Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The six functions of Agrobacterium VirE2.

Agrobacterium tumefaciens is a soil-born pathogen with the unique ability to genetically transform plants. Agrobacterium infects plant wound sites, causing crown gall disease. This agriculturally significant disease results from the transfer of a single-stranded (ss) segment (the T-strand) of the bacterium's tumor-inducing plasmid to the host cell (reviewed in refs. 1–3; Fig. 1). On integration into the host genome, genes encoded by the T-strand direct the synthesis of plant growth hormones, resulting in tumorous proliferation of plant cells. T-strand genes also cause the plant to produce opines, compounds that represent a major carbon and nitrogen source uniquely metabolized by the bacterium. Thus, Agrobacterium has evolved a mechanism to genetically engineer host cells to create a favorable niche for itself. This natural ability has been coopted by researchers who use Agrobacterium to engineer plants for agricultural and research purposes.
Seeker Optimization Algorithm for Optimal Reactive Power Dispatch

Optimal reactive power dispatch problem in power systems has thrown a growing influence on secure and economical operation of power systems. However, this issue is well known as a nonlinear, multimodal and mixed-variable problem. In the last decades, computation intelligence-based techniques, such as genetic algorithms (GAs), differential evolution (DE) algorithms and particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithms, etc., have often been used for this aim. In this work, a seeker optimization algorithm (SOA)-based reactive power dispatch method is proposed. The SOA is based on the concept of simulating the act of human searching, where the search direction is based on the empirical gradient by evaluating the response to the position changes and the step length is based on uncertainty reasoning by using a simple Fuzzy rule. In this study, the algorithm's performance is evaluated on benchmark function optimization. Then, the SOA is applied to optimal reactive power dispatch on standard IEEE 57- and 118-bus power systems, and compared with conventional nonlinear programming method, two versions of GAs, three versions of DE algorithms and four versions of PSO algorithms. The simulation results show that the proposed approach is superior to the other listed algorithms and can be efficiently used for optimal reactive power dispatch.
Liquidity Implications of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosures: Malaysian Evidence

ABSTRACT The study examines the association between the different types of blockholdings, the levels of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure, and liquidity of shares traded in Malaysian public listed companies (PLCs) on Bursa Malaysia. The sample consists of 194 most actively traded PLCs for the year 2009. A CSR index was constructed using the criteria used by a leading newspaper that provides an annual CSR award. We suggest that such CSR awards help legitimize the business activities of PLCs in the eyes of a government promoting sustainable business practices. The study finds that while insider blockholdings increases the trading friction and reduces liquidity, the nongovernmental institutional blockholdings improve the liquidity of shares traded on Bursa Malaysia. Moreover, the government institutional blockholdings interacts with the CSR disclosure levels to affect the liquidity of the shares traded. These findings make important contributions to emerging capital markets where government re.
Connectivity Controlling of Multi-robot by Combining Artificial Potential Field with a Virtual Leader

It is often assumed that a multi-robot network is connected initially. However, it doesn't agree with the actual case that robots are randomly placed in an unknown environment. This paper explores a control algorithm combined artificial potential field function with the virtual leader in wireless sensor network environment to control the connectivity of a multi-robot system, even initial network is unconnected. Potential field function provides foundation of establishing connectivity for subsequent control in a multi-robot system. Finally, comparison between the proposed algorithm and others are analyzed through simulation experiments. It is demonstrated that the proposed algorithm can overcome local optima and control communication topology relationships for the multi-robot system.
Keynes, investment, unemployment and expectations

In Keynes’ General Theory, investment determines effective demand, which determines unemployment and the labour market plays a negligible role. In New Keynesian models, labour market institutions determine the natural rate of unemployment and the speed at which unemployment adjusts to it. Investment is mostly ignored as a key variable behind the problem of high unemployment, despite a strong empirical association between investment and unemployment. We discuss the evolution of the ‘Keynesian’ model, and how in the process of domesticating the General Theory, the central relationship between unemployment and investment and the role of the state of confidence was bred out of the model. We then present some evidence of the centrality of investment and expectations to the long‐term evolution of unemployment in OECD countries. We also argue that recent results in finance, which find that individuals do not behave rationally and, moreover, that there may be no basis for rational calculation, provides support for Keynes’s notion that animal spirits play a central role in investment.
Socioeconomic Status and Prognosis of COPD in Denmark

Abstract We investigated the association between length of school education and 5-year prognosis of chronic obstructive lung disease (COPD), including exacerbations, hospital admissions and survival. We used sample of general population from two independent population studies: The Copenhagen City Heart Study and Copenhagen General Population Study. A total of 6,590 individuals from general population of Copenhagen with COPD defined by the Global initiative for obstructive lung disease criteria were subdivided into 4 groups based on the length of school education: 1,590 with education < 8 years; 3,131 with education 8–10 years, 1,244 with more than 10 years, but no college/university education and 625 with college/university education. Compared with long education, short education was associated with current smoking (p < 0.001), higher prevalence of respiratory symptoms (p < 0.001) and lower forced expiratory volume in the first second in percent of predicted value (FEV1%pred) (p < 0.001). Adjusting for sex, age, FEV1%pred, dyspnea, frequency of previous exacerbations and smoking we observed that shortest school education (in comparison with university education), was associated with a higher risk of COPD exacerbations (hazards ratio 1.65, 95% CI 1.15–2.37) and higher risk of all-cause mortality (hazards ratio 1.96, 95% CI 1.28–2.99). We conclude that even in an economically well-developed country with a health care system (which is largely free of charge), low socioeconomic status, assessed as the length of school education, is associated with a poorer clinical prognosis of COPD.
An Improved Test Collection and Baselines for Bibliographic Citation Recommendation

The problem of recommending bibliographic citations to an author who is writing an article has been well-studied. However, different researchers have used different datasets to evaluate proposed techniques, and have sometimes reported contradictory findings regarding the relative effectiveness of various approaches. In addition, these datasets are problematic in one way or another (e.g., in terms of size or availability), precluding the possibility of adopting one (or some) of them as standard benchmarks. A recently created test collection that makes use of data from CiteSeerx is large, heterogenous, and publicly available, but has certain other limitations. In this paper, we propose a way to modify this test collection to address these limitations. We also use the improved test collection to establish a set of baseline results using elementary content-based techniques, as well as reference directed indexing.
Law, politics, and the true cost of protectionism: the choice of trade remedies or binding overhang

Abstract The literature on escape clauses in international commerce focuses on the workings of trade remedies. The logic is that, by adhering to a strict methodology that is subject to legal review, trade remedies credibly signal that the government is only temporarily defecting from free trade. And yet, countries often turn, instead, to a measure that does not adhere to a strict methodology and is not subject to legal review: binding overhang, or the gap between a country's bound and applied tariffs. What explains a government's decision to use trade remedies or binding overhang? We argue that trade remedies are used where import surges are big enough that injury can be proven, but low enough that governments have incentive to prove it. Otherwise, binding overhang is their flexibility measure of choice. We conduct a variety of empirical analyses concerning 22 emerging economies with access to both trade remedies and binding overhang. The results strongly bear out our hypothesis, shedding new light on governments' incentives over the design of the law governing flexibility provisions.
Domestic Work and the Wage Penalty for Motherhood in West Germany

Previous research suggests that household tasks prohibit women from unfolding their full earning potential by depleting their work effort and limiting their time flexibility. The present study investigated whether this relationship can explain the wage gap between mothers and nonmothers in West Germany. The empirical analysis applied fixed-effects models and used self-reported information on time use and earnings as well as monthly family and work histories from the German Socio-Economic Panel (1985–2007, N = 1,810; Wagner, Frick, & Schupp, 2007). The findings revealed that variation in reported time spent on child care and housework on a typical weekday explains part of the motherhood wage penalty, in particular for mothers of very young children. Furthermore, housework time incurred a significant wage penalty, but only for mothers. The authors concluded that policies designed to lighten women's domestic workload may aid mothers in following rewarding careers.
Three essays in asset pricing

This thesis consists of three essays that explore alternative approaches to extracting information from option data, and, along somewhat different lines, examine the channels through which liquidity is priced in equity options.The first essay proposes a novel approach to extracting option-implied equity premia, and empirically examines the information content of these risk premia for forecasting the stock market return. Our approach does not require specifying the functional form of the pricing kernel, and does not impose any restrictions on investors' preferences. We only assume the existence of put and call options which complete the market, and show that the implied equity premium can be inferred from expected excess returns on a portfolio of options. An empirical investigation of SP (ii) the implied equity premium consistently outperforms variables commonly used in the forecasting literature both in- and out-of-sample; (iii) the implied equity premium is positively related to future returns and negatively related to current returns, as theoretically expected.The second essay studies the effect of illiquidity on equity option returns. Illiquidity is well-known to be a significant determinant of stock and bond returns. We are the first to report on illiquidity premia in equity option markets using a large cross-section of firms. An increase in option illiquidity decreases the current option price and predicts higher expected delta-hedged option returns. This effect is statistically and economically significant, and it is consistent with existing evidence that market makers in the equity options market hold net long positions. The illiquidity premium is robust across puts and calls, across maturities and moneyness, as well as across different empirical approaches. It is also robust when controlling for various firm-specific variables including a standard measure of illiquidity of the underlying stock. For long term options, we find evidence of a liquidity risk factor. In the third essay, we demonstrate that in multifactor asset pricing models, prices of risk for factors that are nonlinear functions of the market return can be readily obtained using data on index returns and index options. We apply this general result to the measurement of the conditional price of coskewness and cokurtosis risk. The price of coskewness risk corresponds to the spread between the physical and the risk-neutral second moments, and the price of cokurtosis risk corresponds to the spread between the physical and the risk-neutral third moments. Estimates of these prices of risk have the expected sign, and they lead to reasonable risk premia. An out-of-sample analysis of factor models with coskewness and cokurtosis risk indicates that the new estimates of the price of risk improve the models. performance. The models also robustly outperform competitors such as the CAPM and the Fama-French model. %%%%Cette these comporte trois…
Distribution of carbapenem resistance determinants among epidemic and non-epidemic types of Acinetobacter species in Japan.

We performed a comparative molecular analysis on three types of clinically isolated Acinetobacter spp. : epidemic sequence types (STs) of Acinetobacter baumannii (epidemic ST-AB), non-epidemic sequence types of A. baumannii (non-epidemic ST-AB) and non-baumannii Acinetobacter spp. A total of 87 isolates - 46 A. baumannii, 25 A. pittii and 16 A. nosocomialis - from 43 hospitals were analysed. Of these, 31 A. baumannii isolates were ST1 or ST2 according to the Pasteur Institute multilocus sequence typing scheme and were defined as epidemic ST-AB. The other 15 A. baumannii isolates were defined as non-epidemic ST-AB. The epidemic ST-AB isolates harboured the blaOXA-23-like gene or had an ISAba1 element upstream of blaOXA-51-like, or both, whereas non-epidemic ST-AB and non-baumannii Acinetobacter spp. isolates harboured blaOXA-58-like or metallo-β-lactamase genes, or both. The proportion of multidrug-resistant isolates was significantly higher in the epidemic ST-AB isolates (48 %) than that in the other types of Acinetobacter isolates (5 %) (P<0.05). In addition, epidemic ST-AB isolates exhibited a relatively higher proportion of fluoroquinolone resistance. We demonstrated that, in terms of genotypes and phenotypes of antimicrobial resistance, non-epidemic ST-AB isolates shared more similarity with non-baumannii Acinetobacter spp. isolates than with epidemic ST-AB isolates, regardless of bacterial species. In addition, this study revealed that, even in Japan, where IMP-type metallo-β-lactamase producers are endemic, epidemic ST-AB harbouring blaIMP have not yet emerged.
On deterministic attitude observers on the Special Orthogonal group SO(3)

We revisit the gradient based nonlinear attitude complementary filters (observers) on the Special Orthogonal group SO(3) and provide time-explicit solutions of the norm of the attitude estimation error dynamics. One constant-gain and two state-dependent-gain attitude observers are considered. The stability and performance properties of these attitude observers can be easily deduced from the obtained closed-form solutions. We show that the traditional (constant-gain) complementary attitude filter, previously proposed in the literature, is not Input-to-State-Stable (ISS) with respect to bounded measurement disturbances, while the state-dependent-gain versions are. We also show that the state-dependent-gain versions of the attitude complementary filter exhibit better convergence rates. Simulation results are provided to illustrate our results.
Extent and Nature of Overlap between Listings of IRS Tax-Exempt Registration and Nonprofit Incorporation: The Case of Indiana

To consider the capacity of nonprofits and communities that respond to public policy initiatives, the authors use a comprehensive database of Indiana nonprofits to examine two indicators of nonprofit formalization: tax-exempt registration under Section 501(c) of the IRS code and formal incorporation with the Indiana Secretary of State. The authors find that only 23% of the 54,108 nonprofits in the statewide database meet both criteria for formalization. The authors test whether more formalized nonprofits (appearing on both lists) are larger, older, and active in more institutionalized fields than those on only one or neither of the two lists. The findings generally confirm these expectations. The authors also hypothesize that larger, growing, and more institutionally developed communities will have a more formalized nonprofit sector (greater list overlap). However, few community-level variables relate meaningfully to the measure of sector formalization. Other factors that may be relevant for such an analysis are considered.
An Analysis of Annual and Multiperiod Quarterly Forecasts of Aggregate Income, Output, and the Price Level

This paper examines several sets of forecasts representing a variety of sources, models, and techniques. Predictions of percentage changes in GNP are relatively accurate, but partly because of negative correlations between errors in the corresponding forecasts of real growth and inflation. For the last two variables, the multiperiod quarterly forecasts for the 1970s have errors that show unusually rapid cumulations over longer spans. The accuracy and properties of the forecasts depend heavily on the economic characteristics of the periods covered but only weakly and not systematically on the differences among the forecasters.
Income Inequality In Australia And New Zealand: International Comparisons And Recent Trends

In this paper we present results on the distribution of income in Australia and New Zealand that can be compared with those for a range of other advanced countries. The framework of analysis, concepts and definitions used have been developed as part of the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). Using data for the early 1980s, the results indicate that the income distributions in Australia and New Zealand are not, as previous research has suggested, more equal than those in other countries. Neither country has an equivalent net family income inequality ranking in the top half of the eight countries studied. Further analysis indicates increasing inequality in Australia in the first half of the 1980s and, on the basis of some indicators, in New Zealand also. The paper does not investigate the causes of these increases in inequality, although the results indicate that the rise in property income has been a factor behind them.
Age-Based Positivity Effects in Imagining and Recalling Future Positive and Negative Autobiographical Events

Thoughts about the future reflect personal goals, and projections into the future enrich our emotional life. Researchers have taken an interest in determining whether the tendency to remember more positive than negative emotional events observed when recalling past events also appears when remembering imagined future events. The objective of this study was to examine the age-based positivity effect of recall for future positive and negative autobiographical events in young and older adults. Representative future events were first established to develop the cues used to prompt personal future events. In the production task, the participants were presented with eight positive and eight negative random future events of young or older adults as a model and the corresponding cues to generate their own positive and negative future autobiographical events. In the recall task, the participants recovered as many experiences as they could of the model and the positive and negative events produced by themselves. The participants correctly recalled more positive than negative events and committed more errors for negative than positive events, showing a clear tendency in both young and older adults to recall future imagined events as positive. Regarding age, the young adults recalled more events than the older participants whilst the older participants in particular showed better recall of their own imagined future events than the model’s events, and committed more errors when recalling the model’s events than their own imagined events. Regarding the positivity effect in incorrect recall, more than half of the errors were valence changes, most of these being from negative to positive events, and these valence changes were more pronounced in the older than in the younger adults. In general, there were fewer differences between young and older adults in the recall of positive events in comparison with negative events. Our findings suggest that people are well disposed toward recalling positive imagined future events and preserve a positive emotional state, suppressing negative memories.
Taxation and Capital Structure Choice: The Role of Ownership

Applying firm fixed-effects estimations to European firm-level data, I analyze how ownership structure affects the relationship between taxation and capital structure. I find that an increase in the corporate tax rate affects the debt-to-assets ratio positively, and that this effect is stronger for firms with concentrated ownership. These results hold independently of whether firms are standalone or subsidiaries, and are also valid if subsidiaries are divided into those that are foreign-owned and those domestically owned. Lastly, ownership plays a role even when controlling for other potentially important determinants of the relation between corporate taxation and capital structure.
Improved OFDM transmission with DF relaying and power allocation for a sum power constraint

In this paper we consider an OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) transmission scheme with a relay. Symbols sent by the source may or may not be retransmitted during a second time slot by the relay, which is assumed to be of the decode-and-forward (DF) type. For each relayed carrier the destination implements maximum ratio combining. Assuming perfect CSI (channel state information) knowledge the paper investigates the power allocation problem in order to maximize the rate offered by the scheme. Compared to [VDLZ08], the second time slot is better used. The source is allowed to transmit a new symbol during this second time slot when the relay is inactive. The optimization is performed for a sum power constraint. The theoretical analysis is illustrated by numerical results.
On the Dummy Variable Technique and Covariance Analysis in Testing Equality among Sets of Coefficients in Linear Regressions: An Expository Note

Econometric research in the past two decades has vitnessed a considerable use of dummy variables in regression analysis. The analysis of covariance has long been a standard statistical technique to test the equality of coefficients in linear regressions. While students and researchers are generally aware of the close relationship between the two methods, they are often frustrated at choosing one method instead of the other in practice and wonder whether the two methods lead to the same test results. This note shows that the two methods are equivalent from the point of view of hypothesis testing.
A compact CPU architecture for sensor signal processing

This paper proposes a compact, one-bit serial processing CPU architecture for general purpose computing as well as for digital signal processing. The primary design goal is to achieve optimal silicon area, which is one of the critical demands in the area-constrained sensor design with delta sigma signal processing techniques. Based on the coordinate rotation digital computer (CORDIC) algorithm, a general purpose CPU is expanded to implement basic logical functions and arithmetic functions such as linear, trigonometric, and hyperbolic algorithms. Two off-chip memory chips provide single digit serial input and output for data and instructions