eastern king prawn (Melicertus plebejus) harvests were analysed with historical (from vessel surveys) and current (from commercial logbooks) vessel data. Between 1989 and 2010, fishing power increased up to 76%. To date, both forward-filling and, alternatively, omitting records with missing vessel information from commercial logbooks produce broadly similar fishing power increases and standardized catch rates, owing to the strong influence of years with complete vessel data (16 out of 23 years of data). However, if gaps in vessel information had not originated randomly and skippers from the most efficient vessels were the most diligent at filling in logbooks, considerable errors would be introduced. Also, the buffering effec.
Antifertility effect of oil from few indigenous plants on female albino rats.

The antifertility effect of the oil from 5 different plants were studied in albino rats by a method which can detect any antizygotic blastocystotoxic antiimplantation or early abortifacient activity. All the preparations were administered from Day 1 to Day 7 of pregnancy. The oil of Areca catechu (nuts) reduced the pregnancy rate by 40% 60% and 80% with doses of 100 250 and 500 mg/kg body weight respectively. The oil of Carica papaya (pulp of the unripe fruit) and Grewia asiatica (seeds) decreased pregnancies by 60% with doses of 500 mg/kg body weight. The oil from Daucus carota (seeds) and Ricinus communis (seeds) reduced pregnancy by 40% and 20% respectively at doses of 500 mg/kg body weight but had no effect at lower doses.