Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Global Social Media Usage: Insights Into Reaching Consumers Worldwide

This study documents global social media usage patterns based on a large-scale survey of 4,630 social media users around the world. The study provides insights into how users in the European Union, United States, and BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) regions use social media for business and personal use. It analyzes variability in global social media platforms being used in these different world regions. The study also presents insights into usage of multilingual content for global social media consumption and the global user propensity to translate social media. Finally, the paper showcases an innovative technology solution to help companies leverage machine and human translation to enable users to translate social media content. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
How do mobile-voice operators compete? IVQR estimates

This article proposes a novel procedure to test whether firms compete à la Cournot or perfectly collude when firms' conduct is allowed to be heterogeneous along the conditional distribution of price–cost margins. We apply the procedure to a panel of quarterly data for 177 mobile-voice operators in 45 countries from 1999:1 to 2004:2. Particularly, we find that the hypothesis of perfect collusion can be rejected even for very high-margin operators while the hypothesis that very low-margin operators compete à la Cournot cannot be rejected.
A Visual Based Group Decision‐Making Process for Layout Finalisation of Large Offices

A visual based group decision‐making process used for office layout finalisation is described. While quantitative and computer based models can be used for planning alternative layout plans, considerations of qualitative and personal factors should be given during the layout finalisation phase. The visual evaluation of detailed architectural drawings of alternative layout plans, by a group of the office employees, can result in generating ideas for modifications. These modifications are incorporated in a new plan, which is sketched by a professional office planner. The process of evaluating a sketch for the office plan, generating‐ideas for modifications, analysing the ideas and re‐sketching the office plan results in an effective office layout. This can increase employee morale and productivity. The visual based group decision‐making process was successfully used for layout finalisation of a large engineering office. A detailed description of this case study is given.
Volatility Spillovers between the US and China Stock Markets: Structural Break Test with Symmetric and Asymmetric GARCH Approaches

Abstract The paper examines the short-run spillover effects of daily stock returns and volatilities between the Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500 stock index in the US and the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) index in China. First, we find that a structural break occurred in the SSE stock return mean in December 2005. Second, by analyzing modified general autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH)(1,1)-M models, we find evidence of a symmetric and asymmetric volatility spillover effect from the US to the China stock market in the post-break period. Third, we observe the symmetric volatility spillover effect from China to the US in the post-break period.
Does participation in the conservation reserve program impact the economic well‐being of farm households?

This study uses U.S. farm household survey data to examine how participation in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) affects farm household economic well-being. Further, the study also examines the effects of CRP participation on farm household consumption, income, and imputed savings. In contrast to previous studies that assume the relationships are homogenous across the population, quantile regression is used to investigate the association between CRP participation across the entire distribution of farm household consumption and income. Empirical findings suggest that the effect of CRP participation on household economic well-being differs across the income and consumption distribution. For households in the lower percentiles of the distribution, the CRP participation is associated with an increase in household consumption, but a decrease in farm household income and savings. In contrast, farm households at the median and higher income and consumption quantiles, participation in CRP is associated with lower levels of household consumption and income, but with higher levels of savings. Copyright 2008 International Association of Agricultural Economists.
Heregulin and HER3 are prognostic biomarkers in oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma

Although heregulin and human epidermal growth factor receptor 3 (HER3) are frequently expressed at high levels in patients with head and neck cancer, their prognostic value remains unclear. The authors explored the prognostic significance of heregulin/HER3 expression in patients with oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC), taking into account other HER family members as well as p16 status.
Cyber security issues for Advanced Metering Infrasttructure (AMI)

Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) is becoming of increasing interest to many stakeholders, including utilities, regulators, energy markets, and a society concerned about conserving energy and responding to global warming. AMI technologies, rapidly overtaking the earlier Automated Meter Reading (AMR) technologies, are being developed by many vendors, with portions being developed by metering manufacturers, communications providers, and back-office Meter Data Management (MDM) IT vendors. In this flurry of excitement, very little effort has yet been focused on the cyber security of AMI systems. The comment usually is "Oh yes, we will encrypt everything - that will make everything secure. " That comment indicates unawareness of possible security threats of AMI - a technology that will reach into a large majority of residences and virtually all commercial and industrial customers. What if, for instance, remote connect/disconnect were included as one AMI capability - a function of great interest to many utilities as it avoids truck rolls. What if a smart kid hacker in his basement cracked the security of his AMI system, and sent out 5 million disconnect commands to all customer meters on the AMI system.
Novel Tire Force Estimation Strategy for Real-Time Implementation on Vehicle Applications

This paper proposes a novel unified structure to estimate tire forces. The proposed structure uses estimation modules to calculate/estimate tire forces by means of nonlinear observers. The novelty in the proposed approach lies in the independence of the estimates from the vehicle tire model, thereby making the structure robust against variations in vehicle mass, tire parameters due to tire wear, and, most importantly, road surface conditions. In the proposed structure, we have a dedicated module to estimate the longitudinal tire forces and another to calculate the vertical tire forces. Subsequently, these forces are fed into a third module that utilizes a nonlinear observer to estimate lateral tire forces. The proposed structure is validated through experimental studies.
Robust wireless transmission utilizing PPDU-based aggregation technique for next generation wireless LANs

In this paper, we propose a robust transmission scheme using aggregated physical protocol data units (APPDU). The proposed method includes a media access control (MAC) layer control for determining the number of preambles to be inserted based on the feed-back reply signal from a receiver; the generation of a multi-preamble aggregation frame by inserting the determined number of preambles into frames received from an upper layer; a physical layer for forming the multi-preamble aggregation frame generated in a data processing unit by using a physical layer frame; and the transmission of the formed multi-preamble aggregation frame. The proposed technique obtains performance improvement of about 3 dB in terms of SNR and 35% in terms of throughput efficiency.
Long-Run Determinants of the Brazilian Real: A Closer Look at Commodities

ABSTRACT We use cointegration analysis to show that the long‐run behaviour of the Brazilian Real effective exchange rate between January 1999 and September 2012 can largely be explained by the price variation of a basket of five commodities—that accounted for 51% of Brazilian export revenues in 2011. We estimate that a 10% variation in the real price of these five commodities moves the fundamental long‐run real exchange rate by almost 5%. Changes in interest rate differentials do not explain short or long term movements in the exchange rate during this period. Furthermore, we find that deviations of the real effective exchange rate from the long run equilibrium level have an estimated half‐life of approximately 8 months. The growing exports of oil and fuel and of iron ores, as well as the important oil discoveries in the pre‐salt layer, suggest that commodity prices will continue to influence the value of the Real in the future. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
NTP-PoCT: a conformance test tool for push-to-talk over cellular network

This paper describes a conformance test tool for push-to-talk over cellular network developed on an Open Mobile Alliance Service Interoperability Test Platform. Based on the TTCN-3 specifications, we show how PoC test cases can be efficiently implemented on the test platform. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Assessing the Need for Referral in Automatic Diabetic Retinopathy Detection

Emerging technologies in health care aim at reducing unnecessary visits to medical specialists, minimizing overall cost of treatment and optimizing the number of patients seen by each doctor. This paper explores image recognition for the screening of diabetic retinopathy, a complication of diabetes that can lead to blindness if not discovered in its initial stages. Many previous reports on DR imaging focus on the segmentation of the retinal image, on quality assessment, and on the analysis of presence of DR-related lesions. Although this study has advanced the detection of individual DR lesions from retinal images, the simple presence of any lesion is not enough to decide on the need for referral of a patient. Deciding if a patient should be referred to a doctor is an essential requirement for the deployment of an automated screening tool for rural and remote communities. We introduce an algorithm to make that decision based on the fusion of results by metaclassification. The input of the metaclassifier is the output of several lesion detectors, creating a powerful high-level feature representation for the retinal images. We explore alternatives for the bag-of-visual-words (BoVW)-based lesion detectors, which critically depends on the choices of coding and pooling the low-level local descriptors. The final classification approach achieved an area under the curve of 93.4% using SOFT-MAX BoVW (soft-assignment coding/max pooling), without the need of normalizing the high-level feature vector of scores.
JAK2 exon 12 mutations in polycythemia vera and idiopathic erythrocytosis.

BACKGROUND The V617F mutation, which causes the substitution of phenylalanine for valine at position 617 of the Janus kinase (JAK) 2 gene (JAK2), is often present in patients with polycythemia vera, essential thrombocythemia, and idiopathic myelofibrosis. However, the molecular basis of these myeloproliferative disorders in patients without the V617F mutation is unclear. METHODS We searched for new mutations in members of the JAK and signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) gene families in patients with V617F-negative polycythemia vera or idiopathic erythrocytosis. The mutations were characterized biochemically and in a murine model of bone marrow transplantation. RESULTS We identified four somatic gain-of-function mutations affecting JAK2 exon 12 in 10 V617F-negative patients. Those with a JAK2 exon 12 mutation presented with an isolated erythrocytosis and distinctive bone marrow morphology, and several also had reduced serum erythropoietin levels. Erythroid colonies could be grown from their blood samples in the absence of exogenous erythropoietin. All such erythroid colonies were heterozygous for the mutation, whereas colonies homozygous for the mutation occur in most patients with V617F-positive polycythemia vera. BaF3 cells expressing the murine erythropoietin receptor and also carrying exon 12 mutations could proliferate without added interleukin-3. They also exhibited increased phosphorylation of JAK2 and extracellular regulated kinase 1 and 2, as compared with cells transduced by wild-type JAK2 or V617F JAK2. Three of the exon 12 mutations included a substitution of leucine for lysine at position 539 of JAK2. This mutation resulted in a myeloproliferative phenotype, including erythrocytosis, in a murine model of retroviral bone marrow transplantation. CONCLUSIONS JAK2 exon 12 mutations define a distinctive myeloproliferative syndrome that affects patients who currently receive a diagnosis of polycythemia vera or idiopathic erythrocytosis.
A Classification Approach to Identify Definitions in Aviation Domain

In this paper, we introduce a classification approach to identify definitions of all terms from a aviation professional corpus. The corpora of aviation domain are firstly segmented by LTP platform from HIT. Then four feature selection methods and two classifiers are applied to extract definitions. First of all, we summarize the correct proportion of feature subset used in classification of term definitions, and secondly argue that the naive bayes classifier combined with CHI or ODDS for feature selection achieve the best score in the F1-measure and F2-measure. In the end, we recognize that the use of SVM classifier with linear kernel could achieve very high precision, but the worst recall.
Recurrence and survival after random assignment to laparoscopy versus laparotomy for comprehensive surgical staging of uterine cancer: Gynecologic Oncology Group LAP2 Study.

PURPOSE The primary objective was to establish noninferiority of laparoscopy compared with laparotomy for recurrence after surgical staging of uterine cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS Patients with clinical stages I to IIA disease were randomly allocated (two to one) to laparoscopy (n = 1,696) versus laparotomy (n = 920) for hysterectomy, salpingo-oophorectomy, pelvic cytology, and pelvic and para-aortic lymphadenectomy. The primary study end point was noninferiority of recurrence-free interval defined as no more than a 40% increase in the risk of recurrence with laparoscopy compared with laparotomy. RESULTS With a median follow-up time of 59 months for 2,181 patients still alive, there were 309 recurrences (210 laparoscopy; 99 laparotomy) and 350 deaths (229 laparoscopy; 121 laparotomy). The estimated hazard ratio for laparoscopy relative to laparotomy was 1.14 (90% lower bound, 0.92; 95% upper bound, 1.46), falling short of the protocol-specified definition of noninferiority. However, the actual recurrence rates were substantially lower than anticipated, resulting in an estimated 3-year recurrence rate of 11.4% with laparoscopy and 10.2% with laparotomy, or a difference of 1.14% (90% lower bound, -1.28; 95% upper bound, 4.0). The estimated 5-year overall survival was almost identical in both arms at 89.8%. CONCLUSION This study previously reported that laparoscopic surgical management of uterine cancer is superior for short-term safety and length-of-stay end points. The potential for increased risk of cancer recurrence with laparoscopy versus laparotomy was quantified and found to be small, providing accurate information for decision making for women with uterine cancer.
Inflation news in Australia: its effects on exchange rates and interest rates

This paper investigates the effects of the Australian quarterly inflation news on $A exchange rates and interest rates for the period June Quarter 1984/85 to December Quarter 1992193. The results indicate that the Australian dollar depreciated and interest rates rose as a result of an announcement of a higher than expected Consumer Price Index inflation before April 1988, and the dollar appreciated and interest rates rose thereafter. This difference in market response to the news is due to the different market perceptions regarding the role of monetary policy by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA). Prior to April 1988, an unexpected inflation caused markets to expect further future inflation and caused a rise in the risk premium on domestic assets. Post April 1988, an unexpected inflation was regarded as a signal for an impending tight monetary response by the RBA. The evidence is consistent with the belief that market participants had the Portfolio Balance Model of exchange rate determination in mind when they responded to the inflation news.
The diffusion of activity-based costing in Jordanian industrial companies

Purpose - This paper seeks to focus on the diffusion of activity-based costing (ABC) in Jordan. A conceptual framework from general diffusion theory is adopted to describe the diffusion process within the Jordanian industrial sector. The main objective of the study is to determine the motivations for the implementation or non-implementation of ABC. Design/methodology/approach - Semi-structured interviews were conducted with financial managers and heads of costing departments of companies within the Jordanian industrial sector. Both face-to-face and telephone interviews were used to achieve the research objective. Findings - It was found that the rate of implementation of ABC in the Jordanian industrial sector follows the classical S-shape. It is also suggested that the supply side of the diffusion process, most notably the role played by consultants, was an influence on many companies. This was not, however, a sufficient condition for companies to implement ABC. Originality/value - Most previous studies focus on the implementation of ABC in Western developed countries. The results of this study make a contribution to existing knowledge in the area of the implementation of ABC, especially in Eastern developing countries such as Jordan. In addition, this research adds further evidence to the value of studying management accounting, and more specifically changes in management accounting practice. It describes the developments undertaken in the implementation of a new system and how a new system becomes accepted in practice.
Charge transport properties in CZT detectors grown by the vertical bridgman technique

Great efforts are being presently devoted to the development of CdTe and CdZnTe detectors for a large variety of applications, such as medical, industrial, and space research. We present the spectroscopic properties of some CZT crystals grown by the standard vertical Bridgman method and by the boron oxide encapsulated vertical Bridgman method, which has been recently implemented at IMEM-CNR (Parma, Italy). By this technique the crystal is grown in an open quartz crucible fully encapsulated by a thin layer of liquid boron oxide. This method prevents contact between the crystal and the crucible thereby allowing larger single grains with a lower dislocation density to be obtained. Several mono-electrode detectors were realized each with two planar gold contacts. The samples are characterized by an active area of about 7 mm × 7 mm and thicknesses ranging from 1 to 2 mm. The charge transport properties of the detectors have been studied by mobility-lifetime (μt) product measurements, carried out at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (Grenoble) in the PTF configuration, where the impinging beam direction is orthogonal to the collecting electric field. We have performed several fine scans between the electrodes with a beam spot of 10 μm × 10 μm at various energies from 60 keV to 400 keV. In this work we present the test results in terms of μt product of both charge carriers.
Bargains and Ripoffs: A Model of Monopolistically Competitive Price Dispersion

Bargains and Ripoffs: A Model of Monopolistically Competitive Price DispersionAuthor(s): Steven Salop and Joseph StiglitzSource: The Review of Economic Studies, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Oct., 1977), pp. 493-510Published by: The Review of Economic Studies Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor. org/stable/2296903Accessed: 15/09/2009 15:43
A Simple Metric for Gauging Risk Aversion

The underlying rationale for insurance purchases and other forms of risk management is aversion to risk, yet the measurement of risk aversion has been inappropriately focused on risks of little or no consequence. The present paper demonstrates that a quantitative measure of large-scale risk aversion can be constructed with elementary mathematics, facilitating the solution of numerical problems. We illustrate its use with hypothetical examples and empirical survey data.
HOW ARE THE SECTOR INDEXES ARE RELATED TO ISE 100 INDEX: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY ON ISTANBUL STOCK EXCHANGE

In Turkey, general perception of the economic welfare is associated with high values of Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) 100 index. Similarly a sector's welfare can be related with associated sector index of ISE. However, sector indexes may respond differently to changes in the economy. The responses may differ in terms of amplitude, duration and impact. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationships between different indexes belonging to ISE. The analysis is based on econometric methods to examine the contemporaneous behaviors of ISE 100 index and sector indexes and their relations.
Auxin Inhibits the Outgrowth of Tiller Buds in Rice (Oryza sativa L.) by Downregulating Osipt Expression and Cytokinin Biosynthesis in Nodes

Auxin and cytokinin (CTK) play important roles in regulating the growth of rice tiller buds. Auxins inhibit bud growth and CTK, which are regulated by auxins, promote growth. However, little is known about the underlying molecular mechanisms. Here, we studied auxin/CTK regulation in Nanjing 44 rice, a japonica cultivar. After full heading, we cut off the roots and removed the panicles. The tiller buds grew rapidly after panicle removal; significantly elevated CTK levels were found in tiller buds and nodes preceding bud growth. However, external application of the auxin indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) inhibited the growth of tiller buds and reversed the increase of CTK levels in tiller buds and nodes induced by panicle removal. According to previous studies, the rice gene adenosine phosphate isopentenyltransferase (OsIPT) encodes a key enzyme in CTK biosynthesis. To determine the site of CTK synthesis involved in bud growth, we examined the expression pattern of OsIPT in tiller buds and nodes. Our results demonstrated that tiller bud growth is not regulated by CTK derived from roots; rather, CTK is biosynthesised mainly in the nodes and subsequently delivered to tiller buds. Auxin negatively regulates the expression of OsIPT and the biosynthesis of CTK in nodes, thus inhibiting the growth of tiller buds in rice.