Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ECB and FED Crisis Policies at the Zero-Lower Bound – An Empirical Assessment Based on Modified Reaction Functions

We assess similarities and differences in the crisis reaction of the ECB and the FED and the potential motivations for them. We propose an alternative way of estimating Taylor reaction functions if the zero-lower-bound on nominal interest rates is binding. This approach relies on tackling the real rather than the nominal interest rate. If the nominal rate is (close to) zero, central banks can employ quantitative easing to impact inflation expectations. We show that there are substantial differences between the estimated reaction coefficients in the pre-and crisis era for both central banks. While they act less inertial, put a smaller weight on the inflation gap, money growth and the risk spread, their response to asset price inflation becomes more pronounced during the crisis. However, the central banks diverge in their response to the output gap and credit growth. We finally address whether and how these measures have been reflected in the composition and volume of the balance sheet of the central banks and how risky and successful the crisis measures of the ECB and the FED have been.
Mechanism for Building Standards: Towards an Effective Building Control Practice in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT)

: Despite the establishment and operations of development control departments across Nigeria, the nation’s Building assets has been plagued with quality deficit that exposes users of such buildings and the public to vulnerability to hazards and disasters resulting from building failures, thus the need for effective building control practice that would ensure construction standard. This study assess the developmental control practices with the view of proposing a mechanism for an improved building standards in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). This exploratory research adopted a pragmatic approach through mixed methodology design. This was done through administration of questionnaires survey and an interview of relevant stakeholders to the research context. The findings show that of all the constructs considered under the study, three (3) of which comprises of; improved institutional framework, increased enforcement and compliance level, and elimination of perceived challenges that constantly hindered the attainment of control department objectives were found to be critical for an improved developmental control towards an improved quality infrastructures in the study area. Therefore, a mechanism for developmental building control practices (MDBC) was developed. It is recommended that the MDBC be put into practice for the benefits of the builtenvironmental.
Outcome measures and needs assessment tools for schizophrenia and related disorders.

BACKGROUND There has been a recent trend to encourage routine outcome measurement and needs assessment as an aid to decision making in clinical practice and patient care. Standardised instruments have been developed which measure clinical symptoms of disorders such as schizophrenia, wider health related quality of life and patients' needs. Such measures might usefully be applied to aid the recognition of psychosocial problems and to monitor the course of patients' progress over time in terms of disease severity and associated deficits in health related quality of life. They might also be used to help clinicians to make decisions about treatment and to assess subsequent therapeutic impact. Such an approach is not, however, without cost and the actual benefit of the adoption of routine outcome and needs assessment in the day-to-day care of those with schizophrenia remains unclear. OBJECTIVES To establish the value of the routine administration of outcome measures and needs assessment tools and the feedback they provide in improving the management and outcome of patients with schizophrenia and related disorders. SEARCH STRATEGY The reviewers undertook electronic searches of the British Nursing Index (1994 to Sept 1999), the Cochrane Library (Issue 2, 2002), the Cochrane Schizophrenia Group Trials Register (2002), EMBASE (1980-2002), MEDLINE (1966-2002), and PsycLIT (1887-2002), together with hand searches of key journals. References of all identified studies were searched for further trials, and the reviewers contacted authors of trials. SELECTION CRITERIA Randomised controlled trials comparing the feedback of routine standardised outcome measurement and needs assessment, to routine care for those with schizophrenia. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS Reviewers evaluated data independently. Studies which randomised clinicians or clinical teams (rather than individual patients) were considered to be the most robust. However only those which took account of potential clustering effects were considered further. Where possible and appropriate, risk ratios (RR) and their 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated. For continuous data Weighted Mean Differences (WMD) were calculated. Data were inspected for heterogeneity. MAIN RESULTS No randomised data were found which addressed the specified objectives. One unpublished and one ongoing trial was identified. REVIEWER'S CONCLUSIONS The routine use of outcomes measures and needs assessment tools is, as yet, unsupported by high quality evidence of clinical and cost effectiveness. Clinicians, patients and policy makers alike may wish to see randomised evidence before this strategy is routinely adopted.
A Fuzzy Logic Based Green Information Technology Readiness Model

Green information technology (IT) has been increasingly becoming a strategic consideration for developing sustainable business practices through balancing economic and environmental performance of an organization. To help individual organizations better pursue green IT, this paper presents a fuzzy logic based decision model for evaluating the green IT readiness of an organization. The decision model effectively considers the multi-dimensional nature of the evaluation problem and appropriately handle the subjectiveness and imprecision of the human evaluation process. An example is given for demonstrating the applicability of the model for evaluating the green IT readiness of organizations.
A TIME SLICING APPROACH TO EXTERNAL WORKLOAD MANAGEMENT ON BSP TIME WARP

The performance of a BSP Time Warp parallel simulation system on a large-scale cluster of workstations can be severely affected due to the presence of external workload on individual machine in the cluster. This paper describes a new approach to managing external workload for BSP Time Warp parallel simulation on a cluster of workstations using the approach of time slicing. Experimental results comparing the performance of this new approach and the one proposed previously show that the new approach is resilient to interruption from external workload on multiple computing nodes in the cluster of workstations.
Balanced Scorecard Implementation of Security Strategies: A Framework for IT Security Performance Management

The article develops a conceptual framework for strategic implementation of IT security using a balanced scorecard (BSC) approach. Current research has mostly looked at economics of IT security, technical considerations, and behavioral aspects of what counter measures are available to firms instead of how successful or cost effective the investments or counter measures are. More specifically, our article provides a framework for building and implementing scorecards for information security performance management.
ON INFORMATICS

— Traffic jams are one of the serious issues in many developed countries. After the pandemic, many employees were allowed to travel interstate to work. This contributes to more severe jams, especially in the capital and nearby states. Long-distance driving and congestion can easily make the drivers sleepy and thus lead to traffic accidents. This paper aims to study and analyze facial cues to detect early symptoms of drowsy driving. The proposed method employs a deep learning approach, utilizing ensemble CNNs and Dlib's 68 landmark face detectors to analyze the facial cues. The analyzed symptoms include the frequency of eyes opened or closed and yawning or no yawning. Three individual CNN models and an ensemble CNN structure are built for the classification of the eyes and mouth yawn. The model training and validation accuracy graph and training loss and validation loss graph are plotted to verify that the models have not been overfitted. The ensemble CNN models achieved an approximate accuracy of 97.4% from the eyes and 96.5% from the mouth. It outperforms the other pre-trained models. The proposed system can immediately alert the driver and send text drowsy messages and emails to the third party, ensuring timely intervention to prevent accidents. The proposed method can be integrated into vehicles and transportation systems to ensure driver's safety. It can also be applied to monitor the driving behavior of those who drive long distances.
Estimating design hydrographs at the basin scale: from event-based to continuous hydrological simulation

ABSTRACT Design hydrographs are widely used in practical hydrologic engineering problems. Typical applications adopt event-based (EBM) methods, using rainfall-runoff models to convert design hyetographs into design hydrographs. Uncertainties include the definition of antecedent conditions and the assumption of equivalence between hyetograph and hydrograph return periods. An alternative is to use continuous simulation (CSM) methods, by forcing a rainfall-runoff model with long precipitation series, and directly analyzing the output discharges. To better understand uncertainties in the EBM method and differences between CSM and EBM ones, we applied a hydrological model in the Itajaí-Açu river basin to compare a CSM method with 730 different simulations of an EBM one, considering different basin antecedent conditions and design hyetographs (10- and 50-years). Results indicated that the EBM method leads to a large range of design discharges depending on the antecedent condition. CS-based 10- and 50-years maximum discharges corresponded to percentiles between 30% and 50% of the EBM estimates. Higher discharge variation occurred in sub-basins with larger maximum soil water storage. Our conclusions agree with the literature, which points towards CSM-based methods to estimate design discharges.
Systematic revision of Late Triassic marine gastropods from Central Perú: considerations on the Late Triassic/Early Jurassic faunal turnover

The Late Triassic/Early Jurassic boundary is marked by a mass extinction event which had an important effect on the marine benthic communities on a global scale. In the Andean region of South America, however, the impact of this phenomenon on the earliest Mesozoic marine invertebrate associations has not been evaluated thus far. The present contribution is a systematic revision of the Late Triassic marine benthic gastropod faunas from the Pucara Group of Central Peru, giving a detailed characterization of 18 species and an updated systematic assigment of representatives of the genera Chartroniella, Phymatifer, Ptychomphalina, Paracerithium, Rhabdocolpus and Omphaloptycha. This research includes a comparison of the Peruvian fauna with their related counterparts from the Early Jurassic of Argentina and the Early/Middle Jurassic of New Zealand. This approach attempts to interpret the Late Triassic/Early Jurassic faunal turnover after the end Triassic crisis and establishes a palaeobiogeographical scheme for the gastropod faunal exchange in the Southern Hemisphere across the palaeo-Pacific seaway during the Late Triassic/Early Jurassic.
Communication-Efﬁcient Collaborative Regret Minimization in Multi-Armed Bandits

In this paper, we study the collaborative learning model, which concerns the tradeoff between parallelism and communication overhead in multi-agent multi-armed bandits. For regret minimization in multi-armed bandits, we present the ﬁrst set of tradeoffs between the number of rounds of communication among the agents and the regret of the collaborative learning process.
Implementation of Methane Efficiency Evaluations for Canadian Holsteins

Methane (CH 4 ) is a potent greenhouse gas (GHG) that warms the atmosphere at a rate 25 to 27 times more than that of carbon dioxide. The average first parity Holstein cow produces nearly 500 g of CH 4 per day or 180 kg per year, mainly due to enteric fermentation. A 30% difference above or below average can also be seen between cows, meaning two cows in the same herd can differ in their CH 4 emissions by up to 110 kg per year. As such, using genetics to select for cows with reduced CH 4 emissions is a strategy that can combat global warming and improve the efficiency of the dairy industry. In April 2023, Lactanet launched genomic evaluations for Methane Efficiency using milk mid-infrared (MIR) spectroscopy data. Previous research using artificial neural network methods determined that a cow’s milk MIR spectral data can be used as a good predictor of its CH 4 emissions. Lactanet developed CH 4 predictions using CH 4 data collected from research herds in Canada through two research projects, the Efficient Dairy Genome Project and the Resilient Dairy Genome Project, and milk spectral data collected via Canadian milk recording services. Predicted CH 4 (g/d) has a genetic correlation with collected CH 4 of 0.92 and a heritability of 0.23 (0.01). Lactanet’s genomic evaluation for Methane Efficiency was developed for the Holstein breed using a 4-trait Single-Step linear animal model including predicted CH 4 and milk, fat and protein yields as correlated traits. Methane Efficiency is defined as genetic Residual Methane Production in 120-185 DIM of first lactation and is genetically independent of production yields via a linear regression approach. The first genomic evaluation for Methane Efficiency included first lactation records on over 500 000 cows in Canadian milk recorded herds, of which more than 60 000 were genotyped. The average reliability of Methane Efficiency for genotyped young bulls and heifers exceeds 70%. Methane Efficiency is expressed as a Relative Breeding Value (RBV) averaging 100 and ranging from 85 to 115. For every 5-point increase in a sire’s RBV for Methane Efficiency, daughters are expected to produce approximately 3 kilograms less CH 4 per year. This equates to a 1.5% reduction in CH 4 emissions per cow per year and a herd can achieve a 20% to 30% reduction by 2050 through genetic selection. Methane Efficiency does not have a significant undesirable correlation with any other trait, including LPI, Pro$, production yields and Feed Efficiency.
Signiﬁcant Decrease of Uncertainties in Sensible Heat Flux Simulation Using Temporally Variable Aerodynamic Roughness in Two Typical Forest Ecosystems of China

Aerodynamic roughness length z om is an important parameter for reliably simulating surface ﬂuxes. It varies with wind speed, atmospheric stratiﬁcation, terrain, and other factors. However, it is usually considered a constant. It is known that uncertainties in z om result in latent heat ﬂux (LE) simulation errors, since z om links LE with aerodynamic resistance. The effects of z om on sensible heat ﬂux (SH) simulation are usually neglected because there is no direct link between the two. By comparing SH simulations with three types of z om inputs, it is found that allowing z om temporal variation in an SH simulation model signiﬁcantly improves agreement between simulated and measured SH and also decreases the sensitivity of the SH model to the heat transfer coefﬁcient C t , which in turn determines the linkage between z om and thermal roughness length z oh .
Florbetapir PET Brain Scan InterpretationF ]18 Decreases Interreader Variability of [ Use of Standardized Uptake Value Ratios

BACKGROUNDANDPURPOSE: Fluorine-18ﬂorbetapirisarecentlydeveloped (cid:2) -amyloidplaquepositron-emissiontomographyimaging agent with high sensitivity, speciﬁcity, and accuracy in the detection of moderate-to-frequent cerebral cortical (cid:2) -amyloid plaque. However, the FDA has expressed concerns about the consistency of interpretation of [ 18 F] ﬂorbetapir PET brain scans. We hypothesized that incorporating automated cerebral-to-whole-cerebellar standardized uptake value ratios into [ 18 F] ﬂorbetapir PET brain scan interpretation would reduce this interreader variability. MATERIALSANDMETHODS: Thisrandomized,blinded-readerstudyusedpreviouslyacquired[ 18 F]ﬂorbetapirscansfrom30anonymized patientswhowereenrolledintheAlzheimer’sDiseaseNeuroimagingInitiative2.In4separate,blinded-readingsessions,5readersclassiﬁed 30 cases as positive or negative for signiﬁcant (cid:2) -amyloid deposition either qualitatively alone or qualitatively with additional adjunct software that determined standardized uptake value ratios. A (cid:3) coefﬁcient was used to calculate interreader agreement with and without the use of standardized uptake value ratios. RESULTS: Therewascompleteinterreaderagreementon20/30casesof[ 18 F]ﬂorbetapirPETbrainscansbyusingqualitativeinterpretation and on 27/30 scans interpreted with the adjunct use of standardized uptake value ratios. The (cid:3) coefﬁcient for the studies read with standardized uptake value ratios (0.92) was signiﬁcantly higher compared with the qualitatively read studies (0.69, P (cid:2) . 006). CONCLUSIONS: Use of standardized uptake value ratios improves interreader agreement in the interpretation of [ 18 F] ﬂorbetapir images.
Ion channels in liposomes.

It may be reasonably argued that of all classes of known cellular proteins, the ion channels are the least understood biochemically. Of the large number of channel proteins known from cellular electrical behavior to exist in the mem­ branes of higher organisms, only three-the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, the Na+ channel, and the mitochondrial porin channel-have been obtained in a relatively purified state (28). Even in these cases, serious questions remain about the physiologically "correct" functioning of these purified proteins. A single peculiarity of ion channel proteins explains this unhappy situation: the lack of a suitable functional assay for integral membrane channels. Seeking to purify an enzyme, for instance, a biochemist can straightforwardly develop a specific assay to pursue and eventually to apprehend the protein with a battery of purification methods. But the only criterion of functionality of an ion channel is its ability to make a membrane "leaky" to specific ions. To be sure, this "leak" may be turned on and off in very specific ways and may be modified pharmacologically, but the fact remains that ion channels, by their very definition, merely catalyze the passive flow of ions down their thermodynamic gradients. It is therefore necessary, in attacking purified channel proteins, to develop a system in which the flow of ions across a membrane may be detected. Histor­ ically, two such model membrane systems have been employed: planar bilayers and liposomes (10, 22, 26, 27, 32-36). The planar bilayer system has been largely favored for ion channel work because of its obvious advantages: the ability to voltage-clamp the model membrane and to measure single channel current fluctuations, and the easy accessibility to both aqueous phases. But there are two serious disadvantages in the use of planar bilayers in biochemical
A General Model for Online Probabilistic Plan Recognition

We present a new general framework for online probabilistic plan recognition called the Abstract Hidden Markov Memory Model (AHMEM). The new model is an extension of the existing Abstract Hidden Markov Model to allow the policy to have internal memory which can be updated in a Markov fashion. We show that the A H M E M can repre­ sent a richer class of probabilistic plans, and at the same time derive an efficient algorithm for plan recognition in the A H M E M based on the RaoBlackwellised Particle Filter approximate inference method.
Defining the Core Genome of Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhimurium for Genomic Surveillance and Epidemiological Typing

ABSTRACT Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium is the most common Salmonella serovar causing foodborne infections in Australia and many other countries. Twenty-one S. Typhimurium strains from Salmonella reference collection A (SARA) were analyzed using Illumina high-throughput genome sequencing. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 21 SARA strains ranged from 46 to 11,916 SNPs, with an average of 1,577 SNPs per strain. Together with 47 strains selected from publicly available S. Typhimurium genomes, the S. Typhimurium core genes (STCG) were determined. The STCG consist of 3,846 genes, a set that is much larger than that of the 2,882 Salmonella core genes (SCG) found previously. The STCG together with 1,576 core intergenic regions (IGRs) were defined as the S. Typhimurium core genome. Using 93 S. Typhimurium genomes from 13 epidemiologically confirmed community outbreaks, we demonstrated that typing based on the S. Typhimurium core genome (STCG plus core IGRs) provides superior resolution and higher discriminatory power than that based on SCG for outbreak investigation and molecular epidemiology of S. Typhimurium. STCG and STCG plus core IGR typing achieved 100% separation of all outbreaks compared to that of SCG typing, which failed to separate isolates from two outbreaks from background isolates. Defining the S. Typhimurium core genome allows standardization of genes/regions to be used for high-resolution epidemiological typing and genomic surveillance of S. Typhimurium.
Cell growth in vitro directed by handmade patterns

SummaryIn this report, we show how the in vitro model of mechanically injured confluent monolayers of cultured mammalian cells, consisting in denudation by gentle scraping of areas in the monolayer, can be extended to obtain patterned cell cultures without using preadded attaching matrices. This work was done with a sinusoidal endothelial liver cell line. Patterns for cell growth were drawn in confluent monolayers by cell detaching with the aid of pipette tips followed by reincubation of the culture. In one or some d, acellular patterns were closed by cell migration and proliferation. For unveiling the pattern formed by migration and cell duplication, an enzymatic digestion with trypsin-collagenase solution was applied; after some min, only the migrating and younger cells filling the previous acellular pattern remained attached to the dish, and the now cellular pattern was clearly depicted. After stopping and recovering from the enzymatic treatment, the culture was ready for starting studies such as those related to migration, proliferation, cell-cell interactions. This method allows us to create simple and complex patterns, does not require preparation of the dishes with attaching matrices, and extracellular matrices in acellular areas are absent because of the enzymatic treatment, thus, potentially having many applications in cell culture techniques.
Software Support for Application Development in Wireless Sensor Networks

Developing software for Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is difficult because they consist of tiny, fragile, and resource-deprived embedded devices that communicate over low-bandwidth wireless links. Middleware can simplify WSN programming; many middleware packages have been proposed. This chapter provides an overview of WSN middleware. It starts with middleware providing basic building blocks, and then focuses on middleware for mobility in all of its forms: data, entity, user, and code. The chapter ends with a discussion on emerging WSN middleware