Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Behavioral Factors Influencing Investment Decision of Individual Investor at Nepalese Stock Market

The investment decision of individual investor is influenced by macro/micro economic and behavioral factors. Interest rate, economic growth, inflation, government policy, technological developments, etc., are the macro-economic factors, and firm size, book-to-market equity, cash flow yield, earnings yield, and dividend yield, etc. are the micro-economic factors whereas accounting information, advocate suggestion, personal financial needs, social relevance, self-image/firm-image coincidence, etc. are the behavioral factor. This paper has analyzed the perception of investor on the selected behavioral factors that makes influence on individual investor's investment decisions at Nepalese stock market. Using the structured survey questionnaire, this study concludes that behavioral factors have significant influence on investment decision of individual investor. This study revealed that to get rich quickly, reputation of the firm, feelings for a firm’s products and services, and firm status in industry are the major influencing Self–image/Firm-image factor. On the other hand, friend or coworker's recommendations, family member opinion, and broker recommendation are the most significant influencing Advocate Recommendation factors. Similarly, return maximizing, stock marketability, ease of obtaining borrowed funds, and expected dividends are the major Personal Financial Needs factors, and past trends of stock, information of dividend, price level of other stock, and information of the stock market are the major Market Information factors for influencing investment decision of individual investor at Nepalese stock market.
Central China Orogen along the Silk Road (Part 2): Mineral deposits, hydrocarbons, geohazards, and environments

This special issue (Volume 2) belongs to the special issues on Central China Orogen along the Silk Road. We selected 35 papers to focus on the mineral deposits, hydrocarbons, geohazards, and environments along the Central China Orogen of the Silk Road. We hope that these papers will highlight more research along the Silk Road to promote the construction and development of the Road and Belt.
Path-oriented random testing

Test campaigns usually require only a restricted subset of paths in a program to be thoroughly tested. As random testing (RT) offers interesting fault-detection capacities at low cost, we face the problem of building a sequence of random test data that execute only a subset of paths in a program. We address this problem with an original technique based on backward symbolic execution and constraint propagation to generate random test data based on an uniform distribution. Our approach derives path conditions and computes an over-approximation of their associated subdomain to find such a uniform sequence. The challenging problem consists in building efficiently a path-oriented random test data generator by minimizing the number of rejects within the generated random sequence. Our first experimental results, conducted over a few academic examples, clearly show a dramatic improvement of our approach over classical random testing.
La región auditiva en los osos del pleistoceno europeo

This paper deals with the description and comparison of the morphological characteristics of the auditive region of the big bears of the European Pleistocene: Ursus prearctos Boule, Ursus deningeri von Reichenau Ursus spelaeus Rosenmüller-Heinroth and Ursus arctos Linneo. Apart of sorne minor morphological differences of uncertain origin and importance, the most important characteristics are: in U. arctos and U. prearctos the bulla tympanica shows a flattened ventral side with an undivided septum, without septae. On the other hand, the speloid species, U. deningeri and mainly U. spelaeus, show an irregulary shaped ventral side of the bulla and the septum is divided by a marked septa. These morphologies are probably linked to a higher resonance capacity of the bulla. The petrosa! bone is relativety larger in U. arctos and U. prearctos than in U. deningeri and. U. spelaeus. Este trabajo
Survival Analysis to Estimate Association between Short-Term Mortality and Air Pollution

Background Ecologic studies are commonly used to report associations between short-term air pollution and mortality. In such studies, the unit of observation is the day rather than the individual. Moreover, individual data on the subjects are rarely available, which limits the assessment of individual risk factors. These associations can also be investigated using case–crossover studies. However, by definition, individual risk factors are not studied, and such studies analyze only dead subjects, which limits the statistical power. Objective We suggest that the survival analysis is more suitable when cohorts are examined with a time-dependent ecologic exposure. To our knowledge, to date this type of analysis has never been proposed. Design, participants, measurements In the present study we used a Cox proportional hazards model to investigate the distribution over time of the short-term effect of black smoke and sulfur dioxide in 439 nonaccidental and 158 cardiorespiratory deaths among the 1,469 subjects of the Personnes Agées QUID (PAQUID) cohort in Bordeaux, France. The model has a delayed entry and a polynomial distributed lag from 0 to 5 days. Results are adjusted for individual risk factors, temperature, relative humidity, weekday, season, influenza epidemics, and a time function to control temporal trends. Results We identified a positive and significant association between cardiorespiratory mortality and black smoke, with a 24% increase in deaths 3 days after a 10-μg/m3 increase in black smoke (95% confidence interval, 4–47%). Conclusions We conclude that the Cox proportional hazards model with time-dependent covariates is very suitable to investigate simultaneously the short-term effect of air pollution on health and the effect of individual risk factors on a cohort study.
Exploration on Effectiveness and Efficiency of Similar Sentence Matching

Similar sentence matching is an essential issue for many applications, such as text summarization, image extraction, social media retrieval, question-answer model, and so on. A number of studies have investigated this issue in recent years. Most of such techniques focus on effectiveness issues but only a few focus on efficiency issues. In this paper, we address both effectiveness and efficiency in the sentence similarity matching. For a given sentence collection, we determine how to effectively and efficiently identify the top-k semantically similar sentences to a query. To achieve this goal, we first study several representative sentence similarity measurement strategies, based on which we deliberately choose the optimal ones through cross-validation and dynamically weight tuning. The experimental evaluation demonstrates the effectiveness of our strategy. Moreover, from the efficiency aspect, we introduce several optimization techniques to improve the performance of the similarity computation. The trade-off between the effectiveness and efficiency is further explored by conducting extensive experiments.
Atrial Fibrillation, Stroke, and Acute Antithrombotic Therapy: Analysis of Randomized Clinical Trials

Background— Strokes in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) are typically larger, are associated with higher early mortality, and occur in older patients versus strokes in patients with sinus rhythm. Until recently, the value of antithrombotic therapies for acute stroke management has been based on empiric evidence. Summary of Review— We present a critical review of 3 randomized clinical trials testing aspirin, heparin/heparinoid, or both involving 5029 patients with AF and acute stroke. Early recurrent ischemic stroke occurred in about 5% of patients during the 2 to 4 weeks after initial stroke. Data conflict about whether early use of heparin/heparinoid reduced early recurrent ischemic stroke but are consistent regarding its lack of overall benefit on long-term functional outcome. Modest benefits for reduction of early recurrent stroke and functional outcome were associated with aspirin use, based largely on subgroup analysis from a single, large, unblinded trial. Conclusions— No benefit of heparin has been demonstrated for acute stroke patients with AF; whether selected subgroups would respond differently remains to be proven. Aspirin followed by early initiation of warfarin for long-term secondary prevention is reasonable antithrombotic management.
A Complexity-of-Strategic-Behavior Comparison between Schulze's Rule and Ranked Pairs

Schulze's rule and ranked pairs are two Condorcet methods that both satisfy many natural axiomatic properties. Schulze's rule is used in the elections of many organizations, including the Wikimedia Foundation, the Pirate Party of Sweden and Germany, the Debian project, and the Gento Project. Both rules are immune to control by cloning alternatives, but little is otherwise known about their strategic robustness, including resistance to manipulation by one or more voters, control by adding or deleting alternatives, adding or deleting votes, and bribery. Considering computational barriers, we show that these types of strategic behavior are NP-hard for ranked pairs (both constructive, in making an alternative a winner, and destructive, in precluding an alternative from being a winner). Schulze's rule, in comparison, remains vulnerable at least to constructive manipulation by a single voter and destructive manipulation by a coalition. As the first such polynomial-time rule known to resist all such manipulations, and considering also the broad axiomatic support, ranked pairs seems worthwhile to consider for practical applications.
A Monte-Carlo AIXI Approximation

This paper introduces a principled approach for the design of a scalable general reinforcement learning agent. Our approach is based on a direct approximation of AIXI, a Bayesian optimality notion for general reinforcement learning agents. Previously, it has been unclear whether the theory of AIXI could motivate the design of practical algorithms. We answer this hitherto open question in the affirmative, by providing the first computationally feasible approximation to the AIXI agent. To develop our approximation, we introduce a new Monte-Carlo Tree Search algorithm along with an agent-specific extension to the Context Tree Weighting algorithm. Empirically, we present a set of encouraging results on a variety of stochastic and partially observable domains. We conclude by proposing a number of directions for future research.
SERIE RESEARCH MEMORANDA Beyond the Espoused Goals of IS/IT Strategy Planning

The paper uses a sociological concept to study the uses of strategic information systems/information technology planning (SISP) beyond its espoused goals. The concept is termed unanticipated or unintended consequences of social action (Merton 1963; Giddens 1984), and it has a long intellectual history, going back to at least the writings of Adam Smith. The main goals of SISP are to align investment in IT with business goals, to exploit IT for competitive advantage, to deliver efficient and effective management of IT resources, and to develop technology policies and architectures. The research findings of the uses of SISP are focused on these goals and produce a rather mixed picture (Runge and Earl 1988; Segar and Grover 1998). However, another way is to look at the uses of SISP beyond its proclaimed goals. Based on such approach, a study of IS and organization literature suggests that SISP can be employed in ways which may seem alien to the original designers of these methods, but which make sense from the perspective of interpretative organizational studies and sociology. Our study suggests that SISP is used in the following ways: (1) to organize thoughts and articulate ideas about information planning activities, (2) to present and interpret past activities, (3) to provide a
UDB: Using Directional Beacons for Localization in Underwater Sensor Networks

Underwater sensor networks (UWSN) are widely used in many applications, such as oceanic resource exploration, pollution monitoring, tsunami warnings and mine reconnaissance. In UWSNs, determining the location information of each sensor node is a critical issue, because many services are based on the localization results. In this paper, we introduce a novel underwater localization approach based on directional signals, which are transmitted by an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). Our method utilizes directional beacons (UDB) to replace traditional omni-directional localization which provides more accurate and efficient ways to locate the sensors themselves by simple calculations. The advantage of this novel scheme is that the communications between AUV and sensors are not necessary because the AUV broadcasts signals and sensors only need to passively listen to the signals. Since the energy consumption for transmissions in underwater environments is a nontrivial factor, our localization scheme not only supports accurate positioning, but also reduces energy consumption of sensors. We evaluate our scheme by simulations. The results show that our new approach is very precise in a strap area. At the same time, we minimize the number of beacons issued from the AUV.
PupilMouse supported by head pose detection

We have already proposed dasiaPupilMousepsila, which would be very useful for the severely handicapped people, who can move their heads, to operate a PC and so on. In PupilMouse, pupil motion between frames detected by a video camera is reflected in cursor motion on a PC screen and whether each of the right and left pupils are detected or not is reflected in the push states of the corresponding buttons of a two button mouse. Accordingly, users can move the cursor on the PC screen by head rotation, and can click by closing their single eye. If they rotate their head while closing one eye, they can drag.
Evaluation of Forecasted Southeast Pacific Stratocumulus in the NCAR, GFDL, and ECMWF Models

Abstract Forecasts of southeast Pacific stratocumulus at 20°S and 85°W during the East Pacific Investigation of Climate (EPIC) cruise of October 2001 are examined with the ECMWF model, the Atmospheric Model (AM) from GFDL, the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM) from NCAR, and the CAM with a revised atmospheric boundary layer formulation from the University of Washington (CAM-UW). The forecasts are initialized from ECMWF analyses and each model is run for 3–5 days to determine the differences with the EPIC field observations. Observations during the EPIC cruise show a well-mixed boundary layer under a sharp inversion. The inversion height and the cloud layer have a strong and regular diurnal cycle. A key problem common to the models is that the planetary boundary layer (PBL) depth is too shallow when compared to EPIC observations. However, it is suggested that improved PBL depths are achieved with more physically realistic PBL schemes: at one end, CAM uses a dry and surface-driven PBL scheme and produces a v.
Facticity as the amount of self-descriptive information in a data set

Using the theory of Kolmogorov complexity the notion of facticity {\phi}(x) of a string is defined as the amount of self-descriptive information it contains. It is proved that (under reasonable assumptions: the existence of an empty machine and the availability of a faithful index) facticity is definite, i.e. random strings have facticity 0 and for compressible strings 0 < {\phi}(x) < 1/2 |x| + O(1). Consequently facticity measures the tension in a data set between structural and ad-hoc information objectively. For binary strings there is a so-called facticity threshold that is dependent on their entropy. Strings with facticty above this threshold have no optimal stochastic model and are essentially computational. The shape of the facticty versus entropy plot coincides with the well-known sawtooth curves observed in complex systems. The notion of factic processes is discussed. This approach overcomes problems with earlier proposals to use two-part code to define the meaningfulness or usefulness of a data set.
A complete wirelessHART network

WirelessHART is the first open wireless standard for the process control industry. Previously we demonstrated a three-node prototype network based on an early release of the protocol stack. In this demonstration we build a fully operational WirelessHART sensor network of multiple nodes. We show the creation of the network and the execution of process monitoring applications on the network. This new demonstration network serves as a proof of concept for the revised WirelessHART standard and as a platform for our future research and experiments.
Acid Hydrolysis of Octahedral Mg2+ Sites in 2:1 Layered Silicates: An Assessment of Edge Attack and Gallery Access Mechanisms

The acid hydrolysis products of trioctahedral fiuorohectorite and phlogopite have been investigated by XRD, MAS NMR spectroscopy and nitrogen BET surface area analysis in an effort to assess the relative importance of edge attack and gallery access mechanisms. A dramatic loss of X-ray crystallinity and the formation of Q3 and Q4 SiO4 sites accompanied the depletion of Mg2+ from the octahedral sheet of both 2:1 layered structures. Depending on the extent of hydrolysis, the products derived from fiuorohectorite exhibited surface areas up to 208 m2/g, whereas phlogopite hydrolysis products gave values <20 m2/g. The dramatic differences in surface areas were not related to differences in hydrolysis mechanisms. 19F MAS NMR studies indicated that the hydrolysis of fiuorohectorite occurred primarily by an edge attack mechanism equivalent to the hydrolysis pathway for phlogopite. A gallery access mechanism contributed to the hydrolysis of fiuorohectorite only at the later stages of octahedral Mg2+ depletion. Solvation effects appeared to be important in determining the surface areas of the reaction products derived from the swelling (fiuorohectorite) and non-swelling (phlogopite) precursors.
Adaptive Group Testing Strategies for Target Detection and Localization in Noisy Environments

This paper studies the problem of recovering a signal with a sparse representation in a given orthonormal basis using as few noisy observations as possible. As opposed to previous studies, this paper models observations which are subject to the type of ‘clutter noise’ encountered in radar applications (i.e., the measurements used influence the observed noise). Given this model, the paper develops bounds on the number of measurements required to reconstruct the support of the signal and the signal itself up to any given accuracy level when the measurement noise is Gaussian using non-adaptive and adaptive measurement strategies. Further, the paper demonstrates that group testing measurement constructions may be combined with statistical binary detection and estimation methods to produce practical and computationally efficient adaptive algorithms for sparse signal approximation and support recovery. In particular, the paper proves that a wide class of sparse signals can be recovered by adaptive methods using fewer noisy linear measurements than required by any recovery method based on non-adaptive Gaussian measurement ensembles. This result demonstrates an improvement over previous non-adaptive methods in the compressed sensing literature for sparse support pattern recovery in the sublinear-sparse support regime under the measurement model considered herein.
An improved Gaussian mixture model algorithm for background subtraction

Background subtraction algorithms are the standard method for detecting moving objects from video scenes; they work by subtracting a model of the background image from the video frames. Previous methods developed by Stauffer and Grimson[12] used adaptive Gaussian mixture models to represent the background model. This thesis presents improvements to this approach. Specifically, it examines the use of the HSV color space to detect and avoid shadows, which is a significant problem in the original algorithm. It also describes adaptive algorithms for per-pixel learning constants and background thresholds. Performance results for the modified tracker, as well as those for the original algorithm, are presented and discussed. Thesis Supervisor: W. Eric L. Grimson Title: Bernard Gordon Professor Of Medical Engineering
Discriminative Reordering Models for Statistical Machine Translation

In large size high resolution plasma panels, a smaller discharge gap between the electrodes reduces the operating margin of the panel, i.e., the difference between the maximum and minimum sustain voltage (Vsmax and Vsmin). Rather than preset these values which vary with each panel at the time of fabrication, the invention provides a control system for determining the Vsmax and Vsmin and the optimum operating point between these values for each panel. An associated microprocessor determines the Vsmin for each panel through a testing algorithm, and the Vsmax is provided by either adding a predetermined increment to the Vsmin or by a testing sequence. The operating point is designated as a predetermined increment below Vsmax. The invention operates each time the panel is turned on, thereby compensating for voltage drift or other panel parameter variations. By using a high speed microprocessor, the entire sequence is accomplished in a short time, while exercising the cells through the test sequence eliminates some of the "start-up" problems sometimes associated with such displays.