Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Underwriter Networks, Investor Attention, and Initial Public Offerings

Using various centrality measures from social network analysis, we analyze how the location of a lead initial public offering (IPO) underwriter in its network of investment banks affects various IPO characteristics. We hypothesize that investment banking networks allow lead IPO underwriters to induce institutions to pay attention to the firms they take public and to perform two information-related roles during the IPO process: an information dissemination role, in which the lead underwriter uses its investment banking network to disseminate noisy information about various aspects of the IPO firm to institutional investors; and an information extraction role, in which the lead underwriter uses its investment banking network to extract information useful in pricing the IPO firm equity from institutional investors. Based on these two roles, we develop testable hypotheses relating lead IPO underwriter centrality to the IPO characteristics of firms they take public. We find that more central lead IPO underwriters are associated with larger absolute values of offer price revisions, greater IPO and after-market valuations, larger IPO initial returns, greater institutional investor equity holdings and analyst coverage immediately post-IPO, greater stock liquidity post-IPO, and better long-run stock returns. Using a hand-collected data set of pre-IPO media coverage as a proxy for investor attention, we show that an important channel through which more central lead IPO underwriters achieve favorable IPO characteristics is by attracting greater investor attention to the IPOs underwritten by them.
Net Efficacy Adjusted for Risk (NEAR): A Simple Procedure for Measuring Risk:Benefit Balance

Background Although several mathematical models have been proposed to assess the risk:benefit of drugs in one measure, their use in practice has been rather limited. Our objective was to design a simple, easily applicable model. In this respect, measuring the proportion of patients who respond favorably to treatment without being affected by adverse drug reactions (ADR) could be a suitable endpoint. However, remarkably few published clinical trials report the data required to calculate this proportion. As an approach to the problem, we calculated the expected proportion of this type of patients. Methodology/Principal Findings Theoretically, responders without ADR may be obtained by multiplying the total number of responders by the total number of subjects that did not suffer ADR, and dividing the product by the total number of subjects studied. When two drugs are studied, the same calculation may be repeated for the second drug. Then, by constructing a 2×2 table with the expected frequencies of responders with and without ADR, and non-responders with and without ADR, the odds ratio and relative risk with their confidence intervals may be easily calculated and graphically represented on a logarithmic scale. Such measures represent “net efficacy adjusted for risk” (NEAR). We assayed the model with results extracted from several published clinical trials or meta-analyses. On comparing our results with those originally reported by the authors, marked differences were found in some cases, with ADR arising as a relevant factor to balance the clinical benefit obtained. The particular features of the adverse reaction that must be weighed against benefit is discussed in the paper. Conclusion NEAR representing overall risk-benefit may contribute to improving knowledge of drug clinical usefulness. As most published clinical trials tend to overestimate benefits and underestimate toxicity, our measure represents an effort to change this trend.
Representing Ramiications in an Event-based Language Representing Ramiications in an Event-based Language

In the last couple of years, several high-level languages have been proposed for modeling actions and change, following the example of Gelfond and Lifschitz's A language. The goal of these languages is to analyse in a simpliied context the fundamental issues in reasoning about actions and the constructs required for dealing with them. In this paper we present a narrative-based language ER with a linear time structure, which is designed to deal with general uent dependencies, in particular ramiications, both of consecutive and simultaneous actions. We argue that a combination of state constraints, eeect propagation rules (causal laws) and action precondition rules is necessary to correctly represent all such dependencies. In particular we introduce causal laws involving complex uent formulae and show such laws to be useful for a compact representation of ramiications of both single and simultaneous actions. We motivate and deene a constructive semantics for causal laws based on the principle of inductive deenitions. In addition, we design ER to deal in a exible way with complete and incomplete knowledge on action occurrences, action ordering and the initial state of the world. We present a mapping of ER to Open Logic Programming using the Event Calculus, and prove its correctness. Two extensions to ER introduce constructs for dealing with nondeterminism and delayed ram-iications; the mapping to Open Logic Programming is extended accordingly. Finally we indicate how innuence information as introduced by Thielscher can be used for deriving causal laws from state constraints (semi-)automatically in the ER setting. We discuss how our approach compares with and diiers from Thielscher's.
Peer Assessment Training on EFL Writing for Lower Proficiency Level, Is It Worthy?

The present study was conducted to investigate whether training on peer assessment could foster better writing ability for English lower proficiency EFL students. Forty-eight (48) students participated in this study and randomly assigned into two groups; trained and untrained peer assessment. Trained group is as experimental group and untrained group is as control group. The students’ English proficiency level was lower to higher based on the results of TOEFL test scores. A pre-writing test of argumentative essay was given before providing the training. Then, the students in experimental group was given peer assessment training before instructing them to rate their peers drafts. The whole sessions were lasted in six sessions. The pre-test was administered before giving the six sessions to apply the treatment; and a post test was given at the end of the session to determine the effects of peer assessment training on students’ writing ability. The result of analysis revealed significant between-group differences, F (2, 816) = 3.440, p (.020) < . 05. the lower proficiency in trained group performed better than the higher and lower proficiency students in untrained group.
Degrees of Freedom for Instantaneous-Relay Aided Interference Channel: Bounds and Achievable Schemes

The K-user flat fading MIMO interference channel with J instantaneous relays (KICJR) is considered. In the KICJR, the effective channel between sources and destinations including the relays has certain structure and is non-generic. For non-generic channels, the achievable degrees of freedom (DoF) is still unknown. Lee and Wang showed that by using the aligned interference neutralization scheme 3/2 degrees of freedom is achievable in a 2IC1R system, which is 50% more than the 2-user interference channel. But the DoF performance and achievable schemes for other KICJR networks are not investigated in literature. In this paper we devise an achievable scheme called restricted interference alignment for instantaneous-relay aided interference channels. Also, to find insights to the maximum achievable degrees of freedom we develop linear beamforming based on the mean square error (MSE) minimization as an achievable scheme. Furthermore, we present upper-bounds on the maximum achievable degrees of freedom by investigating the properness of the interference alignment equation system. The numerical results show that the DoF performance of the proposed restricted interference alignment scheme and the MSE-based beamforming match the upper-bounds determined from the properness of the interference alignment equations.
Bringing Media Spaces into the Real World

This paper describes an experiment to test the media space concepts developed at Rank Xerox EuroPARC in a “real world” setting, that is a distributed product development organization within a large multinational corporation. We installed two types of media space connections: a focused dial up video-phone for engineering problem solving between designers in England and the shop floor of a factory in the Netherlands; an unfocused “office share” to support administrative tasks. The results of user observation are that the video links did prove to be effective for problem solving on the shop floor, enhancing cooperation, mutual trust and confidence, and for supporting new forms of communication in the virtual shared office. We observed that users integrated very quickly the new video links into their existing media space made up of telephone, beepers, satellite video conference, fax, e-mail, answering machines, etc. Users learnt very easily how to shift from one medium to another. This suggests that “real world” media spaces should be designed to allow a user-driven smooth transition from one medium to another according to the task at hand and the bandwidth available: from live video to stored video; from moving video to still frames; from multimedia spaces to shared computing spaces for synchronous sketching and asynchronous message posting; from two user conversation to multi-user conference call.
The effect of remediation and student support programs on the academic outcomes of underprepared college students

________________________________________________________ ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ____________________________________________ iv List of Tables ______________________________________________________ ix List of Figures _____________________________________________________ xi Chapter 1: Introduction Background on the Institution and the Students It Serves__________________ 1 Identifying and Remediating Under-prepared College Students_____________ 5 Relevance of the Study _______________________________________12 Study Purpose ___________________________________________________15 Research Questions _____________________________________________17 Chapter II: Review of the Related Literature History of compensatory higher education programs _____________________ 18 Critics and Proponents of Remedial and Compensatory Support Programs____ 20 The Achievement Gap _____________________________________________31 College Readiness and Transition to College____________________________35 Studies on the Effects of Remedial Education ___________________________42 Theories on Student Retention and Degree Completion____________________53 Predictors of Academic Progress and Success___________________________57 Conceptual Framework: The Nested Factors Model ______________________71 Chapter III: Research Design and Methodology Purpose of the Study_______________________________________________74 Study Design ____________________________________________________ 74
The interleukin 12 p40 gene promoter is primed by interferon gamma in monocytic cells

Interleukin (IL) 12 is a proinflammatory cytokine produced by phagocytic cells, B cells, and other antigen-presenting cells that modulates adaptive immune responses by favoring the generation of T helper type 1 cells. IL-12 mediates some of its physiological activities by acting as a potent inducer of interferon (IFN) gamma production by T and natural killer cells. IFN-gamma enhances the ability of the phagocytic cells to produce IL-12 and other proinflammatory cytokines. Thus, IL-12-induced IFN-gamma acts in a positive feedback loop that represents an important amplifying mechanism in the inflammatory response to infections. We show here that IFN-gamma enhances IL-12 production mostly by priming phagocytic cells for lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced transcription of the IL-12 p40 gene, which encodes the heavy chain of the IL-12 heterodimer; furthermore, IFN-gamma directly induces transcription of the IL-12 p35 gene, which encodes the light chain of IL-12, and has at least an additive effect with LPS stimulation in inducing its transcription. The priming effect of IFN-gamma on the LPS-induced p40 gene transcription requires preincubation of the cells with IFN-gamma for at least 8 h to obtain a maximal effect. The priming effect of IFN-gamma for IL-12 production is predominantly at the transcriptional level for both the p40 and the p35 gene, and no evidence for a major role of posttranscriptional or translational mechanisms was found. A 3.3-kb human IL-12 p40 promoter construct transfected into cell lines recapitulated the tissue specificity of the endogenous gene, being silent in two human T cell lines, constitutively active in two human Epstein-Barr virus-positive B lymphoblastoid cell lines, and LPS inducible in the human THP-1 and mouse RAW264.7 monocytic cell lines. Because the RAW264.7 cell line is easily transfectable and regulates the endogenous IL-12 p40 gene in response to IFN-gamma or LPS similarly to human monocytes, it was used for analysis of the regulation of the cloned human IL-12 p40 promoter. A requirement for the region between - 222 and -204 in both LPS responsiveness and IFN-gamma priming was established. This region contains an ets consensus sequence that was shown to mediate activation of the promoter by IFN-gamma and LPS, as well as by a cotransfected ets-2. The -222 construct was also regulated in a tissue-specific manner. Two other elements, IRF-1 located at -730 to -719, and NF-IL6 at -520 to -512, were also studied by deletion analysis, which did not result in decreased response to IFN-gamma and LPS stimulation.
Exploring a Semantic Publish/Subscribe Middleware for Event-Based SOA

Service Oriented Architecture is currently regarded as the next step for software architectures and achieve great usage in web services. However, the traditional SOA uses request/response pattern and is not suit for loose coupling, asynchronous scene while Even-Driven Architecture works well. To support the effective execution of possibly distributed and completely decoupled and heterogeneous services, synchronously or asynchronously executed in an efficient manner, there is an urgent need to integrate EDA and SOA into the next generation of SOA. We propose a semantic publish/subscribe system called JTangPS to serve as the event platform for event based SOA to satisfy the new challenges.
Business process optimization with big data analytics under consideration of privacy

One of the contemporary problems, and at the same time a big opportunity, in business networks of supply chains are the issues associated with the vast amounts of data arising there. The data may be utilized by the decision support systems in supply chains; nevertheless, often there are information privacy problems. The supply chains in cloud will need appropriate administration for support of privacy aspects of cooperating business units existing in big data ecosystems. In this paper we analyze the possibility of utilizing the big data technology for supporting business processes optimization with respect of the privacy regulations in supply chains under the usage of the big data analytics lifecycle. We present our approach on an example of a business process in logistics.
Finding Optimal 1-Endpoint-Crossing Trees

Dependency parsing algorithms capable of producing the types of crossing dependencies seen in natural language sentences have traditionally been orders of magnitude slower than algorithms for projective trees. For 95.8–99.8% of dependency parses in various natural language treebanks, whenever an edge is crossed, the edges that cross it all have a common vertex. The optimal dependency tree that satisfies this 1-Endpoint-Crossing property can be found with an O(n4) parsing algorithm that recursively combines forests over intervals with one exterior point. 1-Endpoint-Crossing trees also have natural connections to linguistics and another class of graphs that has been studied in NLP.
Internet-based information discovery Application to monitoring of science and technology

The amount of information available in organisation internal information systems or in international networks such as Internet is growing at an important rate. As a consequence, more and more sophisticated information management systems are needed. Among the functionaliti es of those systems, information retrieval is one of the key elements. It allows one to find the relevant information according to its needs. Because of the amount of retrieved information, it is less and less possible to manually analyse it. That is why new systems functionaliti es needs have recently appeared. The objective is to automate as much as possible the transformation of the retrieved information (raw information) into knowledge or generalised patterns (hidden information). That new computed information could then be used directly by the users (manufacturers, searchers,.) to have an overview of the area they are interested on and to take the relevant decisions. One of the main applications is monitoring of science and technology. In this paper, we propose an approach that allows a user to find hidden information from textual information extracted from specific data collections or from Internet sources. It is based on knowledge discovery mechanisms, using data analysis processes. It is also based on an interaction model between the users and the system functionaliti es.
Modeling and Simulation Study of the Propagation and Defense of Internet Email Worm

As many people rely on email communications for business and everyday life, Internet email worms constitute one of the major security threats for our society. Unlike scanning worms such as Code Red or Slammer, email worms spread over a logical network defined by email address relationship, making traditional epidemic models invalid for modeling the propagation of email worms. In addition, we show that the topological epidemic models presented in [1], [2], [3], [4] largely overestimate epidemic spreading speed in topological networks due to their implicit homogeneous mixing assumption. For this reason, we rely on simulations to study email worm propagation in this paper. We present an email worm simulation model that accounts for the behaviors of email users, including email checking time and the probability of opening an email attachment. Our observations of email lists suggest that an Internet email network follows a heavy-tailed distribution in terms of node degrees, and we model it as a power law network. To study the topological impact, we compare email worm propagation on power law topology with worm propagation on two other topologies: small world topology and random graph topology. The impact of the power law topology on the spread of email worms is mixed: email worms spread more quickly than on a small world topology or a random graph topology, but immunization defense is more effective on a power law topology.
Phylogenetic Analysis of Domain Combinations in Eukaryotic Genomes

Protein domains are basic building blocks and which can be units of the function, structure and evolution. A protein often consists of more than two domains and their combinations provide a broad functional spectrum and effective evolution of proteins. Previous work suggests that kingdom specific domain combinations [1], and speciesor phylogenetic groupspecific domain combinations cause particular biological mechanisms. Many multi-domain proteins are involved in regulatory systems of eukaryotes. Here, we have estimated specific domain combinations for various evolutionary related groups and obtained an outline of eukaryotic evolution of domain combinations in eukaryotic evolution.
Automatic point-based facial trait judgments evaluation

Humans constantly evaluate the personalities of other people using their faces. Facial trait judgments have been studied in the psychological field, and have been determined to influence important social outcomes of our lives, such as elections outcomes and social relationships. Recent work on textual descriptions of faces has shown that trait judgments are highly correlated. Further, behavioral studies suggest that two orthogonal dimensions, valence and dominance, can describe the basis of the human judgments from faces. In this paper, we used a corpus of behavioral data of judgments on different trait dimensions to automatically learn a trait predictor from facial pixel images. We study whether trait evaluations performed by humans can be learned using machine learning classifiers, and used later in automatic evaluations of new facial images. The experiments performed using local point-based descriptors show promising results in the evaluation of the main traits.
Gender and ethnic discrimination in the rental housing market

We use a field experiment to measure discrimination in the housing market in Stockholm. Four fictitious persons, of different gender, with distinct-sounding Arabic or Swedish names, are randomly assigned to vacant apartments. We extend the study by Ahmed and Hammarstedt (2008). There are two new results. First, we provide evidence that there is no or little gender premium for the female with the Arabic name, which suggests that ethnic discrimination dominates the effects of gender. Second, discriminatory behaviour is only found in the suburbs or satellite cities/towns of Stockholm County not in the densely populated, affluent, city centre. Moreover, we can replicate that there is a gender premium for females with Swedish names. However, we are not able to confirm that males with Arabic names face discrimination.
Supernatant from Bifidobacterium Differentially Modulates Transduction Signaling Pathways for Biological Functions of Human Dendritic Cells

Background Probiotic bacteria have been shown to modulate immune responses and could have therapeutic effects in allergic and inflammatory disorders. However, the signaling pathways engaged by probiotics are poorly understood. We have previously reported that a fermentation product from Bifidobacterium breve C50 (BbC50sn) could induce maturation, high IL-10 production and prolonged survival of DCs via a TLR2 pathway. We therefore studied the roles of mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPK), glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK3) and phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) pathways on biological functions of human monocyte-derived DCs treated with BbC50sn. Methodology/Principal Findings DCs were differentiated from human monocytes with IL-4 and GM-CSF for 5 days and cultured with BbC50sn, lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or Zymosan, with or without specific inhibitors of p38MAPK (SB203580), ERK (PD98059), PI3K (LY294002) and GSK3 (SB216763). We found that 1) the PI3K pathway was positively involved in the prolonged DC survival induced by BbC50sn, LPS and Zymosan in contrast to p38MAPK and GSK3 which negatively regulated DC survival; 2) p38MAPK and PI3K were positively involved in DC maturation, in contrast to ERK and GSK3 which negatively regulated DC maturation; 3) ERK and PI3K were positively involved in DC-IL-10 production, in contrast to GSK3 that was positively involved in DC-IL-12 production whereas p38MAPK was positively involved in both; 4) BbC50sn induced a PI3K/Akt phosphorylation similar to Zymosan and a p38MAPK phosphorylation similar to LPS. Conclusion/Significance We report for the first time that a fermentation product of a bifidobacteria can differentially activate MAPK, GSK3 and PI3K in order to modulate DC biological functions. These results give new insights on the fine-tuned balance between the maintenance of normal mucosal homeostasis to commensal and probiotic bacteria and the specific inflammatory immune responses to pathogen bacteria.