Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Interest-Rate Smoothing: Monetary Policy Inertia or Unobserved Variables?

Abstract Interest-rate smoothing is traditionally attributed to the gradual adjustment of monetary policy to shocks. Rudebusch (2002) argues that smoothing can also arise spuriously if an autocorrelated variable is incorrectly excluded from the estimated reaction function. This paper presents a model which discriminates between these two explanations using U.S. data. We find that both seem to matter, but that policy inertia appears to be less important than suggested by the existing literature. Further, the excluded variable is likely to reflect financial market conditions.
Design of waveguide slotted arrays using commercially available finite element analysis software

Commercial finite element software has been made available that has the ability to characterize arbitrary radiating structures of moderate size (with respect to wavelength). Although with present computing resources it is unlikely that this software can analyze an entire waveguide slotted array, the scattering matrices of the waveguide radiating and/or coupling slots can be easily characterized. Similar characterisation has been extensively done using integral equation techniques. Although the analysis of these radiating and coupling elements, using commercial finite element software, may not be as computationally efficient as the integral equation techniques, the problem set-up time is minimal. Therefore, if computer resources permit, the necessary data to design a waveguide slotted array can be gathered with minimal input from the user. The design of a waveguide slotted array using commercial finite element software is discussed.
From Network Management to Service Management - A Challenge to Telecom Service Providers

Telecom service providers are facing tremendous challenges today as their customers' demand for service quality increases. To meet the challenge service providers must shift their focus from managing the networks to managing the services. Traditionally network management systems are developed based on ITU-T's FCAP model to automate the network management process. With the network evolves from voice- centric to integrated services such as UMTS, WIMAX, and IMS, service management to measure customer experience becomes essential. The next generation service management systems will be based on the eTOM model and may require Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) which provides an integration technology based on the concept that a service is a sequence of components to implement business processes. Although there is no tight link between SOA and Web services, Web service technology addresses many of the requirements for building an SOA- enabled environment. This paper discusses the challenges of service management, SOA, and the relationship with web services.
Determination of Optimum Environmental Conservation: Using Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Techniques

The type and degree of conservation areas in Turkey legally dictate the kind of land uses that can and cannot take place in a conservation area. Thus, the conservation scheme is one of the most important criteria in designing an urban land-use plan. The aim of this study is to analyse the effects of various conservation decisions on land-use allocation holding everything else constant. This study uses a land-allocation mathematical programme formulated by Hanink and Cromley [(1998) Land-use allocation in the absence of complete market values, Journal of Regional Science, 38, pp. 465–480] that integrates the geographical information systems with a generalized assignment problem to determine an optimum level of conservation scheme in Cesme/Izmir, a coastal resort in Turkey. The findings state that the proposed technique is indeed very useful and promising to answer diversified practical issues on a more rational basis.
Efficiency in Indian electricity distribution through technological innovation

Seeing the increasing importance of energy resources for the development of any economy, it becomes essential to create a sustainable base for the resources throughout the energy value chain. The commercial viability and customer responsiveness of the power distribution sector is the key to setting right the other two segments of generation and transmission. It, therefore, becomes imperative for nations to introduce technological innovations in the power distribution sector and establish infrastructure to support them. This paper explores the technological innovations done by two power distribution firms in India and maps the innovations on the distribution value chain to identify the gap and scope for future improvement in the sector. The gap identified can set the stage for further improvement/innovation in the power distribution sector. It also identifies the value created by different innovations.
Experimental analysis and modeling of multi-chip IGBT modules short-circuit behavior

Considering the case of railway-traction applications, this paper proposes an extensive experimental characterization of multi-chip IGBT-modules, combining fast-transient short-circuit electrical measurements with infrared thermal mapping under realistic operation-like working-conditions. Then, it presents the development of a comprehensive electro-thermal compact model of the multi-chip assembly, which accounts for all major functional and structural electro-thermal effects and which can be used in common circuit simulation environments with great flexibility. A selection of simulation examples demonstrates the usefulness of the model in extending and complementing the information that can be gained by experiment. The results provide precious information for a reliable application of these components.
Are Ex-Ante CEO Severance Pay Contracts Consistent with Efficient Contracting?

Efficient contracting predicts that ex-ante severance pay contracts are offered to CEOs as protection against downside risk and to encourage investment in risky positive net-present-value projects. Consistent with this prediction, we find that ex-ante contracted severance pay is positively associated with proxies for a CEO’s risk of dismissal and costs the CEO would incur from dismissal. Additionally, we show that the contracted severance payment amount positively impacts CEO risk-taking and the extent to which a CEO invests in projects that have a positive net-present-value. Overall, our findings imply that ex-ante severance pay contracts are consistent with efficient contracting.
Model Selection with Nonlinear Embedding for Unsupervised Domain Adaptation

Domain adaptation deals with adapting classifiers trained on data from a source distribution, to work effectively on data from a target distribution. In this paper, we introduce the Nonlinear Embedding Transform (NET) for unsupervised domain adaptation. The NET reduces cross-domain disparity through nonlinear domain alignment. It also embeds the domain-aligned data such that similar data points are clustered together. This results in enhanced classification. To determine the parameters in the NET model (and in other unsupervised domain adaptation models), we introduce a validation procedure by sampling source data points that are similar in distribution to the target data. We test the NET and the validation procedure using popular image datasets and compare the classification results across competitive procedures for unsupervised domain adaptation.
European market integration through technology-driven M&As

Merger and Acquisitions (M&As) have been an important tool for reorganizing the European market since the establishment of European Economic and Monetary Union. This article suggests that European integration helped and encouraged European firms to source technology across national borders in Europe, establishing European innovative firms. The figures confirm that, once barriers impeding the free movement of capital, goods and labour had fallen, European firms used M&As intensively to enter foreign European markets. Enhancing technology competencies is found to be one of the main motives for cross-border acquisitions in the 1990s but is not a factor in domestic acquisitions over the same period.
The Politics of Affliction: Crisis, the State, and the Coloniality of Maternal Death in Bolivia

This dissertation examines the nature of personal suffering and the impact of a local crisis on a group of small Quechua speaking communities in rural Bolivia. I consider the ongoing processes of both sudden social ruptures and "permanent" crisis, inherent in the unique evolution of a (post)colonial state as it coexists in association with "traditional" Andean society. Of most significant interest to me is the manner in which relatively rare, extreme, "deviant" events may illuminate, as a kind of analytical lens, larger issues of social, political and cultural forces at work. Within this context, key determining natures are those of individual affliction and a wider structural violence, both of which are identified here as integral and pervasive components within society as a whole. I explore these as reflecting the transformations of social agency and cultural identity among indigenous groups in contemporary Bolivia, which pertain to their dramatically expanding role in overall civil society and state practices--yet which, nevertheless, remain in dramatic juxtaposition to deeply entrenched systems of power and state control over both the social and the personal body. Within a theoretical context of political economy and critical medical anthropology, I look at these dual subjects--the state and the indigenous citizen--in counterpoint with competing notions of birth, death, affliction, and the role of civil society, as perceived within a climate of unexpected crisis and renewal. As its central ethnographic case study I focus on chronically elevated rates of maternal mortality in Bolivia, and in particular the local instance of an unexpected and dramatic surge in deaths. The multiple complexities of personal priorities and discourses circulating around these events had at its center a crisis at once glaringly public and intensely personal--which was used to the actual advantage of some, while to the obvious disadvantage of others: what I refer to as the "quality of its imagining. " This personal tragedy of "death in birth" offers a unique perspective on the political uses and abuses of indigeneity and traditional culture, within a nation-state struggling amidst the often conflictive process of achieving the officially proposed objectives of "interculturality" and "decolonization. " Concurrent cultural manifestations may resist, or, conversely, adopt, assimilate, and accommodate the official tenets and trappings of modernity, while attempting to find viable solutions to seemingly intractable societal problems. Local reactions and understandings of this ultimate failure in the "reproduction" of society result in crisis as a social phenomenon of significant proportions: the ultimate issue concerns what is at stake for those involved at differing levels, ranging from the (extended) family unit, to the greater community, and ultimately to the political power structures at work.
Stimulating learning-by-doing in advanced biofuels: effectiveness of alternative policies

This letter examines the effectiveness of various biofuel and climate policies in reducing future processing costs of cellulosic biofuels due to learning-by-doing. These policies include a biofuel production mandate alone and supplementing the biofuel mandate with other policies, namely a national low carbon fuel standard, a cellulosic biofuel production tax credit or a carbon price policy. We find that the binding biofuel targets considered here can reduce the unit processing cost of cellulosic ethanol by about 30% to 70% between 2015 and 2035 depending on the assumptions about learning rates and initial costs of biofuel production. The cost in 2035 is more sensitive to the speed with which learning occurs and less sensitive to uncertainty in the initial production cost. With learning rates of 5–10%, cellulosic biofuels will still be at least 40% more expensive than liquid fossil fuels in 2035. The addition of supplementary low carbon/tax credit policies to the mandate that enhance incentives for cellulosic biofuels can achieve similar reductions in these costs several years earlier than the mandate alone; the extent of these incentives differs across policies and different kinds of cellulosic biofuels.
A Branching Strategy For Unsupervised Aspect-based Sentiment Analysis

One of the most recent opinion mining research directions falls in the extraction of polarities referring to specific entities (called “aspects”) contained in the analyzed texts. The detection of such aspects may be very critical especially when the domain which documents belong to is unknown. Indeed, while in some contexts it is possible to train domain-specific models for improving the effectiveness of aspects extraction algorithms, in others the most suitable solution is to apply unsupervised techniques by making the used algorithm independent from the domain. In this work, we implemented different unsupervised solutions into an aspect-based opinion mining system. Such solutions are based on the use of semantic resources for performing the extraction of aspects from texts. The algorithms have been tested on benchmarks provided by the SemEval campaign and have been compared with the results obtained by domain-adapted techniques.
Optimal inventory policies for uniform replenishment systems with time-dependent demand

This study develops an analysis of lot size inventory systems where the replenishment rate is uniform and demand follows a power demand pattern. Shortages are not allowed. Holding cost, replenishing cost and purchasing cost are considered in inventory system control. The objective of the study is to find the economic production quantity that minimises total inventory cost per unit of time. We conclude that optimal inventory policies depend on the demand pattern index chosen to represent customer demand. Theoretical results are illustrated with a business case study. A sensitivity analysis is proposed to describe the optimal policy behaviour.
The Residents' Perspective in Tourism Research

Abstract This article aims to present a research history highlighting the role of residents within tourism systems. It has detailed demographic, economic, environmental, political and socio-cultural impacts on a resident population. It is argued that residents and their stakeholder groups are critical components in successful tourism systems. It is further argued that ongoing investigation of residents and stakeholder groups within diverse tourism environments is essential to our understanding of the complexity of tourism systems.
Frequency of CXCR4-using viruses in primary HIV-1 infections using ultra-deep pyrosequencing

We used ultra-deep pyrosequencing and the Toulouse Tropism Test phenotypic assay to determine the prevalence of CXCR4-using viruses in 21 patients with primary HIV-1 infections. We found X4-containing virus populations in 9% of patients by ultra-deep pyrosequencing using position-specific scoring matrices (PSSMX4/R5) or geno2pheno5.75 and in 14% using the combined 11/25 and net charge rule. The phenotypic assay identified 9% of CXCR4-using viruses. This confirms that R5 viruses are predominant in primary HIV-1 infections.
A Note on Consistent Players’ Valuation

Depending on their degree of risk aversion, team managers might prefer those players who score a regular amount of points in each game of the season to those other players who, although on average do equally well or even better, are more inconsistent. However, sports statistics do not reflect consistency. To take into account this characteristic seriously, the authors propose to use the well-known welfare function of Atkinson to evaluate the performance of a player in any category of the game. To illustrate their proposal, the authors apply it to the ranking of scoring leaders in the regular 2000 to 2001season and in the 2001play-offs of the National Basketball Association and offer an indication of how to deal with the valuation of consistency in the empirical estimation of players’ compensation.
Reframing Environmental Messages to be Congruent with

Prior research has explored the relationship between values, attitudes about environmental issues, and pro-environmental behavior. These studies have shown a consistent pattern of results — individuals who value self-transcendent life goals tend to care more about environmental problems, favor environmental protection over economic growth, and engage in more proenvironmental behavior. In contrast, individuals who value self-enhancing life goals tend to hold more egoistic concerns about environmental issues, tend to favor economic growth over environmental protection, and tend to engage in fewer environmental behaviors. Research on American values suggests that overall, people in the U.S. tend to hold strong self-enhancing values. These selfenhancing values have largely been considered incongruous with the values that lead to environmental concern and to environmental behavior. In this paper, we synthesize the past research on the relationship between values and environmental behavior. Lessons from the Biodiversity Project are used to illustrate efforts to create effective value-based environmental messages.
The Effects of Standardization and Trust on Franchisee's Performance and Satisfaction: A Study on Franchise Systems in the Growth Stage

Franchise systems aim to capitalize on both economies of scale and the benefits derived from localized operations. Although franchisees can be considered small businesses with some independence and local knowledge, compliance with system standardization may be critical to achieving scale benefits, as well as realizing and then maintaining the desired image during the growth stage of the franchise life cycle. However, standardization requirements from the franchisor demand that franchisees make specific investments in the system, which make franchisees more vulnerable to the franchisor. Therefore, whether a franchisee can trust the franchisor becomes an important factor that facilitates the relationship between standardization requirements and franchisees' overall sales and service performance in the market. This research focuses on franchisees in a growing franchise system and examines how the standardization requirements, trust in the franchisor, and the interaction term affect the sales and service performance of a franchisee and ultimately the franchisee's satisfaction. The findings support the hypotheses that, first, the standardization requirements positively affect both sales and service performance. Second, trust not only has main effects on satisfaction and performance constructs but also moderates positively the relationships between standardization requirements and sales/service performance.
Effect of light filters on contrast sensitivity function in normal and retinal degeneration subjects

Contrast sensitivity functions were measured with live light tillers and without a filter, in the presence of a glare source, in 12 retinal degeneration subjects and 9 normal subjects. The light filters included yellow‐tinted, CPF 527, NoIR 111, 0.6 neutral density and sunglasses with a 95% UV filter. Retinal degeneration subjects showed a mild improvement in contrast sensitivity at the higher spatial frequencies and maintained mean log contrast sensitivity with light filters which reduced photopic light transmission up to 75%. Normal subjects exhibited a systematic decrease of contrast sensitivity at higher spatial frequencies with all light fillers and overall mean log contrast sensitivity was significantly correlated (r= 0.86, P < 0.025) with photopic light transmission of the fillers. It is concluded that, when in the presence of a glare source, the benefits of certain light filters to retinal degeneration subjects is related to the reduction of overall photopic luminance.
Utility of Sentinel Flaps in Assessing Facial Allograft Rejection

Background: Skin biopsies are critical for histologic evaluation of rejection and proper treatment after facial allotransplantation. Many facial allografts provide only limited skin area, and frequent biopsies may also compromise aesthetic outcome. Sentinel flaps, recovered as free fasciocutaneous radial forearm flaps, have been used for remote-site rejection monitoring. They maintain their axial blood supply, similar to facial allografts. The correlation between facial allografts and sentinel flaps in cases of rejection is presented. Methods: The authors analyzed the experience of the Boston team’s use of four sentinel flaps. Rejection was evaluated and results were compared for each time point. Sentinel flaps were used as functional flaps whenever possible. Results: Results showed a reliable correlation between biopsy specimens taken from the facial allograft and sentinel flaps. During severe rejection episodes in 100 percent of biopsy pairs, both sites displayed a similar grade of rejection. In one case, clinical findings suggested rejection in the facial allograft but were unraveled as rosacea, because clinically there was no rejection displayed in the sentinel flap. Conclusions: The sentinel flap shows a reliable correlation to the facial allograft in cases of severe rejection, therefore providing a valuable tool for rejection monitoring in facial allotransplantation. Advantages of using these flaps include the avoidance of further surgical procedures to the primary vascularized composite allotransplant, additional use of the sentinel flap to repair damaged nonfacial sites, and its utility as both a clinical and histopathologic barometer of rejection and predictor of the potential existence of facial dermatitis unrelated to rejection. CLINICAL QUESTION/LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Therapeutic, IV.
The Paradox of Contemporary Labour Process Theory: The Rediscovery of Labour and the Disappearance of Collectivism

Recent commentators on the Labour Process Debate have addressed the relationship between individualism, collectivism and broader changes in management strategies through a focus upon the absence of labour and the demise of collectivism. In this critical response the authors argue that almost invariably, while labour in some guise is rediscovered, this occurs at the expense of collectivism.
Political Unrest Costs Egyptian Tourism Dearly: An Ethnographical Study

This study uses ethnographical research methodology to observe the negative impact of political unrest on the tourism industry and overall economy of Egypt during the nation’s revolution. In the paper, a number of proactive strategies are suggested to insulate Egypt from future acts of violence. Emphasis on the implementation of a destination management system is also recommended to enhance overall knowledge and efficiency in the Egyptian tourism sector and to help alleviate negative turns in the market caused by regional unrest and political instability.