Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Essays on capital controls and exchange rate regimes

OF DISSERTATION ESSAYS ON CAPITAL CONTROLS AND EXCHANGE RATE REGIMES This dissertation consists of three essays on capital controls and exchange rate regimes. The first essay, under the background of international monetary policy trilemma, empirically investigates the validity of the proposition that holding the degree of exchange rate stability constant, a decrease in capital mobility through imposition of capital controls will enhance monetary independence. Using a panel dataset covering 88 countries for the 1995-2010 period and system GMM estimation, this paper finds that 1) capital controls help improve a country’s monetary independence; 2) the effectiveness of capital controls depends on the types of assets and the direction of flows they are imposed; 3) the choice of exchange rate regime has important impact on the effectiveness of capital controls on monetary independence. The second essay examines the role of capital controls on economic growth. Conventional wisdom suggests that allowing international capital flows improves domestic investment and growth by providing extra resources through international capital market, yet the flows can be misallocated to finance speculative or low-quality domestic investments. Using a panel dataset covering 78 countries over 1995-2009, this paper finds that 1) capital control policies promote economic growth after taking into account a country’s de facto level of capital flows; 2) controls on capital inflows helps a country’s economic growth, but not controls on outflows; 3) restrictions on different asset types affect growth differently. Capital controls on equity type flows are less effective than controls on debt type flows or direct investment. The third examines the role of exchange rate flexibility on current account balances. Global imbalances have become an important issue for economists and policy makers. Greater exchange rate flexibility is often suggested as a means to achieve faster and more efficient adjustment in the current account. However, previous empirical studies show little support for this hypothesis. This essay revisits this issue with a large panel dataset and Threshold VAR model and finds that 1) the speed of the current account adjustment is higher in a regime with greater exchange rate variability; 2) some existing popular exchange rate classifications may not capture actual exchange rate variability as well as expected.
Epigenetic loss of the PIWI/piRNA machinery in human testicular tumorigenesis

Although most cancer research has focused in mRNA, non-coding RNAs are also an essential player in tumorigenesis. In addition to the well-recognized microRNAs, recent studies have also shown that epigenetic silencing by CpG island hypermethylation of other classes of non-coding RNAs, such as transcribed ultraconserved regions (T-UCRs) or small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs), also occur in human neoplasia. Herein we have studied the putative existence of epigenetic aberrations in the activity of PIWI proteins, an Argonaute family protein subclass, and the small regulatory PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) in testicular cancer, as the PIWI/piRNA pathway plays a critical role in male germline development. We have observed the existence of promoter CpG island hypermethylation-associated silencing of PIWIL1, PIWIL2, PIWIL4, and TDRD1 in primary seminoma and non-seminoma testicular tumors, in addition to testicular germ cell tumor cell lines. Most importantly, these epigenetic lesions occur in a context of piRNA downregulation and loss of DNA methylation of the LINE-1 repetitive sequences, one of the target genomic loci where the PIWI/piRNA machinery acts as a caretaker in non-transformed cells.
Assessing the Treatment Effect Heterogeneity with a Latent Variable

The average treatment effect (ATE) is popularly used to assess the treatment effect. However, the ATE implicitly assumes a homogenous treatment effect even amongst individuals with different characteristics. In this paper, we mainly focus on assessing the treatment effect heterogeneity, which has important implications in designing the optimal individual treatment regimens and in policy making. The treatment benefit rate (TBR) and treatment harm rate (THR) have been defined to characterize the magnitude of heterogeneity for binary outcomes. When the outcomes are continuous, we extend the definitions of the TBR and THR to compare the difference between potential outcomes with a pre-specified level c. Unlike the ATE, these rates involve the joint distribution of the potential outcomes and can not be identified without further assumptions even in randomized clinical trials. In this article, we assume the potential outcomes are independent conditional on the observed covariates and an unmeasured latent variable. Under this assumption, we prove the identification of the TBR and THR in non-separable (generalized) linear models for both continuous and binary outcomes. We then propose estimators and derive their asymptotic distributions. In the simulation studies, we implement our proposed methods to assess the performance of our estimators and carry out a sensitive analysis for different underlying distribution for the latent variable. Finally, we illustrate the proposed methods in two randomized controlled trials.
On Signature Invariants for Effective Motion Trajectory Recognition

Motion trajectory can be an informative and descriptive clue that is suitable for the characterization of motion. Studying motion trajectory for effective motion description and recognition is important in many applications. For instance, motion trajectory can play an important role in the representation, recognition and learning of most long-term human or robot actions, behaviors and activities. However, effective trajectory descriptors are lacking and most reported work just uses motion trajectory in its raw data form. In this paper, we propose a novel motion trajectory signature descriptor and study its rich descriptive invariants which benefit effective motion trajectory recognition. These invariants are key measures of the flexibility and effectiveness of a descriptor. Substantial descriptive invariants can be deduced from the proposed trajectory signature, which is attributed to the computational locality of the signature components. We first present the signature definition and its robust implementation. Then the signature's invariants are elaborated. A non-linear inter-signature matching algorithm is developed to measure the signature's similarity for trajectory recognition. Experiments are conducted to recognize human sign language, in which both synthetic and real data are used to verify the signature's invariants, and to illustrate the effectiveness in the signature recognition.
Evaluation of Neural Network Accuracy for Handwritten Character Recognition

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the character recognition capability of feed-forward back-propagation neural network using more than one hidden layer. This test has been conducted on 182 different upper case letters from English alphabet. After binarization, these characters have been clubbed together to form training patterns for the neural network. Network is trained to learn its behavior by adjusting the connection strengths on each iteration. The gradient descent of each presented training pattern is calculated to identify the minima on the error surface for each training pattern.
Sparse Approximate Inverse Smoother for Multigrid

Various forms of sparse approximate inverses (SAI) have been shown to be useful for preconditioning. Their potential usefulness in a parallel environment has motivated much interest in recent years. However, the capability of an approximate inverse in eliminating the local error has not yet been fully exploited in multigrid algorithms. A careful examination of the iteration matrices of these approximate inverses indicates their superiority in smoothing the high-frequency error in addition to their inherent parallelism. We propose a new class of SAI smoothers in this paper and present their analytic smoothing factors for constant coefficient PDEs. The following are several distinctive features that make this technique special: By adjusting the quality of the approximate inverse, the smoothing factor can be improved accordingly. For hard problems, this is useful. In contrast to the ordering sensitivity of other smoothing techniques, this technique is ordering independent. In general, the sequential performance of many superior parallel algorithms is not very competitive. This technique is useful in both parallel and sequential computations. Our theoretical and numerical results have demonstrated the effectiveness of this new technique.
What Develops in Informal Theories of Development

Individuals of all ages hold coherent, theory-like beliefs in a variety of realms that may be at odds with formal, academic theory. Research on such informal theories suggests that individuals may develop tey concepts in ways that are ontologically incompatible with the same concepts as they exist in formal or academic theories. This incompatibility may be a major obstacle to learning formal versions of theories. In a study that used previous work on concept development, nine individuals were interviewed about their informal theories of child development. Subjects included three first-year university students, three experienced early childhood teachers who had 7-10 years in the classroom but were not themselves parents, and three experienced parpnts of 2-3 children, each in grade school. Interview questions focused on three themes: What are children like? How do children change over time? and, How do children differ from each other? Results showed that all subjects held coherent theories about child development, with important differences in ontolog.i. cal emphases. Students described child development as an abstraction more than teachers, who described the concept in terms of here-and-now choices made by very young children, or parents, who described the concept in terms of personal biography and long-term change. (AC) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ***********************************************************************
Modeling video viewing behaviors for viewer state estimation

Human gaze behaviors when watching videos reflect their cognitive states as well as characteristics of the video scenes being watched. Our goal is to establish a method to estimate the viewer states from his/her eye movements toward general videos, such as TV news and commercials. The proposed method is based on a novel model of video viewing behaviors, which takes into account structural and statistical relationships between video dynamics, gaze dynamics and viewer states. This model realizes statistical learning of gaze information while considering dynamic characteristics of video scenes to achieve viewer-state estimation. In this paper, we present an overview of the viewer-state estimation method based on the model of video-viewing behaviors, including several past work done by the author's team.
Pre-Existing Tumor-Sensitized T Cells Are Essential for Eradication of Established Tumors by IL-12 and Cyclophosphamide Plus IL-121

The antitumor immune response activated by IL-12, especially by a combination of cyclophosphamide and IL-12 (Cy+IL-12), is clinically significant in certain experimental tumor models, in that a number of well-established (10–20 mm in diameter) s.c. tumors are completely eradicated. Furthermore, Cy+IL-12 treatment is also able to eradicate well-established grossly detectable experimental lung metastases and advanced ascites tumors. Despite the dramatic antitumor effects seen in some tumor models, Cy+IL-12 fails to induce regression of other established tumors. Characterization of tumor immunogenicity shows that all tumors responding to IL-12 and Cy+IL-12 treatments are immunogenic tumors, in that an antitumor immune response is detectable in tumor-bearing hosts upon tumor establishment. In contrast, none of the nonimmunogenic tumor responds to IL-12 and Cy+IL-12 treatments. Analysis of cellular requirements for successful tumor rejection through an adoptive cell transfer approach reveals that the presence of tumor-sensitized, but not naive, T cells is essential for tumor rejection by IL-12 and Cy+IL-12. Transfer of these tumor-sensitized T cells must be conducted before, but not after, IL-12 treatment in order for tumor rejection to occur. The requirement of sensitized T cells is also tumor specific. In mice bearing immunogenic tumors, the presence of pre-existing tumor-sensitized T cells is demonstrated by adoptive cell transfer experiments using purified spleen T cells from these mice. Results from our study show that Cy+IL-12-based immunotherapy of cancer may be highly effective and that pre-existing tumor-sensitized T cells are essential for the success of the therapy.
The HiSIM compact model family for integrated devices containing a surface-potential MOSFET core

HiSIM (Hiroshima university Starc Igfet Model) is the name of a surface-potential-based compact model for advanced sub-100nm scale MOSFET, which we are developing since more than a decade. HiSIM has evolved into one of the worlds leading MOSFET models for circuit simulation, practically applied by the semiconductor industry. More recently, the HiSIM approach of a consistently potential-based modeling has been successfully extended to a broad range of integrated devices which have a MOSFET core in common, including SOI-MOSFET (HiSIM-SOI), high-voltage MOSFET (HiSIM-HV), Insulated-Gate-Bipolar Transistor (HiSIM-IGBT), thin-film transistor (HiSIM-TFT), MOS varactor (HiSIM-VAR) and Double-Gate MOSFET (HiSIM-DG). The presentation will give an outline of the surface-potential-based solutions applied in the HiSIM compact model and the methods for consistently potential-based extensions to derive compact models for all integrated devices which contain a MOSFET core.
Child and adolescent health and development.

22 C and Adolescent Health. The WHO/UNICEF Regional Child Survival Strategy was endorsed by the Regional Committee for the Western Pacific at its fifty-sixth session in September 2005. The Strategy is now being used by Member States as an advocacy tool and guide in their efforts to reduce inequities in child survival. It also is expected to accelerate progress towards the achievement of the health-related Millennium Development Goals.
GUICOP: Specification-Based GUI Testing

Typically, oracles used to test graphical user interface(GUI) programs highly depend on environmental factors that are not related to the functionality of the program, such as screen resolution and color schemes. To accommodate these on-functional variations, researchers suggested fuzzy comparison rules that determine whether the output of a GUI program matches the oracles. Others suggested computer vision based solutions that make use of computationally expensive image processing techniques to abstract the strict comparisons. Alternatively, we propose GUICOP, a system that checks whether a trace of a GUI execution violates a given GUI specification. GUICOP is composed of a GUI specification language, instrumented GUI libraries, and a checker. The alphabet of the specification language contains basic geometric shapes describing GUI components, events, and positional and temporal operators that express relative object positions and event timings, respectively. During program execution, the instrumented libraries capture positional and temporal information of components and associated triggered events in execution traces. The checker determines whether the traces satisfy the specifications. To evaluate GUICOP, we wrote 50 use cases that describe real GUI applications and used the GUICOP checker on the supported cases that successfully revealed violations.
Evaluation of a video based fall recognition system for elders using voxel space

 Abstract —Video is a rich source of information that can be used to passively monitor the activity of elders. The amount of information contained in video is significantly greater than other sensing technologies such as RFID tags and motion sensors. Privacy of residents is preserved by not using the raw video, but instead, extracting binary silhouette maps, which represent the pixels a person occupies in an image. Silhouettes acquired from multiple cameras viewing the same scene are used to build a three-dimensional object whose activity is linguistically summarized for activity monitoring. These linguistic summarizations are used for abnormal event detection, specifically for the automated detection of falls. In this paper, we present three measures for system performance evaluation and discuss successes and difficulties in video-based human activity recognition of falls.
Gaze cursor during distant collaborative programming: a preliminary analysis

The geographical distribution of working force creates a challenge for effective team collaboration. When face to face contact is missing, the quality of communication decreases. We study the ways of improving synchronous collaboration over distance by displaying the gaze locations of the collaborators in a shared workspace. In an experiment, we evaluated the effects of seeing the gaze location of an expert programmer when de- scribing two algorithms to a group of novice programmers. Here we focus on an analysis of the global fixational measures. Our preliminary results show that seeing the gaze while comprehending had no effects on the outcome of collaboration. However, seeing the gaze cursor of the expert resulted in different behaviors than when it was not available.
Community Engagement in Portland Oregon, Linking Asset Decisions to Community Values

This paper describes how Portland Transportation faces an asset renewal gap of $249 million. In 2005, newly elected officials and transportation management embraced community dialogue to identify $8 million in budget reduction choices and $46 million over five years. It describes how asset management as an approach to decision making across city services is just beginning in Portland. In part, this is due to a change in political and managerial leadership. Long-term success depends on the community weighing in on their choices and government agencies applying resources to develop a culture based on asset management processes, credible information and performance reporting that support informed decision making.
Iyengar Yoga Increases Cardiac Parasympathetic Nervous Modulation Among Healthy Yoga Practitioners

Relaxation techniques are established in managing of cardiac patients during rehabilitation aiming to reduce future adverse cardiac events. It has been hypothesized that relaxation-training programs may significantly improve cardiac autonomic nervous tone. However, this has not been proven for all available relaxation techniques. We tested this assumption by investigating cardiac vagal modulation during yoga.We examined 11 healthy yoga practitioners (7 women and 4 men, mean age: 43 ± 11; range: 26–58 years). Each individual was subjected to training units of 90 min once a week over five successive weeks. During two sessions, they practiced a yoga program developed for cardiac patients by B.K. S. Iyengar. On three sessions, they practiced a placebo program of relaxation. On each training day they underwent ambulatory 24 h Holter monitoring. The group of yoga practitioners was compared to a matched group of healthy individuals not practicing any relaxation techniques. Parameters of heart rate variability (HRV) were determined hourly by a blinded observer. Mean RR interval (interval between two R-waves of the ECG) was significantly higher during the time of yoga intervention compared to placebo and to control (P < 0.001 for both). The increase in HRV parameters was significantly higher during yoga exercise than during placebo and control especially for the parameters associated with vagal tone, i.e. mean standard deviation of NN (Normal Beat to Normal Beat of the ECG) intervals for all 5-min intervals (SDNNi, P < 0.001 for both) and root mean square successive difference (rMSSD, P < 0.01 for both). In conclusion, relaxation by yoga training is associated with a significant increase of cardiac vagal modulation. Since this method is easy to apply with no side effects, it could be a suitable intervention in cardiac rehabilitation programs.
Image gradient index for classifying digital camera and scanned images

This paper presents a new method for distinguishing images captured using digital camera from that using scanner. The method is based on the concept that the residual noise present in images capture device always distorts the directional change in the intensity or color in an image i.e. image gradient, and the resultant distortions are greatly obtained from printing and scanning process, compared to photography process. Hence, the gradient index values of scanned images derived from gradient values of such image should be lower than the ones obtained from photographic images. Based on the above concept, we propose a method for classifying digital camera and scanned images using image gradient index. The proposed method is tested and its performance is evaluated. The experimental results show that the classification performance up to 95% on average can be achieved using our method achieved.
A randomized clinical trial of cognitive behavioral therapy and interpersonal psychotherapy for panic disorder with agoraphobia

Background Interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) seems to be as effective as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in the treatment of major depression. Because the onset of panic attacks is often related to increased interpersonal life stress, IPT has the potential to also treat panic disorder. To date, a preliminary open trial yielded promising results but there have been no randomized controlled trials directly comparing CBT and IPT for panic disorder. Method This study aimed to directly compare the effects of CBT versus IPT for the treatment of panic disorder with agoraphobia. Ninety-one adult patients with a primary diagnosis of DSM-III or DSM-IV panic disorder with agoraphobia were randomized. Primary outcomes were panic attack frequency and an idiosyncratic behavioral test. Secondary outcomes were panic and agoraphobia severity, panic-related cognitions, interpersonal functioning and general psychopathology. Measures were taken at 0, 3 and 4 months (baseline, end of treatment and follow-up). Results Intention-to-treat (ITT) analyses on the primary outcomes indicated superior effects for CBT in treating panic disorder with agoraphobia. Per-protocol analyses emphasized the differences between treatments and yielded larger effect sizes. Reductions in the secondary outcomes were equal for both treatments, except for agoraphobic complaints and behavior and the credibility ratings of negative interpretations of bodily sensations, all of which decreased more in CBT. Conclusions CBT is the preferred treatment for panic disorder with agoraphobia compared to IPT. Mechanisms of change should be investigated further, along with long-term outcomes.