Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
in Middle Eastern and North African Economies Quinlan School of Business 9-1-2008 Stock Prices , Exchange Rates , and Oil : Evidences from Middle East Oil-Exporting Countries

We consider the linkage between stock prices and exchange rates in four Middle East emerging markets. The existing evidence on stock prices and exchange rates typically relies on introduction of a global market index. On the contrary, we find that for the countries of our sample oil prices emerge as the dominant factor in the above relationship. When we focus on the extended sample we do not detect evidence of cointegration between stock prices and real exchange rates, or of cointegration among stock prices, real exchange rates and other exogenous variables such as the US stock price or the oil price. To address the possibility that this finding may be due to the presence of regime shifts we, first, divide the sample into two subperiods based on the oil price shock in March 1999. The Johansen trace statistics reveals evidence of cointegration only for the second subsample, among stock prices, real exchange rates and oil prices in Egypt, Oman and Saudi Arabia, and between stock prices and oil prices in Kuwait. Utilizing the full sample and including deterministic dummies in the VECM we attempt to capture the regime shifts. The FIML estimation results corroborate the finings from splitting the sample, indicating that the oil prices have a longrun positive effect on stock market in each country. Readjustment towards the long-run equilibrium in each stock market occurs via oil price changes. Finally, we produce persistence profiles showing that convergence to the long run equilibrium takes 17 and 14 months in Egypt and Saudi Arabia respectively, while it takes 22 and 24 moths in Oman and Kuwait. * (Corresponding Author) School of Accounting Finance and Management, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, UK. Email: mmabde@essex.ac. uk ** Department of Economics, University of Athens, Athens 0559, Greece. Phone: 30 (210) 3689805. Email: gchortar@econ.uoa. gr ***Department of Social Cognitive and Quantitative Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, viale A. Allegri, 9, 42100 Reggio Emilia, Italy. Email: acipol@essex.ac. uk
A functional equation often arising in the analysis of algorithms (extended abstract)

Analysis of Algorithms Wojciech Szpankowskit spa~cs. purdue. edu We consider a functional-differential equation of the form ah~(z, u)+,8h(z, u) = ~(zap, u). h(zuq, a)+ a(.z, u) with h(O, ti) = 1 where p + q = 1, cz,~ are nonnegative constants, h~(.,.) denotes the partial derivative with respect to z, and a and z are complex numbers, This equation arises in numerous problems in combinatorics, computer science, data compression and molecular biology (e.g., complexity oft he quicksort, number of phrases in the Lempel-Ziv parsing algorithm, enumeration of parsings of given length, external/internal path length in digital search trees, etc.). We obtain an asymptotic solution of this equation for large Z, and apply it to settle some open problems in the area of analysis of algorithms. In particular, we solve a problem posed by Aldous and Shields concerning the limiting distribution of the number of phrases in the fundamental parsing scheme due to Lempel and Ziv. Actually, we reduce this problem to another one, namely, finding the limiting distribution of the internal path length in a digital search tree. In addition, we can enumerate parsings of given length, obtain limiting distribution of the external path lengths of other digital trees such as tries and Patricia tries, and so forth.
The Power of Story : The influence of story on intrinsic motivation in vocabulary learning

Digital games are on the rise and an increasing amount of instructors try to use elements of digital games to increase motivation in learning. Story is a game design element that is often mentioned, but rarely empirically researched and the few conducted empirical studies showed mixed results. This study will research, whether story can increase intrinsic motivation in vocabulary learning and whether an interactive story is more motivating than a regular story. Therefore, a diglot weave story was designed in German, including A1 level Dutch vocabulary. The learned vocabulary and intrinsic motivation of participants were measured for one condition teaching with interactive story, one condition teaching with story and one condition teaching the vocabulary with a drill. Intrinsic motivation was significantly higher for the interactive story condition when compared to the drill, while the difference between interactive story and story were marginally significant. Story and drill did not differ significantly. There were no significant differences in vocabulary learning across conditions.
Usage and validation of a tracking system to monitor position and velocity during cross-country skiing

For the first time, we investigate here the possibility of using a real-time locating system (RTLS) to track cross-country skiers during a competition. For validation, three RTLS tags were attached to the antenna of a real-time kinematics global navigation satellite system (RTK GNSS) carried by a skier, skiing the course at three different intensities. In addition, RTLS data were collected from 70 racers during a FIS cross-country skiing sprint race. Spline interpolations were fitted to the RTLS data. In comparison to the RTK GNSS, the spline models for the three RTLS tags overestimated the mean skiing velocity by 5% and 2% at low and medium intensities, respectively, with no difference between the two systems during high intensity. The corresponding overestimations of the peak velocity at skiing intensities were 15%, 10% and 8%, respectively. A decimated sampling frequency for the RTLS data from 50 Hz to 0.5 Hz resulted in lower typical mean errors for the x- (0.53 m vs. 1.40 m), y- (0.31 m vs. 1.36 m) and z-axis (0.10 m vs. 0.20 m). The spline models based on 0.5 Hz and 1 Hz RTLS data overestimated the finishing times by on average of 0.5 s and 0.3 s, respectively. If a sufficient number of locators is utilized and the number of tags simultaneously recorded is limited, this RTLS can track cross-country skiers accurately. In conclusion, a low RTLS sampling frequency in combination with a spline model offer considerable potential for analyzing performance during cross-country sprint skiing.
One-sided binary tree-crossbar switching for on-chip networks

This paper is concerned with the design of switch fabrics for on-chip network routers and multicore computer chips. Using a cyclic permutation group representation, it describes an n-terminal, one-sided, binary-tree-crossbar switch fabric comprising a O(lg n) columns of crosspoints with a fan-out of two and n/2 columns of wiring. It also presents a distributed algorithm for routing unicast and multicast connection requests in such a switch.
Exploiting Structure and Semantics for Expressive Text Kernels

Several problems in text categorization are too hard to be solved by standard bag-of-words representations. Work in kernel-based learning has approached this problem by (i) considering information about the syntactic structure of the input or by (ii) incorporating knowledge about the semantic similarity of term features. In this paper, we propose a generalized framework consisting of a family of kernels that jointly incorporates syntax and semantics. We show that both components can be flexibly adapted and tuned towards the particular application domain. We demonstrate the power of this approach in a series of experiments on two diverse datasets, each of which presents a non-standard text categorization problem: one for the classification of natural language questions from a TREC question answering dataset and the other for the automated assignment of ICT9 categories to short textual fragments of medical diagnoses.
Tutorial Proposal : Patterns of Service-Oriented Architectures

This tutorial explains service-oriented architectures in a technologyneutral way using software patterns. It aims at explaining the fundamental concepts of service-oriented architectures in an architecture-centric way. At the same time, by using patterns as a technique to convey these concepts, the tutorial also provides a practical guideline how to apply these concepts in a concrete technology setting. The tutorial aims at providing architectural guidance for architects, developers, and researchers to both understand and develop sustainable serviceoriented architectures.
Minimum-Seeking for CLFs: Universal Semiglobally Stabilizing Feedback Under Unknown Control Directions

Employing extremum seeking (ES) for seeking minima of control Lyapunov function (CLF) candidates, we develop 1) the first systematic design of ES controllers for unstable plants, 2) a simple non-model based universal feedback law that emulates, in an average sense, the “ $L_{g}V$ controllers” for stabilization with inverse optimality, and 3) a new strategy for stabilization of systems with unknown control directions, as an alternative to Nussbaum gain controllers that lack exponential stability, lack transient performance guarantees, and lack robustness to changes in the control direction. The stability analysis that underlies our designs is inspired by an analysis approach synthesized in a recent work by Dürr, Stankovic, and Johansson, which combines a Lie bracket averaging result of Gurvits and Li with a semiglobal practical stability result under small parametric perturbations by Moreau and Aeyels.
Branes, Calibrations and Supergravity

These notes are based on lectures given at the Clay School on Geometry and String Theory, Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge, 25 March - 19 April 2002. They attempt to provide an elementary and somewhat self contained discussion of the construction of supergravity solutions describing branes wrapping calibrated cycles, emphasising the geometrical aspects and focusing on D=11 supergravity. Following a discussion of the role of special holonomy backgrounds in D=11 supergravity, the basic membrane and fivebrane solutions are reviewed and the connection with the AdS/CFT correspondence is made. The world-volume description of branes is introduced and used to argue that branes wrapping calibrated cycles in special holonomy manifolds preserve supersymmetry. The corresponding supergravity solutions are constructed first in an auxiliary gauged supergravity theory which is obtained via Kaluza-Klein reduction.
Non-speech audio event detection

Audio event detection is one of the tasks of the European project VIDIVIDEO. This paper focuses on the detection of non-speech events, and as such only searches for events in audio segments that have been previously classified as non-speech. Preliminary experiments with a small corpus of sound effects have shown the potential of this type of corpus for training purposes. This paper describes our experiments with SVM and HMM-based classifiers, using a 290-hour corpus of sound effects. Although we have only built detectors for 15 semantic concepts so far, the method seems easily portable to other concepts. The paper reports experiments with multiple features, different kernels and several analysis windows. Preliminary experiments on documentaries and films yielded promising results, despite the difficulties posed by the mixtures of audio events that characterize real sounds.
SPC07-4: Performance of Asymmetrically Clipped Optical OFDM in AWGN for an Intensity Modulated Direct Detection System

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is used in many wired and wireless broadband communication systems because of its resilience in the presence of signal dispersion or multipath distortion. OFDM has not been used in practical optical communication systems because the bipolar waveform cannot be used in intensity-modulated direct detection (IM/DD) systems. A new unipolar form of OFDM, asymmetrically clipped optical OFDM (ACO-OFDM), has recently been developed. For the case of an AWGN channel, we compare ACO- OFDM and other modulation schemes. It is shown that ACO- OFDM with 4-QAVI subcarrier modulation has the same bandwidth efficiency but requires 2 dB less energy per bit than on-off keying. ACO-OFDM with larger constellation sizes gives higher bandwidth efficiencies and lower optical power than other modulation schemes. Unlike existing methods, the performance of ACO-OFDM is limited by the bandwidth of the transmitter and receiver not the dispersion of the channel.
microRNAs and the evolution of complex multicellularity: identification of a large, diverse complement of microRNAs in the brown alga Ectocarpus

There is currently convincing evidence that microRNAs have evolved independently in at least six different eukaryotic lineages: animals, land plants, chlorophyte green algae, demosponges, slime molds and brown algae. MicroRNAs from different lineages are not homologous but some structural features are strongly conserved across the eukaryotic tree allowing the application of stringent criteria to identify novel microRNA loci. A large set of 63 microRNA families was identified in the brown alga Ectocarpus based on mapping of RNA-seq data and nine microRNAs were confirmed by northern blotting. The Ectocarpus microRNAs are highly diverse at the sequence level with few multi-gene families, and do not tend to occur in clusters but exhibit some highly conserved structural features such as the presence of a uracil at the first residue. No homologues of Ectocarpus microRNAs were found in other stramenopile genomes indicating that they emerged late in stramenopile evolution and are perhaps specific to the brown algae. The large number of microRNA loci in Ectocarpus is consistent with the developmental complexity of many brown algal species and supports a proposed link between the emergence and expansion of microRNA regulatory systems and the evolution of complex multicellularity.
Copy protection for automotive electronic control units using authenticity heartbeat signals

Protection of intellectual property rights is a vital aspect for the future automotive supplier market, in particular for the aftersales market for ECUs. Computer security can deliver the required protection mechanisms and sustain the according business models. We propose an approach to facilitate the rigorous checking of components for originality in a vehicle. In our system model, a security controller receives special messages (i.e., the authenticity heartbeat signal) from relevant ECUs and it performs subsequent authentication and plausibility checks. As a result, the security controller can tell, if the current setup of components in the vehicle is original. We evaluate our authentication architecture for the Battery Management System (BMS) of a hybrid car. Here, the security controller detects reliably, if the BMS is an original component, and whether an attacker has modified the operational limits of the battery. In this paper, we reason that an effective copy protection scheme needs to fuse relevant information from different sources. Therefore, various security techniques have to be combined in a sound architectural approach. The distinctive feature of our architecture is that it takes into account application-specific knowledge of the real-time entities under control.
Using positive behavioural support as a treatment for trauma symptoms with a man with intellectual disabilities

Background. There is robust evidence that psychological therapies are an effective treatment for trauma-related symptoms, including post-traumatic stress disorder. However, there are relatively few studies involving people with intellectual disabilities, and no studies drawing on positive behavioural support as the mechanism for the delivery of treatment. Method and materials. This study was a descriptive case report of a young man with intellectual disabilities who had a history of early trauma. His challenging behaviour was associated with demand avoidance. A positive behavioural support plan, incorporating psychological therapies and medication, was developed, implemented and is described. Results. Over time, challenging behaviours reduced and were eventually extinguished. This was associated with an increase in engagement in a variety of activities and a reduction in trauma-related symptoms. Discussion. Using positive behaviour support plans as the organisational framework for the adaptation and delivery of both psychological therapies and medication for complex cases is advantageous. Excellent team working is necessary to ensure that interventions are successful.
Three Dimension QoS Deviation based Scheduling in Adaptive Wireless Networks

QoS provisioning over wireless fading channel is challenging. We develop a novel scheduler design in cellular packet-switched wireless networks which provides QoS for users in all three aspects of QoS i.e. throughput, delay and packet loss simultaneously. We establish a three-dimensional space with specific basis vectors for QoS and find the efficient point of system performance in that space. Then we develop a generalized measure, the QoS Deviation, which is the Euclidean distance between flow QoS work point and the efficient QoS point in the 3D space. Based on this measure, a scheduling approach, namely BQDF is outlined and will be extended to AQDC scheduler for wireless channels which makes it possible to tune the tradeoff between QoS provisioning and optimizing throughput in an adaptive manner depending on current cell QoS Deviation level (CDL). Finally, we introduce a QoS Deviation-based CAC policy for the proposed system.
Complete Genome Sequence of Prevotella intermedia Strain 17-2

ABSTRACT Prevotella intermedia, a Gram-negative black-pigmented anaerobic rod, is frequently isolated from not only periodontal pockets but also purulent infections. We report here the complete genome sequence of P. intermedia strain 17-2, which is a non-exopolysaccharide-producing variant obtained from exopolysaccharide (EPS)-producing P. intermedia strain 17 stock culture.
Evidence for the Validity of the Student Risk Screening Scale in Middle School: A Multilevel Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Evidence for the Validity of the Student Risk Screening Scale in Middle School: A Multilevel Confirmatory Factor Analysis Matthew Porter Wilcox Educational Inquiry, Measurement, and Evaluation, BYU Doctor of Philosophy The Student Risk Screening Scale—Internalizing/Externalizing (SRSS-IE) was developed to screen elementary-aged students for Emotional and Behavioral Disorders (EBD). Its use has been extended to middle schools with little evidence that it measures the same constructs as in elementary schools. Scores of a middle school population from the SRSS-IE are analyzed with Multilevel Confirmatory Factor Analysis (MCFA) to examine its factor structure, factorial invariance between females and males, and its reliability. Several MCFA models are specified, and compared, with two retained for further analysis. The first model is a single-level model with chi-square and standard errors adjusted for the clustered nature of the data. The second model is a two-level model. Both support the hypothesized structure found in elementary populations of two factors (Externalizing and Internalizing). All items load on only one factor except Peer Rejection, which loads on both. Reliability is estimated for both models using several methods, which result in reliability coefficients ranging between . 89-. 98. Both models also show evidence of Configural, Metric, and Scalar invariance between females and males. While more research is needed to provide other kinds of evidence of validity in middle school populations, results from this study indicate that the SRSS-IE is an effective screening tool for EBD.
A Molecular View of Kinetochore Assembly and Function

Kinetochores are large protein assemblies that connect chromosomes to microtubules of the mitotic and meiotic spindles in order to distribute the replicated genome from a mother cell to its daughters. Kinetochores also control feedback mechanisms responsible for the correction of incorrect microtubule attachments, and for the coordination of chromosome attachment with cell cycle progression. Finally, kinetochores contribute to their own preservation, across generations, at the specific chromosomal loci devoted to host them, the centromeres. They achieve this in most species by exploiting an epigenetic, DNA-sequence-independent mechanism; notable exceptions are budding yeasts where a specific sequence is associated with centromere function. In the last 15 years, extensive progress in the elucidation of the composition of the kinetochore and the identification of various physical and functional modules within its substructure has led to a much deeper molecular understanding of kinetochore organization and the origins of its functional output. Here, we provide a broad summary of this progress, focusing primarily on kinetochores of humans and budding yeast, while highlighting work from other models, and present important unresolved questions for future studies.
KNN behavior with set-valued attributes

This paper addresses the problem of dealing with set-valued attributes in the lazy learning context. This type of attribute is present in various domains, yet the instance-based learning tools do not provide a representation for them. To solve this problem, we present a proposal for the treatment of the sets in the context of the k-NN algorithm through an extension to HEOM distance. Experiments using various data sets show the feasibility of this option.
Eddy: an error-bounded delay-bounded real-time map matching algorithm using HMM and online Viterbi decoder

Real-time map matching is a fundamental but challenging problem with various applications in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and beyond. It aims to align a sequence of measured latitude/longitude positions with the road network on a digital map in real-time. There exist a number of statistical matching approaches that unfortunately either process trajectory data offline or provide an online solution without an infimum analysis. Here we propose a novel statistics-based online map matching algorithm called Eddy with a solid error-and delay-bound analysis. More specifically, Eddy employs a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) to represent the spatio-temporal data as state chains, which elucidates the road network's topology, observation noises and their underlying relations. After modeling, we shape the decoding phase as a ski-rental problem, and an improved online-version Viterbi decoding algorithm is proposed to find the most likely sequence of hidden states (road routes) in real-time. We reduce the candidate routes search range during the decoding for efficiency reasons. Moreover, our deterministic decoder trades off latency for expected accuracy dynamically, without having to choose a fixed window size beforehand. We also provide the competitive analysis and the proof that our online algorithm is error-bounded (with a competitive ratio of 2) and latency-bounded. Our experimental results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms widely used existing approaches on both accuracy and latency.
Vulnerability assessment of web applications - a testing approach

Cyber security is becoming an important aspect in every industry like in banking sector, power and automation sectors. Servers are critical assets in these industries where business critical sensitive data is stored. These servers often incorporates web servers in them through which any business data and operations are performed remotely. Hence, it is obvious that for a reliable operation, security of web servers is very imperative. This paper provides a new testing approach for vulnerability assessment of web applications by means of analyzing and using a combined set of tools to address a wide range of security issues. We demonstrate the vulnerability assessment tests of a web application by using combination of W3AF and Nikto tools. It shows how with a combination of tools, one can increase the vulnerability testing coverages for web applications, considering the OWASP Top 10 [1] based threat modelling of web applications.