Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Will Islamic Banking Make the World Less Risky? An Empirical Analysis of Capital Structure, Risk Shifting and Financial Stability

We use a classic Merton credit risk framework to argue that Islamic Banking Institutions (IBIs) face less incentive to take on risks than Conventional Banking Institutions (CBI). IBIs have less incentive for risk shifting both in and outside of distress situations. We test and confirm this prediction in an empirical analysis based on a dataset covering all CBIs, IBIs, and Islamic and conventional subsidiaries of mixed banking institutions in Pakistan. We find that full-fledged Islamic banks (IBs) are indeed more stable than conventional banking institutions (CBIs), and are better capitalized than their conventional counterparts. IBIs also have less volatile asset returns, less non-performing loans (NPLs) and lower loan loss provisioning. Similar results obtain for Islamic windows of mixed banks compared with conventional windows. The analysis suggests that the loss absorption capacity of Islamic banks leads to less risk taking and a more stable banking system.
Distributed Test Case Generation using Model Inference

Developers of distributed systems strive for correctness by writing tests. Developing these tests is a difficult and error prone task which spans the life of a system. In spite of developer effort, complicated bugs frequently sneak through and are admitted into production systems. State-of-the-art techniques for achieving correctness are widespread in their approaches and effectiveness. Verification aims to mathematically prove systems correct. Various specification languages leverage powerful model checkers to compute these proofs [7, 6]. Projects such as Verdi and IronFleet [8, 5] have demonstrated the utility of these techniques by developing fully verified systems. These proofs however require expertise, and effort. Conversely, fuzz testing provides a low cost, low effort black box approach to improving system durability by automatically generating new test cases [10]. Fuzzers pointed at network endpoints allow developers to stress their software without writing tests. While efficient, fuzz testing only catches early bugs, and admits complex bugs. In the middle are transparent model checking procedures such as MODIST [9]. Given a specification of correct behaviour (e.g. invariants), such tools exercise real systems, scheduling and interleaving distributed events using a centralized controller. Such techniques are useful for identifying and replicating complex distributed bugs. But, error states are reached using unguided brute force search! The time to detect bugs using such frameworks is long, and while detected bugs can be complex, they are often errors reachable shortly after initialization Due to their low effort and high utility, tools such as MODIST are extremely powerful, but they can be largely improved. We posit that brute force search of bugs detection can be improved by extracting program specific information. Specifically that dynamic traces of program state can be used to model a systems behaviour, and guide transparent model checkers towards deeper bugs. In this work we propose a novel technique for synthesizing models of distributed systems using dynamic state based analysis. Our modelling and checking algorithms are designed to analyze several GB’s of logs generated Traces
Quality control and ISO quality compliance in the product lifecycle management at Siemens

From our experience with customers who deploy customized software products, we have learned that deriving products from shared software assets requires more than complying with quality standards like ISO9126. Additionally, developers must consider what we call the quality profile of the final product. A process that matches the quality profile of final product during product derivation helps provide and validate industrial software application solutions. This paper describes this matching concept and its application in a case study of the development of a product lifecycle reporting tool at a large organization. Also we propose a tool to improve compliance with ISO Quality Standards and that could enhance quality control in derivation process.
Abnormal Developmental Trajectories of White Matter in Autism - The Contribution of MRI

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a disorder of neuronal connectivity. It has been suggested that disturbed, abnormal and disorganized interand intra–cortical connections are one of the core issues in autism1, resulting in poorly synchronized and weakly responsive networks, which in turn lead to abnormal cognitive and neurological functioning. Evidence accumulated in recent years has led to a shift in the conceptualization of autism, from a localized neurological abnormality to a disorder of distributed networks throughout the brain. What is connectivity? Two fundamental principles of brain organization have been proposed: functional specialization and functional integration (Friston, 1994, 2002), with the understanding that these two principles are complementary. Functional specialization is usually inferred by the presence of activation foci while functional integration is regarded as a process mediated by connectivity, which reflects the patterns of interaction between neuronal populations, either during the performance of specific tasks or during resting state (Friston, 1994, 2002, 2009a, 2009b; Honey et al., 2009). Functional integration relies on functional and structural connectivity, while taking into account that these two are not necessarily co-referential (Honey et al., 2009), and that the functional-structural relationship is not straightforward (Damoiseaux & Greicius, 2009). Functional connectivity, as studied by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), refers to the temporal synchronization of the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal of two or more brain areas. Structural connectivity on the other hand, as measured by diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), refers to the physical properties of structural connections the way in which different brain regions are connected, at the macro level (bundles of axonal tracts) (Mori & van Zijl, 2002).
Invasive Crayfish Orconectes neglectus Threatens Native Crayfishes in the Spring River Drainage of Arkansas and Missouri

Abstract Invasive species are one of the major threats to biological diversity. Invasive species of crayfish are known to negatively impact native species in aquatic ecosystems. We recently found that an Ozark endemic crayfish, Orconectes neglectus, has been introduced into the Spring River drainage of southern Missouri and northern Arkansas and appears to have the potential to negatively impact the native communities. We used quantitative kick netting along the Spring River and selected tributaries to determine the distribution and abundance of O. neglectus and its potential to impact native crayfish species. The native crayfishes Orconectes eupunctus, a species of special concern, and Cambarus hubbsi appear to no longer occur throughout much of their former range in the Spring River drainage where O. neglectus is now abundant. Orconectes eupunctus, C. hubbsi, and O. neglectus mainly used fast-flowing riffle and run habitats with a mix of gravel, cobble, and boulder, whereas the other common species collected, Orconectes punctimanus and Orconectes ozarkae, were more generalists in habitat use and were found at all sampled sites. Orconectes eupunctus and C. hubbsi were positively associated with each other, but negatively associated with O. neglectus, despite their similar habitat use. These results provide evidence that O. neglectus is expanding its range, possibly to the detriment of O. eupunctus and C. hubbsi. An intensive field survey and manipulative experiments would be required to confirm the disappearance of the native species, and the mechanisms involved.
High Data Rate Optical logic OR, and NOT Gates at Optimum Injection Current based on SOA-MZI

In this paper, the semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) is used with a Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) forming an SOA-MZI structure which is used to perform the logic gates OR, and NOT. It is simulated at 10 Gbps, 20 Gbps, and 40 Gbps to extract simple design rules. Two binary input data signals are simulated at several bitrate 10 Gbps, 20 Gbps, and 40 Gbps. It is demonstrated that high data rate can be achieved with a specific injection current in SOA. SOAs required low injection current, which leads to a low value on the total power consumption of the gate. In addition, this work includes the study of the effect of the bit rate on the received power, minimum bit error rate (BER), and maximum quality factor (Q-factor). The logical output of the gate has an extinction ratio of more than 10 dB with good eye opening. The output of the OR, NOT gates shows error-free operation at different bit rate with a clear eye opening. General Terms Optical amplifier, MZI, optical logic gates.
Impact of electrode preparation on the bending of asymmetric planar electro-active polymer microstructures

Compliant electrodes of microstructures have been a research topic for many years because of the increasing interest in consumer electronics, robotics, and medical applications. This interest includes electrically activated polymers (EAP), mainly applied in robotics, lens systems, haptics and foreseen in a variety of medical devices. Here, the electrodes consist of metals such as gold, graphite, conductive polymers or certain composites. The common metal electrodes have been magnetron sputtered, thermally evaporated or prepared using ion implantation. In order to compare the functionality of planar metal electrodes in EAP microstructures, we have investigated the mechanical properties of magnetron sputtered and thermally evaporated electrodes taking advantage of cantilever bending of the asymmetric, rectangular microstructures. We demonstrate that the deflection of the sputtered electrodes is up to 39 % larger than that of thermally evaporated nanometer-thin film on a single silicone film. This difference has even more impact on nanometer-thin, multi-stack, low-voltage EAP actuators. The stiffening effect of many metallic electrode layers is expected to be one of the greatest drawbacks in the multi-stack approaches, which will be even more pronounced if the elastomer layer thickness will be in the sub-micrometer range. Additionally, an improvement in voltage and strain resolution is presented, which is as low as 2 V or 5 × 10-5 above 10 V applied.
Effect of valence electron concentration on stability of fcc or bcc phase in high entropy alloys

Phase stability is an important topic for high entropy alloys (HEAs), but the understanding to it is very limited. The capability to predict phase stability from fundamental properties of constituent elements would benefit the alloy design greatly. The relationship between phase stability and physicochemical/thermodynamic properties of alloying components in HEAs was studied systematically. The mixing enthalpy is found to be the key factor controlling the formation of solid solutions or compounds. The stability of fcc and bcc solid solutions is well delineated by the valance electron concentration (VEC). The revealing of the effect of the VEC on the phase stability is vitally important for alloy design and for controlling the mechanical behavior of HEAs.
Removal of lipophilic extractives and manganese ions from Spruce TMP waters in a customized flotation cell

The influence of a chelating surfactant, different foaming agents, cationic polyelectrolytes, pH value, and temperature on the purification efficiency of process waters from a mechanical pulp mill has been studied by flotation in a 1 L customized unit. Turbidity measurements and gas chromatography (GC) were carried out to determine the removal and characteristics of dissolved and colloidal substances (DisCo). The manganese ion content in the process waters before flotation and the metal chelate removal capacity by flotation were determined by Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) and Atomic Absorption Spectrometry (AAS) measurements. It was found that a 99% removal of complex bound manganese ions and a 94% decrease in turbidity of the TMP water produced at the laboratory can be achieved in a single-stage flotation with a chelating surfactant and a foaming agent. Furthermore, a 91% decrease in turbidity, the removal of up to 96% of resin and fatty acids, and 93% of triglycerides from TMP water can be obtained after application of a foaming agent.
PROCESSING OF SPATIAL INFORMATION IN SOCIAL AND NON-SOCIAL STIMULI BY OPIOID-EXPOSED AND NON-EXPOSED NEWBORNS

OF DISSERTATION PROCESSING OF SPATIAL INFORMATION IN SOCIAL AND NON-SOCIAL STIMULI BY OPIOID-EXPOSED AND NON-EXPOSED NEWBORNS The ability to process information from faces is important for effective social functioning. Adults are experts at this function. It has been suggested that the encoding of configural spatial relations among facial features (e.g., the distance between the eyes) contributes to this expertise. I investigated the developmental origin of face processing expertise by studying typically developing newborns’ sensitivity to the distance between the eyes and between the nose and the mouth in face stimuli. Further, I investigated whether prenatal opioid exposure is associated with neonates’ processing of spatial information in social and non-social stimuli. Infants with prenatal opioid-exposure are at risk for several adverse neurobehavioral effects as well as attention and behavioral problems at school age. Research on both humans and animals converges to suggest that prenatal opioid exposure interferes with the development of proper cognitive functions, specifically, memory for spatial information and general attention. However, very little research has examined the association of prenatal opioid exposure to the development of human infants’ early cognitive functioning. The current studies use a visual pairedcomparison procedure to investigate infants’ sensitivity to spatial information on face and non-face images. Both opioid-exposed and non-exposed (typical) infants discriminated subtle spacing changes in face stimuli. However, while non-exposed newborns processed spatial relational information between two non-face objects, opioid-exposed infants failed to exhibit similar sensitivity. Most critically, combined analyses of data of performance on both social and non-social stimuli indicate a general difference in performance such that opioid-exposed infants’ novelty preference scores are lower than non-exposed infants’ scores. These results indicate differences between opioid-exposed and nonexposed infants’ early development and suggests that spatial processing is a mechanism for the compromise of intellectual development.
Metagenomic Insights Into the Contribution of Phages to Antibiotic Resistance in Water Samples Related to Swine Feedlot Wastewater Treatment

In this study, we examined the types of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) possessed by bacteria and bacteriophages in swine feedlot wastewater before and after treatment using a metagenomics approach. We found that the relative abundance of ARGs in bacterial DNA in all water samples was significantly higher than that in phages DNA (>10.6-fold), and wastewater treatment did not significantly change the relative abundance of bacterial- or phage-associated ARGs. We further detected the distribution and diversity of the different types of ARGs according to the class of antibiotics to which they confer resistance, the tetracycline resistance genes were the most abundant resistance genes and phages were more likely to harbor ATP-binding cassette transporter family and ribosomal protection genes. Moreover, the colistin resistance gene mcr-1 was also detected in the phage population. When assessing the contribution of phages in spreading different groups of ARGs, β-lactamase resistance genes had a relatively high spreading ability even though the abundance was low. These findings possibly indicated that phages not only could serve as important reservoir of ARG but also carry particular ARGs in swine feedlot wastewater, and this phenomenon is independent of the environment.
Capacitary strong type estimates in semilinear problems

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Evaluating Neural Sequence Models for Splitting (Swiss) German Compounds

This paper evaluates unsupervised and supervised neural sequence models for the task of splitting (Swiss) German compound words. The models are compared to a state-of-the-art approach based on character ngrams and a simple heuristic that accesses a dictionary. We ﬁnd that the neural models do not outperform the baselines on the German data, but excel when applied to out-of-domain data, i.e. splitting Swiss German compounds. We release our code and data 1 , namely the ﬁrst annotated data set of Swiss German compounds.
Extraction and Application of Dietary Fiber and Cellulose from Pineapple Cores

Pineapple core dietary fiber (PDF) was obtained by alcoholic extraction; pineapple core cellulose (PC) was a product of alkali extraction with a bleaching process. Total dietary fiber content of PDF and PC was 99.8% and 95.2% (dry basis), respectively, and their water activity was 0.25. PC contained 91.2% cellulose with a pH value of 4.0, while that of PDF was 6.2. The fiber product with large particle size gave higher values than the product with smaller particles for pH, water and oil retention capacity, settling volume and emulsifying activity. Both had rough, pitted surfaces and presented showed good functions in cake-type doughnuts, golden layer cake and beef burgers.
WHITE ORGANIC LIGHT-EMITTING DIODES USING 1 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5-HEXAPHENYLSILOLE ( HPS ) AS GREENISH-BLUE EMITTER

White organic light-emitting diodes (WOLEDs) with the structure of ITO/NPB/NPB: DCJTB/HPS/Alq3/LiF/Al have been fabricated. In this device, the NPB: DCJTB layer was used as the red emitter and the 1,1,2,3,4,5hexaphenylsilole (HPS) layer was used as the greenishblue emitter. White light with the Commission Internationale d’Eclairage (CIE) coordinates of (0.33,0.43) was obtained under the driving voltage of 5V. Simultaneously, the luminous efficiency and power efficiency are reaching the maximum value of 12.1cd/A and 7.59lm/W, respectively, with the current density of 1.33mA/cm and luminance of 160cd/m. This high efficiency was attributed to the highly efficient greenishblue emitter-1,1,2,3,4,5-hexaphenylsilole (HPS).
Filtration and resuspension of particulate matter and phytoplankton on an intertidal mussel bed in the Oosterschelde estuary (SW Netherlands)

In situ measurements were carried out on an intertidal mussel bed in the Oosterschelde estuary, SW Netherlands. Exchange of suspended particulate matter and phytoplankton between the water column and the mussel bed was measured with a Benthic Ecosystem Tunnel. In situ clearance rates of the mussel bed were compared to clearance rates of individual mussels measured in a field station under ambient conditions. Concentrations of suspended particulate matter (SPM) and particulate organic carbon (POC) in the water column above the tidal flat were affected by wind-induced resuspension. Chlorophyll a concentrations were higher during flood tides than during ebb tides, and were not affected by wind-induced resuspension. Clearance rates of the mussel bed ranged from 1.3 to 7.1 m(3) m(-2) h(-1). In situ measured clearance rates generally were comparable to rates observed in measurements with individual mussels in a field station. Uptake of SPM and POC by the mussel bed was highly variable. Under calm weather conditions, uptake rates were correlated with inflow concentrations. Net uptake of phytoplankton was relatively higher than the uptake of POC, indicating that a major part of the POC was resuspended and exported from the mussel bed after filtration. In addition, wind stress induced considerable resuspension and export of SPM and POC from the mussel bed. Chlorophyll a uptake was less influenced by wind, and high rates of uptake, caused by mussel filtration, were observed. The result of filtration and resuspension processes was a net uptake by the mussel bed of particulate matter containing a relatively high proportion of phytoplankton: the mussel bed acted as a selective filter for phytoplankton. [KEYWORDS: bivalves; phytoplankton; in situ measurements; particulate matter flux; wind Benthic suspension feeders; dutch wadden sea; mytilus-edulis-l; wind-driven resuspension; san-francisco bay; tidal flat; crassostrea-virginica; suspended sediment; seasonal-variation; feeding bivalves]
Human-Assisted Online Anomaly Detection with Normal Outlier Retraining

Anomaly detection has been essential for information and communications technology (ICT) systems to maintain reliable services. For continually using anomaly detection algorithms for ICT systems, the non-stationarity of such systems should be considered. Although several online anomaly detection algorithms has been investigated for addressing non-stationarity, there has been a fundamental problem of applying the algorithms to real environments, that is, outliers are generally assumed as anomalies with conventional unsupervised algorithms. However, in reality, many normal data are often observed as outliers due to their rarity or emerging new patterns, which we call normal outliers . Such normal outliers will cause false alarms which lose operator’s trust and will result in overlooking of true anomalies. In this paper, we propose an online anomaly detection algorithm that exploits an operator’s judgment of detection results to retrain normal outliers as normal by learning normal data boundary in the feature space of the data. We exploit elastic weight consolidation (EWC) for learning normal outliers as normal in online fashion while remembering the already trained situations for avoiding overﬁtting without using old training data. We evaluated our algorithm with network benchmark data and real measured data from an enterprise service. We found that our algo-rithm reduces false alarms due to the normal outliers by about 79% compared to a simple sliding window algorithm without degrading the anomaly detection accuracy. 1