Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Score-driven time series models with dynamic shape : an application to the Standard & Poor's 500 index

We introduce new dynamic conditional score (DCS) volatility models with dynamic scale and shape parameters for the effective measurement of volatility. In the new models, we use the EGB2 (exponential generalized beta of the second kind), NIG (normal-inverse Gaussian) and Skew-Gen-t (skewed generalized-t) probability distributions. Those distributions involve several shape parameters that control the dynamic skewness, tail shape and peakedness of financial returns. We use daily return data from the Standard & Poor's 500 (S&P 500) index for the period of January 4, 1950 to December 30, 2017. We estimate all models by using the maximum likelihood (ML) method, and we present the conditions of consistency and asymptotic normality of the ML estimates. We study those conditions for the S&P 500 and we also perform diagnostic tests for the residuals. The statistical performances of several DCS specifications with dynamic shape are superior to the statistical performance of the DCS specification with constant shape. Outliers in the shape parameters are associated with important announcements that affected the United States (US) stock market. Our results motivate the application of the new DCS models to volatility measurement, pricing financial derivatives, or estimation of the value-at-risk (VaR) and expected shortfall (ES) metrics.
Early Changes in Microbial Colonization Selectively Modulate Intestinal Enzymes, but Not Inducible Heat Shock Proteins in Young Adult Swine

Metabolic diseases and obesity are developing worldwide in a context of plethoric intake of high energy diets. The intestine may play a pivotal role due to diet-induced alterations in microbiota composition and increased permeability to bacterial lipopolysaccharide inducing metabolic inflammation. Early programming of metabolic disorders appearing in later life is also suspected, but data on the intestine are lacking. Therefore, we hypothesized that early disturbances in microbial colonization have short- and long-lasting consequences on selected intestinal components including key digestive enzymes and protective inducible heat shock proteins (HSP). The hypothesis was tested in swine offspring born to control mothers (n = 12) or mothers treated with the antibiotic amoxicillin around parturition (n = 11), and slaughtered serially at 14, 28 and 42 days of age to assess short-term effects. To evaluate long-term consequences, young adult offspring from the same litters were offered a normal or a fat-enriched diet for 4 weeks between 140 and 169 days of age and were then slaughtered. Amoxicillin treatment transiently modified both mother and offspring microbiota. This was associated with early but transient reduction in ileal alkaline phosphatase, HSP70 (but not HSP27) and crypt depth, suggesting a milder or delayed intestinal response to bacteria in offspring born to antibiotic-treated mothers. More importantly, we disclosed long-term consequences of this treatment on jejunal alkaline phosphatase (reduced) and jejunal and ileal dipeptidylpeptidase IV (increased and decreased, respectively) of offspring born to antibiotic-treated dams. Significant interactions between early antibiotic treatment and later diet were observed for jejunal alkaline phosphatase and sucrase. By contrast, inducible HSPs were not affected. In conclusion, our data suggest that early changes in bacterial colonization not only modulate intestinal architecture and function transiently, but also exert site- and sometimes diet-specific long-term effects on key components of intestinal homeostasis.
Study of the Bipolar Nebula IRAS 19312+1950. II. Circumstellar Chemistry

The bipolar nebula IRAS 19312+1950 is a unique SiO maser source exhibiting both properties of young and evolved objects. To clarify the nature of this object, we made molecular line observations with the Nobeyama 45-m radio telescope. We detected emission from O-bearing (HCO + ,S iO, SO, and SO2), C- and N-bearing molecules (CN, CS, HCN, HNC, NH3 ,N 2H + ,H C3N, H2CS, and CH3OH), and their isotopic species (C 17 O, 13 C 18 O, and C 34 S). The line profiles consist of weak broad (∆v ∼ 30kms −1 ) and/or strong narrow (∆v 5kms −1 ) components, depending on the molecular species. Strong time variations of H2O and SiO masers were also observed. Numerical modeling of the envelope with the LVG-code resulted in a good fit of the model with a mass loss rate of · ·· · ·· ∗ ··· · ·· · ·· ··· · ·· · ··
Anomaly Detection In Crowded Scenes Using Dense Trajectories

Abnormal crowd behavior has become a popular research topic in recent years. This is related to a rise in the need for electronic video surveillance. Many methods have been proposed to detect abnormalities, but these methods rely on optical flow or classical classification techniques. We propose to follow the general pipeline used by previous works, but upgrade several components with state-of-theart techniques. Specifically, we use dense trajectories in place of optical flow, robust features such as social force, HOG, HOF, and MBH, and a single-class support vector machine. We achieve significant improvements in abnormality detection when compared with prior works.
Existence of the attractor and numerical analysis for the fractional-order Lü et al power system

Voltage collapse dynamics has been modeled by the movement of the system state along a particular trajectory at a saddle node bifurcation. In this paper, appling this voltage collapse model to a simple 3-bus power system model, we will establish the dynamic behaviors of fractional-order Lü et al system based on the stability theory of fractional-order systems, some sufficient conditions are given. Numerical simulations are shown to verify the result and the theoretical analysis.
Compliance, Communication and Competition: Patterns of EU Environmental Policy Making and Their Impact on Policy Convergence

Responsibility for environmental policy making in Europe has shifted to the EU level to a remarkable extent. Considering that many of the EU measures aim at levelling the playing field between member states and even achieving the harmonization of national policies, one might expect far-reaching convergence of environmental policy in Europe, but there are a number of domestic and policy-specific factors diverting the path from reaching convergence. In this contribution we are interested in the specific effects of different patterns of European governance on domestic environmental policies. In this respect, we are particularly interested in the scope of national institutional change and cross-national convergence of regulatory institutions. We distinguish between three ideal‐typical governance patterns: (1) prescriptive governance based on the compliance of national implementers with legally binding EU rules, (2) communicative governance based on information exchange between regulatory agents across national levels arranged in a EU legal or institutional framework and (3) competitive governance based on competition between national administrative systems to achieve EU requirements. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
Investigating the transport of angular momentum from young stellar objects : do H2 jets from Class I YSOs rotate

Aims. In this pilot study, we examine molecular jets from the embedded Class I sources, HH 26 and HH 72, to search, for the first time, for kinematic signatures of jet rotation from young embedded sources. Methods. High-resolution long-slit spectroscopy of the H 2 1-0 S(1) transition was obtained using VLT/ISAAC. The slit was placed perpendicular to the flow direction about 2″ from the sources. Position-velocity (PV) diagrams are constructed and intensity-weighted radial velocities transverse to the jet flow are measured. Results. Mean intensity-weighted velocities vary between $v_{\rm LSR} \sim -90$ and -65 km s -1 for HH 26, and -60 and -10 km s -1 for HH 72; maxima occur close to the intensity peak and decrease toward the jet borders. Velocity dispersions are ~45 and ~80 km s -1 for HH 26 and HH 72, respectively, with gas motions as fast as -100 km s -1 present. Asymmetric PV diagrams are seen for both objects, which a simple empirical model of a cylindrical jet section shows could in principle be reproduced by jet rotation alone. Assuming magneto-centrifugal launching, the observed HH 26 flow may originate at a disk radius of 2-4 AU from the star with the toroidal component of the magnetic field dominant at the observed location, in agreement with magnetic collimation models. We estimate that the kinetic angular momentum transported by the HH 26 jet is ~$2 \times10^{-5}\,M_\odot$ yr -1 AU km s -1 . This value (a lower limit to the total angular momentum transported by the flow) already amounts to 70% of the angular momentum that has to be extracted from the disk for the accretion to proceed at the observed rate. Conclusions. These results of this pilot study suggest that jet rotation may also be present at early evolutionary phases and support the hypothesis that they carry away excess angular momentum, thus allowing the central protostar to increase its mass.
Effects of Added Organic Matter and Water on Soil Carbon Sequestration in an Arid Region

It is generally predicted that global warming will stimulate primary production and lead to more carbon (C) inputs to soil. However, many studies have found that soil C does not necessarily increase with increased plant litter input. Precipitation has increased in arid central Asia, and is predicted to increase more, so we tested the effects of adding fresh organic matter (FOM) and water on soil C sequestration in an arid region in northwest China. The results suggested that added FOM quickly decomposed and had minor effects on the soil organic carbon (SOC) pool to a depth of 30 cm. Both FOM and water addition had significant effects on the soil microbial biomass. The soil microbial biomass increased with added FOM, reached a maximum, and then declined as the FOM decomposed. The FOM had a more significant stimulating effect on microbial biomass with water addition. Under the soil moisture ranges used in this experiment (21.0%–29.7%), FOM input was more important than water addition in the soil C mineralization process. We concluded that short-term FOM input into the belowground soil and water addition do not affect the SOC pool in shrubland in an arid region.
Non-lexical conversational sounds in American English

Sounds like h-nmm, hh-aaaah, hn-hn, unkay, nyeah, ummum, uuh, um-hm-uh-hm, um and uh-huh occur frequently in American English conversation but have thus far escaped systematic study. This article reports a study of both the forms and functions of such tokens in a corpus of American English conversations. These sounds appear not to be lexical, in that they are productively generated rather than finite in number, and in that the sound? meaning mapping is compositional rather than arbitrary. This implies that English bears within it a small specialized sub-language which follows different rules from the language as a whole. The functions supported by this sub-language complement those of main-channel English; they include low-overhead control of turn-taking, negotiation of agreement, signaling of recognition and comprehension, management of interpersonal relations such as control and affiliation, and the expression of emotion, attitude, and affect.
Robust parent-identifying codes

Codes with the identifiable parent property (IPP codes) are used in traitor tracing schemes that protect data broadcast by the publisher from unauthorized access or distribution. An n-word y over a finite alphabet is called a descendant of a set of t words x<sup>1</sup>, …, x<sup>t</sup> if y<inf>i</inf> ∊ {x<sup>1</sup><inf>i</inf>, …, x<sup>t</sup><inf>i</inf>} for all i = 1, … n. A code C = {x<sup>1</sup>, …, x<sup>M</sup>} is said to have the i-IPP property if for any n-word y that is a descendant of at most t parents belonging to the code it is possible to identify at least one of them. The existence of good i-IPP codes is known from earlier works. We introduce a robust version of IPP codes which allows unconditional identification of parents even if some of the coordinates in y can break away from the descent rule, i.e., can take arbitrary values from the alphabet, or become completely unreadable. By linking this problem to perfect hash functions and, more generally, to hash distances of a code, we prove initial results on the proportion of such coordinates that can be tolerated under the unconditional recovery requirement.
Extensible Digital Library User Portals for e-Infrastructures

Large scale Digital Library e-Infrastructures are emerging as a new approach for facilitating the development of Digital Libraries (DLs) serving diverse user communities with specific and continuously evolving requirements. Such an approach promotes the building of large-scale DLs via the dynamic, automated management of highly-distributed DL resources – e.g. collections of information objects, services, computing and storage resources – and enforcing controlled sharing of such resources across different DLs. This paper discusses an extensible and new approach for User Interfaces development, facilitating the sharing and reuse of UI resources, i.e. user interface constituents. In particular a design model and a concrete implementation, carried out in the context of DILIGENT and D4Science projects is presented in detail.
Iron Deficiency Status Irrespective of Anemia: A Predictor of Unfavorable Outcome in Chronic Heart Failure Patients

Objective: To assess the prognostic significance of iron deficiency (ID) in a chronic heart failure (CHF) outpatient population. Methods and Results: We prospectively evaluated 127 patients with stable CHF and left ventricular ejection fraction ≤45%. Clinical and analytical data as well as information regarding the occurrence of the composite endpoint of overall mortality and nonfatal cardiovascular events were assessed. Among the 127 patients enrolled [81% men, median age: 62 years (25th-75th percentile: 53-68)], 46 (36%) patients had ID. Women, patients with higher plasma brain natriuretic peptide levels (>400 pg/ml) and with right ventricular systolic dysfunction presented ID more frequently (p < 0.05 for all). At 225 ± 139 days of follow-up, the composite endpoint occurred in 15 (12%) patients. It was more frequent in ID (24 vs. 5%, p = 0.001) and anemic patients (25 vs. 8%, p = 0.014). In a Cox regression analysis, ID was associated with a higher likelihood of composite endpoint occurrence (HR 5.00, 95% CI 1.59-15.78, p = 0.006). In a multivariable analysis adjusted for clinical variables, including the presence of anemia, ID remained a significant predictor of the composite endpoint (HR 5.38, 95% CI 1.54-18.87, p = 0.009). Conclusion: In a CHF outpatient population, ID carried a higher risk of unfavorable outcome, irrespectively of the presence of anemia.
A Luenberger–Sliding Mode Observer for Online Parameter Estimation and Adaptation in High-Performance Induction Motor Drives

The performance and efficiency of an induction motor drive system can be enhanced by online estimation of the critical parameters, such as the rotor time constant and stator resistance. A novel Luenberger-sliding mode observer with parameter adaptation algorithm is proposed in this paper to compensate for the parameter variation effects. The observer is simple and robust when compared with the previously developed observers, and suitable for online implementation. A field-programmable-gate-array-based controller has been implemented, and demonstrated using hardware-in-the-loop simulation setup. An experiment has been carried out with an induction motor using the controller to verify the algorithm.
Toward a Better Understanding of Causality between Verbal Events: Extraction and Analysis of the Causal Power of Verb-Verb Associations

The identification of causal relations between verbal events is important for achieving natural language understanding. However, the problem has proven notoriously difficult since it is not clear which types of knowledge are necessary to solve this challenging problem close to human level performance. Instead of employing a large set of features proved useful in other NLP tasks, we split the problem in smaller sub problems. Since verbs play a very important role in causal relations, in this paper we harness, explore, and evaluate the predictive power of causal associations of verb-verb pairs. More specifically, we propose a set of knowledge-rich metrics to learn the likelihood of causal relations between verbs. Employing these metrics, we automatically generate a knowledge base (KBc) which identifies three categories of verb pairs: Strongly Causal, Ambiguous, and Strongly Non-causal. The knowledge base is evaluated empirically. The results show that our metrics perform significantly better than the state-of-the-art on the task of detecting causal verbal events.
Supporting QoS-aware Multicasting in Differentiated Service Networks

— A scalable QoS aware multicast deployment in DiffServ networks has become an important research dimension in recent years. Although multicasting and differentiated services are two complementary technologies, the integration of the two technologies is a non-trivial task due to architectural conflicts between them. A popular solution proposed is to extend the functionality of the DiffServ components to support multicasting. In this paper, we propose an algorithm to construct an efficient QoS-driven multicast tree, taking into account the available bandwidth per service class. We also present an efficient way to provision the limited available bandwidth for supporting heterogeneous users. The proposed mechanism is evaluated using simulated tests. The simulated result reveals that our algorithm can effectively minimize the bandwidth use and transmission cost
A Case-Study for Sentiment Analysis on Twitter

Microblogging platforms like Twitter can convey short messages to direct contacts, but also to other potentially interested users. They are actively exploited either by individual users or whole organizations and companies. This paper describes some results we obtained from the Social Network and Sentiment Analysis of a Twitter channel, related to a pop music event. Apart from the particular results, a methodology and some guidelines for the automatic classification of Twitter content are
Approximation by Smooth Multivariate Splines Author ( s ) :

he degree of approximation achievable by piecewise polynomial functions of given total order on certain regular grids in the plane is shown to be adversely affected by smoothness requirements-in stark contrast to the univariate situation. For a rectangular grid, and for the triangular grid derived from it by adding all northeast diagonals, the maximum degree of approximation (as the grid size I/n goes to zero) to a suitably smooth function is shown to be O(n -p-2) in case we insist that the approximating functions are in CP. This only holds as long as p < (r 3)/2 and p < (2r 4)/3, respectively, with r the total order of the polynomial pieces. In the contrary case, some smooth functions are not approximable at all. In the discussion of the second mesh, a new and promising kind of multivariate B-spline is introduced.
Bimanual teleoperation with heart motion compensation on the da Vinci® Research Kit: Implementation and preliminary experiments

This paper describes the implementation of a heart motion compensation system on the da Vinci surgical system (Intuitive Surgical Inc.) with the da Vinci Research Kit, for the purpose of simulating minimally invasive coronary artery bypass surgery on the beating heart. A Novint Falcon device is used to simulate the motion of the coronary bypass site. The 3D position of the heart simulator is measured optically in real time using an NDI Optotrak Certus tracker. The NDI measurements are used to command the da Vinci patient side manipulators to track, from a fixed distance, the simulated heart surface. Visual stabilization is achieved by having a stereo endoscopic camera carried by another patient-side manipulator that is also tracking the heart surface. The system performance is evaluated and discussed. In a preliminary evaluation study, surgeons were asked to perform a bimanual teleoperation suturing task on the simulated heart, with the gold standard being a suturing task on a stationary surface. When motion compensation was enabled, the median completion time dropped from 1.24 to 1.07 of the gold standard, the number of errors was reduced, and subjective measures show higher preference for the use of motion compensation in the da Vinci controllers.
XenFlow: Seamless migration primitive and quality of service for virtual networks

Next generation networks offer virtual networks on demand, each one with its own features and Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. Besides, live-migration provides a flexible and seamless topology remapping primitive for virtual networks, but it is usually limited to a local area network. In this paper, we propose XenFlow, a hybrid virtualization system, based on Xen and OpenFlow. XenFlow main goals are threefold. First, it provides a flexible virtual network migration primitive, as it deploys a Software Defined Networking between virtual machines, based on OpenFlow. Second, it provides a strong isolation of virtual networks, avoiding denial of service caused by interference of other virtual networks. Third, XenFlow offers inter-network and intra-network QoS provisioning by a consistent resource controller. We developed a prototype and our results show that the proposed system performs better than native mechanism of Xen virtual machine migration. XenFlow allows virtual router migration between different local area networks without creating tunnels or losing packets. Our experiments also show that resource usage controller meets QoS requirements and outperforms other techniques while it redistributes idle network resources.
Phase equilibria trigger for explosive volcanic eruptions

A mechanism for explosive volcanic eruptions based on multicomponent phase equilibria modelling of four explosive volcanic systems is proposed. In each system, either isochoric or isobaric crystallization, where either crystals or crystals and exsolved fluid are chemically fractionated from melt, leads inevitably to near‐solidus dynamical instability culminating in violent explosive eruption. Driving this instability is a dramatic increase in the volume fraction of fluid bubbles in the magma exceeding the limit for magma fragmentation. This phenomenon is independent of magma decompression. Country rock may be weak, allowing magma to remain in lithostatic equilibrium with its host rock, or strong, leading to divergence of magma and lithostatic pressure. Bubbles may be retained or expelled during crystallization. Instability is the inevitable outcome of crystallization at shallow levels in the crust for all four systems, regardless of the mechanical state of host country rock. We speculate that this phase equilibria mechanism driving explosive eruptions has general significance.
Convex Optimization for Active Learning with Large Margins

In this paper we show how large margin assumptions make it possible to use ideas and algorithms from convex optimization for active learning. This provides an alternative and complementary approach to standard algorithms for active learning. These algorithms appear to be robust and provide approximately correct hypotheses with probability one, as opposed to the standard PAC learning results. In particular we consider the problem of finding global convergence bounds for active learning with halfspaces. We show that a large margin assumption allows the reduction of active learning problem to that of convex optimization from which one can construct efficient algorithms. This work generalizes and clarifies previous results in this area and provides new insights.