Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
From Discourse Structure to Text Specificity: Studies of Coherence Preferences

To successfully communicate through text, a writer needs to organize information into an understandable and well-structured discourse for the targeted audience. This involves deciding when to convey general statements, when to elaborate on details, and gauging how much details to convey, i.e., the level of specificity. This thesis explores the automatic prediction of text specificity, and whether the perception of specificity varies across different audiences. We characterize text specificity from two aspects: the instantiation discourse relation, and the specificity of sentences and words. We identify characteristics of instantiation that signify a change of specificity between sentences. Features derived from these characteristics substantially improve the detection of the relation. Using instantiation sentences as the basis for training, we propose a semi-supervised system to predict sentence specificity with speed and accuracy. Furthermore, we present insights into the effect of underspecified words and phrases on the comprehension of text, and the prediction of such words. We show distinct preferences in specificity and discourse structure among different audiences. We investigate these distinctions in both cross-lingual and monolingual context. Cross-lingually, we identify discourse factors that significantly impact the quality of text translated from Chinese to English. Notably, a large portion of Chinese sentences are significantly more specific and need to be translated into multiple English sentences. We introduce a system using rich syntactic features to accurately detect such sentences. We also show that simplified text is more general, and that specific sentences are more likely to need simplification. Finally, we present evidence that the perception of sentence specificity differs among male and female readers. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Computer and Information Science First Advisor Ani Nenkova Second Advisor Mitchell P. Marcus
Projections of declining fluvial sediment delivery to major deltas worldwide in response to climate change and anthropogenic stress

Deltas are resource rich, low-lying areas where vulnerability to flooding is exacerbated by natural and anthropogenically induced subsidence and geocentric sea-level rise, threatening the large populations often found in these settings. Delta ‘drowning’ is potentially offset by deposition of sediment on the delta surface, making the delivery of fluvial sediment to the delta a key balancing control in offsetting relative sea-level rise, provided that sediment can be dispersed across the subaerial delta. Here we analyse projected changes in fluvial sediment flux over the 21st century to 47 of the world’s major deltas under 12 environmental change scenarios. The 12 scenarios were constructed using four climate pathways (Representative Concentration Pathways 2.6, 4.5, 6.0 and 8.5), three socioeconomic pathways (Shared Socioeconomic Pathways 1, 2 and 3), and one reservoir construction timeline. A majority (33/47) of the investigated deltas are projected to experience reductions in sediment flux by the end of the century, when considering the average of the scenarios, with mean and maximum declines of 38% and 83%, respectively, between 1990–2019 and 2070–2099. These declines are driven by the effects of anthropogenic activities (changing land management practices and dam construction) overwhelming the effects of future climate change. The results frame the extent and magnitude of future sustainability of major global deltas. They highlight the consequences of direct (e.g. damming) and indirect (e.g. climate change) alteration of fluvial sediment flux dynamics and stress the need for further in-depth analysis for individual deltas to aid in developing appropriate management measures.
Improving a symbolic parser through partially supervised learning

Recently, several statistical parsers have been trained and evaluated on the dependency version of the French TreeBank (FTB). However, older symbolic parsers still exist, including FRMG, a wide coverage TAG parser. It is interesting to compare these different parsers, based on very different approaches, and explore the possibilities of hybridization. In particular, we explore the use of partially supervised learning techniques to improve the performances of FRMG to the levels reached by the statistical parsers.
The Impact of Natural Culture on New Technology Adoption by Firms: A Country Level Analysis

The objective of this paper is to discover and explain the effect of national culture on the adoption of new technology by firms. Hofstede’s cultural framework was employed in order to measure national cultural differences. The data of new technology adoption at firm-level on a country basis was obtained from The Global Information Technology Report, 2016. Analyses of the hypotheses were conducted using one-way ANOVA. The results reveal that power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism and long-term orientation dimensions have a satisfactory influence on the adoption of new technology at firm-level; however, the dimension of masculinity does not affect it. The relationship between long-term orientation and the adoption of new technology has seldom been researched. The contribution made to the literature by this study is to provide findings for the long-term orientation dimension. This study shows that there is adequate positive impact on long-term orientation on new technology adoption.
Measuring task quality through technical-service support software

The purpose of this research is to provide an effective model that can be used to improve the design quality of technical-service support software and thus enhance task quality. Herein, variables and model derived from previous studies are applied to a technical-service model that creates a direct chain of linkage from user contexts and software quality to overall task quality. In order to confirm its effectiveness, the proposed model is then applied into six types of technical-service support software. The software development for enhancing “information believability” was found to be the most effective key to task quality enhancement. In contrast, improvements to integrity and reliability do not contribute to enhancing task quality, even though their needs, in terms of technical-service support software, cannot be neglected. The proposed model can be used to determine acceptable target quality in technical-service software development situations. Because the proposed measuring model treats engineer task recognition as user context information and can be used for engineer task-quality evaluation, it can precisely indicate not only the influence of a software quality as it relates to task quality but also the quality needs and the degree to which it needs to be validated.
Essays on the economics of culture

I present a thesis in three chapters on human capital, labor supply, and their relationship with cultural values. Chapter 1 and 2 contribute, respectively, to the questions of what share of income differences across countries that can be attributed to human capital, and on what determines differences in human capital. They rely on unique Swedish employer-employee linked administrative data to estimate differences in human capital as country-of-origin specific labor productivity terms in firm production functions. Unlike previous migrant-based measures in the literature, this is immune to concerns related to wage discrimination and robust to other varieties of discrimination. After accounting for education and experience, estimated human capital still varies by a factor of 3 between the countries at the 90th and 10th percentile of the human-capital distribution. When I investigate which country-of-origin characteristics most closely correlate with my estimates of human capital, cultural values elicited from the World Values Survey are the only robust predictor. This relationship persists among the children of migrants, which lends further credence to the cultural interpretation of human-capital differences unexplained by education and experience. Chapter 3 documents substantial cross-sectional variation in labor supply across countries, after taking into account differences in tax rates and real wages. When investigating which country characteristics that best explain the variation, I find that a cultural measure of preferences for leisure exerts an economically larger and statistically more robust influence than do traditional measures of labor market frictions. Micro-level labor supply choices of descendants of immigrants in the United States and Sweden buttress the cultural interpretation, that part of differences in labor supply can be attributed to differences in preferences. As an “out of sample” test, the paper looks at the implication of differences in preferences for cross-country differences in labor taxation. Economic theory suggests a negative association between preferences for leisure and labor taxes; empirical data verify the theoretical prediction.
Analisis Kualitas Website SMK Negeri 2 Sragen dengan Metode Webqual 4.0 dan Importance Performance Analysist (IPA)

The website is one of many communication media that contains information in the form of text, sound, images, or videos that can be accessed publicly by the public. Measurements and observations are made to determine the quality of a website. By doing this, we can understand the opinions of users on a website. The implementation of this study uses a combined method, namely the Webqual method as the main reference with indicators of usability, information quality, and service interactions and Importance Performance Analysis (IPA) methods. The target location taken in this study was the environment of SMK Negeri 2 Sragen. To get data accurately from end users, data collection is used by questionnaire method. The scope of the object to be studied is Students of SMK Negeri 2 Sragen. The results that will be obtained after the research are the development of website usability for users who access it. Other things such as appearance and service provided are the main factors towards user satisfaction in using the website of SMK Negeri 2 Sragen.
Exploring the role of Credit Assignment of Error in Motor Learning

Errors are critical to motor learning. The source of error can be environmental forces or poor motor control. The central nervous system (CNS) likely distinguishes between sources of error. If the CNS attributes error to motor control (i.e., internal credit assignment) adaptations will transfer across situations; errors attributed to the environment (i.e. external credit assignment) may lead to context-specific learning. I tested this hypothesis by manipulating the perceived source of error as participants learned balance-beam walking. The Aware (AW) and Unaware (UN) groups experienced subthreshold platform perturbations during practice; Control group (CN) practiced without perturbations. AW was informed that the platform would move (external credit assignment); UN was told the platform would not move (internal credit assignment). UN improved performance faster than CN during acquisition, and showed greater learning than CN on a narrow beam transfer. Credit assignment may affect learning and could influence how motor skills should be taught.
Where Are the Revolving Doors in Brussels? Sector Switching and Career Progression in EU Business–Government Affairs

By applying event history analysis to a unique large sample of more than 300 government affairs managers working for companies active in the European Union (EU), this article investigates whether managers with work experience in the public or nonprofit sector are more likely to progress in their career in their current company and whether career progression depends on when that experience takes place. The findings suggest that managers with experience in the public and nonprofit sector are less likely to progress in their careers. This effect becomes stronger when the stage of the career at which the manager had experience in the public sector is taken into consideration. These findings are contrary to the expectations from the public and private management literature and suggest that we should see less revolving door activity in Brussels. We propose that these findings are driven by the distinct EU public policy process and the variance in individual and organizational incentives in the EU public sector.
Analyzing Opinions on Sustainable Agriculture: Toward Increasing Farmer Knowledge of Organic Practices in Taiwan-Yuanli Township

Local farmer knowledge is key to sustainable agriculture when organic farming promotes biodiversity conservation. Yet, farmers may not recognize ecosystem service (ES) benefits within their agricultural landscape. Surveys were administered to 113 farmers, and the opinions of 58 respondents toward organic farming were analyzed to identify influential variables when deciding to farm organically. We classified responses by geographic category within a socio-economic production landscape (SEPL), and by social influence categories. With principal component analysis (PCA), a two-scale, four-phased analysis was conducted. Coastal farmers (n = 22) were the most positive towards organic farming trends due to consumer demand. Plains farmers (n = 18) were highly interested in future opportunities for achieving consumer health and food safety objectives. Mountain farmers (n = 18) perceived the most organic transitioning barriers overall, namely irrigation. In all three geographic categories, farming decisions were not primarily related to biodiversity conservation or ES management, but rather to farming community patterns, consumer feedback, and a lack of barriers. Further, farmer opinions toward organic practices were more influenced by their life experiences than by school-taught concepts. Since no previous studies have assessed the knowledge, values, and opinions on organic farming of Taiwan’s west coast farmers from an ES perspective, the proposed approach both identifies farmers’ knowledge and opinions, and verifies a satoyama landscape with PCA results for informed decision making.
Essays on labor and technology in asset pricing

Technological innovations are important for economic growth but they are also a source of various risks. This thesis is a collection of three self-contained essays in which I study how technology shocks create risk for firms and households, and affect stock prices. Overall, the thesis helps us better understand the role of labor in the transmission of these shocks to stock prices. The first essay examines the asset pricing implications of technological innovations that allow capital to displace labor: automation. I develop a theory in which firms with high share of displaceable labor are negatively exposed to such technology shocks due to competition that makes technology adoption appear profitable but in equilibrium erodes the expected profits. Empirically, I develop a firm-level measure of displaceable labor share, based on detailed job classifications from the O*NET database, and find that firms with high displaceable labor share have negative exposure to technology shocks. A long-short portfolio based on this new measure is highly correlated with macroeconomic measures of technology shocks. I further show that firms with negative exposure to these technology shocks earn a 4% per year return premium. At the firm level, I provide support for the hypothesis of costly automation following technology shocks. In the second essay, I study how investment shocks affect different types of labor. I construct panel data sets of geographical areas, manufacturing industries and individual workers to examine the effects of investment shocks at three different levels of observations. I utilize the cross-sectional variation in routine intensity of occupations across these three panel data sets. I show that investment shocks are an important source of job displacement and labor income risk. The third essay examines how a firm’s capital intensity can affect the measurement of firm’s exposure to investment shocks by a popular measure, the IMC portfolio. I show that this measure suggests a considerable premium for an exposure to investment shocks when applied in a sample of capital-intensive firms but almost no premium for the same exposure when applied in labor-intensive sample. I extend a model from previous literature by capital intensity to provide a possible explanation.
An Approximate Dynamic Programming Approach to Dynamic Pricing for Network Revenue Management

Much of the network revenue management literature considers capacity control problems where product prices are ﬁxed and the product availability is controlled over time. However, for industries with imperfect competition, ﬁrms typically retain some pricing power and dynamic pricing models are more realistic than capacity control models. Dynamic pricing problems are more challenging to solve; even the deterministic version is typically nonlinear. In this paper, we consider a dynamic programming model and use approximate linear programs (ALPs) to solve the problem. Unlike capacity control problems, the ALPs are semi-inﬁnite linear programs, for which we propose a column generation algorithm. Furthermore, for the aﬃne approximation under a linear independent demand model, we show that the ALPs can be reformulated as compact second order cone programs (SOCPs). The size of the SOCP formulation is linear in model primitives, including the number of resources, the number of products, and the number of periods. In addition, we consider a version of the model with discrete price sets and show that the resulting ALPs admit compact reformu-lations. We report numerical results on computational and policy performance on a set of hub-and-spoke problem instances.
The effects of lowered readability and the use of a glossary upon reading comprehension of selected industrial arts electronics text materials

3. When a map, drawing or chart, etc., was part of the material being photographed the photographer followed a definite method in "sectioning" the material. It is customary to begin photoing at the upper left hand corner of a large sheet and to continue photoing from left to right in equal sections with a small overlap. If necessary, sectioning is continued again — beginning below the first row and continuing on until complete.
Insecurity on Economic and Business Climate; Empirical Evidence from Nigeria

Insecurity undermines the economic and business process of a nation. Tallying to the human cost, it sabotaged the right to life, liberty, and freedom. This study tests the long run effect and cause of insecurity from 2007-2017 in Nigeria. Using a framework of the Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag Model (ARDL) and Error Correction Model (ECM). Findings revealed that insecurity in Nigeria is majorly internal factors and government expenditure on security in Nigeria is far below the United Nations Standard. The ECM report that disequilibrium caused by internal factors instigating insecurity can be revised back to equilibrium at 25% annually. To improve the economic and business climate competitive advantage.
Periosteum and fascia lata: Are they so different?

Introduction: The human fascia lata (HFL) is used widely in reconstructive surgery in indications other than fracture repair. The goal of this study was to compare microscopic, molecular, and mechanical properties of HFL and periosteum (HP) from a bone tissue engineering perspective. Material and Methods: Cadaveric HP and HFL (N = 4 each) microscopic morphology was characterized using histology and immunohistochemistry (IHC), and the extracellular matrix (ECM) ultrastructure assessed by means of scanning electron microscopy (SEM). DNA, collagen, elastin, glycosaminoglycans, major histocompatibility complex Type 1, and bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) contents were quantified. HP (N = 6) and HFL (N = 11) were submitted to stretch tests. Results: Histology and IHC highlighted similarities (Type I collagen fibers and two-layer organization) but also differences (fiber thickness and compaction and cell type) between both tissues, as confirmed using SEM. The collagen content was statistically higher in HFL than HP (735 vs. 160.2 μg/mg dry weight, respectively, p < 0.0001). On the contrary, DNA content was lower in HFL than HP (404.75 vs. 1,102.2 μg/mg dry weight, respectively, p = 0.0032), as was the immunogenic potential (p = 0.0033). BMP-2 and BMP-7 contents did not differ between both tissues (p = 0.132 and p = 0.699, respectively). HFL supported a significantly higher tension stress than HP. Conclusion: HP and HFL display morphological differences, despite their similar molecular ECM components. The stronger stretching resistance of HFL can specifically be explained by its higher collagen content. However, HFL contains many fewer cells and is less immunogenic than HP, as latter is rich in periosteal stem cells. In conclusion, HFL is likely suitable to replace HP architecture to confer a guide for bone consolidation, with an absence of osteogenicity. This study could pave the way to a bio-engineered periosteum built from HFL.
A National Hospital‐Based Study of Hospitalized Patients With Primary Biliary Cholangitis

Epidemiological studies on primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) have been based primarily on tertiary referral case series. We aimed to estimate the incidence and prevalence and describe comorbidities in hospitalized patients with PBC in Italy using a national hospital‐based data source. Data were extracted from the National Hospital Discharge Database, which includes all Italian individuals discharged from any hospital in the country. All adults diagnosed with biliary cirrhosis (International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification, 571.6) as the primary or secondary diagnosis from 2011 to 2015 were included. To determine whether a comorbidity was either more or less frequent in PBC patients compared with the general hospitalized Italian population, the standardized hospitalization ratio (SHR) was calculated. A total of 5,533 incident cases were identified from 2011 to 2015, 3,790 of whom were females (68.5%; female to male [F:M] ratio, 2.2:1). Prevalent cases were 9,664, of whom 7,209 were females (74.6%; F:M ratio, 2.9:1). The incident rate was 1.03 × 100,000 in males and 1.92 × 100,000 in females; prevalence was 1.89 × 100,000 in males and 4.75 × 100,000 in females. Extrahepatic autoimmune diseases, malignant neoplasms of liver and intrahepatic biliary ducts, and malignant neoplasms of gallbladder and extrahepatic bile ducts were found more frequently in PBC patients than in the general hospitalized population (SHR > 100), whereas cerebrovascular diseases and ischemic heart diseases were less frequent in PBC individuals (SHR < 100). Conclusion: This national study provides a survey of comorbidities associated with PBC. Hospitalized patients with PBC are more likely to have extrahepatic autoimmune diseases, hepatocellular carcinoma, and biliary tract cancers and a low risk of cardiovascular events.