Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
High-latitude obliquity as a dominant forcing in the Agulhas current system

Abstract. The Agulhas Current transport of heat and salt from the Indian Ocean into the South Atlantic around South Africa (Agulhas leakage), can affect the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) and, thus, influence global climate. However, efforts to elucidate forcing mechanisms connecting the Agulhas leakage with the upstream dynamics of the current have been hampered by a lack of climate records extracted from the area where the Agulhas current originates. We determine 800-kyr sea surface temperature (SST) and salinity (SSS) records from the "precursor" region of the Agulhas current and show that these records contain strong 100-kyr and 41-kyr cycles. This latter obliquity-driven cycle is nearly in phase with changes in the annual mean insolation and air temperature at high southern latitudes. In contrast, our SST and SSS records did not reveal precession-driven cycles, which is surprising given the low-latitude location of the upstream Agulhas current. Together, this indicates that the dynamics of the Agulhas current system is mainly controlled by high latitude obliquity through its influence on the position of the Southern Hemisphere subtropical front (STF) and its associated westerlies. Our study demonstrates that obliquity may drive an important part of the 100 kyr cycles observed in the system rather than precession. Our results also suggest that a stronger Agulhas current, associated with a northward shift of the wind system during glacial periods, leads to reduced leakage, in accordance with the theory. We argue that during terminations, stronger Agulhas leakage of heat and salt was triggered by increased obliquity exerting a positive feedback on the global climate system through modulating long-term AMOC variations.
Challenges facing gap-based silviculture and possible solutions for mesic northern forests in North America

Gap-based silvicultural systems were developed under the assumption that richness, and diversity of tree species and other biota positively respond to variation in size of harvest-created canopy gaps. However, varying gap size alone often does not meet diversity objectives and broader goals to address contemporary forest conditions. Recent research highlights the need to consider site factors and history, natural disturbance models, within-gap structure and recruitment requirements in addition to light resources for desired tree diversity. This synthesis brings together silvicultural developments and ecological literature on gap-based management, highlighting interactions with other factors such as microsite conditions, non-tree vegetation and more. We pose a revised concept for managers and researchers to use in prescriptions and studies focused on integrated overstory and understory manipulations that increase structural complexity within and around canopy openings.
A water quality index for use with diatoms in the assessment of rivers

Water quality is commonly reported with respect to the minerals that comprise the total dissolved solids, often together with COD, BOD, pH and other components. For ease of use by consumers, the quality parameters are mostly related to usage, i.e. water quality for domestic use, livestock or irrigation, etc. When diatom populations are used as water quality indicators a different system is necessary because diatoms are mostly good indicators of the total dissolved solids. A system to report water quality as an index or class is proposed using data collected from the Swartkops River system, which has pristine headwaters but which becomes progressively polluted downstream. The data included in the index encompass water quality values that cover more than 90% of the 212 river sites sampled from all the phytogeographical areas of South Africa.
A pure-jump market-making model for high-frequency trading

Law, Chi Wai PhD, Purdue University, May 2015. A Pure-Jump Market-Making Model for High-Frequency Trading. Major Professor: Frederi G. Viens. We propose a new market-making model which incorporates a number of realistic features relevant for high-frequency trading. In particular, we model the dependency structure of prices and order arrivals with novel selfand cross-exciting point processes. Furthermore, instead of assuming the bid and ask prices can be adjusted continuously by the market maker, we formulate the market maker’s decisions as an optimal switching problem. Moreover, the risk of overtrading has been taken into consideration by allowing each order to have different size, and the market maker can make use of market orders, which are treated as impulse control, to get rid of excessive inventory. Because of the stochastic intensities of the cross-exciting point processes, the optimality condition cannot be formulated using classical Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman quasi-variational inequality (HJBQVI), so we extend the framework of constrained forward backward stochastic differential equation (CFBSDE) to solve our optimal control problem.
Volatility-of-Volatility Risk in Asset Pricing

This paper develops a general equilibrium model and provides empirical support that the market volatility-of-volatility (VOV) predicts market returns and drives the time-varying volatility risk. In asset pricing tests with the market, volatility, and VOV as factors, the risk premium on VOV is statistically and economically significant and robust. Market and volatility risks are not priced in unconditional models, but, consistent with theory, their factor loadings, conditional on VOV, are priced. The pricing impact of VOV strengthens during market crashes, suggesting that VOV is particularly relevant during market turmoil, when investors demand increased compensation for VOV risk.
Small Business Commercial Loan Selection Decision: An Empirical Evaluation

For many years, bank decision-makers and academic researchers have recognized the significance of both commercial banks and small businesses to the overall economy of America. However, there appears to be little, if any, statistically valid empirical research dealing with the decision-making processes in commercial banks which commit funds to small businesses. This article deals specifically with the decision-making process of 30 commercial loan decision-makers as they are faced with commercial loan selection decisions concerning Small Business (SBA guaranteed) new business loans.
Experimental Studies of Blood Brain Barrier Permeability in Acute Hepatic Failure

Permeability of the blood brain barrier in relation to the development of hepatic encephalopathy was investigated in two animal models of acute hepatic failure, in one of which there was the potential for recovery (D‐galactosamine‐induced hepatitis). In both this and the hepatic devascularization model, there was an approximate 3‐fold increase in the passive permeability of the blood brain barrier to inulin and sucrose. Transport of amino acids was also significantly affected, with approximate 30% increases in the brain uptake of phenylalanine, tyrosine and arginine and a 65% increase in uptake of leucine. These changes are attributed to the action of circulating toxic substances, some of which increase blood brain barrier permeability in normal animals.
Trends in the Severity of Self-Poisoning

Of 2947 patients admitted to a district general hospital over an 11-year period for the management of self-poisoning, 148 (5%) required intensive care unit (ICU) treatment. There was a significant increase in the number of self-poisonings admitted each year, whereas the number requiring ICU admission did not change. Therefore the proportion of patients requiring ICU admission fell significantly over the study period (P< 0.0005). Of 898 patients admitted from 1973 to 1977, 62 (6.9%) were treated in ICU. Of 2049 patients admitted from 1978 to 1983, 86 (4.2%) required ICU treatment. It is felt that this trend is explained by a rise in parasuicidal self-poisonings. The impact of change in drug availability is evident in the significant reduction in ingestion of sedative barbiturates.
Market performance on resale of treasury shares

The study examines the announcement effects on resale of treasury shares among publicly listed firms in Malaysia.All firms that resale their treasury shares between 2001 and 2012 are analyzed using standard event methodologies namely market adjusted return (MAR) and market model (MM). We find that resale firms experience significant positive 4% abnormal returns in the 5 days prior to the actual resale of treasury shares.However, there are no abnormal gains realized following the actual resale of treasury shares date, suggesting that the market is semi-strongly efficient where prices can fully reflect all publicly available information.
Mechanism Design for Fair Division 1

We revisit the classic problem of fair division from a mechanism design perspective, using Proportional Fairness as a benchmark. In particular, we aim to allocate a collection of divisible items to a set of agents while incentivizing the agents to be truthful in reporting their valuations. For the very large class of homogeneous valuations, we design a truthful mechanism that provides every agent with at least a 1/e ≈ 0.368 fraction of her Proportionally Fair valuation. To complement this result, we show that no truthful mechanism can guarantee more than a 0.5 fraction, even for the restricted class of additive linear valuations. We also propose another mechanism for additive linear valuations that works really well when every item is highly demanded. To guarantee truthfulness, our mechanisms discard a carefully chosen fraction of the allocated resources; we conclude by uncovering interesting connections between our mechanisms and known mechanisms that use money instead.
Understanding SME policy environment in ASEAN

The Development Research Forum (DRF) of Cambodia, with financial support from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada, is coordinated by the Cambodia Development Resource Institute (CDRI). In partnership with the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA), the DRF organised a seminar on “Understanding SME Policy Environment in ASEAN” in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on 6 June 2014. The objectives of the seminar were: (1) to share existing knowledge on major issues and challenges facing SMEs in Cambodia especially in policy environment and support services; (2) to promote research and research collaboration on SMEs among institutions involved in the DRF and its research interest groups; and (3) to provoke academic and policy debate on best practices to support SME policy initiatives with a view to strengthening Cambodian SMEs’ engagement with regional economies. The following is a brief overview of the key issues arising from the discussion.
Effectiveness of a training program to increase the capacity of health care providers to provide HIV/AIDS care and treatment in Swaziland

Abstract Implementation of HIV care and treatment programs in sub-Saharan Africa is a complex undertaking that requires training of health care providers (HCPs). Many sub-Saharan African countries have introduced training programs to build human resources for health. Evaluation of the ongoing trainings is warranted so that programs can be improved. The purpose of this study was to evaluate Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative's (BIPAI) HCP training program in Swaziland. The specific aims were: (1) to assess coverage and delivery of the training program; and (2) to determine the impact of the training program on HCPs’ knowledge about HIV and pediatric practices, attitudes toward HIV/AIDS patients, and self-efficacy to provide antiretroviral therapy (ART). The evaluation was a multimethod design with two types of data collection and analysis: (1) one-group pretest–posttest survey with 101 HCPs; and (2) semi-structured in-depth interviews with seven trainers from Baylor College of Medicine and 16 local HCPs in Swaziland. Quantitative data were analyzed using Stata Statistical Software version 8.2 for descriptive and multivariate analysis while factor analysis was done using Statistical Program for Social Sciences version 14. The transcribed interviews were analyzed using a didactic approach. Process evaluation showed that the training had good coverage, was delivered as intended, and improved as the work progressed. The training program led to a significant increase (p=0.0000) in HCPs’ knowledge about HIV/AIDS, ART, and relevant clinical pediatrics practices between pretest (mean 68.7% SD 13.7) and post training (mean 84.0% SD 12.0). The training program also increased trainees’ self-efficacy to provide ART and their attitudes toward AIDS patients (p=0.0000 and 0.02, respectively). In conclusion, BIPAI training program in Swaziland had good coverage of all health care facilities and HCPs in Swaziland. The training was effective in imparting knowledge and skills to HCPs and in their attitudes toward HIV/AIDS patients.
Once weekly total and subtotal skin electron beam therapy for kaposi's sarcoma

Although Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) usually appears with solitary skin lesions, in a large percentage of these patients the disease progresses eventually to involve large extensive segments of the skin. In the past, the most frequently used approach is the irradiation of isolated lesions as they arose, hence the so‐called “chasing technique. ” Since 1971, a technique of once weekly total skin electron beam therapy (TSEB) has been employed at Memorial Hospital for mycosis fungoides and other cutaneous malignancies involving large areas of the body. Four hundred rads once weekly for six to eight consecutive weeks are delivered to the entire skin surface by employing a 3.5 MeV electron beam. Twenty patients with KS treated by this technique have been followed for 12–98 months, median 48 months. Overall response is 100%; 17/20 (85%) obtained complete remission lasting 10–92 months (median 48 months).
Which are the Benefits of Having More Female Leaders? Evidence from the Use of Part-Time Work in Italy

Using three waves of a uniquely rich survey on Italian private firms, we explore the impact of female managers on the use of part-time work. Building on a literature arguing that female leaders are more sensitive to their employees' needs and more self-transcendent than their male counterparts, we assess whether such attitudes manifest themselves also in relation to working time arrangements. Results indicate that female managers are indeed more responsive to their employees' needs: they heavily limit the employment of involuntary part-time work, correspondingly increasing full-time employment, and concede more part-time arrangements to employees asking for them. All in all, our results show that there are some hitherto unexplored benefits from increasing the number of female leaders: on the one hand, they strongly contain the widespread phenomenon of involuntary part-time employment and, on the other hand, they enhance the work-life balance of workers engaged in child care or elderly care activities.
Environmental sustainability adoption

Environmentally sustainable businesses and products are necessary to deal with increasing environmental problems. In order to market this category, the drivers for adoption need to be investigated. Current research has not yet focused on the consumer perspective for sustainability adoption. This study fills this gap with the application of the Theory of Planned Behaviour onto the context of environmental sustainability. A web-based self-administered survey amongst 257 respondents is used to test a total of eight hypotheses on intention to adopt and adoption. Environmental concern, previous purchase behaviour, willingness to pay more and perceived convenience are found to be the main drivers for sustainability adoption. Results further indicate that environmental knowledge, social pressure and herd behaviour are not found to be significant contributors to intention to adopt environmental sustainability. Scientific contributions and managerial implications are discussed, followed by the limitations and recommendations for future research.
Who Should Regulate Investment Advisers

We compare the ability of state and federal regulators to deter misconduct by investment advisers. Dodd-Frank shifted oversight responsibility for mid-size firms ($25M-$100M in assets) from the SEC to state-securities regulators for exogenous reasons. We find that client complaints increased 60% for mid-size advisers, relative to similar advisers continuing under SEC oversight. Complaints increased more in states with less-staff-per-adviser. Advisers with histories of misconduct, serving older and less-educated clients, and located farther from regulators misbehaved more. Severity increased as awarded damages doubled and denial rates dropped 10%. The results suggest state regulators deter less misconduct, especially against less-sophisticated clients. JEL: G24, G28, D14, D18
Language Feature Mining for Document Subjectivity Analysis

In recent years, document sentiment analysis has attracted a great deal of research interest. One important aspect of this filed is the subjectivity analysis. This problem is different from traditional text categorization on that more linguistic or semantic information are required for better estimating the subjectivity of a document. Therefore, in this paper, focuses are on how to extract useful and meaningful language features and how to combine all of these language features efficiently. Under the well-known n- gram language model framework, we investigated a series of language-grams having different n-order and various distances to find the most important ones. In addition, we have also tried several weighting methods to make features more meaningful. Based on various kinds of language features, we adopted a tailored Maximum Entropy modeling method to construct our subjectivity classifier. Detailed experiments given in this paper show that the well extracted language features are suit for the document subjectivity analysis task.
Distance-Constrained Scheduling and Its Applications to Real-Time Systems

In hard real time systems, each task must not only be functionally correct but also meet its timing constraints. A common approach to characterizing hard real time tasks with repetitive requests is the periodic task model. In the periodic task model, every task needs to be executed once during each of its periods. The execution of a task in one period is independent of the execution of the same task in another period. Hence, the executions of the same task in two consecutive periods may be right next to each other, or at the far ends of the two periods. While the periodic task model can serve as a simple paradigm for scheduling tasks with repetitive requests, it may not be suitable for all real time applications. For example, in some real time systems, the temporal distance between the finishing times of any two consecutive executions of the same task must be less than or equal to a given value. In other words, each execution of a task has a deadline relative to the finishing time of the previous execution of the same task. Scheduling algorithms designed for the periodic task model may not provide efficient solutions for tasks with temporal distance constraints. We propose the (preemptive) distance constrained task system model which can serve as a more intuitive and adequate scheduling model for "repetitive" task executions. We design an efficient scheduling scheme for the model, and derive a schedulability condition for the scheduling scheme. We also discuss how to apply the scheduling scheme to real time sporadic task scheduling and to real time communications.
The Development of Executive Attention: Contributions to the Emergence of Self-Regulation

Over the past decade, developmental studies have established connections between executive attention, as studied in neurocognitive models, and effortful control, a temperament system supporting the emergence of self-regulation. Functions associated with the executive attention network overlap with the more general domain of executive function in childhood, which also includes working memory, planning, switching, and inhibitory control (Welch, 2001). Cognitive tasks used with adults to study executive attention can be adapted to children and used with questionnaires to trace the role of attention and effortful control in the development of self-regulation. In this article we focus on the monitoring and control functions of attention and discuss its contributions to self-regulation from cognitive, temperamental, and biological perspectives.
PENGARUH BAURAN PEMASARAN TERHADAP KEPUTUSAN PEMBELIAN SABUN MANDI LIFEBUOY DI SURABAYA

The rapid development in business world has made the competition level becomes more competitive, particularly in the shower soap companies. Currently, there are a lot of new products coming up and it has made the customers become more selective in choosing the product to purchase. Lifebuoy is a bath soap brand produced by PT. Unilever. This research is meant to find out the influence of purchasing decision. The samples are all customers who have ever purchased the Lifebuoy bath soap at Onik store and D’vita store. The sample collection technique has been done by using nonprobability sampling with the amount of samples are 98 people. The data analysis technique has been done by using multiple linear regressions. Based on the result of model feasibility test, it shows that the independent variables have significant influence to the purchasing decision. The partial result of t test shows that the variables i.e.: product, price, place and promotion have positive and significant influence to the purchasing decision. It can be concluded from the result of test that the variable which has dominant influence is promotion, so that the Lifebuoy bath soap company increase its promotion through visual media, giving gifts or by face to face. Keywords: Product, Price, Place, Promotion, Purchasing Decision.
Robust Feedback Linearizing Control With Sliding Mode Compensation for a Grid-Connected Photovoltaic Inverter System Under Unbalanced Grid Voltages

A robust feedback linearizing control strategy, based on sliding mode compensation, is proposed for the operation of a grid-connected photovoltaic inverter system under grid faults, characterized by unbalanced voltages, to meet low-voltage ride through requirements. Under normal grid condition, the control system is developed for maximum power transfer from the photovoltaic source to the grid by maximum power point tracking operation of the dc–dc converter, and regulation of the dc-link voltage and the current at the inverter-grid side. Under grid fault, which is unbalanced grid voltage due to voltage dips, the active power is regulated to reduce the current excess and the reactive power is injected to avoid the inverter damage or disconnection, while the dc-link voltage is controlled via the dc–dc converter. A sliding mode compensator is injected into the control system to enhance its robustness to uncertainties. The feedback linearizing control schemes are developed from the grid model at the inverter side and the dc-link model at the dc–dc converter side. The proposed control strategies are experimentally validated on a three-phase grid-connected photovoltaic inverter system and experimental results show that the control system is effective in terms of voltage and power control with smooth transitions between the modes.