Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Learning Proximal Operator Methods for Nonconvex Sparse Recovery with Theoretical Guarantee

Sparse recovery has attracted considerable attention in signal processing community these years, because of its widespread usage in many applications. Though lots of convex and nonconvex methods have been proposed for this topic, most of them are computationally expensive. Recently, learned iterative shrinkage-thresholding algorithm (LISTA) and its variants are incorporated to sparse recovery, which are based on specific deep neural networks designed by unfolding ISTA. However, the problem they are able to solve is regularized by $\ell _1$ norm, which is less effective at promoting sparseness than some nonconvex sparsity-inducing penalties (SIPs). Motivated by the fact that the problems regularized by these SIPs can be solved by proximal operator methods, we devise a network named learning proximal operator method (LePOM) for sparse recovery. For LePOM on a general class of SIPs, a necessary condition of its convergence is established. Based on this condition, a simplified network is proposed with less parameters. Theoretical analysis of this network inspires us to further reduce the number of parameters and arrive at proposing Analytical LePOM (ALePOM). ALePOM determines most parameters by solving an optimization problem and significantly reduces the number of parameters. Theoretical analysis shows if the signal is sufficiently sparse, ALePOM converges linearly. Simulations confirm our analyses and demonstrate that the proposed solutions outperform state-of-the-art sparse recovery algorithms and neural network-based methods.
Effect of Leverage on Real Earnings Management: Evidence from Korea

This study examines how leverage affects real earnings management (REM) in non-financial firms listed on the Korea Composite Stock Price Index from 2010 to 2018 by employing total, short-term, and long-term debt ratios (i.e., leverage) as independent variables and four REM metrics as dependent variables. We find a significant positive relationship between leverage and REM in suspicious firms, whereas the effect of leverage is insignificant in non-suspicious firms. We also find that the positive relationship between both variables is stronger in the second half of the fiscal year, which shows the prevalence of the seasonality of REM, as managers collect high-frequency financial information during this period. These findings are consistent with those in the literature that managers increase firm leverage and REM activities to reduce their probability of being discovered, since financial statements in the interim quarters are not often audited. Our study complements the literature by introducing quarterly data to identify clearly REM activities and detect the strongest effect on the relationship between REM and leverage. Moreover, our results from the two-stage least square (2SLS) regression analysis are consistent with our previous findings.
Antibiotic resistance and virulence factors among Escherichia coli isolates from avian organic fertilizer

ABSTRACT: Brazilian poultry industry generates large amounts of organic waste, such as chicken litter, which is often used in agriculture. Among the bacteria present in organic fertilizer are members of the Enterobacteriaceae family, such as Escherichia coli. The aim of this study was to analyze the profile of virulence factors and antimicrobial resistance of E. coli isolates from avian organic fertilizer. A total of 47 E. coli strains were tested through Polymerase chain reaction to detect virulence genes (hlyF, iss, ompT, iutA and iroN). Fourteen antimicrobials were used to test antimicrobial susceptibility in the strains. Genes characteristic of Avian Pathogenic E. coli (APEC) were reported among the strains, with the hlyF, iss and ompT genes being the most prevalent. The isolates showed high resistance (˃50%) to tetracycline, gentamicin, cefotaxime, nitrofurantoin, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole and ampicillin. Multidrug resistance was reported in a great number of strains (>70%). The results showed the presence of APEC cells with virulence genes and antimicrobial resistance after 15 days of the windrowing process in poultry houses, it means this process should be improved to eliminate these cells.
Contracting and Reporting Conservatism around a Change in Fiduciary Duties*

We exploit an influential 1991 Delaware court ruling to examine the impact of changes in managerial fiduciary duties on firms’ accounting and contracting choices. The ruling shifted the balance of power in favor of creditors and away from shareholders for a specific group of firms. We find that, following the ruling, affected firms exhibit lower abnormal accruals, greater magnitude and incidence of negative special items, and are more likely to adopt SFAS 106 using the immediate recognition method for OPEB liabilities. We also find that debt contracts of affected firms rely less on the use of income escalators following the ruling. Our results hold across a battery of robustness tests. Overall, our study demonstrates how a shift in fiduciaries duties owed by management that enhances the relative power of creditors changes the nature of both financial reporting and debt contracting.
Novel anthracene-9-sulfonyl derivatives as anticancer agents: synthesis and in vitro biological evaluation

In this study, a new series of anthracene-9-sulfonyl derivatives incorporated with different heterocyclic moieties were synthesized and screened for their in vitro anticancer activity against colon carcinoma cell lines (HCT-116), hepatic carcinoma cell lines (HepG 2) and breast carcinoma cell lines (MCF-7). Among them, compound 4-acetylphenyl anthracene-9-sulfonate (8) showed selective high cytotoxic activity over colon carcinoma cell lines (HCT-116), also compounds 2-(anthracen-9-ylsulfonyl)malononitrile (7), N-(4-fluorophenyl)anthracene-9-sulfonamide (5b) and N-((1H-benzo[d]imidazol-2-yl)methyl)anthracene-9-sulfonamide (10) showed the significant selective cytotoxic effect over breast carcinoma cell lines (MCF-7). All the compounds are subjected to explore their safety on normal human skin cell lines (BJ-1), the results revealed that all the compounds are safe and have insignificant weak cytotoxicity over normal human cells.
Multi-Modal Self-Supervised Pre-Training for Joint Optic Disc and Cup Segmentation in Eye Fundus Images

This paper presents a novel approach for the segmentation of the optic disc and cup in eye fundus images using deep learning. The accurate segmentation of these anatomical structures in the eye is important towards the early detection of glaucoma and, therefore, potentially avoiding severe vision loss. In order to improve the segmentation of the optic disc and cup, we propose a novel self-supervised pretraining consisting in the multi-modal reconstruction of eye fundus images. This novel approach aims at facilitating the segmentation task and avoiding the necessity of excessively large annotated datasets.To validate the proposal, we perform several experiments on different public datasets. The results show that the proposed multi-modal self-supervised pre-training leads to a significant improvement in the performance of the segmentation task. Consequently, the presented approach shows remarkable potential towards further improving the interpretable and early diagnosis of a relevant disease as is glaucoma.
Glycerine levels for crossbred heifers growing in pasture: performance, feed intake, feed eficiency and digestibility

O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar a inclusao de glicerina sobre o desempenho animal, eficiencia alimentar e digestibilidade em novilhas suplementadas em pastagem de Brachiaria brizantha cultivar Marandu. O periodo experimental foi de 102 dias, sendo os primeiros 14 destinados a adaptacao as dietas e as condicoes experimentais. Foram utilizadas 36 novilhas mesticas com peso inicial medio de 226 + 12 kg e 13 meses de idade distribuidas em delineamento inteiramente casualizado com quatro tratamentos e nove repeticoes: G00 = controle; G2,8 = 3,8%; G6,1 = 6,1% e G9,0 = 9,0% de glicerina na materia seca (MS) total na dieta. As novilhas foram pesadas a cada 28 dias para avaliacao do ganho medio diario. A ingestao de MS foi estimada a partir da producao fecal, com uso de oxido cromico (Cr2O3) como indicador externo e da MS indigestivel (MSi) como indicador interno. A digestibilidade aparente foi estimada a partir da producao fecal determinada pelo oxido cromico. A adicao de glicerina na dieta determinou reducao linear (P 0,05) entre os tratamentos. A ingestao de extrato etereo aumentou de forma linear (P 0,05) sobre os coeficientes de digestibilidade da MS, PB, MO, FDN, CNF e CT. A inclusao de glicerina as dietas aumentou de forma linear (P < 0,05) o digestibilidade do extrato etereo. O uso de glicerina de baixa pureza nao e recomendado, pois determina reducao no desempenho animal.
Complete mitochondrial genome of Anarta trifolii (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae)

Abstract The Anarta trifolii belongs to Noctuidae in Lepidoptera. The complete mitogenome of A. trifolii was described in this study, which is typical circular duplex molecules and 15,281 bp in length, containing the standard metazoan set of 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA genes, 2 ribosomal RNA genes, and an A + T-rich region. The gene order is same with other lepidopterans. Except for cox1 started with CGA, all other PCGs started with the standard ATN codons. Most of the PCGs terminated with the stop codon TAA, whereas nad3 is TAG, nad4 has the incomplete stop codon T. The phylogenetic tree showed that A. trifolii and other three species belong to Hadeninae, which are clustered into a clade.
Misunderstanding home: Exploring depictions of home in old age policy decision-making

Living at home is a core value in old age policies worldwide. This study examines how members of parliament (MP) depict the home in two parliamentary discussions related to a law on older people’s care and living arrangements in Finland. The data contained 110 speeches from 42 MPs in the first discussion and 17 in the second and was examined using thematic analysis. The extracts with the word “home” were coded and grouped as potential themes. These themes were reviewed further and reflected using relevant literature. As a result, the overarching theme ‘home as a restricted space’ was formulated with three subthemes: home as a space in which old people ‘manage to live’, ‘are treated’ and ‘live without contacts’. The findings suggest that policymakers misrecognised the valued attributes related to older persons’ homes, and in doing so, they hamper the potential for success in home-centred old age policies.
MAINTAINING THE EFFICIENCY OF MAS METHOD IN CEREALS WHILE REDUCING THE COSTS

Marker-assisted selection (MAS) is a powerful tool too rarely exploited in practical breeding applications mainly because of its prohibitive costs. A new manual protocol has been developed for DNA extraction and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analyses which could increase the impact of this technology on the creation of new varieties. In this procedure, only the amount of DNA serving as template is extracted directly into PCR tubes. The method is reproducible (100 %) and efficient (97.9 %). The overall cost is low in term of starting lab equipment (25000 €), chemicals and consumable materials (0.33 to 0.40 € per samples) and labor (1500 sample analyses per person and per week).
Investigation of performance of small wind turbine blades with winglets

Purpose This paper aims to discuss the results of the performance study of wind turbine blades equipped with winglets. An investigation focusses on small wind turbines (SWTs), where the winglets are recalled as one of the most promising concepts in terms of turbine efficiency increase. Design/methodology/approach To investigate a contribution of winglets to SWT aerodynamic efficiency, a wind tunnel experiment was performed at Lodz University of Technology. In parallel, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations campaign was conducted with the ANSYS CFX software to investigate appearing flow structures in greater detail. Findings The research indicates the potential behind the application of winglets in low Reynolds flow conditions, while the CFD study enables the identification of crucial regions influencing the flow structure in the most significant degree. Research limitations/implications As the global effect on a whole rotor is a result of a small-scale geometrical feature, it is important to localise unveiled phenomena and the mechanisms behind their generation. Practical implications Even the slightest efficiency improvement in a distributed generation installation can promote such a solution amongst energy prosumers and increase their independence from limited natural resources. Originality/value The winglet-equipped blades of SWTs provide an opportunity to increase the device performance with relatively low cost and ease of implementation.
Manajemen program pengembangan panca jangka, kemandirian dan kemajuan Pondok Modern Darussalam Gontor Indonesia

This research is aimed at investigating the philosophical meaning of Pondok Gontor's Modern Darussalam using the management of the "Five Term" development program. Exploring the management relations of the "five term" development program, to the independence and progress of Pondok Gontor and, exploring the extent of the results of the "Panca Term" development program of the Pondok Gontor Modern Darussalam in realizing its independence and educational progress. Based on preliminary studies that the management of the development program "Panca Term" Pondok Modern Darussalam Gontor showed its success. Among the results that appear until the age of 90 this year, that PMDG succeeded in producing alumni who became prominent national figures, had 16 branch boarding schools throughout Indonesia, had businesses in the economy quite rapidly, had very large waqf assets, developed Darussalam Gontor University, which until now has succeeded in having S1, S2 and S3 study programs. In addition, his other successes were managed by his marketing to many foreign students and students who sought knowledge in Gontor. Including Pondok Gontor, is in demand by Indonesian elites, such as the children of state officials and national religious leaders. This is what attracts researchers to conduct this research. So it is felt that their presence is needed as a management model for developing Islamic boarding schools in particular and Islamic education in general. The management system model that can be transformed is in preparing strategic plans for the long-term, medium-term and short-term development management models in creating independence and progress in pesantren and Islamic education institutions in general.
Women Participation: A Productivity Strategy in Rice Production

Agriculture is an important engine for economic growth and a vigorous driver of poverty reduction in developing countries. In Pakistan, rice production is one of the most essential sectors. However, it has been underperforming, largely because of low women’s participation, which is often a crucial resource in agriculture and the rural economy. Unfortunately, previous studies have seldom recognized and emphasized the role of women in triggering agricultural and rural development. We address this research gap using 300 farm households’ survey data forms collected from Pakistan farmers by applying the stochastic frontier analysis. The results indicate that women’s participation is associated with higher labor/land ratio, land productivity, and finally improved technical efficiency. Precisely, women’s participation increased technical efficiency (TE) by 47.3%. Interestingly, in view of previous studies, this evidence is not sporadic. Overall, our study provides some evidence to promote women’s participation in rice production, as such empowerment of women holds great potential to enhance agricultural production, which is consistent with the aim of sustainable development goals (SDGs).
Ja n 20 05 Propagators from characteristic surfaces

The Cauchy problem for hyperbolic equations is well known since many years ago. We can take the wave equation in Minkowski space-time as an example. If we choose an infinite space-like surface where it is known the function and its normal derivative (with respect to the surface) the solution is fully obtained in the rest of the space. The situation becomes more delicate when the surface where we know the data is light-like, as the light cones are. The problem is then called a Goursat or characteristic one, as the surfaces are the characteristics of the equation [1] and another different procedure is needed to obtain the solution. But if we consider only a future light cone, curiously, the solution inside this depends only on the function or on the normal derivative of the function on the cone, but not on both. This characteristic surface is such that the derivative is not independent of the function. This is remarkable, as the causal development of a field depends in half of the data compared with the Cauchy evolution. Although the previous considerations are purely mathematical, there might be a correspondence with physics, if we consider the holographic principle. Naively we can state that degrees of freedom in a certain space (called bulk) match one to one with the degrees of freedom on the boundary of this space. This situation is reproduced in our simple example, where the boundary is the light cone itself, and the degrees of freedom are carried by the fields in it. The idea of holography has been studied extensively in the last years, specially in scenarios with negative cosmological constant. The so-calledAdS/CFT correspondence is probably the most successful example, although the knowledge about it is still incomplete. Much less attention has been devoted to Ricci-flat geometries, with vanishing cosmological constant. In this work we will study a simple scenario of this kind and try to check a possible holographic relation. In order to do this we will need explicit classical solutions, so we will introduce a method to find them. But before we start with a description of the geometry and its properties, and how general can be this procedure.
Trend and Pattern in Average Monthly Maximum Temperatures in Thailand from 1986 to 2015

This research aims to study the trends and patterns of average maximum temperature change data of monthly surface in Thailand during the 30 year-period from 1986 to 2015 that has already eliminated seasonal variations and autocorrelation. The data set obtained from Climatological center, Meteorological Development Division, Thailand Meteorological Department for 73 completed recording stations. The climatically regions of Thailand meteorology are divided into 5 regions: Central, Eastern, North, Northeast and South. After the process of parameter estimation using simple linear regression of average maximum temperature data that has already eliminated influences of variations, the study results showed that over the last 10 years, the northern, central, eastern, northeastern and southern regions of Thailand had trends of the average maximum surface temperature increasing by 0.164°C 0.137°C 0.127°C 0.194°C 0.068°C, respectively. For over the whole country, the average maximum surface temperature increasing by 0.141°C in the last 10 years at a significant level of 0.05.
Influence Of Compensation, Leadership Style, Work Environment, And Perceptions Of Job Opportunities On Turnover Intention at PT. VALBURY ASIA FUTURES SEMARANG

This study aims to analyze the effect of compensation, leadership style, work environment, and perceptions of job opportunities on employee turnover intention at PT. Valbury Asia Futures Semarang. The population used in this study were all employees working at PT. Valbury Asia Futures Semarang and the sample used is 70 employees. This study used non-probability sampling technique research methods with saturated sampling method (census). Data analysis in this study used the SPSS 24 program. The data analysis technique used was multiple linear regression analysis. The results of the analysis and discussion show that the variable Compensation has a partial negative effect on Turnover Intention, Leadership Style has a partial negative effect on Turnover Intention, Work Environment has a partial negative effect on Turnover Intention, and Perception of Work Opportunities has a partial positive effect on Turnover Intention at PT. Valbury Asia Futures Semarang.
The Down-Regulation of α-Interferon Receptors in Human Lymphoblastoid Cells: Relation to Cellular Responsiveness to the Antiproliferative Action of α-Interferon

Abstract Human lymphoblastoid cell lines (Daudi, Daudi subclones, Raji and MOLT-4) were compared for sensitivity to the antiproliferative action of α-interferon (IFN-α) and down-regulation of IFN-α receptors. IFN-sensitive and IFN-resistant cell lines have similar numbers (2–4000/cell) of high affinity (20–75 pm) IFN-α receptors. Treatment of IFN-sensitive cells with low concentrations (3–10 pm) of IFN-α results in low receptor occupancy and nearly complete (> 95%) down-regulation of cell surface IFN-α receptors within 5 h. Treatment of resistant cells with higher IFN concentrations (30 pm) only results in partial (≈60%) receptor down-regulation that is directly related to receptor occupancy. Receptor-receptor interactions, induced by IFN-α binding, may account for the enhanced down-regulation of IFN-α receptors in IFN-sensitive cells. Such interactions apparently do not occur in IFN-resistant lymphoblastoid cell lines.
TEMPORAL PATTERNS IN POPULATION GENETIC DIVERSITY OF PROROCENTRUM MICANS (DINOPHYCEAE) 1

We describe temporal changes in the genetic structure of populations of the dinoflagellate Prorocentrum micans Ehrenberg over a period of 2 years at Scripps Pier (La Jolla, CA, USA). We collected 12 water samples over the course of two blooms and analyzed 166 single‐cell isolates using randomly amplified polymorphic DNA analysis. Six PCR primers uncovered 27 polymorphic markers, allowing the identification of 40 unique haplotypes. Analysis of molecular variance demonstrated that >92% of the genetic variance was partitioned within water samples, providing evidence of high levels of genetic diversity and possibly sexual reproduction. Although the level of genetic diversity remained fairly stable over the sampled time interval, several populations (sampled in June 1998 and March 1999) exhibited significantly different genetic composition, demonstrating differences among bloom and nonbloom periods. About 40% of the isolates in each sample were identified as one haplotype, suggesting that a genetically distinct subgroup was a common member of the populations during the sampled periods. The composition of the remaining isolates was genetically diverse and changed over time, indicating rapid responses (days) to changing environmental conditions or extensive genetic spatial patchiness (kilometers). Within the limitations of our sampling, these two genetically distinct groups appear to exhibit different population dynamics (one stable and the other variable), suggesting that genetic diversity may be closely linked to the change in abundance of phytoplankton on ecological time scales.