Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The impact of pillar I support on farm choices: conceptual and methodological challenges

In the near future the CAP will continue to be structured around two pillars. In the first pillar the main instrument for producers’ support is the decoupled Single Farm Payment. In this paper we review the methodological framework for analysing decoupled payments in models of agricultural production. Market and technological uncertainty, credit constraints, farm household choices involving extra-agricultural decisions, policy uncertainty and long-run impact of decoupling on investment and land values are the relevant issues that should be pursued by methodological and empirical analysis. Future research should refine the analysis of decoupled payments, mainly trying to provide results that can be useful for policy simulation, to bridge the gap between analysis at the individual level and sector policy models.
Optimal automatic speech recognition system selection for noisy environments

To improve the performance of noisy automatic speech recognition (ASR), it is effective to prepare multiple ASR systems that can address the large varieties of noise. However, the optimal ASR system is different for each environment and mismatches between training and testing degrade ASR performance. In this situation, the overall system combination of multiple systems is effective; however, the computational resources increase in proportion to the number of systems. This paper proposes a method to select an optimal single system from multiple systems. The selection is based on the estimated word error rates of a respective system by using the i-vector similarities between training and test data. The experiments on the third CHiME challenge show that our proposed method can efficiently select a single system from multiple systems with different speech enhancement and feature transformation methods to improve the overall performance without increasing computational resources.
Bargaining in Legislatures: An Experimental Investigation of Open versus Closed Amendment Rules

We investigate the differential effects of open versus closed amendment rules within the framework of a distributive model of legislative bargaining. The data show that there are longer delays in distributing benefits and a more egalitarian distribution of benefits under the open amendment rule, the proposer gets a larger share of the benefits than coalition members under both rules, and play converges toward minimal winning coalitions under the closed amendment rule. However, there are important quantitative differences between the theoretical model underlying the experiment (Baron and Ferejohn 1989) and data, as the frequency of minimal winning coalitions is much greater under the closed rule (the theory predicts minimal winning coalitions under both rules for our parameter values) and the distribution of benefits between coalition members is much more egalitarian than predicted. The latter are consistent with findings from shrinking pie bilateral bargaining game experiments in economics, to which we relate our results.Research support from the Economics Division and the DRMS Divisions of NSF and the University of Pittsburgh is gratefully acknowledged. We have benefited from comments by David Cooper, Massimo Morelli, Jack Ochs, and seminar participants at Carnegie Mellon University, École des Hautes Études Commerciales, Harvard University, Indiana University, ITAM, Université de Montreal, Universite du Québec a Montréal, University of Pittsburgh, Joseph L. Rotman School, University of Toronto, Ohio State University, Texas \widehat{{\rm A}{\&}{\rm M}} University, Tilburg University CENTER, Western Michigan University, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, the 2000 Public Choice Meetings, the 2000 Summer Institute in Behavioral Economics, the 2000 Econometric Society World Congress meetings, and the CEA 35th Annual Meetings. We are responsible for all remaining errors.
Effects of temperature on frequency properties of FBAR

This paper investigated the effects of temperature on resonance properties of Film Bulk Acoustic Resonator (FBAR) in thickness-stretch mode. Based on the fundamental piezoelastic equations of piezoelectric material, the vibration equation of ideal FBAR under sine excitation voltage is derived. The solution is then obtained by using of the boundary conditions. The series and parallel resonance frequency were presented, and the effects of temperature on resonance frequency, bandwidth, and effective electromechanical coupling coefficient were discussed. A numerical example was presented to show the effects. These results are useful for the improvement of designing FBAR.
Export Subsidies, Productivity and Welfare under Firm-Level Heterogeneity

In this paper we use the monopolistic competition model with heterogeneous firms to study the effect of different policies on productivity and welfare, and provide three particular policies, which allow to reach the first best allocation in the economy. We also show that an export subsidy generates an increase in productivity, but - if policy already deals with the mark-up distortion that arises in this context (for example, through a subsidy on consumption of domestic varieties) - its effect on welfare is negative due to combination of falling variety and adverse terms of trade changes.
The Research on Personalized Recommendation Algorithm of LibraryBased on Big Data and Association Rules

In order to provide better information consistent with their preferences features for users, personalized recom- mendation technology has become an important research field of digital libraries and get more and more attention from searchers. Among them, the large data mining and association rules-based personalized recommendation technology is the focus of research in the field of recommendation. In this paper, these two issues are studied. In order to increase the lend- ing rate of collections, this paper use association rules analyzes for borrowing pattern mining, to obtain library users inter- ests, to analyze different types of readers' purpose library collections, and automatically provide readers with other books related to such book. Through improved frequent pattern growth algorithm, combined with online recommended and off- line recommendation method, achieved a more satisfactory recommendation results. Finally, taken experimental analysis and verification for these techniques studies, and future research were discussed.
Efficacy and tolerability of a monophasic combined oral contraceptive containing nomegestrol acetate and 17β-oestradiol in a 24/4 regimen, in comparison to an oral contraceptive containing ethinylestradiol and drospirenone in a 21/7 regimen

ABSTRACT Objectives The primary objective was to assess the efficacy, cycle control and tolerability of a monophasic combined oral contraceptive (COC) containing nomegestrol acetate (NOMAC) and 17β-oestradiol (E2). Effects on acne were evaluated as a secondary objective. Results were compared to those of a COC containing drospirenone (DRSP) and ethinylestradiol (EE). Methods Women (aged 18–50 years) were randomised to receive NOMAC/E2 (2.5 mg/1.5 mg) in a 24/4-day regimen (n = 1591) or DRSP/EE (3 mg/30 μg) in a 21/7-day regimen (n = 535) for 13 cycles. Results Estimated Pearl Indices for NOMAC/E2 and DRSP/EE were 0.38 and 0.81 in women aged ≤ 35 years and 0.31 and 0.66 for all women (18–50 years), respectively. Scheduled withdrawal bleedings were shorter and lighter among users of NOMAC/E2 and were sometimes absent altogether. Intracyclic bleeding/spotting was infrequent in both groups, and decreased over time. Type and frequency of adverse events were similar to those typically reported for COCs. Conclusions These data show that NOMAC/E2 provides high contraceptive efficacy with acceptable cycle control as well as an overall adverse event profile similar to that of DRSP/EE.
Computational Detection of Stage-Specific Transcription Factor Clusters during Heart Development

Transcription factors (TFs) regulate gene expression in living organisms. In higher organisms, TFs often interact in non-random combinations with each other to control gene transcription. Understanding the interactions is key to decipher mechanisms underlying tissue development. The aim of this study was to analyze co-occurring transcription factor binding sites (TFBSs) in a time series dataset from a new cell-culture model of human heart muscle development in order to identify common as well as specific co-occurring TFBS pairs in the promoter regions of regulated genes which can be essential to enhance cardiac tissue developmental processes. To this end, we separated available RNAseq dataset into five temporally defined groups: (i) mesoderm induction stage; (ii) early cardiac specification stage; (iii) late cardiac specification stage; (iv) early cardiac maturation stage; (v) late cardiac maturation stage, where each of these stages is characterized by unique differentially expressed genes (DEGs). To identify TFBS pairs for each stage, we applied the MatrixCatch algorithm, which is a successful method to deduce experimentally described TFBS pairs in the promoters of the DEGs. Although DEGs in each stage are distinct, our results show that the TFBS pair networks predicted by MatrixCatch for all stages are quite similar. Thus, we extend the results of MatrixCatch utilizing a Markov clustering algorithm (MCL) to perform network analysis. Using our extended approach, we are able to separate the TFBS pair networks in several clusters to highlight stage-specific co-occurences between TFBSs. Our approach has revealed clusters that are either common (NFAT or HMGIY clusters) or specific (SMAD or AP-1 clusters) for the individual stages. Several of these clusters are likely to play an important role during the cardiomyogenesis. Further, we have shown that the related TFs of TFBSs in the clusters indicate potential synergistic or antagonistic interactions to switch between different stages. Additionally, our results suggest that cardiomyogenesis follows the hourglass model which was already proven for Arabidopsis and some vertebrates. This investigation helps us to get a better understanding of how each stage of cardiomyogenesis is affected by different combination of TFs. Such knowledge may help to understand basic principles of stem cell differentiation into cardiomyocytes.
Towards Type Safety of Aspect-Oriented Languages

In this paper we describe our vision of supporting aspectoriented programming with interactive theorem proving in Coq. The goal is to construct a mechanized semantical basis that enables the analysis of type safety and other security properties. This basis consists of a featherweight aspectoriented language and a supporting framework for analysis. We identify features of aspect-oriented programming that direct our investigation and present first axiomatic formalizations building the basis for this analysis of aspect-oriented programming.
Psychological differences between children with and without chronic encopresis.

OBJECTIVE To validate a theoretical model of encopresis in terms of psychological factors that differentiates children with and without chronic encopresis and to identify scales that demonstrate these differences. METHODS Eighty-six children with encopresis were compared to 62 nonsymptomatic children on five psychometric instruments. Differences in the mean scores and the percentages of children falling beyond preselected clinical thresholds were compared across the patient-control groups. RESULTS Children with encopresis were found to have more anxiety/depression symptoms, family environments with less expressiveness and poorer organization, more attention difficulties, greater social problems, more disruptive behavior, and poorer school performance (ps =.01 < or =.001 on 15/20 subscales). There were no differences in self-esteem. On those subscales where proportionately more encopretic children exceeded clinical thresholds, approximately 20% more of the encopretic children exceeded thresholds than control children. CONCLUSIONS As a group, children with encopresis differ from children without encopresis on a variety of psychological parameters. However, only a minority of children with encopresis demonstrated clinically significant elevations in these parameters. Identification and treatment of such clinical issues may enhance treatment efficacy.
Trying to Understand the Ppps in Icp2011: Why are the Results so Different?

Purchasing power parity exchange rates, or PPPs, are price indexes that summarize prices in each country relative to a numeraire country, typically the United States. These numbers are used to compare living standards across countries, by academics in studies of economic growth, particularly through the Penn World Table, by the World Bank to construct measures of global poverty, by the European Union to redistribute resources, and by the international development community to draw attention to discrepancies between rich and poor countries. The International Comparison Program (ICP) collects the detailed prices on which these indexes are based on an irregular basis. In 2014, the ICP published PPPs from the 2011 round that are sharply different from those that were expected from extrapolation of the previous round, ICP 2005. These discrepancies will eventually have important implications for the Penn World Table, and for international comparisons of living standards given that the PPPs are used to convert countries' national accounts--GDP and consumption, for example--from local currency to common currency units (international dollars.) The world according to ICP 2011 looks markedly more equal than the world according to ICP 2005. This paper investigates why this happened. We identify a likely source of the problem in the way that the regions of the ICP were linked in 2005. We use two different methods for measuring the size of the effect. Both suggest that the 2005 PPPs for consumption for countries in Asia (excluding Japan), Western Asia, and Africa were overstated relative to the United States by between 18 to 26 percent. Per capita consumption in international dollars of these countries was therefore too low in 2005 and more likely to be accurately estimated in 2011.
deregulation: an analysis of the Australian dairy manufacturing industry*

© 2007 The Authors Journal compilation © 2007 Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society Inc. and Blackwell Publishing Ltd doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8489.2007. 00370.x Blackwell Publishing Ltd Oxford, UK AJAR ustralian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 1364-985X © 2007 The Author Journ Compilat on © 2007 A str lian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society Inc. and Blackwell Publishers Ltd XXX RIGINAL ARTICLES D i y m ufacturi deregula ion K. Balcombe e al . Input usage, output mix and industry deregulation: an analysis of the Australian dairy manufacturing industry*
Intervals of Almost Totally Positive Matrices

We consider the class of the totally nonnegative matrices, i.e., the matrices having all their minors nonnegative, and intervals of matrices with respect to the chequerboard partial ordering, which results from the usual entrywise partial ordering if we reverse the inequality sign in all components having odd index sum. For these intervals in 1982 we stated in this journal the following conjecture: If the left and right endpoints of an interval are nonsingular and totally nonnegative then all matrices taken from the interval are nonsingular and totally nonnegative. In this paper we show that this conjecture is true if we restrict ourselves to the subset of the almost totally positive matrices.
Urban Teachers Immersed in Complexity in a Context that Assumes Simplicity.

PreK-12 teachers in an urban school district enrolled in a course designed to examine the complexities of teaching in urban schools. This course was part of a grant aimed at increasing math and science achievement of their students. Teachers critically examined local and national policies and conditions that added to the complexities of their students’ lives. They examined school and district systemic practices that also created complex environments in which to teach. This qualitative study describes their understandings and the often simplistic view of education that contradicted what they were learning about.
Face detection on distorted images using perceptual quality-aware features

We quantify the degradation in performance of a popular and effective face detector when human–perceived image quality is degraded by distortions due to additive white gaussian noise, gaussian blur or JPEG compression. It is observed that, within a certain range of perceived image quality, a modest increase in image quality can drastically improve face detection performance. These results can be used to guide resource or bandwidth allocation in a communication/delivery system that is associated with face detection tasks. A new face detector based on QualHOG features is also proposed that augments face-indicative HOG features with perceptual quality–aware spatial Natural Scene Statistics (NSS) features, yielding improved tolerance against image distortions. The new detector provides statistically significant improvements over a strong baseline on a large database of face images representing a wide range of distortions. To facilitate this study, we created a new Distorted Face Database, containing face and non–face patches from images impaired by a variety of common distortion types and levels. This new dataset is available for download and further experimentation at www.ideal. ece.utexas. edu/˜suriya/DFD/.
Arithmetical independence results using higher recursion theory

Abstract We extend an independence result proved in [1]. We show that for all n, there is a special set of Πn sentences {φa}a ∈ H corresponding to elements of a linear ordering (H, <H) of order type . These sentences allow us to build completions {Ta}a ∈ H of PA such that for a <H b, Ta ∩ Σn ⊂ Tb ∩ Σn, with φa ∈ Ta, ¬φa ∈ Th. Our method uses the Barwise-Kreisel Compactness Theorem.
Company Fundamentals and Equity Returns in India

This paper examines the relationship between four company fundamental variables (viz. market capitalization, book equity to market equity ratio, price earnings ratio and debt equity ratio) and equity returns in Indian stock market using monthly price data of a sample of 455 companies forming part of S&P CNX 500 Index over the period June 1997 to June 2007. We also investigate whether the inclusion of any one or more of these fundamental variables can better explain cross sectional variations in equity returns in India than the single factor CAPM. We find that market capitalization and price earnings ratio have statistically significant negative relationship with equity returns while book equity to market equity ratio and debt equity ratio have statistically significant positive relationship with equity returns in India. The investment strategies based on these variables produced extra risk adjusted returns over the study period. Using Davis Fama and French(2000) methodology we find that Fama-French three factor model ( based on market risk premium, size premium and value premium) explains cross sectional variations in equity returns in India in a much better way than the single factor CAPM. These results have important implications for market efficiency, asset pricing and market microstructure issues in Indian stock market.
Putting Intelligent Characters to Work

Extempo Systems, Inc. was founded in 1995 to commercialize intelligent characters. Our team built innovative software and novel applications for several markets. We had some early-adopting customers during the Internet boom, but the company was not quite able to survive the significant downturn in corporate IT spending when the bubble burst. In 2004, Extempo ceased operations and was formally liquidated. Although our commercial venture failed, we learned a lot, had fun, and are trying again with a new company. To others who aspire to commercialize their AI technology, I say: ";;Take a chance! ";;
Assignment Techniques for Crowdsourcing Sensitive Tasks

Protecting the privacy of crowd workers has been an important topic in crowdsourcing, however, task privacy has largely been ignored despite the fact that many tasks, e.g., form digitization, live audio transcription or image tagging often contain sensitive information. Although assigning an entire job to a worker may leak private information, jobs can often be split into small components that individually do not. We study the problem of distributing such tasks to workers with the goal of maximizing task privacy using such an approach. We introduce information loss functions to formally measure the amount of private information leaked as a function of the task assignment. We then design assignment mechanisms for three different assignment settings: PUSH, PULL and a new setting Tug Of War (TOW), which is an intermediate approach that balances flexibility for both workers and requesters. Our assignment algorithms have zero privacy loss for PUSH, and tight theoretical guarantees for PULL. For TOW, our assignment algorithm provably outperforms PULL; importantly the privacy loss is independent of the number of tasks, even when workers collude. We further analyze the performance and privacy tradeoffs empirically on simulated and real-world collusion networks and find that our algorithms outperform the theoretical guarantees.
TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPETITION, RATE-REBALANCING, AND CONSUMER WELFARE IN NEPAL

This paper examines two important aspects of telecommunications liberalization as a policy for economic development. The first involves the tradeoff between increased efficiency from competition and the consequences of higher prices for basic services resulting from rate-rebalancing. The second addresses an entrant’s ability to provide efficient, high-quality service under the given competitive environment. Using new data from Nepal, we analyze how the introduction of competition in landline and mobile services and subsequent rate-rebalancing has affected the welfare perceptions of residential consumers. We find that while many consumers remain sensitive to prices, competition is viewed as a way to satisfy growing demand for telecommunications services. However, service quality remains a problem, and the incumbent operator has succeeded in maintaining a higher overall level of satisfaction relative to entrants. This suggests that a more aggressive rate-rebalancing strategy may be necessary to fully bring out the benefits of efficient and fair competition.
Spectrin-dependent and -independent association of F-actin with the erythrocyte membrane

Binding of F-actin to spectrin-actin-depleted erythrocyte membrane inside-out vesicles was measured using [3H]F-actin. F-actin binding to vesicles at 25 degrees C was stimulated 5-10 fold by addition of spectrin dimers or tetramers to vesicles. Spectrin tetramer was twice as effective as dimer in stimulating actin binding, but neither tetramer nor dimer stimulated binding at 4 degrees C. The addition of purified erythrocyte membrane protein band 4.1 to spectrin- reconstituted vesicles doubled their actin-binding capacity. Trypsinization of unreconstituted vesicles that contain < 10% of the spectrin but nearly all of the band 4.1, relative to ghosts, decreased their F-actin-binding capacity by 70%. Whereas little or none of the residual spectrin was affected by trypsinization, band 4.1 was significantly degraded. Our results show that spectrin can anchor actin filaments to the cytoplasmic surface of erythrocyte membranes and suggest that band 4.1 may be importantly involved in the association.