Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Daily Precipitation over Southern Africa: A New Resource for Climate Studies

This paper describes a new high-resolution multiplatform multisensor satellite rainfall product for southern Africa covering the period 1993–2002. The microwave infrared rainfall algorithm (MIRA) employed to generate the rainfall estimates combines high spatial and temporal resolution Meteosat infrared data with infrequent Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) overpasses. A transfer function relating Meteosat thermal infrared cloud brightness temperatures to SSM/I rainfall estimates is derived using collocated data from the two instruments and then applied to the full coverage of the Meteosat data. An extensive continental-scale validation against synoptic station data of both the daily MIRA precipitation product and a normalized geostationary IR-only Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) precipitation index (GPI) demonstrates a consistent advantage using the former over the latter for rain delineation. Potential uses for the resulting high-resolution daily rainfall dataset are discussed.
Nitrogen and carbon source balance determines longevity, independently of fermentative or respiratory metabolism in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Dietary regimens have proven to delay aging and age-associated diseases in several eukaryotic model organisms but the input of nutritional balance to longevity regulation is still poorly understood. Here, we present data on the role of single carbon and nitrogen sources and their interplay in yeast longevity. Data demonstrate that ammonium, a rich nitrogen source, decreases chronological life span (CLS) of the prototrophic Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain PYCC 4072 in a concentration-dependent manner and, accordingly, that CLS can be extended through ammonium restriction, even in conditions of initial glucose abundance. We further show that CLS extension depends on initial ammonium and glucose concentrations in the growth medium, as long as other nutrients are not limiting. Glutamine, another rich nitrogen source, induced CLS shortening similarly to ammonium, but this effect was not observed with the poor nitrogen source urea. Ammonium decreased yeast CLS independently of the metabolic process activated during aging, either respiration or fermentation, and induced replication stress inhibiting a proper cell cycle arrest in G0/G1 phase. The present results shade new light on the nutritional equilibrium as a key factor on cell longevity and may contribute for the definition of interventions to promote life span and healthy aging.
Product Quality and the Impact of Trade and Technology on the Relative Wage ¤ ( Preliminary Draft )

Trade and technology have long been identi.ed as two major factors responsible for the rising income inequality between skilled and unskilled labor. This paper extends the existing studies on the relative wage impact of trade and technology by allowing . rms to endogenously choose among di¤erentiated varieties with di¤erent skill requirements. With vertical di¤erentiation, besides the supply and demand elasticities of substitution, the cost of quality upgrade, the preference over quality and price and the total expenditure on the homogeneous good can all play important roles in the trade-technology debate. The paper provides conditions for the case where only sector bias matters versus the case where only factor bias matter. Due to their di¤erences in endowment, technology and preference, both the developed and developing countries can experience a rise in the relative wage of skilled labor but can be of di¤erent reasons. JEL Classi.cation: F23, J31, O34
Green belts: a twentieth-century planning experiment

The general public creates an outcry if any attempt is made to invade this green belt and that is something we want to get into planning – the creation of public interest. We want to get them to know something of our work and support us in our activities The implementation of green belts in many countries can be regarded as one of the most internationally famous attempts to control urban growth. Green belts have ringed major cities to prevent them sprawling. Planners have used them to separate satellite 'new towns' from the urban core, safeguarding land for recreation, agriculture and forestry. Green belts have also provided sites for more utilitarian uses such as salvage yards, incinerators and quarries. In some places, areas of the green belt have suffered through illegal dumping or through neglect. The popularity of green belts among planners during the twentieth century is due to the alignment of their attributes with some of the assumptions that underpinned modernist planning. These assumptions were that strict divisions between different land-uses could be unproblematically drawn, and that planners' actions could be justified by normative conventions and a search for universal truths. As planners began to grapple with the messy realities of urban growth during the twentieth century, green belts gave them a tool to realise a normative geography that a city has natural limits, that urban and rural areas should be separated and that settlements should be balanced and evenly-spaced. Green belts were used as part of a project to construct a universal planning canon, being employed regardless of the contingencies that affect urban growth in different cities around the world. They also contributed to the construction of planning as a discipline, as the open space they preserved could be linked directly to a who's who of famous UK planners such as Patrick Abercrombie and Raymond Unwin (Gault, 1981). Planning has changed considerably since the early post-WWII period when practitioners attempted to physically realise the ideas of high modernism (Taylor, 1998). As planners seek to direct the growth of cities towards sustainable patterns of land-use, how likely is it that they will continue to see a green belt policy as a useful tool for managing urban growth? Planners are no longer the all-powerful experts that they once were, nor can they rely on a consensus politics that will support such bold measures. The impact that green belts have on …
Deriving high-level concepts using fuzzy-ID3 decision tree for image retrieval

To improve the retrieval accuracy of content-based image retrieval, an important task is to reduce the 'semantic gap' between low-level image features and the richness of human semantics. We present a region-based image retrieval system using high-level semantic concepts. The contribution of the paper is two-fold. First, salient low-level features are extracted from arbitrarily-shaped regions. Second, a fuzzy-ID3 decision tree learning method is proposed to derive association rules which map low-level image features to high-level concepts. Experimental results prove that, by reducing the 'semantic gap', the proposed system not only improves the retrieval accuracy, but also supports users in query-by-keyword.
The High Levels of Excess Reserves 2008-2012: An Investigation into the Determinants of the U.S. Banks' Liquidity Hoarding during the Global Financial Crisis

Excess reserves, the indication of a bank's opportunity to invest, have historically been quite predictable and low for many years. From early sixties to August of 2008, the percentage of excess reserves in relation to required reserves has been between 1% to 9%. In September 2008, shortly prior to the tipping point of the 2008 financial crisis, the level of excess reserves began to rise dramatically and has stayed quite high even four years later. The watershed moment of Lehman Brothers and AIG failing precipitated a banking panic that involved drastic policy changes by the Fed and financial firms scrambling to find liquidity in anticipation of a credit crunch and drawdowns of credit lines. In less than six months, excess reserves ballooned to over $900 billion, which accounts to 2,063% of required reserves. Surprisingly, the large amount of excess reserves did not return to the previous levels. Instead, it has increased even more to nearly $2 trillion. This paper thus investigates the determinants for banks to hoard liquidity. The data reveals that high losses in loans and investments have caused banks to prognosticate higher levels of precautionary reserves. Furthermore, the very low federal funds rate and high unemployment rate have given banks limited opportunities to use the reserves in other alternative investment vehicles. Finally, the Federal Reserve's decision to pay interest on excess reserves provided incentives for banks and made holding reserves above the required amount no longer a cost for the bank.
PUT‐CALL SYMMETRY: EXTENSIONS AND APPLICATIONS

Classic put‐call symmetry relates the prices of puts and calls at strikes on opposite sides of the forward price. We extend put‐call symmetry in several directions. Relaxing the assumptions, we generalize to unified local/stochastic volatility models and time‐changed Lévy processes, under a symmetry condition. Further relaxing the assumptions, we generalize to various asymmetric dynamics. Extending the conclusions, we take an arbitrarily given payoff of European style or single/double/sequential barrier style, and we construct a conjugate European‐style claim of equal value, and thereby a semistatic hedge of the given payoff.
Taking on a New Grading System: The Interconnected Effects of Standards-Based Grading on Teaching, Learning, Assessment, and Student Behavior

This study explored high school teachers’ perceptions of the effects of standards-based grading (SBG) on planning, instruction, assessment, classroom management, and student behaviors. Findings indicated that despite some infidelity and an initial implementation dip, systemic (SBG) changes made teaching clearer, more purposeful, and more conducive to student needs while enhancing student growth mind-set and ownership. The researchers concluded SBG is a viable reform because it makes teaching and learning more focused, effective, and enjoyable. Findings also led to several recommendations for administrators and teachers.
Performance issues in integrating a capital market surveillance system using Web services

Internet-based technologies have opened new opportunities for conducting business within and across enterprises that were never possible a few years ago. This paper presents our experience in using Web services for prototyping a service-oriented architecture for capital market systems (CMSs). Our work exposes a world-class surveillance system's functionality into a number of Web services. Our work also includes benchmarking the performance of this legacy system and investigating the associated overheads of using SOAP as a wire format for Web services. Even though other research studies have tried to explain SOAP's performance inefficiency, there is lack of studies that evaluate SOAP in the context of a realistic business application. This initial investigation shows that system's integration opportunities introduced by Web services can outweigh the performance overheads. This occurs in some aspects of real-time CMSs that are not performance-demanding such as the dissemination of market alerts to the analysts.
de Bruijn notation as a nested datatype

“I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. ” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes de Bruijn notation is a coding of lambda terms in which each occurrence of a bound variable x is replaced by a natural number, indicating the ‘distance’ from the occurrence to the abstraction that introduced x. One might suppose that in any datatype for representing de Bruijn terms, the distance restriction on numbers would have to be maintained as an explicit datatype invariant. However, by using a nested (or non-regular) datatype, we can define a representation in which all terms are well-formed, so that the invariant is enforced automatically by the type system. Programming with nested types is only a little more difficult than programming with regular types, provided we stick to well-established structuring techniques. These involve expressing inductively defined functions in terms of an appropriate fold function for the type, and using fusion laws to establish their properties. In particular, the definition of lambda abstraction and beta reduction is particularly simple, and the proof of their associated properties is entirely mechanical.
An Enhanced PSO-Based Clustering Energy Optimization Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Network

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a network which formed with a maximum number of sensor nodes which are positioned in an application environment to monitor the physical entities in a target area, for example, temperature monitoring environment, water level, monitoring pressure, and health care, and various military applications. Mostly sensor nodes are equipped with self-supported battery power through which they can perform adequate operations and communication among neighboring nodes. Maximizing the lifetime of the Wireless Sensor networks, energy conservation measures are essential for improving the performance of WSNs. This paper proposes an Enhanced PSO-Based Clustering Energy Optimization (EPSO-CEO) algorithm for Wireless Sensor Network in which clustering and clustering head selection are done by using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm with respect to minimizing the power consumption in WSN. The performance metrics are evaluated and results are compared with competitive clustering algorithm to validate the reduction in energy consumption.
The Receptor Tyrosine Kinase FGFR2b/KGFR Controls Early Differentiation of Human Keratinocytes

The FGFRs trigger divergent responses, such as proliferation and differentiation, and the cell type as well as the context-dependent signaling are crucial for the functional outcome. The FGFR2b/KGFR is expressed exclusively on epithelial cells and plays a key role in skin homeostasis. Here we analyzed in vitro the role of KGFR in the early differentiation of keratinocytes modulating its expression by KGFR cDNA transient transfection or KGFR siRNA microinjection and inducing a synchronous wave of differentiation in pre-confluent cells. Immunofluorescence, biochemical and molecular approaches demonstrated that KGFR overexpression increased the early differentiation marker keratin 1 at both transcriptional and translational levels, while receptor depletion reduced it. Ligand-dependent receptor activation and signaling were required for this differentiative effect. Overexpression of kinase negative KGFR mutant or Tyr769 KGFR signaling mutant, which is not able to recruit and activate PLC-γ, showed that the receptor kinase activity, but not its PLCγ-mediated signaling, is required for differentiation. Reduction of K1 expression, obtained by AKT inhibition, demonstrated that the PI3K/Akt signaling pathway is involved in the control of KGFR-mediated keratinocyte differentiation. This in vitro experimental model indicates that FGFR2b/KGFR expression represents a key event regulating keratinocyte early differentiation during the switch from undifferentiated to differentiating cells.
Prediction of Students' Attitudes toward Euthanasia Using Their Religious Orientation, Self-Esteem and Death Anxiety

Introduction uthanasia is one of the important challenges that has fueled many debates in philosophical, medical, ethical, legal, and religious circles. The term "euthanasia" is derived from two Greek words: eu, meaning "good" and thanatos, meaning "death" and is used to refer to good death, comfortable death, desirable death, and sweet death (1). Islam's orientation toward this issue is very clear and decisive. From Islamic perspective, any soul is respectable. Patients does not have the right to voluntary death, because life is considered God's gift and therefore its termination through medical interventions, either active or passive, is not allowed (2). According to Surat Al-A'raf [7:34]: “So when their time has come, they will not remain behind an hour, nor will they precede [it]”. From the perspectives of two large religions, Christianity and Judaism, both suicide and euthanasia are unlawful and are condemned in their teachings. A study conducted in 33 European countries reported that highly educated and less religious adults were opener to euthanasia (3). According to Allport and Ross theory, religious orientation refers to the tendency to performing religious practices and religious thoughts, and can be intrinsic and extrinsic (4). Through an inseparable connection with people's lives, religiosity and religious orientation influence their behaviors and attitudes toward the complicated issues of life and have numerous basic functions in this area. Respect for material and corporeal life equals respect for hereafter life that leads to respect E Abstract
Some Cues to Design Effective HMI for Green Car in Fiat Group Automobiles

Environmental issues have become a full part in the process of developing vehicle concepts: new driving technologies as alternative fuels or hybrid engines will be applied on a much wider scale in the future. The design of CNG vehicles introduces new problems dealing with the in-vehicle user interface alternative fuels symbols, specific indicators and switches, that we try to discuss in this paper.
An Exposure Assessment for Methylmercury from Seafood for Consumers in the United States

An exposure model was developed to relate seafood consumption to levels of methylmercury (reported as mercury) in blood and hair in the U.S. population, and two subpopulations defined as children aged 2–5 and women aged 18–45. Seafood consumption was initially modeled using short‐term (three‐day) U.S.‐consumption surveys that recorded the amount of fish eaten per meal. Since longer exposure periods include more eaters with a lower daily mean intake, the consumption distribution was adjusted by broadening the distribution to include more eaters and reducing the distribution mean to keep total population intake constant. The estimate for the total number of eaters was based on long‐term purchase diaries. Levels of mercury in canned tuna, swordfish, and shark were based on FDA survey data. The distribution of mercury levels in other species was based on reported mean levels, with the frequency of consumption of each species based on market share. The shape distribution for the given mean was based on the range of variation encountered among shark, tuna, and swordfish. These distributions were integrated with a simulation that estimated average daily intake over a 360‐day period, with 10,000 simulated individuals and 1,000 uncertainty iterations. The results of this simulation were then used as an input to a second simulation that modeled levels of mercury in blood and hair. The relationship between dietary intake and blood mercury in a population was modeled from data obtained from a 90‐day study with controlled seafood intake. The relationship between blood and hair mercury in a population was modeled from data obtained from several sources. The biomarker simulation employed 2,000 simulated individuals and 1,000 uncertainty iterations. These results were then compared to the recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) that tabulated blood and hair mercury levels in a cross‐section of the U.S. population. The output of the model and NHANES results were similar for both children and adult women, with predicted mercury biomarker concentrations within a factor of two or less of NHANES biomarker results. However, the model tended to underpredict blood levels for women and overpredict blood and hair levels for children.
Asymptotic Resource Consumption in MulticastReservation StylesUSC { CS { 94 { 586

The goal of network design is to meet the needs of resident applications in an eecient manner. Adding real-time service and point-to-multipoint multicast routing to the In-ternet's traditional point-to-point best eeort service model will greatly increase the Internet's eeciency in handling point-to-multipoint real-time applications. Recently, the RSVP resource reservation protocol has introduced the concept of \reservation styles", which control how reservations are aggregated in multipoint-to-multipoint real-time applications. In this paper, which is an extension of 9], we analytically evaluate the eeciency gains ooered by this new paradigm on three simple network topologies: linear, m-tree, and star. We compare the resource utilization of more traditional reservation approaches to the RSVP reservation styles in the asymptotic limit of large multipoint applications. We nd that in several cases the eeciency improvements scale linearly in the number of hosts.
The Global Dispersion of Innovative Activities - The Case of Finnish Multinationals

The internationalisation of R&D of multinational firms is an important ingredient in the ongoing trend towards globalisation. Previous research on Finnish multinationals has mainly relied on R&D expenditure data. In this paper we provide new insights into how the internationalisation of R&D of these Finnish multinationals is also reflected in their innovative output as measured by patenting. The results indicate that inventor teams have grown in size over time, especially through the entry of US, German, Swedish and UK inventors. Contrary to what the extant literature predicts, the share of patents with foreign inventors is lower for Finnish multinationals when compared with multinationals from other industrialised countries. However, foreign patents of Finnish multinationals score higher in terms of originality and point to the domination of home-base-augmenting R&D strategies over home-base-exploiting ones.
Multilevel Research in Information Systems: Concepts, Strategies, Problems, and Pitfalls

Information systems (IS) researchers often explore complex phenomena that result from the interplay between technologies and human actors; as such, IS research frequently involves constructs found at multiple levels of analysis, although rarely recognized as such. In fact, our targeted review of the IS literature found minimal explicit consideration of the issues posed by multilevel research although a number of studies implicitly conducted research at multiple levels. In this paper, we discuss the issues that result from not explicitly recognizing the multilevel nature of one’s work and offer guidance on how to identify and explicitly conduct multilevel IS research. Recognizing the relevance of multilevel research for the IS domain, we discuss a systematic approach to conduct quantitative multilevel IS research that is grounded in an overarching framework that focuses equally on testing variables and entities. We also highlight the unique role of IS in developing multilevel opportunities for researchers. Finally, we identify a number of gaps within the IS literature in which specific multilevel research questions may be articulated. Such explicit consideration of multilevel issues in future IS research will not only improve IS research but contribute to the larger discourse on multilevel research.
Commodity Price Volatility Across Exchange Rate Regimes

This paper documents a new "stylized fact" regarding commodity prices using alternative datasets covering the period from 1880 to 1996: The volatility of real commodity prices, defined as nominal commodity prices deflated by the manufacturing unit value index, is higher under flexible-exchange rate regimes than fixed-exchange rate regimes. Furthermore, changes in exchange regime are associated with changes in the persistence of commodity price shocks. Implications of this finding for open-economy macro modeling are briefly discussed in the concluding section.