Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Discussion of "Interbank Lending, Credit-Risk Premia, and Collateral" ∗

The paper by Heider and Hoerova (2009) is ambitious. It studies the interaction between secured interbank lending, unsecured interbank lending, and banks’ portfolio choices. It is motivated by a puzzling empirical observation, namely the “decoupling of secured and unsecured lending rates” in the Great Financial Crisis of 2007–09. The observation made by Heider and Hoerova is that on August 9, 2007, not only did secured three-month interbank rates start to exhibit historically unprecedented discounts to unsecured rates, but the time-series behavior of both rates began to diverge as never before. Furthermore, the discount of secured interbank rates fluctuated more strongly in the United States than in the euro area. While the evidence consists of only two plots of time series, it is obvious without any further econometric analysis that the phenomenon is there and is significant. The simple observation that unsecured lending became more expensive than secured lending in a period of financial turbulence is not surprising. Any model of lending will produce this result. What is puzzling is the decoupling of the time-series behavior. In order to address this puzzle, Heider and Hoerova propose a model of interbank borrowing that imbeds both types of interbank markets into a model of bank portfolio management under investment risk. This model exhibits a key feature of what seems to have occurred after August 2007: the dramatic change in the risk of bank portfolios has affected secured and unsecured interbank rates differently. While this result is derived in an essentially static model, it is plausible and contributes greatly to our understanding of the crisis.
Description and Microbiology of Endotracheal Tube Biofilm in Mechanically Ventilated Subjects

BACKGROUND: A biofilm is found on the inner side of endotracheal tubes (ETT) in mechanically ventilated patients, but its features and role in pneumonia remain unclear. METHODS: This prospective, observational, monocentric study included critically ill ventilated subjects. Measurement of the ETT inner volume was first performed before extubation using the acoustic reflection method. After extubation, the biofilm was studied by means of optical and atomic force microscopy. Bacteriological analysis was then performed and compared with clinical documentation. RESULTS: Twenty-four subjects were included. Duration of intubation lasted from 2 to 79 d (mean ± SD: 11 ± 15 d). The mean percentage of ETT volume loss evaluated in situ (n = 21) was 7.1% and was not linked with the duration of intubation. Analyses with atomic force microscopy (n = 6) showed a full coverage of the inner part of the tube with biofilm, even after saline rinse. Its thickness ranged from 0.8 to 5 μm. Bacteriological cultures of the biofilm (n = 22) often showed the same bacteria as in tracheal secretions, especially for pathogenic organisms. Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Candida albicans were among the most frequent microorganisms. In subjects who had experienced a successfully treated episode of ventilator-associated pneumonia (n = 5), the responsible bacteria were still present in the biofilm. CONCLUSIONS: ETT biofilm is always present in intubated patients whatever the duration of intubation and appears quickly after intubation. Even after soft rinse, a small but measurable part of biofilm remains always present, and seems strongly adherent to the ETT lumen. It contains potentially pathogenic bacteria for the lung.
NILAI-NILAI EDUKATIF SYAIR GULUNG SEBAGAI UPAYA PENDIDIKAN KEBENCANAAN BERBASIS KOMUNITAS PADA MASYARAKAT MELAYU DI KABUPATEN KETAPANG KALIMANTAN BARAT

This research aims to know and describe about 1) background of Syair Gulung in Ketapang Malay society of West Kalimantan, 2) Educative values contained in Syair Gulung, 3) Potential of Syair Gulung as a community-based disaster education efforts in Ketapang Malay society. This research uses qualitative research method with form of stuck case study strategy. Sources of data used are informants, places and events, and documents. Data collection techniques used direct observation techniques, in-depth interviews, and document studies. The sampling technique used is purposive sampling. Data validity uses triangulation and data analysis techniques using interactive analysis techniques. Syair Gulung is a typical Malay cultural art. The educational values that exist in the Syair Gulung can be developed as a tool of dissemination of disaster education which recently happened such as forest fire and flood. Natural disasters that occur in the Ketapang community can not be separated from the fading and shifting values of local wisdom that developed in the community. As a preventive form for the preservation of the natural environment, it reinvents the educational values implicit in Syair Gulung contributing greatly in the effort to preserve the nature of the disaster. Educational theories of local wisdom and disaster risk education are important in helping the realization of a disaster-conscious society. Community communities are highly effective targets for awareness of the importance of disaster education.
Information technology adoption among selected SMI owners in Malaysia: Implication to training

This paper examines the extent of Information Technology (IT) skill, usage and adoption among Small and Medium Industries (SMIs) owners in Malaysia.It also identifies the innovation characteristics and adopters categories among the SMI owners.There are 383 SMI owners participated in this study.The findings show that the IT skills possessed by the SMI owners in Malaysia are poor; the usage of IT is low and the adoption of IT is slow and late.The implications of the study are discussed.
A 7.5Gb/s 10-Tap DFE Receiver with First Tap Partial Response, Spectrally Gated Adaptation, and 2nd-Order Data-Filtered CDR

A 7.5Gb/s receiver has a 3-level DFE architecture to satisfy feedback timing requirements for 10 post-cursor taps. The receiver includes a second-order CDR with partial-response transition data filtering as well as a spectrally gated adaptation engine to prevent equalization updates during poor data patterns. The receiver consumes 136mW in a 90nm CMOS process
X10-based distributed and parallel betweenness centrality and its application to social analytics

Betweenness centrality is a measure that determines the relative importance of a vertex (or an edge) within a graph based on shortest paths. Recently, large-scale graphs have emerged in many different domains, as social networks, road networks, protein interaction networks, etc., and they are too large to fit into the memory of a single SMP. The algorithm proposed by Edmonds et al. [1] is capable of running on distributed memory systems. However, the algorithm does not expose intra-node parallelism. In this paper we investigated the inter- and intra-node parallelism of computing betweenness centrality on distributed memory systems. We developed the implementation based on the algorithm proposed by Edmonds et al. using X10 programming language [2]. We further improved the performance of the implementation by optimizing the network transport of the X10 runtime. We thoroughly evaluated the performance of our implementation on synthetic graphs of various scales against the existing implementation of Edmonds' algorithm from PBGL. We estimated the betweenness centrality of the huge Twitter networks [3] and found that its distribution follows a power law.
Parallelization of the Trinity Pipeline for De Novo Transcriptome Assembly

This paper details a distributed-memory implementation of Chrysalis, part of the popular Trinity workflow used for de novo transcripto me assembly. We have implemented changes to Chrysalis, which was previously multi-threaded for shared-memory architectures, to change it to a hybrid implementation which uses both MPI and OpenMP. With the new hybrid implementation, we report speedups of about a factor of twenty for both Graph From Fasta and Reads To Transcripts on an iDataPlex cluster for a sugar beet dataset containing around 130 million reads. Along with the hybrid implementation, we also use PyFasta to speed up Bowtie execution by a factor of three which is also part of the Trinity workflow. Overall, we reduce the runtime of the Chrysalis step of the Trinity workflow from over 50 hours to less than 5 hours for the sugar beet dataset. By enabling the use of multi-node clusters, this implementation is a significant step towards making de novo transcripto me assembly feasible for ever bigger transcripto me datasets.
System modeling and stability design for peak current-mode buck power converter

In this paper, a small-signal model of a kind of peak current-mode pulse-width-modulation (PWM) control buck converter is presented which uses the circuit state average approach and combines with the consideration of influence by load change, and mutual effect between voltage feedback loop and current feedback loop. Based on the small-signal model, this paper proposes a novel method of systematic stability design. The principle is, firstly, just considering the stability design of current inner loop by cutting off the voltage outer loop; when the current inner loop compensation succeeds; we close the inner loop and complete the design of outer loop compensation. Consequently the stability design of the whole systematic circuit completes. This paper also gives a brief discuss on the issue of input immunity and output immunity. Finally, by using Matlab Simulink, based on system equivalent model which is established in this paper, and Hsipce, based on transistor-level circuit, this paper works out the system transient response simulation. Results from the simulation show that the system small-signal model proposed in this paper is reasonable, and the system-level design based on the model is feasible. Also, it is capable to enhance the system stability and has good input and output immunity.
The Structure of an NDR/LATS Kinase–Mob Complex Reveals a Novel Kinase–Coactivator System and Substrate Docking Mechanism

Eukaryotic cells commonly use protein kinases in signaling systems that relay information and control a wide range of processes. These enzymes have a fundamentally similar structure, but achieve functional diversity through variable regions that determine how the catalytic core is activated and recruited to phosphorylation targets. “Hippo” pathways are ancient protein kinase signaling systems that control cell proliferation and morphogenesis; the NDR/LATS family protein kinases, which associate with “Mob” coactivator proteins, are central but incompletely understood components of these pathways. Here we describe the crystal structure of budding yeast Cbk1–Mob2, to our knowledge the first of an NDR/LATS kinase–Mob complex. It shows a novel coactivator-organized activation region that may be unique to NDR/LATS kinases, in which a key regulatory motif apparently shifts from an inactive binding mode to an active one upon phosphorylation. We also provide a structural basis for a substrate docking mechanism previously unknown in AGC family kinases, and show that docking interaction provides robustness to Cbk1’s regulation of its two known in vivo substrates. Co-evolution of docking motifs and phosphorylation consensus sites strongly indicates that a protein is an in vivo regulatory target of this hippo pathway, and predicts a new group of high-confidence Cbk1 substrates that function at sites of cytokinesis and cell growth. Moreover, docking peptides arise in unstructured regions of proteins that are probably already kinase substrates, suggesting a broad sequential model for adaptive acquisition of kinase docking in rapidly evolving intrinsically disordered polypeptides.
Cryoelectron Tomographic Analysis of an HIV-neutralizing Protein and Its Complex with Native Viral gp120*

Identifying structural determinants of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) neutralization is an important component of rational drug and vaccine design. We used cryoelectron tomography and atomic force microscopy to characterize the structure of an extremely potent HIV-neutralizing protein, D1D2-Igαtp (abbreviated as D1D2-IgP), a polyvalent antibody construct that presents dodecameric CD4 in place of the Fab regions. We show that D1D2-IgP has a novel structure, displaying greater flexibility of its antibody arms than the closely related IgM. Using simian immunodeficiency virus in complex with D1D2-IgP, we present unequivocal evidence that D1D2-IgP can cross-link surface spikes on the same virus and on neighboring viruses. The observed binding to the viral envelope spikes is the result of specific CD4-gp120 interaction, because binding was not observed with MICA-IgP, a construct that is identical to D1D2-IgP except that major histocompatibility complex Class I-related Chain A (MICA) replaces the CD4 moiety. CD4-mediated binding was also associated with a significantly elevated proportion of ruptured viruses. The ratio of inactivated to CD4-liganded gp120-gp41 spikes can be much greater than 1:1, because all gp120-gp41 spikes on the closely apposed surfaces of cross-linked viruses should be incapable of accessing the target cell surface and mediating entry, as a result of inter-virus spike cross-linking. These results implicate flexibility rather than steric bulk or polyvalence per se as a structural explanation for the extreme potency of D1D2-IgP and thus suggest polyvalence presented on a flexible scaffold as a key design criterion for small molecule HIV entry inhibitors.
Do you see what I am saying? Exploring visual enhancement of speech comprehension in noisy environments.

Viewing a speaker's articulatory movements substantially improves a listener's ability to understand spoken words, especially under noisy environmental conditions. It has been claimed that this gain is most pronounced when auditory input is weakest, an effect that has been related to a well-known principle of multisensory integration--"inverse effectiveness. " In keeping with the predictions of this principle, the present study showed substantial gain in multisensory speech enhancement at even the lowest signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) used (-24 dB), but it was also evident that there was a "special zone" at a more intermediate SNR of -12 dB where multisensory integration was additionally enhanced beyond the predictions of this principle. As such, we show that inverse effectiveness does not strictly apply to the multisensory enhancements seen during audiovisual speech perception. Rather, the gain from viewing visual articulations is maximal at intermediate SNRs, well above the lowest auditory SNR where the recognition of whole words is significantly different from zero. We contend that the multisensory speech system is maximally tuned for SNRs between extremes, where the system relies on either the visual (speech-reading) or the auditory modality alone, forming a window of maximal integration at intermediate SNR levels. At these intermediate levels, the extent of multisensory enhancement of speech recognition is considerable, amounting to more than a 3-fold performance improvement relative to an auditory-alone condition.
Upsides to Dark and Downsides to Bright Personality: A Multidomain Review and Future Research Agenda

It has become common practice to refer to personality traits as being either bright or dark, and a wealth of research has provided support for the effects of both bright traits and dark traits in organizations. This research has largely focused on explaining the downside of dark traits and the upside of bright traits. However, a recent trend has emerged in which scholars are challenging the long-standing convention that bright traits are always beneficial and dark traits are always detrimental. Instead, novel research has begun to explore the potential upside of dark traits and downside of bright traits. In this review, we adopt a multidomain perspective—integrating work from organizational behavior, human resources, strategic management, and entrepreneurship—to highlight this growing body of research. Specifically, we focus on the work advancing our understanding of the complexity of personality, such as identifying situations in which dark traits may be advantageous or beneficial and detecting curvilinear effects that suggest too much of a bright trait may be disadvantageous. Furthermore, we provide a brief discussion on special considerations for the measurement of both bright and dark traits and close with a series of avenues for future research.
Adverse outcome of infants with metastatic neuroblastoma, MYCN amplification and/or bone lesions: results of the French Society of Pediatric Oncology

To assess the relevance of MYCN amplification and bone lesions in stage 4 neuroblastoma (NB) in infants aged <1 year, 51 infants with stage 4 NB were enrolled. Three groups of patients were defined according to the type of metastases and the resectability of the primary tumour. Group I comprised 21 infants with radiologically detectable bone lesions, Group II 22 patients with an unresectable primary tumour and Group III eight patients with only metaiodobenzylguanidine (MIBG) skeletal uptake. MYCN oncogene content was assayed in 47/51 tumours and found to be amplified in 17 (37%). The 5-year event-free survival (EFS) rate of these 51 infants was 64.1% (± 7.1%). In a univariate analysis, bone lesions, MYCN amplification, urinary vanillylmandelic/homovanillic acid ratio and serum ferritin levels adversely influenced outcome. In the multivariate analysis, radiologically detectable bone lesions were the most powerful unfavourable prognostic indicator: the EFS rate was 27.2% for these infants compared to 90% for infants without bone lesions (P < 0.0001). Our data emphasize the poor prognosis of infants affected by stage 4 NB with bone lesions, especially when associated with MYCN amplification. Given the poor results in this group whatever the treatment, new therapeutic approaches need to be investigated in the future. © 2000 Cancer Research Campaign
Hot today, gone tomorrow: on the migration of MySpace users

While some empirical studies on Online Social Networks (OSNs) have examined the growth of these systems, little is known about the patterns of decline in user population or user activity (in terms of visiting their OSN account) in large OSNs, mainly because capturing the required information is challenging. In this paper, we examine the evolution of user population and user activity in a popular OSN, namely MySpace. Leveraging more than 360K randomly sampled profiles, we characterize both the pattern of departure and the level of activity among MySpace users. Our main findings can be summarized as follows: (i) A significant fraction of accounts have been deleted and a large fraction of valid accounts have not been visited for more than three months. (ii) One third of public accounts are owned by users who abandon their accounts shortly after creation (i.e., tourists). We leverage this information to estimate the account creation time of other users from their user IDs. (iii) We demonstrate that the growth of allocated user IDs in MySpace was exponential, followed by a sudden and significant slow-down in April 2008 due to an increase in the popularity of Facebook. If such up- and down-turns are symptomatic of OSNs, they raise the obvious question: What are the main forces that enable some systems to compete and strive in the Internet's OSN eco-system, while others decline and ultimately die out?
Centre de Referència en Economia Analítica Barcelona Economics Working Paper Series Working Paper n o 35 Measurement and Explanation of Socioeconomic Inequality in Health with Longitudinal Data

This paper presents a method to compare indices of inequality in health that are based on short-run and long-run measures of health and income. For pure health inequality (as measured by the Gini coefficient) and income-related health inequality (as measured by the concentration index), we show how measures derived from longitudinal data can be related to cross section Gini and concentration indices that have been typically reported in the literature to date, along with measures of health mobility inspired by the literature on income mobility. We also show how these measures of mobility can be usefully decomposed into the contributions of different factors. We apply these methods to investigate the degree of income-related mobility in the GHQ measure of psychological well-being in the first nine waves of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). This reveals that dynamics increase the absolute value of the concentration index of GHQ on income by 15%, or 1.7% per year on average, for men, and 5%, or 0.6% per year, for women. JEL classification: D63, I12, C21
Comparative Expression Profiles of Midgut Genes in Dengue Virus Refractory and Susceptible Aedes aegypti across Critical Period for Virus Infection

Background Aedes aegypti is the primary mosquito vector for dengue virus (DENV) worldwide. Infectivity of dengue virus varies among natural populations of this mosquito. How A. aegypti responds to DENV infection relative to which genes and associated pathways contribute to its differential susceptibility as a vector is not well defined. Methods/Principal Findings Here, we used custom cDNA microarrays to identify groups of genes that were differentially expressed in midgut tissues between susceptible and refractory strains in a highly time specific manner. While genes involved in protein processing in the endoplasmic reticulum, mRNA surveillance, and the proteasome were significantly up-regulated in the susceptible strain, several metabolic processes including glycolysis, glycan biosynthesis and Wnt pathway were active in the refractory strain. In addition, several key signaling genes were expressed as common responsive genes in both susceptible and refractory mosquitoes that may be necessary for signal transduction to trigger the appropriate host response to the viral infection. These are coordinately expressed in the form of tight gene networks and expression clusters that may be necessary to differentially contribute to the progression of dengue infection between the two strains. Conclusions Our data show that highly correlated differential expression of responsive genes throughout the post infection period in A. aegypti midgut tissues is necessary for a coordinated transcriptional response of the mosquito genes to host or defend the viral infection.