Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Financial Market Design and Equity Premium : Electronic versus Floor Trading

We assemble the dates of announcement and actual introduction of electronic trading by the leading exchange of 120 countries to examine the long term and medium term impact of automation. Estimates from dividend growth model as well as international CAPM suggest a significant decline in expected returns after the introduction of electronic trading in the world’s equity markets, especially in the developing nations. Consistent with this reduction in equity premium in the long run, there is a positive short-term price reaction to the switch. These findings are sustained even after controlling for risk factors, economic growth, financial integration, and economic liberalization. Further analysis of trading turnover supports the notion that electronic trading enhances the liquidity and informativeness of stock markets leading to a reduction in cost of capital.
Turn Taking for Human-Robot Interaction

Applications in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) in the not-so-distant future include robots that collaborate with factory workers or serve us as caregivers or waitstaff. When offering customized functionality in these dynamic environments, robots need to engage in real-time exchanges with humans. Robots thus need to be capable of participating in smooth turn-taking interactions. The research goal in HRI of unstructured dialogic interaction would allow communication with robots that is as natural as communication with other humans. Turn-taking is the framework that provides structure for human communication. Consciously or subconsciously, humans are able to communicate their understanding and control of the turn structure to a conversation partner by using syntax, semantics, paralinguistic cues, eye gaze, and body language in a socially intelligent way. Our research aims to show that by implementing these turn-taking cues within a interaction architecture that is designed fundamentally for turn-taking, a robot becomes easier and more efficient for a human to interact with. This paper outlines our approach and initial pilot study into this line of research.
Reaching a Consensus in a Dynamically Changing Environment: A Graphical Approach

This paper presents new graph-theoretic results appropriate for the analysis of a variety of consensus problems cast in dynamically changing environments. The concepts of rooted, strongly rooted, and neighbor-shared are defined, and conditions are derived for compositions of sequences of directed graphs to be of these types. The graph of a stochastic matrix is defined, and it is shown that under certain conditions the graph of a Sarymsakov matrix and a rooted graph are one and the same. As an illustration of the use of the concepts developed in this paper, graph-theoretic conditions are obtained which address the convergence question for the leaderless version of the widely studied Vicsek consensus problem.
STUDY REGARDING HELIX ASPERSA SNAIL WINTERTIME PROTECTION IN OPEN AIR REARING TECHNOLOGY

In Italy the standard wintertime protecting solution used for brown garden snail(Helix aspersa aspersa) inside open air rearing technology is to cut the plants to 20cm and to protect the rearing pen with agryl-sheet, named in italian language Tessuto-NonTessuto or for short TNT. But this method isn`t suited for our country colderwinters. Low temperatures registered during 2005 - 2006 winter and hibernationbehaviour inadequate understanding led to high mortality rates, estimated to over85%, in most of the outdoor snail farms all around Romania.In order to solve the problem we studied some aspects of brown garden snail ecologicplasticity, his hibernation behavior inside outdoor snail farms and researched thepossibilities of implementing some alternative wintertime protective methods. As aresult we developed the “sandwich” system based on straw non-conducting propertiesconceived in such a manner to provide an efficient adiabatic protection while theinside aeration is enough to limit as much as possible the straw mass moistening.
Overview of BioNLP Shared Task 2011

The BioNLP Shared Task 2011, an information extraction task held over 6 months up to March 2011, met with community-wide participation, receiving 46 final submissions from 24 teams. Five main tasks and three supporting tasks were arranged, and their results show advances in the state of the art in fine-grained biomedical domain information extraction and demonstrate that extraction methods successfully generalize in various aspects.
Communications of the Association for Information Systems Communications of the Association for Information Systems

: We developed a mobile-based information system (MBIS) to empower users to improve their livelihood activities. To do so, we first developed an empowerment framework (since one does not exist) as a basis to develop the MBIS. In particular, we conducted this research to solve an agriculture over-production problem in Sri Lanka where farmers remain trapped in a poverty cycle. They cannot make informed decisions due to lack of access to timely, context-based actionable information to achieve a good revenue. We had to generate some essential information such as current production level in real-time by capturing farmers’ decisions such as what and how much to grow. For this purpose, we needed to empower farmers to actively engage them in informed decision-making process through the MBIS. In evaluating the impact of the MBIS, we found a statistically significant positive change in farmers’ empowerment levels based on measuring self-efficacy, sense of control, and motivation before and after they used the application. Commercial organizations have since adopted this mobile-based system in India and Sri Lanka to solve agricultural problems, in universities Africa to mitigate hidden hunger, and the Corporative Research Center in Australia to develop digital health applications to manage chronic diseases, which indicates the approach’s wide adoptability.
Investigatng The Social Impact of Social Networking Media on Teenagers From 13 to 19 Years Old in Oman

The burst in the use of social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and Friendster has brought many opportunities, changes and challenges into our world. The impact of this type of media can be social, psychological, and/or economic. For many societies, the social impact is a major concern since these technologies with their rapid spread have succeeded in influencing the attitudes of various groups of individuals. The role that social media played in the recent unrests in the Arab world is a clear example of such an impact. Oman, like all other countries, is also facing the same challenge. Among all other age groups in Oman, teenagers from 13 to 19 years old make up a major segment in the demographic structure of the country. Therefore, it is very important to study and understand the impact of the rapidly-growing social networking media on this group. The present research aims to contribute to this understanding by investigating the social impact of social networking media on teenagers in Oman. We survey teenagers’ use of and perceptions about these technologies, in addition to parents’ perceptions. By combining these two perspectives, this research aims to provide several contributions to both theory and practice. The results revealed that almost all teenagers (99%) agreed that the social networking sites are beneficial. They believe that using social networking sites does not impact their social behavior.
Effect of Dispersion on Solutal Convection in Porous Media

Solutal convection in porous media is thought to be controlled by the molecular Rayleigh number, Ram, the ratio of the buoyant driving force over diffusive dissipation. The mass flux should increase linearly with Ram and the finger spacing should decrease as Ram−1/2 . Instead, our experiments find that flux levels off at large Ram and finger spacing increases with Ram. Here we show that the convective pattern is controlled by a dispersive Rayleigh number, Rad, balancing buoyancy and dispersion. Increasing the bead size of the porous medium increases Ram but decreases Rad and hence coarsens the pattern. While the flux is predominantly controlled by Ram, the anisotropy of mechanical dispersion leads to an asymmetry in the pattern that limits the flux at large bead sizes.
Quickstep : A Data Platform Based on the Scaling-In Approach

Modern servers pack enough storage and computing power that just a decade ago was spread across a modestsized cluster. This paper presents a prototype system, called Quickstep, to exploit the large amount of parallelism that is packed inside such modern servers. Quickstep builds on a vast body of previous work on methods for organizing data, optimizing, scheduling and executing queries, and brings them together in a single system. Quickstep also includes new query processing methods that go beyond previous approaches. To keep the project focused, the project’s initial target is read-mostly in-memory data warehousing workloads in single-node settings. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of Quickstep for this target application space. In this paper, we also present experimental results comparing the performance of Quickstep to a number of other systems. These experiments show that Quickstep is often faster than many other contemporary systems, and in some cases faster by an order-of-magnitude. Quickstep is an Apache (incubating) project and lives at: https:// github.com/apache/incubator-quickstep.
An inverse method for estimating air volume fraction of sea foam from emissivity data

ABSTRACT The air volume fraction (AVF) of a sea foam layer is a key parameter that affects the microwave emissivity and brightness temperature of the sea surface. To extract AVF of a sea foam layer from the measured emissivity data at microwave frequencies, a novel retrieval method is developed based on the spectral representation of effective dielectric constant of sea foam composites media, with the volume fraction of constituents and the geometry of foam microstructure included in the spectral function. In the retrieval method, the cost function of emissivity is constructed with two constraints: one is the first two moments of the spectral function and the other is derived from the spectral representation of coated spherical composites. We tested the inverse method using the simulation data of a known emissivity model with Gaussian noise. Good agreement is obtained between the inverse results and the known AVF of sea foam from the simulated emissivity data with varying sea surface temperature, salinity, and incident angle. Finally, the proposed method was used to estimate the AVF of the sea foam layer from the measured emissivity data at frequencies 1.4, 6.8, 10.8, 35, and 36.5 GHz. Generally, the retrieved values of the AVF fall in the range of 0.85–0.98. This study implies that our method can be extended to retrieve the volume fraction of constituents of other composites media from the passive microwave remote-sensing data.
Agents, Simulated Users and Humans An Analysis of Performance and Behaviour

Most of the current models that are used to simulate users in Interactive Information Retrieval (IIR) lack realism and agency. Such models generally make decisions in a stochastic manner, without recourse to the actual information encountered or the underlying information need. In this paper, we develop a more sophisticated model of the user that includes their cognitive state within the simulation. The cognitive state maintains data about what the simulated user knows, has done and has seen, along with representations of what it considers attractive and relevant. Decisions to inspect or judge are then made based upon the simulated user’s current state, rather than stochastically. In the context of ad-hoc topic retrieval, we evaluate the quality of the simulated users and agents by comparing their behaviour and performance against 48 human subjects under the same conditions, topics, time constraints, costs and search engine. Our ﬁndings show that while na¨ıve conﬁgurations of simulated users and agents substantially outperform our human subjects, their search behaviour is notably di ↵ erent from actual searchers. However, more sophisticated search agents can be tuned to act more like actual searchers providing greater realism. This innovation advances the state of the art in simulation, from simulated users towards autonomous agents . It provides a much needed step forward enabling the creation of more realistic simulations, while also motivating the development of more advanced cognitive agents and tools to help support and augment human searchers. Future work will focus not only on the pragmatics of tuning and training such agents for topic retrieval, but will also look at developing agents for other tasks and contexts such as collaborative search and slow search.
of the Association for Information Systems

: There is an uptake of organizations’ involvement in collaborative organizational structures (COS). Consistent with the resource-centric views of the firm, we suggest that the COS members need to contribute their managed IT competencies to their COS, whose synergies would create COS IT competencies. We suggest three key IT competencies for COS: proactive top management decision synergy, collaborative and agile IT infrastructure, and cross-functional tactical management synergy. Using survey data, we found evidence of a positive association between these COS IT competencies and the collaborative rent-generating potential of the COS. We also found a positive association between the collaborative rent-generating potential of the COS and the business value of the COS members. The results suggest that developing COS IT competencies add value to a COS and its members. This study provides guidance for organizations looking to leverage their involvement in a COS.
Network Flow Algorithms

Network flow theory has been used across a number of disciplines, including theoretical computer science, operations research, and discrete math, to model not only problems in the transportation of goods and information but also a wide range of applications from image segmentation problems in computer vision to deciding when a baseball team has been eliminated from contention. This graduate text and reference presents a succinct, unified view of a wide variety of efficient combinatorial algorithms for network flow problems, including many results not found in other books. It covers maximum flows, minimum-cost flows, generalized flows, multicommodity flows, and global minimum cuts and also presents recent work on computing electrical flows along with recent applications of these flows to classical problems in network flow theory.
The Power of Localization for Efficiently Learning Linear Separators with Noise

We introduce a new approach for designing computationally efficient learning algorithms that are tolerant to noise, and we demonstrate its effectiveness by designing algorithms with improved noise tolerance guarantees for learning linear separators. We consider both the malicious noise model of Valiant [1985] and Kearns and Li [1988] and the adversarial label noise model of Kearns, Schapire, and Sellie [1994]. For malicious noise, where the adversary can corrupt both the label and the features, we provide a polynomial-time algorithm for learning linear separators in ℜd under isotropic log-concave distributions that can tolerate a nearly information-theoretically optimal noise rate of η = Ω(ϵ), improving on the Ω (ϵ3/log2(d/ϵ)) noise-tolerance of Klivans et al. [2009a]. In the case that the distribution is uniform over the unit ball, this improves on the Ω (ϵ/d1/4) noise-tolerance of Kalai et al. [2005] and the Ω (ϵ2/log(d/ϵ)) of Klivans et al. [2009a]. For the adversarial label noise model, where the distribution over the feature vectors is unchanged and the overall probability of a noisy label is constrained to be at most η, we also give a polynomial-time algorithm for learning linear separators in ℜd under isotropic log-concave distributions that can handle a noise rate of η = Ω(ϵ). In the case of uniform distribution, this improves over the results of Kalai et al. [2005], which either required runtime super-exponential in 1/ϵ (ours is polynomial in 1/ϵ) or tolerated less noise.1 Our algorithms are also efficient in the active learning setting, where learning algorithms only receive the classifications of examples when they ask for them. We show that, in this model, our algorithms achieve a label complexity whose dependence on the error parameter ϵ is polylogarithmic (and thus exponentially better than that of any passive algorithm). This provides the first polynomial-time active learning algorithm for learning linear separators in the presence of malicious noise or adversarial label noise. Our algorithms and analysis combine several ingredients including aggressive localization, minimization of a progressively rescaled hinge loss, and a novel localized and soft outlier removal procedure. We use localization techniques (previously used for obtaining better sample complexity results) to obtain better noise-tolerant polynomial-time algorithms.
Cooperative institutions for sustainable common pool resource management: Application to groundwater

Beneficiaries of common pool resources (CPRs) may select available noncooperative and regulatory exogenous institutions for managing the resource, as well as cooperative management institutions. All these institutions may increase the long‐term gains, prolong the life of the resource, and help to escape the tragedy of the commons trap. Cooperative game theory approaches can serve as the backbone of cooperative CPR management institutions. This paper formulates and applies several commonly used cooperative game theoretic solution concepts, namely, the core, Nash‐Harsanyi, Shapley, and nucleolus. Through a numerical groundwater example, we show how CPR users can share the gains obtained from cooperation in a fair and efficient manner based on these cooperative solution concepts (management institutions). Although, based on their fairness rationales, various cooperative management institutions may suggest different allocations that are potentially acceptable to the users, these allocation solutions may not be stable as some users may find them unfair. This paper discusses how different methods, such as application of the plurality rule and power index, stability index, and propensity to disrupt concepts, can help identify the most stable and likely solutions for enforcing cooperation among the CPR beneficiaries. Furthermore, how the noncooperative managerial characteristics of the CPR users can affect the stability and acceptability of the different cooperative CPR management institutions is discussed, providing valuable policy insights for cooperative CPR management at community levels.
Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing

Purpose – This study aims to examine managers ’ perceptions of digital banking ’ s (DB) effect on customer experienceandbanks ’ ﬁ nancial performance. Design/methodology/approach – The research uses interviews from the senior UK bank managers to gather their views on DB ’ s impact on customer experience and ﬁ nancial performance. The interviews were thematically analysed to produce resultsanda model. Findings – The attributes affecting DB experience are as follows: service quality, functional quality, perceived value, service customisation, service speed, employee – customer engagement, brand trust, DB innovation, perceived usability and perceived risk. They affect customer experience, satisfaction and loyalty and ﬁ nancial performance. The research revealed relationships amongst these attributes (e.g. brand trust and loyalty). Research limitations/implications – The study is a UK bank speci ﬁ c and can be replicated in other developed countries ’ banks, helping in further comparison. However, DB is conducted globally, which implies that the ﬁ ndings are robust enough to be potentially applied in other countries. The proposed model shows customer experience driversandoutcomesthrough managers ’ views,which can be theoretically tested. Practical implications – The ﬁ ndings suggest important attributes (as above) for consideration to improve DB customer experience and ﬁ nancial performance. They show the relevance of employee – customer interaction, service personalisation, value proposition, quality service offering and DB experience, which have useful implications forimprovingDB design and interactivemarketing. Originality/value – Gauging DB customer experience as perceived by bank managers has not been studied in this way, highlighting DB effectiveness, which is important for multi-channel marketing and banks ’ ﬁ nancialperformance,andadvancestheory.
Smart TV: are they really smart in interacting with people? Understanding the interactivity of Korean Smart TV

Smart TV (STV), a new digital television service, has been rapidly developing, particularly in Korea. With the conceptual model of interactivity, this study empirically investigates the effects of perceived interactivity on the motivations and attitudes towards STV in Korea. The model is created to validate the relationship of perceived interactivity to performance, attitude and intention. Further, the model examines the mediating roles of perceived interactivity in the effect of performance on attitude towards STV. Empirical evidence supports the mediating role of perceived interactivity. Implications of the findings are discussed in terms of building a theory of interactivity and providing practical insights into developing a user-centred STV interface.
Electrical Investigation of Metal‐Olivine Systems and Application to the Deep Interior of Mercury

We report electrical conductivity measurements on metal‐olivine systems at about 5 and 6 GPa and up to 1,675°C in order to investigate the electrical properties of core‐mantle boundary (CMB) systems. Electrical experiments were conducted in the multianvil apparatus using the impedance spectroscopy technique. The samples are composed of one metal layer (Fe, FeS, FeSi2, or Fe‐Ni‐S‐Si) and one polycrystalline olivine layer, with the metal:olivine ratio ranging from 1:0.7 to 1:9.2. For all samples, we observe that the bulk electrical conductivity increases with temperature from 10−2.5 to 101.8 S/m, which is higher than the conductivity of polycrystalline olivine but lower than the conductivity of the pure metal phase at similar conditions. In some experiments, a conductivity jump is observed at the temperature corresponding to the melting temperature of the metallic phase. Both the metal:olivine ratio and the metal phase geometry control the electrical conductivity of the two‐layer samples. By combining electrical results, textural analyses of the samples, and previous studies of the structure and composition of Mercury's interior, we propose an electrical profile of the deep interior of the planet that accounts for a layered CMB‐outer core structure. The electrical model agrees with existing conductivity estimates of Mercury's lower mantle and CMB using magnetic observations and thermodynamic calculations, and thus, supports the hypothesis of a layered CMB‐outermost core structure in the present‐day interior of Mercury. We propose that the layered CMB‐outer core structure is possibly electrically insulating, which may influence the planet's structure and cooling history.