Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Application of one‐step method to parameter estimation in ODE models

In this paper, we study application of Le Cam's one‐step method to parameter estimation in ordinary differential equation models. This computationally simple technique can serve as an alternative to numerical evaluation of the popular non‐linear least squares estimator, which typically requires the use of a multistep iterative algorithm and repetitive numerical integration of the ordinary differential equation system. The one‐step method starts from a preliminary n ‐consistent estimator of the parameter of interest and next turns it into an asymptotic (as the sample size n→∞) equivalent of the least squares estimator through a numerically straightforward procedure. We demonstrate performance of the one‐step estimator via extensive simulations and real data examples. The method enables the researcher to obtain both point and interval estimates. The preliminary n ‐consistent estimator that we use depends on non‐parametric smoothing, and we provide a data‐driven methodology for choosing its tuning parameter and support it by theory. An easy implementation scheme of the one‐step method for practical use is pointed out.
The bilingual advantage in the language processing domain : evidence from the Verbal Fluency Task

Several cognitive advantages in the non-verbal domain have been associated with bilingualism. However, it remains debated whether this advantage also extends to the language processing domain in bilingual children. To assess this, monolingual and bilingual eight-year-old children performed a letter (or phonemic) and a category (or semantic) Verbal Fluency Task (VFT) in order to observe executive functioning under language processing demands. Results showed that bilinguals significantly outperformed monolinguals in both versions of the VFT, demonstrating enhanced lexical processing abilities for bilinguals. These findings will be discussed in view of the bilingual advantage controversy.
The Evolution of Tag-Based Cooperation in Humans

Recent game-theoretic simulation and analytical models have demonstrated that cooperative strategies mediated by indicators of cooperative potential, or “tags,” can invade, spread, and resist invasion by noncooperators across a range of population-structure and cost-benefit scenarios. The plausibility of these models is potentially relevant for human evolutionary accounts insofar as humans possess some phenotypic trait that could serve as a reliable tag. Linguistic markers, such as accent and dialect, have frequently been either cursorily defended or promptly dismissed as satisfying the criteria of a reliable and evolutionarily viable tag. This paper integrates evidence from a range of disciplines to develop and assess the claim that speech accent mediated the evolution of tag-based cooperation in humans. Existing evidence warrants the preliminary conclusion that accent markers meet the demands of an evolutionarily viable tag and potentially afforded a cost-effective solution to the challenges of maintaining viable cooperative relationships in diffuse, regional social networks.
Application of power laws to biometrics, forensics and network traffic analysis

Tampering of biometric samples is becoming an important security concern. Attacks can occur in behavioral modalities (e.g. keyboard stroke) as well. Besides biometric data, other important security concerns are related to network traffic data on the Internet. In this thesis, we investigate the application of Power laws for biometrics, forensics and network traffic analysis. Passive detection techniques such as Benford’s law and Zipf’s law have not been investigated for the detection and forensic analysis of malicious and non-malicious tampering of biometric, keystroke and network traffic data. The Benford’s law has been reported in the literature to be very eﬀective in detecting tampering of natural images. In this thesis, our experiments show that the biometric samples do follow the Benford’s law; and that the highest detection and localisation accuracies for the biometric face images and ﬁngerprint images are achieved at 97.41% and 96.40%, respectively. The divergence values of Benford’s law are then used for the classification and source identification of ﬁngerprint images with good accuracies between the range of 76.0357% and 92.4344%. Another research focus in this thesis is on the application and analysis of the Benford’s law and Zipf’s law for keystroke dynamics to differentiate between the behaviour of human beings and non-human beings. The divergence values of the Benford’s law and the P-values of the Zipf’s law based on the latency values of the keystroke data can be used eﬀectively to differentiate between human and non-human behaviours. Finally, the Benford’s law and Zipf’s law are analysed for TCP ﬂow size difference for the detection of malicious traffics on the Internet with AUC values between the range of 0.6858 and 1. Furthermore, the P-values of the Zipf’s law have also been found to differentiate between malicious and non-malicious network traffics, which can be potentially exploited for intrusion detection system applications.
Locating the Missing 6 dB by Loudness Calibration of Binaural Synthesis

Binaural synthesis is a sound reproduction technology based on the convolution of sound signals with impulse responses defined between a source and a listener’s eardrums. The convolution products are typically presented by headphones. For perceptual verification, subjects traditionally remove the headphones to listen to the corresponding real scenario, which is cumbersome and requires a pause between the stimuli. In this contribution, loudness adjustments are presented using a method that allows for direct comparison by defining the reference scene for a listener wearing headphones. Influences of different headphones and equalization procedures are discussed and an explanation for the difference in auditory canal pressure between headphone and loudspeaker reproduction at the same loudness commonly referred to as the missing
Structure of wave-particle resonances and Alfvén mode saturation

The dynamics of beta-induced Alfven eigenmodes driven by anisotropic co-passing or counter-passing fast ions, in a low-shear magnetic equilibrium, is investigated by self-consistent hybrid MHD-particle simulations with the XHMGC code. Though the modes exhibit similar structure and frequency in both cases and the linear growth rate is 10% larger for counter-passing ions than for co-passing ions, the nonlinear saturation amplitude is much larger in co-passing case. Moreover, different scalings for the saturation amplitude with increasing growth rates are observed in the two cases. It is shown that these differences are caused by the different radial dependence of resonance frequencies of co-passing and counter-passing fast ions: flat in the former case, steep in the latter case, so that the resonance width is, respectively, larger (in the former case) or smaller (in the latter case) than the mode width.
Potential scavenging, antimicrobial activities and total phenolic content achieved by resins for five species of Commiphora

In this study, we will study the biochemical characters of the resins for the different species of Commiphora genus through investigation of the in vitro anti-oxidant activity of the crude extracts of resins for five species of Commiphora. The free radical scavenging activity will be measured by the 2,2 -diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) method. Also the total phenolic content was evaluated according to the Folin-Ciocalteu procedure. On the other hand the determination of the inhibitory effects of each of the extracts on the growth of selected bacterial and fungal was investigated on the pathogenic selected species. The results of this study are aiming to help in the development of biochemical analysis of resins which contributed to distinguish between plant species, to employ the plant extracts in the medical field and the possibility of their use in the treatment of many microbial diseases.
Integrated epigenetic and genetic analysis identifies markers of prognostic significance in pediatric acute myeloid leukemia

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) may be an epigenetically-driven malignancy because it harbors fewer genomic mutations than other cancers. In recent studies of AML in adults, DNA methylation patterns associate with clinical risk groups and prognosis. However, thorough evaluations of methylation in pediatric AML have not been done. Therefore, we performed an integrated analysis (IA) of the methylome and transcriptome with clinical outcome in 151 pediatric patients from the multi-center AML02 clinical trial discovery cohort. Intriguingly, reduced methylation and increased expression of DNMT3B was associated with worse clinical outcomes (IA p ≤ 10−5; q ≤ 0.002). In particular, greater DNMT3B expression associated with worse minimal residual disease (MRD; p < 10−5; q = 0.01), a greater rate of relapse or resistant disease (RR) (p = 0.00006; q = 0.06), and event-free survival (EFS; p = 0.00003; q = 0.04). Also, greater DNMT3B expression associated with greater genome-wide methylation burden (GWMB; R = 0.39; p = 10−6) and greater GWMB associated with worse clinical outcomes (IA p < 10−5). In an independent validation cohort of 132 similarly treated AAML0531 clinical trial patients, greater DNMT3B expression associated with greater GWMB, worse MRD, worse RR, and worse EFS (all p < 0.03); also, greater GWMB associated with worse MRD (p = 0.004) and EFS (p = 0.037). These results indicate that DNMT3B and GWMB may have a central role in the development and prognosis of pediatric AML.
Land Ice Freshwater Budget of the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans: 1. Data, Methods, and Results

Abstract The freshwater budget of the Arctic and sub‐polar North Atlantic Oceans has been changing due, primarily, to increased river runoff, declining sea ice and enhanced melting of Arctic land ice. Since the mid‐1990s this latter component has experienced a pronounced increase. We use a combination of satellite observations of glacier flow speed and regional climate modeling to reconstruct the land ice freshwater flux from the Greenland ice sheet and Arctic glaciers and ice caps for the period 1958–2016. The cumulative freshwater flux anomaly exceeded 6,300 ± 316 km3 by 2016. This is roughly twice the estimate of a previous analysis that did not include glaciers and ice caps outside of Greenland and which extended only to 2010. From 2010 onward, the total freshwater flux is about 1,300 km3/yr, equivalent to 0.04 Sv, which is roughly 40% of the estimated total runoff to the Arctic for the same time period. Not all of this flux will reach areas of deep convection or Arctic and Sub‐Arctic seas. We note, however, that the largest freshwater flux anomalies, grouped by ocean basin, are located in Baffin Bay and Davis Strait. The land ice freshwater flux displays a strong seasonal cycle with summer time values typically around five times larger than the annual mean. This will be important for understanding the impact of these fluxes on fjord circulation, stratification, and the biogeochemistry of, and nutrient delivery to, coastal waters.
The anatomy , biological plausibility and efficacy of visceral mobilization in the treatment of pelvic floor dysfunction

This paper provides an overview of the technique of visceral mobilization. Founded on the principles of osteopathic manipulative therapy, this modality is employed by manual therapy practitioners throughout the world. Advancements in the field of pelvic physiotherapy have generated a better understanding of how the components of the abdominopelvic canister work synergistically to support the midline of the body and contribute to normal function. The walls of this canister are occupied by and intimately connected to the visceral structures found within the abdominal cavity. These midline contents carry a significant mass within the body, and affect the function of the somatic frame in three ways: referred visceral pain; central sensitization; and changes in local tissue dynamics. The evidence supporting visceral mobilization therapy (VMT) is limited, and there is an overabundance of case reports and observational studies in the literature. However, there is some higher-level clinical evidence that supports the inclusion of VMT within a comprehensive treatment programme for a number of pelvic physiotherapy diagnoses, including lower urinary tract dysfunction, chronic constipation and irritable bowel syndrome. The evidence supporting VMT for the treatment of adhesion-related disorders such as infertility shows promise, and further studies are currently in progress.
Empirical study on CAPM model on China stock market MASTER THESIS WITHIN: Business administration in finance NUMBER OF CREDITS: 15 ECTS TUTOR: Andreas Stephan PROGRAMME OF STUDY: international financial analysis AUTHOR:

Background: The capital asset pricing model (CAPM) describes the interrelationship between the expected return of risk assets and risk in the equilibrium of investment market and gives the equilibrium price of risky assets (Banz, 1981). CAPM plays a very important role in the process of establishing a portfolio (Bodie, 2009). As Chinese stock market continues to grow and expand, the scope and degree of attention of CAPM models in China will also increase day by day. Therefore, in China, such an emerging market, it is greatly necessary to test the applicability and validity of the CAPM model in the capital market. Purpose: Through the monthly data of 100 stocks from January 1, 2007 to February 1, 2018, the time series and cross-sectional data of the capital asset pricing model on Chinese stock market are tested. The main objectives are: (1) Empirical study of the relationship between risk and return using the data of Chinese stock market in recent years to test whether the CAPM model established in the developed western market is suitable for the Chinese market. (2) Through the empirical analysis of the results to analyse the characteristics and existing problems of Chinese capital market. Method: First of all, we calculate the β#, i = 1, 2, . , 100 coefficients of each stock. Then 100 stocks are divided into 20 groups based on the size of the β# coefficient. Furthermore, we calculate β+#, 1 = 1, 2, . , 20 coefficients of each portfolio. Then, we test whether there is a positive linear correlation between the average return r+# of each portfolio and the β+# coefficient during the sample period. Therefore, according to the empirical method of this article, we would draw the conclusion. Conclusion: From the results of empirical research, China's securities market does not satisfy the capital asset pricing model, and asset portfolios with high systematic risks have low excess returns. In Chapter 5, this article will explain in detail the problems in the Chinese securities market.
Weighted Hausdorff Distance: A Loss Function For Object Localization

Recent advances in Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) have achieved remarkable results in localizing objects in images. In these networks, the training procedure usually requires providing bounding boxes or the maximum number of expected objects. In this paper, we address the task of estimating object locations without annotated bounding boxes, which are typically hand-drawn and time consuming to label. We propose a loss function that can be used in any Fully Convolutional Network (FCN) to estimate object locations. This loss function is a modification of the Average Hausdorff Distance between two unordered sets of points. The proposed method does not require one to "guess" the maximum number of objects in the image, and has no notion of bounding boxes, region proposals, or sliding windows. We evaluate our method with three datasets designed to locate people's heads, pupil centers and plant centers. We report an average precision and recall of 94% for the three datasets, and an average location error of 6 pixels in 256x256 images.
Conceptual Model Development of Big Data Analytics Implementation Assessment Effect on Decision-Making

The significance of big data advancement has benefited various organizations to leverage the potential insights and capabilities of big data in organizational performance and decision-making. However, the analytics outcome and quality of big data analytics (BDA) implementation has yet to be addressed. Therefore the aims of this paper are to identify and analyze the affecting factors and elements of BDA implementation and to propose a conceptual model for effective decision-making through BDA implementation assessment. The model is developed based on three dimensions such as performing data strategy (organization), collaborative knowledge worker (people) and executing data analytics (technology). The findings of this ongoing study proceeds with designing a proposed conceptual model with the research hypothesis and may provide a better assessment model for effective decision-making in the long run.
EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY STUDIES ON THE IRIS PUMILA CLONAL PLANT: ADVANTAGES OF A GOOD MODEL SYSTEM, MAIN FINDINGS AND DIRECTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

Evolutionary studies on the dwarf bearded iris, Iris pumila L. , a perennial clonal monocot with hermaphroditic enthomophylous flowers, have been conducted during the last three decades on plants and populations from the Deliblato Sands in Serbia. In this review we discuss the main advantages of this model system that have enabled various studies of several important genetic, ecological, and evolutionary issues at different levels of biological organization (molecular, physiological, anatomical, morphological and population). Based on published research and its resonance in international scientific literature, we present the main findings obtained from these studies, and discuss possible directions for further research.
Testing the Effect of Portfolio Holdings Disclosure in an Environment Absent of Mandatory Disclosure

This study examines a number of portfolio disclosure regimes with respect to accuracy and susceptibility to copycat behaviour in an environment absent of mandatory disclosure. We find that periodic portfolio disclosure tends to underestimate true excess performance as well as idiosyncratic risk in top-quartile fund managers, with longer inter-reporting intervals tending to result in greater differences. ‘Copycat funds’ following the disclosed holdings of top-tier managers significantly underperform the underlying fund, while copycats following bottom-tier managers significantly outperform the underlying fund. Our findings suggest that periodic reporting at monthly intervals or longer would not affect fund alpha generation.
ASSESSMENT OF FRUIT QUALITY AND ANTIOXIDANT ACTIVITY OF THREE CITRUS SPECIES DURING RIPENING

Physicochemical changes and antioxidant activity of pulp from three citrus varieties were investigated during ripening. Results showed, all varieties except for 'Page' had not significant differences (p<0.05) on total soluble solid (TSS) and titratable acidity (TA) after Oct. evaluation. Generally, all varieties had optimum peel colour in Nov. and Dec. harvesting time. Although, phenolic content was superior in Sep. and Dec. but total flavonoid varied depending the variety and ripening stage. 'Moro' showed high anthocyanin content (0.83 mg/l) in Nov. evaluation. Total carotenoid increased during Sep. and Oct. and then was constant after Nov., but ascorbic acid decreased during ripening. IC50 values of DPPH · were high in all samples taken in November. Furthermore, antiradical efficiency (AE) of 'Moro' was higher (Oct.) than 'Thamson' and 'Siavaraz' (Dec.) species. According to antioxidant assay founded that antioxidant capacities at all varieties were in highest level at early of December harvesting date. In generals, due to optimum fruit quality and antioxidant capacity during late November and early December, we suggested that these times is suitable to harvest of studied varieties.
Disease Mapping via Negative Binomial M-quantile Regression

Summary A new approach to ecological regression for disease mapping is introduced, based on semiparametric M-quantile regression models. In particular, we dene a Negative Binomial M-quantile model as an alternative to Empirical Bayes or fully Bayesian approaches to disease mapping. The area-level covariates used in ecological regression are usually measured with error, and the proposed M-quantile modelling approach is easily made robust against outlying data in the model covariates. Dierences between the M-quantile model and the usual random eects models are discussed, and these alternative approaches are compared using the well-known Scottish Lip cancer data and a simulation experiment. The Lip Cancer data example shows that the Negative Binomial M-quantile model conrms results obtained by other methods, but also seems to have less shrinkage than the Empirical Bayes method, so reducing the problem of oversmoothing. The simulation experiment suggests that the new model leads to estimates with smaller mean square error. We also show how the Negative Binomial M-quantile can be extended to account for spatial correlation between areas using a Geographically Weighted Regression strategy.
Generative Adversarial Networks for Image-to-Image Translation on Multi-Contrast MR Images - A Comparison of CycleGAN and UNIT

In medical imaging, a general problem is that it is costly and time consuming to collect high quality data from healthy and diseased subjects. Generative adversarial networks (GANs) is a deep learning method that has been developed for synthesizing data. GANs can thereby be used to generate more realistic training data, to improve classification performance of machine learning algorithms. Another application of GANs is image-to-image translations, e.g. generating magnetic resonance (MR) images from computed tomography (CT) images, which can be used to obtain multimodal datasets from a single modality. Here, we evaluate two unsupervised GAN models (CycleGAN and UNIT) for image-to-image translation of T1- and T2-weighted MR images, by comparing generated synthetic MR images to ground truth images. We also evaluate two supervised models; a modification of CycleGAN and a pure generator model. A small perceptual study was also performed to evaluate how visually realistic the synthesized images are. It is shown that the implemented GAN models can synthesize visually realistic MR images (incorrectly labeled as real by a human). It is also shown that models producing more visually realistic synthetic images not necessarily have better quantitative error measurements, when compared to ground truth data. Code is available at this https URL
Does Integration Occur on a Certain Day? The Case of the Lithuanian Stock Market

Does Integration Occur on a Certain Day? The Case of the Lithuanian Stock Market This paper explores the intersection between market integration and Weekend Effect by investigating the possibility of integration to occur in a certain day over the period of 1 January 1990 until 31 December 2010. The integration was retrieved from the intercept time varying rolling regression of Stehle's (1977) ICAPM Model. Meanwhile, the Weekend effect is captured by the intercept time varying rolling regression of French's (1980) Monday Effect Model. For robustness, we modified the French's Model to examine the seasonality inside market integration with Exchange Rate and Oil Prices as the control variable. This research remarks the seasonality of Lithuanian stock market integration.