Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Simulation of coupled nonlinear time-delayed feedback loops using state-space representation

A discrete time model for single and coupled nonlinear time-delayed Mach-Zehnder feedback loops is developed and validated. The model is used to investigate synchronization regimes related to feedback strength, time delay and optical biasing for mutually coupled loops. A comparison between simulation and experimental results is presented for synchronization regimes, and the model is used to identify parameter mismatches in the experimental system. Identification of mismatches and appropriate adjustment of synchronization regimes is discussed in context of applications to secure communications and sensor networks. Introduction The simulation of accurate models for experimental systems is vital to determining future research and validating existing research. In particular, modeling a system of coupled nonlinear time-delayed feedback loops provides a number of unique avenues for numerical investigation. Such systems are under heavy study in efforts to develop new methods of secure communication and sensing. Of particular interest to this field is the nonlinear system involving Mach-Zehnder interferometers as all of its components are readily available commercially. Published models for this system have been developed using continuous time, and model reasonably the behavior of the system. In our research however, development of the system has progressed in a manner that suggests implementing a physically discrete system. This progression motivates a change in the models for the system as well. The model for each independent loop will be a discrete time, state-space representation of the loop in Kouomuo [1] and will be tested against published results for identical systems. Coupling schemes will be initially tested on well known and previously explored systems such as the Lorenz model [2]. The final implementation will be tested against published experimental data for such a coupled system [3,4]. Since research into implementation as either a communication or sensor device has shown a significant dependence on the accuracy of synchronization which is further dependent on the quality of parameter matching, this will explored in detail. We will identify via simulation existing parameter mismatching in an experimental system. Background The nonlinear time-delayed feedback system explored in detail by Kouomuo [1] is comprised of a laser, Mach-Zehnder inferometer, filtering, delay and amplification. Through basic mathematical representations for each of these components one can form a model for the evolution of the system in terms of a time-delayed integrodifferential equation as defined in Kouomuo:
Future Changes in Precipitation and Drought Characteristics over Bangladesh Under CMIP5 Climatological Projections

: The impacts of climate change on precipitation and drought characteristics over Bangladesh were examined by using the daily precipitation outputs from 29 bias-corrected general circulation models (GCMs) under the representative concentration pathway (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios. A precipitation-based drought estimator, namely, the Effective Drought Index (EDI), was applied to quantify the characteristics of drought events in terms of the severity and duration. The changes in drought characteristics were assessed for the beginning (2010–2039), middle (2040–2069), and end of this century (2070–2099) relative to the 1976–2005 baseline. The GCMs were limited in regard to forecasting the occurrence of future extreme droughts. Overall, the findings showed that the annual precipitation will increase in the 21st century over Bangladesh; the increasing rate was comparatively higher under the RCP8.5 scenario. The highest increase in rainfall is expected to happen over the drought-prone northern region. The general trends of drought frequency, duration, and intensity are likely to decrease in the 21st century over Bangladesh under both RCP scenarios, except for the maximum drought intensity during the beginning of the century, which is projected to increase over the country. The extreme and medium-term drought events did not show any significant changes in the future under both scenarios except for the medium-term droughts, which decreased by 55% compared to the base period during the 2070s under RCP8.5. However, extreme drought days will likely increase in most of the cropping seasons for the different future periods under both scenarios. The spatial distribution of changes in drought characteristics indicates that the drought-vulnerable areas are expected to shift from the northwestern region to the central and the southern region in the future under both scenarios due to the effects of climate change.
Investment in energy saving measures and heterogeneous preferences

Investments of homeowners in energy efficiency renovation can lead to greenhouse gas abatement. We investigate homeowners’ motives for these investments in energy saving measures. As homeowners have to trade off current investments with uncertain future returns, their decisions may depend on their intrinsic preferences. We analyze whether Swiss homeowners’ preferences with respect to risk, time, environmental, and social preferences drive their investments in energy-efficient renovations. We combine methods from experimental economics with classical survey questions. The data show that homeowners who declare being risk taking in general are more likely to have renovated their house or to plan to renovate their house. Among households who renovated their house at least once, we find that time preferences affect the energy efficiency of the house. Environmental preferences mainly play a role for renovating according to the Minergie standard that guaranties energy efficient renovation.
In vitro evaluation of ruminant feed from West Sumatera based on chemical composition and content of rumen degradable and rumen undegradable proteins

Aim: This research aimed to discover the chemical composition, as well as the content of the degradable and undegradable protein of the ruminant feed commonly used as cattle feed by Indonesian farmers. Materials and Methods: In this study, Pennisetum purpureum, Leucaena leucocephala, Indigofera zollingeriana, Gliricidia sepium, cassava, maize, palm kernel cake, and rice bran were used as feed. Chemical composition was determined by proximate and Van Soest analyses performed in triplicate. Dry matter and organic matter digestibility, as well as the rumen degradable proteins (RDP) and rumen undegradable proteins (RUP) contents, were determined in vitro using the Tilley and Terry method. Results: The results showed that more proteins can be obtained from legumes than from grass or concentrates. The highest protein amount was obtained from I. zollingerian (31.22%), while the lowest protein amount was obtained from cassava (3.59%). Dry matter digestibility ranged from 18.53% (rice bran) to 49.21% (G. sepium). Organic matter digestibility ranged from 35.71% (cassava) to 59.57% (I. zollingerian). Rice bran had the highest RDP from concentrate (73.26%), whereas I. zollingerian had the highest RDP from forage (74.72%). The highest RUP from concentrate was obtained from palm kernel cake (61.01%), and the highest RUP from forage was obtained from L. leucocephala (49.23%). Conclusion: The preparation of ruminant livestock rations must be based on RDP and RUP to meet the needs of both the rumen microbes and host animals. Information regarding the RDP and RUP of feeds is still limited, making this study useful in the preparation of ruminant livestock rations based on RDP and RUP ratios.
Real Interest Rates , Inflation , and Default Sewon Hur

This paper argues that the comovement between inflation and economic activity is an important determinant of real interest rates over time and across countries. First, we show that for advanced economies, periods with more procyclical inflation are associated with lower real rates, but only when there is no risk of default on government debt. Second, we present a model of nominal sovereign debt with domestic risk-averse lenders. With procyclical inflation, nominal bonds pay out more in bad times, making them a good hedge against aggregate risk. In the absence of default risk, procyclical inflation yields lower real rates. However, procyclicality implies that the government needs to make larger (real) payments when the economy deteriorates, which could increase default risk and trigger an increase in real rates. The patterns of real rates predicted by the model are quantitatively consistent with those documented in the data.
Acquiring Firms ’ Shareholder Wealth Effects of Selected Asian Domestic and Cross-Border Takeover Bids : China and India 1999-2003

Acquiring Firms’ Shareholder Wealth Effects of Selected Asian Domestic and Cross-Border Takeover Bids: China and India 1999-2003 Yunfei Cheng, J. Wickramanayake and J. P. A. Sagaram ABSTRACT This study investigates the shareholders’ wealth effects of mergers and acquisitions of Chinese and Indian acquiring companies. It examines market reactions to 157 Indian and 109 Chinese mergers and acquisition (M&A) deals with a value of at least US$1million during the period from 1999 to 2003. It is found that acquirers react positively with statistically significant bid announcement effects for the Indian sample for short window periods. However in a 301-day event window centred on announcement day, cumulative average abnormal returns for both samples are negative but statistically insignificant for Indian acquirers and statistically significant for Chinese acquirers. Another finding is that domestic M&As trigger higher wealth effects than cross-border operations for Indian acquirers while Chinese acquirers generate higher returns through cross-border M&As. Low market to book value ratio (MTBV) acquirers seem to out-perform high MTBV glamour acquirers based on both Indian and Chinese samples. There is strong evidence that the means of payment and tender offers have a substantial impact on the share prices of both Chinese and Indian acquirers. By way of policy implications of our findings, Chinese and Indian shareholders can use differential financing methods and varied wealth outcomes arising from investments based on style-characteristics of firms. For policy makers in these countries such as government authorities dealing with company mergers, they have an important role to play in creating a good competitive market environment for M&As.
TWENTY-SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COMPOSITE MATERIALS ( ICCM 22 ) FATIGUE PROPERTIES AND DAMAGE OF CF-PPS FROM HIGH TO VERY HIGH CYCLES

Although fiber reinforced polymer composites (FRP) are increasingly used in primary aircraft structures, there is still a lack of knowledge on their fatigue behavior and underlying damage mechanisms, particularly under very high cycle fatigue (VHCF) conditions. To address these issues, there is a limiting factor regarding conventional fatigue testing concepts, as they are not capable of performing very high cycles (N > 100 million) in an economically feasible period. A unique ultrasonic fatigue testing facility was therefore developed for cyclic three-point bending of FRP. However, obtaining very high cycle fatigue data of polymer composites using elevated testing frequencies of 20 kHz is challenging with respect to the viscoelastic nature of polymers. In this research, therefore, energy dissipation by heat due to viscoelastic damping and interfacial friction was mitigated by compressed air cooling and pulse-pause control (1:20), resulting in an effective testing frequency of approx. 1 kHz. Furthermore, monitoring of suitable fatigue testing conditions was undertaken by infrared thermography, high-resolution force measurements and cyclic displacement control via Laser Doppler vibrometry. Nevertheless, low frequency benchmark tests were mandatory in order to evaluate data obtained by applying elevated testing frequencies. Therefore, cyclic three-point bending tests in the high cycle fatigue (HCF) regime were performed at 10 Hz for comparison. Besides investigating the fatigue behavior at lower cycle numbers than viable with the VHCF setup, the HCF tests allowed load frequency influences to be investigated and, thus, served as benchmarks for the ultrasonic VHCF experiments. To summarize, HCF and VHCF tests up to 2x109 load cycles showed decrease of maximum bending stress versus fatigue life which could be described by separate power law functions for 10 Hz and 20 kHz testing frequency, respectively. Increased fatigue life was observed for 10 Hz compared to the 20 kHz testing frequency, yet, microscopic characterization indicated similar damage evolution and failure mechanisms in the areas of highest shear stresses.
Interviewer effects on respondents’ willingness to provide blood samples in SHARE

This paper deals with the influence of the interviewer on respondents willingness to provide blood samples in the German part of the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). A multilevel approach highlights the importance of the interviewer: the empty model shows an intraclass correlation (ICC) of 36% meaning that 36% of the variance are at the interviewer level. Information coming from an additional interviewer survey is used to identify determinants which can explain these effects, focussing on interviewers’ experience in the job and with the measurement as well as the expectations regarding their own success at getting respondents’ consent. The results show that interviewers’ experiences as well as their expectations are important determinants of consent. The ICC can be reduced substantially to 9%.
1 Shared Information and Argument Omission in Turkish

Studies of argument realization and omission attempt to lay out various ways of argument realization and ellipsis across languages and aim to uncover how the chosen forms of arguments are determined by language specific constraints. For instance while it is obligatory for English speakers to utter all arguments of a predicate overtly, this obligation does not hold for Turkish speakers, i.e. use of null arguments cannot be deemed as a source of ungrammaticality for Turkish. The English sentence in (1), for instance, can be constructed without a subject in Turkish as in (2). Moreover, Turkish also allows for covert realization of direct objects and oblique objects.
AN EMPIRICAL EVALUATION OF THE PERFORMANCE OF TRAMO / SEATS ON SIMULATED SERIES

TRAMO (Time series Regression with ARIMA noise, Missing observations, and Outliers) and SEATS (Signal Extraction in ARIMA Time Series) are linked programs developed by Victor Gomez and Agustin Maravall to seasonally adjust time series using ARIMA model-based signal extraction techniques. We will evaluate the performance of TRAMO/SEATS on some simulated economic time series, including series with a large irregular component, series with complex trends, and short series. The Bureau is moving to a new classification system for establishment based surveys. The former Standard Industrial Codes (SIC) are being replaced by the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS). When this happens, there is a possibility that some series at the Census Bureau will need to be adjusted with only a few years of data. So we will look at adjusting our simulated series with only four years of data. We evaluated the performance of seasonal adjustments from TRAMO and SEATS as compared to adjustments from X-12-ARIMA. X-12-ARIMA is the Census Bureau's latest program in the X-11 line of seasonal adjustment programs. We looked at three different versions of SEATS, including a version of X12-ARIMA that has access to the SEATS algorithm hereafter called X-12-ARIMA-SEATS. X-12-ARIMASEATS allows us to compute similar diagnostics for both programs so we can compare adjustments between modelbased adjustment and the X-12 method.
Retina Retinal Vascular Reactivity in Central Serous Chorioretinopathy

Felice Cardillo Piccolino, Marco Lupidi, Carlo Cagini, Daniela Fruttini, Massimo Nicolò, Chiara Maria Eandi, and Silvia Tito Fondazione per la Macula Onlus, Di.N. O.G. Mi. , University Eye Clinic, Genova, Italy Department of Biomedical and Surgical Sciences, Section of Ophthalmology, University of Perugia, S. Maria della Misericordia Hospital, Perugia, Italy Centre de l’Odéon, Paris, France Department of Internal Medicine, University of Perugia, S. Maria della Misericordia Hospital, Perugia, Italy Clinica Oculistica Università di Genova DINOGMI, Ospedale Policlinico San Martino, Genova, Italy Department of Surgical Sciences, Eye Clinic, University of Torino, Torino, Italy
The Impact of Social Network Structure on the Growth and Survival of Online Communities

While online communities are important platforms for various social activities, many online communities fail to survive, which motivates researchers to investigate factors affecting the growth and survival of online communities. We comprehensively examine the effects of a wide variety of social network features on the growth and survival of communities in Reddit. We show that several social network features, including clique ratio, density, clustering coefficient, reciprocity and centralization, have significant effects on the survival of communities. In contrast, we also show that social network features examined in this paper only have weak effects on the growth of communities. Moreover, we conducted experiments predicting future growth and survival of online communities from social network features. The results show that social network features are useful for predicting the survival of communities but not for predicting their growth.
Think With Your Feet , Not With Your Head : A Biologically Inspired Design Approach for Augmenting Unsteady Locomotion

1.1 Animals can navigate unsteady environments Animals are highly stable and agile when moving through complex and unexpected environments. Despite the leaps and bounds of success that legged robots have had, they still cannot match the performance of legged animals in these maneuvers. Interestingly, animals achieve this despite having extremely long sensorimotor delays [1], noisy sensors and compliant actuators. These problems would render today’s state-of-the-art robot closed loop feedback controllers infeasible. So how do animals achieve these aweinspiring behaviors with theoretically less capable sensors and actuators?
GROWTH AND SURVIVORSHIP OF FREMONT COTIONWOOD , GOODDING WILLOW , AND SALT CEDAR SEEDLINGS AFTER LARGE FLOODS IN CENTRAL ARIZONA

-During winter 1993, Arizona experienced regional river flooding. Floodwaters at the Hassayampa River eroded floodplains and created a 50-m-wide scour zone available for colonization by pioneer plant species. The slow rate and long duration of the floodwater recession allowed establishment of spring-germinating native trees (mainly Fremont cottonwood [Populus fremontii] and Goodding willow [Salix gooddingii] as well as summer-germinating species including the introduced salt cedar (Tamarix chinensw and related species). Goodding willow and Fremont cottonwood seedlings showed zonation in the floodplain, while salt cedar was equally abundant in zones with saturated and dry surface soils. Floodplain elevation (and soil moisture) influenced shoot growth rate to different degrees among the 3 species. For example, Goodding willow seedlings were significantly taller in areas with saturated soils than dry surface soils; Fremont cottonwoods were taller in the dry surface soil areas; and salt cedar were equally short in both soil moisture zones. Other factors that differentially influenced abundance or growth rates included competition with herbaceous species (Melilotus spp., an introduced plant, locally preempted salt cedar establishment) and herbivory (selective browsing by livestock at 1 river site reduced the natural height advantage of the native tree species). I draw on the results of this descriptive field study to suggest ways in which stream flows and floodplain land use can be managed to restore ecological conditions that favor native tree species over the introduced and widespread salt cedar.
Does Intraindividual Variability in Cognition Mediate the Relationship between Socioeconomic Status and Academic Achievement ?

Individuals from lower SES backgrounds tend to perform relatively poorly on markers of academic achievement. Mechanisms underlying this influence are, at least in part, neurologically based: Associations between SES and brain development are present in utero, and persist throughout childhood and adolescence. Recently, numerous studies have described associations between intraindividual variability (IIV; fluctuations in the performance of an individual on a single measure administered over multiple occasions) and the presence and severity of brainbased disorders, such as multiple sclerosis and dementia. Individuals with higher IIV across measurement occasions tend to experience more functional difficulties. However, no study has investigated whether the relationship between SES and academic achievement might be mediated by IIV in cognitive performance. This pilot study (N = 7) laid the groundwork for a larger investigation of that question. I recruited undergraduate students, gathered data on their familial SES and recent academic achievement, and tested their cognitive performance on three occasions spread over 3 weeks. SES and academic achievement were significantly positively correlated, r = . 81, p = . 013, but hierarchical regression analyses detected no significant mediating effects of IIV in reaction time or working memory. Despite this negative result, this pilot study can be considered a success: It gave insight into the shortcomings of SES measures in undergraduates, and into the problems inherent in retaining participants in an extended IIV paradigm. Furthermore, the presence of some promising correlational trends in the data, trends consistent with findings from other studies, suggest there might be value in a larger investigation of the relationship between SES, academic achievement, and IIV in cognitive performance.
Author ' s personal copy ATTENTIONAL MODULATION OF THE SOMATOSENSORY MU RHYTHM

Neural oscillations with a frequency of around 10 Hz are thought to be a ubiquitous phenomenon in sensory cortices, and it has been hypothesized that the level of 10 Hz activity is related to local cortical excitability. During spatial attention, the visual alpha rhythm has been found to be modulated according to the direction of attention. Specifically, the alpha rhythm desynchronizes over visual cortex contralateral to the direction of attention and synchronizes over visual cortex ipsilateral to the direction of attention, and these modulations have been associated with facilitation and inhibition of sensory processing. In the somatosensory domain, the reactivity of a similar rhythm, known as the mu rhythm, during attention tasks is a current topic of inquiry and somatotopic modulation of the mu rhythm by directed attention have been reported. In this paper, we investigate how lateralized spatial attention modulates the ongoing somatosensory mu rhythm, and how such modulation impacts sensory information processing. 128 channel EEG was recorded while subjects performed a somatosensory spatial attention task. In addition to analyses on scalp recorded data, a spatial filtering method was utilized to investigate spatial attention effects in the source space. The direction of spatial attention was found to have a significant somatotopic effect on the ongoing mu rhythm occurring in primary somatosensory cortex. Concurrently, the visual alpha rhythm was significantly elevated above the baseline level during somatosensory attention, demonstrating a cross-modal effect. Lastly, an analysis was performed to investigate the correlation between the level of prestimulus mu activity and subsequent stimulus evoked activity in primary somatosensory cortex. © 2011 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.