Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How Appraisers Develop Fair Value

Management is responsible for its own financial decisions. If we take into account, that fair value concept was shown in financial crisis as something that does not work anymore in this way; there is a big need to develop it for the future. Non-professional readers of financial statements believe, however, that company financials are the work of the public accounting firm that had signed the audit certificate. The main reason for bringing this point up is that when companies disclose Fair Value (FV) information in their financial statements, they are taking responsibility for the values disclosed. Management may often be encouraged to utilize the services of an outside professional, but at the end of the day, the outside appraiser is a hired gun. Although the appraiser has to take responsibility for his own work, hiring the appraiser does not absolve management of its ultimate responsibility. The obverse of this is also true. Management does not have to hire the appraiser to develop any fair value disclosures made in the financial statements. Developing FV information is not recommended as a do-it yourself undertaking, there is nothing in Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) or Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations, however, that requires an outside appraiser.
Traffic pollutants affect fertility in men.

BACKGROUND Given the lack of consensus about the effect of traffic-derived pollutants on male fertility, we evaluated semen quality in men occupationally exposed to traffic. METHODS Semen quality was investigated in 85 men employed at motorway tollgates and in 85 age-matched men living in the same area. Semen, circulating sex hormones, methaemoglobin, sulphaemoglobin, carboxyhaemoglobin, lead (Pb) and zinc (Zn) protoporphyrin were assayed. Environmental carbonium oxide, nitrogen oxide, sulphur oxide and Pb were also measured. RESULTS Sperm count, and serum levels of FSH, LH and testosterone were within normal range in both groups. Total motility, forward progression, functional tests and sperm kinetics were significantly lower in tollgate workers versus controls. In a subset of tollgate workers with motility below normal, methaemoglobin was inversely correlated with total motility, viability, the hypo-osmotic swelling test, the acridine orange test, the cervical mucus penetration test, linearity, and amplitude of lateral movement of the sperm head, whereas blood levels of Pb were inversely correlated with viability and sperm count. CONCLUSIONS The finding that blood methaemoglobin and Pb were inversely correlated with sperm parameters indicates that nitrogen oxide and Pb adversely affect semen quality.
Positive Selection Drives the Evolution of rhino, a Member of the Heterochromatin Protein 1 Family in Drosophila

Heterochromatin comprises a significant component of many eukaryotic genomes. In comparison to euchromatin, heterochromatin is gene poor, transposon rich, and late replicating. It serves many important biological roles, from gene silencing to accurate chromosome segregation, yet little is known about the evolutionary constraints that shape heterochromatin. A complementary approach to the traditional one of directly studying heterochromatic DNA sequence is to study the evolution of proteins that bind and define heterochromatin. One of the best markers for heterochromatin is the heterochromatin protein 1 (HP1), which is an essential, nonhistone chromosomal protein. Here we investigate the molecular evolution of five HP1 paralogs present in Drosophila melanogaster. Three of these paralogs have ubiquitous expression patterns in adult Drosophila tissues, whereas HP1D/rhino and HP1E are expressed predominantly in ovaries and testes respectively. The HP1 paralogs also have distinct localization preferences in Drosophila cells. Thus, Rhino localizes to the heterochromatic compartment in Drosophila tissue culture cells, but in a pattern distinct from HP1A and lysine-9 dimethylated H3. Using molecular evolution and population genetic analyses, we find that rhino has been subject to positive selection in all three domains of the protein: the N-terminal chromo domain, the C-terminal chromo-shadow domain, and the hinge region that connects these two modules. Maximum likelihood analysis of rhino sequences from 20 species of Drosophila reveals that a small number of residues of the chromo and shadow domains have been subject to repeated positive selection. The rapid and positive selection of rhino is highly unusual for a gene encoding a chromosomal protein and suggests that rhino is involved in a genetic conflict that affects the germline, belying the notion that heterochromatin is simply a passive recipient of “junk DNA” in eukaryotic genomes.
On recycling the randomness of states in space bounded computation

Let M be a logarithmic space Turing machine (or a polynomial width branching pmgram) that USES up to k z p/G (read once) random bits. For a fixed input, let E(S) be the probability (over rhe random string) that at time i the machine M is in state S, and assume that some weak estimation of the pmbabilities P;(S) is known or given or can be easily computed. We construct a logarithmic space pseudo-random generator that USES only logarithmic number of truly random bits and outputs a sequence of k bits that looks random to M. This means that a very weak estimation of the stateprobabilities of M is suf/icientforafill derandomization of M and for constructing pseudo-random sequencesfor M. We have several applications of the main theorem, as stated within. To prove our theorem, we introduce the idea of recycling the state S of the machine M at time i apart of the random string for the same machine at later time. That is, we use the entropy of the random variable S in order to save truly random bits later on. Our techniques and results can both be generalized to larger size of space.
Enhancing MPLS network fault recovery using P-Cycle with QoS protection

The emerging multi protocol label switching (MPLS) networks enable quality-of-service (QoS) constrained label switch paths (LSPs) between network nodes. MPLS network protection is an important aspect within QoS framework. P-cycle concept is an efficient way to protect the network traffic against failure of any network element. In this paper we introduce optimized models to the p-cycle scheme for MPLS networks fault recovery to protect LSPs, to meet QoS protection parameters. Each model is formulated and different case studies are analyzed to select the most suitable model. Results show that in comparison with other methods, the proposed models have a better performance.
AdVise: Offline Advertising Analytics

AdVise improves the way in which companies display digital advertisements in public spaces. Current public display advertisements are static and must target a broad audience to be effective. The advertiser has no way of measuring an advertisement’s effectiveness. AdVise utilizes facial and bodytype recognition to dynamically display relevant advertisements to specific demographics. It allows advertisers to target groups of people based on age, gender, and other traits, and it gives them feedback about which advertisements garnered the most attention or interaction. AdVise intends to increase relevancy and interactions with advertisements in public spaces, thus eliminating inefficiencies and maximizing profits.
Human Activity Recognition from automatically labeled data in RGB-D videos

Human Activity Recognition (HAR) is an interdisciplinary research area that has been attracting interest from several research communities specialized in machine learning, computer vision, medical and gaming research. The potential applications range from surveillance systems, human computer interfaces, sports video analysis, digital shopping assistants, video retrieval, games and health-care. Several and diverse approaches exist to recognize a human action. From computer vision techniques, modeling relations between human motion and objects, marker-based tracking systems and RGB-D cameras. Using a Kinect sensor that provides the position of the main skeleton joints we extract features based solely on the motion of those joints. This paper aims to compare the performance of several supervised classifiers trained with manually labeled data versus the same classifiers trained with data automatically labeled. We propose a framework capable of recognizing human actions using supervised classifiers trained with automatically labeled data.
The Impact of World Bank and IMF Programs on Democratization in Developing Countries

This paper proposes a theory on the interference of World Bank and IMF programs with domestic politics by changing the prevailing power balance between pro-democratic and anti-democratic forces. However, World Bank and IMF programs differ in design and impact. Thus, the question arises whether the participation in different types of World Bank and IMF programs also has a different impact on democratization in recipient countries. Therefore, this paper analyzes empirically the separate and joint effects of World Bank and IMF programs on democratization in 76 developing countries in Africa and Asia from 1974 to 2007. Our results show that aid modalities matter. In general, while World Bank and IMF programs do not change electoral accountability mechanisms in recipient countries, they induce changes in civil liberties and domestic oversight of the borrower government. Traditional lending types have significant negative short-term effects on the extent of horizontal accountability and civil liberties in recipient countries, while more flexible policy lending types significantly increase the extent of checks and balances at the domestic level in the long term. Moreover, civil society’s participation in the formulation and implementation of national poverty reduction strategies potentially increases a country’s civil liberties record.
Oxidized LDL induces monocytic cell expression of interleukin-8, a chemokine with T-lymphocyte chemotactic activity.

T lymphocytes, macrophages, and oxidized low-density lipoprotein (Ox-LDL) are collocalized in early atherosclerotic lesions. Using a low-endotoxin in vitro system, we observed that Ox-LDL but not native LDL induced the production, by both freshly adherent human peripheral blood monocytes and human monocytic THP-1 cells, of the alpha chemokine interleukin (IL)-8, a potent chemoattractant for T lymphocytes. Marked IL-8 induction by Ox-LDL did not require IL-1 beta generation in THP-1 cells. Ox-LDL-induced chemokine production was selective, as Ox-LDL did not stimulate the production by THP-1 cells of the T-lymphocyte chemotactic beta chemokine macrophage inflammatory protein (MIP)-1 alpha. IL-8 induction increased in proportion to the extent of oxidation of LDL as measured by the content of lipid oxidation end products. To identify potentially active components of Ox-LDL, we tested malondialdehyde, an arachidonate-derived lipid oxidation product, and 9-hydroxyoctadecadienoic acid, an oxidation product of linoleate, the major polyunsaturated fatty acid in LDL, and observed that they induced IL-8 generation in the absence of Ox-LDL. Furthermore, when most free lipid oxidation products were removed from Ox-LDL by dialysis, some IL-8-inducing activity was released into the dialysate. However, the major IL-8-inducing activity was not dialyzable. To address the nature of the LDL particle modification required to induce IL-8, acetylated or malondialdehyde-treated native LDL particles were monitored for activity. Neither procedure rendered LDL capable of inducing IL-8. However, phospholipase A2-treated LDL induced THP-1 cell expression of IL-8. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
A Strategy to Improve Resource Utilization in Grids Based on Network-Aware Meta-scheduling in Advance

The provision of Quality of Service (QoS) in Grids (systems made of heterogeneous computing resources geographically dispersed) is still a challenging task that needs the attention of the research community. Since reservations of resources may not always be possible, another possible way of enhancing the QoS perceived by Grid users is by performing meta-scheduling of jobs in advance, where jobs are scheduled some time before they are actually executed. Hence, it becomes more likely that the appropriate resources are available to run the job whenever needed. One of the drawbacks of this scenario is that fragmentation appears as a well known effect in job allocations into resources. Fragmentation also becomes the cause for poor resource utilization. For these reasons, a new technique has been developed to tackle fragmentation problems, which consists of rescheduling already scheduled tasks. To this end, some heuristics have been implemented to figure out which intervals need replanning and to select the jobs which are involved in that rescheduling process. On top of that, another heuristic has been implemented to put rescheduled jobs as close together as possible so that fragmentation is avoided or reduced to the minimum. This technique has been tested using a real test bed involving heterogeneous computing resources from different organizations. An evaluation is presented that illustrates the efficiency of this approach to meet the users' QoS requirements.
Codesign of the Stanford FLASH Multiprocessor

Hardware/software codesign is a methodology for solving design problems in systems with processors or embedded controllers where the design requirements mandate a functionality and performance level for the system, independent of the hardware and software boundary. In addition to the challenges of functional correctness and total system performance, design time is often a critical factor. To design MAGIC, the programmable memory and communication controller for the Stanford FLASH multiprocessor, we employed a hardware/software codesign methodology. This methodology allowed us to concurrently design the hardware and software thereby reducing design time while simultaneously ensuring that the design would meet ambitious performance goals. Serializing the hardware and software design would have lengthened the design time and significantly increased the amount of redesign when the tradeoffs between the hardware and software implementations became clear late in the design process. The codesign approach led us to build a series of hierarchical simulators that allowed us to begin design verification early and to reduce the level of effort required to ensure a functional design.
Improving Facility Performance in Infectious Disease Care in Uganda: A Mixed Design Study with Pre/Post and Cluster Randomized Trial Components

Background The effects of two interventions, Integrated Management of Infectious Disease (IMID) training program and On-Site Support (OSS), were tested on 23 facility performance indicators for emergency triage assessment and treatment (ETAT), malaria, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and HIV. Methods The trial was implemented in 36 primary care facilities in Uganda. From April 2010, two mid-level practitioners per facility participated in IMID training. Eighteen of 36 facilities were randomly assigned to Arm A, and received OSS in 2010 (nine monthly two-day sessions); 18 facilities assigned to Arm B did not receive OSS in 2010. Data were collected from Nov 2009 to Dec 2010 using a revised Ministry of Health outpatient medical form and nine registers. We analyzed the effect of IMID training alone by measuring changes before and during IMID training in Arm B, the combined effect of IMID training and OSS by measuring changes in Arm A, and the incremental effect of OSS by comparing changes across Arms A and B. Results IMID training was associated with statistically significant improvement in three indicators: outpatients triaged (adjusted relative risks (aRR) = 1.29, 99%CI = 1.01,1.64), emergency and priority patients admitted, detained, or referred (aRR = 1.59, 99%CI = 1.04,2.44), and pneumonia suspects assessed (aRR = 2.31, 99%CI = 1.50,3.55). IMID training and OSS combined was associated with improvements in six indicators: three ETAT indicators (outpatients triaged (aRR = 2.03, 99%CI = 1.13,3.64), emergency and priority patients admitted, detained or referred (aRR = 3.03, 99%CI = 1.40,6.56), and emergency patients receiving at least one appropriate treatment (aRR = 1.77, 99%CI = 1.10,2.84)); two malaria indicators (malaria cases receiving appropriate antimalarial (aRR = 1.50, 99%CI = 1.04,2.17), and patients with negative malaria test results prescribed antimalarial (aRR = 0.67, 99%CI = 0.46,0.97)); and enrollment in HIV care (aRR = 1.58, 99%CI = 1.32,1.89). OSS was associated with incremental improvement in emergency patients receiving at least one appropriate treatment (adjusted ratio of RR = 1.84,99%CI = 1.09,3.12). Conclusion The trial showed that the OSS intervention significantly improved performance in one of 23 facility indicators.
Multimodal Affect

Many tasks such as driving or rapidly sorting items can be best achieved by direct actions. Other tasks such as giving directions, being guided through a museum, or organizing a meeting are more easily solved verbally. Since computers are increasingly being used in all aspects of daily life, it would be of great advantage if we could communicate verbally with them. Although advanced interactions with computers are possible, a vast majority of interactions are still based on the WIMP (Window, Icon, Menu, Point) metaphor [Hevner and Chatterjee 2010] and are, therefore, via simple text and gesture commands. The field of affective interfaces is working toward making computers more accessible by giving them (rudimentary) natural-language abilities, including using synthesized speech, facial expressions, and virtual body motions. Once the computer is granted a virtual body, however, it must be given the ability to use it to nonverbally convey socio-emotional information (such as emotions, intentions, mental state, and expectations) or it will likely be misunderstood. Here, we present a simple affective talking head along with the results of an experiment on the multimodal expression of emotion. The results show that although people can sometimes recognize the intended emotion from the semantic content of the text even when the face does not convey affect, they are considerably better at it when the face also shows emotion. Moreover, when both face and text convey emotion, people can detect different levels of emotional intensity.
The Impact of Elevation Angle on MIMO Capacity

Many channel models for MIMO systems have appeared in the literature. However, with the exception of a few recent results, they are largely focussed on two dimensional (2D) propagation, i.e., propagation in the horizontal plane, and the impact of elevation angle is not considered. The assumption of 2D propagation breaks down when in some propagation environments the elevation angle distribution is significant. Consequently, the estimation of ergodic capacity assuming a 2D channel coefficient alone can lead to erroneous results. In this paper, for cross polarized channels, we define a composite channel model and channel coefficient that takes into account both 2D and 3D propagation. Using this composite channel coefficient we assess the ergodic channel capacity and discuss its sensitivity to a variety of different azimuth and elevation power distributions and other system parameters.
Fiscal Rules, Decentralization and Public Finances: Making Sense of Balanced Budget Requirements for Sub-National Governments

This paper reviews the debate over fiscal rules and specifically balanced-budget requirements with regards to sub-national (state/regional) government. It will be argued that fiscal rules, if properly designed, can play an important role in balancing the relations between central and sub-national governments and build a healthy system of public finances in the long-run. Fiscal rules are required to limit the subsidiarity challenge that decentralizing governments face: How can they balance the need for locally delivered public services with a fair and sufficient financial endowment while at the same time incentivizing sub-national governments not to overspent their general resources? This paper analyzes global experiences with some of the strictest forms of fiscal policy rules - i.e. balanced-budget requirements (BBR). It will discuss and illustrate their relevance in the context of three major Asian economies with very different fiscal positions - China, India and Indonesia - but similar demands or requirements for the decentralization of public services due to their vast populations and geographical size.
Statistical Evidence of Tax Fraud on the Carbon Allowances Market

The aim of this paper is to show evidence and to quantify with forensic econometric methods the impact of the Value Added Tax fraud on European carbon allowances markets. This fraud mainly occurred at the beginning of between the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009. In this paper, we explore the financial mechanisms of the fraud and the impact on the market behavior as well as the reflexion on its econometric features. In a previous work, we showed that the European carbon market is strongly influenced by fundamentals factors as oil, energy, gas, coal and equity prices. Therefore, we calibrated Arbitrage Pricing Theory-like models and showed that they have a good forecast capacity. Those models enabled us to quantify the impact of each factor on the market. In this study, we focused more precisely on the benchmark contract for European carbon emissions prices over 2008 and 2009. We observed that during the first semester of 2009, there is a significant drop in our model performances and robustness and that the part of market volatility explained by fundamentals reduced. Therefore, we identified the period where the market was driven by VAT fraud movements and we were able to measure the value of this fraud. Soon after governments passed a law that cut the possibility of fraud occurrence the performance of the model improved rapidly. We estimate the impact of the VAT extortion on the carbon market at 1.3 billion euros.
A NOVEL NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING (NLP) BASED APPROACH FOR DEVELOPING AUTOMATED SEMANTIC CLAUSE PARSER

In traditional syntactic parsing, hierarchical breaking (tree or bracketed way) of sentences into its minimal word-level constituent factor is targeted, whereas there was no effort made to capture meaning of constituent clauses in a parsing process of breaking a sentence in constituents has been done. Hence, this innovative Natural Language Processing (NLP) application parses English Compound and complex sentences which are always major challenges in even traditional syntactic parsing-i.e., to break them into clause level and mark the clause with semantic annotations. This has far-fetched implication, this automated tool for SyntacticSemantic merger using NLP opens new arena in directly developing a Q-A system, aiding to disambiguation of Machine Translation (MT) systems, Decision Support Systems (DSS) and also developing E-learning for language analysis tool to name a few.