Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
VEGETATION PATCHES AND RUNOFF–EROSION AS INTERACTING ECOHYDROLOGICAL PROCESSES IN SEMIARID LANDSCAPES

Ecological and hydrological processes can interact strongly in landscapes, yet these processes are often studied separately. One particularly important interaction between these processes in patchy semiarid lands is how vegetation patches serve to obstruct runoff and then how this retained water increases patch growth that, in turn, provides feedbacks to the system. Such ecohydrological interactions have been mostly demonstrated for semiarid landscapes with distinctly banded vegetation patterns. In this paper, we use data from our studies and from the literature to evaluate how strongly four ecohydrological interactions apply across other patchy semiarid vegetations, and how these interactions are affected by disturbances. We specifically address four questions concerning ecohydrological interactions: (1) if vegetation patches obstruct runoff flows during rainfall events, how much more soil water is stored in these patches compared to open interpatch areas; (2) if inputs of water are higher in patches, how much stronger is the pulse of plant growth compared to interpatches; (3) if more soil water in patches promotes greater biological activity by organisms such as earthworms that create macropores, how much does this improve soil infiltrability; and (4) if vegetation patches are damaged on a hillslope, how much does this increase runoff and erosion and decrease biomass production? We used the trigger-transfer-reserve-pulse framework developed for Australian semiarid woodlands to put these four questions into a landscape context. For a variety of patchy semiarid vegetation types in Australia, Europe, and North America, we found that patches significantly stored more soil water, produced more growth and had better infiltrability than interpatches, and that runoff and erosion can markedly increase on disturbed hillslopes. However, these differences varied greatly and appeared to depend on factors such as the intensity and amount of input events (rainstorms) and type of topography, soils, and vegetation. Exper- imental and modeling studies are needed to better quantify how these factors specifically affect ecohydrological interactions. Our current findings do support the conclusion that vegetation patches and runoff-erosion processes do strongly interact in many semiarid landscapes across the globe, not just banded landscapes.
Corporate real estate practice in Australia

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the corporate real estate (CRE) practices of 25 major corporations in Australia. It will study such areas as, what constitutes CRE, the performance measures used in CRE practice, CRE management units, planning horizons in CRE, owned and leased CRE, outsourcing policies for CRE, use of benchmarking measures to assess the performance of CRE, use of “gain share” practices in CRE operations, use of flexible CRE practices and the role of cost or profit centres in corporations.Design/methodology/approach – A data base was established using 25 companies (corporations) taken from the top 200 listed in the Australian Financial Review. Contact was made with the companies and interviews were carried out to obtain the relevant data. As well as the annual reports for the companies were analysed over the last five years to extract the necessary financial and additional property data.Findings – The conclusions indicate that there is a great disparity between corporat.
From Monte Carlo to Las Vegas: Improving Restricted Boltzmann Machine Training Through Stopping Sets

We propose a Las Vegas transformation of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) estimators of Restricted Boltzmann Machines (RBMs). We denote our approach Markov Chain Las Vegas (MCLV). MCLV gives statistical guarantees in exchange for random running times. MCLV uses a stopping set built from the training data and has maximum number of Markov chain steps K (referred as MCLV-K). We present a MCLV-K gradient estimator (LVS-K) for RBMs and explore the correspondence and differences between LVS-K and Contrastive Divergence (CD-K), with LVS-K significantly outperforming CD-K training RBMs over the MNIST dataset, indicating MCLV to be a promising direction in learning generative models.
Japanese Management, Enterprise Unions and Company Performance

The success of the Japanese company has often been attributed to a range of management practices and enterprise unionism. These claims, however, have been based on research that was conducted during periods of high economic growth where a major objective of the company was increasing market share. This article extends this research by assessing the impact of these factors on the financial performance of Japanese companies over the period 1991-2001, a period of economic decline and change. The findings of the research challenge the conventional view of the value of Japanese management practices and enterprise unions, and illustrate the need to consider these practices within a wider economic context.
Local Parametric Approach of Wireless Capsule Endoscope Localization Using Randomly Scattered Path Loss Based WCL

We propose scattered path loss based weighted centroid localization (WCL) algorithm for wireless video capsule endoscope (VCE). The main challenge in this approach is the random deviation in the measured received signal strength indicator (RSSI) caused by multipath propagation and shadowing effects of human body channel which in turn increases the localization error. To address this issue, we propose local parameter dependent path loss representation in the training phase and apply adaptive least square error (LSE) method to extract the parameters. Then, in the test phase, we estimate distance using the extracted parameters and the randomly scattered path loss. The position of capsule is estimated using non-degree based WCL followed by a calibration process. We propose suboptimal method of estimating the calibration coefficient and also compute the optimal value of coefficient analytically to set the benchmark. We develop a simulation platform using MATLAB to present the results and to verify the performance. We gradually increase the number of sensors and place them in different topologies using different dimensions. The obtained accuracy by our proposed suboptimal method of WCL is very close to the optimal benchmark for all cases. Our proposed approach also outperforms existing works in terms of localization accuracy.
Learning to Succeed at Scale

Dynamic new ventures like the Knowledge is Power Program, Teach For America, and New Leaders for New Schools, are increasingly being asked to step in to assist struggling school districts. While promising, these ventures have thus far typically been characterized by “one-off” examples of success that are extraordinarily reliant on talent and passion, philanthropic funding, and exhausting work schedules. For many funders, practitioners, and policymakers, scaling up the most successful ventures has become the sine non qua of successful reform. The appeal of growth by “best practice” imitation is undeniable, but narrowly following such a course is unlikely to deliver large-scale educational reform. Markets are local, clienteles differ dramatically from one place to the next, and the challenges and availability of facilities, staff, and other resources vary enormously. A primary reason these organizations initially “work” is the uniformity of their approach to organizational systems and culture or their “organizational career imprint”—the set of capabilities, connections, confidence, and cognitions that individuals share as a result of working for a given organization at a particular point in time. But the factors that strengthen imprinting and early success in new ventures, such as creating stretch assignments and hiring in cohorts, can become flaws if left unchecked. Drawing on lessons from the biotechnology industry, this article examines how successful new ventures in the education sector might revisit and reorganize original (internal and external) arrangements to facilitate more sure-footed growth.
From Value to Growth Stocks: A Financial Ratio Analysis

The value investing philosophy, which can be traced at least to the teaching of Graham and Dodd in the 1930’s, entails identifying and investing in potentially under valued stocks with a potential for extraordinary returns. The focus of this thesis is to identify patterns and characteristics in financial accounting data preceding creation of shareholder value. The authors of this thesis utilize a multivariate discriminant analysis in order to identify indicators of value creation and subsequent extraordinary returns in value stocks. A discriminant function is derived which successfully identifies which value stocks will eventually become growth stocks. The thesis proves that it is possible to predict future extraordinary returns using easily accessible financial accounting data. Furthermore, the authors conclude that firms are rationally priced at low market-to-book ratios due to a lack of profitable investment opportunities. Firms leaving the value segment to become growth stocks are shown to achieve this transition by improving a suboptimal capital structure.
Community-based cultural tourism: issues, threats and opportunities

Using examples from long-term anthropological fieldwork in Tanzania, this paper critically analyzes how well generally accepted community-based tourism discourses resonate with the reality on the ground. It focuses on how local guides handle their role as ambassadors of communal cultural heritage and how community members react to their narratives and practices. It pays special attention to the time-limited, project-based development method, the need for an effective exit strategy, for quality control, tour guide training and long-term tour guide retention. The study is based on a program funded by the Netherlands-based development agency, Stichting Nederlandse Vrijwilligers (SNV), from 1995 to 2001, and on post-program experiences. Findings reveal multiple complex issues of power and resistance that illustrate many community-based tourism conflicts. The encounter with the “Other” is shown to be central and that the role of professional intermediaries in facilitating this experience of cultural contact is crucial. Tour guides are often the only “locals” with whom tourists spend considerable time: they have considerable agency in the image-building process of the peoples and places visited, (re)shaping tourist destination images and indirectly influencing the self-image of those visited too. The paper provides ideas for overcoming the issues and problems described.
Implementation issues influencing the decision to adopt postponement

Purpose – Postponement (also known as delayed product differentiation) has been shown to be an effective supply chain strategy from an inventory‐reduction, service‐level improvement standpoint. However, there has been relatively little empirical research on identifying the drivers and/or obstacles to a successful implementation of a postponement strategy. This study aims to identify the importance of several managerial issues surrounding the implementation of such a strategy.Design/methodology/approach – Exploratory depth interviews with company managers were conducted to identify and examine issues that may affect a successful implementation. Borrowing from the concept of triangulation, the findings are integrated with results reported elsewhere in the literature to understand the interrelated aspects of postponement implementation issues. This approach provides insights that would not be had if the results of each study were viewed independently of one another.Findings – The identification of managerial.
Small Circularly Polarized U-Slot Wideband Patch Antenna

A single-feed circularly polarized (CP) patch antenna at L-band is designed and built using the recently developed U-slot loaded patch technique. With the presence of the U-slot, the antenna fabricated on a high-dielectric-constant (ε<sub>r</sub> = 10.02) substrate achieves a reasonable axial-ratio bandwidth. At the operating frequency of 1.575 GHz, the size of the patch is 0. 13λ<sub>o</sub> × 0. 13λ<sub>o</sub>, while the ground size is 0. 315λ<sub>o</sub> × 0. 315λ<sub>o</sub> and the thickness of the substrate is 0. 05λ<sub>o</sub>. The measured gain is 4.5 dBi, and axial-ratio bandwidth is 3.2%.
Calendar Effect: Do Investors Overreact to the Seasonality of the U.S. Hotel Industry?

Abstract The efficient market, where investors behave rationally, has been one of the primary concepts defining financial markets, such as stock and bond markets. However, scholars in behavioral finance claim that investors do not always behave rationally in the financial market. Accordingly, to further understand finance phenomenon in association with behavioral finance, this study examined whether or not investor irrationality exists toward U.S hotel stocks. The results of this study found that investors tended to overreact to the seasonality of the U.S hotel industry. Moreover, several calendar effects, which refer to monthly abnormal stock returns, were found to result from investors’ overreactions. The results can provide important messages regarding equity financing for hotel firms and potential strategies for investors. More detailed findings are provided in the results section.
Shadowy Banks and Financial Contagion during the Great Depression: A Retrospective on Friedman and Schwartz

This essay assesses whether network linkages within the banking system amplified the real effects of bank failures during the Great Contraction. In 1929, nearly all interbank deposits held by Federal Reserve member banks belonged to "shadowy" nonmember banks which were outside the regulatory reach of federal regulators. Regional banking panics in the early 1930s drained these interbank deposits from central reserve city banks. Money-center banks in Chicago and New York responded to volatile and declining interbank deposits by changing their asset composition. They reduced their lending to businesses and individuals, and increased their holdings of cash and government bonds.
Crop mapping applications at scale: Using Google Earth Engine to enable global crop area and status monitoring using free and open data sources

The confluence of rapidly growing streams of “free and open” satellite imagery at 10-30 m spatial resolution, expending libraries of sophisticated open source software components for geospatial data processing and the increase in publicly available open data sets is driving major changes in agricultural monitoring activities. In the next years, we can expect a scale step in derived crop area and status information at parcel level from the combined use of global sensors such as Landsat-8, Sentinel 1 and 2. In order to handle the unprecedented flow of such data into value adding agricultural mapping and monitoring applications, novel approaches need to be developed to ensure a globally consistent use in a “knowledge inference” context in support of, for instance, food security analysis. We demonstrate the use of Google Earth Engine (GEE) as a prototype environment that could possibly support such a context with 3 different examples.
Detection of Interictal Discharges With Convolutional Neural Networks Using Discrete Ordered Multichannel Intracranial EEG

Detection algorithms for electroencephalography (EEG) data, especially in the field of interictal epileptiform discharge (IED) detection, have traditionally employed handcrafted features, which utilized specific characteristics of neural responses. Although these algorithms achieve high accuracy, mere detection of an IED holds little clinical significance. In this paper, we consider deep learning for epileptic subjects to accommodate automatic feature generation from intracranial EEG data, while also providing clinical insight. Convolutional neural networks are trained in a subject independent fashion to demonstrate how meaningful features are automatically learned in a hierarchical process. We illustrate how the convolved filters in the deepest layers provide insight toward the different types of IEDs within the group, as confirmed by our expert clinicians. The morphology of the IEDs found in filters can help evaluate the treatment of a patient. To improve the learning of the deep model, moderately different score classes are utilized as opposed to binary IED and non-IED labels. The resulting model achieves state-of-the-art classification performance and is also invariant to time differences between the IEDs. This paper suggests that deep learning is suitable for automatic feature generation from intracranial EEG data, while also providing insight into the data.
Ultra-brief non-expert-delivered defusion and acceptance exercises for food cravings: A partial replication study

Food cravings are a common barrier to losing weight. This article presents a randomised comparison of non-expert group-delivered ultra-brief defusion and acceptance interventions against a distraction control. A total of 63 participants were asked to carry a bag of chocolates for a week while trying to resist the temptation to eat them. A behavioural rebound measure was administered. Each intervention out-performed control in respect of consumption, but not cravings. These techniques may have a place in the clinical management of food cravings. We provide tentative evidence that the mechanism of action is through decreased reactivity to cravings, not through reduced frequency of cravings.
Source/Drain Extension Region Engineering in FinFETs for Low-Voltage Analog Applications

In this letter, we propose a novel design methodology for engineering source/drain extension (SDE) regions to simultaneously improve intrinsic dc gain (AVO) and cutoff frequency (fT ) of 25-nm gate-length FinFETs operated at low drain-current (I ds=10 muA/mum). SDE region optimization in 25-nm FinFETs results in exceptionally high values of AVO (~45 dB) and f T (~70 GHz), which is nearly 2.5 times greater when compared to devices designed with abrupt SDE regions. The influence of spacer width, lateral source/drain doping gradient, and the spacer-to-gradient ratio on key analog figures of merit is examined in detail. This letter provides new opportunities for realizing future low-voltage/low-power analog design with nanoscale SDE-engineered FinFETs
CD68 tumor-associated macrophage marker is not prognostic of clinical outcome in classical Hodgkin lymphoma

Abstract A novel biomarker, CD68, which marks tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) in the microenvironment, has recently been reported to affect the prognosis of Hodgkin lymphoma (HL). We aimed to evaluate its role in our patient cohort (n = 100) by utilizing a routine immunohistochemistry method on whole tissue sections and a semiquantitative method for CD68 scoring. Clinical data were taken from medical records. Correlation with baseline characteristics, attainment of complete remission (CR), progression-free survival (PFS) and disease-specific survival (DSS) was done by categorical analysis using different cut-offs of CD68 score and also by taking absolute CD68 score as a continuous variable. There was no significant association between levels of CD68 expression and baseline characteristics or CR after primary therapy. CD68 score (neither categorical nor absolute continuous values) also did not predict for any difference in PFS or DSS. We conclude that CD68 TAM marker does not have prognostic value in HL.
Differential Biological Role of CD3 Chains Revealed by Human Immunodeficiencies1

The biological role in vivo of the homologous CD3γ and δ invariant chains within the human TCR/CD3 complex is a matter of debate, as murine models do not recapitulate human immunodeficiencies. We have characterized, in a Turkish family, two new patients with complete CD3γ deficiency and SCID symptoms and compared them with three CD3γ-deficient individuals belonging to two families from Turkey and Spain. All tested patients shared similar immunological features such as a partial TCR/CD3 expression defect, mild αβ and γδ T lymphocytopenia, poor in vitro proliferative responses to Ags and mitogens at diagnosis, and very low TCR rearrangement excision circles and CD45RA+ αβ T cells. However, intrafamilial and interfamilial clinical variability was observed in patients carrying the same CD3G mutations. Two reached the second or third decade in healthy conditions, whereas the other three showed lethal SCID features with enteropathy early in life. In contrast, all reported human complete CD3δ (or CD3ε) deficiencies are in infants with life-threatening SCID and very severe αβ and γδ T lymphocytopenia. Thus, the peripheral T lymphocyte pool was comparatively well preserved in human CD3γ deficiencies despite poor thymus output or clinical outcome. We propose a CD3δ ≫ CD3γ hierarchy for the relative impact of their absence on the signaling for T cell production in humans.
Viability of an economy with constrained inequality

Governments want to prevent high inequality while maintaining economic effi ciency. This paper investigates how an economy can satisfy both these constraints. We use the relative factor share as a proxy for inequality and so can use a representative agent model to understand how inequality evolves. Our representative agent model includes capital, consumption and debt which, like the relative factor share, are influenced by tax rates. Whether the model's evolutions can be constrained is understood as a problem of viability theory, and so we compute the viability kernels corresponding to our constraints. These kernels explain both how policy makers should act and why they act as they currently do. For example, we show that substantial government debt will require policy makers to reduce inequality. More importantly, we demonstrate that viability theory is a meaningful, interesting approach to understanding the tradeoff between inequality and efficiency.
Sequential Steps in Human Immunodeficiency Virus Particle Maturation Revealed by Alterations of Individual Gag Polyprotein Cleavage Sites

ABSTRACT Retroviruses are produced as immature particles containing structural polyproteins, which are subsequently cleaved by the viral proteinase (PR). Extracellular maturation leads to condensation of the spherical core to a capsid shell formed by the capsid (CA) protein, which encases the genomic RNA complexed with nucleocapsid (NC) proteins. CA and NC are separated by a short spacer peptide (spacer peptide 1 [SP1]) on the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) Gag polyprotein and released by sequential PR-mediated cleavages. To assess the role of individual cleavages in maturation, we constructed point mutations abolishing cleavage at these sites, either alone or in combination. When all three sites between CA and NC were mutated, immature particles containing stable CA-NC were observed, with no apparent effect on other cleavages. Delayed maturation with irregular morphology of the ribonucleoprotein core was observed when cleavage of SP1 from NC was prevented. Blocking the release of SP1 from CA, on the other hand, yielded normal condensation of the ribonucleoprotein core but prevented capsid condensation. A thin, electron-dense layer near the viral membrane was observed in this case, and mutant capsids were significantly less stable against detergent treatment than wild-type HIV-1. We suggest that HIV maturation is a sequential process controlled by the rate of cleavage at individual sites. Initial rapid cleavage at the C terminus of SP1 releases the RNA-binding NC protein and leads to condensation of the ribonucleoprotein core. Subsequently, CA is separated from the membrane by cleavage between the matrix protein and CA, and late release of SP1 from CA is required for capsid condensation.