Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Investigating the relationships between the yield curve, output, and inflation using an intertemporally-consistent and arbitrage-free version of the Nelson and Siegel class of yield curve models

This article provides a theoretical economic foundation for an intertemporally-consistent and arbitrage-free version of the popular Nelson and Siegel (1987) class of yield curve models. This foundation offers a new and straightforward framework for investigating and interpreting the relationships between the yield curve, output, and inflation that have already been well-established empirically in the literature. Specifically, the level of the yield curve as measured by the VAO model is predicted to have a cointegrating relationship with inflation, and the shape of the yield curve as measured by the VAO model is predicted to correspond to the profile (i.e timing and magnitude) of future changes in the output gap. These relationships are confirmed in the empirical analysis on 50 years of United States data. JEL: E43, E31, E32
Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Medicine 1473 Steering health and social care through quasi-markets

Isaksson, D. 2018. Steering health and social care through quasi-markets. Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Medicine 1473. 52 pp. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. ISBN 978-91-513-0368-0. Municipalities and county councils try a multitude of different strategies when they design and steer health and social care markets to ensure that goals such as quality and equity are met. Depending on the strategies used, different problems arise. The aim of this thesis is to examine how local authorities can design quasi-markets in a way that achieves public goals such as equity and high quality. To answer the aim, four empirical studies were carried out. The studies show that when designing a market by contracting-out through public procurement, the issues lay primarily at specifying and defining what is meant by quality before a service is privatized. This is especially difficult to do concerning soft areas such as elderand healthcare. If this is not done properly, it can lead to crucial issues for monitoring quality since the contracting authority cannot hold the provider responsible for delivering an aspect of a service if that aspect is not specified in the contract. When a market is designed as in the patient choice systems in primary care, it creates a whole other set of difficulties for the local governments. Here, it is not as important to specify quality beforehand in the contracts since quality monitoring is done retrospectively by both the counties themselves as well as the patients who with their choices can monitor quality by punishing providers with poor quality by registering with another provider. Instead, the crucial problem is how to design reimbursement system that will lead to an equal access to health care. In this respect, the county councils utilize different methods. However, despite these measures, the primary care choice reform have led to inequity, both geographical inequity in regards to where new private primary health care centres are located but also, to a larger degree, socioeconomic inequity relating to what kind of socio-economic groups of individuals are registered with private PHCCs. In other words, county councils do not manage to fully counteract risk selection behaviour by the design of their reimbursement system which could imply issues with unequal access to health care.
Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Medicine 950 Application of Mitochondrial DNA Analysis in Contemporary and Historical Samples

Lembring, M. 2013. Application of Mitochondrial DNA Analysis in Contemporary and Historical Samples. Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Medicine 950. 62 pp. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. ISBN 978-91-554-8799-7. The mitochondrion is a tiny organelle that is the power supplier of the cell and vital to the functioning of the body organs. Additionally it contains a small circular genome of about 16 kb, present in many copies which makes the mitochondrial DNA more viable than nuclear DNA. Mitochondrial DNA is also maternally inherited and thus provides a direct link to maternal relatives. These two properties are of particular use for forensic samples, which only contain limited or degraded amounts of DNA, and for historical samples (ancient DNA). This thesis presents work on the mitochondrial DNA in the hypervariable regions (HV) I and II, in both contemporary and historical samples. Forensic genetics makes use of mitochondrial DNA analysis in court as circumstantial evidence, and population databases are used for the calculation of evidence value. Population samples (299) across Sweden have been analysed in order to enrich the EDNAP mtDNA database (EMPOP) (paper I). The application of mitochondrial DNA analysis allowed for analysis of historical skeletal remains: Copernicus, 1473-1543 (paper II), Karin Göring, 1888-1931 (paper III) and Medieval bones, 880-1000 AD, from a mass grave found in Sigtuna, Sweden (paper IV). The thesis also includes analyses of bones and teeth from the shipwrecked crew of the Vasa warship, 1628, samples from the Vasa museum, Stockholm, Sweden (paper V). Overall, the varying age of the samples and the different conservation environments (soil and water) accounted for variations in quality, but still allowed for successful DNA analysis.
BUSTER: a "BUSiness Transaction Entity Recognition" dataset

Albeit Natural Language Processing has seen major breakthroughs in the last few years, transferring such advances into real-world business cases can be challenging. One of the reasons resides in the displacement between popular benchmarks and actual data. Lack of supervision, unbalanced classes, noisy data and long documents often affect real problems in vertical domains such as finance, law and health. To support industry-oriented research, we present BUSTER, a BUSiness Transaction Entity Recognition dataset. The dataset consists of 3779 manually annotated documents on financial transactions. We establish several baselines exploiting both general-purpose and domain-specific language models. The best performing model is also used to automatically annotate 6196 documents, which we release as an additional silver corpus to BUSTER.
Relationships between Felt Intensity and Instrumental Ground Motion in the Central United States and California

In this study, we develop empirical relationships between instrumental ground-motion parameters and observed Modified Mercalli Intensity (mmi) by using data from felt moderate earthquakes in the central United States (cus) that were also recorded on broadband seismographic networks and strong-motion recorders in the cus region. The data are calibrated and supplemented at higher intensities based on observations in California. mmi for ShakeMap applications in the cus region, and in California, can be predicted from recorded peak ground velocity (pgv), in cm/sec, with a standard deviation of 0.8 mmi units, using the following equation: MMI = 4.37 + 1.32(log PGV) log PGV ≤ 0.48 MMI = 3.54 + 3.03(log PGV) log PGV ≥ 0.48 There are weak-magnitude and distance-dependent trends in the residuals for this relationship. These trends, if not removed, may lead to apparent regional dependencies in mmi versus ground-motion amplitude relationships. Refined relationships that include magnitude and distance as predictive variables that are applicable throughout North America are defined.
Origin of a boreal birch bog woodland and landscape development on a warm low mountain summit at the Carpathian–Pannonian interface

Hilly regions along the Western Carpathian–Pannonian border are phytogeographically important, but their vegetation history remains largely unknown. We analysed two peat cores of Late Glacial origin from a bog woodland in the Malé Karpaty Mts (SW Slovakia) using plant macrofossil, pollen, peat chemistry and charcoal analyses to trace local successional patterns, regional vegetation development and occurrence of rare species. The small distance between the two profiles situated within homogeneous vegetation enabled us to explore small-scale differences in local vegetation history. The sediment started to accumulate at the end of the Allerød (ca. 12950 cal. yr BP), when a shallow oligotrophic/mesotrophic lake with macrophytes developed. Open pine-birch forests dominated in the landscape. During the early Holocene, the lake was infilled, mire vegetation appeared and broad-leaved forests spread in the surroundings. Two fire events indicated by increases in number of macroscopic charcoal particles were recorded. The first one, which occurred at the end of the Late Glacial, was found only in one of the profiles, while the second one affected entire mire and probably caused a hiatus spanning the middle and late Holocene. Fagus started to spread no later than 5800 cal. yr BP. Open mire vegetation reappeared after the fire (ca. 400 cal. yr BP). During the 19th century, the mire was overgrown by a birch bog woodland. The two profiles showed basically the same successional patterns, but some local events and occurrences of rare species (Potamogeton alpinus, Potamogeton praelongus, Scorpidium scorpioides and Pleurospermum austriacum) were traced only in one of them.
Adaptation Strategies to Climate Extremes among Smallholder Farmers: a Case of Cropping Practices in the Volta Region of Ghana

Climate extremes threaten livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa hence the need for adaptations strategies. The objective of the study was to analyze adaptation strategies used by smallholder farmers by examining their knowledge of climate extremes and the perceived effects of climate extremes on agriculture activities. The study was conducted using data generated from 70 randomly selected farm families from 4 villages in Hohoe district, the Volta Region in Ghana, in July 2009. Information sought included household socio-economic characteristics, cropping systems, experience with climate variability and adaptation strategies to weather extremes and climate risk. Descriptive statistics were run on household characteristics, chi-square tests and analysis of variance were used to separate means (P<0.01 and 0.05) using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Results showed that farmers experienced either drought or flood once in every two seasons over the past 3 years. Among the adaptation strategies currently used to reduce the impact of climate extremes were early planting, use of hybrid Research Article British Journal of Applied Science & Technology, 4(1): 198-213, 2014 199 seed and soil moisture conservation techniques such as within-field ridge construction. Awareness of the climate change phenomena was high among farmers (94%), and the main sources of climate change-related information were radio, television, agricultural extension agents and local experts. Farmers perceived deforestation and forest fires as major factors contributing to climate extremes. Limited use of fertilizer, hybrid seed and lack of planned crop sequences reduced the benefits from the mixed cropping system. Low resource endowment limited effective use of improved and modern crop production technologies. Current adaptation strategies to climate extremes especially drought are not enough to reduce risk and loss in agricultural production. However, improved drainage infrastructure and mulching were reported to increase crop production; important innovations against droughts and floods. We conclude that inputs and modern crop management techniques are key to minimizing the effects of climate extremes on crops. Delivery of high quality weather forecasting information could better prepare farmers and improve planning of seasonal calendars. The study showed close relationships between adaptation capacity and resource endowment and rural infrastructural development. The results are important in planning intervention on climate extremes and rural agricultural development.
Tracking and sense of futility: the impact of between school tracking versus within school tracking in secondary education in Flanders (Belgium)

It has been established since the 1960s that tracking yields negative consequences for students in lower tracks. As this research has been carried out mainly in the US and UK, the effects of tracking have been demonstrated in systems of within-school tracking mostly. However, in many European countries—such as Belgium (Flanders) and the Netherlands—tracking is commonly organized between schools. The question then arises whether the specific system of tracking, within-school versus between-school tracking, might affect the impact of tracking on students. In Flanders between-school tracking is the norm, but there are also a number of schools offering a combination of academic tracks with technical and/or vocational tracks, allowing for a comparison of both systems. Present study aims at investigating whether the association between feelings of futility and the specific track a student is enrolled in depends upon whether these tracks are organized between- or within schools. Sense of futility reflects the students’ feelings about the possibility of functioning adequately in the school system. High futility means that students experience strong feelings that the school system is working against them and that they have to be lucky to succeed. Three-level multilevel analyses (HLM6) of students clustered in tracks, clustered in schools, are carried out based on the Flemish Educational Assessment (FlEA), data gathered in 2004–2005 from 11,872 3rd- and 5th-grade students clustered in 146 tracks in a representative sample of 85 secondary schools in Flanders. Within-school tracking appears to have a greater impact on lower track students’ development of feelings of futility than between-school tracking. So, lower track students who are directly confronted with higher track students in the same school, seem more likely to lose their faith in a meritocratic system, as they put luck above working hard or above merit.
Numerical Evaluation of Seismic Soil Pressures on Rigid Walls Fixed to the Bedrock

Seismic soil pressures developed on a 7 m rigid retaining wall fixed to the bedrock are investigated using a finite element model that engages nonlinear soil intended materials available in OpenSees. This allows incorporation of the inelastic behavior of the soil and wave propagation effects in the soil-wall system seismic response. The nonlinear response of the soil was validated using the well-stablished, frequency-domain, linear-equivalent approach. An incremental dynamic analysis was implemented to comprehensively examine the effect of soil nonlinearity and input motion on the induced seismic pressures and to evaluate current code equations/methodologies at different levels of earthquake intensity. The results show that soil nonlinearity and seismic wave amplification may play an important role in the response of the soil-wall system. Therefore, methodologies that rely only on peak ground acceleration may introduce large bias on the estimated seismic pressures in scenarios where high nonlinearity and site amplification are expected.
in impression formation

Which facial characteristics do people rely on when forming personality impressions from faces? Previous research has uncovered an array of facial features that influence people’s impressions. Even though some (classes of) features, such as facial width-to-height ratio or resemblances to emotional expressions, play a central role in theories of social perception, their relative importance in impression formation remains unclear. Here, we model faces along a wide range of theoretically important dimensions. We use machine learning to test how well 31 features predict impressions of trustworthiness and dominance in a diverse set of 597 faces. In line with overgeneralization theory, emotion resemblances were most predictive of both traits. Other features that have received a lot of attention in the literature, such as facial width-to-height ratio, were relatively uninformative. Our results highlight the importance of modeling faces along a wide range of dimensions to elucidate their relative importance in impression formation.
Past and present‐day ice mass variation on Svalbard revealed by superconducting gravimeter and GPS measurements

We use Superconducting Gravimeter (SG) and Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements from Ny‐Ålesund, Svalbard, to infer changes in ice mass loss between September 1999 and September 2010. We find that during this period, the gravity rate and vertical crustal velocities are changing with time, adding to evidence about varying rates of ice mass loss. The gravity rate varies through 10 years of observation; −0.23 μGal/yr in 2000–2002, −3.22 μGal/yr in 2002–2005 and −1.10 μGal/yr in 2005–2010. The gravity changes agree well with the observed uplift rates measured by GPS, which are 4.4, 11.3 and 7.4 mm/yr, over the same periods. In addition, we generate model predictions which account for past and present‐day ice mass variation. We find that the models under predict both the observed uplift rates and gravity changes.
To Do or Not to Do: Dopamine, Affordability and the Economics of Opportunity

Five years ago, we introduced the thrift hypothesis of dopamine (DA), suggesting that the primary role of DA in adaptive behavior is regulating behavioral energy expenditure to match the prevailing economic conditions of the environment. Here we elaborate that hypothesis with several new ideas. First, we introduce the concept of affordability, suggesting that costs must necessarily be evaluated with respect to the availability of resources to the organism, which computes a value not only for the potential reward opportunity, but also the value of resources expended. Placing both costs and benefits within the context of the larger economy in which the animal is functioning requires consideration of the different timescales against which to compute resource availability, or average reward rate. Appropriate windows of computation for tracking resources requires corresponding neural substrates that operate on these different timescales. In discussing temporal patterns of DA signaling, we focus on a neglected form of DA plasticity and adaptation, changes in the physical substrate of the DA system itself, such as up- and down-regulation of receptors or release probability. We argue that changes in the DA substrate itself fundamentally alter its computational function, which we propose mediates adaptations to longer temporal horizons and economic conditions. In developing our hypothesis, we focus on DA D2 receptors (D2R), arguing that D2R implements a form of “cost control” in response to the environmental economy, serving as the “brain’s comptroller”. We propose that the balance between the direct and indirect pathway, regulated by relative expression of D1 and D2 DA receptors, implements affordability. Finally, as we review data, we discuss limitations in current approaches that impede fully investigating the proposed hypothesis and highlight alternative, more semi-naturalistic strategies more conducive to neuroeconomic investigations on the role of DA in adaptive behavior.
BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY GRADUATE COLLEGE DEFENSE COMMITTEE AND FINAL READING APPROVALS

vi LIST OF TABLES . x LIST OF FIGURES . xi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS . xv CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION . 1 Geologic and Geophysical Setting: Pre-Snake River Plain. 3 Geologic and Geophysical Setting: Snake River Plain . 7 Geologic and Geophysical Setting: Lithospheric Signature of the Snake River Plain . 11 Geothermal energy . 14 Heat flow and geothermal resources of southern Idaho . 15 CHAPTER TWO: DATA AND METHODOLOGY . 22 Receiver Functions . 22 Data . 25 Metropolis Algorithm Inversion Technique . 29 CHAPTER THREE: RECEIVER FUNCTION INVERSION RESULTS . 33 Receiver Function Signals . 33 Metropolis Algorithm Sensitivity Tests . 36
BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY GRADUATE COLLEGE DEFENSE COMMITTEE AND FINAL READING APPROVALS

vi LIST OF TABLES . xi LIST OF FIGURES . xii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS . xiii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION . 1 Free Diving . 1 Aspects of Free Diving . 4 Need for The Current Study:. 6 Purpose . 6 Hypothesis.7 Operational Definitions . 7 Delimitations/Limitations . 8 Significance of Study . 8 CHAPTER TWO: EFFECTS OF TWO-WEEKS OF CO2 BREATH-HOLD TABLE TRIANING ON THE DIVE RESPONSE AND APNEIC DURATION IN UNTRAINED DIVERS . 9 Introduction . 9 Methods.10 Participants . 10
The skewed distribution of working sets : leveraging randomness for cache design (ההתפלגות המוטה של זיכרון עבודה.)

The increasing gap between processor and memory speeds, as well as the introduction of multicore CPUs, have exacerbated the dependency of CPU performance on the memory subsystem. This trend motivates the search for more efficient caching mechanisms, enabling both faster service of frequently used blocks and decreased power consumption. This thesis explores the temporal locality phenomenon in an effort to devise such efficient caching mechanisms. Specifically, it is shown that while Denning’s working sets model puts all memory blocks in a working set on an equal footing, a dramatic difference in fact exists between the usage patterns of frequently used data and those of lightly used data. This thesis therefore extends Denning’s definition with the core working sets model, employing predicates to identify the most important subset of blocks in a working set. This model forms the base for a probabilistic predictor that can distinguish transient cache insertions from non-transient ones. It is shown that this predictor can identify a small set of data cache resident blocks that service most of the memory references. This predictor is then used in the design of an L1 dual-cache that inserts only frequently used blocks into a low-latency, low-power direct-mapped main cache, while serving the rest of the blocks from a small fullyassociative filter. The design further employs a novel, low-latency, low-power fully-associative element, that uses a small direct-mapped lookup table to cache recently accessed blocks in the filter — thereby eliminating most of the costly fully-associative lookups. This L1 dual-cache design demonstrates that a 16K direct-mapped L1 cache, augmented with a fully-associative 2K filter, can outperform a 32K 4-way cache, while consuming 70%80% less dynamic power and 40% less static power.