Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Baseline Model of Price Formation in a Sequential Market

In a centralized market where information over the fundamental value of a traded asset is asymmetric and imperfect a basic question arises: how well the market price transmits and aggregates disperse information. We address this using the trading protocol of Glosten and Milgrom (1985) but in an environment where ex ante symmetric agents have interdependent valuations, and affiliated private information. This implies that traders are informationally equivalent, and that there are neither pure liquidity-driven traders nor pure speculators. We show several properties of the ask and bid prices, but most importantly we prove that both prices in the limit collapse to a single value (the limiting price) which reveals the fundamental value of the asset. Adverse selection, which is inherent in the model, does not impede the estimation problem in the sense that the rate of convergence to the limiting price is the same as that of a fully signal-revealing mechanism.
Heterogeneous Agents and Non-Normal Fundamentals

This paper proposes an explanation for the disconnect puzzle between exchange rates and macro-economic variables in variance and extremes. We insert a fundamental rate with financial market characteristics into a heterogeneous agents model and simulate exchange rates in order to examine whether the model replicates the disconnect puzzle in higher moments. The simulations are consistent with reality if the exchange rate is detached from the fundamental rate, i.e. if there is a bubble. This implies that the disconnect puzzle can be explained by the fact that the market is in a constant bubble state, caused by a high proportion of technical analysts active in the market.
DFEC: Dynamic Forward Error Control for DVB-H

DVB-H is a terrestrial digital TV standard that allows user to move freely when receiving signals. Additional Reed-Solomon codes are also included as an option to cope with higher channel error rate in mobile environment. However, it is designed with fix-valued link layer parameters, such as coding rates and error rates. In mobile networks, channel conditions change from time to time, thus code rates that behave well in one case may become inadequate in another. On the other hand, to implement static and highly protective codes results in low throughput. In this paper, we propose dynamic forward error control scheme (DFEC) that adapts to varying channel conditions. Depending on the content carried, DFEC provides different schemes for more efficient utilization of channel capacities. Simulations show that it achieves a better throughput, which could also translate to more power saving for the system
Magnetizing the universe

The origin of cosmic magnetism is an issue of fundamental importance in astrophysics. We review here some of the ideas of how large scale magnetic fields in the universe, particularly in galaxies and galaxy clusters could arise. The popular paradigm involves the generation of a seed magnetic field followed by turbulent dynamo amplification of the seed field. We first outline various seed field generation mechanisms including Biermann batteries. These in general give a field much smaller than the observed field and so they require further amplification by dynamo action. The basic idea behind fluctuation dynamos, as applied to cluster magnetism and the mean-field helical dynamo as applied to disk galaxies, are outlined. Major difficulties with the dynamo paradigm are considered. It is particularly important to understand the nonlinear saturation of dynamos, and whether the fields produced are coherent enough on large-scales to explain the observed fields in galaxies and clusters. At the same time the alternative possibility of a primordial field lacks firm theoretical support but can have very interesting observational consequences.
Design and Performance Analysis of Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducer Linear Array

An ultrasonic transducer is a key component to achieve ultrasonic imaging. This paper designs a new type of Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) based capacitive ultrasonic transducer and a linear array based on the transducer. Through directivity analysis, it can be found that its directivity is weak due to the small size of the designed transducer, but the directivity of the designed linear array is very strong. In order to further suppress the sidelobe interference and improve the resolution of the imaging system and imaging quality, the Dolph-Chebyshev weighting method and the Taylor weighting method are used to process −40dB sidelobe suppression, and satisfactory results are obtained, which can meet actual requirements.
Seeing Objects as Faces Enhances Object Detection

The face is a special visual stimulus. Both bottom-up processes for low-level facial features and top-down modulation by face expectations contribute to the advantages of face perception. However, it is hard to dissociate the top-down factors from the bottom-up processes, since facial stimuli mandatorily lead to face awareness. In the present study, using the face pareidolia phenomenon, we demonstrated that face awareness, namely seeing an object as a face, enhances object detection performance. In face pareidolia, some people see a visual stimulus, for example, three dots arranged in V shape, as a face, while others do not. This phenomenon allows us to investigate the effect of face awareness leaving the stimulus per se unchanged. Participants were asked to detect a face target or a triangle target. While target per se was identical between the two tasks, the detection sensitivity was higher when the participants recognized the target as a face. This was the case irrespective of the stimulus eccentricity or the vertical orientation of the stimulus. These results demonstrate that seeing an object as a face facilitates object detection via top-down modulation. The advantages of face perception are, therefore, at least partly, due to face awareness.
Implementing Reforms in the Telecommunications Sector: Lessons from Experience

The movement toward structural reform of the telecommunications sector which began in the 1980s, has become a veritable worldwide wave of change. Most organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, and a growing number of developing countries, have by now either completed major reforms or have these well under way. In 1991, the World Bank, the International Telecommunication Union, and the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation jointly hosted a seminar in Washington, DC, to examine the experience of implementing reforms in the telecommunications sector. This highly successful event brought together over one hundred participants involved in telecommunications reform in some fourty countries. This publication is the product of a collective undertaking to make available the main findings of the Washington seminar to a larger audience. It offers readers an up-to-date account of approaches to major policy and structural issues, describes practical experiences in Latin America, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe, and discusses issues related to investment, regulation, and implementation. Several recurrent themes are brought out, and a number of countries' experiences are examined successively from different angles.
Quality degradative reversible data embedding using pixel replacement

Conventionally, reversible data embedding methods aim at maintaining high output image quality while sacrificing carrier capacity. Recently, as a new trend, some researchers exploited reversible data embedding techniques to severely degrade image quality. In this paper, a novel high carrier capacity data embedding technique is proposed to achieve quality degradation. An efficient pixel value estimation method called checkerboard based prediction is proposed and exploited to realize data embedding while achieving scrambling effect. Here, locations of the predicted pixels are vacated to embed information while degrading the image quality. Basic performance of the proposed method is verified through experiments using various standard test images. In the best case scenario, carrier capacity of 7.31 bpp is achieved while the image is severely degraded.
Synthesis for the Blizzard Challenge 2008

In this paper we present the details of our first entry for the Blizzard Challenge 2008 speech synthesis evaluation. Our system is a new HMM-based text-to-speech voice building system for the HTS runtime synthesis engine. We entered two UK English voices, one built from the full database provided, A, the other from the Arctic subset, B and one Mandarin voice built from the provided database. The evaluation results show that our system provides very good intelligibility, moderate naturalness and low similarity to the original speaker.
Fully automated rodent brain MR image processing pipeline on a Midas server: from acquired images to region-based statistics

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of rodent brains enables study of the development and the integrity of the brain under certain conditions (alcohol, drugs etc.). However, these images are difficult to analyze for biomedical researchers with limited image processing experience. In this paper we present an image processing pipeline running on a Midas server, a web-based data storage system. It is composed of the following steps: rigid registration, skull-stripping, average computation, average parcellation, parcellation propagation to individual subjects, and computation of region-based statistics on each image. The pipeline is easy to configure and requires very little image processing knowledge. We present results obtained by processing a data set using this pipeline and demonstrate how this pipeline can be used to find differences between populations.
Monte Carlo dosimetric study of the Flexisource Co-60 high dose rate source

Purpose Recently, a new HDR 60Co brachytherapy source, Flexisource Co-60, has been developed (Nucletron B.V. Veenendaal, The Netherlands). This study aims to obtain dosimetric data for this source for its use in clinical practice as required by AAPM and ESTRO. Material and methods Two Monte Carlo radiation transport codes were used: Penelope2008 and GEANT4. The source was centrally-positioned in a 100 cm radius water phantom. Absorbed dose and collisional kerma were obtained using 0.01 cm (close) and 0.1 cm (far) sized voxels to provide high-resolution dosimetry near (far from) the source. Dose rate distributions obtained with the two Monte Carlo codes were compared. Results and Discussion Simulations performed with those two radiation transport codes showed an agreement typically within 0.2% for r > 0.8 cm and up to 2% closer to the source. Detailed results of dose distributions are being made available. Conclusions Dosimetric data are provided for the new Flexisource Co-60 source. These data are meant to be used in treatment planning systems in clinical practice.
Dynamic Production of Soluble Extracellular Polysaccharides by Streptococcus mutans

Caries development in the presence of Streptococcus mutans is associated not only with the production of extracellular water-insoluble polymers but also is based on water-soluble polysaccharides. The aim of this study was the evaluation of a novel glucan-specific Lectin assay for monitoring water-soluble EPS produced by S. mutans during several growth periods in different media. S. mutans cultures were grown for 24 h, 48 h, and 144 h in medium deficient of sucrose (A) and medium supplemented with 5% sucrose (B). Microtiter well plates were coated with cell-free supernatants followed by the addition of labeled Concanavalin-A and enzyme substrate. The substrate reactions were kinetically detected at 405 nm. The validation of the assay was performed using carbohydrates dextran, xanthan, and sucrose as reference. This new Concanavalin-A-based assay showed the highest sensitivity for dextran and revealed that the glucan production of S. mutans reached its maximum at 144 h in medium B according to bacterial maturation.
Se p 20 08 Record-driven growth process and networks

We introduce a novel stochastic growth process, the Record-driven growth process, which originates from the analysis of a class of growing networks in a universal limiting regime. Nodes are added one by one to a network, each node possessing a quality. The new incoming node connects to the preexisting node with best quality, that is, with record value for the quality. The emergent structure is that of a growing network, where groups are formed around record nodes (nodes endowed with the best intrinsic qualities). Special emphasis is put on the statistics of leaders (nodes whose degrees are the largest). The asymptotic probability for a node to be a leader is equal to the Golomb-Dickman constant ω = 0.624 329. , which arises in problems of combinatorical nature. This outcome solves the problem of the determination of the record breaking rate for the sequence of correlated inter-record intervals. The process exhibits temporal self-similarity in the late-time regime. Connections with the statistics of the cycles of random permutations, the statistical properties of randomly broken intervals, and the Kesten variable are given.
Classification Systems Based on Fuzzy Cognitive Maps

In the framework of Fuzzy Cognitive maps theory, we propose a novel classify algorithm, which is totally different from the traditional classify algorithm. The novel classify algorithm has three main advantages: Firstly, the procedures of the proposed algorithm are more transparent and understandable, and the classify results have shown the relationship between attributes. Secondly, the predefined distance function and objective function are not required, and any parameters need not be given in advance. Last, the proposed algorithm doesn’t have a heavy calculation load. To evaluate the performance of the proposed LS-FCM classify algorithm, we consider three well-known benchmark clustering problems–Iris data, Wine data and Wisconsin diagnostic breast cancer data.
Dynamic and Automatic Feedback-Based Threshold Adaptation for Code Smell Detection

Most code smell detection tools expose thresholds to engineers for customization because code smell detection is essentially subjective and application specific. Another reason why engineers should customize these thresholds is that they have different working schedules and different requirements on software quality. They have their own unique need on precision and recall in smell detection. This unique need should be fulfilled by adjusting thresholds of smell detection tools. However, it is difficult for software engineers, especially inexperienced ones, to adjust often contradicting and related thresholds manually. One of the possible reasons is that engineers do not know the exact quantitative relation between threshold values and performance, e.g., precision. In this paper, we propose an approach to adapting thresholds automatically and dynamically. Engineers set a target precision manually according to their working schedules and quality requirements. With feedback from engineers, the proposed approach then automatically searches for a threshold setting to maximize recall while having precision close to the target precision. The proposed approach has been evaluated on open-source applications. Evaluation results suggest that the proposed approach is effective.
Sialidase-based anti-influenza virus therapy protects against secondary pneumococcal infection.

BACKGROUND DAS181 (Fludase) is a sialidase fusion protein in clinical development as a broad-spectrum anti-influenza virus (IFV) therapeutic agent. Previous reports by other investigators have raised the concern that desialylation of airway epithelium might increase susceptibility to Streptococcus pneumoniae infection. METHODS To address whether DAS181 would lead to an increased risk of pneumococcal infection, we tested S. pneumoniae colonization after DAS181 treatment of human A549 cells, healthy mice, and mice challenged with a lethal dose of IFV A/PR/8/34 (H1N1) or A/Victoria/3/75 (H3N2), followed by 10(4) cfu of S. pneumoniae (D39) on day 3 or day 7. DAS181 treatment was given 24-48 h after IFV challenge. RESULTS DAS181 treatment did not increase S. pneumoniae colonization in vitro or in vivo in healthy animals. In IFV-infected mice, DAS181 prevented pneumonia and significantly prolonged survival and inhibited the IFV titer by > or = 3 logs. None of the treated animals showed enhanced S. pneumoniae colonization of the lung. In addition, opportunistic infections with Citrobacter species or Klebsiella species occurred only in mice receiving vehicle, not in animals treated with DAS181. CONCLUSIONS These data indicate that DAS181 treatment does not exacerbate secondary bacterial infection in mice. DAS181 may reduce the risk of secondary bacterial infection by inhibiting IFV.
A New Image Fusion Scheme Based on Wavelet Transform

A new image fusion scheme based on wavelet transform is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the image is decomposed into high-frequency images and lowfrequency images with wavelet transform, then the spatial frequency and the contrast of the low-frequency image are measured to determine the fused lowfrequency image, and to the high-frequency image, we select the highfrequency coefficient based on the absolute value maximum principal and verify the consistency of these coefficients. Finally, the image can be reconstructed with Mallat algorithm. The experimental results show that the scheme can preserve all useful information from primitive images and the clarity and the contrast of the fused image are improved. The presented scheme is verified to be effective for the image fusion.
Missense Mutations Allow a Sequence-Blind Mutant of SpoIIIE to Successfully Translocate Chromosomes during Sporulation

SpoIIIE directionally pumps DNA across membranes during Bacillus subtilis sporulation and vegetative growth. The sequence-reading domain (γ domain) is required for directional DNA transport, and its deletion severely impairs sporulation. We selected suppressors of the spoIIIEΔγ sporulation defect. Unexpectedly, many suppressors were intragenic missense mutants, and some restore sporulation to near-wild-type levels. The mutant proteins are likely not more abundant, faster at translocating DNA, or sequence-sensitive, and rescue does not involve the SpoIIIE homolog SftA. Some mutants behave differently when co-expressed with spoIIIEΔγ, consistent with the idea that some, but not all, variants may form mixed oligomers. In full-length spoIIIE, these mutations do not affect sporulation, and yet the corresponding residues are rarely found in other SpoIIIE/FtsK family members. The suppressors do not rescue chromosome translocation defects during vegetative growth, indicating that the role of the γ domain cannot be fully replaced by these mutations. We present two models consistent with our findings: that the suppressors commit to transport in one arbitrarily-determined direction or delay spore development. It is surprising that missense mutations somehow rescue loss of an entire domain with a complex function, and this raises new questions about the mechanism by which SpoIIIE pumps DNA and the roles SpoIIIE plays in vivo.
Joint Variable Selection for Data Envelopment Analysis via Group Sparsity

This study develops a data-driven group variable selection method for data envelopment analysis (DEA), a non-parametric linear programming approach to the estimation of production frontiers. The proposed method extends the group Lasso (least absolute shrinkage and selection operator) designed for variable selection on (often predefined) groups of variables in linear regression models to DEA models. In particular, a special constrained version of the group Lasso with the loss function suited for variable selection in DEA models is derived and solved by a new tailored algorithm based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). This study further conducts a thorough evaluation of the proposed method against two widely used variable selection methods -- the efficiency contribution measure (ECM) method and the regression-based (RB) test -- in DEA via Monte Carlo simulations. The simulation results show that our method provides more favorable performance compared with its benchmarks.
Aesthetics in performance : formations of symbolic construction and experience

In various ways, the essays presented in this volume explore the structures and aesthetic possibilities of music, dance and dramatic representation in ritual and theatrical situations in a diversity of ethnographic contexts in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. Each essay enters into a discussion of the logicA" of aesthetic processes exploring their social and political and symbolic import. The aim is above all to explore the way artistic and aesthetic practices in performance produce and structure experience.
Performance Evaluation of CoAP Using RPL and LPL in TinyOS

The use of web services for sensor networking applications is seen as an important part in emerging M2M communications. The Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) is proposed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to optimize the use of the RESTful web service architecture for constrained nodes and networks, for example Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). In this paper, we present a performance evaluation of the CoAP protocol implemented for the embedded operating system TinyOS. The CoapBlip implementation has been deployed on 20 TelosB motes forming a multi- hop network using the Routing Protocol for Low- power and Lossy Networks (RPL) with the two objective function of MRHOF and OF0. The performance of CoAP has been studied using both objective functions in the routing layer together with having LPL (Low Power Listening) enabled or disabled.
NEUROMUSCULAR TRAINING IMPROVES PERFORMANCE AND LOWER‐EXTREMITY BIOMECHANICS IN FEMALE ATHLETES

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a comprehensive neuromuscular training program on measures of performance and lower-extremity movement biomechanics in female athletes. The hypothesis was that significant improvements in measures of performance would be demonstrated concomitant with improved biomechanical measures related to anterior cruciate ligament injury risk. Forty-one female basketball, soccer, and volleyball players (age, 15.3 ± 0.9 years; weight, 64.8 ± 9.96 kg; height, 171.2 ± 7.21 cm) underwent 6 weeks of training that included 4 main components (plyometric and movement, core strengthening and balance, resistance training, and speed training). Twelve age-, height-, and weight-matched controls underwent the same testing protocol twice 6 weeks apart. Trained athletes demonstrated increased predicted 1 repetition maximum squat (92%) and bench press (20%). Right and left single-leg hop distance increased 10.39 cm and 8.53 cm, respectively, and vertical jump also increased from 39.9 ± 0.9 cm to 43.2 ± 1.1 cm with training. Speed in a 9.1-m sprint improved from 1.80 ± 0.02 seconds to 1.73 ± 0.01 seconds. Pre- and posttest 3-dimensional motion analysis demonstrated increased knee flexion-extension range of motion during the landing phase of a vertical jump (right, 71.9 ± 1.48 to 76.9 ± 1.48; left, 71.3 ± 1.58 to 77.3 ± 1.48). Training decreased knee valgus (28%) and varus (38%) torques. Control subjects did not demonstrate significant alterations during the 6-week interval. The results of this study support the hypothesis that the combination of multiple-injury prevention-training components into a comprehensive program improves measures of performance and movement biomechanics.