Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hedging Oil Price Risk : Lessons from Metallgesellschaft

Metallgesellschaft Refining and Marketing (MGRM) hedged long term oil commitments on a one to one basis with short term futures. Two very different views on the effectiveness of this hedging strategy exist in the literature. On the one hand, Hanke, Culp and Miller argue that the strategy of Metallgesellschaft was basically sound and effectively reduced MGRM ́s oil price risk. On the other hand, a number of authors like Ross, Edwards and Canter, Mello and Parsons argue that instead of reducing its oil price risk, MGRM actually increased risk by using a grossly oversized hedge position. This paper compares both arguments and their underlying assumptions. It shows that the main reason for the diverging views lies in the implicitely assumed time horizon over which risk is measured. The analysis reveals that hedgers with short time horizons will use a small hedge ratio of only about one third, while the 1:1 hedge strategy followed by Metallgesellschaft was very effective when risk is measured over the complete contract length. We then test the effect of allowing cross hedges that were eligible under the MGRM hedging program on MGRM’s short term risk. It is shown that even when risk is measured over a short time horizon, the 1:1 hedge strategy had the potential to significantly reduce MGRM’s oil price risk once cross hedges are admitted. Finally, we investigate the adequacy of MG’s equity cushion by comparing its equity capital to the minimum equity requirements for banks from the new BIS market risk proposals. It is shown that MG’s equity capital of MG was probably not sufficient to cover its oil price risk under future BIS regulations for banks. * Department of Economics, D-50923 Köln, Tel: +49-221-470 4354, Fax: +49-221-470 5068, E-Mail: Wahrenburg@wiso.uni-koeln.de
A Bayesian approach to Visual Question Answering

Visual question answering (VQA) is a complex task involving perception and reasoning. Typical approaches which use black-box neural networks, do well on perception but fail to generalize due to lack of compositional reasoning ability. Recent promising approaches [1, 2] learn latent representations of queries in the form of programs, facilitating efficient reasoning. On similar lines, we propose to take both image and question into their latent spaces, guided by the intuition that VQA task is much easier in the latent space. We use a generative model of images and questions and perform inference independently on them using inference compilation and importance sampling respectively. Finally, we use a symbolic solver to arrive at an answer. Hence we use an approach which disentangles reasoning from perception. We show the application of our approach on the sort-of-CLEVR dataset and achieve state of the art performance.
N ° 1809 Environmental regulation and eco-industry trade : Theory and evidence from the European Union

In this paper, we theoretically and empirically study the impact of environmental taxation on trade in environmental goods (EGs). Using a trade model in which the demand for and supply of EGs are endogenous, we show that the relationship between environmental taxation and demand for EGs follows a bell-shaped curve. Above a cutoff tax rate, a higher pollution tax rate can reduce the bilateral trade of EGs because there are too many low-productivity suppliers of EGs. Our empirical results confirm our main findings using data regarding the EU-27 countries. We also theoretically and empirically show that environmental taxation has a monotonically positive impact on the extensive margin of trade. Furthermore, we show that if countries apply an environmental tax rate equals to the “optimal” tax rate, 4.03% (e.g., the tax rate maximizing international trade of EGs), then trade in EGs would experience an increase of 22 percentage points.
The Promise of Different Types of Environmental Management Systems for Voluntary Governance

In spite of firms’ global interest in adopting environment management systems (EMSs), there is little information about which types of EMSs are associated with greater environmental improvements. This research compares the environmental performance of facilities that adopt self-declared EMSs, complete EMSs, and ISO 14001-certified EMSs across multiple environmental impacts. We analyze these relationships using a two-stage model to control for selection bias, and OECD survey data for manufacturing facilities in Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Norway, and the United States. Our findings indicate that adoption of all three EMSs is related to facilities’ reductions in natural resource uses, solid waste, wastewater effluent, local air pollution, and global air pollutants. However, there lacks strong evidence that ISO 14001-certified EMSs lead to superior environmental improvements than other types of EMSs.
Tsunami-HySEA : A Model to Simulate Tsunamis Generated by Earthquakes on Multiple GPUs

HySEA (Hyperbolic Systems and Efficient Algorithms) is a high-performance software package developed by the EDANYA group at the University of Málaga, Spain, for the simulation of geophysical flows, such as tsunamis generated by earthquakes or landslides, river flows, sediment transport, turbidity currents, etc. Specifically, Tsunami-HySEA is the numerical model of the HySEA family to simulate tsunamis generated by earthquakes. The computations are performed using a single GPU or a multi-GPU cluster in order to take advantage of the massively parallel architecture of the modern graphics cards. In Tsunami-HySEA, the three phases of an earthquake generated tsunami (deformation of the seafloor, propagation of the tsunami and inundation of the coastal areas) are performed in a single code. Time series and nested meshes with different spatial resolutions are also supported. Tsunami-HySEA is currently being used by the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) for its National Tsunami Early Warning System (TEWS), by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission in its TEWS, by the Spanish Instituto Geográfico Nacional (IGN) in its TEWS, and integrated in TRIDEC Cloud at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences. Tsunami-HySEA has been extensively tested during several years, and validated and verified with the benchmark tests compiled in [6].
Incidence of Campylobacter and anaerobic bacteria among apparently healthy and diarrheic camel calves

250 Referred by Prof. Dr. Mohamed O. El-Shazly Professor of Pathology, Fac. Vet. Med., Cairo University Prof. Dr. Jakeen K. A. El-Jakee Professor of Microbiology & Immunity, Fac. Vet. Med., Cairo University Incidence of Campylobacter and anaerobic bacteria among apparently healthy and diarrheic camel calves By *EL-Shahawy, H.S,* Mona M. Sobhy, ** Sherein, S. Abd El-Gaied *Animal Reproduction Research Institute (ARRI) EL-Haram, Giza **Pathology Dep. , Fac. Vet. Med., Cairo University
A natural approach to control induced fumonisin B1-histopathological nephrotoxic and hepatotoxic changes in rats

1 Department of Protein Technology, Institute of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, City of Scientific Research & Technological Applications, Bourg Elarab, Alexandria, Egypt. 2Faculty of Agriculture (Saba Basha), Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt. 3City of Scientific Research & Technological Applications, Bourg Elarab, Alexandria, Egypt. 4Department of Histology and Cell Biology, Faculty of Medicine, Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt.
Dartmouth medical school ( 1980 – 1983 ) The EI complex vs . proenzyme : a controversy about ‘ latent ’ collagenase In August 1980

I was given the honor of delivering the 2015 Lifetime Membership Award lecture at the International Proteolysis Society’s annual meeting held in Penang, Malaysia in October 2015. It gave me an opportunity to look back on how I started my research on matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) and how I continued to work on these proteinases for the next 42 years. This is a series of sketches from the personal journey that I took with MMPs, starting from the purification of metalloproteinases, cloning, structural studies, then to a more recent encounter, endocytic regulation of matrix-degrading metalloproteinases.
CHARACTERIZATION OF COMMERCIAL CELLULASE PRODUCED BY FUNGAL SPECIES 1565 Results and Discussion Fungal isolates screening for cellulolytic activity : Twenty three

Present study is designed to screen fungal species for cellulase production from agricultural wastes and their utilization in industry. A wide variety of fungal species have capability to degrade cellulosic waste materials, but only a small number of fungal species produce cellulase in significant amount. In the given study, twenty three fungal species were collected from various sources belonged to four different genera, and analyzed for cellulolytic activity. Fungal cellulase activity was checked with 1% Congo red dye in alkaline medium to screen and isolate novel fungal species. The diameter of yellow zone indicated the cellulolytic activity of fungal species. Index of Relative enzyme activity (ICMC) depicted high cellulase producing species and low cellulase producing species in different categories. Species of Trichoderma and Humicola revealed maximum cellulase activity as compared to Aspergillus and Penicillium. The specific activity of crude cellulase produced by Aspergillus niger IMMIS1 was 238 U/mg, after Ammonium sulphate precipitation 260 U/mg, after dialysis 334 U/mg and after gel filtration 388 U/mg. Purification fold was increased up to 1 to 1.63 after gel filtration. The cellulase used for the clarification of fruit juices, revealed rise in percentage yield of apple 25%, mango 18%, apricot 9% and peach 14%. Ariel detergent revealed maximum stability for cellulase protein as compared to other local detergents.
Field-grown miR 156 transgenic switchgrass reproduction , yield , global gene expression analysis , and bioconfinemen t

Background: Genetic engineering has been effective in altering cell walls for biofuel production in the bioenergy crop, switchgrass (Panicum virgatum). However, regulatory issues arising from gene flow may prevent commercializa‐ tion of engineered switchgrass in the eastern United States where the species is native. Depending on its expression level, microRNA156 (miR156) can reduce, delay, or eliminate flowering, which may serve to decrease transgene flow. In this unique field study of transgenic switchgrass that was permitted to flower, two low (T14 and T35) and two medium (T27 and T37) miR156‐overexpressing ‘Alamo’ lines with the transgene under the control of the constitutive maize (Zea mays) ubiquitin 1 promoter, along with nontransgenic control plants, were grown in eastern Tennessee over two seasons. Results: miR156 expression was positively associated with decreased and delayed flowering in switchgrass. Line T27 did not flower during the 2‐year study. Line T37 did flower, but not all plants produced panicles. Flowering was delayed in T37, resulting in 70.6% fewer flowers than controls during the second field year with commensurate decreased seed yield: 1205 seeds per plant vs. 18,539 produced by each control. These results are notable given that line T37 produced equivalent vegetative aboveground biomass to the controls. miR156 transcript abundance of field‐ grown plants was congruent with greenhouse results. The five miR156 SQUAMOSA PROMOTER BINDING PROTEIN‐ LIKE (SPL) target genes had suppressed expression in one or more of the transgenic lines. Line T27, which had the highest miR156 overexpression, showed significant downregulation for all five SPL genes. On the contrary, line T35 had the lowest miR156 overexpression and had no significant change in any of the five SPL genes. Conclusions: Because of the research field’s geographical features, this study was the first instance of any geneti‐ cally engineered trait in switchgrass, in which experimental plants were allowed to flower in the field in the eastern U.S.; USDA‐APHIS‐BRS regulators allowed open flowering. We found that medium overexpression of miR156, e.g., line T37, resulted in delayed and reduced flowering accompanied by high biomass production. We propose that induced miR156 expression could be further developed as a transgenic switchgrass bioconfinement tool to enable eventual
Title Savings Constraints and Microenterprise Development : Evidence from a Field Experiment in Kenya Permalink

To what extent does the lack of access to formal nancial services impede business growth in low-income countries? While most research on this issue has so far focused on credit market failures, this paper focuses on the role of access to formal saving services. We conducted a eld experiment in which a randomly selected sample of self-employed individuals in rural Kenya got access to an interest-free bank account. As the bank charged substantial withdrawal fees, the de facto interest rate on the account was negative. Despite this, take-up and usage of the account was high among our sample of market vendors, primarily composed of women. Access to an account had a substantial, positive impact on levels of productive investments among market women, and, within 6 months, led to higher income levels, as proxied by expenditures. These results imply that a substantial fraction of women entrepreneurs have di¢ culty saving and investing as much as they would like, and have a demand for formal saving devices even those that o¤er negative interest rates. Our results also imply a relatively high upper bound on the rate of return to capital for the women in our sample, estimated at 5.5% per month at the median. Note that these results do not necessarily imply gender di¤erences: our sample of male entrepreneurs is too small to generate results for that group. JEL Codes: O12, G21, L26 Keywords: Financial Services, Investment, Poverty Alleviation. For helpful discussions and suggestions, we are grateful to Orazio Attanasio, Jean-Marie Baland, Leo Feler, Fred Finan, Sarah Green, Seema Jayachandran, Dean Karlan, Ethan Ligon, Craig McIntosh, David McKenzie, John Strauss, Dean Yang, Chris Woodru¤, and participants at numerous seminars and conferences. We thank Jack Adika and Anthony Oure for their dedication and care in supervising the data collection, and Nathaniel Wamkoya for outstanding data entry. We thank Eva Kaplan, Katherine Conn, Se ra Fialko¤, and Willa Friedman for excellent eld research assistance, and thank Innovations for Poverty Action for administrative support. We are grateful to Aleke Dondo of the K-Rep Development Agency for hosting this project in Kenya, and to Gerald Abele for his help in the early stages of the project. Dupas gratefully acknowledges the support of a Rockefeller Center faculty research grant from Dartmouth College and Robinson gratefully acknowledges the support of an NSF dissertation improvement grant (SES-551273), a dissertation grant from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and support from the Princeton University Industrial Relations Section. We also gratefully acknowledge the support of the World Bank. All errors are our own. yEconomics Department, University of California, Los Angeles. E-mail: pdupas@econ.ucla. edu. zEconomics Department, University of California, Santa Cruz. E-mail: jmrtwo@ucsc.edu.
Adjusting the complexity level of groundwater models

Numerical models are now commonly used to optimize pumping strategies of well fields, define legal frameworks of water resources development, or investigating the resilience of groundwater resources to global change. In these applications, models are of interest for their predictive potential to address current environmental challenges such as: What is the best pumping strategy to reduce water contamination and pumping costs? How much will river baseflow be affected by a changing environment? Model analysis methods aims at quantifying the uncertainty on model predictions and defining optimal strategies to reach an acceptable level of uncertainty. One of the reasons that leads to disregard this essential step is the computational burden associated with complex models [1]. A single model run may take several hours up to several days to be completed, even on currently available computational resources. In addition, large scale, physically-based models are highly parameterized so that dozens up to hundreds of thousand model runs are necessary to complete model analysis. Though critical, model analysis is often neglected for operational studies, which makes models poorly relevant [2]. To which extent should we sacrifice physical accuracy for a model to become robust and practical?
AUTHOR IDENTIFICATION OF CORRUPTED OCR-BASED TEXTS

Author identification is the application of the linguistic study of an anonymous text document to identify its actual author. In this paper, we are interested in identifying the actual author of texts extracted from images using an OCR (Optical Character Recognition also known as Optical Character Reader) procedure. The OCR procedure refers to both operations; recognising (or reading) and converting (transforming) text image into machine-encoded text. That is to extract texts included in a scanned document by transforming pixels into alphanumeric characters. The OCR must first find these characters, recognize them individually and then validate them by lexical recognition of the words that contain them. For this purpose, we constructed a special English corpus containing 25 texts, extracted from scanned documents, with an average size of 850 words per text, written by 5 American contemporary Philosophers. The texts are corrupted using seven degrees of “Salt & Pepper” noise (from 1% to 7%). Several features and classifiers were tested and evaluated on the same corpus to compare their performances. Results show that the character-tetragram feature seems to be interesting in this experiment. The score of Good Author Identification (SGAI) obtained using this feature reaches 100% for all classifiers and with different noise levels (1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, 5% and 7%). Keywords— Author Identification, OCR procedure, Salt & pepper noise, noisy texts.
UPDATED HIGH-ENERGY LHC DESIGN∗

We present updated design parameters for a future HighEnergy LHC. A more realistic turnaround time has led to a revision of the target peak luminosity, as well as a choice of a larger IP beta function, and longer physics fills. Pushed parameters of the Nb3Sn superconducting cable together with a modified layout of the 16 T dipole magnets resulted in revised field errors, updated dynamic-aperture simulations, and an associated re-evaluation of injector options. Collimators in the dispersion suppressors help achieve satisfactory cleaning performance. Longitudinal beam parameters ensure beam stability throughout the cycle. Intrabeam scattering rates and Touschek lifetime appear benign.
Gradient Flow Based Detection of Prominent Points on BCCT Depth-Map Images

Breast Cancer Conservative Treatment (BCCT) is established as the most used procedure for breast cancer treatment. The use of this technique made essential the aesthetic outcome evaluation. Surgical outcome depends on several factors, leading to significantly heterogeneous results, due to the difficult to assess them. The limited reproducibility of subjective evaluation, led to the development of different techniques based on objective methodologies, such as Breast Cancer Conservative Treatment.cosmetic results (BCCT.core) software tool. Recently, several studies proved that the introduction of simple three-dimension (3D) approaches could improve the performance of BCCT.core, maintaining the simplicity and concept behind the tool. The introduction of this new type of data, led to new challenges on the detection of important characteristics. The objective of this work is to develop a simultaneous detection of breast contour and breast peak point, in images acquired using a depthbased low-cost system. Experimental results show the suitability of our depth-map based approach. The proposed algorithm has proven accurate and robust for a wide number of patients. Additionally, in comparison with previous research, the procedure for detecting prominent points was automated.
Use of GADD 45 A and CDKN 1 A Gene Expression Changes as Biomarker in Assessment of DNA Damage for Ionizing Radiation Exposure واذخخسا ثاشَبغخنا نا ٍف ٍُُدنا شُبؼخـن CDKN 1 A و GADD 45

Abdulsahib K. Ali * Nasr Farhan Abdullah ** Zhoa Shu-Hong Ministry of Science and Technology * University of Baghdad ** Huazhong Agricultural University/ Wuhan/ China ** Zhoa, Shu-Hong اللهذبػ ٌبحشف شصَ * ٍهػ ىظبك بحبصناذبػ ةرازو ايجولنكتلاو مولعلا دادغب ةعماج * مولعلل كنوجاوخ ةعماج / ناهوا / نيصلا ** Abstract The present study aims to determination of GADD45 and CDKN1A expression genes as a biomarkers for ionizing radiation in white mice Mus musculus Balb/C by using the real-time quantitative PCR assay. Seventytwo white mice (36 males and 36 females) were divided into two groups; their whole body was exposed to 5 cGy and 100 cGy of X-ray radiation at a dose rate of 200 cGy/min, in addition to the control group. Total RNA was isolated using Trizol method from liver samples of mice after 6, 48 hours and 10 days of exposure to radiation as well as of the control group. Complementary DNA was used in amplification of genes used in the present study, two types of primers pairs were selected for the genes amplification Growth arrest and DNA-damage inducible A (GADD45A) and Cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 1A (CDKN1A), which have a relation with ionizing radiation in addition to the primers for internal control (β-actin) gene. The size amplified product were 95 bp and 162 bp nitrogen-base pair for GADD45A and CDKN1A genes, respectively. The existence of significant elevation p <0.05 in the amount of gene expression of the GADD45A gene in samples of mice liver exposed to doses 5 cGy and 100 cGy after 6 hours of exposure to radiation. It was found that this gene having up-regulation level after 6 hours in the liver of mice exposed to these doses in comparison with the control group. The presence of a significant reduction (p <0.05) in the amount of gene expression of the CDKN1A gene in samples of mice liver exposed to doses 5 cGy and 100 cGy after 6 hours of exposure to radiation and this reduction continued after 24 hours and 10 days. Moreover, it was found that this gene had a downregulation level after 6 hours in the liver of mice exposed to these doses in comparison with the control group. The organizational level in the high dose of 100 cGy is higher than that at the low dose 5 cGy. In conclusion, the results indicated that there is a possibility of using the changes in the level of GADD45A and CDKN1A genes expression as useful biomarkers in assessment of DNA damage for low and high radiation exposure.
Telefonica Research system for the Query-by-example task at Albayzin 2012

In this paper we describe the Telefonica Research submission to the Albayzin 2012 Evaluation. In particular, we participated in the query-by-example task within the search on speech evaluation. Our system is a a zero-resources approach by using a variant of the Dynamic Time Warping algorithm. We also preprocess and post-process the signal to make the features as much speaker independent as possible, to eliminate silence frames usually causing an increase in false alarms and eliminating unnecessary overlapping matching segments. The results are low due to the difficulty of the task and the strictness of the used metric, but are representative of the potential of these techniques for search on speech when no information is available a priori on what language or acoustic conditions we are facing.