Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Consumer Limited Attention to Online Ratings and Seller Response: A Regression Discontinuity Design∗

Reputation system contributes a lot to the success of e-commerce. Yet there are limited studies on how consumers make use of the reputation system and how sellers react. This study utilize a discontinuity in rating levels to make causal inference on the effect of reputation on demand. I collected a large and unique dataset with nearly three thousand sellers and 6.8 million transactions on Taobao. Using a sharp panel regression discontinuity design with non-parametric estimation, I find that consumers care about and are limited attentive to sellers’ rating scores. On average, having one extra level increases sales by over 9% for the same seller, same item with the same price. The effect is even stronger for established sellers with thousands of net positive ratings. It is also highly heterogeneous across industries. A dynamic pricing model with limited attentive consumers predicts that sellers keep lowering their prices before the thresholds, and increase prices after passing the thresholds. Consistent with the predictions, I do observe prices falling by more than 2% before sellers reaching thresholds and increasing afterwards. I also find suggestive evidence that sellers list more new items afterwards.
Assessment of the Skill of Coupled Physical–Biogeochemical Models in the NW Mediterranean

Numerical modelling is a key tool to complement the current physical and biogeochemical observational datasets. It is essential for understanding the role of oceanographic processes on marine food webs and producing climate change projections of variables affecting key ecosystem functions. In this work we evaluate the horizontal and vertical patterns of four state-of-the-art coupled physical-biogeochemical models, three of them already published. Two of the models include data assimilation, physical and/or biological, and two do not. Simulations are compared to the most exhaustive dataset of in situ observations in the North Western Mediterranean, built ad hoc for this work, comprising gliders, conventional CTD surveys and complemented with satellite observations. The analyses are performed both in the whole domain and in four sub-regions (Catalan Shelf, Ebro Delta, Mallorca Channel and Ibiza Channel), characterized by a priori divergent primary production dynamics and driving mechanisms. Overall, existing models offer a reasonable representation of physical processes including stratification, surface temperature and surface currents, but it is shown that relatively small differences among them can lead to large differences in the response of biogeochemical variables. Our results show that all models are able to reproduce the main seasonal patterns of primary production both at the upper layer and at the Deep Chlorophyll Maximum (DCM), as well as the differential behaviour of the four sub-regions. However, there are significant discrepancies in the local variability of the intensity of the winter mixing, phytoplankton blooms or the intensity and depth of the DCM. All model runs show markedly contrasting patterns of interannual phytoplankton biomass in all four sub-regions. This lack of robustness should dissuade end-users from using them to fill gaps in time series observations without assessing their appropriateness. Finally, we discuss the usability of these models for different applications in marine ecology, including fisheries oceanography.
Advances in cladistics

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A Novel Feature Descriptor for Face Anti-Spoofing Using Texture Based Method

: In this paper we propose a novel approach for face anti-spoofing called Extended Division Directional Ternary Co-relation Pattern ( EDDTCP ) . The EDDTCP encodes co-relation of ternary edges based on the centre pixel gray values with its immediate directional neighbour and its next immediate average directional neighbour, which is calculated by using the average of cornered neighbours with directional neighbours. The proposed method is robust against presentation attacks by extracting the spatial information in all directions. Three Experiments were performed by using all the four texture descriptors ( LBP, LTP, LGS and EDDTCP ) and the results are compared. The proposed face anti-spoofing method performs better than LBP, LTP and LGS .
Using deep learning to enhance cancer diagnosis and classication

Using automated computer tools and in particular machine learning to facilitate and enhance medical analysis and diagnosis is a promising and important area. In this paper, we show that how unsupervised feature learning can be used for cancer detection and cancer type analysis from gene expression data. The main advantage of the proposed method over previous cancer detection approaches is the possibility of applying data from various types of cancer to automatically form features which help to enhance the detection and diagnosis of a specic one. The technique is here applied to the detection and classication of cancer types based on gene expression data. In this domain we show that the performance of this method is better than that of previous methods, therefore promising a more comprehensive and generic approach for cancer detection and diagnosis.
Using Physically Adjusted NDF in Formulating Rations for Dairy Cows

Physically effective fiber (peNDF) is defined as that fraction of NDF that stimulates chewing activity and contributes to the floating mat of large particles in the rumen. A limitation of using peNDF is that it does not account for differences in rumen fermentability of nutrients, most notably rumen-degraded starch. The physically adjusted fiber (paNDF) system can be used to estimate TMR particle size and diet compositions needed to maintain target rumen conditions. The system is based on equations derived from a meta-analysis and estimates dietary physical and chemical characteristics required to maintain desired rumen conditions in lactating dairy cows. Effective fiber feeding recommendations are based upon diet ADF, NDF, forage NDF (fNDF), starch, and proportion of the ration as forage or cottonseed, as well as particle size measures.
A MODEL OF THE EXTENSION AND BRANCHING OF A SEMINAL ROOT OF BARLEY, AND ITS USE IN STUDYING RELATIONS BETWEEN ROOT DIMENSIONS

A model of root growth was used to investigate why the average length (l) of cereal root members remains roughly consta,nt. Ta,king as a, standard the model root which agreed with a,ctual roots from an experiment, the nine variables in the model were a,ltered singly to see which ha,d greatest influence on 1. The results showed that the consta,ncy of 1 wa,s due primarily to the existence of ceilings to the rates at which each class of root member ca,n extend. These ceilings are thought to be determined by a property associated with the diameter of the root member. Also of importa,nce wa,s the timing of the onset of each order of bra,nching. This timing was related to that at which the parent members, as a population, began to increase roughly linearly in volume. A tentative explanation of the concomitance is put forward. Understanding of the phenomenon was advanced by the study, but a full explanation was not achieved, mainly because of the la,ck of information about certain a,spects of root development.
Method of Seismic Response Reduction for Crossover Piping Using Inertial Mass Damper

Piping systems crossing between isolated and non-isolated structures are designed to have relatively long length not to restrict the displacement of the isolated structure during earthquakes. Therefore, the natural frequencies of these piping systems are not high enough to avoid the resonances due to earthquake motions. In such cases, supports are required not to restrain the displacement of isolation, and to suppress the resonances of the piping systems. Because of this requirement, rigid supports cannot be applied to crossover piping systems. In this paper, the method of seismic response reduction for crossover piping using inertial mass damper is proposed. Inertial mass damper generates the force which is proportional to the relative acceleration acting on the damper. In this paper, it is shown that the participation factors of the target vibration modes are minimized by optimizing the parameter of the inertial mass damper. Additionally, by earthquake response analysis, it is confirmed that the resonances of piping systems are suppressed effectively.
Recent Development in Human Motion and Gait Prediction

—Human intent is often hard to model and predict. In ﬁelds such as robotics and biomechanics, one type of human motion that is important to model is the bipedal walking motion. As a type of legged locomotion, bipedal walking has unique advantages in daily-life environments such as stairs and muddy surfaces, compared to rolling locomotion that are used by many autonomous mobile robots. In this paper, recent development in predicting bipedal gait dynamics and the corresponding human motion trajectory is presented. Such prediction usually require two main steps: data collection and data analysis. We inspect and compare existing solutions in each of the two steps, summarize the common approaches, and discuss the potential opportunities in the ﬁeld going forward.
TOWARDS UNIFYING GROUNDED AND DISTRIBUTIONAL SEMANTICS USING THE WORDS-AS-CLASSIFIERS MODEL OF LEXICAL SEMANTICS

Automated systems that make use of language, such as personal assistants, need some means of representing words such that 1) the representation is computable and 2) captures form and meaning. Recent advancements in the field of natural language processing have resulted in useful approaches to representing computable word meanings. In this thesis, I consider two such approaches: distributional embeddings and grounded models. Distributional embeddings are represented as high-dimensional vectors; words with similar meanings tend to cluster together in embedding space. Embeddings are easily learned using large amounts of text data. However, embeddings suffer from a lack of “real world” knowledge; for example, the knowledge of identifying colors or objects as they appear. In contrast to embeddings, grounded models learn a mapping between language and the physical world, such as visual information in pictures. Grounded models, however, tend to focus only on the mapping between language and the physical world and lack the knowledge that could be gained from considering abstract information found in text. In this thesis, I evaluate wac2vec, a model that brings together grounded and distributional semantics to work towards leveraging the relative strengths of both, and use empirical analysis to explore whether wac2vec adds semantic information to traditional embeddings. Starting with the words-as-classifiers (WAC) model of grounded semantics, I use a large repository of images and the keywords that were used to retrieve those images. From the grounded model, I extract classifier coeffivi cients as word-level vector embeddings (hence, wac2vec), then combine those with embeddings from distributional word representations. I show that combining grounded embeddings with traditional embeddings results in improved performance in a visual task, demonstrating the viability of using the wac2vec model to enrich traditional embeddings, and showing that wac2vec provides important semantic information that these embeddings do not have on their own.
Comparing secondary organic aerosol (SOA) volatility distributions derived from isothermal SOA particle evaporation data and FIGAERO–CIMS measurements

Abstract. The volatility distribution of the organic compounds present in secondary organic aerosol (SOA) at different conditions is a key quantity that has to be captured in order to describe SOA dynamics accurately. The development of the Filter Inlet for Gases and AEROsols (FIGAERO) and its coupling to a chemical ionization mass spectrometer (CIMS; collectively FIGAERO–CIMS) has enabled near-simultaneous sampling of the gas and particle phases of SOA through thermal desorption of the particles. The thermal desorption data have been recently shown to be interpretable as a volatility distribution with the use of the positive matrix factorization (PMF) method. Similarly, volatility distributions can be inferred from isothermal particle evaporation experiments when the particle size change measurements are analyzed with process-modeling techniques. In this study, we compare the volatility distributions that are retrieved from FIGAERO–CIMS and particle size change measurements during isothermal particle evaporation with process-modeling techniques. We compare the volatility distributions at two different relative humidities (RHs) and two oxidation conditions. In high-RH conditions, where particles are in a liquid state, we show that the volatility distributions derived via the two ways are similar within a reasonable assumption of uncertainty in the effective saturation mass concentrations that are derived from FIGAERO–CIMS data. In dry conditions, we demonstrate that the volatility distributions are comparable in one oxidation condition, and in the other oxidation condition, the volatility distribution derived from the PMF analysis shows considerably more high-volatility matter than the volatility distribution inferred from particle size change measurements. We also show that the Vogel–Tammann–Fulcher equation together with a recent glass transition temperature parametrization for organic compounds and PMF-derived volatility distribution estimates are consistent with the observed isothermal evaporation under dry conditions within the reported uncertainties. We conclude that the FIGAERO–CIMS measurements analyzed with the PMF method are a promising method for inferring the volatility distribution of organic compounds, but care has to be taken when the PMF factors are analyzed. Future process-modeling studies about SOA dynamics and properties could benefit from simultaneous FIGAERO–CIMS measurements.
Role of Testis Exposure Levels in the Insensitivity of Prepubertal Rats to Carbendazim-Induced Testicular Toxicity

Our recent studies have indicated that benomyl (BNL)-induced testicular toxicity is mediated by its major metabolite carbendazim (CBZ). The present study has used CBZ to investigate hypotheses that could explain prepubertal insensitivity to BNL. When CBZ (164 mg/kg intraperitoneally) was administered to postpubertal and prepubertal rats, it caused little testicular damage in prepubertal rats, but in adult rats, sloughing of the seminiferous epithelium resulted. When the inhibitory effect of CBZ on prepubertal testicular microtubule assembly was compared with that on postpubertal assembly, the IC50 values were very similar. Pharmacokinetic studies revealed that blood levels of CBZ were comparable in the two age groups; however, higher levels of CBZ were found in the adult testes (210.52 nmol/g wet wt) in comparison with young testes (67.77 nmol/g wet wt). These data suggest that delivery to and/or retention of CBZ in the testis may play a role in the age-dependent differences in susceptibility to CBZ toxicity. When CBZ was administered intratesticularly to reach levels sufficient to cause damage, the young animals did show an increased incidence of vacuolization and detachment of the seminiferous epithelium; however, in contrast to the older animals, sloughing of the seminiferous epithelium was not observed in the prepubertal animals. Overall, the low levels of CBZ measured in the testes of prepubertal animals offer a partial explanation for the insensitivity of young animals to CBZ-induced testicular toxicity following intraperitoneal administration. A differential responsiveness between the two age groups is also likely, however, since prepubertal animals lack elongated spermatids and it is sloughing of this cell type that characterizes CBZ-induced testicular toxicity in the adult.
Genetic characterization of multidrug-resistant Mycobacterium bovis strains from a hospital outbreak involving human immunodeficiency virus-positive patients

Nineteen multidrug-resistant (MDR) Mycobacterium complex strains isolated in a nosocomial outbreak were characterized at the molecular level. The strains were microbiologically characterized as Mycobacterium bovis. The mpt40 sequence was not present in chromosomal DNA from these strains, supporting the fact that they were M. bovis. All of the isolates were resistant to isoniazid, rifampin, pyrazinamide, ethambutol, streptomycin, para-aminosalicylic acid, clarithromycin, cycloserine, ethionamide, ofloxacin, capreomycin, and amikacin. By performing the standardized IS6110 fingerprinting by restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis, we were able to differentiate two groups (groups A and B) containing two (16 isolates) and three (3 isolates) IS6110 copies, respectively. These strains were typed by spoligotyping, developed to distinguish M. bovis strains and also to distinguish them from M. tuberculosis strains (J. Kamerbeek et al., J. Clin. Microbiol. 35:907-914, 1997). All the strains were confirmed to be M. bovis. In addition, spoligotyping showed a difference in only 1 of 43 spacers between RFLP groups A and B. The rpo beta region of several strains representative of each identified group was cloned and sequenced, and identical mutations (Ser-531 to Leu) responsible for the rifampin resistance phenotype were found. To our knowledge, this is the first characterization at the molecular level of an MDR M. bovis strain responsible for a nosocomial outbreak.
Morphological variation and the recent evolution of wing length in the Icterine Warbler : a case of unidirectional introgression?

Icterine Warbler Hippolais icterina and Melodious Warbler H. polyglotta are closely related species with parapatric breeding ranges. Their breeding ranges overlap only in a narrow zone in western Europe, where the Icterine Warbler population is presently declining and the Melodious Warbler population expanding. In eastern Burgundy (France), both species have bred in sympatry for at least forty years, but the Icterine Warbler started to decline in the mid-seventies. The two species differ in wing length and wing formula. Morphological variations of the wing were compared for the Icterine Warbler population in eastern Burgundy between 1965/76 and 1985/96. In the second period, wing length and wing characteristics of the Icterine Warbler approached those of the Melodious Warbler. The number of recorded heterospecific pairs also differed between the two periods. No similar morphological change was observed for the Melodious Warbler between the two periods. We discuss the evidence for unidirectional genetic introgression from the Melodious into the Icterine Warbler population as a likely explanation for this observed situation.
Strategic Processing and Memory for Temporal Order in Patients With Frontal Lobe Lesions

This study evaluated whether deficits in memory for temporal order in patients with frontal lobe lesions result from impaired automatic encoding of temporal information or are secondary to deficits in effortful processes, such as the use of organizational strategies and control of interference. Patients with lesions in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and control participants were tested on temporal order reconstruction of semantically related and unrelated word lists learned under intentional or incidental conditions. Memory for temporal order in patients with frontal lobe lesions was sensitive to semantic relatedness but not to intention to learn. Tests of item free recall and recognition using similar encoding manipulations indicated that order performance in these patients was dissociable from item memory. Results indicate that automatic procesging of temporal information is intact in patients with frontal lobe lesions but that strategic processing of this information is impaired.
Regional Frequency Analysis: An Approach Based on L-Moments

Preface 1. Regional frequency analysis 2. L-moments 3. Screening the data 4. Identification of homogeneous regions 5. Choice of a frequency distribution 6. Estimation of the frequency distribution 7. Performance of the regional L-moment algorithm 8. Other topics 9. Examples Appendix References Index of notation.
Ammonia Gas Sensing Behavior of Hybridization between Reduced Graphene Oxide and Gold Nanoparticles

Stack and composite are the two ways of hybridization between gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and reduced graphene oxide (rGO) which have been fabricated and tested the ability to detect NH3 gas at room temperature. The device based on the rGO-AuNP composite structure exhibited the highest response and the fastest response and recovery time compared to stack and bare rGO. The red shift of a resonant peak in the absorption spectra and the negative shift in the binding energy of 4f5/2 peak indicated that the remarkable NH3 gas-sensing properties of this composite are mainly attributed to a chemical bonding formed between AuNPs and rGO at the defective sites. This type of interaction facilitates the electron transfer from the defect states to the AuNP surface wherein it easily reacts with the oxygen molecules in the atmosphere to create oxygen absorbents. Consequently, NH3 not only reacts with sp3-hybridized atoms but also reacts primarily with oxygen absorbents on the surface of AuNPs, resulting in a better sensing behavior of composite samples.
COLLABORATIVE GOVERNANCE FOR LARGE AIRPORT TERMINAL RENOVATION & EXPANSION PROJECTS WITHOUT SUSPENDING AIR: A CASE STUDY

As the important and close connection structure, large airport terminal acts as the key facility to protect and maintain the overall operation function of the whole airport system. According to the existing global service capabilities, the actual needs of the airline operations, as well as air traffic forecast data, more and more airport terminal renovation & expansion projects in developing countries need to be carried out in the condition without suspending air. As a complex nonlinear system, the complexity of the large airport terminal renovation & expansion projects is much higher than those of the general construction projects. It has the characteristics of complicated organization structure, inconsistent demands of different units, conflicting working interfaces, complicated information management and so on. Hence, how to achieve the collaborative construction and operation effect in the condition without suspending air is one of the most important issues concerned by practioners and researchers in the field of airport project management.Taking the Shanghai Pudong International Airport Terminal 1 project as the example, this paper analyzes the collaborative governanceframework for large airport terminal renovation & expansion projects in the complex condition without suspending air including objective collaboration, organizational collaboration, resource collaboration, information collaboration and process collaboration, collaborative management offices also established as a bridge between service governance system and construction governance system.