Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evolutionary stable investment in stock markets

This paper studies the performance of portfolio rules in incomplete markets for long-lived assets with endogenous prices. The dynamics of wealth shares in the process of repeated reinvestment of wealth is modelled as a random dynamical systems. The performance of a portfolio rule is determined by the wealth share eventually conquered in competition with other rules. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the evolutionary stability of portfolio rules when dividends are Markov or, in particular, i.i. d. These local stability conditions leads to a unique evolutionary stable strategy for which an explicit representation is given. It is further demonstrated that mean-variance optimization is not evolutionary stable while the CAPM-rule always imitates the best portfolio rule and survives. JEL-Classification: G11, D52, D81.
The Conservatives and the governance of social policy

This chapter outlines the approach of the Conservative Party, under David Cameron's leadership, to the making and delivery of social policies. It considers the implications of these, and of likely changes, including in the Coalition with the Liberal Democrats. It suggests that despite the significance of many of the Coalition's reform proposals, there is little evidence to suggest any real redistribution of power, particularly to those who currently have least.
Bidirectional 2D-OFD for Face Recognition

In this paper, we propose an algorithm for face recognition. The new feature representation technique is called bidirectional 2-dimensional orthogonalized fisher discriminant analysis (B2D-OFD). B2D-OFD directly extracts image scatter matrix from 2D image and uses LDA for recognition. And then it eliminates dependence among feature vectors by orthogonalizing. By simultaneously considering both the row and column direction, we greatly reduce the size of feature matrix and get similar recognition rate. As a result of ORL database, the average recognition rate of B2D- OFD is 96.1%, while the average recognition rate of (2D)2FLD is 95.3% and the average recognition rate of (2D)2PCA is 94.6%.
Label set perturbation for MRF based neuroimaging segmentation

Graph-cuts based algorithms are effective for a variety of segmentation tasks in computer vision. Ongoing research is focused toward making the algorithms even more general, as well as to better understand their behavior with respect to issues such as the choice of the weighting function and sensitivity to placement of seeds. In this paper, we investigate in the context of neuroimaging segmentation, the sensitivity/stability of the solution with respect to the input “labels” or “seeds”. In particular, as a form of parameter learning, we are interested in the effect of allowing the given set of labels (and consequently, the response/statistics of the weighting function) to vary for obtaining lower energy segmentation solutions. This perturbation leads to a “refined” label set (or parameters) better suited to the input image, yielding segmentations that are less sensitive to the set of labels or seeds provided. Our proposed algorithm (using Parametric Pseudoflow) yields improvements over graph-cuts based segmentation with a fixed set of labels. We present experiments on about 450 3-D brain image volumes demonstrating the efficacy of the algorithm.
Extracting Log Patterns from System Logs in LARGE

This paper introduces algorithms of extracting log patterns from system logs in LARGE system. LARGE is a log analyzing framework deployed in the Scientific Computing Grid Environment in Chinese Academy of Sciences. In the process of monitoring systems logs, there is the need of obtaining patterns from log records, and set corresponding rules to deal with logs in certain patterns. Two algorithms named identical words rate and tree-matching to fulfill this requirement are illustrated, and their performances are compared to show the capability and efficiency of extracting log patterns. This work can be extended to various distributed and cloud environments for log monitoring.
Race and Wildfire Risk Perceptions among Rural Forestland Owners in North-Central Florida

The southern United States is susceptible to wildfire, from its climate, growing seasons, lightning frequency, and decades of fire suppression. With much known about wildfire's biophysical risks, less is understood about sociodemographic obstacles, including race, income, and education. Blacks in the rural southeastern United States are typically among the most marginalized Americans and least likely to have sufficient knowledge about resource protection. Because disaster preparedness has been shown to vary by sociodemographic status and race, this study focused on race and wildfire prevention by rural forestland owners in north-central Florida. Results show that while Whites were more aware of existing resources, they were less likely to incorporate preventative measures. In contrast, Blacks earned lower incomes and utilized their land less, but were more likely to manage and live on their land. We conclude that wildfire mitigation programs may be more effective when they work to connect absentee rural land owners to their land.
Fair Energy Scheduling for Vehicle-to-Grid Networks Using Adaptive Dynamic Programming

Research on the smart grid is being given enormous supports worldwide due to its great significance in solving environmental and energy crises. Electric vehicles (EVs), which are powered by clean energy, are adopted increasingly year by year. It is predictable that the huge charge load caused by high EV penetration will have a considerable impact on the reliability of the smart grid. Therefore, fair energy scheduling for EV charge and discharge is proposed in this paper. By using the vehicle-to-grid technology, the scheduler controls the electricity loads of EVs considering fairness in the residential distribution network. We propose contribution-based fairness, in which EVs with high contributions have high priorities to obtain charge energy. The contribution value is defined by both the charge/discharge energy and the timing of the action. EVs can achieve higher contribution values when discharging during the load peak hours. However, charging during this time will decrease the contribution values seriously. We formulate the fair energy scheduling problem as an infinite-horizon Markov decision process. The methodology of adaptive dynamic programming is employed to maximize the long-term fairness by processing online network training. The numerical results illustrate that the proposed EV energy scheduling is able to mitigate and flatten the peak load in the distribution network. Furthermore, contribution-based fairness achieves a fast recovery of EV batteries that have deeply discharged and guarantee fairness in the full charge time of all EVs.
Physical activity is medicine for older adults

There is evidence from high quality studies to strongly support the positive association between increased levels of physical activity, exercise participation and improved health in older adults. Worldwide, around 3.2 million deaths per year are being attributed to inactivity. In industrialised countries where people are living longer lives, the levels of chronic health conditions are increasing and the levels of physical activity are declining. Key factors in improving health are exercising at a moderate-to-vigorous level for at least 5 days per week and including both aerobic and strengthening exercises. Few older adults achieve the level of physical activity or exercise that accompanies health improvements. A challenge for health professionals is to increase physical activity and exercise participation in older adults. Some success in this has been reported when physicians have given specific, detailed and localised information to their patients, but more high quality research is needed to continue to address this issue of non-participation in physical activity and exercise of a high enough level to ensure health benefits.
Combining Formal and Informal Decision Making Approaches to the Design of a Personalised GIS

This paper describes the two-fold method that was used to design a Geographical Information System (GIS) for the tourism purposes of Kefalonia Island. Our concern lies on how to best engage user adaptation on a system with high demands in terms of user interest. We have come up with a combined decision making process for its design. In earlier stages we employ the informal QOC ensuring that high level decisions are sound and explicit throughout design and later on we use formal SAW, which is applied on every high-level decision to further weigh the user adaptation attributes that are adopted. This two-sided attack approach ensures design integrity and a high degree of flexibility to our system.
Preliminary Notes on Auction Design Kcb 1 Auction Mechanisms

This note exposits a simplified version of Myerson's [8] paper on revenue-maximizing auction design for independent private values. A seller has a single object to sell to one of N bidders. The seller has no use for the object himself. Bidders are assumed to be identical except for their type. A bidder's type is a represented by a real number θ in the interval Θ = [θ, θ] ⊂ R +. A typical element in Θ N is denoted θ. A direct auction mechanism determines the allocation of the object and the payments to the bidders based on the vector of the bidders' types. That is, it is a pair of functions The allocation rule q determines the probability q i (θ) that bidder i is awarded (" wins ") the object when the vector of types is θ. We allow for random assignment, in part to have symmetric tie-breaking rules. The function q must satisfy q i (θ) ⩾ 0, θ ∈ Θ and N ∑ i=1 q i (θ) ⩽ 1, θ ∈ Θ N. The transfer rule determines the payment t i (θ) from bidder i to the seller when the vector of types is θ. Note that a payment may occur even if the bidder does not win the object. Such would be the case in an auction in which there was a participation fee. 1 1 Most auctions found in the wild do not use transfer rules that strictly act this way. The problem is with breaking ties. In the event of a two-way tie, there may be a coin toss and the object is awarded to the winner of the toss. This aspect is taken care of by allowing q i to be a probability. But then the payment is usually conditioned on the outcome of the coin toss. That is, the winner pays and the loser doesn't. Our formulation does not allow us to condition on the outcome of the coin toss. Instead we would require that each pay half the winning price. In terms of expectation it doesn't matter, and changing the transfers to depend on a randomizing device is not hard to incorporate, but it adds one more piece of notation to cloud the argument.
A Bayesian Account of Vocal Adaptation to Pitch-Shifted Auditory Feedback

Motor systems are highly adaptive. Both birds and humans compensate for synthetically induced shifts in the pitch (fundamental frequency) of auditory feedback stemming from their vocalizations. Pitch-shift compensation is partial in the sense that large shifts lead to smaller relative compensatory adjustments of vocal pitch than small shifts. Also, compensation is larger in subjects with high motor variability. To formulate a mechanistic description of these findings, we adapt a Bayesian model of error relevance. We assume that vocal-auditory feedback loops in the brain cope optimally with known sensory and motor variability. Based on measurements of motor variability, optimal compensatory responses in our model provide accurate fits to published experimental data. Optimal compensation correctly predicts sensory acuity, which has been estimated in psychophysical experiments as just-noticeable pitch differences. Our model extends the utility of Bayesian approaches to adaptive vocal behaviors.
Predicting Recurrence Using the Clinical Factors of Patients with Non-small Cell Lung Cancer After Curative Resection

We present a recurrence prediction model using multiple clinical parameters in patients surgically treated for non-small cell lung cancer. Among 1,578 lung cancer patients who underwent complete resection, we compared the early-recurrence group with the 3-yr non-recurrence group for evaluating those factors that influence early recurrence within one year after surgery. Adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma were analyzed independently. We used multiple logistic regression analysis to identify the independent clinical predictors of recurrence and Cox's proportional hazard regression method to develop a clinical prediction model. We randomly divided our patients into the training and test subsets. The pathologic stages, tumor cell type, differentiation of tumor, neoadjuvant therapy and age were significant factors on the multivariable analysis. We constructed the model for the training set with adenocarcinoma (n=236) and squamous cell carcinoma (n=305), and we applied it to the test set with adenocarcinoma (n=110) and squamous cell carcinoma (n=154). It was predictive for the in adenocarcinoma (P<0.001) and the squamous cell carcinoma (P=0.037), respectively. Our results showed that our recurrence prediction model based on the clinical parameters could significantly predict the individual patients who were at high risk or low risk for recurrence.
Ceftriaxone-resistant salmonella infection acquired by a child from cattle.

BACKGROUND The emergence of resistance to antimicrobial agents within the salmonellae is a worldwide problem that has been associated with the use of antibiotics in livestock. Resistance to ceftriaxone and the fluoroquinolones, which are used to treat invasive salmonella infections, is rare in the United States. We analyzed the molecular characteristics of a ceftriaxone-resistant strain of Salmonella enterica serotype typhimurium isolated from a 12-year-old boy with fever, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. METHODS We used pulsed-field gel electrophoresis and analysis of plasmids and beta-lactamases to compare the ceftriaxone-resistant S. enterica serotype typhimurium from the child with four isolates of this strain obtained from cattle during a local outbreak of salmonellosis. RESULTS The ceftriaxone-resistant isolate from the child was indistinguishable from one of the isolates from cattle, which was also resistant to ceftriaxone. Both ceftriaxone-resistant isolates were resistant to 13 antimicrobial agents; all but one of the resistance determinants were on a conjugative plasmid of 160 kb that encoded the functional group 1 beta-lactamase CMY-2. Both ceftriaxone-resistant isolates were closely related to the three other salmonella isolates obtained from cattle, all of which were susceptible to ceftriaxone. CONCLUSIONS This study provides additional evidence that antibiotic-resistant strains of salmonella in the United States evolve primarily in livestock. Resistance to ceftriaxone, the drug of choice for invasive salmonella disease, is a public health concern, especially with respect to children, since fluoroquinolones, which can also be used to treat this disease, are not approved for use in children.
Sequential contribution of L- and P-selectin to leukocyte rolling in vivo

Leukocyte recruitment into inflammatory sites is initiated by a reversible transient adhesive contact with the endothelium called leukocyte rolling, which is thought to be mediated by the selectin family of adhesion molecules. Selectin-mediated rolling precedes inflammatory cell emigration, which is significantly impaired in both P- and L-selectin gene-deficient mice. We report here that approximately 13% of all leukocytes passing venules of the cremaster muscle of wild- type mice roll along the endothelium at < 20 min after surgical dissection. Rolling leukocyte flux fraction reaches a maximum of 28% at 40-60 min and returns to 13% at 80-120 min. In P-selectin-deficient mice, rolling is absent initially and reaches 5% at 80-120 min. Rolling flux fraction in L-selectin-deficient mice is similar to wild type initially and declines to 5% at 80-120 min. In both wild-type and L- selectin-deficient mice, initial leukocyte rolling (0-60 min) is completely blocked by the P-selectin monoclonal antibody (mAb) RB40.34, but unaffected by L-selectin mAb MEL-14. Conversely, rolling at later time points (60-120 min) is inhibited by mAb MEL-14 but not by mAb RB40.34. After treatment with tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha for 2 h, approximately 24% of all passing leukocytes roll in cremaster venules of wild-type and P-selectin gene-deficient mice. Rolling in TNF- alpha-treated mice is unaffected by P-selectin mAb or E-selectin mAb 10E9.6. By contrast, rolling in TNF-alpha-treated P-selectin-deficient mice is completely blocked by L-selectin mAb. These data show that P- selectin is important during the initial induction of leukocyte rolling after tissue trauma. At later time points and in TNF-alpha-treated preparations, rolling is largely L-selectin dependent. Under the conditions tested, we are unable to find evidence for involvement of E- selectin in leukocyte rolling in mice.
AN EXAMINATION OF THE QUALITY OF TACIT KNOWLEDGE SHARING THROUGH THE THEORY OF REASONED ACTION

Knowledge is information and understanding gained through experience, some of this professional knowledge of an employee is recorded and documented among the organization’s files and databases (explicit knowledge), professional experience, know how, know why are held back in the minds of employees (tacit knowledge). This tacit knowledge when appropriately shared can become vital source of quality products/ services and innovation. Knowledge sharing is hampered when individuals are not motivated enough to come forward and share their professional experiences, to obtain high quality of knowledge sharing one needs to understand the motivations (intentions) behind it. Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) helps us comprehend them. It states that intentions are function of person’s attitude and subjective norms which collectively help form intentions. Data regarding the knowledge sharing intentions of 209 Information Technology (I.T) professionals from more than 70 I.T companies registered with PSEB located in 5 major cities of Pakistan was obtained. Using Structured Equation Modeling (SEM) technique, the TRA model showed a good fit with the researched data. The I.T professionals show their intent towards sharing tacit knowledge and this intent is mostly influenced by the subjective norms towards sharing knowledge and less by their personal attitude.
On QoS Mapping in Adaptive QoS Management for Distributed Multimedia Applications

A generic QoS mapping mechanism for distributed multimedia applications is presented. A generic multilevel QoS model is also proposed. A user can specify the user QoS abstractly in the highest level of the proposed QoS model, and QoS in lower level than user level QoS is expressed in level-specific QoS parameters. Hence two QoS mapping methods are developed. The first method maps the abstract user level QoS into lower level QoS parameters by using userspecific profile data. The second method uses spline functions to perform mapping among lower level QoS parameters than user level QoS. This spline QoS mapping method, which is located as a hybrid of two conventional mapping methods, is adaptive to various user requirements by interpolating sample data, and adaptive to a dynamically changing environment by updating the sample data as the environment changes.
Att blanda? : En undersökning av planerares och allmännyttiga bostadsbolags syn på planering för en allsidig hushållssammansättning

Social mix is a pressing issue for both researchers and policy makers in the western world. How can this be achieved and what effects can be expected for individuals as well as the wider society? A lot has been written about this in the international literature but less has been written on the Swedish case. The research that has been carried out for Sweden is often done on a very local scale or at a highly aggregated and statistical level. Few of these studies are concerned by the practical level of planning. The authors’ therefore saw a need for in-depth studies on the Swedish case and particular for studies at the intermediate municipal level. To capture the local perspectives on planning for social mix this interview study is targeting municipal planners and actors at the municipal owned housing companies in 31 of the largest cities in Sweden. The study aims to find out whether the policy goal of social mix, introduced in the 1970s, still is relevant and how a planning for social mix can be done. What measures are used, what possibilities and difficulties are associated with social mix strategies? The authors begin with placing social mix as a policy goal in an international and historical perspective and this is followed by a discussion and presentation of the main results of the study in hand. In this report the authors’ conclude that social mix is a goal placed at the agenda although it might not be placed at the very top of the agenda. Further the physical restructuring of the housing stock is seen as the most important way to achieve social mix. They also conclude that the ability to achieve a social mix is to a great extent depending on the municipal housing companies and since their existence is questioned this makes this planning goal even more interesting to do further studies on.
Interesting applications of Atmel AVR microcontrollers

The paper describes a design of a microcode-controlled state machine and its software implementation in the Atmel AVR microcontrollers. In particular, the microcontrollers ATmegal03 and ATmegal28 are used. This design is closely related to a software implementation of a simulator in AVR microcontrollers. This simulator communicates with the designed state machine and presents a complete design environment for microcode development and debugging. Both of these devices can be interconnected by a flat cable and linked to a computer through a serial or USB interface. Both devices share the control software that allows us to create and edit microprograms and to control the whole state machine. It is possible to start, cancel or step through the execution of microprograms. The operator can observe the current state of the state machine, too. The second part of the control software enables the operator to create and compile simulating programs. The control software communicates with both devices using commands. All the results of this communication are well arranged in dialog boxes and windows.
Phrase detection and the associative memory neural network

This paper describes the use of a novel associative memory neural network architecture to perform unsupervised phrase detection in a large, unstructured, English text corpus. To significantly increase the difficulty associated with processing the text corpus, the network is exposed to over 270 thousand Web pages from the . edu domain with no textual substitution or alteration (for spelling, grammar, etc.). The corpus, consisting of 150M words, is represented as a string of sparse tokens and phrase detection is performed through the use of the unique information theoretic quantity of mutual significance.
Increasing software reliability through rollback and on-line fault repair

We propose a new paradigm for increasing the reliability of a software system by combing reactive and proactive approaches. The proposed approach employs rollback and restart for masking transient failure, and employs on-line software version charge to remove faults from the software. A model for reliability analysis of a system employing the proposed approach is presented. The analysis shows that substantial benefit in reliability can be obtained by employing the proposed approach. A prototype system which incorporates the proposed approach is also described.