Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stochastic Volatility Corrections for Interest Rate Derivatives

We study simple models of short rates such as the Vasicek or CIR models, and compute corrections that come from the presence of fast mean‐reverting stochastic volatility. We show how these small corrections can affect the shape of the term structure of interest rates giving a simple and efficient calibration tool. This is used to price other derivatives such as bond options. The analysis extends the asymptotic method developed for equity derivatives in Fouque, Papanicolaou, and Sircar (2000b) . The assumptions and effectiveness of the theory are tested on yield curve data.
On the optimal nesting order for computing N-relational joins

Using the nested loops method, this paper addresses the problem of minimizing the number of page fetches necessary to evaluate a given query to a relational database. We first propose a data structure whereby the number of page fetches required for query evaluation is substantially reduced and then derive a formula for the expected number of page fetches. An optimal solution to our problem is the nesting order of relations in the evaluation program, which minimizes the number of page fetches. Since the minimization of the formula is NP-hard, as shown in the Appendix, we propose a heuristic algorithm which produces a good suboptimal solution in polynomial time. For the special case where the input query is a “tree query,” we present an efficient algorithm for finding an optimal nesting order.
Genomic Sequence of an Otitis Media Isolate of Nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae: Comparative Study with H. influenzae Serotype d, Strain KW20

ABSTRACT In 1995, the Institute for Genomic Research completed the genome sequence of a rough derivative of Haemophilus influenzae serotype d, strain KW20. Although extremely useful in understanding the basic biology of H. influenzae, these data have not provided significant insight into disease caused by nontypeable H. influenzae, as serotype d strains are not pathogens. In contrast, strains of nontypeable H. influenzae are the primary pathogens of chronic and recurrent otitis media in children. In addition, these organisms have an important role in acute otitis media in children as well as other respiratory diseases. Such strains must therefore contain a gene repertoire that differs from that of strain Rd. Elucidation of the differences between these genomes will thus provide insight into the pathogenic mechanisms of nontypeable H. influenzae. The genome of a representative nontypeable H. influenzae strain, 86-028NP, isolated from a patient with chronic otitis media was therefore sequenced and annotated. Despite large regions of synteny with the strain Rd genome, there are large rearrangements in strain 86-028NP's genome architecture relative to the strain Rd genome. A genomic island similar to an island originally identified in H. influenzae type b is present in the strain 86-028NP genome, while the mu-like phage present in the strain Rd genome is absent from the strain 86-028NP genome. Two hundred eighty open reading frames were identified in the strain 86-028NP genome that were absent from the strain Rd genome. These data provide new insight that complements and extends the ongoing analysis of nontypeable H. influenzae virulence determinants.
Effective Dysphonia Detection Using Feature Dimension Reduction and Kernel Density Estimation for Patients with Parkinson’s Disease

Detection of dysphonia is useful for monitoring the progression of phonatory impairment for patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD), and also helps assess the disease severity. This paper describes the statistical pattern analysis methods to study different vocal measurements of sustained phonations. The feature dimension reduction procedure was implemented by using the sequential forward selection (SFS) and kernel principal component analysis (KPCA) methods. Four selected vocal measures were projected by the KPCA onto the bivariate feature space, in which the class-conditional feature densities can be approximated with the nonparametric kernel density estimation technique. In the vocal pattern classification experiments, Fisher’s linear discriminant analysis (FLDA) was applied to perform the linear classification of voice records for healthy control subjects and PD patients, and the maximum a posteriori (MAP) decision rule and support vector machine (SVM) with radial basis function kernels were employed for the nonlinear classification tasks. Based on the KPCA-mapped feature densities, the MAP classifier successfully distinguished 91.8% voice records, with a sensitivity rate of 0.986, a specificity rate of 0.708, and an area value of 0.94 under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. The diagnostic performance provided by the MAP classifier was superior to those of the FLDA and SVM classifiers. In addition, the classification results indicated that gender is insensitive to dysphonia detection, and the sustained phonations of PD patients with minimal functional disability are more difficult to be correctly identified.
Engineering for Sustainable Energy Education within Suburban, Urban and Developing Secondary Schools

It is crucial that the younger generation be included in the conversation of sustainable development, given the urgent need of a global transition to cleaner energy solutions. Sustainable energy engineering (SEE) taught as early as secondary school can not only increase the number of students that will potentially study engineering to solve global energy issues, but also will spread a social awareness across the students themselves, their families and their communities. This literary review gathers articles that study different methods in teaching SEE across different secondary schooling demographics in an effort to compose a future curriculum that can be used to implement SEE in a range of high-school settings. Some key results found were that most research gaps in SEE were identified in urban schools, whereas college programmes hold many resources that would be beneficial to promoting SEE but are not implemented on a high-school level.
An RF Pulse Width Modulator for Switch-Mode Power Amplification of Varying Envelope Signals

This paper presents the design of a RF pulse width modulator (RF-PWM) for switched-mode power amplification of varying envelope signals. The general idea is to modulate the varying envelope signal using squarewave signals with varying width and subsequently drive a class D-type power amplifier. The linearity in the modulator is ensured by a novel combination of low frequency feedback combined with predistortion. Measurements on a frequency wise down-scaled prototype show that the RF-PWM modulator modulates a UMTS signal with more than 17 dB margin to the modulation mask and EVM below 0.5% RMS. This leads to the conclusion that sufficient linearity and modulation accuracy can be obtained using RF pulse width modulation
A Possible World Approach to Uncertain Relational Data

Data exchange between embedded systems and other small or large computing device increases. Since data in different data sources may refer to the same real world objects, data cannot simply be merged. Furthermore, in many situations, conflicts in data about the same real world objects need to be resolved without interference from a user. We report on an attempt to make a RDBMS probabilistic, i.e., data in a relation represents all possible views on the real world, in order to achieve unattended data integration. We define a probabilistic relational data model and review standard SQL query primitives in the light of probabilistic data. It appears that thinking in terms of 'possible worlds' is powerful in determining the proper semantics of these query primitives.
Intervenciones de estimulación infantil temprana en los países en vías de desarrollo: Lo que funciona, por qué y para quién

Este artículo revisa la efectividad de 33 intervenciones de estimulación infantil temprana en niños de 0 a 3 años en los países en vías de desarrollo. El artículo explora bajo qué condiciones funcionan estos programas, por qué y para qué poblaciones presentan mayor efectividad. Se concluye que las intervenciones de mayor intensidad y de mayor duración son las más eficaces. Además, estas intervenciones para ser más efectivas deben centrarse en los niños más pequeños así como los más desfavorecidos, y también buscar activamente la participación de las familias y los cuidadores. Sin embargo, aún se necesitan más estudios para determinar la edad óptima de intervención y las modalidades de entrega del servicio más costo-efectivas.
SEONSORS FOR TRACKING , TRIGGERING AND INITIAL 3 D MODELING

We propose a novel face capture system for security gateways which allows for inexpensive rapid automated or computer-aided face-based person authentication employing 3D head and face data. By face-based person authentication we refer to the process of comparing the appearance of a person to a visual representation of that person stored on a security document. This comparison can be done either manually or automatically and the data to be compared may be a standard facial image or a 3D representation of the person’s head, depending on the capabilities of the security document. We propose algorithms for 3D reconstruction of persons passing the security gate as well as for head pose estimation and compensation to enable precise alignment of the 3D representation to be compared to the document. Furthermore, we show how eyeglasses affect reconstruction results and propose methods to compensate for these effects as on-going research.
A Candida‐specific antibody in patients with vaginitis

FIGURE: Reactivity of human sera against proteins of C. albicans, identified by Western blot analysis. Vaginal swabs from patients 1, 3 and 6 were positive for C. albicans; the remainder were negative. Lane M shows a monospecific antiserum against the 47-kD protein. Asked if they would take a refresher course if one was offered by a local instructor, 69% of divers replied that they would (73% of those unable to correctly complete the profiles were willing to take a refresher course). The implication of these findings is that many certified divers may be at risk of decompression sickness as a result of their inability to effectively plan their diving activities. On commercial charters supervisors will assist with dive planning, but professional guidance is not always available to the private recreational diver. Certifying agencies should be aware that many scuba divers are probably embarrassed about forgetting skills they learned during open water training, though they are willing to take a refresher course if one is offered. Clearly a number of major accident risks may be avoided through increasing the availability of diver retraining. Jeffrey Wilks, PhD Psychologist University College of Central Queensland Rockhampton, QLD 4702 I. Department of Industrial Affairs, Workplace Health and Safety Regulations. Brisbane: Queensland Government Printer, 1989.
Mutation Analysis Approach to Develop Reliable Object-Oriented Software

In general, modern programs are large and complex and it is essential that they should be highly reliable in applications. In order to develop highly reliable software, Java programming language developer provides a rich set of exceptions and exception handling mechanisms. Exception handling mechanisms are intended to help developers build robust programs. Given a program with exception handling constructs, for an effective testing, we are to detect whether all possible exceptions are raised and caught or not. However, complex exception handling constructs make it tedious to trace which exceptions are handled and where and which exceptions are passed on. In this paper, we address this problem and propose a mutation analysis approach to develop reliable object-oriented programs. We have applied a number of mutation operators to create a large set of mutant programs with different type of faults. We then generate test cases and test data to uncover exception related faults. The test suite so obtained is applied to the mutant programs measuring the mutation score and hence verifying whether mutant programs are effective or not. We have tested our approach with a number of case studies to substantiate the efficacy of the proposed mutation analysis technique.
Emulation-based fault injection in circuits with embedded memories

FPGA emulation has proven to be a performance effective method to analyse the behaviour of digital circuits in the presence of soft errors due to SEU effects. In particular, the recently developed autonomous emulation techniques allow the classification of thousands and even millions of faults per second. In this paper, an approach to extend the autonomous emulation techniques to circuits with embedded memories is presented. The LEON2 processor benchmark is used to demonstrate as an application for the proposed techniques
Learning from Imbalanced Data for Predicting the Number of Software Defects

Predicting the number of defects in software modules can be more helpful in the case of limited testing resources. The highly imbalanced distribution of the target variable values (i.e., the number of defects) degrades the performance of models for predicting the number of defects. As the first effort of an in-depth study, this paper explores the potential of using resampling techniques and ensemble learning techniques to learn from imbalanced defect data for predicting the number of defects. We study the use of two extended resampling strategies (i.e., SMOTE and RUS) for regression problem and an ensemble learning technique (i.e., the AdaBoost. R2 algorithm) to handle imbalanced defect data for predicting the number of defects. We refer to the extension of SMOTE and RUS for predicting the Number of Defects as SmoteND and RusND, respectively. Experimental results on 6 datasets with two performance measures show that these approaches are effective in handling imbalanced defect data. To further improve the performance of these approaches, we propose two novel hybrid resampling/boosting algorithms, called SmoteNDBoost and RusNDBoost, which introduce SmoteND and RusND into the AdaBoost. R2 algorithm, respectively. Experimental results show that SmoteNDBoost and RusNDBoost both outperform their individual components (i.e., SmoteND, RusND and AdaBoost. R2).
Primary Prevention of Stroke by Healthy Lifestyle

Background— The combination of healthy lifestyle factors is associated with lower risk of coronary heart disease, diabetes, and total cardiovascular disease. Little is known about the impact of multiple lifestyle factors on the risk of stroke. Methods and Results— We conducted a prospective cohort study among 43 685 men from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study and 71 243 women from the Nurses’ Health Study. Diet and other lifestyle factors were updated from self-reported questionnaires. We defined a low-risk lifestyle as not smoking, a body mass index <25 kg/m2, ≥30 min/d of moderate activity, modest alcohol consumption (men, 5 to 30 g/d; women, 5 to 15 g/d), and scoring within the top 40% of a healthy diet score. We documented 1559 strokes (853 ischemic, 278 hemorrhagic) among women and 994 strokes (600 ischemic, 161 hemorrhagic) among men during follow-up. Women with all 5 low-risk factors had a relative risk of 0.21 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.12, 0.36) for total and 0.19 (95% CI, 0.09, 0.40) for ischemic stroke compared with women who had none of these factors. Among men, the relative risks were 0.31 (95% CI, 0.19, 0.53) for total and 0.20 (95% CI, 0.10, 0.42) for ischemic stroke for the same comparison. Among the women, 47% (95% CI, 18 to 69) of total and 54% (95% CI, 15 to 78%) of ischemic stroke cases were attributable to lack of adherence to a low-risk lifestyle; among the men, 35% (95% CI, 7 to 58) of total and 52% (95% CI, 19 to 75) of ischemic stroke may have been prevented. Conclusion— A low-risk lifestyle that is associated with a reduced risk of multiple chronic diseases also may be beneficial in the prevention of stroke, especially ischemic stroke.
The Subjectivity of Objectivity: The Social, Cultural and Political Shaping of Evidence-Based Medicine

Most critiques of evidence-based medicine (EBM) focus on the scientific shortcomings of the technique. Social scientists are more likely to criticize EBM for it ideological biases. In this chapter, we provide a different critique. Our critique does not focus on the inconsistencies and practical problems of data collection. We find EBM to be flawed, not because it fails to be scientific, but because - like all science - it imports the biases of researchers and clinicians. In this paper we explore three sources of these biases: the structural arrangement of clinical research, the cultural ideas that shape research questions and research design, and the political goals that influence how evidence is presented in the public arena. Our evidence - drawn from separate studies of 1) the funding of pharmaceutical research, 2) the use of research data to support government policy on home birth in the Netherlands, and 3) the use of previous research on adverse events in The Institute of Medicine's report on Medical Error - shows how bias finds its way into the scientific literature. If medicine wants to be truly evidence based, it has to take these structural, cultural and political biases into account when designing policies and practices.
A simple and efficient MIMO TDD transmission scheme for high-data-rate wireless downlink

A simple and efficient multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) time division duplex (TDD) transmission scheme for high-data-rate wireless downlink is proposed. This scheme can not only avoid extra signaling information and suppress transmitter channel estimation error but approximately achieve the channel capacity limit of MIMO systems whether transmit antennas are more than receive antennas or not. The data information is recovered via a simplified maximum likelihood detector which only has the complexity of a zero forcing detector. Finally, computer simulation shows the proposed scheme can attain the excellent performance, especially when it is concatenated with turbo codes. For achieving 8bit/s/Hz in a system with 8 transmit antennas and 4 receiver antennas, the needed E/sub b//N/sub 0/ is -4.84 dB which has only a loss of 1.78 dB from the capacity limit.
Combinaison de reconnaissance de la parole, reconnaissance des émotions et tête parlante codeuse en LPC pour les personnes sourdes et malentendantes

We present here an original approach based on the combination of speech recognition, emotion recognition and a talking head generating CS (Cued Speech). This approach completes a previous research that provided lip readers and, especially deaf and impaired hearing people with an artificial talking head controlled by automatic speech recognition (Labiao, 2005). The talking head can be lip read and, if needed, can produce CS (Cornett, 1967 ; Krahe et al, 2007). However, the system users require not only the linguistic content speech but also its emotional part. Hence, the talking head can be improved by the introduction of an advanced technique for the recognition and synthesis of the speaker’s emotional state. This approach belongs to the speech analysis methods, in order to create a multimodal interface between speaker and listener (hearing impaired). The aim of this interface is to improve speech recognition. MOTS-CLES : Personnes sourdes, personnes malentendantes, descripteurs acoustiques, reconnaissance de la parole, reconnaissance des emotions, tete parlante, Langage Parle Complete.
Low rates of X‐Y recombination, not turnovers, account for homomorphic sex chromosomes in several diploid species of Palearctic green toads (Bufo viridis subgroup)

Contrasting with birds and mammals, most ectothermic vertebrates present homomorphic sex chromosomes, which might be due either to a high turnover rate or to occasional X‐Y recombination. We tested these two hypotheses in a group of Palearctic green toads that diverged some 3.3 million years ago. Using sibship analyses of sex‐linked markers, we show that all four species investigated share the same pair of sex chromosomes and a pattern of male heterogamety with drastically reduced X‐Y recombination in males. Phylogenetic analyses of sex‐linked sequences show that X and Y alleles cluster by species, not by gametolog. We conclude that X‐Y homomorphy and fine‐scale sequence similarity in these species do not stem from recent sex‐chromosome turnovers, but from occasional X‐Y recombination.
Muscle Physiology and Modeling

Because they are so important for survival, muscles have evolved many complex features that enhance their strength, speed, efficiency and controllability. The model presented here consists of quantitative functions that represent each of the anatomical structures and physiological processes that underlie such features in typical mammalian skeletal muscles. These include the processes of recruitment, activation, active and passive force generation and energy consumption for the full physiological range of kinematics for both slowand fast-twitch motor units. By selecting appropriate parameters, the model can be made to represent any specific normal or pathological muscle.
Parents of Urban Adolescents in Harlem, New York, and the Internet: A Cross-sectional Survey on Preferred Resources for Health Information

Background Vulnerable populations suffer disproportionately from a variety of health conditions. Access to health information is an important component of health promotion. Reports suggest that while health providers and print media are traditional sources of information, the Internet may be becoming an increasingly important resource for consumers. Particularly, for parents of urban adolescents of color, the Internet could prove to be a valuable asset in helping them understand adolescent health and behavioral issues. Objective To determine the types of adolescent health and behavioral issues of concern to parents of color and to assess their preference for sources of health information, including the Internet. Methods A confidential, self-administered survey was administered to parents (largely of African American and Hispanic descent) of 9th-grade students over a 2-year period during 2001-2002 in Harlem, NY. The instrument assessed health and behavioral topics of concern, preferred resources for information, ownership and utilization patterns of computers and the Internet, and interest in obtaining additional computer/Internet training. Results A total of 419 surveys were completed; 165 in 2001 (67% response rate) and 254 in 2002 (no response rate available). Analysis of responses indicated a substantial degree of interest in obtaining information about a variety of adolescent health issues, including: HIV, sexually transmitted infections, , mental health concerns and relationships with family and peers. While home ownership of computers (84%) and access to the Internet were reasonably high (74%), use of the Internet for health information was low (14%). However, 62% of parents indicated a strong desire to have more instruction on computers and the Internet. Conclusions Compared to other sources of health information, the Internet is underutilized by urban parents of color. Additional research is needed to identify strategies to improve utilization and assess subsequent impact on parenting activities.