Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stability of Kalman Filtering with Multiple Sensors Involving Lossy Communications

Abstract We study a networked state estimation problem for a linear system with multiple sensors, each of which transmits its measurements to a central estimator via a lossy communication network for computing the minimum mean-square-error (MMSE) state estimate. Under a general Markov packet loss process, we establish necessary and sufficient conditions for the stability of the estimator for any diagonalizable system in the sense that the mean of the state estimation error covariance matrix is uniformly bounded. For the second-order systems under an i.i. d. packet loss model, the stability condition is expressed as a simple inequality in terms of open-loop poles and the packet loss rate.
New management in Spanish universities: introducing balanced scorecard

Nowadays, the world has rapidly moved from an industrial economy towards a knowledge-based economy, in which wealth creation is associated with the development and maintenance of competitive advantages based on intangible elements. In this sense, the balanced scorecard is a very suitable tool to recognise value and manage intellectual capital because it translates an organisation's strategic objectives into a set of performance indicators from a financial, as well as customer perspective, internal process and learning and growth perspectives. The aim of this paper is to expose and justify the benefits that the balanced scorecard might have for identifying, measuring and managing intangibles at universities, by means of reviewing the most important balanced scorecard implementations at Spanish public universities.
Coherent compounding in doppler imaging

Coherent compounding can provide high frame rates and wide regions of interest for imaging of blood flow. However, motion will cause out-of-phase summation, potentially causing image degradation. In this work the impact of blood motion on SNR and the accuracy of Doppler velocity estimates are investigated. A simplified model for the compounded Doppler signal is proposed. The model is used to show that coherent compounding acts as a low-pass filter on the coherent compounding Doppler signal, resulting in negatively biased velocity estimates. Simulations and flow phantom experiments are used to quantify the bias and Doppler SNR for different velocities and beam-to-flow (BTF) angles. It is shown that the bias in the mean velocity increases with increasing beam-to-flow angle and/or blood velocity, whereas the SNR decreases; losses up to 4 dB were observed in the investigated scenarios. Further, a 2-D motion correction scheme is proposed based on multi-angle vector Doppler velocity estimates. For a velocity of 1.1 vNyq and a BTF angle of 75°, the bias was reduced from 30% to less than 4% in simulations. The motion correction scheme was also applied to flow phantom and in vivo recordings, in both cases resulting in a substantially reduced mean velocity bias and an SNR less dependent on blood velocity and direction.
Antimicrobial use in defined populations of infants and young children.

BACKGROUND Antimicrobial overprescribing contributes to bacterial resistance, but data on use in infants and young children are limited. OBJECTIVES To assess antimicrobial use in a defined population of infants and young children and to determine diagnosis-specific prescribing rates for common infections. DESIGN AND SETTING Retrospective cohort study of children served by 44 practices affiliated with 2 managed care organizations. PATIENTS Children aged 3 months to 72 months enrolled in either health plan between September 1, 1994, and August 31, 1996. ANALYSIS Rates of antimicrobial use were calculated as the number of pharmacy dispensings divided by the number of person-years of observation contributed to the cohort in 2 age groups (3 to <36 months and 36 to <72 months). Other outcomes included the distribution of diagnoses associated with antimicrobial dispensing and population-based rates of diagnosis of common acute respiratory tract illnesses. RESULTS A total of 46477 children contributed 59710 person-years of observation across the 2 health plans. Rates of antimicrobial dispensing for children aged 3 to 36 months were 3.2 and 2.1 dispensings per person-year in the 2 populations. A substantial fraction of younger children (35% in population A and 23% in population B) received 4 or more antimicrobial prescriptions in a single year. For children aged 36 to 72 months, the dispensing rates for the 2 populations were 2.0 and 1.5 antimicrobials per person-year. We found significant differences in rates between the populations studied and a decrease in use at all sites from 1995 to 1996. The diagnosis of otitis media accounted for 56% of antimicrobial drugs dispensed to children aged 3 to 36 months and 40% of those dispensed to children aged 36 to 72 months. Antimicrobial prescribing for colds and upper respiratory tract infections, bronchitis, and sinusitis was less frequent than previously reported but accounted for 10% to 14% of antimicrobial drugs dispensed. CONCLUSIONS In these populations, otitis media accounted for the largest number of antimicrobial agents dispensed to children younger than 6 years. Clearly inappropriate indications such as cold, upper respiratory tract infection, and bronchitis accounted for smaller fractions of antimicrobial use but may be most amenable to change. However, interventions that encourage use of strict criteria for diagnosis and treatment of otitis media will likely have the greatest impact on overall antimicrobial exposure. Monitoring defined populations longitudinally will allow assessment of the effectiveness of such national and local initiatives.
The stock market and competitive analysis

A method is presented for analysing the stock market's implicit assessment of relative strategic position in an industry. The market's overall perception of strategic position is obtained by comparing the value of future growth potential to that of the existing earnings stream for each company. More detail is extracted by using the quality and quantity of future growth, implicit in the relative value of future growth, as a measure of competitive position and product market outlook respectively. The method is applied to a sample of firms from the computer and data processing industry.
Estimating uncertainty ranges for costs by the bootstrap procedure combined with probabilistic sensitivity analysis.

When an economic evaluation incorporates patient-level data, there are two types of uncertainty over the results: uncertainty due to variation in the sampled data, and uncertainty over the choice of modelling parameters and assumptions. Previously statistical methods have been used to estimate the extent of the former, and sensitivity analysis to estimate the extent of the latter. Ideally interval estimates for economic variables should reflect both types of uncertainty. This paper describes a method for combining bootstrapping with probabilistic sensitivity analysis to estimate a total 'uncertainty range' for incremental costs. The approach is illustrated using cost data from a randomized controlled trial of endoscopy for Helicobactor pylori negative young dyspeptic patients. The trial failed to demonstrate any clinical benefit from endoscopy, which was on average pound 395 more costly. The combined 95% uncertainty range for incremental costs (-pound 236 to pound 931) was wider than 95% intervals estimated by either probabilistic sensitivity analysis (pound 43 to pound 592) or the non-parametric bootstrap method (-pound 95 to pound 667) alone. The method can easily be extended to the calculation of uncertainty ranges for incremental cost-effectiveness ratios.
Image moments-based structuring and tracking of objects

This paper presents a new method for structuring and tracking of objects in video sequences. Our approach is based on image moments and the BSP-tree data structure. We use invariant properties of these moments to construct a BSP-tree and determine an ellipsis that approximates the object's shape. Then, we employ this information to track objects frame by frame through the image sequence. The method works well for segmented images with a single object and we assume that the motion will not change abruptly.
A novel wideband and circularly polarized cross-dipole antenna

In this paper, we present a novel wideband circularly polarized (CP) composite, called cavity-backed crossed dipole antenna for 2.45 GHz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band wireless communication. To excite the CP radiation effectively, a curved-delay line providing an orthogonal phase difference among the cross-dipole elements is attached at corners of the sequentially rotated elements. By choosing a proper radius of the curved-delay line, a wide input impedance of the antenna can be realized. Unlike conventional cross-dipole antennas, the proposed cross-dipole antenna is designed with an open stub added to the radiating arms of the dipole so that both impedance and axial ratio bandwidths are enhanced. The antenna is center-fed by a 50-Ω coaxial cable and is placed above a cavity-backed reflector to obtain a directional CP radiation pattern. With the advantage of being center-fed, a symmetric CP radiation pattern can be achieved across the entire operating bandwidth. To further improve the directivity and the radiation pattern, a rectangular cavity-backed reflector is used. Simulated and measured results confirm that the proposed antenna has good CP characteristics. The proposed antenna obtains a broad 3-dB axial ratio bandwidth of 49% (1.20 GHz, 1.96–3.16 GHz) and an impedance bandwidth of 67.7% (1.66 GHz, 1.69–3.35 GHz) for reflection coefficient (S11) ≦ −10 dB. It also yields an average CP gain of 9.2 dBic across the operating bandwidth and a peak CP gain of 10 dBic. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Driver yawning detection based on long short term memory networks

This paper proposes an efficient and nonintrusive approach for detecting Driver's Yawn using a single camera based on Long Short Term Memory Networks. Fatigue is a significant cause of accidents since it reduces drivers' capacity of responding to emergency. Because drivers' drowsiness involves several external facial expression including continuous yawns. We propose an system employing Convolutional Neural Networks to extract spatial image features and an Long Short Term Memory Network to Analyze temporal characteristics. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method perform a high accuracy rate more than 87%. These experiments are applied over real video sequences acquired by our angle fixed web camera and the yawning detection dataset.
Panel Data Econometrics

This book, by one of the world's leading experts on dynamic panel data, presents a modern review of some of the main topics in panel data econometrics. The author concentrates on linear models, and emphasizes the roles of heterogeneity and dynamics in panel data modelling. The book combines methods and applications, so will appeal to both the academic and practitioner markets. The book is divided in four parts. Part I concerns static models, and deals with the problem of unobserved heterogeneity and how the availability of panel data helps to solve it, error component models, and error in variables in panel data. Part II looks at time series models with error components. Its chapters deal with the problem of distinguishing between unobserved heterogeneity and individual dynamics in short panels, modelling strategies of time effects, moving average models, inference from covariance structures, the specification and estimation of autoregressive models with heterogeneous intercepts, and the impact of assumptions about initial conditions and heteroskedacity on estimation. Part III examines dynamics and predeterminedness. Its two chapters consider alternative approaches to estimation from small and large T perspectives, looking at models with both strictly exogenous and lagged dependent variables allowing for autocorrelation of unknown form, models in which the errors are mean independent of current and lagged values of certain conditioning variables but not with their future values. Together Parts II and III provide a synthesis, and unified perspective, of a vast literature that has had a significant impact on recent econometric practice. Part IV reviews the main results in the theory of generalized method of moments estimation and optimal instrumental variables.
Experiences Using the RISC-V Ecosystem to Design an Accelerator-Centric SoC in TSMC 16nm

The recent trend towards accelerator-centric architectures has re-newed the need for demonstrating new research ideas in prototype systems with custom chips. Unfortunately, building such research prototypes is tremendously challenging, but the emerging RISC-V open-source software and hardware ecosystem can partly address this challenge by reducing design, implementation, and verification effort. This paper briefly describes the Celerity system-on-chip (SoC), a 5 × 5mm 385M-transistor chip in TSMC 16nm, which uses a tiered parallel accelerator fabric to improve both the performance and energy efficiency of embedded applications. The Celerity SoC includes five RV64G cores, a 496-core RV32IM tiled manycore processor, and a complex BNN (binarized neural network) accelerator implemented as a Rocket custom co-processor (RoCC). We describe our experiences using the RISC-V ecosystem to build Celerity, and highlight both key benefits and challenges in leveraging the RISC-V instruction set, RISC-V software stack, RISC-V processor and memory system generators, RISC-V on-chip network interfaces, RISC-V verification suite, and RISC-V system-level hardware infrastructure. The RISC-V ecosystem
The Festival in My Hometown: The Relationships Among Performance Quality, Satisfaction, and Behavioral Intentions

Despite the high volume of research on festivals in Western cultures and the incredible growth of festivals over recent decades, little empirical research has been conducted on festivals in Thailand, many of which have existed more than 100 years. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the motivations that drive people to attend the Tenth Month Merit-Making Festival (TMMF) in Nakhon Si Thammarat, a province in southern Thailand, what they thought of products and services provided at the festival, what their level of satisfaction was, and whether or not they would recommend the festival to others or attend it again in the future. There were 324 respondents participating in the study. Friend—family togetherness, festival novelty, excitement, and escape were the leading motivations for attending the festival. Respondents were most satisfied with arts and crafts, entertainment, ticket price, displays and exhibitions, and the festival's duration. The activity–culture factor was the best performer. Those who were satisfied with the festival would encourage others to attend the festival, but they might not attend again in the future themselves.
Trade facilitation in South Asia

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to discuss the progress and challenges of South Asia in trade liberalization and facilitation, and to quantitatively demonstrate the potential benefits of trade facilitation in South Asia.Design/methodology/approach – The quantitative study simulates the trade gains to the region based on the gravity model estimation for 101 world countries.Findings – The gains to the region are estimated to be $31 billion in 2007 and $26 billion in 2010 if South Asia and the “rest of the world” raised levels of trade facilitation halfway to the world average. Of those trade gains, about 80 per cent (in 2007) and 67 per cent (in 2010) of the total gains to South Asia will be generated from South Asia's own efforts.Originality/value – Thus this study demonstrates the importance of trade facilitation as an instrument for expansion of trade both within South Asia and with the rest of the world, as well as policy recommendations regarding the priority area for reform.
Comparison of Methods for Combining Case-Control and Family-Based Association Studies

Objectives: Combining the analysis of family-based samples with unrelated individuals can enhance the power of genetic association studies. Various combined analysis techniques have been recently developed; as yet, there have been no comparisons of their power, or robustness to confounding factors. We investigated empirically the power of up to six combined methods using simulated samples of trios and unrelated cases/controls (TDTCC), trios and unrelated controls (TDTC), and affected sibpairs with parents and unrelated cases/controls (ASPFCC). Methods: We simulated multiplicative, dominant and recessive models with varying risk parameters in single samples. Additionally, we studied false-positive rates and investigated, if possible, the coverage of the true genetic effect (TDTCC). Results/Conclusions: Under the TDTCC design, we identified four approaches with equivalent power and false-positive rates. Combined statistics were more powerful than single-sample statistics or a pooled χ2-statistic when risk parameters were similar in single samples. Adding parental information to the CC part of the joint likelihood increased the power of generalised logistic regression under the TDTC but not the TDTCC scenario. Formal testing of differences between risk parameters in subsamples was the most sensitive approach to avoid confounding in combined analysis. Non-parametric analysis based on Monte-Carlo testing showed the highest power for ASPFCC samples.
Improved virus purification processes for vaccines and gene therapy

The downstream processing of virus particles for vaccination or gene therapy is becoming a critical bottleneck as upstream titers keep improving. Moreover, the growing pressure to develop cost‐efficient processes has brought forward new downstream trains. This review aims at analyzing the state‐of‐the‐art in viral downstream purification processes, encompassing the classical unit operations and their recent developments. Emphasis is given to novel strategies for process intensification, such as continuous or semi‐continuous systems based on multicolumn technology, opening up process efficiency. Process understanding in the light of the pharmaceutical quality by design (QbD) initiative is also discussed. Finally, an outlook of the upcoming breakthrough technologies is presented. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2015;112: 843–857. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Employment choice and mobility in multi‐sector labour markets: Theoretical model and evidence from Ghana

Using detailed household survey data on male workers in Ghana, the author tests a theoretical model incorporating capital market failure and labour market segmentation into sectors of (largely formal) wage employment and (largely informal) self-employment and family enterprise employment, in which credit-constrained individuals draw self-employment capital from family assets. The data show very low rates of mobility across the three sectors, the highest mobility being observed among family enterprise workers, and the lowest, among the self-employed. The findings show no robust evidence that wage earnings ease liquidity constraints, while suggesting that both liquidity and skill transferability constraints are important for mobility.
Forgiving-Proof Equilibrium in Infinitely Repeated Games

In repeated games, equilibrium often requires that any deviation be punished in the continuation, regardless of whether it is beneficial to the other players. It seems against the nature of non-cooperative game theory for the other players to decide what to do based on what one player did, rather than on the well-being of themselves. We introduce a new solution concept called a forgiving-proof equilibrium that recommends continuing as if nothing had happened after a player deviates without harming the others. A folk theorem is established to characterize the set of forgiving-proof equilibrium payoffs when players are sufficiently patient. The concept of forgiving-proof equilibrium significantly reduces the set of equilibrium outcomes in many repeated games.
Pro-Poor Growth and Firm Size: Evidence from Vietnam

This article examines the relationship between pro-poor growth and the size distribution of manufacturing enterprises in Vietnam. Analysis focuses on the consequences for both efficiency and equity of the predominance of very large firms in the size distribution, i.e. the “rightward skew”. The evidence suggests that the rightward skew may have adverse consequences for efficiency, but less so for equity.
Traditional Chinese medicine integrated chemotherapy can improve the prognosis of patients with stage III gastric cancer after radical surgery : a retrospective clinical analysis

Synchronous chemotherapy after radical surgery is the primary treatment for stage III gastric cancer. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) plays as a complementary and alternative medicine for the treatment of gastric cancer in China. In this study, 302 stage III gastric cancer cases were retrospectively analyzed to evaluate the effect of TCM combined with synchronous chemotherapy after radical surgery. Of the 302 patients, 170 were included in the integrated group and receiving combined therapy and 132 patients were included in the control group. Survival rates were calculated by Kaplan-Meier method. Karnofsky Performance Status (KPS) score was used to compare the rank sum test between the groups. Factors possibly affecting the survival were assessed by multivariate analysis in the Cox proportional hazard model. The median disease-free survival (DFS) was 29.5 months (95% confidence interval [95% CI], 21.04-37.96) in the integrated group vs 16.6 months (95% CI, 13.08-20.12) in the control group. The median overall survival (OS) was 39.7 months (95% CI, 33.94-45.46) in the integrated group and 25.9 months (95% CI, 22.38-29.42) in the control group. After 6 months of treatment, the KPS scores were significantly improved in the integrated group compared with the control group (81.47±17.70 vs 74.55±20.43). Cox regression analysis revealed that TCM treatment was a protective factor for patients to improve DFS and OS. Current study data demonstrated that TCM integrated chemotherapy may prolong DFS, OS, and improve the quality of life of patients with stage III gastric cancer after radical surgery.
Governance Mechanisms and Equity Prices

We investigate how the market for corporate control (external governance) and shareholder activism (internal governance) interact. A portfolio that buys firms with the highest level of takeover vulnerability and shorts firms with the lowest level of takeover vulnerability generates an annualized abnormal return of 10 - 15% only when public pension fund (blockholder) ownership is high as well. A similar portfolio created to capture the importance of internal governance generates annualized abnormal returns of 8%, though only in the presence of high vulnerability to takeovers. Further, we show that the complementary relation exists for firms with lower industry-adjusted leverage and is stronger for smaller firms. The complementary relation is confirmed using accounting measures of profitability. Using data on acquisitions, firm level Q's and accounting performance, we explore possible interpretations, providing preliminary evidence for a risk effect as well.