Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Deferred Compensation and Gift Exchange: An Experimental Investigation into Multi-Period Labor Markets

This paper examines the relationship between firms’ wage offers and workers’ supply of effort using a three-period experiment. In equilibrium, firms will offer deferred compensation: first period productivity is positive and wages are zero, while third period productivity is zero and wages are positive. The experiment produces strong evidence that deferred compensation increases worker effort; in about 70 percent of cases subjects supplied the optimal effort given the wage offer, and there was a strong effort response to future-period wages. We also find some evidence of gift exchange; worker players increased the effort levels in response to above equilibrium wage offers by a human, but not in response to similar offers by a computer. Finally, we find that firm players who are initially hesitant to defer compensation learn over time that it is beneficial to do so.
InfoVis Experience Enhancement though Mediated Interaction

Information visualization is an experience in which both the aesthetic representations and interaction are part. Such an experience can be augmented through close consideration of its major components. Interaction is crucial to the experience, yet it has seldom been adequately explored in the field. We claim that direct mediated interaction can augment such an experience. This paper discusses the reasons behind such a claim and proposes a mediated interactive manipulation scheme based on the notion of directness. It also describes the ways in which such a claim will be validated. The Literature Knowledge Domain (LKD) is used as the concrete domain around which the discussions will be held.
Combining Enumerative and Symbolic - Techniques for Diagnosis of Discrete-Event Systems

In this paper, an efficient approach to verify diagnosability of discrete-event systems is proposed. The approach consists in constructing a hybrid diagnoser based on the symbolic observation graph (SOG), which is a technique that combines symbolic and enumerative representations in order to build a deterministic observer from a partially observed model. The construction of the diagnoser as well as the verification of diagnosability are performed simultaneously on-the-fly, which can considerably reduce the generated state space of the diagnoser and thus the overall running time. Furthermore, the proposed approach provides a heuristic strategy in order to converge fast into the necessary part, of the diagnoser, for analysing diagnosability.
working paper 1998 / 1

While some efforts have been made to elevate the role of the 4Ps in consumer marketing, this paper employs the network theory and aims to investigate consumer perception using the incident of the “mad cow disease. " Contrary to other studies that observe the role of media as a means to support market activities, this paper considers media and its influence on consumer perception from a different angle. It studies how variations in intensity of negative news released by the media influence the consumer. This is done by two surveys conducted during two periods of time one when media discussed the incident intensively and then again three months later, examining the permanency of the perception change. The defined network for this study is a set of loosely interconnected entities of the international market consumers, vendors, national and international media, governments, and specialists in different countries, and public opinion. This paper attempts to expand and enrich the already known set of ideas about consumer-environment interaction and add more knowledge about the use of network models for consumer marketing.
Effect of the Heterogeneity on Sorptivity in Sandstones with High and Low Permeability in Water Imbibition Process

Capillary imbibition in unsaturated rocks is important for the exploitation of tight reservoirs, such as oil and gas reservoirs. However, the physical properties of natural rocks tend to be relatively uneven, mainly in the heterogeneity of material composition and pore space. Reservoir heterogeneity is an important factor affecting the exploitation of oil fields and other reservoirs, which can be evaluated by the pore structure tortuosity fractal dimension DT of rock. The greater the value of DT, the stronger the heterogeneity of sandstone. Two types of sandstone with high and low permeability were selected to study the effect of heterogeneity on the imbibition behavior by using high-resolution X-ray imaging and neutron radiography. Quantitative results of the wetting front position for each specimen were extracted from the neutron images. The wetting front advanced linearly with the power index of time t1/(2DT). Different values of DT were selected to estimate and discuss the effect of the heterogeneity on sorptivity. A modified L-W equation was employed to predict the sorptivity. Comparing with the experimental results, the heterogeneity plays a significant role in determining the sorptivity. The modified model provides a reference for the prediction of the sorptivity of the same types of sandstones studied in this paper.
MARKETING OF FOREST PRODUCTS IN A CHANGING WORLD*

Marketing in the forest sector has evolved, responding to new challenges in the business environment. Marketing philosophies have changed from production oriented to marketing oriented and a new era is beginning: responsible forest industry — responsible marketing. Since the 1950s the customer has been the driving force behind marketing thinking. Recently research and theory development have focused on the resources and capabilities needed to satisfy customers and to manage in a highly competitive environment. New paradigms (e.g., key account management) have emerged to manage customer relationships and to build value propositions. The challenge of forest products marketing is to combine the resourceand capability-based view with the customer relationship and value proposition view. Research work targeted to new business models aims at this combination. Future success demands that companies be capable of “doing the right thing”, “doing things right”, and “identifying and using the best available tools”. By doing the right thing we refer to social and environmental responsibility. Doing things right means choosing the appropriate approach to a problem (e.g., concentrating on customer relationships and/or company resources and capabilities). Using the best tools available means, for example, embracing new technologies for better marketing information and planning systems.
Influenza Virus Vaccine Based on the Conserved Hemagglutinin Stalk Domain

ABSTRACT Although highly effective in the general population when well matched to circulating influenza virus strains, current influenza vaccines are limited in their utility due to the narrow breadth of protection they provide. The strain specificity of vaccines presently in use mirrors the exquisite specificity of the neutralizing antibodies that they induce, that is, antibodies which bind to the highly variable globular head domain of hemagglutinin (HA). Herein, we describe the construction of a novel immunogen comprising the conserved influenza HA stalk domain and lacking the globular head. Vaccination of mice with this headless HA construct elicited immune sera with broader reactivity than those obtained from mice immunized with a full-length HA. Furthermore, the headless HA vaccine provided full protection against death and partial protection against disease following lethal viral challenge. Our results suggest that the response induced by headless HA vaccines is sufficiently potent to warrant their further development toward a universal influenza virus vaccine. IMPORTANCE Current influenza vaccines are effective against only a narrow range of influenza virus strains. It is for this reason that new vaccines must be generated and administered each year. We now report progress toward the goal of an influenza virus vaccine which would protect against multiple strains. Our approach is based on presentation to the host immune system of a region of the influenza virus—called a “headless hemagglutinin” (headless HA)—which is similar among a multitude of diverse strains. We show that vaccination of mice with a headless HA confers protection to these animals against a lethal influenza virus challenge, thereby demonstrating the viability of the approach. Through further development and testing, we predict that a single immunization with a headless HA vaccine will offer effective protection through several influenza epidemics. Current influenza vaccines are effective against only a narrow range of influenza virus strains. It is for this reason that new vaccines must be generated and administered each year. We now report progress toward the goal of an influenza virus vaccine which would protect against multiple strains. Our approach is based on presentation to the host immune system of a region of the influenza virus—called a “headless hemagglutinin” (headless HA)—which is similar among a multitude of diverse strains. We show that vaccination of mice with a headless HA confers protection to these animals against a lethal influenza virus challenge, thereby demonstrating the viability of the approach. Through further development and testing, we predict that a single immunization with a headless HA vaccine will offer effective protection through several influenza epidemics.
An Improved Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm for Image Matching

Image matching is widely applied in the areas of pattern recognition, computer vision, medicine, remote sensing, aircraft navigation and movement tracking. In this paper, an improved particle swarm optimization algorithm based on variable swarm population size and mutual information as similarity measure function is proposed for image matching. The aim is to enhance the overall performance of image matching. The proposed scheme adjusts the population size in terms of the diversity of the population. The algorithm presented is compared with the exhaustive search based on mutual information, and Standard PSO. Remote sensing images captured by different sensors with different resolutions are as testing data. It is proved that the algorithm the paper suggested is effective for image matching.
Bug Driven Bug Finders

We describe a method of creating tools to find bugs in software that is driven by the analysis of previously fixed bugs. We present a study of bug databases and software repositories that characterize commonly occurring types of bugs. Based on the types of bugs that were commonly reported and fixed in the code, we determine what types of bug finding tools should be developed. We have implemented one static checker, a return value usage checker. Novel features of this checker include the use of information from the software repository to try to improve its false positive rate by identifying patterns that have resulted in previous bug fixes.
Dental contour extraction using window empirical mode decomposition

Medical images with fuzzy and non-uniform characteristics make it difficult to accurately extract target contour, aiming at this problem, an improved method is proposed to detect the dental contour of a single-teeth X-ray film segmented from a bitewing radiograph. Three necessary steps are to be performed, the first of which is to enhance the contrast of the medical X-ray image based on human visual properties after denoised with morphology open-close filter, the second to get the first intrinsic mode function from the empirical mode decomposition with a square-adaptive sliding window of the enhanced image, and the third to detect and threshold the edge of the intrinsic mode function. Some results of experiments have confirmed the efficiency of our proposed method.
Illumination normalization of face images with cast shadows

We propose a method for extracting and combining small-scale and large-scale illumination insensitive features for face recognition that can work even in the presence of cast shadows. Although several methods have been proposed to extract such features, they are not designed to handle severe lighting variation on a face and thus fail to work if cast shadows are present. In this paper, we extend quotient image-based illumination normalization by explicitly taking cast shadows into account so that illumination insensitive large-scale features can be obtained. The experimental results show that the proposed method achieves favorable normalization results under difficult illuminations with cast shadows.
Value Preserving State-Action Abstractions

Abstraction can improve the sample efficiency of reinforcement learning. However, the process of abstraction inherently discards information, potentially compromising an agent’s ability to represent high-value policies. To mitigate this, we here introduce combinations of state abstractions and options that are guaranteed to preserve the representation of near-optimal policies. We first define φ-relative options, a general formalism for analyzing the value loss of options paired with a state abstraction, and present necessary and sufficient conditions for φ-relative options to preserve near-optimal behavior in any finite Markov Decision Process. We further show that, under appropriate assumptions, φ-relative options can be composed to induce hierarchical abstractions that are also guaranteed to represent high-value policies.ion can improve the sample efficiency of reinforcement learning. However, the process of abstraction inherently discards information, potentially compromising an agent’s ability to represent high-value policies. To mitigate this, we here introduce combinations of state abstractions and options that are guaranteed to preserve the representation of near-optimal policies. We first define φ-relative options, a general formalism for analyzing the value loss of options paired with a state abstraction, and present necessary and sufficient conditions for φ-relative options to preserve near-optimal behavior in any finite Markov Decision Process. We further show that, under appropriate assumptions, φ-relative options can be composed to induce hierarchical abstractions that are also guaranteed to represent high-value policies.
Inequality Maximum Entropy Classifier with Character Features for Polyphone Disambiguation in Mandarin TTS Systems

Grapheme-to-phoneme (G2P) conversion is an important component in TTS systems. The difficulty in Chinese G2P conversion is to disambiguate the polyphones. In this paper, we formulate the polyphone disambiguation problem into a classification problem and propose a language independent classifier based on maximum entropy to address the issue. Furthermore, we introduce inequality smoothing to alleviate data sparseness and exploit language independent character features as linguistic knowledge. Experimental results show that the character features perform as well as the language dependent features such as words and part-of-speech, compared with the widely-used Gaussian smoothing, the inequality smoothing can greatly reduce the active features used in the classifier and achieve better performance. Our classifier achieves 96.35% in term of overall accuracy, greatly superior to 81.22% by using high-frequent "pin-yin"(Romanization of Chinese phoneme). Finally, we explore to merge all key polyphones into 6 groups and find that the overall accuracy only decreases about 2% and the active features are reduced more than 33% further.
Predictive Modelling to Identify Near-Shore, Fine-Scale Seabird Distributions during the Breeding Season

During the breeding season seabirds are constrained to coastal areas and are restricted in their movements, spending much of their time in near-shore waters either loafing or foraging. However, in using these areas they may be threatened by anthropogenic activities such as fishing, watersports and coastal developments including marine renewable energy installations. Although many studies describe large scale interactions between seabirds and the environment, the drivers behind near-shore, fine-scale distributions are not well understood. For example, Alderney is an important breeding ground for many species of seabird and has a diversity of human uses of the marine environment, thus providing an ideal location to investigate the near-shore fine-scale interactions between seabirds and the environment. We used vantage point observations of seabird distribution, collected during the 2013 breeding season in order to identify and quantify some of the environmental variables affecting the near-shore, fine-scale distribution of seabirds in Alderney’s coastal waters. We validate the models with observation data collected in 2014 and show that water depth, distance to the intertidal zone, and distance to the nearest seabird nest are key predictors in the distribution of Alderney’s seabirds. AUC values for each species suggest that these models perform well, although the model for shags performed better than those for auks and gulls. While further unexplained underlying localised variation in the environmental conditions will undoubtedly effect the fine-scale distribution of seabirds in near-shore waters we demonstrate the potential of this approach in marine planning and decision making.
Policy-Based Behavior Control

Currently, most security models focus on different control objects or restrict conditions, and this method loses generality. One example is RBAC, which only controls access behavior. It is the specialty that restrains model from being used widely. RBAC can only be used in application related to access control. Why do we not take general behavior as control object? Policy-based security technology can manage behavior uniformly. If we can use the general behavior as control object, and combine with policy-based technology, great progress will be got. This paper proposes a Policy-based Behavior Control model (PBBC). PBBC controls system with general behavior. And the property of the behavior is described with variable. Hence the restriction of the behavior is also general and more comprehensive than the exiting models. Furthermore, based on policy, PBBC separates application logic, control logic and security policy from each other, which makes it more flexible and is easy to be realized. In this paper, we provide the description of PBBC and its design method. An application sample of PBBC is also provided.
Breast Cancer Risk and 6 q 22 . 33 : Combined Results from Breast Cancer Association Consortium and Consortium of Investigators on Modifiers of BRCA 1 / 2

Recently, a locus on chromosome 6q22.33 (rs2180341) was reported to be associated with increased breast cancer risk in the Ashkenazi Jewish (AJ) population, and this association was also observed in populations of non-AJ European ancestry. In the present study, we performed a large replication analysis of rs2180341 using data from 31,428 invasive breast cancer cases and 34,700 controls collected from 25 studies in the Breast Cancer Association Consortium (BCAC). In addition, we evaluated whether rs2180341 modifies breast cancer risk in 3,361 BRCA1 and 2,020 BRCA2 carriers from 11 centers in the Consortium of Investigators of Modifiers of BRCA1/2 (CIMBA). Based on the BCAC data from women of European ancestry, we found evidence for a weak association with breast cancer risk for rs2180341 (per-allele odds ratio (OR) = 1.03, 95% CI 1.00–1.06, p = 0.023). There was evidence for heterogeneity in the ORs among studies (I = 49.3%; p = ,0.004). In CIMBA, we observed an inverse association with the minor allele of rs2180341 and breast cancer risk in BRCA1 mutation carriers (perallele OR = 0.89, 95%CI 0.80–1.00, p = 0.048), indicating a potential protective effect of this allele. These data suggest that that 6q22.33 confers a weak effect on breast cancer risk. Citation: Kirchhoff T, Gaudet MM, Antoniou AC, McGuffog L, Humphreys MK, et al. (2012) Breast Cancer Risk and 6q22.33: Combined Results from Breast Cancer Association Consortium and Consortium of Investigators on Modifiers of BRCA1/2. PLoS ONE 7(6): e35706. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0035706 Editor: Ludmila Prokunina-Olsson, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, United States of America Received November 16, 2011; Accepted March 20, 2012; Published June 29, 2012 Copyright: 2012 Kirchhoff et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: Due to the international scale of the collaboration, which included two large consortia, each a consortium of consortia, and a large number of funding sources for each participating center, the description of sources of funding for the study is detailed in Supporting Information, Funding S1. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: offitk@mskcc.org . These authors contributed equally to this work. 6q22.33 Association in BCAC and CIMBA Consortia PLoS ONE | www.plosone. org 2 June 2012 | Volume 7 | Issue 6 | e35706
On the Use of Decision Trees as Behavioral Approaches in Intrusion Detection

Decision trees are well known and efficient classifiers widely used as behavioral approaches. However, most works pointed out their inefficiency in detecting novel attacks. In this paper, we address the inadequacy of decision trees for behavioral anomaly detection. We first explain why decision trees fail in detecting most of novel attacks. In particular, we provide experimental results showing that minimum description length (MDL) principle used while inducing decision trees is among the main reasons in their failure in detecting novel attacks. Then we propose relaxing MDL principle in order to build compatible decision trees more suitable for novel behavior detection. The strategy of relaxing MDL principle is to exploit additional tests/features in order to discriminate between normal behaviors and intrusive ones while standard decision trees only rely on minimum subset of tests/features. Experimental studies, carried out on real and recent http traffic and several Web attacks, show the significant improvements that can be made by relaxed MDL decision trees.
Mid-infrared spectral evolution of thermally annealed amorphous pyroxene

Ground and space born spectroscopic observations have shown that crystalline Mg-rich silicates are among the main components of cometary grains. We have produced amor- phous Mg-rich pyroxene particles by laser evaporation of natural mineral. Thermal annealing of the material has been performed at 800 and 1000 C for different time lags. Composition and morphological properties of the samples have been character- ized. Mid-infrared spectroscopy has been used to monitor the structural evolution with annealing from amorphous to crys- talline phase. The activation temperature of the amorphous to crystalline transition derived from our measurements is about 47,500 K. This result suggests that crystalline silicates, observed in comets, may have been produced by long term exposure of the amorphous grains to temperature higher than 770 K during the pre-cometary phase.