Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Working Papers in Economics and Statistics Causes , consequences , and cures of myopic loss aversion – An experimental investigation

We examine in an experiment the causes, consequences and possible cures of myopic loss aversion (MLA) for investment behaviour under risk. We find that both, investment horizons and feedback frequency contribute almost equally to the effects of MLA. Longer investment horizons and less frequent feedback lead to higher investments. However, when given the choice, subjects prefer on average shorter investment horizons and more frequent feedback. Exploiting the status quo bias by setting a long investment horizon or low feedback frequency as a default turns out to be a successful behavioural intervention that increases investment levels.
Reever control: A biosignal controlled interface

With the development of new technologies, new accessibility solutions have emerged to increase the inclusion of user with disabilities. This paper details the development of Reever Control, an interface based on inertial sensors and sEMG signal processing to control a cursor in a virtual environment. The metrics of time, number of false clicks and average absolute error were used to characterize the system and compare it with Camera Mouse, an image processing-based interface. The Reever Control showed improvements compared to uniaxial control, robustness to artifacts, support of right click and runtime compatible with Camera Mouse.
Wearable RGB Camera-based Navigation System for the Visually Impaired

This paper proposes a wearable RGB camera-based system for sightless people through which they can easily and independently navigate their surrounding environment. The system uses a single head or chest mounted RGB camera to capture the visual information from the current user’s path, and an auditory system to inform the user about the right direction to follow. This information is obtained through a novel alignment technique which takes as input a visual snippet from the current user’s path and responds with the corresponding location on the training path. Then, assuming that the wearable camera pose reflects the user’s pose, the system corrects the current user’s pose to align with the corresponding pose in the training location. As a result, the user receives periodically an acoustic instruction to assist him in reaching his destination safely. The experiments conducted to test the system, in various collected indoor and outdoor paths, have shown that it satisfies its design specifications in terms of correctly generating the instructions for guiding the visually impaired along these paths, in addition to its ability to detect and correct deviations from the predefined paths.
An Integrated Path Integral and Free-energy Perturbation-umbrella Sampling Method for Computing Kinetic Isotope Effects of Chemical Reactions in Solution and in Enzymes

An integrated centroid path integral and free-energy perturbation-umbrella sampling (PI-FEP/UM) method for computing kinetic isotope effects (KIEs) for chemical reactions in solution and in enzymes is presented. The method is based on the bisection quantized classical path sampling in centroid path integral simulations to include nuclear quantum corrections in the classical potential of mean force. The required accuracy for computing kinetic isotope effects is achieved by coupled free-energy perturbation and umbrella sampling for reactions involving different isotopes. The use of FEP results in relatively small statistical uncertainties, whereas if kinetic isotope effects are computed directly by the difference in free energies obtained from the quantum mechanical potentials of mean force for different isotopes, the statistical errors are significantly greater. The PI-FEP/UM method is illustrated in two applications. The first reaction is the decarboxylation of N-methyl picolinate in water, and the primary 13 C and secondary 15 N KIEs have been determined. The second reaction is the proton-transfer reaction between nitroethane and acetate ions in water, and the total kinetic isotope effects were obtained. In both cases, the computational results are in accord with experimental results, and the findings provide further insight into the mechanism of these reactions in water.
Vegetation carbon sequestration in Chinese forests from 2010 to 2050

Forests store a large part of the terrestrial vegetation carbon (C) and have high C sequestration potential. Here, we developed a new forest C sequestration (FCS) model based on the secondary succession theory, to estimate vegetation C sequestration capacity in China's forest vegetation. The model used the field measurement data of 3161 forest plots and three future climate scenarios. The results showed that logistic equations provided a good fit for vegetation biomass with forest age in natural and planted forests. The FCS model has been verified with forest biomass data, and model uncertainty is discussed. The increment of vegetation C storage in China's forest vegetation from 2010 to 2050 was estimated as 13.92 Pg C, while the average vegetation C sequestration rate was 0.34 Pg C yr−1 with a 95% confidence interval of 0.28–0.42 Pg C yr−1, which differed significantly between forest types. The largest contributor to the increment was deciduous broadleaf forest (37.8%), while the smallest was deciduous needleleaf forest (2.7%). The vegetation C sequestration rate might reach its maximum around 2020, although vegetation C storage increases continually. It is estimated that vegetation C sequestration might offset 6–8% of China's future emissions. Furthermore, there was a significant negative relationship between vegetation C sequestration rate and C emission rate in different provinces of China, suggesting that developed provinces might need to compensate for undeveloped provinces through C trade. Our findings will provide valuable guidelines to policymakers for designing afforestation strategies and forest C trade in China.
Optimal Orthogonal Graph Drawing with Convex Bend Costs

Traditionally, the quality of orthogonal planar drawings is quantified by the total number of bends or the maximum number of bends per edge. However, this neglects that, in typical applications, edges have varying importance. We consider the problem OptimalFlexDraw that is defined as follows. Given a planar graph G on n vertices with maximum degree 4 (4-planar graph) and for each edge e a cost function coste : N0 → R defining costs depending on the number of bends e has, compute a planar orthogonal drawing of G of minimum cost. In this generality OptimalFlexDraw is NP-hard. We show that it can be solved efficiently if (1) the cost function of each edge is convex and (2) the first bend on each edge does not cause any cost. Our algorithm takes time O(n, ⋅, Tflow(n) and O(n2, ⋅, Tflow(n)) for biconnected and connected graphs, respectively, where Tflow(n) denotes the time to compute a minimum-cost flow in a planar network with multiple sources and sinks. Our result is the first polynomial-time bend-optimization algorithm for general 4-planar graphs optimizing over all embeddings. Previous work considers restricted graph classes and unit costs.
Parallel boosted regression trees for web search ranking

Gradient Boosted Regression Trees (GBRT) are the current state-of-the-art learning paradigm for machine learned web-search ranking - a domain notorious for very large data sets. In this paper, we propose a novel method for parallelizing the training of GBRT. Our technique parallelizes the construction of the individual regression trees and operates using the master-worker paradigm as follows. The data are partitioned among the workers. At each iteration, the worker summarizes its data-partition using histograms. The master processor uses these to build one layer of a regression tree, and then sends this layer to the workers, allowing the workers to build histograms for the next layer. Our algorithm carefully orchestrates overlap between communication and computation to achieve good performance. Since this approach is based on data partitioning, and requires a small amount of communication, it generalizes to distributed and shared memory machines, as well as clouds. We present experimental results on both shared memory machines and clusters for two large scale web search ranking data sets. We demonstrate that the loss in accuracy induced due to the histogram approximation in the regression tree creation can be compensated for through slightly deeper trees. As a result, we see no significant loss in accuracy on the Yahoo data sets and a very small reduction in accuracy for the Microsoft LETOR data. In addition, on shared memory machines, we obtain almost perfect linear speed-up with up to about 48 cores on the large data sets. On distributed memory machines, we get a speedup of 25 with 32 processors. Due to data partitioning our approach can scale to even larger data sets, on which one can reasonably expect even higher speedups.
Radiolabeled Nanoparticles for Multimodality Tumor Imaging

Each imaging modality has its own unique strengths. Multimodality imaging, taking advantages of strengths from two or more imaging modalities, can provide overall structural, functional, and molecular information, offering the prospect of improved diagnostic and therapeutic monitoring abilities. The devices of molecular imaging with multimodality and multifunction are of great value for cancer diagnosis and treatment, and greatly accelerate the development of radionuclide-based multimodal molecular imaging. Radiolabeled nanoparticles bearing intrinsic properties have gained great interest in multimodality tumor imaging over the past decade. Significant breakthrough has been made toward the development of various radiolabeled nanoparticles, which can be used as novel cancer diagnostic tools in multimodality imaging systems. It is expected that quantitative multimodality imaging with multifunctional radiolabeled nanoparticles will afford accurate and precise assessment of biological signatures in cancer in a real-time manner and thus, pave the path towards personalized cancer medicine. This review addresses advantages and challenges in developing multimodality imaging probes by using different types of nanoparticles, and summarizes the recent advances in the applications of radiolabeled nanoparticles for multimodal imaging of tumor. The key issues involved in the translation of radiolabeled nanoparticles to the clinic are also discussed.
Ensemble differential evolution algorithm for CEC2011 problems

Differential Evolution (DE) is a simple yet efficient stochastic algorithm for solving real world problems. To achieve optimal performance with DE, time consuming parameter tuning is essential as its performance is sensitive to the choice of the mutation and crossover strategies and their associated control parameters. During different stages of DE's evolution, different combinations of mutation and crossover strategies with different parameter settings can be appropriate. Based on this observation different adaptive and self-adaptive techniques have been proposed. In this paper, we employ a DE with an ensemble of mutation and crossover strategies and their associated control parameters known as EPSDE. In EPSDE, a pool of distinct mutation and crossover strategies along with a pool of values for each control parameter coexists throughout the evolution process and competes to produce offspring. The performance of EPSDE is evaluated on a set of real world problems taken from different fields of engineering and presented in the technical report of Conference on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) 2011.
Elasticity of AlFeO(3) and FeAlO(3) perovskite and post-perovskite from first-principles calculations

[ 1 ] We use state ‐ of ‐ the ‐ art ab initio calculations based on the generalized gradient approximation of the density functional theory in the planar augmented wavefunction formalism to determine the elastic constants tensor of perovskite and post ‐ perovskite with formulas AlFeO 3 and FeAlO 3 in which Fe or Al respectively occupy only octahedral sites, for the stable magnetic configurations. The phase transition between perovskite and post ‐ perovskite is associated with a site exchange, during which Fe from the inter ‐ octahedral site in perovskite moves into the octahedral site in post ‐ perovskite. Following this transition path the elastic moduli show positive jumps, considerably larger than for MgSiO 3 . The phase transition is marked by a positive jump of 0.04 km/s (0.33%) in the velocity of the compressional waves and by a negative jump of − 0.15 km/s ( − 1.87%) in shear wave velocity. We find that the effects of the Mg + Si <=> Al + Fe substitution on the seismic properties of MgSiO 3 perovskite and post ‐ perovskite depend on the crystallography of the substitution, namely the position the exchanged cations take in the structure. Citation: Caracas, Elasticity of AlFeO 3 and FeAlO 3 perovskite and post ‐ perovskite from first ‐ principles calculations, Res.
Statistical language models with structural elements

Statistical n-gram language models, which can be seen as a variant of finite state grammars with transition probabilities written on the arcs of the graph, have been applied successfully in speech technology. We will present the new theoretical concept of structural elements and outline an automatic method to improve n-gram language models by distributing those structural elements in word sequences. In our model, n-grams that have not occurred in the training will be interpolated by n-grams containing structural elements. We give a detailed description of the algorithm and present first results of a system trained on a small corpus which consists of spontaneous speech dialogues.
Using Collaborative Activities on Tabletops to Enhance Learning and Knowledge Transfer

Digital tabletops are gaining increasing relevancy within commercial and educational sectors. These devices, with their multi-touch surfaces, can support collaborative activities while maintaining natural face-to-face communication. However, we still know little about possible learning outcomes and the situations they favor. We have conducted a study to explore how group activities on tabletops could potentially encourage collaboration on tabletops. We have particularly focused on the potential of tabletops to favor knowledge transfer, which can be translated to the question how knowledge might be assimilated, understood and transferred in the best way. This paper presents a comparative study of a learning session using concept-maps on tabletops and a learning session using traditional paper and pencil tools. The comparison revealed a tendency for the tabletop-environment to effectively support knowledge transfer.
Procedural city model using multi-source parameter estimation

Most current digital 3D city modelling procedures have either a low degree of automation or require specialized skills. Moreover, the construction process is the result of an equilibrium between the desired level of detail on the one hand and modelling performance on the other hand. Although environmental 3D models and 3D city models in particular are essential for a wide range of applications and disciplines, these difficulties are substantial bottle necks for the availability of the models. In this paper, initial steps and ideas behind a novel approach for the construction of 3D city models are presented using an Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) point cloud and standard digital 2D data. The first step involves point processing and feature detection for an ALS point cloud, resulting in the separation of building and ground points from vegetation and other points in the point cloud. Secondly, the detected building features are described in more detail using the 2D data, allowing the distinction between roof points and façade points. A texture map is assigned to the detected features using image libraries. The 2D data are also used for the improvement of vegetation mapping. The novelty of this approach is the fact that the actual city modelling is performed using recently made available software. The used software allows the interpretation of conceptual rules for the automated modelling of real-world environments. The proposed workflow is illustrated by the construction of a city model of some part of Geraardsbergen (Belgium).
Societal impact of a serious game on raising public awareness: the case of FloodSim

This paper presents an evaluation of the societal impact of a simulation-based Serious Game. FloodSim was developed with the aim of raising awareness of issues surrounding flooding policy and citizen engagement in the UK. The game was played by a large number of users (N=25,701) in a period of 4 weeks. Quantitative and qualitative analyses (on a reduced data set) were carried out in order to explore the impact of FloodSim play in raising the general public awareness around flooding in the UK. The results suggest FloodSim was hugely successful in generating general public interest and there was evidence that (a) FloodSim increased awareness at a basic level and (b) that despite the simplicity of the simulation, players perceived FloodSim to be an accurate source of information about flood risk and prevention. This suggests that serious games such as FloodSim have potential to engage the public and raise awareness of societal issues. However, FloodSim only raised awareness at a basic level. It is suggested that more needs to be done to endow serious games with pedagogical principles and more care should be given to the accuracy of the information they convey. The appropriateness of games as an educational medium for raising awareness of complex, real-life issues should also be carefully considered. This study throws some light on the potential of simulation-based Serious Games to offer experiential learning, engage users with serious topics while raising public awareness and understanding of social issues such as flooding and related policymaking. Future research is outlined consisting of identifying the problems and challenges in designing and developing serious games while considering pedagogical principles.
Do sexual ornaments demonstrate heightened condition-dependent expression as predicted by the handicap hypothesis?

The handicap hypothesis of sexual selection predicts that sexual ornaments have evolved heightened condition–dependent expression. The prediction has only recently been subject to experimental investigation. Many of the experiments are of limited value as they: (i) fail to compare condition dependence in sexual ornaments with suitable non–sexual trait controls; (ii) do not adequately account for body size variation; and (iii) typically consider no stress and extreme stress manipulations rather than a range of stresses similar to those experienced in nature. There is also a dearth of experimental studies investigating the genetic basis of condition dependence. Despite the common claim that sexual ornaments are condition–dependent, the unexpected conclusion from our literature review is that there is little support from well–designed experiments.
A novel reduced complexity detection scheme for distributed single-carrier frequency domain equalization

In this paper, we propose a new detection scheme for single carrier frequency-domain equalization (SC-FDE) for relay-assisted transmission scenario over frequency selective channels. We show that, by incorporating linear processing techniques, our new receiver significantly outperforms the minimum mean square error (MMSE)-distributed (D)-SC-FDE receiver in terms of the error rate performance. Simulation results and complexity analysis demonstrate that our proposed receiver outperforms the conventional cooperative MMSE-SC-FDE receiver by performing close to matched filter bound (MFB), while incurring a minimal additional computational complexity.
Studying the benefits and challenges of spatial distribution and physical affordances in a multi-device workspace

In recent years, research on cross-device interaction has become a popular topic in HCI leading to novel interaction techniques mutually interfering with new evolving theoretical paradigms. Building on previous research, we implemented an individual multi-device work environment for creative activities. In a study with 20 participants, we compared a traditional toolbar-based condition with two conditions facilitating spatially distributed tools on digital panels and on physical devices. We analyze participants' interactions with the tools, encountered problems and corresponding solutions, as well as subjective task load and user experience. Our findings show that the spatial distribution of tools indeed offers advantages, but also elicits new problems, that can partly be leveraged by the physical affordances of mobile devices.
Determination of location and amount of series compensation to increase power transfer capability

This paper discusses the merits of an analytical method for determining the location and amount of series compensation to increase the steady state power transfer capability in the power system based primarily on cascading line overload considerations. Steady state transmission limits define the boundaries of a power system operating point. This paper presents tools to identify these boundaries and analytically estimates the change in the boundary limits due to the application of series and shunt compensation. The approach identifies critical lines that can initiate cascading line outages and identifies the optimal location and amount for series compensation. The methodology can also be used to select sites for devices that can extend the availability of power in flowgates.
Spousal Violence in Bangladesh: A Call for a Public-health Response

Spousal violence against women is a serious public-health issue. Although there is a growing body of literature on this subject, there are still many unanswered questions regarding the prevalence of this violence, the risk factors, the consequences, and how to address the issue. The purpose of this literature review is to organize and synthesize the empirical evidence on spousal violence against women in Bangladesh and to provide direction for both researchers and practitioners for future work in this area. The review suggests that spousal violence against women is high in Bangladesh. The list of correlates is long and inconclusive. Although there is evidence on adverse consequences of this violence on health of women and their children, more research is needed to explore the multifaceted consequences of violence for women, children, families, and communities. Action research is needed to develop and test preventive and curative interventions.