Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Basic Foundation for Unravelling Quantity Discounts : Gaining more Insight into Supplier Cost Mechanisms

Selling organizations often offer quantity discounts schedules, but do not provide the underlying Quantity Discount Price Functions (QDPF). In literature an analysis on how QDPF could be derived from discount schedules is lacking. This is remarkable as QDPF contain useful information for buying organizations. QDPF give more insight into the fixed and variable costs of selling organizations and can be a useful tool for buying organizations in selecting and negotiating processes. Furthermore, QDPF can be used for calculating and allocating price savings in group purchasing and multiple sourcing decisions. In this paper we develop one general QDPF and two related measures for negotiating spaces. We prove that our QDPF gives a highly reliable approximation of 66 quantity discount schedules of different selling organizations. Finally, we compare the QDPF parameters of the 66 schedules and discuss their basic properties.
Precision full-wave current-mode rectifier using current differencing transconductance amplifier

In this paper new high performance current-mode precision full-wave rectifier using the current differencing transconductance amplifier (CDTA) is presented. To analyze the behavior of the proposed rectifier, the frequency-dependent RMS error and DC transient value are evaluated for different values of input current amplitudes. The SPICE simulations are also included that show the feasibility to rectify signals of frequency 10 MHz and beyond with no or minimal distortion.
Examining the Pipeline: People of Color's Pathway to Headship

Predictions indicate that a large majority of the heads of independent schools in the United States will retire within the next decade. Although there is a push for a greater representation of people of color in this position, in order for people of color to be considered, it seems that they are held to a higher standard than their white counterparts. The data from this study show that there is a significant statistical difference in the percentage of recently appointed heads of color who are alumni of independent schools, as well as those who have held a senior-level position. Furthermore, a greater percentage of heads of school of color than of heads of school who are white are alumni of selective graduate schools or hold a terminal degree. Last, heads of color reported that they found it important, yet difficult, to develop relationships with the educational search firms who often serve as the gatekeepers to these highly coveted positions. The results of this study, although they call for changes which will be daunting to make, give independent schools the necessary framework to move beyond the criteria and approaches currently used to identify viable head-of-school candidates.
Competing for the Attention of Decision Makers

A decision maker (DM) prefers to allocate a limited number of prizes to the highest-quality agents. She can learn about quality by reviewing some agents before awarding prizes. We introduce “Contests for Attention,” where agents make payments in competition for the DMs' limited attention. In equilibrium, the DM learns about agent quality directly through the review process and indirectly by observing contest payments. She becomes informed about the quality of all agents, even though she only reviews some of them. The analysis characterizes the set of full-information contests, including the payment-maximizing contest, and discusses implications for political lobbying.
Adapting to the driving context in congestion control for vehicular networks

Vehicular safety applications require reliable reception of basic safety messages (BSMs), which are broadcast from their neighbours. These messages contain position, mobility, and other information about the vehicle state critical for the operation of envisioned safety-enhancing applications. The scalability of future vehicular networks depend on a suitable congestion control method to handle instances where high node density results in excessive load on the shared control channel, degrading network performance and reducing the safety level of vehicles. When network congestion is detected, these algorithms reduce the offered load by adapting transmission parameters such as the rate and the power. Early works aimed for a fair distribution of network resources in their adaptation of transmission parameters. More recent works recognized that different driving contexts may warrant preferential allocation of resources to nodes in more potential danger. However, existing methods allow users to relate the driving context to a corresponding share of the network resource, rather than a certain quality of service (QoS) level. In this work, we propose a method of representing the driving context as a maximum delay profile. A probabilistic bound on the violation of this delay profile form a QoS requirement between neighbouring nodes. We propose a simple way to incorporate these constraints into an additive-increase multiplicative-decrease congestion control algorithm, which requires minimal amount of packet header overhead. We study its performance by comparing it with a recent AIMD algorithm through simulations and demonstrate its improved fairness in terms of constraint satisfaction probability.
Neural Network Assisted Identification of the Absence of Direct Path in Indoor Localization

Time of Arrival (TOA) based indoor positioning systems are considered to be the high precision alternatives to other positioning systems employing received signal strength (RSS) or Angle of Arrival (AOA). However, such systems suffer from the blockage of the direct path (DP) and occurrence of undetected direct path (UDP) condition and their performance degrades drastically in such conditions. Erroneous detection of the other multipath components (MPCs) as DP, which is the indicator of the true distance between the transmitter and the receiver, will introduce substantial ranging and localization errors into the system. Therefore, identification of the occurrence of large ranging errors and absence of DP from the received radio signal is our subsequent concern. After identification, the second step is to remedy the ranging errors in such UDP conditions. In this paper we present a methodology, based on an application of artificial neural network (ANN) design, to identify the UDP conditions and mitigate the ranging error using statistics extracted from wideband frequency domain indoor measurements conducted in a typical office building. The system bandwidth used for the frequency domain measurement was 500 MHz centered around 1 GHz.
Strap ? l Cutting edge Distance to default

Let f(x, t) be the survival probability density function of X(t), given by: (4) for x ≥ b(t). From standard results in probability theory, the function f(x, t) satisfies the forward Fokker-Planck equation: (5) with initial and boundary conditions: (6) (7) We note that the integral: (8) represents the survival probability up to time t, 1 – P(t). Therefore, the default probability P(t) is related to the survival probability density f(x, t) and the barrier b(t) by the equation: (9) We see from this equation that the barrier function b(t) must be chosen appropriately so that the pair {f(x, t), b(t)} is consistent with the given default probabilities {P(t); t > 0}. To see this in a more explicit way, we differentiate the default probability with respect to time in equation (9), and use the equations satisfied by f, whence: (10) Thus, aside from (7), the survival density function must satisfy an additional boundary condition at the barrier x = b(t). This gives rise to a free boundary problem for the forward Fokker-Planck equation, since the boundary b(t) is unknown and must be determined consistently with the two boundary conditions (7) and (10). We observe that the model is invariant under a scaling, or similarity, transformation. Let σ 0 be a positive number, and consider the transformation: x b t b t 2 x b t b t xx 2 f P t dx f b t ,t b t t 1 f dx af dx 2 1 f 2 x = ∞ ∞ ∞ ∂ = − + ′ ′ ∂ = − σ + ∂ = σ ∂ ∫ ∫ ∫ () () () b t P t 1 f x,t dx ∞ = − ∫ () () b t f x,t dx ∞ ∫ () () x b t f x,t 0 = = () () t 0 0 f x,t x X = = δ − () () () () () 2 t x xx 1 f x , tf ax , tf , t 0 , x bt 2 = σ − > > () () f x, t dx Pr ob x X t x dx, t   = < < + τ≥   () () { } inf t 0 : X t b t τ = ≥ ≤ C redit derivatives provide synthetic protection against bond and loan defaults. A …
Spatiotemporal signal space separation method for rejecting nearby interference in MEG measurements

Limitations of traditional magnetoencephalography (MEG) exclude some important patient groups from MEG examinations, such as epilepsy patients with a vagus nerve stimulator, patients with magnetic particles on the head or having magnetic dental materials that cause severe movement-related artefact signals. Conventional interference rejection methods are not able to remove the artefacts originating this close to the MEG sensor array. For example, the reference array method is unable to suppress interference generated by sources closer to the sensors than the reference array, about 20–40 cm. The spatiotemporal signal space separation method proposed in this paper recognizes and removes both external interference and the artefacts produced by these nearby sources, even on the scalp. First, the basic separation into brain-related and external interference signals is accomplished with signal space separation based on sensor geometry and Maxwell's equations only. After this, the artefacts from nearby sources are extracted by a simple statistical analysis in the time domain, and projected out. Practical examples with artificial current dipoles and interference sources as well as data from real patients demonstrate that the method removes the artefacts without altering the field patterns of the brain signals.
Processes influencing visual awareness during motion-induced blindness

Visual illusions, such as motion-induced blindness, arise when the visual system, balancing speed and efficiency, summarizes the information it receives to form a percept. Motion-induced blindness (MIB) is characterized as the disappearance of a salient target when surrounded by a moving mask. Efforts to determine the mechanism have focused on the role of target characteristics on perceived disappearance by a coherently moving mask. In this dissertation, I take another approach, paying specific attention to the role of motion characteristics of the mask. In Experiments 1, 2, 3, and 4, I investigate whether the property of common fate influences target disappearance by manipulating coherence of the mask elements. Results showed that as mask coherence increased, perceived target disappearance decreased. This pattern was unaffected by the lifetime of the moving dots, the dot density of the motion stimulus, the target eccentricity, or the number of motion trajectories contained in the mask. The finding that motion coherence preferentially affected MIB prompted Experiments 5, 6, 7, and 8. Specifically, these experiments sought to investigate the spatial influence of mask motion on target disappearance. MIB was measured during conditions where opposing areas of motion coherence were confined locally surrounding the target or in more global areas across the display. The results revealed that motion coherence at more global locations, particularly at the area of fixation, had more influence on target disappearance compared to the coherence in proximity of the target and may reflect inability of the visual system to form a global motion pattern. The possibility that global motion may give rise to MIB, motivated the final research avenue. Experiment 9 addressed the possibility that variability in motion processing of the mask affects target disappearance. Specifically, the strength of motion processing was measured using the motion aftereffect. Results showed a strong connection between the amount of motion processing dedicated to the mask and the amount of MIB. As a whole, the findings show that motion processing, particularly during MIB, may be a driving force in our ability to perceive other objects in our environment.
Sequence alignment and mutual information

Background: Alignment of biological sequences such as DNA, RNA or proteins is one of the most widely used tools in computational bioscience. All existing alignment algorithms rely on heuristic scoring schemes based on biological expertise. Therefore, these algorithms do not provide model independent and objective measures for how similar two (or more) sequences actually are. Although information theory provides such a similarity measure -- the mutual information (MI) -- previous attempts to connect sequence alignment and information theory have not produced realistic estimates for the MI from a given alignment. Results: Here we describe a simple and flexible approach to get robust estimates of MI from {\it global} alignments. For mammalian mitochondrial DNA, our approach gives pairwise MI estimates for commonly used global alignment algorithms that are strikingly close to estimates obtained by an entirely unrelated approach -- concatenating and zipping the sequences. Conclusions: This remarkable consistency may help establish MI as a reliable tool for evaluating the quality of global alignments, judging the relative merits of different alignment algorithms, and estimating the significance of specific alignments. We expect that our approach can be extended to establish further connections between information theory and sequence alignment, including applications to local and multiple alignment procedures.
Pitch identification and discrimination for complex tones with many harmonics

Four experiments are reported that deal with pitch perception of harmonic complex tones containing up to 11 successive harmonics. In particular, the question is raised whether the pitch percept of the missing fundamental is mediated only by low‐order resolvable harmonics, or whether it can also be conveyed by high‐order harmonics that the cochlea fails to resolve. Melodic interval identification performance was found to remain significantly above chance level even if the range of harmonics extended from the 20th to the 30th. Just‐noticeable differences (jnd) in the pitch of the missing fundamental were found to increase with increasing harmonic order, but to level off when all harmonics are above the 12th. These results are consistent with the notion of the existence of two distinct neural pitch mechanisms in the auditory system, but are, in principle, also compatible with a single central‐spectrum mechanism that uses the interspike interval histograms of auditory‐nerve fibers as inputs.
Turkish Word Error Detection Using Syllable Bigram Statistics

In this study, we have designed and implemented a system, which uses n-gram statistical language model in order to facilitate optical character recognition, speech synthesis and recognition systems. First, the syllables bigram frequencies are extracted from Turkish corpora. Then, the test database including the words, which are written correctly and wrongly, is created. The probability of the words appears the given text is calculated and the wrongly and, correctly written words are determined. The system finds the wrongly written words about 86.13% with the proposed approach and the correctly written words are found about 88.32%
Physiological responses of a halophytic shrub to salt stress by Na2SO4 and NaCl: oxidative damage and the role of polyphenols in antioxidant protection

We studied the halophytic shrub Prosopis strombulifera to investigate whether the differential ability of this species to grow under increasing salt concentrations and mixtures was related to the synthesis of polyphenolic compounds and to the maintenance of leaf pigment contents for an adequate photosynthetic activity. The significant accumulation of flavonoids in tissues under Na2SO4 treatment and their powerful antioxidant activity indicates a role for these compounds in counteracting the oxidative damage induced by severe salt stress, particularly, ionic stress. We demonstrate that ionic interactions between different salts in salinized soils modify the biochemical and morpho-physiological responses of Prosopis strombulifera plants to salinity.
The Cherished Conceits of Research with Children: Does Seeking the Agentic Voice of the Child through Participatory Methods Deliver What It Promises?

Abstract The canonical narratives (Bruner, 2004) of contemporary research with children include participation, agency and voice. This inclusive language has saturated research literature throughout the development of the “new” social studies of childhood (James, Jenks, & Prout, 1998). Their presence was highlighted as illuminating greater understanding of the social realities of children’s lives but they mask and mute as much as they reveal. Heralded as the holy grail of emancipatory research with children, participatory methods have come to be recognized almost exclusively as the route for ethical practice and valid data. The absence of substantial, critical evaluation results in these concepts being little more than “cherished conceits” (Segal, 1999, p. 118). There has been a lack of thorough interrogation of what participation actually means and the data and social relations it produces. Participation implies collaboration and reciprocity but is counter-intuitively used to seek and promote the agentic child enshrined in neoliberalism. Children as social beings negotiate complex social relations (Richards, Clark, & Boggis, 2015) but this is often lost in research encounters which privilege the individual voice, informed by an under-interrogated definition of agency. Instead of following the neoliberal agenda we argue that recognizing the ways in which participatory methods, agency, and voice can and should promote reciprocal and relational social realities is vital to a better understanding of the worlds of children. We call not for their expulsion from research methods but for a re-evaluation of the assumptions that lie beneath and what is produced in their name.
The Nomological Network of Fit: Where Do Different Fit Measurements Fit?

The concept of Person-Environment fit has been studied utilizing three measurement techniques (i.e., perceived, subjective, and objective) to capture the concept of fit. The relationships between three measures of fit using the same context, content dimension, and outcomes were examined using students’ and instructors’ learning goals to evaluate their predictions of behavioral and attitudinal outcomes. Data were collected at three time periods during the semester from undergraduate students. It was expected that: 1) the three measurements of fit would be weakly related to one another; 2) subjective and perceived fit would be related to attitudinal outcomes more strongly than to behavioral outcomes with perceived being the stronger predictor; and 3) objective fit would be related to behavioral outcomes more strongly than to attitudinal outcomes. Support was found for the first set of proposed fit-outcome relationships, partial support for the first set of proposed relationships, and no support for the final set of proposed relationships. No traditional fit relationships were revealed; however, positive and negative fit relationships significantly predicted attitudes and behaviors. These relationships provided evidence that researchers should discriminate among the types of fit because the three fit measurement approaches are not equivalent and differentially predict academic-related outcomes.
The relationship between circulating endothelial microparticles and arterial stiffness and atherosclerosis in children with chronic kidney disease.

BACKGROUND Endothelial dysfunction is an important factor in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis, and endothelial microparticles (EMPs) are considered as markers of endothelial dysfunction. In this study, we aimed to examine the relationship between EMPs and arterial stiffness and atherosclerosis in children with chronic kidney disease (CKD). METHODS This cross-sectional study included 37 dialysis patients (12 haemodialysis, 25 peritoneal dialysis), 33 pre-dialysis patients and 18 healthy controls. Both in vivo and in vitro (HUVECs) evaluations were used for the study. Circulating EMPs were measured by flow cytometry. The carotid artery intima-media thickness (cIMT) and pulse wave velocity (PWV) were measured by using high-resolution ultrasound. Study groups were compared for circulating EMP, cIMT and PWV. The relationship between EMPs and arterial stiffness and atherosclerosis was evaluated. RESULTS The levels of PWV, cIMT, CD144 + EMP and CD146 + EMP in the dialysis group were significantly higher than those in the pre-dialysis and control groups (P < 0.05). Additionally, the levels of cIMT, CD144 + EMP and CD146 + EMP in the pre-dialysis group were significantly higher than those in the control group (P < 0.05). In all CKD patients, the CD144 + EMP was significantly positively associated with blood pressures, age, known duration of disease, CRP and PTH, and was significantly negatively associated with haemoglobin, GFR and albumin. The CD146 + EMP was significantly positively associated with blood pressures, age and CRP. In a multiple linear regression analysis, in the CKD group, cIMT was independently related to mean blood pressure and dialysis duration. PWV was independently related to the CD144 + EMP and mean blood pressure. CONCLUSION Our results suggest that endothelial damage starts in the early stage of CKD, that the endothelial dysfunction becomes overt with the increase of cardiovascular risk factors and that EMPs may be a reliable marker of the subclinical atherosclerosis and arterial stiffness.
Cell Wall Polysaccharide Synthases Are Located in Detergent-Resistant Membrane Microdomains in Oomycetes

ABSTRACT The pathways responsible for cell wall polysaccharide biosynthesis are vital in eukaryotic microorganisms. The corresponding synthases are potential targets of inhibitors such as fungicides. Despite their fundamental and economical importance, most polysaccharide synthases are not well characterized, and their molecular mechanisms are poorly understood. With the example of Saprolegnia monoica as a model organism, we show that chitin and (1→3)-β-d-glucan synthases are located in detergent-resistant membrane microdomains (DRMs) in oomycetes, a phylum that comprises some of the most devastating microorganisms in the agriculture and aquaculture industries. Interestingly, no cellulose synthase activity was detected in the DRMs. The purified DRMs exhibited similar biochemical features as lipid rafts from animal, plant, and yeast cells, although they contained some species-specific lipids. This report sheds light on the lipid environment of the (1→3)-β-d-glucan and chitin synthases, as well as on the sterol biosynthetic pathways in oomycetes. The results presented here are consistent with a function of lipid rafts in cell polarization and as platforms for sorting specific sets of proteins targeted to the plasma membrane, such as carbohydrate synthases. The involvement of DRMs in the biosynthesis of major cell wall polysaccharides in eukaryotic microorganisms suggests a function of lipid rafts in hyphal morphogenesis and tip growth.
Potential and kinetic shaping for control of underactuated mechanical systems

This paper combines techniques of potential shaping with those of kinetic shaping to produce some new methods for stabilization of mechanical control systems. As with each of the techniques themselves, our method employs the energy methods and LaSalle's invariance principle. We give explicit criteria for asymptotic stabilization of equilibria of mechanical systems which, in the absence of controls, have a kinetic energy function that is invariant under an Abelian group.