Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Asset Pricing and Volatility Modeling: The Case of Indonesia Stock Market

In determining the rate of return of stocks, many models have been introduced. Equilibrium models like APT and multifactor models have been used in calculating the level of risk and returns through portfolio formation. Since the development initiated by Markowitz, the empirical results of many researchers have produced different points of view related to stock return and risk relationship. This study aims to look at what factors that can be used as a basis to determine returns and at the same time to minimize the risk. As in previous research studies using the CAPM, APT and multifactor models, this study focuses on determining the combination of the most significant variables that determine portfolio stock returns in Indonesia. In addition to using the standard of beta estimates, this study also uses an estimate of volatility models. To obtain the best model, the first group of variables was selected through several test models of equilibrium. This allows the best model to only include several valid variables. The results show that the CAPM is not valid and that market capitalization variable can explain changes in the portfolio yield more than do other variables. The model of the APT shows that macroeconomic and market risk premium are significant in explaining changes in portfolio returns, except for the production index. Several fundamental factors of the multifactor models are also found to be significant variables, including rating, and that liquidity factor is still an investment benchmark in Indonesia. It is proven that the volume and frequency of trades are consistently significant in all test models. Apart from that, it is also found that investors in Indonesia are still passive and not comfortable with risk, and follow traditional pattern. The simulation results of this study indicate that beta is estimated using a standard similar to that estimated using ARCH beta (volatility modeling), and that both methods show the same conclusion. In addition, the portfolio simulation indicates that there is an effect of market capitalization.
Development of semantic web services: model driven approach

The power of Web Service (WS) technology lies in the fact that it establishes a common, vendor-neutral platform for integrating distributed computing applications, in intranets as well as the Internet at large. Semantic Web Services (SWSs) promise to provide solutions to the challenges associated with automated discovery, dynamic composition, enactment, and other tasks associated with managing and using service-based systems. One of the barriers to a wider adoption of SWS technology is the lack of tools for creating SWS specifications. OWL-S is one of the major SWS description languages. This paper presents a model driven approach to facilitate the construction of OWL-S specifications. The methodology is divided into three main steps. In the first step we reverse engineered WSDL documents into UML profile models that enable the use of high-level graphical models as an integration platform for semantic web services. In the second step, suitable domain ontologies are used for the semantic annotation of the UML models. Finally, in the third step a conversion tool will generate automatically the OWL-S description from these UML models. The UML profile provides flexibility as it can expresses multiple semantic web service concepts.
The Wisdom of Crowds in Matters of Taste

Decision makers can often improve the accuracy of their judgments on factual matters by consulting “crowds” of others for their respective opinions. In this article, we investigate whether decision makers could similarly draw on crowds to improve the accuracy of their judgments about their own tastes and hedonic experiences. We present a theoretical model that states that accuracy gains from consulting a crowd’s judgments of taste depend on the interplay among taste discrimination, crowd diversity, and the similarity between the crowd’s preferences and those of the decision maker. The model also delineates the boundary conditions for such “crowd wisdom. ” Evidence supporting our hypotheses was found in two laboratory studies in which decision makers made judgments about their own enjoyment of musical pieces and short films. Our findings suggest that although different people may have different preferences and inclinations, their judgments of taste can benefit from the wisdom of crowds. Data are available a.
Theoretical Analysis of Seepage through Homogeneous and Non-homogeneous Saturated-Unsaturated Soil

In this research, the program SEEP / W was used to compute the value of seepage through the homogenous and non-homogeneous earth dam with known dimensions. The results show that the relationship between the seepage and water height in upstream of the dam to its length for saturated soil was nonlinear when the dam is homogenous. For the non-homogeneous dam, the relationship was linear and the amount of seepage increase with the height of water in upstream to its length. Also the quantity of seepage was calculated using the method of (Fredlund and Xing, 1994) and (Van Genuchten, 1980) when the soil is saturated – unsaturated, the results referred to that the higher value of seepage when the soil is saturated and the lowest value of seepage when using Van Genuchten method for both homogeneous and non-homogeneous earth fill dams. Also relationship for the seepage (Q) with the curve fitting parameter (a) for sand, silt and clay soil was nonlinear when the dam is homogenous with constant variables (n, m) and the amount of seepage increase with increasing value of (a). The amount of seepage for a nonhomogeneous dam with a different value of (Kshell to Kcore) was calculated and then compared with the value of (K equivalent) which was equal to average (Kshell and Kcore) for the homogenous dam. The results show that when the average between (Kshell and Kcore) is ≤ 100 the difference was small between the quantity of the seepage calculated. For simplicity of the solution process, it can be replaced non-homogeneous dam by a homogenous dam with (K eq) when the values of Kshell and Kcore are less than or equal to 100.
Comparison of nitrification inhibitors to restrict nitrate leaching in a maize crop irrigated under mediterranean conditions

The aim of this paper was to compare dicyandiamide (DCD) and 3,4 dimethylpyrazole phosphate (DMPP) as inhibitors of ammonium oxidation and nitrate leaching after applying fertilizer to a maize (Zea mays L.) crop grown under Mediterranean conditions. The effects of nitrification inhibitors were also compared to those of N fertilization without inhibitors and with split N application. In plots fertilized with ammonium sulphate nitrate (ASN), either DCD or DMPP lengthened ammonium presence in soil and produced lower soil NO3 concentrations (30% lower than in plots with no inhibitor). The use of DCD or DMPP achieved significant reductions in nitrate leaching. DCD showed excellent properties for controlling nitrate leaching, taking into account the fact that grain yield and N accumulated by plant were similar for the ASN-DCD and ASN treatments applied at the same N doses. The split N treatment did not offer any advantages in terms of leached nitrate, either with the use of single ammonium sulphate nitrate (ASN) or with single application of nitrification inhibitors. The nitrification inhibitors did not increase the yield but did not reduce it either. The drainage rate was the most important component of nitrate leaching. The low drainage values of the first year resulted in a sharp decline of nitrate leaching. However, the experiment of the second year, showed clear differences in nitrate leaching between treatments due to the greater drainage. Additional key words: dicyandiamide, dimethylpyrazolephosphate, N fertilization, split N application. Resumen
Interaction of Public and Private Employment: Evidence from a German Government Move

We use the move of the seat of the German government from Bonn to Berlin in 1999 to test competing views about the impact of public employment on private sector activity in a local labor market. A relocated public sector job might create new jobs in an area as it increases demand for locally-produced goods and services, or crowd out existing jobs due to upward pressure on housing rents. Using employment data from a panel of a 50% sample of establishments across 190 Berlin postcodes, we apply a treatment intensity approach which takes the possibility of spillovers into account. Results indicate that the arrival of 100 public sector jobs into an area generates 55 additional jobs in the private sector. There is evidence of spillovers: relocations up to a distance of 1km from a postcode boundary increases employment in the private sector by 36 jobs. These effects are coming through job gains in the service sector, while manufacturing employment is not influenced by the relocation.
A framework for secure and decentralized sharing of medical imaging data via blockchain consensus

The electronic sharing of medical imaging data is an important element of modern healthcare systems, but current infrastructure for cross-site image transfer depends on trust in third-party intermediaries. In this work, we examine the blockchain concept, which enables parties to establish consensus without relying on a central authority. We develop a framework for cross-domain image sharing that uses a blockchain as a distributed data store to establish a ledger of radiological studies and patient-defined access permissions. The blockchain framework is shown to eliminate third-party access to protected health information, satisfy many criteria of an interoperable health system, and readily generalize to domains beyond medical imaging. Relative drawbacks of the framework include the complexity of the privacy and security models and an unclear regulatory environment. Ultimately, the large-scale feasibility of such an approach remains to be demonstrated and will depend on a number of factors which we discuss in detail.
A Study of the Electoral Business Cycle in Japan: Elections and Government Spending on Public Construction

The recent literature on the electoral business cycle has tried to explore the relationship between the timing of national elections and economic conditions in modem capitalist democracies. A variety of studies, both theoretical and empirical, have been conducted on the subject. They share a common theme. In an attempt to win elections the incumbent government will manipulate the economy in order to attract the most votes. As a result of this manipulation, certain economic indicators fluctuate over time so that the peaks in the series synchronize with the timing of elections. ' This paper examines the nature of the electoral business cycle in Japan and seeks to identify the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government's attempt to manipulate the economy for electoral purposes. Earlier studies, such as those by Inoguchi and Tufte, suggest that an electoral business cycle exists in Japan, but they do not specify what political instruments are available for manipulating short-term economic well-being.2 Inoguchi, in particular, claims that the apparent cycle in Japan is caused not so much by political manipulation of the economy, but rather by adjusting the timing of elections to the peaks of the economy. We will challenge Inoguchi's assessment, (1) by showing that the LDP government has not always been capable of controlling the timing of elections and (2) by presenting evidence to indicate that it has taken advantage of government spending on public construction for electoral purposes.
Detection of Unknown Anomalies in Streaming Videos with Generative Energy-based Boltzmann Models

Abnormal event detection is one of the important objectives in research and practical applications of video surveillance. However, there are still three challenging problems for most anomaly detection systems in practical setting: limited labeled data, ambiguous definition of "abnormal" and expensive feature engineering steps. This paper introduces a unified detection framework to handle these challenges using energy-based models, which are powerful tools for unsupervised representation learning. Our proposed models are firstly trained on unlabeled raw pixels of image frames from an input video rather than hand-crafted visual features; and then identify the locations of abnormal objects based on the errors between the input video and its reconstruction produced by the models. To handle video stream, we develop an online version of our framework, wherein the model parameters are updated incrementally with the image frames arriving on the fly. Our experiments show that our detectors, using Restricted Boltzmann Machines (RBMs) and Deep Boltzmann Machines (DBMs) as core modules, achieve superior anomaly detection performance to unsupervised baselines and obtain accuracy comparable with the state-of-the-art approaches when evaluating at the pixel-level. More importantly, we discover that our system trained with DBMs is able to simultaneously perform scene clustering and scene reconstruction. This capacity not only distinguishes our method from other existing detectors but also offers a unique tool to investigate and understand how the model works.
Essays on changing labor markets and the macroeconomy

This thesis furthers our understanding of several recent changes affecting labor markets and the macroeconomy. Chapter 1 addresses the role of technological change in the recent polarization of the labor market through a quantitative assessment of the relative price of investment channel, using an extension of the standard growth model, allowing for an endogenously determined supply and demand for occupational labor. The model is able to account for a substantial fraction of changes in relative employment and wages across occupations, but only through the year 2000, suggesting a reduced role for technological change in the last decade. The model is also able to capture 25% of the observed decline in the labor share and 35% of the decline in the employment to population ratio after 2000, suggesting a substantial role for secular factors in recently sluggish labor markets. Chapter 2 addresses the recent decline of the U.S. labor share and its relation to changes across occupations specializing in different tasks, reaching two main conclusions. First, the labor share decline is linked to the decline of compensation of workers employed in routine occupations. Second, until the year 2000, most of this decline in routine compensation was offset by growth in income paid to high-skill occupations, but this growth ceased in the year 2000, generating the accelerated decline in the labor share thereafter. I show that this recent slowdown of high skill compensation is specific to certain detailed industries and occupations and suggest implications of this evidence for theories of the slowdown. Chapter 3 makes several points regarding changes in the cyclicality of labor productivity. I show the that change in cyclical productivity is not statistically synonymous with recent jobless recoveries, but is synonymous with the change in the relative cyclical volatility of hours and output. I show there is substantial heterogeneity in this relative volatility within industries and across time, and that aggregate changes in this relative volatility are also partially explained by changes in between industry co-movements. Existing theories focusing on changes in labor frictions appear unable to fully reconcile these facts.
The effects of a transcontinental flight on markers of coagulation and fibrinolysis in healthy men after vigorous physical activity

ABSTRACT Purpose: Athletes and military service members are known to undergo strenuous exercise and sometimes have to take long haul flights soon afterwards; however, its combined effect on many physiological functions is relatively unknown. Therefore, we examined the combined effects of a full-body muscle-damaging workout and transcontinental flight on coagulation and fibrinolysis in healthy, resistance trained men. We also determined the efficacy of a full-body compression garment in limiting their coagulation responses. Materials and Methods: Nineteen healthy, resistance trained men flew from Connecticut (CT) to California (CA), performed a full-body muscle-damaging workout and then flew back to CT. Ten participants wore full-body compression garments (FCG) for the duration of both flights and during all other portions of the study except during workouts and blood draws, when they wore loose clothing. Nine controls wore loose clothing (CON) throughout the study. Blood samples were collected at 16 h and 3 h before the initial flight from CT, immediately after landing in CA, immediately before and immediately after the full-body workout in CA, immediately after landing in CT, and at 29 h after landing in CT. Plasma markers of coagulation included activated partial thromboplastin time (aPTT), prothrombin fragment 1+2 (PTF 1+2) and thrombin ant-thrombin (TAT). Markers of the fibrinolytic system included the tissue plasmigen activator (tPA), plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) and D-Dimer. Results: Both FCG and CON groups exhibited a faster aPTT after the full-body workout compared to all other time points. Thrombin generation markers, TAT and PTF 1+2, increased significantly after the full-body workout and immediately after landing in CT. Additionally, tPA increased after the full-body workout, while PAI-1 increased before the flight to CA, after the full-body workout, and just after landing in CT. The D-Dimer significantly increased after the full-body workout and at 29 h post-flight in both groups. Between groups, aPTT was significantly faster and TAT elevated with the CON group at 29 h post-flight. Also, PAI-1 demonstrated higher concentrations immediately after landing in CT for the CON group. Conclusion: A full-body muscle-damaging workout in conjunction with a trans-continental flight activated the coagulation and fibrinolytic systems. Additionally, wearing a full-body compression garment may limit coagulation following a workout through the recovery period.
Can Shareholders Be at Rest After Adopting Clawback Provisions? Evidence from Stock Price Crash Risk

Using a propensity score matched sample for the period from 2003 to 2012 and a difference-in-difference research design, we find that stock price crash risk increases after firms voluntarily adopt clawback provisions in managers’ compensation contract. Our results reveal that total upward (but not downward) earnings management increases for clawback adopters, and the increase in crash risk is driven by firms with more income-increasing total earnings management after adopting clawback provisions. These results suggest that the heightened crash risk is attributable to the increased magnitude of total upward earnings management subsequent to clawback adoption. In addition, we find that the positive association between clawback adoption and crash risk is more pronounced for firms with low institutional holdings and with high equity incentive for CEOs, where the opportunity and incentive to hoard bad news are higher.
Health effectiveness of community health workers as a diabetes self-management intervention

Objective: To evaluate the health effectiveness of community health workers among three groups (intervention, attentional control and control groups) of Hispanic adults with uncontrolled (HbA1c >8%) type 2 diabetes mellitus. Methods: This was a randomized clinical trial involving 180 English- and Spanish-speaking Hispanic individuals with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes mellitus, 40–74 years of age, who received diabetes care at an outpatient, public, urban hospital. Repeated-measures analysis of variance was used to evaluate the effect of time and group on the primary outcome measure and secondary outcomes. Group differences in the percentage of participants achieving at least 1% reduction in HbA1c levels were assessed using chi-square tests. Results: Patients’ ages ranged from 44 to 74 years, 40% were male, 97% preferred Spanish and seven Spanish-speaking countries were identified as country of origin. Relative to the control and attentional control groups, the intervention group showed greater HbA1c reduction from baseline to 12 months and was the group with the highest percentage of participants showing 1% or more HbA1c reduction. Conclusion: Integration of community health workers improved disease control for patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus during the intervention phase. Peer-driven/interactive ways to sustain diabetes control need to be explored.
Feasibility of the salivary transcriptome as a novel biomarker in determining disease susceptibility

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE The salivary transcriptome may present as a readily available and non-invasive source of potential biomarkers. The development of chronic periodontitis is determined by individual patient susceptibility; hence, the aim of this study was to determine the potential of the salivary transcriptome as a biomarker of disease susceptibility using chronic periodontitis as an example. MATERIAL AND METHODS Using an Oragene® RNA kit, the total RNA was purified from the saliva of 10 patients with chronic periodontitis and 10 patients without chronic periodontitis. The quantity and quality of the total RNA was determined, and a measure of gene expression via cDNA was undertaken using the Affymetrix microarray system. The microarray profiling result was further validated by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction. RESULTS Spectrophotometric analysis showed the total RNA purified from each participant ranged from 0.92 μg/500 μL to 62.85 μg/500 μL. There was great variability in the quantity of total RNA obtained from the 2 groups in the study with a mean of 10.21 ± 12.71 μg/500 μL for the periodontitis group and 15.97 ± 23.47 μg/500 μL for the control group. Further the RNA purity (based on the A260 /A280 ratio) for the majority of participants (9 periodontitis and 6 controls) were within the acceptable limits for downstream analysis (2.0 ± 0.1). The study samples, showed 2 distinct bands at 23S (3800 bp) and 16S (1500 bp) characteristic of bacterial rRNA. Preliminary microarray analysis was performed for 4 samples (P2, P6, H5 and H9). The percentage of genes present in each of the 4 samples was not consistent with about 1.8%-18.7% of genes being detected. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction confirmed that the total RNA purified from each sample was mainly bacterial RNA (Uni 16S) with minimal human mRNA. CONCLUSION This study showed that minimal amounts of human RNA were able to be isolated from the saliva of patients with periodontitis as well as controls. Further work is required to enhance the extraction process of human mRNA from saliva if the salivary transcriptome is to be used in determining individual patient susceptibility.