Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterizations in a random record model with a nonidentically distributed initial record

We consider a sequence, of random length M, of independent, continuous observations X i , 1 ≤ i ≤ M, where M is geometric, X 1 has cumulative distribution function (CDF) G, and X i , i ≥ 2, have CDF F. Let N be the number of upper records and let R n , n ≥ 1, be the nth record value. We show that N is independent of F if and only if G(x) = G 0(F(x)) for some CDF G 0, and that if E(|X 2|) is finite then so is E(|R n |), n ≥ 2, whenever N ≥ n or N = n. We prove that the distribution of N, along with appropriately chosen subsequences of E(R n ), characterize F and G and, along with subsequences of E(R n - R n-1), characterize F and G up to a common location shift. We discuss some applications to the identification of the wage offer distribution in job search models.
Carbon nanospheres and tubules obtained by the pyrolysis of hydrocarbons

Monodispersed nanospheres of carbon are obtained by the pyrolysis of methane or benzene at high temperatures in the presence of hydrogen without the use of any catalyst. Carbonization of these hydrocarbons over transition metal powders (for example Ni) or supported metal catalysts, however, yields carbon nanotubes.
ELECTROCHEMICAL BEHAVIOR AND SIMULTANEOUS DETERMINATION OF VITAMIN B2, B6, AND C AT ELECTROCHEMICALLY PRETREATED GLASSY CARBON ELECTRODE

An electrochemically pretreated glassy carbon electrode (PGCE) was achieved by anodic oxidation at 1.8V and following potential cycling in the potential range from −0.8 to +1.0 V. The resulting PGCE gave well-defined redox peaks with E pa= −0.073 V, E pc = 0.044 V. The PGCE showed good activity in improving the electrochemical responses of some water-soluble Vitamins, such as Vitamin (VB2), Vitamin (VB6) and Vitamin (VC). VB2, VB6 could be adsorbed at PGCE and VC proceeded with an electrocatalytic process. The electrochemical behavior of VB6 at PGCE depended on the potential scanning method and the pretreatment process of the electrode. The PGCE was rather stable and can be used to simultaneously determine these vitamins in multivitamin tablets.
Mutual Separation of (W, As, Mo, V, Ge, B) Oxoanions from Bi‐metallic Solution by Resin having Methyl‐Amino‐Glucitol Moiety

Abstract The mutual separation of (W, As, Mo, V, Ge, B)‐oxoanions using resin having methyl‐amino‐glucitol polymeric moiety from bimetallic solution was investigated by means of dynamic column experiments. The effect of solution pH on the separation efficiency and on the co‐removal level of metallic impurities was followed in this study. The conditions for efficient desorption of metals were determined in order to get the highly concentrated, impurities free solution suitable for recovery and reuse of separated metal. Effective separation of molybdenum and vanadium from boron or germanium and tungsten from arsenic was achieved. †This study was originated by late Prof. Zdeněk Matějka who passed away in the midst of the work on October 2nd 2006.
Inside Debt and Bank Risk

Abstract Inside debt compensation held by top officers of U.S. banks is negatively related to risk and risk taking. The evidence reveals a robust and strongly negative relation between end-of-2006 inside debt and 2007–2009 bank-specific risk exposures in terms of lost stock market value, volatility, tail risk, and the probability of financial distress. Banks with managers having large inside debt holdings are also characterized by better-quality assets, more conservative balance sheet management, and a stronger tendency toward traditional banking activities. The results suggest that debt-based compensation limits bank risk and risk taking by encouraging more conservative decision making.
Redox conditions in piston-cylinder apparatus: The different behavior of boron nitride and unfired pyrophyllite assemblies

Abstract Piston-cylinder experiments with C-H-O fluids in equilibrium with graphite as redox sensor were performed at 900 °C and 10 kbar. With this technique, it is possible to investigate the hydrogen permeability of the material surrounding the samples and to determine the hydrogen fugacity. The furnace assembly consisted of boron nitride or unfired pyrophyllite. Solid organic compounds (C4H4O4, C9H10O2, and C14H22O) were used as starting materials. The different H/O ratios of these compounds (1:1, 5:1, 22:1) result in different initial hydrogen fugacities. The fluid formed during the experiments was analyzed by gas chromatography. The experimental data demonstrate that boron nitride is nearly impermeable to hydrogen at the investigated conditions. The hydrogen fugacity observed in the gold capsules is controlled by the composition of the C-H-O starting compound. After approximately 1 h it is 340 bar for experiments with C4H4O4, 2400 bar for experiments with C9H10O2, and 3200 bar for experiments with C14H22O and remains constant for at least 8 d. The situation is different with unfired pyrophyllite as the pressure-transmitting material. In these experiments, the same hydrogen fugacity was determined irrespective of the compositions of the organic compounds. The hydrogen fugacity seems to be controlled only by the furnace assembly. It is approximately 470 bar after 3 d. The hydrogen fugacity in two samples placed side-by-side in the boron nitride assembly and containing different starting compounds (H/O = 1 and 5) becomes identical during experimental durations of less than 2 d. This is because of the exchange of hydrogen through the adjacent capsule walls. This observation can be used to measure the hydrogen fugacity of any piston-cylinder experiment. In boron nitride assemblies, a second capsule with a C-H-O fluid and graphite can also be applied to control the hydrogen fugacity within given limits.
Techniques For The Synthesis Of Multiprocessor Tasksets

—The selection of task attributes for empirical evaluations of multiprocessor scheduling algorithms and associated schedulability analyses can greatly affect the results of experiments. Taskset generation algorithms should meet three requirements: efﬁciency, parameter independence, and lack of bias. Satisfying these requirements enables tasksets to be generated in a moderate amount of time, allows effects of speciﬁc parameters to be explored without the problem of confounding variables, and ensures fairness in comparisons between different schedulability analysis techniques. For the uniprocessor case, they are met by the UUniFast algorithm but for multiprocessor systems, where the total desired utilisation is greater than one, UUniFast can produce invalid tasksets. This paper outlines an algorithm, Randﬁxedsum, for the underlying mathematical problem of efﬁciently generating uniformly distributed random points whose components have constant sum. This algorithm has been available via a MatLab forum for a number of years; however, this is the ﬁrst time it has been formally published. This algorithm has direct application to multiprocessor taskset generation. The importance of period generation to experimental evaluation of schedulability tests is also covered.
Carbon Nanotube Composite as Novel Platform for Microbial Biosensor

The presented work includes the development of a microbial biosensor based on a carbon-nanotube epoxy composite (CNTEC) platform used as supporting electrode for cell immobilization. For this purpose, cells of Pseudomonas fluorescens were immobilized on the surface of the CNTEC electrode by means of gelatin which was then cross linked with glutaraldehyde. After optimization of experimental parameters like cell amount, pH and temperature, the system was calibrated for glucose. From the calibration graph the linear range was estimated as 0.5 – 4.0 mM with a response time of 100 s. Furthermore, substrate specificity and operational stability were investigated. Finally, the results that were obtained with CNTEC electrodes were compared with conventional graphite epoxy composite electrode (GECE) and as a result, higher current values (2 to 3 folds) were observed with CNTEC microbial biosensor.
Immobilized pH gradients in capillary tubes and two‐dimensional gel electrophoresis

Isoelectric focusing in mixed carrier ampholyte‐immobilized pH gradients (CA‐IPG) is an effective way to separate proteins by charge. A method to prepare CA‐IPG in capillary tubes and the description of the equipment used are outlined. Two‐dimensional gel electrophoresis patterns of human serum and liver biopsies, with isoelectric focusing and CA‐IPG as the first dimension, are presented. The comparison with two‐dimensional gel electrophoresis patterns obtained by conventional carrier ampholyte pH gradient separation shows the excellent resolution and potential of this technique.
Confidence in the Familiar: An International Perspective

Abstract One striking feature of international portfolio investment is the extent to which equity portfolios are concentrated in the domestic equity market of the investor—the home bias puzzle. I examine the role of investors' perception of foreign investment risk on their portfolio choices. The expected returns and risk of foreign investment are specified through an asset pricing model with the home portfolio being the benchmark asset—Pastor's (2000) domestic CAPM. The model serves as a reference point around which investors can center their prior beliefs. I focus on investors' prior beliefs that are consistent with the literature on confidence in the familiar—foreign equities, in terms of both expected returns and risk, being viewed less favorably than domestic equities. These prior beliefs are then combined with the data on G7 equities, and the revised beliefs are used to obtain the global optimal asset allocation. To hold predominantly domestic equities, each G7 investor has to believe that the risk of foreign investment is several times higher than the actual risk. The home bias is more of a puzzle for a U.S. investor during the 1970s. Specifying investors' prior beliefs around the world CAPM does not help resolve the puzzle.
Initiation of Electrical Breakdown in Ultrahigh Vacuum

Existing theories for the initiation of electrical breakdown are reviewed, together with the experimental observations on which they are based. Experiments here described have extended the available data on electrical breakdown between broad area electrodes under ultra-high-vacuum conditions. The results, together with those of several other experimenters, are interpreted on the basis of a single picture which explains and relates the phenomena of predischarge currents and the initiation of breakdown. Based on field emission from sharp submicroscopic points, this picture predicts breakdown when the local electric field at the cathode reaches a critical value. The local field, which for broad area electrodes may be much larger than the average field, is deduced from observations of field emission prior to breakdown. When properly analyzed, data for tungsten electrodes from this research and several others indicate a value for the electrical field at breakdown which is independent of gap spacing or geometri.
Response

In her comment on our study “Administrative Reform and Environmental Protection: The Case of China,” Deborah Seligsohn raises important questions about event analysis. These methods have been used widely to get at the effects of various political and economic shocks, but she questions our choice of the event window and the event date. The issues are larger: what can we expect to learn from these types of studies and what can we say about institutional and policy change in China in particular? Regarding the event window, Seligsohn argues that the event window chosen was too narrow and “it most likely should include the entire period from the adoption of the 11th Five Year Plan and its targets in March 2006 to the elevation to Ministry status in March 2008. At the very least, the period from the OECD review in late 2006 through March 2008 needs to be included. ” Yet this assumes that policy proposals or policy initiatives may have real effects, even if they are not yet endorsed by the party leadership (or powerful organizations). Let us take a recent example. The Third Plenum of the 18th Party Congress, which was held in November 2013, announced an ambitious agenda to restructure the relationship between the government and the market. The agenda was highly praised and deemed to provide newmomentum for China’s economic reform (Xu 2015). However, a recent estimation of reform performance after 2013 concluded that “it is impossible to resist the conclusion that the reform process overall has stumbled and is in serious trouble” (Naughton 2017, 3). If a policy initiative that is announced by the central committee of the Party and endorsed by the top leader (Xi Jinping) turns out to be (basically) a failure, how can we be sure that a regular policy proposal such as the 11th Five Year Plan (hereafter the Plan) may significantly change polluting companies’ behavior? It is true that there are certain hard (mandatory) environmental targets in the Plan, and these targets have been basically met (according to the Chinese government);1 however, these targets are met mainly through certain public investment projects, such as building more sewage treatment works and more desulfurizing installations (for electric power plants)2 or even by radical administrative measures, such as lazhaxiandian (cutting power to limit consumption)3 rather than by encouraging environmental regulatory agencies to implement environmental regulations more seriously.4 Why might companies’ performance (and hence investors’ expectations) change as a response to such a broad (or amorphous) pollution control strategy? Seligsohn also emphasizes the importance of the OECD review as a possible trigger. International organizations, such as theWorld Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), have issued numerous reports, reviews, and policy proposals concerning China. Whether and to what extent the Chinese government may adopt these proposals is a debated issue. For example, the IMF has warned several times that China’s financial Journal of East Asian Studies 19 (2019), 65–67 doi:10.1017/jea.2019. 2
FB: A Flexible Buffer Management Scheme for Data Center Switches

Today, network devices share buffer across priority queues to avoid drops during transient congestion. While cost-effective most of the time, this sharing can cause undesired interference among seemingly independent traffic. As a result, low-priority traffic can cause increased packet loss to high-priority traffic. Similarly, long flows can prevent the buffer from absorbing incoming bursts even if they do not share the same queue. The cause of this perhaps unintuitive outcome is that today's buffer sharing techniques are unable to guarantee isolation across (priority) queues without statically allocating buffer space. To address this issue, we designed FB, a novel buffer sharing scheme that offers strict isolation guarantees to high-priority traffic without sacrificing link utilizations. Thus, FB outperforms conventional buffer sharing algorithms in absorbing bursts while achieving on-par throughput. We show that FB is practical and runs at line-rate on existing hardware (Barefoot Tofino). Significantly, FB's operations can be approximated in non-programmable devices.
Taxation, Dividends, and Share Repurchases: Taking Evidence Global

Abstract We compile a comprehensive international dividend and capital gains tax data set to study tax-based explanations of corporate payout for a panel of 6,035 firms from 25 countries for the period 1990–2008. We find robust evidence that the tax penalty on dividends versus capital gains corresponds closely with firms’ propensity to pay dividends and repurchase shares, and with the amount of dividends and shares repurchased. Our coefficient estimates suggest a smaller tax effect than reported in recent single-country, single-event studies. Instead, our results correspond more closely with historic long-term estimates of the elasticity of dividends.
Amperometric batch injection analysis: Theoretical aspects of current transients and comparison with wall-jet electrodes in continuous flow

Amperometric detection using the batch injection analysis technique has been studied and compared with the current obtained at the wall-jet electrode under similar conditions using the oxidation of potassium ferrocyanide and the injection of samples of volume 10 to 100μL. The form of the current transients has been analyzed and compared with the steady-state response at wall-jet disk electrodes. Good agreement is found at high dispension rate, differences at lower dispension rates being ascribed to radial diffusion effects. The importance of tip–electrode distance and injection volume have been evaluated; it is shown that the optimum distance is 3 mm and that maximum sensitivity requires a minimum injection volume of 14 μL. A detection limit of 50 μM using simple amperometric detection is estimated. Implications of these results for the efficient application of amperometric batch injection analysis are discussed.
Absolute Optical Calibrations Using a Simple Tungsten Bulb: Theory

The absolute spectral intensity calibration of op- tical detectors has always been difficult. In the past, this was only possible using expensive sources, which had been cross-calibrated against national standards. We describe a simple theoretical approach to absolute optical calibrations using any ordinary Tungsten light bulb. A key element of the theory is transforming Tungsten into an equivalent black body radiator. This permits direct application of Stefan- Boltzmann's and Planck's formulas of radiation.
Summaries of Doctoral Dissertations

I was honored that Lee Alston asked me to be the convener for the Nevins Prize Competition this year. There were close to a dozen submissions spanning a wide range of topics in economic history and displaying a wide range of methodologies, from the quantitative to the narrative. Reading all of these dissertations was, for me, interesting, enlightening, and even inspiring. If the research in this most recent cohort of PhD dissertations is any indication, economic history has a bright future.
1β-hydroxylfriedelin, a new natural pentacylic triterpene from the sclerotia of Polyporus umbellatus

A new pentacylic triterpene, 1β-hydroxylfriedelin, has been isolated from the sclerotia of Polyporus umbellatus (Pers.) Fries (Polyporaceae) together with 18 known compounds (2–19). The structures of these compounds were elucidated on the basis of spectral data.
CEO Turnover–Performance Sensitivity in Private Firms

We compare chief executive officer (CEO) turnover in public and large private firms. Public firms have higher turnover rates and exhibit greater turnover–performance sensitivity (TPS) than private firms. When we control for pre-turnover performance, performance improvements are greater for private firms than for public firms. We investigate whether these differences are due to differences in quality of accounting information, the CEO candidate pool, CEO power, board structure, ownership structure, investor horizon, or certain unobservable differences between public and private firms. One factor contributing to public firms’ higher turnover rates and greater TPS appears to be investor myopia.
Building Geometrical Models for Biological Molecules

Dedication To my Father, Who is in heaven. To my Brother, through Whom all things came into being. To my Helper, Who teaches me all things. I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; From where shall my help come? My help comes from the LORD, Who made heaven and earth. Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank Dr. Daniel Dix, my thesis advisor, who has patiently guided me through this long process of completing the thesis, encouraging me through the Scripture when I felt that I could not go on any more and bearing with me in my ignorance and frustration. I recognize and thank his family for the sacrifices that they made for him to do so. Also, I am grateful to Dr. László Székely, my second reader, for being a second reader, waiting quietly without pressuring at all till I was able to hand the thesis for his reading, and his insightful suggestion and uplifting words. I would like to express special thanks to Dr. George McNulty, who has been not only the technical support, but more than that, has been a support throughout my time here in this school, even from my undergraduate time, and encouraged me to go on to graduate school. I am thankful for Dr. Anton Schep, the director of the Department of Mathematics , for his advise and guidance and help in many ways, going beyond his duty as to look for an office space for my last semester. To all the staff in the Department, I give thanks for what they have done and are doing and the care that they show to us. And many thanks to my fellow graduate students and office mates for various ways of support and kindness. I am deeply grateful for my family and the Family for their deep love, continous support, care and labor, taking part in this project for His glory. By His power through their labor, this servant was enabled to persevere. His grace was and is sufficient. May He reward and bless each one. iii And most of all, I give thanks to my Lord, my Creator, the living God for sustaining and teaching me and for His great love.
Enhanced carrier injection in Schottky contacts using dopant segregation: a Monte Carlo research

In this paper we present a Monte Carlo research of the impact, on carrier transport, of including a dopant-segregated layer adjacent to the Schottky contact in back-to-back diodes. A comparison with a homogeneous structure is developed, evidencing that the doped layer boosts the tunneling current through the Schottky barrier, thus significantly improving the injection of carriers at the contact. We have carried out a complete study of carrier injection and transport in the region close to the reverse-biased contact together with the analysis of internal quantities such as conduction band, carrier density and electric field. The effect of temperature on the current is also evaluated. The study of the velocity distribution functions and the average number of scatterings undergone by the carriers reveals that devices with dopant segregation exhibit an enhancement of the ballistic transport in the first nanometers close to the Schottky contact.
E. coli Adenylate Kinase Dynamics: Comparison of Elastic Network Model Modes with Mode-Coupling

The dynamics of adenylate kinase of Escherichia coli (AKeco) and its complex with the inhibitor AP5A, are characterized by correlating the theoretical results obtained with the Gaussian Network Model (GNM) and the anisotropic network model (ANM) with the order parameters and correlation times obtained with Slowly Relaxing Local Structure (SRLS) analysis of N-NMR relaxation data. The AMPbd and LID domains of AKeco execute in solution large amplitude motions associated with the catalytic reaction Mg*ATP + AMP Mg*ADP + ADP. Two sets of correlation times and order parameters were determined by NMR/SRLS for AKeco, attributed to slow (nanoseconds) motions with correlation time τ⊥ and low order parameters, and fast (picoseconds) motions with correlation time τ|| and high order parameters. The structural connotation of these patterns is examined herein by subjecting AKeco and AKeco*AP5A to GNM analysis which yields the dynamic spectrum in terms of slow and fast modes. The low/high NMR order parameters correlate with the slow/fast modes of the backbone elucidated with GNM. Likewise, τ|| and τ⊥ are associated with fast and slow GNM modes, respectively. Catalysis-related domain motion of AMPbd and LID in AKeco, occurring per NMR with correlation time τ⊥, is associated with the first and second collective slow (global) GNM modes. The ANM-predicted deformations of the unliganded enzyme conform to the functional reconfiguration induced by ligand-binding, indicating the structural disposition (or potential) of the enzyme to bind its substrates. It is shown that NMR/SRLS and GNM/ANM analyses can be advantageously synthesized to provide insights into the molecular mechanisms that control biological function.