Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Transaction costs in an electronic call auction in the presence of insider information ∗

This study presents a simple model of price formation with insider information in an electronic call auction. Based on our model we derive a measure of transaction costs in electronic call auctions. We decompose transaction costs in a difference in valuation and an asymmetric information part. These components are similar to the components of the bid-ask spread in an order-driven continuous market and therefore allow for a direct comparison of the composition of trading costs in continuous and periodic auctions. Empirical results for twenty stocks from Euronext Paris are provided. We find strong evidence for the asymmetric information component of transaction costs but in contrast to continuous markets there is no negative relationship between liquidity and asymmetric information problems. Thus, we conclude that for illiquid stocks call auction trading leads to lower transactions costs than continuous trading. JEL Classification: G10, G14, C11
Phenotypic variability in developmental coordination disorder: Clustering of generalized joint hypermobility with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, atypical swallowing and narrative difficulties

Developmental coordination disorder (DCD) is a recognized childhood disorder mostly characterized by motor coordination difficulties. Joint hypermobility syndrome, alternatively termed Ehlers–Danlos syndrome, hypermobility type (JHS/EDS‐HT), is a hereditary connective tissue disorder mainly featuring generalized joint hypermobility (gJHM), musculoskeletal pain, and minor skin features. Although these two conditions seem apparently unrelated, recent evidence highlights a high rate of motor and coordination findings in children with gJHM or JHS/EDS‐HT. Here, we investigated the prevalence of gJHM in 41 Italian children with DCD in order to check for the existence of recognizable phenotypic subgroups of DCD in relation to the presence/absence of gJHM. All patients were screened for Beighton score and a set of neuropsychological tests for motor competences (Movement Assessment Battery for Children and Visual‐Motor Integration tests), and language and learning difficulties (Linguistic Comprehension Test, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Boston Naming Test, Bus Story Test, and Memoria‐Training tests). All patients were also screening for selected JHS/EDS‐HT‐associated features and swallowing problems. Nineteen (46%) children showed gJHM and 22 (54%) did not. Children with DCD and gJHM showed a significant excess of frequent falls (95 vs. 18%), easy bruising (74 vs. 0%), motor impersistence (89 vs. 23%), sore hands for writing (53 vs. 9%), attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (89 vs. 36%), constipation (53 vs. 0%), arthralgias/myalgias (58 vs. 4%), narrative difficulties (74 vs. 32%), and atypical swallowing (74 vs. 18%). This study confirms the non‐causal association between DCD and gJHM, which, in turn, seems to increase the risk for non‐random additional features. The excess of language, learning, and swallowing difficulties in patients with DCD and gJHM suggests a wider effect of lax tissues in the development of the nervous system. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Conventional Study on Novel Dicationic Ionic Liquid Inclusion with β-Cyclodextrin

This study focuses on the synthesis and characterization of the inclusion complex of β-Cyclodextrin (β-CD) with dicationic ionic liquid, 3,3′-(1,4-Phenylenebis [methylene]) bis(1-methyl-1H-imidazol-3-ium) di(bromide) (PhenmimBr). The inclusion complex was prepared at room temperature utilizing conventional kneading technique. Proton (1H) NMR and 2D (1H–1H) COSY NMR were the primary characterization tools employed to verify the formation of the inclusion complex. COSY spectra showed strong correlations between protons of imidazolium and protons of β-CD which indicates that the imidazolium ring of PhenmimBr has entered the cavity of β-CD. UV absorption indicated that β-CD reacts with PhenmimBr to form a 2:1 β-CD-PhenmimBr complex with an apparent formation constant of 2.61 × 105 mol&−2 L2. Other characterization studies such as UV, FT-IR, XRD, TGA, DSC and SEM studies were also used to further support the formation of the β-CD-PhenmimBr inclusion complex.
Towards Dimensionality Reduction for Smart Home Sensor Data

In this paper, we investigate in how far nonlinear dimensionality reduction (DR) techniques can be utilized to tackle particular challenges of sensor data from smart home environments. Smart homes often contain a large number of sensors of various types, providing output in real time, which results in a sequence of high-dimensional, heterogeneous data vectors. We propose that DR techniques can provide a truthful low-dimensional representation (i.e. a compression) of this kind of data, together with a corresponding reconstruction (i.e. decompression). This yields an automatic fusion of uncoordinated raw sensor signals, as well as an economical storage format, with a certain robustness against sensor failure. In proof-of-concept experiments, we present first empirical results to test our approach based on real-world data.
Novel high-Tc superconducting devices for wireless communications and imaging

High-Tc superconducting (HTS) materials have ultralow surface resistance values at microwave frequencies, which have been applied to make high-Q resonators and “super filters” with narrow-bandwidth, low insertion losses, and superior out-of-band rejections. The second important property of HTS materials is related to low-noise Josephson junctions made from the HTS thin films. In recent years, novel nonlinear high-frequency devices, most of them exploiting the unique features of the AC Josephson effect, have been developed. Applications of the HTS devices based on Josephson junctions have been extended from lower electromagnetic bands (microwave) into mm-wave and terahertz, regions. An overview of CSIRO's recent research activities and achievements in developing novel HTS devices for applications to wireless communication and imaging is presented in this paper.
Cometary molecular clouds around RNO 6 - On-going star formation near the double cluster $h$ and $\chi$ Persei

We present molecular line observations of the star-forming cloud around RNO 6 along with a newly discovered nearby molecular cloud that we name RNO 6 NW. Both clouds display striking similarities in their cometary structures and overall kinematics. By using 13 CO line observations, we estimate that these clouds have similar sizes (~4.5 pc) and masses (~200 $M_{\odot}$). Both molecular clouds RNO 6 and RNO 6 NW are active in star formation. From new high resolution near-IR narrowband images, we confirm that RNO 6 hosts an embedded IR cluster that includes a Herbig Be star. A conspicuous H 2 filament is found to delineate the dense cometary head of the globule. RNO 6 NW hosts at least two IR sources and a bipolar molecular outflow of ~0.9 pc of length and ~0.5 $M_{\odot}$ of mass. We show that the cometary structure of both clouds has been created by the UV radiation from numerous OB stars lying ~1.5° to the north. Such OB stars are associated with the double cluster h and χ Persei, and are probably members of the Per OB1 association. Thus star formation inside these clouds has been very likely triggered by the Radiation Driven Implosion (RDI) mechanism. From comparison to RDI theoretical models, we find that the similar kinematics and morphology of both clouds is well explained if they are at a re-expansion phase. Triggered sequential star formation also explains the observed spatial distribution of the members of the near-IR cluster inside the RNO 6 cloud, and the morphology of the H 2 filament. We conclude that the RNO 6 and RNO 6 NW clouds are high-mass counterparts to the cometary globules of smaller masses which have been studied up to now. Thus our observations demonstrate that the RDI mechanism can produce, not only low mass stars in small globules, but also intermediate mass stars and clusters in massive clouds.
Quantizer Precision for Distributed Estimation in a Large Sensor Network

We investigate the design of simple noncooperative quantizers for distributed estimation of a common random variable. It is assumed that there is a budget of aggregate rate, a criterion of Fisher information, and a large population of sensors. It is further assumed that sensor quantizers are uniform, and that rate is determined by the entropy of the outputs of these. The key question asked is whether it is better to quantize a relatively few sensors finely or as many as possible coarsely
Wealth Inequality and Parental Transmission of Savings Behavior

Disparities in household wealth are much larger than standard economic theory predicts, and empirical studies are only partially successful in relating these disparities to observable variables. In this paper, ∗Postlewaite gratefully acknowledges support from National Science Foundation Grant #SES 0095768. We wish to thank Abhijit Banerjee, Alberto Bisin, Hal Cole, David Laibson, Lee Ohanian, Jesus Villaverde and Ken Wolpin for helpful comments. †jknowles@econ.sas. upenn.edu ‡apostlew@econ.sas. upenn.edu
The effect of chiropractic manipulation on salivary cortisol levels.

BACKGROUND The stress response in humans is a healthy response and is necessary for life. The effects of chiropractic manipulation (CM), if any, on stress are ill-defined. Cortisol has been used as an accurate measure of the stress response system in humans. Salivary cortisol is a noninvasive technique to accurately quantify biologically active cortisol. OBJECTIVE To determine whether basal salivary cortisol levels can be properly detected and whether CM has any direct effect on basal salivary cortisol levels in humans. METHODS Subjects were adult male students attending a chiropractic college. Salivary samples were collected for 5 weeks. During Week 1, samples were collected by the students at home upon waking. During Weeks 2 through 5, home samples were collected upon waking and were followed by an additional time course of samples collected in a laboratory setting before and after CM. Salivary cortisol was measured by enzyme-linked immunoassay. RESULTS Chiropractic manipulative therapy did not significantly change basal salivary cortisol levels. The time course of acute changes to cortisol levels was independent of testing week and group. A decrease in salivary cortisol was detected over time on each trial testing day. Overall, cortisol levels significantly decreased from the time of the home samples until the pretreatment laboratory measurement (P <.05). Cortisol levels subsequently decreased from pretreatment to 15 minutes after treatment (P <.05). After treatment, there were progressive decreases in cortisol levels from the 15- and 30-minute time points to the 60-minute time point (P <.05). CONCLUSION The results of this pilot study suggest that there is no effect of CM on salivary cortisol levels in asymptomatic subjects. As such, we conclude that neither the anticipation of CM nor the spinal manipulative procedure itself induces a state of stress or anxiety.
A Framework of Web Image Search Engine

The advance of image capture device and the popularity of the Internet have made the World Wide Web the biggest and most diverse repository of images. How to retrieve images fast and accurately from the WWW has become an urgent problem to be solved. Although many commercial web image search engine has come forth, the precision is not satisfying for the reason that the text in the pages which they use to annotate the images is not always relevant to the images. We design a framework of Web image search engine to offer the service for searching images with high precision, which combines multiple evidences such as images’ visual features and user’s relevance feedback. Visual features are used for refining the candidate annotation generated from pages, and a novel mechanism is proposed to re-rank the search result by classifying the visual features into three categories based on relevance feedback with genetic algorithm.
Learning during the quality management process: Antecedents and effects in service firms

Purpose – The goal of this research is to provide a model of how service firms respond to their environment by developing both different quality management (QM) practices and organizational learning.Design/methodology/approach – We review the different contributions to the study of the relationship between organizational learning and quality. Based on prior research, we propose a series of hypotheses concerning the influence in service firms of QM practices on organizational learning and the influence of the degree of implementation of the practices. Finally, we tested these hypotheses empirically using a sample of 127 service firms operating in the European Union.Findings – The results of the investigation reveal first, a strong relationship exists among organizational learning and QM practices. Second, we verified that the relations between different QM practices and between QM practices and organizational learning are stronger in service firms with a high degree of implementation of these practices. Fi.
Live digital forensics: Windows XP vs Windows 7

Over the last few years, analysing a computer or a digital device has become a necessity in the field of criminal investigations. Traditional digital forensics analysis includes static analysis, which concerns data that are permanently stored in devices, and live analysis, which regards data that are temporarily stored in equipments or that transit in networks. This paper proposes a live forensics analysis on two different operating systems: Windows XP and Windows Seven. The case study focuses on some common applications such as Skype, Google Talk and the browser Internet Explorer. The last software involves only those cases in which the browser is surfing on Facebook, Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail. In addition, although many types of applications are payment software, one of the main objectives of this work has been the only use of the free software in order to prove the possibility to obtain the same results minimizing the costs.
What Makes a Good Online Dictionary? - Empirical Insights from an Interdisciplinary Research Project

This paper presents empirical findings from two online surveys on the use of online dictionaries, in which more than 1,000 participants took part. The aim of these studies was to clarify general questions of online dictionary use (e.g. which electronic devices are used for online dictionaries or different types of usage situations) and to identify different demands regarding the use of online dictionaries. We will present some important results of this ongoing research project by focusing on the latter. Our analyses show that neither knowledge of the participants' (scientific or academic) background, nor the language version of the online survey (German vs. English) allow any significant conclusions to be drawn about the participant's individual user demands. Subgroup analyses only reveal noteworthy differences when the groups are clustered statistically. Taken together, our findings shed light on the general lexicographical request both for the development of a user-adaptive interface and the incorporation of multimedia elements to make online dictionaries more user-friendly and innovative.
Consumer Decisionmaking in the Health Care Marketplace

To understand how consumers make decisions and the extent to which various factors can hinder decisionmaking, RAND researchers reviewed the literature on health insurance choice and on designing websites to support consumers' choices and, where possible, gleaned best practices from the literature. To understand the approaches health insurance websites have taken to convey information to consumers, they then reviewed 20 websites.
Strongly-Bounded Sparse Decompositions of Minor Free Graphs

As networks grow large and complex, a key approach in managing information and constructing algorithms is to decompose the network into locality-preserving clusters. Then, information and/or management can be divided between the clusters, such that every node is responsible only for clusters for which it belongs. Such decompositions into locality sensitive clusters have become key tools in network and graph theory and span a large body of literature. A key property of a useful decomposition is that each cluster has a short diameter. This property comes in two variants: a weak short diameter in which the short path between nodes may leave the common cluster and a strong diameter, in which each cluster has a small diameter when considered as an induced sub-graph. In this work we present sparse covers and sparse partitions with a bounded strong diameter for the family of minor-free graphs. The tools we present are useful in a large variety of distributed applications such as compact routing and synchronizers.
THE INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK AND PUBLIC FINANCE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: THE AFRICAN CASE / STRUCTURE POLITIQUE ET FINANCES PUBLIQUES DANS LES PAYS EN VOIE DE DEVELOPPEMENT: LE CAS DE L'AFRIQUE

Since the 1970s, the level of external borrowing by developing countries, especially those in Africa, has risen significantly. Researchers have become interested in examining the impact of the institutional framework on the ability of governments to borrow exter nally. In 1988, Anderson found preliminary evidence to support the hypothesis that political democracy constraints the ability of governments to raise their external debt levels. The present study uses data from Africa to test the hypothesis that the institu tional framework has a significant effect on the ability of governments to increase their national debt levels. The results show that there is preliminary evidence of a significantly strong negative relationship between increasing levels of political democracy in Africa and the ability of continental governments to raise levels of public debt. African dic tators appear better able to increase their national debt levels than governments in coun tries in which there are greater levels of political democracy.
Optimized PCR Conditions and Increased shRNA Fold Representation Improve Reproducibility of Pooled shRNA Screens

RNAi screening using pooled shRNA libraries is a valuable tool for identifying genetic regulators of biological processes. However, for a successful pooled shRNA screen, it is imperative to thoroughly optimize experimental conditions to obtain reproducible data. Here we performed viability screens with a library of ∼10 000 shRNAs at two different fold representations (100- and 500-fold at transduction) and report the reproducibility of shRNA abundance changes between screening replicates determined by microarray and next generation sequencing analyses. We show that the technical reproducibility between PCR replicates from a pooled screen can be drastically improved by ensuring that PCR amplification steps are kept within the exponential phase and by using an amount of genomic DNA input in the reaction that maintains the average template copies per shRNA used during library transduction. Using these optimized PCR conditions, we then show that higher reproducibility of biological replicates is obtained by both microarray and next generation sequencing when screening with higher average shRNA fold representation. shRNAs that change abundance reproducibly in biological replicates (primary hits) are identified from screens performed with both 100- and 500-fold shRNA representation, however a higher percentage of primary hit overlap between screening replicates is obtained from 500-fold shRNA representation screens. While strong hits with larger changes in relative abundance were generally identified in both screens, hits with smaller changes were identified only in the screens performed with the higher shRNA fold representation at transduction.
Learning the Kernel in Mahalanobis One-Class Support Vector Machines

In this paper, we show that one-class SVMs can also utilize data covariance in a robust manner to improve performance. Furthermore, by constraining the desired kernel function as a convex combination of base kernels, we show that the weighting coefficients can be learned via quadratically constrained quadratic programming (QCQP) or second order cone programming (SOCP) methods. Performance on both toy and real-world data sets show promising results. This paper thus offers another demonstration of the synergy between convex optimization and kernel methods.
Memory for Object Locations in Boys With and Without ADHD

Objective: To determine whether 7- to 12-year-old boys with ADHD, relative to non-ADHD age-mates, exhibit greater difficulty learning and remembering object locations. The second purpose was to examine the functional utility of mnemonic strategies, specifically speech-to-self, used by boys with and without ADHD. Method: Boys with and without ADHD were videotaped while completing a well-established, laboratory-based object location learning and memory task. Results: Boys with ADHD evinced a deficit while learning the location of objects and employed less sophisticated forms of private speech during the memory task. Conclusion: These findings reveal details about the utility of private speech during spatial working memory performance and further a theoretical understanding of ADHD. (J. of Att. Dis. 2010; 13(5) 505-515)
Active Collection of Land Cover Sample Data from Geo-Tagged Web Texts

Sample data plays an important role in land cover (LC) map validation. Traditionally, they are collected through field survey or image interpretation, either of which is costly, labor-intensive and time-consuming. In recent years, massive geo-tagged texts are emerging on the web and they contain valuable information for LC map validation. However, this kind of special textual data has seldom been analyzed and used for supporting LC map validation. This paper examines the potential of geo-tagged web texts as a new cost-free sample data source to assist LC map validation and proposes an active data collection approach. The proposed approach uses a customized deep web crawler to search for geo-tagged web texts based on land cover-related keywords and string-based rules matching. A data transformation based on buffer analysis is then performed to convert the collected web texts into LC sample data. Using three provinces and three municipalities directly under the Central Government in China as study areas, geo-tagged web texts were collected to validate artificial surface class of China’s 30-meter global land cover datasets (GlobeLand30-2010). A total of 6283 geo-tagged web texts were collected at a speed of 0.58 texts per second. The collected texts about built-up areas were transformed into sample data. User’s accuracy of 82.2% was achieved, which is close to that derived from formal expert validation. The preliminary results show that geo-tagged web texts are valuable ancillary data for LC map validation and the proposed approach can improve the efficiency of sample data collection.
Fast aberrant crypt foci segmentation on the GPU

Aberrant crypt foci (ACF) are thought to be one of the earliest manifestations of colorectal cancer (CRC). We propose a parallel signal processing algorithm (based on a fast approach of the active contour without edges model) to segment in vivo ACF, from stained endoscopic images, to serve as a diagnosis/prognosis auxiliary. In order to tackle this challenge, we successfully overcame several obstacles, involving the adaptation of the algorithm and data structures to a parallel environment. This algorithm was developed using the compute unified device architecture (CUDA) interface, which allows programming the graphics processing units (GPU). We show that it is possible to process four frames of 1 Mega pixel images per second using a conventional GPU. The GPU speeds up the in vivo ACF segmentation more than 40×, regarding to CPUs, and paves the way for real-time segmentation.