Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Unemployment, Splitting Up, and Spousal Income Replacement

In this study, the consequences of unemployment for a Swedish sample of couples are analyzed. The purpose is to estimate the possible income replacement that a spouse can provide. Unemployment can also affect the probability that the couples split up. Since not all couples remain in the analysis, a potential selection problem can occur. To deal with this problem, and also to take care of unobserved heterogeneity, a sample selection model for panel data is estimated. The results indicate that it is necessary to take into account the selection problem. A period in unemployment is found to be correlated with a higher female income only in the case of men who earned a fairly high income before becoming unemployed. Women who earned a fairly low income and were subject to a long period of unemployment are found to be compensated by a higher male income.
Efficient computations for solving algebraic Riccati equations by Newton's method

Based on equivalent formulas for generalized continuous- and discrete-time algebraic Riccati equations (AREs), improved algorithms are proposed for solving such equations using Newton's method. The residual and closed-loop matrices needed by Newton solvers are efficiently computed, in order to reduce the computational effort per iteration. Newton algorithms are suitable for solving large AREs with dense matrices, and especially for improving the accuracy of the solutions provided by other algorithms.
Applicability of affordance concept in user-computer interaction

The aim of this study is to explore whether the intuitive-corresponding relation between users and physical objects presented by affordance concept alike exists in interaction between users and virtual buttons. In this study, a type of virtual button is used as the test sample. The intuitive judgments and practical operations to the test sample were carried out to find out whether users could directly pick up the affordances presented by the test sample through the virtual-perceptual information and then make appropriate decisions based on usability. The results show that the users could perceive directly the affordances presented by the virtual button by looking at them and approximately know what sizes of the virtual button are appropriate for usability. That is, the intuitive-corresponding relation described by affordance concept exists in interaction between users and virtual button. The results could serve to explain the rationality of affordance concept in application on GUI design.
Understanding the Diffusion of a Mobile Application for Supply Chain Management: A System Dynamics Approach

An appropriate information and logistics structure is of paramount importance for the local fresh food supply chain, which is characterized by market fragmentation and little coordination among suppliers and customers. Mobile communication technologies can help meet this goal because of their large diffusion and real time information management. In this context, a System Dynamics model is developed to study the diffusion pattern and the impacts of a new application for mobile devices supporting supply chain operations. To this end, a reference supply chain in Northern Italy has been considered. The base application and the integration of three additional features assisting in the management of product traceability, electronic payments, and time-sensitive deliveries are analyzed. Simulation results provide insights into the dynamics of adoption of the mobile service and help derive business policies to disseminate its diffusion
Identifying Peer Influence Effects in Observational Social Network Data : An Evaluation of Propensity Score Methods

There is widespread scientific and practical interest in estimating peer influence effects for a variety of behaviors, but peer influence effects are not identifiable in most observational data. Social scientists have thus had to remain largely silent on these effects — or make inconclusive or misleading arguments for their estimates of them. The state-of-the-art research has used propensity score methods to either estimate or place an upper bound on peer influence effects. The proposed research will evaluate these methods using simulations. In particular, I will demonstrate how realistic cases missing edge data leads can lead to these methods substantially underestimating peer influence effects. This means that these estimates fail as upper bounds (i.e., fail to partially identify peer influence effects). I compare these methods with regression adjustment, which may be preferrable in such conditions.
Detection, measurement, and gravitational radiation.

The optimum design, construction, and use of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), the French-Italian Gravitational Wave Observatory (VIRGO), or the Laser Gravitational Wave Observatory (LAGOS) gravitational radiation detectors depends upon accurate calculations of their sensitivity to different sources of radiation. Here I examine how to determine the sensitivity of these instruments to sources of gravitational radiation by considering the process by which data are analyzed in a noisy detector
Associations between insulin action and integrity of brain microstructure differ with familial longevity and with age

Impaired glucose metabolism and type 2 diabetes have been associated with cognitive decline, dementia, and with structural and functional brain features. However, it is unclear whether these associations differ in individuals that differ in familial longevity or age. Here, we investigated the association between parameters of glucose metabolism and microstructural brain integrity in offspring of long-lived families (“offspring”) and controls; and age categories thereof. From the Leiden Longevity Study (LLS), 132 participants underwent an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) to assess glycemia [fasted glucose and glucose area-under-the-curve (AUC)], insulin resistance [fasted insulin, AUCinsulin, and homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR)], and pancreatic Beta cell secretory capacity (insulinogenic index). 3 Tesla MRI and Magnetization Transfer (MT) imaging MT-ratio (MTR) peak-height was used to quantify differences in microstructural brain parenchymal tissue homogeneity that remain invisible on conventional MRI. Analyses were performed in offspring and age-matched controls, with and without stratification for age. In the full offspring group only, reduced MTR peak-height in gray and white matter was inversely associated with AUCinsulin, fasted insulin, HOMA-IR and insulinogenic-index (all p < 0.01). When dichotomized for age (≤65 years and >65 years): in younger controls, significantly stronger inverse associations were observed between MTR peak-height and fasted glucose, AUCglucose, fasted insulin, AUCinsulin and HOMA-IR in gray matter; and for AUCglucose, fasted insulin and HOMA-IR in white matter (all P-interaction < 0.05). Although the strength of the associations tended to attenuate with age in the offspring group, the difference between age groups was not statistically significant. Thus, associations between impaired insulin action and reduced microstructural brain parenchymal tissue homogeneity were stronger in offspring compared to controls, and seemed to diminish with age.
Control of Mammalian Cochlear Amplification by Chloride Anions

Chloride ions have been hypothesized to interact with the membrane outer hair cell (OHC) motor protein, prestin on its intracellular domain to confer voltage sensitivity (Oliver et al., 2001). Thus, we hypothesized previously that transmembrane chloride movements via the lateral membrane conductance of the cell, GmetL, could serve to underlie cochlear amplification in the mammal. Here, we report on experimental manipulations of chloride-dependent OHC motor activity in vitro and in vivo. In vitro, we focused on the signature electrical characteristic of the motor, the nonlinear capacitance of the cell. Using the well known ototoxicant, salicylate, which competes with the putative anion binding or interaction site of prestin to assess level-dependent interactions of chloride with prestin, we determined that the resting level of chloride in OHCs is near or below 10 mm, whereas perilymphatic levels are known to be ∼140 mm. With this observation, we sought to determine the effects of perilymphatic chloride level manipulations of basilar membrane amplification in the living guinea pig. By either direct basolateral perfusion of the OHC with altered chloride content perilymphatic solutions or by the use of tributyltin, a chloride ionophore, we found alterations in OHC electromechanical activity and cochlear amplification, which are fully reversible. Because these anionic manipulations do not impact on the cation selective stereociliary process or the endolymphatic potential, our data lend additional support to the argument that prestin activity dominates the process of mammalian cochlear amplification.
Dynamic Cache Way Allocation for Static and Dynamic Power Reduction

Power consumption has increasingly becoming a main constraint in microprocessor designs. Until recently, low-power techniques mainly focused on the reduction of dynamic power consumption. However, due to the rapid growth in magnitude of leakage current, not only dynamic power but also static power need to be reduced. We propose way-variable caches in which some ways of the set-associative cache can be disabled during periods of modest cache requirement, while more cache ways may remain operational for more cache-intensive periods. Power consumption reduction is achieved through avoiding unnecessary switching activity (dynamic power) and suppressing leakage current (static power) in the disabled ways. We then propose an original algorithm considering temporal locality of the cache accesses to make proper way controlling decisions.
New Performance Indices and Workspace Analysis of Reconfigurable Hyper-Redundant Robotic Arms

In this paper, we introduce new performance indices to characterize the workspace of reconfigurable hyper-redundant robotic arms. These indices are then used to analyze the workspace of a type of hyper-redundant robotic arm using as modules lower mobility parallel platforms. The modules of the reconfigurable robotic arm are the three-legged translational universal-prismatic-universal (UPU) and orientational universal-prismatic-spherical (UPS) parallel platforms. Each arm is composed of a large number of these modules having a very large number of degrees of freedom. Results of the workspace analysis are presented in tabular and graphical forms and the corresponding best designs are identified. All possible arm assembly configurations with two, three, and four parallel platform modules and one configuration with five parallel platform modules have been taken into consideration, analyzed, and compared.
Economic growth and human resources

There have been many attempts to determine the role of human capital in the process of economic growth, including growth accounting and the measurement of social and private returns to investment in education. Both approaches have tended to indicate positive returns to investment in human capital, but both have been criticized on theoretical and empirical grounds. An analysis is conducted on two levels. First, some simple statistical manipulations are used to see what can be inferred about the relation between growth and human resources. Then, multiple regression techniques are used for treatment of the same issue in greater depth. In these regressions, it is assumed that the growth of GDP per person is influenced by three important factors: the rate of investment, the growth rate of imports, and the level of human resource development at the beginning of the period.
Interference with the endosomal acidification by a monoclonal antibody directed toward the 116 (100)-kD subunit of the vacuolar type proton pump

A monoclonal antibody (OSW2) was prepared by using human osteosarcoma cells. OSW2 was found to be directed toward the 116 (also called 100)- kD protein that uniquely associates to the vacuolar-type proton pump. The antibody specifically localized acidic membrane compartments that could be visualized with acridine orange in many types of human cells. It also reacted with the surface and was internalized along the endosomal pathway. Monitoring the endosome pH by using FITC-dextran and acridine orange suggested that the antibody interfered with low pH. Cell-free experiments indicated that the ATP-dependent acidification was inhibited in endosomes associated with OSW2. In contrast, the antibody gave little effect on the ATPase activity of the solubilized H+ pump. The internalization of OSW2 reduced infectivity of certain enveloped viruses (influenza, SFV, VSV) by 50 to 80%. Inhibition of viral fusion was directly demonstrated by monitoring the fate of octadecylrhodamine-labeled influenza virus fluorescence. These results indicate that the 116 (100)-kD protein is necessary for the control of pH. The antibody represents a novel probe for understanding the role of the endosomal compartments in cellular physiology.
States, Multinational Corporations, and Institutional Arrangements

This study argues that economic relations between Japan and Southeast Asia have been moving toward greater interdependence in the context of the creation of regional deliberation councils. These maintain the interests of the members within a three-party economic interdependence system, namely, the Japanese government, governments in Southeast Asia, and Japanese multinational corporations (MNCs). Under such institutional arrangements, the Japanese government, in association with Japanese MNCs, has been facilitating economic development in Southeast Asia that benefits Japanese MNCs as well as the regional economy. The establishment of AMEICC, the ASEAN Economic Ministers (AEM)—Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) Economic and Industrial Cooperation Committee, and the Vietnam—Japan Joint Initiative (VJJI) will be examined as case studies at the multilateral and bilateral levels, respectively.
Design of PSSs for distributed synchronous generators using a system representation based on norm-bounded linear differential inclusions

This paper proposes a systematic method based on linear matrix inequalities for the design of power system stabilizers for synchronous generators connected to distribution grids. The system to be controlled is originally described by a nonlinear dynamical model in state-space form. However, for synthesis purposes we represent it as a norm-bounded linear differential inclusion model. Using an approach based on the mean-value theorem, this linear representation considers the nonlinear terms in the Taylor series expansion of the nonlinear equations as uncertainties in the model. Constraints are included to the control problem formulation in order to guarantee a satisfactory performance of the controlled system. The main objectives, from the application viewpoint, are the enhancement in the damping of electromechanical oscillations, as well as the minimization of the peaks reached by the terminal and field voltages during the transients of interest. The proposed algorithm is a straightforward design procedure and can be easily handled by using LMI solvers. A cogeneration plant of 10 MW added to a distribution network constituted by a feeder and six buses is adopted as test system, and the results show that the two designed objectives are quite satisfactorily achieved.
Design of Examination Paper Generating System from Item Bank by Using Genetic Algorithm

Based on the activity for building the foundation and application of computer, a common used automatic examination paper generating system is designed. This paper introduces how to design the database of item bank and establish the mathematic model of examination paper generating system, and discusses the method of finding the solution. To solve the model, the multiple objectives are translated into single objective by using genetic algorithm.
Porting CMP Benchmarks to GPUs

GPUs have become increasingly popular in recent years, in large part due to their potential to offer a large amount of computational power at low prices. They offer massive potential speedups in program performance, but only if an application maps well to its data parallel programming model. However, it is unclear how to effectively port programs that do not map well onto the GPU programming model. The amount of performance these programs will have on GPUs is also unclear. If GPUs can be shown to execute general-purpose programs with high performance, then it is possible that a GPU-like, manycore architecture could provide the next big increase in general-purpose program performance. In this project, we implemented four benchmarks from the PARSEC CMP benchmarks suite on GPUs – streamcluster, blackscholes, fluidanimate, and swaptions – then analyzed their performance and compared their performance to that of the PARSEC serial and pthreads versions of the same programs. We also investigated what general-purpose programming techniques worked well when mapped to a GPU, what techniques did not work well, and where bottlenecks occurred. We observed that general-purpose programs neither mapped uniformly easily nor well to GPUs in our implementations. ∗Work performed while author was a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Fast computation of contact points for robotic simulations based on CAD models without tessellation

Computing multiple contact points between geometric models evolved in a virtual 3D environment is central to many robotic simulation applications. While this task can be performed efficiently and robustly between complex polyhedra, using the exact analytic geometric models issued by CAD modelers still suffers from efficiency limitations. Yet models composed of smooth surfaces are required to ensure smooth contact constraints, thus avoiding possible numerical artifacts which may dramatically affect the behavior of the system in the case of functional contacts. This paper builds on the observation that industrial CAD models are mostly composed of simple surfaces to perform an off-line identification of similar features and build a bounding volume hierarchy in order to locate potential contacts. Those are then computed by dedicated analytic methods, or an iterative root-finder, depending on the actual geometric representations of the features. In the context of dynamic simulation of robotic tasks, our method exhibits interactive computation times while naturally providing better result accuracy than existing polyhedron-specific algorithms.
On the Gierer-Meinhardt system with precursors

We consider the following Gierer-Meinhardt system with a precursor $ \mu (x)$ for the activator $A$ in $\mathbb{R}^1$: $A_t=$e2$A^{''}- \mu (x) A+\frac{A^2}{H} \mbox{ in } (-1, 1),$ $\tau H_t=D H^{''}-H+ A^2 \mbox{ in } (-1, 1),$ $ A' (-1)= A' (1)= H' (-1) = H' (1) =0. $ Such an equation exhibits a typical Turing bifurcation of the second kind, i.e., homogeneous uniform steady states do not exist in the system. We establish the existence and stability of $N-$peaked steady-states in terms of the precursor $\mu(x)$ and the diffusion coefficient $D$. It is shown that $\mu (x)$ plays an essential role for both existence and stability of spiky patterns. In particular, we show that precursors can give rise to instability. This is a new effect which is not present in the homogeneous case.
Automatic Generation of Programming Feedback; A Data-Driven Approach

Automatically generated feedback could improve the learning gains of novice programmers, especially for students who are in large classes where instructor time is limited. We propose a data-driven approach for automatic feedback generation which utilizes the program solution space to predict where a student is located within the set of many possible learning progressions and what their next steps should be. This paper describes the work we have done in implementing this approach and the challenges which arise when supporting ill-defined domains.
Foraging strategy switch of a top marine predator according to seasonal resource differences

The spatio-temporal variability in marine resources influences the foraging behaviour and success of top marine predators. However, little is known about the links between these animals and ocean productivity, specifically, how plankton density influences their foraging behaviour. Southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) have two annual at-sea foraging trips: a two month post-breeding foraging trip (Nov – Jan) that coincides with elevated summer productivity; and an eight month post-moulting foraging trip (Feb – Oct) over winter, when productivity is low. Physical parameters are often used to describe seal habitat, whereas information about important biological parameters is lacking. We used electronic tags deployed on elephant seals during both trips to determine their movement and foraging behaviour. The tags also recorded light, which measured the bio-optical properties of the water column, the bulk of which is presumably influenced by phytoplankton. We investigated the relationship between plankton density and seal foraging behaviour; comparing trends between summer and winter trips. We found a positive relationship between plankton density and foraging behaviour, which did not vary seasonally. We propose that profitable concentrations of seal prey are more likely to coincide with planktonic aggregations, but we also acknowledge that trophic dynamics may shift in response to seasonal trends in productivity. Seal prey (mid-trophic level) and plankton (lower-trophic level) are expected to overlap in space and time during summer trips when peak phytoplankton blooms occur. In contrast, aggregated patches of lower trophic levels are likely to be more dispersed during winter trips when plankton density is considerably lower and heterogeneous. These results show that southern elephant seals are able to exploit prey resources in different ways throughout the year as demonstrated by the variation observed between seal foraging behaviour and trophic dynamics.
3D Model Acquisition Based on Projections of Level Curves

A novel method for 3D model acquisition based on projections of level curves is presented. The idea is similar to surface from parallel contours. However, different from CT or laser range scanning for range data acquisition, our approach is implemented on a low-cost passive camera system. The object is placed in a container and the level curves are generated by raising the water level. The 3D surface is recovered by multiple 2D projections of parallel level curves with camera pose estimation. Furthermore, the complete 3D model is reconstructed by registration and integration of multi-view 3D shape acquisition. Experimental results are presented for real image sequences. The average error is less than 3 mm in the working range of about 1 meter from the camera
Genetic programming: an introduction and survey of applications

The aim of this paper is to provide an introduction to the rapidly developing field of genetic programming (GP). Particular emphasis is placed on the application of GP to engineering problem solving. First, the basic methodology is introduced. This is followed by a review of applications in the areas of systems modelling, control, optimisation and scheduling, design and signal processing. The paper concludes by suggesting potential avenues of research.