Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Exploration of Trend-Cycle Decomposition Methodologies in Simulated Data

This paper uses simulations to explore the properties of the HP filter of Hodrick and Prescott (1997), the BK filter of Baxter and King (1999), and the H filter of Hamilton (2018) that are designed to decompose a univariate time series into trend and cyclical components. Each simulated time series approximates the natural logarithms of U.S. Real GDP, and they are a random walk, an ARIMA model, two unobserved components models, and models with slowly changing nonstationary stochastic trends and definitive cyclical components. In basic time series, the H filter dominates the HP and BK filters in more closely characterizing the underlying framework, but in more complex models, the reverse is true.
The Inside Baseball of Sudden Stop Models

This paper examines the role of collateral in "sudden stop" models that feature occasionally binding constraints and endogenous growth. We show how different assumptions regarding the nature and valuation of collateral alter the dynamics of crisis episodes and the welfare costs of pecuniary externalities. For example, in a model with land as collateral, we show that valuing collateral at the "expected future price" leads to substantially weaker Fisherian deflation effects compared to the case with collateral valued at the "current price". However, the average size of sudden stops in the two economies is similar because households endogenously avoid the region where large sudden stops would occur. The difference between different collateral valuations and the size of sudden stops are amplified when we abstract from endogenous growth. In another case, assuming collateral is income rather than land leads to smaller sudden stops as income is less volatile than asset prices. Finally, we show that the efficiency distortions also change in terms of nature and policy implications; using the expected future price case the competitive equilibrium is efficient, while other cases feature a small distortion.
Recent Advances and Opportunities for Improving Critical Realism-Based Case Study Research in IS

Critical realism (CR) has been proposed as an alternative to positivist and interpretivist research in information systems. In recent years, there have been several articles that describe methodological guidelines for conducting CR-based empirical studies. These guidelines have been used by numerous researchers as the methodological underpinnings for empirical research articles in IS, particularly for case studies. As a result, CR-based research has evolved as these researchers address many of the challenges and issues associated with this approach. In this article, we present a review and synthesis of methodological and recent empirical CR literature. We identify the methodological advances and important gaps in the empirical research and present a set of state-of-the-art recommendations for conducting and evaluating critical realist research studies in IS.
GENDER, SOCIOECONOMIC AND PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS OF EMIGRATION INTENTIONS AMONG SLOVAK UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

The objectives of this study were to explore the associations between gender, socioeconomic factors, psychological factors and emigration intentions among Slovak university students as well as testing for the moderating effects of gender on the relationships between psychological factors and emigration intentions. The data were collected online from 375 students (75.5% females; M=22.9; SD=3.0). Students were asked to report their gender, their perception of Slovakia’s economic future, perception of their financial situation, home/family satisfaction, desire to change their living environment and the importance of religion in their life. Multiple binary logistic regression models were used for data analyses. A lower level of home/family satisfaction and a higher level of desire to change their living environment were more likely to be reported by undecided students and students with emigration intentions (leavers) compared to students without emigration intentions (stayers). A lower level of the importance of religion was more likely to be reported only by students with emigration intentions (leavers) compared to students without emigration intentions (stayers). A moderating effect of gender on the relationships between the importance of religion and emigration intentions among Slovak university students was found. The results contribute to a better understanding of the psychological and socioeconomic predictors of emigration intentions.
Exploring the Effects of Aggregation Choices on Untrained Visualization Users' Generalizations From Data

Visualization system designers must decide whether and how to aggregate data by default. Aggregating distributional information in a single summary mark like a mean or sum simplifies interpretation, but may lead untrained users to overlook distributional features. We ask, How are the conclusions drawn by untrained visualization users affected by aggregation strategy? We present two controlled experiments comparing generalizations of a population that untrained users made from visualizations that summarized either a 1000 record or 50 record sample with either single mean summary mark, a disaggregated view with one mark per observation or a view overlaying a mean summary mark atop a disaggregated view. While we observe no reliable effect of aggregation strategy on generalization accuracy at either sample size, users of purely disaggregated views were slightly less confident in their generalizations on average than users whose views show a single mean summary mark, and less likely to engage in dichotomous thinking about effects as either present or absent. Comparing results from 1000 record to 50 record data set, we see a considerably larger decrease in the number of generalizations produced and reported confidence in generalizations among viewers who saw disaggregated data relative to those who saw only mean summary marks.
The Mediating Role of Psychological Empowerment in Information Security Compliance Intentions

The issue of employee noncompliance with information security policies is universal. Noncompliance increases the possibility of invasive information security threats, which can result in compromised organizational assets. Although research has empirically revealed a relationship between structural empowerment and employee intention to comply with information security policies, the mediating role of psychological empowerment in the relationship has received limited attention. This study conceptualizes the role of psychological empowerment as a mediator between structural empowerment and the intention to comply with information security policy. It suggests that empowerment work structures, which include information security education, training, and awareness (SETA), access to information security strategic goals, and participation in information security decision-making all increase employees’ feelings of being psychologically empowered, which consequently leads to positive intentions to comply with information security policy.
Changes of Plasma Lidocaine Concentrations after Stellate Ganglion Block according to Volume-changes of 1% Lidocaine

Background: Sympathetic blocks with local anesthetics are used to differentiate sympathetically￢maintained pain (SMP) from sympathetically-independent pain (SIP). However, systemic lidocaine is also used in the management of neuropathic pain. Therefore, there may be possibility of a false positive response in relieving their pain by systemic absorption of lidocaine following a diagnostic sympathetic block in patients with SIP. In this study, we measured the plasma lidocaine concentrations after a stellate ganglion block (SGB) using three volumes of 1 % lidocaine. Methods: This prospective, crossover study was performed in 3 patients who experience sudden hearing loss and in 4 volunteers. Each person received SGB three times using three different volumes (6 mI, 12 mI and 16 mI) of 1 % lidocaine at one week intervals. SGB was performed using a 23 G butterfly needle via a paratracheal approach by two persons. Two ml of venous blood was obtained from a prepared contra-lateral sided venous route at 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 20 and 60 min after SGB. Plasma lidocaine level was analyzed by immunoassay. Results: Mean plasma lidocaine concentrations correlated well with the volumes of 1 % lidocaine used in SGB; larger volumes showed higher concentrations (P < 0.01). Mean peak plasma concen-trations were 1.08 ± 0.18 in 6 ml, 1.90 ± 0.47 in the 12 ml and 2.74 ± 0.67 pg/ml in the 16 ml groups (P < 0.01). The mean time to reach peak plasma concentration was not significantly different between the three groups. Conclusions: The peak plasma lidocaine concentrations in SGB using large volume were found to be similar to that of IV lidocaine infusion in the management of neuropathic pain. These data suggest that diagnostic sympathetic block may result in many false positive responses for SMP. Part of its effect may be related to systemic local anesthetic absorption and not to a sympathetic block. Therefore, physicians may be required to use optimal volumes and minimal concentration of local anesthetic in diagnostic sympathetic block procedures and also make a careful assessment of the performance of a permanent sympathetic block.
Structure-Properties Relationship in the Evaluation of Alginic Acid Functionality for Tableting

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between the structural, molecular, and particulate properties of alginic acid and its functional characteristics in direct compression (tabletability, compressibility, elasticity, deformation mechanism, and disintegration ability). Therefore, accurate characterization of two different batches of alginic acid was executed (X-ray powder diffraction, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, scanning electronic microscopy, 1H nuclear magnetic resonance, size exclusion chromatography – multi angle light scattering, viscosimetry, carboxylic acid titration, powder flowability, true density, laser granulometry). Results showed that molecular weight seems to affect tablet properties and that the alginic acid with the lowest molecular weight provides the hardest tablets with the lowest elastic recovery. Furthermore, these results show the potential interest of exploiting alginic acid as filler excipient in tablet formulation. Finally, disintegration properties of tested materials were found to be close to that of commercial superdisintegrants (Glycolys® and Kollidon Cl®) but not correlated to their swelling force. It can be concluded, for the first time, that the determination of alginic acid molecular weight seems key for applications in direct compression and in particular for obtaining tablets with reproducible strength.
Prevalence and Risk Factors of Food Allergy in Preschool Children in Seoul

1 Department of Pediatrics, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Childhood Asthma Atopy Center, 2 Research Center for Standardization of Allergic Diseases, Seoul, 3 Department of Pediatrics, Bundang Hospital, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seongnam, Department of Pediatrics, Haeundae Paik Hospital, Busan, Inje University Sanggye Paik Hospital, Seoul, Inje University College of Medicine, 6 Department of Pediatrics, Hallym Sacred Heart Hospital, Hallym University College of Medicine, Anyang, 7 Department of Pediatrics, National Health Insurance Corporation Ilsan Hospital, Ilsan, 8 Department of Pediatrics, Guro Hospital, Korea University College of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Inje University Seoul Paik Hospital, Inje University College of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Kangbuk Samsung Hospital, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
A Model of Expenditure Shocks

We document four features of consumption and income microdata: (1) household-level consumption is as volatile as household income on average, (2) household-level consumption has a positive but small correlation with income, (3) many low-wealth households have marginal propensities to consume near zero, and (4) lagged high expenditure is associated with low contemporaneous spending propensities. Our interpretation is that household expenditure depends on time-varying consumption thresholds where marginal utility discontinuously increases. Our model with consumption thresholds matches the four facts better than does a standard model. Poor households in our model also exhibit “excess sensitivity” to anticipated income declines.
RELACIÓN DEL COLOR DEL PELAJE Y FACTORES AMBIENTALES CON CARACTERÍSTICAS REPRODUCTIVAS EN OVEJAS TROPICALES RELATIONSHIP OF HAIR COLOR AND ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS WITH REPRODUCTIVE TRAITS IN TROPICAL EWES

In addition to environmental factors related to year of lambing, season of lambing and lambing number, hair color can influence the degree of adaptability of tropical sheep. However, its relationship with productive and reproductive traits must be determined. The objectives of this study were to quantify the magnitude of the association between hair color in tropical ewes (white, light brown, spotted, blackbelly) and the year of lambing nested within type of mating (continuous: 1990 to 1993, seasonal: 1994 to 1997), season of lambing (January to April, May to August, and September to December), type of mating (continuous, seasonal) and lambing number (1 to 5) with age of first lambing (AFL), litter size (LS), and lambing interval (LI) of the ewes, as well as to estimate repeatability of litter size and lambing interval. Data were gathered at a farm located near Tierra Blanca, Veracruz, at 96 o 21’ W and 18” 27’ N, with an altitude of 60 m. The sheep grazed in rotation on a plantation of Manila mango (Mangifera indica) in which Pangola (Digitaria decumbens ) Insurgente (Brachiaria brisanta), Señal (Brachiaria decumbens ), Privilegio (Panicum maximum) and African Star (Cynodon plectostachyus ) had been sown. The data were analyzed with the GLM procedure of the SAS statistical package; for analysis of LS and LI, the random effect of ewe nested within color was included in order to estimate repeatability by the intraclass correlation method. Overall means for AFL, LS and LI were 557±96d, 1.2±0.4 lambs and 274±88 d. Hair color had an influence (p<0.01) only on AFL; the blackbelly ewes had their first lambing at an earlier age (503 d) than the spotted (557 d), light brown (561 d) and white (584 d) ewes. The year of lambing, mating type, lambing season and lambing number affected (p<0.01) all of the variables analyzed. Repeatability estimates for LS and LI were 0.12±0.03, and 0.21±0.03, respectively. It was concluded that the hair color of tropical ewes affected only AFL, that these reproductive traits are affected by environmental factors, and that litter size and lambing interval of tropical ewes are not repeated to
Packet-Level Signatures for Smart Home Devices

—Smart home devices are vulnerable to passive inference attacks based on network trafﬁc, even in the presence of encryption. In this paper, we present P ING P ONG , a tool that can automatically extract packet-level signatures for device events ( e.g., light bulb turning ON/OFF) from network trafﬁc. We evaluated P ING P ONG on popular smart home devices ranging from smart plugs and thermostats to cameras, voice-activated devices, and smart TVs. We were able to: (1) automatically extract previously unknown signatures that consist of simple sequences of packet lengths and directions; (2) use those signatures to detect the devices or speciﬁc events with an average recall of more than 97%; (3) show that the signatures are unique among hundreds of millions of packets of real world network trafﬁc; (4) show that our methodology is also applicable to publicly available datasets; and (5) demonstrate its robustness in different settings: events triggered by local and remote smartphones, as well as by home-automation systems.
Harmonic Recurrent Process for Time Series Forecasting

In this paper, we propose the Harmonic Recurrent Process (HRP) for forecasting non-stationary time series with period-varying patterns. HRP works by selectively ensembling recurrent period-varying patterns in harmonic analysis. In contrast to classical forecasting approaches that rely on stationary priors and recurrent neural network approaches that are mostly black boxes, our model is able to deal with irregular nonstationary signals, and its working mechanism is reasonably lucid. We also prove that the stochastic process led by HRP under weak dependence condition is predictive PAC learnable. Comprehensive experiments on simulated and practical tasks validate the effectiveness of HRP.
Parkinson's Disease: A Comprehensive Analysis of Fungi and Bacteria in Brain Tissue

Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by motor disorders and the destruction of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta. In addition to motor disability, many patients with PD present a spectrum of clinical symptoms, including cognitive decline, psychiatric alterations, loss of smell and bladder dysfunction, among others. Neuroinflammation is one of the most salient features of PD, but the nature of the trigger remains unknown. A plausible mechanism to explain inflammation and the range of clinical symptoms in these patients is the presence of systemic microbial infection. Accordingly, the present study provides extensive evidence for the existence of mixed microbial infections in the central nervous system (CNS) of patients with PD. Assessment of CNS sections by immunohistochemistry using specific antibodies revealed the presence of both fungi and bacteria. Moreover, different regions of the CNS were positive for a variety of microbial morphologies, suggesting infection by a number of microorganisms. Identification of specific fungal and bacterial species in different CNS regions from six PD patients was accomplished using nested PCR analysis and next-generation sequencing, providing compelling evidence of polymicrobial infections in the CNS of PD. Most of the fungal species identified belong to the genera Botrytis, Candida, Fusarium and Malassezia. Some relevant bacterial genera were Streptococcus and Pseudomonas, with most bacterial species belonging to the phyla Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria. Interestingly, we noted similarities and differences between the microbiota present in the CNS of patients with PD and that in other neurodegenerative diseases. Overall, our observations lend strong support to the concept that mixed microbial infections contribute to or are a risk factor for the neuropathology of PD. Importantly, these results provide the basis for effective treatments of this disease using already approved and safe antimicrobial therapeutics.
Asymptotics for the conditional number of blocks in the Ewens-Pitman sampling model

The study of random partitions has been an active research area in probability over the last twenty years. A quantity that has attracted a lot of attention is the number of blocks in the random partition. Depending on the area of applications this quantity could represent the number of species in a sample from a population of individuals or the number of cycles in a random permutation, etc. In the context of Bayesian nonparametric inference such a quantity is associated with the exchangeable random partition induced by sampling from certain prior models, for instance the Dirichlet process and the two parameter Poisson-Dirichlet process. In this paper we generalize some existing asymptotic results from this prior setting to the so-called posterior, or conditional, setting. Specifically, given an initial sample from a two parameter Poisson-Dirichlet process, we establish conditional fluctuation limits and conditional large deviation principles for the number of blocks generated by a large additional sample.
To play or not to play: on the motivational effects of games in engineering education

ABSTRACT The popularity of games as educational tools has steadily increased and is mainly explained by the motivational power that is ascribed to games in general. The research investigates the role of different motivational forms in educational gaming and the influence of game and teaching context on the students’ motivation to involve in game play. Based on self-determination theory and a mixed-method case study approach, seven educational games played in a postgraduate level engineering course in two consecutive years were studied. Our research reveals that different motivational forms can co-exist when students play games and that the interplay of game attractiveness, game learning and game operativeness can explain the emergence of these motivational forms.
A Survey of Personalization for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems

The field of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) has matured towards more and more complex assistance functions, applied with wider scope and a strongly increasing user base due to wider market penetration. To deal with such a large variety of usage conditions and patterns, personalization methods have been developed to ensure optimal user experience. In this article we review current approaches in the literature that demonstrate an adaptation to the drivers’ preferences, driving styles, skills and driving patterns. We discuss the general assumptions on which personalization in the automotive context is based, the general design of personalized ADAS, the current approaches with their practical realization and point out open issues in the design and implementation of a personalized driving experience. Based on this analysis we propose a general conceptual framework to personalization in ADAS. It suggests a modular decomposition for the next generation of personalized ADAS and HMI which can be expected to continuously adapt in interaction with the driver.
Communication and Commitment with Constraints: An Application to Alliances∗

An informed and an uninformed agent both contribute to a joint coordination game such that their actions are substitutable and constrained. When agents are allowed to share information prior to the coordination stage, in the absence of commitment, there is full information revelation as long as constraints are not binding. The presence of binding constraints results in only partial revelation of information in equilibrium. The most informative equilibrium is strictly pareto dominant. Allowing for limited commitment strictly increases (ex ante) welfare of both agents. I completely characterize the optimal commitment mechanism for the uninformed agent. Finally, I apply the theoretical results to the problem of information sharing and binding agreements in international alliances. JEL codes: C72, D74, D82, F53
Board Diversity and Director Dissent in Corporate Boards

While several studies examine how differences in director characteristics impact firm-level performance outcomes, there is limited evidence that heterogeneous boards affect firm value by offering diverse opinions. This is partly due to data availability on the process and outcome of board decisions. We utilize Korean data on individual director voting at board meetings to directly measure director dissent as evidence of diversity of opinion. We find that directors in heterogeneous boards are more likely to vote against management proposals and reject them. Firms that experience proposal rejection exhibit lower return volatility, consistent with independent directors restricting CEO influence. Firm value implications of director dissent and proposal rejection varies depending on firm complexity and industry dynamism. Our results suggest that board diversity, by increasing dissenting opinions and proposal rejections, affects firm performance. ________________________ We thank Amy Dittmar, E. Han Kim, and seminar participants at Baruch College, Korea University, Peking University (HSBC), and Tsinghua University for helpful comments.