Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimal Monetary Policy in a Model of the Credit Channel

We consider a simple extension of the basic new-Keynesian setup in which we relax the assumption of frictionless financial markets. In our economy, asymmetric information and default risk lead banks to optimally charge a lending rate above the risk-free rate. Our contribution is threefold. First, we derive analytically the loglinearised equations which characterise aggregate dynamics in our model and show that they nest those of the new- Keynesian model. A key difference is that marginal costs increase not only with the output gap, but also with the credit spread and the nominal interest rate. Second, we find that financial market imperfections imply that exogenous disturbances, including technology shocks, generate a trade-off between output and inflation stabilisation. Third, we show that, in our model, an aggressive easing of policy is optimal in response to adverse financial market shocks. JEL Classification: E52, E44
Stability criteria for flooded vehicles: a state‐of‐the‐art review

Hazard conditions related to vehicular circulation are important in flood risk management. The knowledge of vehicles stability when those are exposed to flooding is crucial for an informed flood risk management in urban areas. After losing stability, the vehicle becomes buoyant and may be washed away with potential injuries and fatalities. Therefore, the analysis of the stability of vehicles exposed to flooding is important in order to make decisions to reduce the damages and hazards. Herein a comprehensive state‐of‐the‐art on stability of vehicles exposed to flooding is presented. The different studies have been gathered in experimental, theoretical and guidelines proposals and all of them focusing on parked vehicles. There is a clear need to conduct more research in this field by testing a greater variety of models in order to offer a more general methodology to define stability threshold for any vehicle exposed to flooding. Nevertheless, in this work, it has been demonstrate that the most safety stability criterion for vehicles exposed to flooding up to now is the proposed in the Guide AR&R.
Granger-Causal-Priority and Choice of Variables in Vector Autoregressions

We derive a closed-form expression for the posterior probability of Granger-noncausality in a Gaussian vector autoregression with a conjugate prior. We also express in closed form the posterior probability of Granger-causal-priority, a more general relation that accounts for indirect effects between variables and therefore is suitable in a multivariate context. We show how to use these results to choose variables for a vector autoregression, whether the goal is prediction or impulse response analysis.
The Performance and Robustness of Interest-Rate Rules in Models of the Euro Area ∗ , †

In this paper, we examine the performance and robustness of optimised interest-rate rules in four models of the euro area which differ considerably in terms of size, degree of aggregation, relevance of forward-looking behavioural elements and adherence to micro-foundations. Our findings are broadly consistent with results documented for models of the U.S. economy: backward-looking models require relatively more aggressive policies; rules that are optimal in such models tend to perform reasonably well in forward-looking models, while the reverse is not necessarily true; and a robust rule (i.e., one that performs satisfactorily in all models) does not seem to be readily available. JEL Classification System: E31, E52, E58, E61
1 Geography or Skills : What Explains Fed Watchers ’ Forecast Accuracy of US Monetary Policy ? *

The paper shows that there is a substantial degree of heterogeneity in the ability of Fed watchers to forecast U.S. monetary policy decisions. Based on a novel database for 268 individual professional forecasters since 1999, the average absolute forecast error of FOMC decisions varies 5 to 10 basis points between the best and worst-performers across the sample. This heterogeneity is found to be related to both the skills of analysts – such as their educational and employment backgrounds – and to geography. In particular, forecasters located in regions which experience more idiosyncratic economic conditions perform worse in anticipating monetary policy. This evidence is indicative that limited attention and heterogeneous priors are present even for anticipating important events such as monetary policy decisions. JEL No.: E52, E58, G14
Plant domestication and its contributions to in situ conservation of genetic resources in Benin

All over the world, plant domestication is continually being carried out by local communities to support their needs for food, fibre, medicine, building materials, etc. Using participatory rapid appraisal approach, 150 households were surveyed in 5 villages (Aglamidjodji, Banon, Batia, Gbede and Korontiere) selected in five ethnic groups of the two contrasting agroecological zones (arid and humid) of southern and northern Benin, to investigate the local communities’ motivations for plant domestication and the contributions of this process to in situ conservation of genetic resources. The results indicated differences in plant domestication between agroecological zones and among ethnic groups. People in the humid zones give priority to herbs while those in dry area prefer trees. The Gourmantche people in Batia domesticate plants mostly for their fruits, while the ethnic groups Mahi (Aglamidjodji), the Nago-Fe (Banon), the Nago-Tchabe (Gbede) and the Ditamari / Lamba (Konrontiere) domesticate plants mainly for their leaves. Local communities were motivated to undertake plant domestication for foods (80% of respondents), medicinal use (40% of respondents), income generation (20% of respondents) and cultural reasons (5% of respondents). 45% of the species recorded are still at early stage in domestication and only 2% are fully domesticated. Eleven factors related to the households surveyed (size, number of crops practiced, total area available, total area cultivated, total area occupied by the major crops, number of food shortages experienced during the last ten years) and to the head of the household interviewed (age, education level, number of wives, age of the first wife, number of the social groups to which he belongs) affect farmers’ decision making in domesticating plant species. There is gender influence on the domestication: Women are keen in domesticating herbs while men give priority to trees. Key words: Domestication, plant species, gender influence, motivation, in situconservation.
Estimating bed shear stress from remotely measured surface turbulent dissipation fields in open channel flows

Synoptic information on bed shear stress is necessary in predicting the transport of sediments and environmental contaminants in rivers and open channels. Existing methods of estimating bed shear stress typically involve measuring vertical profiles of streamwise velocity or Reynolds stress and taking advantage of the logarithmic or the constant stress region, respectively, to determine friction velocity and subsequently, bed shear stress. While effective, these methods yield local measurements of bed shear stress only. Direct measurements of bed shear stress can also be obtained through measurements with a drag plate. However, this method yields average shear stress information over the area of the plate and is impractical for large‐scale implementation in the field.
Hierarchical and Dynamic Regulation of Defense-Responsive Specialized Metabolism by WRKY and MYB Transcription Factors

The plant kingdom produces hundreds of thousands of specialized bioactive metabolites, some with pharmaceutical and biotechnological importance. Their biosynthesis and function have been studied for decades, but comparatively less is known about how transcription factors with overlapping functions and contrasting regulatory activities coordinately control the dynamics and output of plant specialized metabolism. Here, we performed temporal studies on pathogen-infected intact host plants with perturbed transcription factors. We identified WRKY33 as the condition-dependent master regulator and MYB51 as the dual functional regulator in a hierarchical gene network likely responsible for the gene expression dynamics and metabolic fluxes in the camalexin and 4-hydroxy-indole-3-carbonylnitrile (4OH-ICN) pathways. This network may have also facilitated the regulatory capture of the newly evolved 4OH-ICN pathway in Arabidopsis thaliana by the more-conserved transcription factor MYB51. It has long been held that the plasticity of plant specialized metabolism and the canalization of development (Waddington, 1942) should be differently regulated; our findings imply a common hierarchical regulatory architecture orchestrated by transcription factors for specialized metabolism and development, making it an attractive target for metabolic engineering.
Geological map of Etna volcano, 1:50,000 scale

The new geological map of Etna volcano at 1:50,000 scale represents a significant progress in the geological studies of this volcano over the last 30 years, coming after Waltershausen’s map published around the mid of 19th century, the first geological map of a large active volcano, and the [Romano et alii (1979)][1] map published about a century later, both at 1:50,000 scale. Lithostratigraphy was used for mapping volcanic units and then Unconformity Bounded Units were applied to group lithostratigraphic units into synthems. In addition, lithosomes were exploited to better represent the spatial localization of different eruptive centres according to their morphology. On the whole, we identified 27 lithostratigraphic units, grouped into 8 synthems, and 9 volcanoes. In detail, effusive and explosive deposits generated by each eruption of Mongibello and, partially, Ellittico volcanoes were mapped as flow rank. This stratigraphic framework represents the best synthesis of the geological evolution of Etna volcano using the main unconformities recognized within its complex volcanic succession. In addition, we constrain the Etna volcanic succession and its lithostratigraphic units chronologically by radioisotope age determinations. On the basis of the outlined synthemic units, it was possible to divide Etna’s volcanic succession into 4 supersynthems, which correspond to 4 well-defined and spatially localized phases. The detailed reconstruction of the past eruptive activity allowed compiling the most accurate dataset in particular of the Holocene eruptions of Etna volcano, which will enable significantly improving the volcanic hazard assessment, together with petrological interpretation of erupted magmas and geophysical modelling of the volcano plumbing system. [1]: #ref-67
Middle class one-child migrants : between transnational aspirations in the UK and family responsibility in China

The rapid economic development in China since 1978 and the one-child policy enacted in 1979 produced a large number of middle class families with only one child. Initially inspired by the Western means to affluence, these one-child migrants came to the UK (mostly) as international students and remained after their study to take up opportunities to gain work in the professions. As the only child they were faced with the dilemma of seeking greater mobility in the host country, and looking after their ageing parents in China. This research seeks to understand the factors behind their decision to migrate or to settle, and how the only-child migrants in the UK negotiate filial obligations in relation to their parents in China. The transnational one-child family provides a unique case for investigating how families function and change under extreme conditions; as well as how traditional family values and practices shift in the 21st Century within the context of rapid modernisation. The findings of the research are based on interviews with 27 one-child migrants, 6 migrants with siblings and 7 parents of the one-child participants. The migrant participants are from different regions of China and were dispersed in the UK. The majority of the sample has an urban middle class background. By including parents and children from the same family, which is rarely done in transnational family research, this study is able to analyse the separated household members from both sides. The detailed accounts of the migrants' lived experience reveal a multi-level decision-making process over the life course of these families, a predominately parent-to-child intergenerational material transfer, as well as a reconfigured reciprocity between one-child migrants and their parents. Families represent the most intimate form of a transnational social field. One-child transnational families in this study have shown intense circulation of material resources, emotion and care forged by the biological bond and family contract; these families played a crucial "bridging" role that connects the social spaces between China and the UK. As a result individual migrants are actively involved in relationships in multi-layered spaces, and simultaneously influenced by these relationships. International education and the globalised late-capital world gave rise to a demographic of Western-educated Chinese migrants who are relatively mobile, while some aspects of their lives are still geographically bound. By introducing the time factor into the family-migration nexus the thesis shows that migrants' establishment in the host country and their transnational ties are neither incompatible, nor are they static; their relationship evolves with the life cycle of the individuals, and the changing society in both the host country and China.
An Empirical Study

It has been shown that “visual numerosity emerges as a statistical property of images in ‘deep networks’ that learn a hierarchical generative model of the sensory input” , through unsupervised deep learning [1]. The original deep generative model was based on stochastic neurons and, more importantly, on input (image) reconstruction. Statistical analysis highlighted a correlation between the numerosity present in the input and the population activity of some neurons in the second hidden layer of the network, whereas population activity of neurons in the ﬁrst hidden layer correlated with total area (i.e., number of pixels) of the objects in the image. Here we further investigate whether numerosity information can be isolated as a disentangled factor of variation of the visual input. We train in unsupervised and semi-supervised fashion a latent-space generative model that has been shown capable of disen-tangling relevant semantic features in a variety of complex datasets, and we test its generative performance under diﬀerent conditions. We then propose an approach to the problem based on the assumption that, in order to let numerosity emerge as disentangled factor of variation, we need to cancel out the sources of variation at graphical level.
POLITECNICO DI TORINO Repository ISTITUZIONALE Assessing the Performance of Virtualization Technologies for NFV : a Preliminary Benchmarking

The NFV paradigm transforms those applications executed for decades in dedicated appliances, into software images to be consolidated in standard server. Although NFV is implemented through cloud computing technologies (e.g., virtual machines, virtual switches), the network traffic that such components have to handle in NFV is different than the traffic they process when used in a cloud computing scenario. Then, this paper provides a (preliminary) benchmarking of the widespread virtualization technologies when used in NFV, which means when they are exploited to run the so called virtual network functions and to chain them in order to create complex services. Keywords—NFV; service function chain; performance evaluation; KVM; Docker; Open vSwitch
POLITECNICO DI TORINO Repository ISTITUZIONALE A Joint Source / Channel Approach to Strengthen Embedded Programmable Devices against Flash Memory Errors /

Reconfigurable embedded systems can take advantage of programmable devices, such as microprocessors and FPGAs, to achieve high performance and flexibility. Support to flexibility often comes at the expense of large amounts of non volatile memories. Unfortunately, non-volatile memories, such as multi-level-cell (MLC) NAND flash, exhibit a high raw bit error rate that is mitigated by employing different techniques, including error correcting codes. Recent results show that lowdensity-parity-check (LDPC) codes are good candidates to improve the reliability of MLC NAND flash memories especially when page size increases. This work proposes to use a joint source/channel approach, based on a modified arithmetic code and LDPC codes, to achieve both data compression and improved system reliability. The proposed technique is then applied to the configuration data of FPGAs and experimental results show the superior performance of the proposed system with respect to state of the art. Indeed, the proposed system can achieve biterror-rates as low as about 10−8 for cell-to-cell coupling strength factors well higher than 1.0.
Facteurs écologiques influençant la répartition et la dynamique des populations de Xenopsylla cunicularis Smit, 1957 (Insecta: Siphonaptera) Puce inféodée au Lapin de Garenne, Oryctolagus cuniculus (L.)

L'amplitude ecologique de X.c. est plus restreinte que celle de son hote.Parmi les facteurs limitants,les plus evidents se trouvent dans la nature du substrat qui doit etre de texture a dominante sabloneuse,le climat qui doit etre relativement chaud,peu pluvieux,avec des precipitations faibles en hiver;enfin,une bonne densite en lapins est un facteur biotique tres favorisant
Timeless Perspective vs . Discretionary Monetary Policy in Forward-Looking Models

ment rules. ” Is there, in fact, a major difference? Or can targeting-rule outcomes be closely approximated by instrument-rule procedures? Third, in the context of optimal policy-rule analysis, issues concerning operationality—stressed by McCallum and Nelson (1999)—arise naturally. Is the superiority of rulebased over discretionary policymaking enhanced or diminished by realistic specification of information available to the policymaker? Finally, how important is this newly emphasized dynamic loss compared with that from the more familiar inflationary bias that arises from discretionary policymaking? In exploring these issues, we begin with an exposition of the basic analysis that emphasizes Woodford’s concept of a “timeless perspective” monetary policy and its relationship to previous concepts of rule-based policymaking.
Evaluation of a health and nutrition education program in primary school children of Crete over a three-year period.

BACKGROUND No national policy for health education in schools exists to date in Greece. The first attempt to apply a school-based health education intervention program was launched in 1992 on all 4,171 pupils registered in the first grade in two counties of Crete. The 1,510 pupils registered in a third county served as controls. METHODS The school-based intervention and the seminars organized for parents were primarily aimed at improving children's diet, fitness, and physical activity. Pupils in the first grade in a representative sample of 40 schools were examined prior to the intervention program on a variety of health knowledge, dietary, physical activity, fitness, anthropometric, and biochemical indices. The same measurements were taken after 3 years of the program on 288 intervention group and 183 control group pupils. RESULTS Positive serum lipid level changes occurred to a greater extent in the intervention group than the control group. BMI increased less in the intervention group than for controls. The increase in health knowledge and physical activity and fitness levels occurred to a higher extent in the intervention group compared to controls. CONCLUSIONS The short-term changes observed in the present study are markedly encouraging and indicate great potential for progressive improvement. Continuation and expansion of such a program may prove to be beneficial in initiating long-term changes.
Arbitration and Stability in Cooperative Games with Overlapping Coalitions

Overlapping Coalition Formation (OCF) games, introduced by Chalkiadakis, Elkind, Markakis, Polukarov and Jennings in 2010, are cooperative games where players can simultaneously participate in several coalitions. Capturing the notion of stability in OCF games is a difficult task: deviating players may continue to contribute resources to joint projects with non-deviators, and the crucial question is what payoffs the deviators expect to receive from such projects. Chalkiadakis et al. introduce three stability concepts for OCF games--the conservative core, the refined core, and the optimistic core--that are based on different answers to this question. In this paper, we propose a unified framework for the study of stability in the OCF setting, which encompasses the stability concepts considered by Chalkiadakis et al. as well as a wide variety of alternative stability concepts. Our approach is based on the notion of arbitration functions, which determine the payoff obtained by the deviators, given their deviation and the current allocation of resources. We provide a characterization of stable outcomes under arbitration. We then conduct an in-depth study of four types of arbitration functions, which correspond to four notions of the core; these include the three notions of the core considered by Chalkiadakis et al. Our results complement those of Chalkiadakis et al. and answer questions left open by their work. In particular, we show that OCF games with the conservative arbitration function are essentially equivalent to non-OCF games, by relating the conservative core of an OCF game to the core of a non-overlapping cooperative game, and use this result to obtain a strictly weaker sufficient condition for conservative core non-emptiness than the one given by Chalkiadakis et al.
Effect of autophagy induction and cathepsin B inhibition on developmental competence of poor quality bovine oocytes

The present study investigated the effect of autophagy induction and cathepsin B (CTSB) inhibition on developmental competence of poor quality oocytes. Bovine cumulus oocyte complexes (COCs) were classified as good or poor according to their morphology. Autophagy activity was detected in good and poor germinal vesicle (GV) oocytes. Then E-64, a CTSB inhibitor, rapamycin (Rapa), an autophagy inducer, and combined administration was achieved during in vitro maturation (IVM) of poor quality COCs followed by detection of autophagy activity. In the next experiment, E-64, Rapa, and E64 + Rapa, were added during IVM to good and poor quality COCs followed by in vitro fertilization and culture for 8 days to investigate whether inhibition of CTSB and/or induction of autophagy improve embryonic development and quality. Autophagy activity was significantly lower in poor quality GV oocytes than in good quality ones. E-64, Rapa and E-64 + Rapa treatment during IVM significantly increased autophagy activity in poor quality oocytes. Addition of Rapa in good quality COCs did not increase the blastocyst rate, whereas E-64 increased the blastocyst rate and total cell number (TCN) with decreasing TUNEL-positive cells. In contrast, Rapa treatment in poor quality COCs significantly increased the blastocyst rate and TCN with decreasing TUNEL-positive cells. These results indicate oocyte quality has different responses to intracellular autophagy induction and CTSB activity control by potential autophagy and catabolic status, however, synergetic effect of autophagy induction and CTSB inhibition can increase developmental competence of both good and poor quality COCs, especially rescue effect in poor quality COCs.