Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Asset-price Bubbles and Monetary Policy

In this paper we develop a theoretical framework that helps to analyse the role of monetary policy in responding to asset-price bubbles. A large and rapid fall in the nominal price of assets that form the basis of collateral for loans from financial intermediaries can have adverse effects on financial system stability. This asymmetric effect of asset price changes, by reducing the extent of intermediated finance, can reduce output below potential and keep inflation below the central bank’s target for extended periods. We demonstrate that there may be circumstances where monetary policy should be tightened in response to an emerging asset-price bubble, in order to burst the bubble before it becomes too large, even though this means that expected inflation is below target in the short run. Such a policy is optimal because it can help to avoid extreme longer-term effects of a larger asset-price bubble and its eventual collapse. In principle, the adverse effects of asset-price bubbles on financial system stability can be moderated through appropriate financial system regulation and supervision. Nevertheless, provided that the effects of asset-price bubbles on the economy are not entirely eliminated, a role for monetary policy may remain.
Who gets to lead the multinational team? An updated status characteristics perspective

This article examines the emergence of informal leadership in multinational teams. Building on and extending status characteristics theory, the article proposes and tests a model that describes how global inequalities reproduce in multinational teams, and accounts for who gets to lead these teams. It is argued that an individual’s language (i.e. a specific status characteristic) and nationality (i.e. a diffuse status characteristic) predict deference received from peers (i.e. leadership status). However, individuals enhance and/or compensate for the effects of their status characteristics by virtue of their core self-evaluations. A study of over 230 individuals from 46 nationalities working in 36 self-managing teams generally supports the expected main and moderation effects. Individual core self-evaluations enhance an otherwise weak effect of English proficiency, but compensate for low levels of national development. The article concludes with implications for practice, and linking micro- and macro-level theories of status and global inequality.
Flexible and Time-Efficient Tag Scanning with Handheld Readers

Tag scanning is an important issue to dynamically manage tag IDs in radio frequency identification (RFID) systems. Different from tag identification that collects IDs of all the tags, tag scanning first verifies whether or not a responding tag has already been identified and retrieves its ID when the answer is yes, and collects the tag's ID only when it is unidentified. In this paper, we present the first study on spot scanning with a handheld reader, which aims to scan tags in the reader's interrogation range at an arbitrarily specified position in the system. Existing studies mainly focus on continuous scanning, and they are highly time inefficient in performing spot scanning. The inefficiency stems from the small overlap between tag populations in different spot scanning operations, in which case existing solutions cannot efficiently recognize unidentified tags. We develop a novel technique called LOCK to efficiently recognize unidentified tags even when the overlapped tags are few. LOCK does not simply use a tag's reply slot index but also compact short responses from tags to efficiently distinguish unidentified tags from identified ones. The valuable compact short responses are firstly investigated, which are the keys for efficient tag identification in the paper. Based on LOCK, three tag scanning protocols are proposed to solve the spot scanning problem. Simulation results show that, for spot scanning, our best protocol reduces per tag scanning time by up to 70 percent when compared with the state-of-the-art solution. Moreover, the proposed protocols can also be employed to perform continuous scanning with better time efficiency than the best existing solutions.
Network File Transfer Performance: Effect of IP Address, TCP Window Size and File Size

The aim of this study is to quantify performance of network file transfer for research testbed. This study was carried out because Internet users nowadays has surfing tendency to stream video, download and upload video which need more Internet bandwidth. In addition, there is also a requirement for clarification between theoretical and actual performance of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). This study is important for researchers and network administrators because output from this study is useful for them as an input for simulation and decision making process. Testbed used for this study consists of computers, network switch, server and routers. Multiple sizes of files were transferred by using multiple sizes of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) Window and IP address version. Result from the test shows that there is a performance gap for file transfer between different IP address versions. More study in this research area will be done because there is a need for enhancement in IP based network performance.
Hedonic Mechanisms of Weight Changes in Medication Assisted Treatment for Opioid Addiction

Opioid abuse and addiction affects more than 2.4 million people in the United States. Medication assisted treatment (MAT), in combination with counseling, is recognized as the most effective treatment for patients with opioid dependence and abuse. Although MAT is considered the most effective treatment, previous research has found clinically significant weight gain with methadone. The purpose of this study was to determine if hedonic eating behaviors, sugar cravings, and addictive like eating was related to weight gain in opioid addicted patients receiving methadone and buprenorphine/naloxone (SuboxoneTM). Hedonic eating behaviors were measured using three validated surveys. Following survey collection, a chart review was completed to determine weight changes over time. One hundred twenty surveys were completed and 113 were analyzed. No differences were found between the medication groups in terms of mean age, weight at entry, BMI at entry, race, sex, and Hepatitis C status. A subset of 39 participants was analyzed for weight changes during treatment. There were no differences in food addiction scores, hedonic eating behaviors, and food cravings between the medication groups. We found significant weight gain in patients receiving methadone and no weight changes for those receiving SuboxoneTM. Weight gain in methadone maintenance does not appear to be related to addictive like eating, food craving, or hedonic eating. This research suggests that weight gain seen in methadone maintenance for opioid addiction treatment is related to something other than hedonic eating behaviors. Clinically significant weight gain should be considered when prescribing methadone for opioid addiction.
Linguistic Indicators of Severity and Progress in Online Text-based Therapy for Depression

Mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety are highly prevalent, and therapy is increasingly being offered online. This new setting is a departure from face-toface therapy, and offers both a challenge and an opportunity ‐ it is not yet known what features or approaches are likely to lead to successful outcomes in such a different medium, but online text-based therapy provides large amounts of data for linguistic analysis. We present an initial investigation into the application of computational linguistic techniques, such as topic and sentiment modelling, to online therapy for depression and anxiety. We find that important measures such as symptom severity can be predicted with comparable accuracy to face-to-face data, using general features such as discussion topic and sentiment; however, measures of patient progress are captured only by finergrained lexical features, suggesting that aspects of style or dialogue structure may also be important.
Can a Shaft Brush be Safely Applied on a Motor in a Class I Hazardous Location?

Some inverter-fed motors, particularly at higher power ratings, are supplied with a shaft brush in order to help mitigate bearing currents. As more inverters are applied to motors in Class I Division 1/Zone 1 and Class I Division 2/Zone 2 locations, there is a need to understand whether a shaft brush can be safely applied in such an environment. This paper addresses the physics of why this is a concern and a methodology to evaluate the relative safety of two example cases. These issues are considered from the perspective of users, manufacturers of inverters and motors, and certifying bodies. The question posed in the title of this paper is answered by considering whether the addition of a shaft brush to an inverter-fed motor in a Class I hazardous location makes the system more safe or less safe.
Do Expertise and the Degree of Perception—Action Coupling Affect Natural Anticipatory Performance?

Two experiments using a temporal occlusion paradigm (the first with expert and novice participants and the second with participants of intermediate skill) were conducted to examine the capability of tennis players to predict the direction of an opponent's service in situ. In both experiments two different response conditions, reflecting differing degrees of perception–action coupling, were employed. In a coupled condition players were required to make a movement-based response identical to that which they would use to hit a return of service in a game situation, whereas in an uncoupled condition a verbal prediction of service direction was required. Experiment 1 provided clear evidence of superior prediction accuracy under the coupled response condition when ball flight was available, plus some limited evidence to suggest that superior prediction accuracy under uncoupled response conditions might hold true if only advance (pre-contact) information was available. Experiment 2 showed the former finding to be a robust one, but was unable to reveal any support for the latter. Experiment 1 also revealed that expert superiority is more apparent for predictions made under natural (coupled) than uncoupled response-mode conditions. Collectively, these findings suggest that different perceptual processes may be in operation in anticipatory tasks which depend on skill level, the type of information presented, and degree of perception–action coupling inherent in the task requirements.
LDPC Lattice Codes for Full-Duplex Relay Channels

Low-density parity-check (LDPC) lattices were the first family of lattices to show efficient decoding in high dimensions. We consider a case of these lattices with one binary LDPC code as an underlying code. We employ encoding and decoding of the LDPC lattices in a cooperative transmission framework. We establish two efficient shaping based on hypercube and Voronoi shaping, to obtain LDPC lattice codes. Then, we propose the implementation of block Markov encoding for one-way and two-way relay networks using LDPC lattice codes. An efficient method is also required for decomposing full-rate codebook into lower rate codebooks. We apply different decomposition schemes for one-way and two-way relay channels, which are the altered versions of the decomposition methods of low density lattice code (LDLC) lattices. Due to the lower complexity of the decoding for LDPC lattices comparing with LDLCs, the complexity of our schemes is significantly lower than the ones proposed for LDLCs. The efficiency of the proposed schemes is presented using simulation results that indicate the outperforming behavior of LDLCs over LDPC lattice codes in the same dimensions. However, having lower decoding complexity enables us to increase the dimension of the lattice to compensate the existing gap between the performance of the LDPC lattice codes and the LDLCs.
A Smart Energy System with Distributed Access Control

This paper presents a new smart energy (SE) system with distributed access control. Many other SE systems to date support remote control and automation but not access control, making them applicable to homes but not offices or other public settings. Even if they implement access control, virtually all existing SE systems suffer from central point of failure. To address these problems, we propose a new SE system that supports not only access control but also distributed access from multiple devices without relying on centralized control. In addition to access-control list, we also take advantage of the proximity tag feature supported by the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol without requiring users to take out their identifying BLE devices from their pockets as one would have to do with RFID tags. Experimental results show that our SE system to offer the security features required for public deployment with minimal power, latency, and cost overhead.
Hydrodynamic limit of particle systems with long jumps

We consider some interacting particle processes with long-range dynamics: the zero-range and exclusion processes with long jumps. We prove that the hydrodynamic limit of these processes corresponds to a (non-linear in general) fractional heat equation. The scaling in this case is superdiffusive. In addition, we discuss a central limit theorem for a tagged particle on the zero-range process and existence and uniqueness of solutions of the Cauchy problem for the fractional heat equation.
Phylogenetic Comparison of Genes Using Long Range Correlation Patterns in DNA Sequences

The diversity of life is staggering which is apparent not only in the large number of species, but also in their heterogeneity. Species share commonalities based on their physical appearance, but the intrinsic similarities lies within their DNA sequences which point towards relationships of evolutionary descent. In the proposed research, the authors have analyzed the phylogenetic relationships between genes of different species using the long-range statistical correlation patterns. It is found that the genes of species which are considered to be evolutionarily related are in fact similar in their long-range correlation patterns which provide a substantial proof of their evolutionary relationship.
An environment for managing software development processes

Considerable efforts have been undertaken to construct environments supporting dynamic software processes. The road to success neither takes us into the runtime stack of the process engine (rule-based approaches), nor may we tolerate the straight-jacket of a static Petri net. We propose an environment centered around dynamic task nets, which provide project managers with all details required to plan, analyse, and monitor software projects, taking into account changes to the product structure, feedbacks, simultaneous engineering, and replanning of resource assignments. Developers benefit from the management of dynamic work contents, including control over incoming versions of input documents and intermediate releases of output documents. The environment is based on a formal specification as a graph rewriting system, which allows for describing editing, analysis, and enactment of task nets in a uniform formal framework. By generating code from the specification, we avoid the cumbersome and error-prone task of translating complex graph transformations manually into a low-level programming language.
The molecular effect of metastasis suppressors on Src signaling and tumorigenesis: new therapeutic targets

A major problem for cancer patients is the metastasis of cancer cells from the primary tumor. This involves: (1) migration through the basement membrane; (2) dissemination via the circulatory system; and (3) invasion into a secondary site. Metastasis suppressors, by definition, inhibit metastasis at any step of the metastatic cascade. Notably, Src is a non-receptor, cytoplasmic, tyrosine kinase, which becomes aberrantly activated in many cancer-types following stimulation of plasma membrane receptors (e.g., receptor tyrosine kinases and integrins). There is evidence of a prominent role of Src in tumor progression-related events such as the epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) and the development of metastasis. However, the precise molecular interactions of Src with metastasis suppressors remain unclear. Herein, we review known metastasis suppressors and summarize recent advances in understanding the mechanisms of how these proteins inhibit metastasis through modulation of Src. Particular emphasis is bestowed on the potent metastasis suppressor, N-myc downstream regulated gene 1 (NDRG1) and its interactions with the Src signaling cascade. Recent studies demonstrated a novel mechanism through which NDRG1 plays a significant role in regulating cancer cell migration by inhibiting Src activity. Moreover, we discuss the rationale for targeting metastasis suppressor genes as a sound therapeutic modality, and we review several examples from the literature where such strategies show promise. Collectively, this review summarizes the essential interactions of metastasis suppressors with Src and their effects on progression of cancer metastasis. Moreover, interesting unresolved issues regarding these proteins as well as their potential as therapeutic targets are also discussed.
Estimating the Under-Five Mortality Rate Using a Bayesian Hierarchical Time Series Model

Background Millennium Development Goal 4 calls for a reduction in the under-five mortality rate by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015, which corresponds to an annual rate of decline of 4.4%. The United Nations Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation estimates under-five mortality in every country to measure progress. For the majority of countries, the estimates within a country are based on the assumption of a piece-wise constant rate of decline. Methods and Findings This paper proposes an alternative method to estimate under-five mortality, such that the underlying rate of change is allowed to vary smoothly over time using a time series model. Information about the average rate of decline and changes therein is exchanged between countries using a Bayesian hierarchical model. Cross-validation exercises suggest that the proposed model provides credible bounds for the under-five mortality rate that are reasonably well calibrated during the observation period. The alternative estimates suggest smoother trends in under-five mortality and give new insights into changes in the rate of decline within countries. Conclusions The proposed model offers an alternative modeling approach for obtaining estimates of under-five mortality which removes the restriction of a piece-wise linear rate of decline and introduces hierarchy to exchange information between countries. The newly proposed estimates of the rate of decline in under-5 mortality and the uncertainty assessments would help to monitor progress towards Millennium Development Goal 4.
MRI findings at image guided adaptive cervix cancer brachytherapy: radiation oncologist’s perspective

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) represents the reference imaging modality for image guided adaptive brachytherapy (IGABT) of cervix cancer. Accurate interpretation of pre-treatment MRI is required for proper understanding of the tumor extent and topography at IGABT. Planning and optimal timing of the application begins already before treatment, and may need to be adapted during external beam irradiation (EBRT) according to additional clinical and/or radiological findings. The level of MRI utilization in IGABT depends on the infrastructural capabilities of individual centers, ranging from no use at all to repetitive imaging during EBRT and each IGABT fraction. In this article, we summarize the role of different imaging modalities and practical aspects of MRI interpretation in cervix cancer IGABT, concentrating on the systematic evaluation of post-insertion images. MRI with the applicator in place from the radiation oncologist’s perspective should begin with immediate identification of eventual complications of the application procedure and assessment of the implant adequacy, followed by appropriate corrective measures in case of adverse findings. Finally, the tumor extent, topography, and treatment response should be evaluated in the context of initial clinical and radiological findings to allow for an appropriate selection and delineation of the target volumes.
Abstract—in This Paper We Investigate the Action Selection Problem for Multiple Mobile Robots Active and Cooperative Global Localization in Large Environments. Firstly, an Off-line Localizability Estimation Approach Using Known Probabilistic

grid map (PGM) is briefly proposed and a localizability matrix is presented to describe properties of expected localization probability distribution (LPD). Based on the proposed localizability matrix, a novel on-line action selection mechanism is further presented which enables mobile robots to actively collaborate with each other and select complementary actions with redundant information exclusion. This action selection mechanism brings the lowest expected localization covariance in each localization cycle and can accelerate the converging speed of global localization. Efficiency in time complexity also ensures that the proposed method could be used in real applications. The appropriateness of our approach is demonstrated through simulations and real experiments.
ROCker: accurate detection and quantification of target genes in short-read metagenomic data sets by modeling sliding-window bitscores

Abstract Functional annotation of metagenomic and metatranscriptomic data sets relies on similarity searches based on e-value thresholds resulting in an unknown number of false positive and negative matches. To overcome these limitations, we introduce ROCker, aimed at identifying position-specific, most-discriminant thresholds in sliding windows along the sequence of a target protein, accounting for non-discriminative domains shared by unrelated proteins. ROCker employs the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve to minimize false discovery rate (FDR) and calculate the best thresholds based on how simulated shotgun metagenomic reads of known composition map onto well-curated reference protein sequences and thus, differs from HMM profiles and related methods. We showcase ROCker using ammonia monooxygenase (amoA) and nitrous oxide reductase (nosZ) genes, mediating oxidation of ammonia and the reduction of the potent greenhouse gas, N2O, to inert N2, respectively. ROCker typically showed 60-fold lower FDR when compared to the common practice of using fixed e-values. Previously uncounted ‘atypical’ nosZ genes were found to be two times more abundant, on average, than their typical counterparts in most soil metagenomes and the abundance of bacterial amoA was quantified against the highly-related particulate methane monooxygenase (pmoA). Therefore, ROCker can reliably detect and quantify target genes in short-read metagenomes.