Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hardware Setup : Our robot consists of a Dobot Magician robotic arm

Data-driven approaches to solving robotic tasks have gained a lot of traction in recent years. However, most existing policies are trained on large-scale datasets collected in curated lab settings. If we aim to deploy these models in unstructured visual environments like people’s homes, they will be unable to cope with the mismatch in data distribution. In such light, we present the first systematic effort in collecting a large dataset for robotic grasping in homes. First, to scale and parallelize data collection, we built a low cost mobile manipulator assembled for under 3K USD. Second, data collected using low cost robots suffer from noisy labels due to imperfect execution and calibration errors. To handle this, we develop a framework which factors out the noise as a latent variable. Our model is trained on 28K grasps collected in several houses under an array of different environmental conditions. We evaluate our models by physically executing grasps on a collection of novel objects in multiple unseen homes. The models trained with our home dataset showed a marked improvement of 43.7% over a baseline model trained with data collected in lab. Our architecture which explicitly models the latent noise in the dataset also performed 10% better than one that did not factor out the noise. We hope this effort inspires the robotics community to look outside the lab and embrace learning based approaches to handle inaccurate cheap robots.
How Important is Preference Heterogeneity for Wealth Inequality?

This paper investigates to what extent preference heterogeneity helps account for two observations that challenge standard life-cycle theory: (i) The richest 1% of households hold at least 25% of total wealth. (ii) Households with similar lifetime earnings hold very different amounts of wealth. The key idea is to infer the distribution of preference parameters from data on how consumption and wealth inequality vary as cohorts age. I find that time preference heterogeneity helps account for wealth inequality among households with similar lifetime earnings, but makes only a modest contribution towards accounting for high wealth observations. Heterogeneity in risk aversion has only minimal effects on saving and wealth inequality.
Foreign exchange investment rules and endogenous currency crashes

We present a model of the FX market with 3 agents: carry traders, momentum traders, and fundamentalists, where carry traders are subject to funding constraints. We show that the interac-tions between these agents provide a theoretical base for the empirical observation that exchange rates go up the stairs and down the elevator. Such microstructure e? ects also help explaining some important puzzles of the FX market such as the exchange rate disconnect from fundamentals and the seemingly abnormal pro? ts to momentum and carry trading.
STUDY OF METALS DISSOLUTION FROM A BRAND OF MOBILE PHONE WASTE

This work constitutes the first part of activities being carried out within the context of beneficiation of valuable metals from a brand of spent mobile phones by leaching process in laboratory scale. The printed circuit board of the mobile phone was employed in this study. The effects of parameters such as acid concentration, particle size and temperature on the leaching efficiency at different time intervals were investigated. With 4M HCl solution about 87.4% was dissolved within 120 minutes at a temperature of 80
Towards subterahertz bandwidth ultracompact lithium niobate electrooptic modulators A

Achieving ultrahigh-speed electro-optic modulators (subterahertz modulation bandwidths) is shown to be feasible in the thin-film lithium niobate integrated photonic platform. Design guidelines for optimization of the main radio-frequency and optical parameters are presented, and 3-dB modulation bandwidth up to 400 GHz is proved attainable in 3-mm-long devices. Such unprecedented bandwidths pave the path towards utilizing the devices in advanced optical communication systems. © 2019 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement
Risk and Macro Finance Working Paper Series No . 2018-01 Bank Capital Regulation in a Zero

How do near-zero interest rates affect bank capital regulation and risk taking? I study these questions in a tractable dynamic equilibrium model, in which forward-looking banks compete imperfectly for deposit funding, and deposit insurance may induce excessive risk taking. If the zero lower bound on deposit rates (ZLB) binds occasionally, optimal capital requirements vary with the level of interest rates, where low rates motivate weaker requirements despite overall higher risk taking. The reason is that the ZLB makes capital regulation less effective in curbing risk shifting incentives, as tight capital requirements erode franchise value when banks cannot pass on the cost of capital to depositors. The model thus highlights a novel interaction between monetary and macro-prudential policies, and shows that it may be desirable to complement existing regulation with policy tools that subsidize the funding cost of banks at the ZLB.
Influence of the North Atlantic Subtropical High on wet and dry seabreeze events in North Carolina , United States Influencia del Anticiclón del Atlántico Norte en la pluviosidad de la brisa marina en Carolina del Norte , Estados Unidos

The sea-breeze (SB) is an important source of summertime precipitation in North Carolina (NC, southeast United States). However, not all SB events produce precipitation. A climatology of wet and dry SB events in NC is used to investigate the conditions that are conducive to precipitation associated with the sea breeze. Radar imagery was used to detect 88 SB events that occurred along the NC coast between MaySeptember of 2009-2012. The majority (85%) of SB events occurred during offshore flow (53%) or during flow that was parallel to the coast (22%). SB events were separated into dry (53%) and wet (47%) events and differences in the dynamic and thermodynamic parameters of the environment in which they formed were analyzed. Significant differences in dynamic and thermodynamic conditions were found. SB dry events occurred under stronger winds (6.00 ± 2.36 ms) than SB wet events (4.02 ± 2.16 ms). Moreover, during SB wet events larger values of convective available potential energy and lower values of convective inhibition were present, conditions that favor precipitation. Overall, the SB wet events accounted for 20-30% of the May-September precipitation along the NC coastal region. The position of the North Atlantic Subtropical High (NASH) controls both moisture availability and winds along the NC coast, thus providing a synoptic-scale control mechanism for SB precipitation. In particular, it was shown that when the NASH western ridge is located along the southeast coast of the United States, it causes a moist southwesterly flow along the NC coast that may favor the occurrence of SB wet events.
On the Island Sensitivity of Topicalization in Norwegian: An Experimental Investigation

Mainland Scandinavian languages have been reported to allow movement from embedded questions, relative clauses, and complex NPs—domains commonly considered to be islands crosslinguistically. Yet in formal acceptability studies Scandinavian participants often show ‘island effects’: they reject island-violating movement similarly to native speakers of ‘island-sensitive’ languages. To investigate this apparent mismatch between informal and formal judgments, we conducted two acceptability judgment experiments testing the acceptability of topicalization from various island domains in Norwegian. We were interested in determining whether we could (i) find evidence for island insensitivity and (ii) pin down the source of qualitatively different island effects. We asked whether such effects are best explained as reflecting violations of a uniform syntactic constraint or extrasyntactic factors. Our results suggest that embedded questions and relative clauses are not uniform syntactic islands for topicalization, but complex NPs are. Unexpectedly, we also found evidence suggesting that conditional adjunct clauses may not be islands.
SOUND QUALITY EVALUATIONS BASED ON HUMAN AUDITORY-BRAIN SYSTEM

A model of primary sensations and spatial sensations to environmental noise is proposed by Ando (2001). The model of the auditory–brain system includes the autocorrelation function (ACF) and the interaural crosscorrelation function (IACF) mechanisms. At present, environmental noises are evaluated by sound intensity such as equivalent continuous A-weighted sound pressure level (LAeq). However, we sometimes feel annoyed with sound with low sound intensity because of the quality. Sound quality can be characterized by factors obtained from ACF and IACF of sounds. For example, pitch and pitch strength can be characterized by the delay time and amplitude of the maximum peak of the ACF. Directional sensation can be characterized by the delay time and amplitude of the maximum peak of the IACF. To verify the model, we investigated how ACF and IACF factors are coded in our human brain. The results indicated that the delay time and amplitude of the maximum peak of the ACF and IACF are coded by the latency, strength, and location of brain activity. In addition, we applied the model to evaluations of noises inside a train car. The results indicated that the effects of outside environments on noises inside the train car can be characterized by the ACF and IACF factors.
Winner of the ESTS Young Investigators Award 2013 The risk of bilobectomy compared with lobectomy : a retrospective analysis of a series of matched cases and controls †

OBJECTIVES: Bilobectomy is considered to be a risky procedure due to space mismatch between the pleural space and the remnant lung. The objective of this study was to evaluate if postoperative complications related or not to size mismatch are more frequent after bilobectomy compared with right lobectomy cases. METHODS: Retrospective case-control study on a series of matched non-small-cell lung cancer patients. Cases were patients who underwent right bilobectomy (upper and middle or lower and middle) and controls, patients who underwent right upper or lower lobectomy. Cases and controls were matched by propensity scoring according to site, age, ppoFEV1, type of postoperative management (intensive physiotherapy or not), cardiac comorbidity and pT status. We selected two primary outcomes for comparison: occurrence of any cardiorespiratory complication and occurrence of any complication related to space discrepancies. For the latter, all complicated case records were reviewed and two blinded observers agreed on the probability of each complication to be related to space discrepancies. Agreement was measured by the κ statistic. The overall odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) for each outcome were calculated on 2 × 2 tables for the whole population and for cases with upper or lower resections. RESULTS: The study included 689 patients: 572 right lobectomy (419 upper and 153 lower) and 117 bilobectomy cases (30 upper and middle and 87 lower and middle). The overall mortality rate of the series was 2.03% (14/689), and cardiorespiratory complications were recorded in 14.4% (99/689) and space-related complications in 19.59% (135/689) cases. Both observers agreed on space-related complications in 86% of the 135 cases (κ: 0.72). After matching, 234 cases entered the study (117 with right lobectomy, including 83 lower and 34 upper, and 117 with bilobectomy, including 87 lower and 30 upper). The prevalence of cardiorespiratory complications was higher after lower and middle lobectomy compared with lower lobectomy (P = 0.0002; OR: 7.96, 95% CI: 2.19–43.16). No differences were found in death rates or in space-related complications between groups of lobectomy and bilobectomy cases. CONCLUSIONS: This study failed to demonstrate a higher space-related complication rate in bilobectomy cases but cardiorespiratory complications were statistically higher after lower and middle lobectomy compared with lower lobectomy in matched cases.
Explain Dengue Viral Infection

Dengue virus (DENV) is one of the most prevalent human pathogens worldwide. It caus‐ es a huge socioeconomic burden with approximately 400 million infections per year, but yet there is no vaccine or antiviral that is currently effective against the disease. DENV is spread by the mosquitoes Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, and viral replication within the mosquito vector is required for transmission to human host. During its replication cy‐ cle, the virus cause significant changes to the host transcriptome profile, especially in the metabolic and trafficking pathways. Recent studies have shown a strong association be‐ tween autophagy and lipid metabolism modulation. For many years, biochemistry studies have been forgotten and replaced by the most ad‐ vanced techniques and theories in molecular biology and their promises for solving the "life code"; however, after many years of strong molecular biology research, it had not found the key of many problems with which we have the elemental biosystems like vi‐ ruses. Decades of molecular virology investigations did not give more light about several cellular processes that occurred into the host cells when the infections happen. The mo‐ lecular virologists have cloned many viral genes, manipulating full viral genomes, and engineering chimeric constructs to study many details at the molecular level, but the host cell and the encrypted viruses do not want to reveal their secrets. Only with the new perspective of complex diseases, a new approach has emerged: An in‐ tegrative methodology wherein molecular cell biology is converging with the most pure and elegant biochemistry. In this way, more extensive research is necessary for future comparative analyses of the host and vector metabolic/signaling environments required for viral replication.
Influence of fertilizer nitrogen source and management practice on N2O emissions from two Black Chernozemic soils

Fertilizer nitrogen use is estimated to be a significant source of nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions in western Canada. These estimates are based primarily on modeled data, as there are relatively few studies that provide direct measures of the magnitude of N2O emissions and the influence of N source on N2O emissions. This study examined the influence of nitrogen source (urea, coated urea, urea with urease inhibitor, and anhydrous ammonia), time of application (spring, fall) and method of application (broadcast, banded) on nitrous oxide emissions on two Black Chernozemic soils located near Winnipeg and Brandon Manitoba. The results of this 3-yr study demonstrated consistently that the rate of fertilizer-induced N2O emissions under Manitoba conditions was lower than the emissions estimated using Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) coefficients. The Winnipeg site tended to have higher overall N2O emissions (1.7 kg N ha-1) and fertilizer-induced emissions (~0.8% of applied N) than did the Brandon si.
Reduction of the proof of the non - rationality of a non - singular cubic threefold to a result of M

A polymeric material which comprises an amorphous solid solution formed between a metallic compound and a polymer by virtue of ether, thioether or urethane linkages contained therein, the metal of the metallic compound being selected from the group consisting of Be, Mg, Sr, Ba, Sc, Y, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Ga, Ge, Zr, Nb, Mo, Tc, Ru, Rh, Pd, Ag, Cd, In, Sn, Sb, Hf, Ta, W, Re, Os, Ir, Pt, Au, Hg, Tl, Pb, Bi, Al, La and the other lanthanides.
Sediment Erosion Prediction for a Francis Turbine Based on Liquid-Solid Flow Simulation Using Modified PANS

A challenge in the prediction of the sediment erosion is the proper estimation of the motion and velocity of the solid particles, where Reynolds average Navier-Stokes (RANS) methods show limited resolution to determine the motion of solid phase affected by flow fluctuations. The present study adopts a modified partially averaged-Navier Stokes (PANS) method to analyse the sediment erosion prediction for Francis turbines. Numerical simulations were carried out to obtain liquid-solid two-phase flow information in entire flow passage of a Francis turbine using Eulerian-Lagrangrian approach. The hydraulic performance such as efficiency and discharge of the turbine achieved experimentally, are used to validate the present simulation method. The results show that the modified PANS model can improve the prediction accuracy and the smallest unresolved-to-total ratio of turbulence kinetic energy, fk, decided with the consideration of the difference between local average grid size and smallest grid size shows a slight accuracy improvement. Based on the two-phase flow field, sediment erosion was predicted in stay vane, guide vane and runner using a semi-empirical equation obtained from an erosion experiment of liquid-solid flow. It is noted that higher physical resolution captured by the turbulence model causes a diminution of the sediment erosion predicted. Further, the numerical simulation reveals that sediment erosion in stay vane is lower than guide vane and runner, whereas the highest values of the erosion intensity occurs in the runner. The sediment erosion due to fine solid particles in the turbine is mainly resulted from cutting. However, high sediment erosion due to deformation is also produced at the leading edges of stay vane and guide vane.
! ! ! 1 ! NORMATIVE DATA FOR SUBCORTICAL REGIONAL VOLUMES OVER THE LIFETIME OF THE ADULT HUMAN BRAIN

Normative data for volumetric estimates of brain structures are necessary to adequately assess brain volume alterations in individuals with suspected neurological or psychiatric conditions. Although many studies have described age and sex effects in healthy individuals for brain morphometry assessed via magnetic resonance imaging, proper normative values allowing to quantify potential brain abnormalities are needed. We developed norms for volumetric estimates of subcortical brain regions based on cross-sectional magnetic resonance scans from 2790 healthy individuals aged 18 to 94 years using 23 samples provided by 21 independent research groups. The segmentation was conducted using FreeSurfer, a widely used and freely available automated segmentation software. Models predicting subcortical regional volumes of each hemisphere were produced including age, sex, estimated total intracranial volume (eTIV), scanner manufacturer, magnetic field strength, and interactions as predictors. The mean explained variance by the models was 48%. For most regions, age, sex and eTIV predicted most of the explained variance while manufacturer, magnetic field strength and interactions predicted a limited amount. Estimates of the expected volumes of an individual based on its characteristics and the scanner characteristics can be obtained using derived formulas. For a new individual, significance test for volume abnormality, effect size and estimated percentage of the normative population with a smaller volume can be obtained. Normative values were validated in independent samples of healthy adults and in adults with Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia.
Whistle-Blower Protection : Theory and Experimental Evidence mArch 2017

IZA DP No. 10607 mArch 2017 Whistle-Blower Protection: Theory and Experimental Evidence* Whistle-blowing by employees plays a major role in uncovering corporate fraud. Various recent laws aim at improving protection of whistle-blowers and enhancing their willingness to report. Evidence on the effectiveness of such legislation is, however, scarce. Moreover, critics have raised worries about fraudulent claims by low-productivity employees. We study these issues in a theory-guided lab experiment. Easily attainable (“belief-based”) protection indeed leads to more reports, both truthful and fraudulent. Fraudulent claims dilute prosecutors’ incentives to investigate, and thereby hamper deterrence. These effects are ameliorated under more stringent (“fact-based”) protection. JEL Classification: C91, D83, D73, K42, M59
The Water Isotopic Version of the Land-Surface Model ORCHIDEE: Implementation, Evaluation, Sensitivity to Hydrological Parameters

Land-Surface Models (LSMs) exhibit large spread and uncertainties in the way they partition precipitation into surface runoff, drainage, transpiration and bare soil evaporation. To explore to what extent water isotope measurements could help evaluate the simulation of the soil water budget in LSMs, water stable isotopes have been implemented in the ORCHIDEE (ORganizing Carbon and Hydrology In Dynamic EcosystEms: the land-surface model) LSM. This article presents this implementation and the evaluation of simulations both in a stand-alone mode and coupled with an atmospheric general circulation model. ORCHIDEE simulates reasonably well the isotopic composition of soil, stem and leaf water compared to local observations at ten measurement sites. When coupled to LMDZ (Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique-Zoom: the atmospheric model), it simulates well the isotopic composition of precipitation and river water compared to global observations. Sensitivity tests to LSM (Land-Surface Model) parameters are performed to identify processes whose representation by LSMs could be better evaluated using water isotopic measurements. We find that measured vertical variations in soil water isotopes could help evaluate the representation of infiltration pathways by multi-layer soil models. Measured water isotopes in rivers could help calibrate the partitioning of total runoff into surface runoff and drainage and the residence time scales in underground reservoirs. Finally, co-located isotope measurements in precipitation, vapor and soil water could help estimate the partitioning of infiltrating precipitation into bare soil evaporation.
The R Coronae Borealis stars — I. Infrared photometry and long-term variations

Extensive JHKL photometry is given for 12 R Coronae Borealis (RCB) stars, covering periods of up to 23 years. Limited infrared observations of a few other RCB stars and five HdC stars are also reported. These data are used to study the long term variations ofthe stars (atJ) and ofthe circumstellar dust (at L ). All of the RCB stars show variations in the flux from the dust on time-scales of from a few hundred days to a few thousand days. Dust flux amplitudes at L of up to 3 mag are found, the larger amplitudes being associated with the longer time-scales. Secular variations over about 10000 d are also sometimes seen. R CrB itself is atypical in showing evidence of semiregular variations (period ~ 1260 d). There is no direct relation between the occurrence of obscuration minima and changes in the flux from the dust. However, there is possibly a statistical relation between the dust flux and the frequency of the obscuration minima. Models involving fixed geometry for the ejection of dust from the star appear to be ruled out and the data support the random dust-puff model. High infrared excesses and high levels of obscuration activity seem to be associated with a higher than average hydrogen abundance.
Deposited in DRO : 08 January 2019 Version of attached

Article history: Received 30 January 2016 Received in revised form 14 July 2017 Accepted 21 September 2017 Available online 17 December 2017 Using a panel of Chinese listed firms over the period 1998–2015, we examine the extent to which liquidity impacts firms' acquisition decisions, method of payment choice, and performance followingmergers.We observe that cash-rich firms aremore likely to attempt acquisitions, especially if they are subject to tunneling. Next, we find that bidders with higher growth opportunities are less likely to use cash payments in acquisitions. This effect is stronger for financially constrained bidders, who face greater opportunity costs of holding cash. Our last set of results highlights the under-performance of cash acquisitions in both the short and long term. © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). JEL classifications: G34 G32