Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Is More Precise Word of Mouth Better for a High Quality Firm? ... Not Always

When a product is introduced, consumers are often uniformed about its quality. Here, consumers often resort to third-party information such as word of mouth, testimonials and reviews to learn more about quality. Naturally, the extent to which this information is helpful depends on its precision. But it may be difficult for consumers to assess the precision of such information. We use a monopoly setting to investigate how consumers’ ability to recognize the precision of third-party information impacts firm profits. Conventional wisdom suggests that a high quality firm should prefer a market where consumers are better at recognizing precise signals. Yet in a broad range of conditions, we show that high quality firms are more profitable when they sell to consumers who do not recognize precise signals. We also examine how information precision impacts profits. A low quality firm always suffers from more precise information but the inverse is not true. A high quality firm may also suffer from more precise information. The precision range in which a high quality firm gains or suffers from better information depends on how skilled consumers are at recognizing precision.
On the limit of English conversational speech recognition

In our previous work we demonstrated that a single headed attention encoder-decoder model is able to reach state-of-the-art results in conversational speech recognition. In this paper, we further improve the results for both Switchboard 300 and 2000. Through use of an improved optimizer, speaker vector embeddings, and alternative speech representations we reduce the recognition errors of our LSTM system on Switchboard-300 by 4% relative. Compensation of the decoder model with the probability ratio approach allows more efficient integration of an external language model, and we report 5.9% and 11.5% WER on the SWB and CHM parts of Hub5'00 with very simple LSTM models. Our study also considers the recently proposed conformer, and more advanced self-attention based language models. Overall, the conformer shows similar performance to the LSTM; nevertheless, their combination and decoding with an improved LM reaches a new record on Switchboard-300, 5.0% and 10.0% WER on SWB and CHM. Our findings are also confirmed on Switchboard-2000, and a new state of the art is reported, practically reaching the limit of the benchmark.
Selection and behavioral responses of health insurance subsidies in the long run: Evidence from a field experiment in Ghana.

We study the effects of a health insurance subsidy in Ghana, where mandates are not enforceable. We randomly provide different levels of subsidy (1/3, 2/3, and full) and evaluate the impact at 7 months and 3 years after the intervention. We find that a one-time subsidy increased insurance enrollment for all groups in both the short and long runs, but health care utilization in the long run increased only for the partial subsidy group. We find supportive evidence that ex-post behavioral responses rather than ex-ante selective enrollment explain the long-run health care utilization results.
Chain initiation mechanism of acrylamide polymerisation in direct and inverse emulsions

The breif review of literature data shows that the kinetics of polymerisation of watersoluble monomers, in particular of acrylamide, is very complex. Different authors using unadequate experimental conditions have established different rate laws. The only conclusion which is common is that the kinetics do not obey the Smith-Ewart model. Very often the unusual form of the rate law is being explained assuming the system (medium) action on the initiation mechanism. But even in this case the negative order of R p with respect to surfactants has not its grounded explanation. This situation requests step by step study of the polymerisation process. In this communication the mechanism of chain initiation mechanism of acrylamide polymerisation has been studied by inhibitory method both in direct and inverse emulsions. By direct experiments strictly it has been established that primary radicals are being formed as result of persulphate monomolecular decomposition in the aqueous phase; it does not depend on whether the emulsion is direct or inverse. Therefore, very probably the main reason of the complexity of the mechanism is due to interactions between all compounds of the polymerisation system which bring to principle changes in its colloid chemical properties.
Holographic entanglement negativity in flat space generalized minimal massive gravity

In this paper, we study the application of holographic entanglement negativity proposal for bipartite states in the 2D Galilean conformal field theory [Formula: see text] dual to bulk asymptotically flat space–times in the context of generalized minimal massive gravity (GMMG) model. [Formula: see text] is considered on the boundary side of the duality and the bulk gravity is described by GMMG that is asymptotically symmetric under the Galilean conformal transformations. In this paper, the replica technique, based on the two-point and the four-point twist correlators, is utilized and the entanglement entropy and the entanglement negativity are obtained in the bipartite configurations of the system in the boundary.
Non-asymptotic convergence rates for mean-field games: weak formulation and McKean-Vlasov BSDEs

This work is mainly concerned with the so-called limit theory for mean-field games. Adopting the weak formulation paradigm put forward by Carmona and Lacker, we consider a fully non-Markovian setting allowing for drift control and interactions through the joint distribution of players' states and controls. We provide first a characterisation of mean-field equilibria as arising from solutions to a novel kind of McKean-Vlasov backward stochastic differential equations, for which we provide a well-posedness theory. We incidentally obtain there unusual existence and uniqueness results for mean-field equilibria, which do not require short time horizon, separability assumptions on the coefficients, nor Lasry and Lions's monotonicity conditions, but rather smallness, or alternatively regularity, conditions on the terminal reward and a dissipativity condition on the drift. We then take advantage of this characterisation to provide non-asymptotic rates of convergence for the value functions and the Nash-equilibria of the N-player version to their mean-field counterparts, for general open-loop equilibria. An appropriate reformulation of our approach also allows us to treat closed-loop equilibria, and to obtain convergence results for the master equation associated to the problem.
An Eco-Friendly Process for Removal of Lead from Aqueous Solution

The adsorption of lead (Pb II) ion on different types of synthesized zeolite was investigated. The BET surface area, total pore volume & average pore size distribution of these synthesized zeolites were determined by adsorption isotherms for N2, the surface area & total pore volume of their sources were found by adsorption isothermN2.The adsorption equilibrium was measured after 24h at room temperature (RT) & concentration 10mg.L -1 of Pb (II) was used. The adsorption of heavy metal Pb (II) on four different prepared zeolites (LTA from Montmorillonite clay, FAU(Y)-B.H (G2) from Barley husk, Mordenite (G1) from Chert rock, FAU(X)-S.C (G3) from shale clay & modified Shale clay by oxalic acid (N1) & sodium hydroxide (N2)), were compared with the adsorption of their sources by using static batch experimental method. The major factors affecting the heavy metal ion sorption on different synthesized zeolites & their sources were investigated. The adsorption equilibrium capacity (Qm) of Pb (II) ion for different synthesized zeolites ordered from (N1>N2>LTA>G3>G2>G1&for their sources ordered Shale clay >Montmorilonite> Barley husk>Chert rock. The atomic absorption spectrometry was used for analysis of lead heavy metal ion, the obtained results in this study showed that the different synthesized zeolites were efficient ion exchanges for removing heavy metal, in particular, the modified zeolite from shale clay by oxalic acid.
Remark on the quasilocal calculation of tidal heating: Energy transfer through the quasilocal surface

In this note, using the quasilocal formalism of Brown and York, the flow of energy through a closed surface containing a gravitating physical system is calculated in a way that augments earlier results on the subject by Booth and Creighton. To this end, by performing a variation of the total gravitational Hamiltonian (bulk plus boundary part), it is shown that associated tidal heating and deformation effects generally are larger than expected. This is because the aforementioned variation leads to previously unrecognized correction terms, including a bulk-to-boundary inflow term that does not appear in the original calculation of the time derivative of the Brown-York energy and leads to corrective extensions of Einstein’s quadrupole formula in the large sphere limit.
Anchored foams and annular homology

We describe equivariant SL(2) and SL(3) homology for links in the solid torus via foam evaluation. The solid torus is replaced by 3-space with a distinguished line in it. Generators of state spaces for annular webs are represented by foams with boundary that may intersect the distinguished line; intersection points, called anchor points, contribute additional terms, reminiscent of square roots of the Hessian, to the foam evaluation. Both oriented and unoriented SL(3) foams are treated in the paper.
DISTRIBUTIONALLY ROBUST PORTFOLIO MAXIMISATION AND MARGINAL UTILITY PRICING IN DISCRETE TIME

We consider the optimal investment and marginal utility pricing problem of a risk averse agent and quantify their exposure to a small amount of model uncertainty. Specifically, we compute explicitly the first-order sensitivity of their value function, optimal investment policy and marginal option prices to model uncertainty. The latter is understood as replacing a baseline model P with an adverse choice from a small Wasserstein ball around P in the space of probability measures. Our sensitivities are thus fully non-parametric. We show that the results entangle the baseline model specification and the agent’s risk attitudes. The sensitivities can behave in a non-monotone way as a function of the baseline model’s Sharpe’s ratio, the relative weighting of assets in an agent’s portfolio can change and marginal prices can increase when an agent faces model uncertainty.
MLCheck- Property-Driven Testing of Machine Learning Models

In recent years, we observe an increasing amount of software with machine learning components being deployed. This poses the question of quality assurance for such components: how can we validate whether specified requirements are fulfilled by a machine learned software? Current testing and verification approaches either focus on a single requirement (e.g., fairness) or specialize on a single type of machine learning model (e.g., neural networks). In this paper, we propose property-driven testing of machine learning models. Our approach MLCheck encompasses (1) a language for property specification, and (2) a technique for systematic test case generation. The specification language is comparable to property-based testing languages. Test case generation employs advanced verification technology for a systematic, property-dependent construction of test suites, without additional user-supplied generator functions. We evaluate MLCheck using requirements and data sets from three different application areas (software discrimination, learning on knowledge graphs and security). Our evaluation shows that despite its generality MLCheck can even outperform specialised testing approaches while having a comparable runtime.
Cancer‐associated POT1 mutations lead to telomere elongation without induction of a DNA damage response

Mutations in the shelterin protein POT1 are associated with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), Hodgkin lymphoma, angiosarcoma, melanoma, and other cancers. These cancer‐associated POT1 (caPOT1) mutations are generally heterozygous, missense, or nonsense mutations occurring throughout the POT1 reading frame. Cancers with caPOT1 mutations have elongated telomeres and show increased genomic instability, but which of the two phenotypes promotes tumorigenesis is unclear. We tested the effects of CAS9‐engineered caPOT1 mutations in human embryonic and hematopoietic stem cells (hESCs and HSCs, respectively). HSCs with caPOT1 mutations did not show overt telomere damage. In vitro and in vivo competition experiments showed the caPOT1 mutations did not confer a selective disadvantage. Since DNA damage signaling is known to affect the fitness of HSCs, the data argue that caPOT1 mutations do not cause significant telomere damage. Furthermore, hESC lines with caPOT1 mutations showed no detectable telomere damage response while showing consistent telomere elongation. Thus, caPOT1 mutations are likely selected for during cancer progression because of their ability to elongate telomeres and extend the proliferative capacity of the incipient cancer cells.
Identifying High-Risk Subphenotypes and Associated Harms From Delayed Antibiotic Orders and Delivery*

Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text. OBJECTIVES: Early antibiotic administration is a central component of sepsis guidelines, and delays may increase mortality. However, prior studies have examined the delay to first antibiotic administration as a single time period even though it contains two distinct processes: antibiotic ordering and antibiotic delivery, which can each be targeted for improvement through different interventions. The objective of this study was to characterize and compare patients who experienced order or delivery delays, investigate the association of each delay type with mortality, and identify novel patient subphenotypes with elevated risk of harm from delays. DESIGN: Retrospective analysis of multicenter inpatient data. SETTING: Two tertiary care medical centers (2008–2018, 2006–2017) and four community-based hospitals (2008–2017). PATIENTS: All patients admitted through the emergency department who met clinical criteria for infection. INTERVENTIONS: None. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Patient demographics, vitals, laboratory values, medication order and administration times, and in-hospital survival data were obtained from the electronic health record. Order and delivery delays were calculated for each admission. Adjusted logistic regression models were used to examine the relationship between each delay and in-hospital mortality. Causal forests, a machine learning method, was used to identify a high-risk subgroup. A total of 60,817 admissions were included, and delays occurred in 58% of patients. Each additional hour of order delay (odds ratio, 1.04; 95% CI, 1.03–1.05) and delivery delay (odds ratio, 1.05; 95% CI, 1.02–1.08) was associated with increased mortality. A patient subgroup identified by causal forests with higher comorbidity burden, greater organ dysfunction, and abnormal initial lactate measurements had a higher risk of death associated with delays (odds ratio, 1.07; 95% CI, 1.06–1.09 vs odds ratio, 1.02; 95% CI, 1.01–1.03). CONCLUSIONS: Delays in antibiotic ordering and drug delivery are both associated with a similar increase in mortality. A distinct subgroup of high-risk patients exist who could be targeted for more timely therapy.
Effect of a Scalable School-Based Intervention on Cardiorespiratory Fitness in Children: A Cluster Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance Cardiorespiratory fitness is an important marker of childhood health and low fitness levels are a risk factor for disease later in life. Levels of children's fitness have declined in recent decades. Whether school-based physical activity interventions can increase fitness at the population level remains unclear. Objective To evaluate the effect of an internet-based intervention on children's cardiorespiratory fitness across a large number of schools. Design, Setting, and Participants In this cluster randomized clinical trial, 22 government-funded elementary schools (from 137 providing consent) including 1188 students stratified from grades 3 and 4 in New South Wales, Australia, were randomized. The other schools received the intervention but were not included in the analysis. Eleven schools received the internet-based intervention and 11 received the control intervention. Recruitment and baseline testing began in 2016 and ended in 2017. Research assistants, blinded to treatment allocation, completed follow-up outcome assessments at 12 and 24 months. Data were analyzed from July to August 2020. Interventions The internet-based intervention included standardized online learning for teachers and minimal in-person support from a project mentor (9-10 months). Main Outcomes and Measures Multistage 20-m shuttle run test for cardiorespiratory fitness. Results Of 1219 participants (49% girls; mean [SD] age, 8.85 [0.71] years) from 22 schools, 1188 students provided baseline primary outcome data. At 12 months, the number of 20-m shuttle runs increased by 3.32 laps (95% CI, 2.44-4.20 laps) in the intervention schools and 2.11 laps (95% CI, 1.38-2.85 laps) in the control schools (adjusted difference = 1.20 laps; 95% CI, 0.17-2.24 laps). By 24 months, the adjusted difference was 2.22 laps (95% CI, 0.89-3.55 laps). The cost per student was AUD33 (USD26). Conclusions and Relevance In this study, a school-based intervention improved children's cardiorespiratory fitness when delivered in a large number of schools. The low cost and sustained effect over 24 months of the intervention suggests that it may have potential to be scaled at the population level. Trial Registration http://anzctr.org. au Identifier: ACTRN12616000731493.
Mind the gap: Habit and self‐determined motivation predict health behaviours in middle‐aged and older adults

Objectives Physical activity and fruit and vegetable consumption are two key health behaviours associated with the health and well‐being of middle‐aged and older adults. The present research investigated how habit and self‐determined motivation interact with intention to prospectively predict physical activity and fruit and vegetable consumption in middle‐aged and older adults. Design A prospective correlational design (two data collection points) was used. Methods A convenience sample of 195 adults completed online questionnaires measuring intention, habit, and self‐determined motivation. One week later, 177 participants (67.2% female), aged 52–87 years (M = 61.50, SD = 5.90), completed self‐report measures of physical activity and fruit and vegetable consumption over the previous week. Results Separate hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted. For physical activity, the model explained 46% of the variance in behaviour, F(8, 168) = 17.88, p < . 001 and a large effect size (ƒ 2 = .85). Two‐way interactions contributed an additional 3.70% of unique variance in physical activity, F(3, 165) = 4.07, p = . 008, ƒ 2 = . 04. For fruit and vegetable consumption, the model explained 19.20% of the variance in behaviour, F(5, 171) = 8.13, p < . 001 and a medium effect size (ƒ 2 = .24). Two‐way interactions did not significantly improve the model, F(3, 168) = 1.68, p = . 174. Conclusions Habit and self‐determined motivation were both important in narrowing the intention–behaviour gap for two key health behaviours, and combining these processes may better inform strategies to support people’s intentions to improve these health behaviours.
Transcription factor FOXP2 is a flow‐induced regulator of collecting lymphatic vessels

The lymphatic system is composed of a hierarchical network of fluid absorbing lymphatic capillaries and transporting collecting vessels. Despite distinct functions and morphologies, molecular mechanisms that regulate the identity of the different vessel types are poorly understood. Through transcriptional analysis of murine dermal lymphatic endothelial cells (LECs), we identified Foxp2, a member of the FOXP family of transcription factors implicated in speech development, as a collecting vessel signature gene. FOXP2 expression was induced after initiation of lymph flow in vivo and upon shear stress on primary LECs in vitro. Loss of FOXC2, the major flow‐responsive transcriptional regulator of lymphatic valve formation, abolished FOXP2 induction in vitro and in vivo. Genetic deletion of Foxp2 in mice using the endothelial‐specific Tie2‐Cre or the tamoxifen‐inducible LEC‐specific Prox1‐CreERT2 line resulted in enlarged collecting vessels and defective valves characterized by loss of NFATc1 activity. Our results identify FOXP2 as a new flow‐induced transcriptional regulator of collecting lymphatic vessel morphogenesis and highlight the existence of unique transcription factor codes in the establishment of vessel‐type‐specific endothelial cell identities.
Preoperative volumetric synthetic magnetic resonance imaging of the primary tumor for a more accurate prediction of lymph node metastasis in rectal cancer.

Background An accurate assessment of lymph node (LN) status in patients with rectal cancer is important for treatment planning and an essential factor for predicting local recurrence and overall survival. In this study, we explored the potential value of histogram parameters of synthetic magnetic resonance imaging (SyMRI) in predicting LN metastasis in rectal cancer and compared their predictive performance with traditional morphological characteristics and chemical shift effect (CSE). Methods A total of 70 patients with pathologically proven rectal adenocarcinoma who received direct surgical resection were enrolled in this prospective study. Preoperative rectal MRI, including SyMRI, were performed, and morphological characteristics and CSE of LN were assessed. Histogram parameters were extracted on a T1 map, T2 map, and proton density (PD) map, including mean, variance, maximum, minimum, 10th percentile, median, 90th percentile, energy, kurtosis, entropy, and skewness. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to explore their predictive performance for assessing LN status. Results Significant differences in the energy of the T1, T2, and PD maps were observed between LN-negative and LN-positive groups [all P<0.001; the area under the ROC curve (AUC) was 0.838, 0.858, and 0.823, respectively]. The maximum and kurtosis of the T2 map, maximum, and variance of PD map could also predict LN metastasis with moderate diagnostic power (P=0.032, 0.045, 0.016, and 0.047, respectively). Energy of the T1 map [odds ratio (OR) =1.683, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.207-2.346, P=0.002] and extramural venous invasion on MRI (mrEMVI) (OR =10.853, 95% CI: 2.339-50.364, P=0.002) were significant predictors of LN metastasis. Moreover, the T1 map energy significantly improved the predictive performance compared to morphological features and CSE (P=0.0002 and 0.0485). Conclusions The histogram parameters derived from SyMRI of the primary tumor were associated with LN metastasis in rectal cancer and could significantly improve the predictive performance compared with morphological features and CSE.