Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evidence for Yellow Light Suppression of Lettuce Growth ¶

Researchers studying plant growth under different lamp types often attribute differences in growth to a blue light response. Lettuce plants were grown in six blue light treatments comprising five blue light fractions (0, 2, 6% from high‐pressure sodium [HPS] lamps and 6, 12, 26% from metal halide [MH] lamps). Lettuce chlorophyll concentration, dry mass, leaf area and specific leaf area under the HPS and MH 6% blue were significantly different, suggesting wavelengths other than blue and red affected plant growth. Results were reproducible in two replicate studies at each of two photosynthetic photon fluxes, 200 and 500 μmol m−2 s−1. We graphed the data against absolute blue light, phytochrome photoequilibrium, phototropic blue, UV, red:far red, blue:red, blue:far red and ‘yellow’ light fraction. Only the ‘yellow’ wavelength range (580–600 nm) explained the differences between the two lamp types.
From the Battlefield to the Schoolyard

The Post- 9/11 GI Bill brought about an enormous expansion in veteran education benefits, roughly doubling the average maximum benefit level and generating large variation in the magnitude of benefit expansion across states. Using this context, I explore how enrollment of older, nontraditional students responds to educational subsidies. The transition from a conditional cash transfer to a more in- kind benefit affects the relative prices of different types of education, pushing veterans to invest in more expensive (plausibly higher- quality) schooling. Using a difference- in- differences strategy, combined with state level variation in the degree of benefit expansion, I find that the higher level of benefits increased college enrollment of separated veterans by between 15 and 20 percent while also shifting the composition of enrollment toward four- year schools.
Hedge Funds: The Living and the Dead

Abstract In this paper, I examine survivorship bias in hedge fund returns by comparing two large databases. I find that the survivorship bias exceeds 2% per year. Results of survivorship bias by investment styles indicate that the biases are different across styles. I reconcile the conflicting results about survivorship bias in previous studies by showing that the two major hedge fund databases contain different amounts of dissolved funds. Empirical results show that poor performance is the main reason for a fund's disappearance. Furthermore, I find that there are significant differences in fund returs, inception date, net assets value, incentive fee, management fee, and investment styles forthe 465 common funds covered by both databases. Mismatching between reported returns andthe percentage change in NAVs can partially explain the differences in returns.
Metabolic theory predicts whole-ecosystem properties

Significance A theory is presented which shows how the metabolism of individual organisms controls the flow of carbon through ecosystems. The theory synthesizes top-down, ecosystem-level and bottom-up, organism-level approaches to ecological energetics and material cycles. The theory predicts a very simple straight-line relationship between residence time of carbon molecules and the ratio of whole-ecosystem biomass to primary productivity. This and additional predictions for total throughfow and recycling are supported by numerical models and data from real ecosystems. The theory provides a powerful way to understand the roles of organisms in ecosystem processes at scales from local habitats to the biosphere. Such an understanding is important for addressing the impacts of human-caused changes in climate, land use, and biodiversity. Understanding the effects of individual organisms on material cycles and energy fluxes within ecosystems is central to predicting the impacts of human-caused changes on climate, land use, and biodiversity. Here we present a theory that integrates metabolic (organism-based bottom-up) and systems (ecosystem-based top-down) approaches to characterize how the metabolism of individuals affects the flows and stores of materials and energy in ecosystems. The theory predicts how the average residence time of carbon molecules, total system throughflow (TST), and amount of recycling vary with the body size and temperature of the organisms and with trophic organization. We evaluate the theory by comparing theoretical predictions with outputs of numerical models designed to simulate diverse ecosystem types and with empirical data for real ecosystems. Although residence times within different ecosystems vary by orders of magnitude—from weeks in warm pelagic oceans with minute phytoplankton producers to centuries in cold forests with large tree producers—as predicted, all ecosystems fall along a single line: residence time increases linearly with slope = 1.0 with the ratio of whole-ecosystem biomass to primary productivity (B/P). TST was affected predominantly by primary productivity and recycling by the transfer of energy from microbial decomposers to animal consumers. The theory provides a robust basis for estimating the flux and storage of energy, carbon, and other materials in terrestrial, marine, and freshwater ecosystems and for quantifying the roles of different kinds of organisms and environments at scales from local ecosystems to the biosphere.
Testing for a Change in Persistence in the Presence of a Volatility Shift

We consider the impact of a break in the innovation volatility process on ratio-based persistence change tests. We demonstrate that the ratio statistics used do not have pivotal limiting null distributions and that the associated tests display a considerable degree of size distortion with size approaching unity in some cases. In practice, therefore, on the basis of these tests the practitioner will face difficulty in discriminating between persistence change processes and processes which display a simple volatility break. A wild bootstrap-based solution to the identified inference problem is proposed and is shown to work well in practice.
An empirical investigation into the gravitation and convergence of industry return rates in OECD countries

Tests are offered for the hypotheses that sectoral average profit rates and incremental return rates are gravitating around or converging towards a common value. We study data for various OECD countries relying on an econometric method able to account for residual autocorrelation and cross‐sector correlation. Our null hypotheses receive only a mixed empirical support. This is interpreted as the result of various kinds of limitations to capital mobility. Policy implications are discussed.
Robust stabilisation and output tracking of Lipschitz nonlinear systems

A simple approach for controller design of Lipschitz nonlinear systems for output tracking is proposed. The method works in the Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) framework. The resulting controller, if feasible, guarantees exponential stability as well as output tracking of reference signals, for the nonlinear system. The controlled system is also robust against norm bound parametric uncertainties.
Piezoelectric transformer for high-side MOSFET driver supplying

This paper describes auxiliary power supply for supplying high-side MOSFET driver using piezoelectric transformer. The proposed circuit consists of the piezoelectric transformer and driving circuit. The circuit allows 100% duty cycle of the high side MOSFET driver. Used piezoelectric transformer works in radial vibration mode. To verify the power supply function the full bridge convertor was used. The experimental results are presented.
Study of output power variation due to component tolerances in LCsCp resonant inverters applied to HPS lamp control

The aim of this paper is to incorporate the analysis of component tolerance in the design criteria of resonant inverters applied to the control of high-pressure sodium (HPS) lamps. This method may also be considered for metal halide (MH) lamps. The design accepts a large load variation without exceeding the lamp power limits given by the standard. The analysis is focused on the selection of the most suitable value of the resonant network in order to achieve a good repeatability of the circuit performance. The study is based on the analysis of the lamp power sensitivity regarding the lamp aging and the tolerance of the circuit components. The proposed design is validated with experimental results and a statistical study by the Monte Carlo method.
Towards a crisis pre‐emptive image management model

Purpose – A good corporate image is important to organizations. However, little is elaborated on how organizations can work on their images. This study seeks to explicate the types of image management before, during, and after a crisis through the development of the crisis pre‐emptive image management model.Design/methodology/approach – Integrating insights from communication and marketing literature, this paper uses cases from the USA, Europe and Asia to make the concepts come alive.Findings – At each stage of Wilcox and Cameron's crisis life cycle, different types of image management can take place. At the proactive stage are image creation and maintenance; at the strategic stage are image strengthening and transformation; at the reactive stage is image repair; and at the recovery stage are image renewal and reinvention.Research limitations/implications – This paper is a comprehensive examination of the types of image management that organizations can consider as they seek to solidify their images at di.
Data Revisions are Not Well-Behaved

We document the empirical properties of revisions to major macroeconomic variables in the United States. Our findings suggest that they do not satisfy simple desirable statistical properties. In particular, we find that these revisions do not have a zero mean, which indicates that the initial announcements by statistical agencies are biased. We also find that the revisions are quite large compared to the original variables and they are predictable using the information set at the time of the initial announcement, which means that the initial announcements of statistical agencies are not rational forecasts. We also provide evidence that professional forecasters ignore this predictability.
Australia's response to illegal foreign fishing: a case of winning the battle but losing the law

The right of prompt release has been interpreted by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea as a safeguard, balancing the right of the coastal State to detain and deal with arrested fishing vessels and crew on the one hand, with the interests of the flag State to secure the release of detained vessels on the other. As the incidence of illegal fishing within national fishing zones has increased in the past decade, many coastal States, such as Australia, have implemented increasingly harsh penalties aimed at deterring the fishers. One such measure involves the operation of an automatic forfeiture regime whereby the detained vessel, gear and catch are forfeited to the Commonwealth. This regime operates in the absence of any judgement on the merits. This paper examines the details of the Australian legislation in addition to recent case law and concludes that the operation of the automatic forfeiture regime has the potential to upset the balance established in Article 73 of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Organizational performance and managerial turnover

Involuntary and voluntary managerial job-termination hazard functions are estimated for English professional soccer for the period 1972-1997. A novel feature is the use of match-level data, which reveals aspects of the hazard otherwise concealed by estimation using annual data. Short-term fluctuations in performance strongly influence the involuntary termination hazard. The latter is also heavily dependent on the team's current league position relative to its position when the manager took charge, and on the win ratio over the entire spell. Managerial human capital attributes are found to have a greater influence on the voluntary rather than on the involuntary termination hazard. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Recovery From Virtual Environment Exposure: Expected Time Course of Symptoms and Potential Readaptation Strategies

Objective: This study investigated potential means of facilitating a return to normal functioning following virtual environment (VE) exposure using a peg-in-hole exercise in recalibrating hand-eye coordination, a targeted gait movement (rail walking) in recalibrating vestibular (i.e., postural) aftereffects, and natural decay. Background: Despite technology advances and considerable efforts focused on the identification and quantification of VE aftereffects, few have addressed means for recuperation, the focus of the current study. Method: After 15 min—60 min of VE exposure and recalibatory exercises, hand-eye coordination and postural stability were assessed electronically, the former via a 3-D measure capturing pointing errors, and the latter by head and body oscillations while standing in the tandem Romberg position. Both measurements were collected immediately after VE exposure and every 15 min up to 1 hr thereafter. Results: Participants (more than 900 college students) who experienced the peg-in-hole readaptation strategy had a significant decrease (p < 0.000 in pointing errors following the exercise; the other two methods (i.e., rail walking, natural decay) showed no significant change. For posture, all groups showed significant improvement during the 15 minutes after VE exposure, yet none returned to baseline by 1 hr postexposure. Conclusion: Although hand-eye coordination readaptation strategies showed noticeable effects immediately after they were performed, aftereffects were not completely eliminated after 1 hr; hence further research on readaptation strategies is essential to achieve more substantial recalibratory gains in hand-eye coordination and posture. Additionally, hand-eye coordination and vestibular aftereffects may require a period exceeding the VE immersion time in order to recover. Application: These findings may serve as a guide in the development of monitoring policies following VE exposure.
The Privatization of Retirement Income? Variation and Trends in the Income Packages of Old Age Pensioners

The aim of this article is to investigate the changing balance between public and private components in the income packages of old age pensioners in a selection of nine OECD countries. Four waves of data from the Luxembourg Income Study databank are used to analyse variation across countries and across time in the public/private mix of retirement income. The article seeks to address two main questions: (a) Is there a general trend towards a stronger reliance on private income provision and, perhaps, a trend towards convergence in the balance between public and private income components? (b) Is there evidence of a tendency for substitution/crowding out between public and private income components, and hence a tendency for crossnational convergence in the relative income position enjoyed by old age pensioners – despite variation in the generosity of national pension systems?
Non-negative subspace projection during conventional MFCC feature extraction for noise robust speech recognition

An additional feature processing algorithm using Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) is proposed to be included during the conventional extraction of Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) for achieving noise robustness in HMM based speech recognition. The proposed approach reconstructs log-Mel filterbank outputs of speech data from a set of building blocks that form the bases of a speech subspace. The bases are learned using the standard NMF of training data. A variation of learning the bases is proposed, which uses histogram equalized activation coefficients during training, to achieve noise robustness. The proposed methods give up to 5.96% absolute improvement in recognition accuracy on Aurora-2 task over a baseline with standard MFCCs, and up to 13.69% improvement when combined with other feature normalization techniques like Histogram Equalization (HEQ) and Heteroscedastic Linear Discriminant Analysis (HLDA).
Demand Dynamics in a Psycho-Socio-Economic Evolving Network of Consumers

ABSTRACT In a model of demand dynamics, consumers are linked to each other both in the agent space and in the commodity space and are subject to viability constraints stipulating that only specific configurations of demand are possible. The viability of demand is re-established through both centralized and decentralized, social and learning coordination mechanisms. The framework leads to different results depending on the field of application. In market dynamics theory, the framework characterizes an a posteriori supply and demand law, where social mechanisms are market prices and learning mechanisms the endogenous adaptation of supply. In monetary regulation theory, coordination mechanisms are interest rates and agents' solvability is allowed through both micro and macro-monetary regulation. In a demand model with frustration, agents control their frustration using the representative frustration of society, and the decentralized learning mechanism leads to a selection of neighbors. In a model with consumer sub-groups, the demand regulation adds an identity-building process to lifestyles and mimetic behaviors to lifestyles.
Poor agreement among prothrombin time international normalized ratio methods: comparison of seven commercial reagents.

BACKGROUND Prothrombin time (PT) has long been the most popular test for monitoring oral anticoagulation therapy. The International Normalized Ratio (INR) was introduced to overcome the problem of marked variation in PT results among laboratories and the various recommendations for patient care. According to this principle, all reagents should be calibrated to give identical results and the same patient care globally. This is necessary for monitoring of single patients and for application of the results of anticoagulation trials and guidelines to clinical practice. METHODS We took blood samples from 150 patients for whom oral anticoagulation had been prescribed. Plasmas were separated and PTs determined by use of seven commercial reagents and four calibrator sets. The differences in results were assessed by plotting, for each possible pair of methods, the differences in INR values for each sample against the mean INR value (Bland-Altman difference plots). RESULTS Mean results differed significantly (P <0.001) for 17 of 21 possible paired comparisons of methods. Only two pairs of methods produced very similar results when assessed for problems of substantial differences in INR values; a significant, systematic increase in the difference with INR; and a significant systematic increase in the variation in difference with increasing INR values. CONCLUSIONS The agreement among several (and perhaps most) commercial INR methods is poor. The failure of current calibration strategies may severely compromise both the monitoring of individual patients and the application of oral anticoagulation guidelines and trial results to clinical practice.
Psychological traits and the gender wage gap

This paper examines the role that psychological factors play in explaining the gender wage gap. To do so, I propose a methodology that extends the standard approach used in the literature interested in this question in three main dimensions. First, I rely on an economic model that captures multiple channels through which gender differences in traits can influence gender wage inequality. Second, I account for measurement error in the measures of psychological traits by using latent factor models. Third, I estimate entire counterfactual wage distributions in order to measure the contribution of gender differences in traits to the gender wage gap along the whole wage distribution instead of focusing on its mean. Implementing this methodology in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, I find that gender differences in cognition and self-confidence explain a considerable fraction of the gender wage gap, with the majority of this effect being due to gender differences in self-confidence. Moreover, I establish evidence of substantial heterogeneity in the effect that gender gaps in psychological traits have on the gender wage gap along the wage distribution. In particular, gender gaps in self-confidence and, to a lesser extent, cognition explain a greater fraction of the gender wage gap at the top than at the bottom of the wage distribution. By comparing my estimates to those obtained from implementing two standard decomposition methods widely used in the gender wage gap literature, I show that failing to account for the heterogeneity of returns to traits across occupations and for measurement error in observed measures of traits leads to substantial biases in the analysis of the role that psychological factors play in explaining the gender wage gap.
Taxation and Bond Market Equilibrium in a World of Uncertain Future Interest Rates

Throughout the finance and economics literature, it is widely recognized that taxation can significantly alter individual behavior and market equilibrium conditions. Yet, in the area of bonds, the impacts of taxation upon bond pricing have generally been ignored. The primary purpose of this paper is to trace out the impact of differential taxation of regular income and capital gains upon the pricing of coupon-bearing bonds.
The Time-Dependent Effect of Conflict in the Council on Delays in the Transposition of EU Directives

This article analyses the effect of conflict in the Council of the European Union (EU) on delays in the transposition of EU directives. Based on enforcement and management theories, we predict that conflict in the Council speeds up the transposition process. In addition, we control for the instigation of infringement procedures by the Commission and expect a weaker effect of conflict in cases where the Commission disagrees with a directive and if directives grant more discretion to member states. These hypotheses are tested using two indicators of conflict: heterogeneity and polarization. Cox regression analysis is applied with time-dependent effects and with a shared frailty to control for the multilevel structure of the data. The analyses show that, over time, conflict has an increasing negative effect on delays.
The good souvenir: representations of Okinawa and Kinmen islands in Asia

Representations of indigenous Okinawa shisa (Japan) and Kinmen wind lion totems (Taiwan) are popular tourist souvenirs. They are also commonly used in destination tourism promotion as logos or mascots. Some tourism research describes these practices as exploitative and damaging to local culture. Other research suggests that resident consensus, local production and government sponsorship can produce a good souvenir that benefits local identity and economy. This paper reports on a semiotic analysis of these cultural representations as found onsite at these two destinations. Photographs are interpreted as index, icon and symbol according to Peirce's semiotics compared. Seven types of representations were found that indicate complex relationships between original totems and their variations. The representations are the same for both destinations. This comparative research finds that each type of representation has a unique place in the tourism economy, but all are held together as a coherent whole by the form and location of the original totems. The good souvenir is a product of creative marketing and sponsorship and vigilant preservation of cultural heritage. The original totem form should be immutable; its value and significance increases over time. As commercial duplications proliferate, government policy should protect the originals and fix them in their physical locations.