Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Research Department Staff Report 346 a Unified Framework for Monetary Theory and Policy Analysis *

Search-theoretic models of monetary exchange are based on explicit descriptions of the frictions that make money essential. However, tractable versions of these models typically need strong assumptions that make them ill-suited for studying monetary policy. We propose a framework based on explicit micro foundations within which macro policy can be analyzed. The model is both analytically tractable and amenable to quantitative analysis. We demonstrate this by using it to estimate the welfare cost of inflation. We find much higher costs than the previous literature: our model predicts that going from 10% to 0% inflation can be worth between 3% and 5% of consumption. NSF, and the Federal Reserve Banks of Cleveland and Minneapolis is acknowledged. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, or the Federal Reserve System.
Man Muss Immer Umkehren

The 19th century geometrist Jacobi famously said that one should always try to invert every geometrical theorem. But his advice applies much more widely! Choose any class of relational frames, and you can study its valid modal axioms. But now turn the perspective around, and fix some modal axiom beforehand. You can then find the class of frames where the axiom is guaranteed to hold by 'modal correspondence' analysis ‐ and we all know the famous examples of that. It may look as if this style of analysis is tied to one particular semantics, say relational frames: but it is not. Correspondence analysis also works on neighbourhood models, telling us, e.g., just which modal axioms collapse these to binary relational frames. We will show how this same style of inverse thinking also applies to modern dynamic logics of information change. Basic axioms for knowledge after information update ! A tell us what sort of operation must be used for updating a given model M to a new one incorporating A. Likewise, we will show how modal axioms for (conditional) beliefs that hold after revision actions *A actually fix one particular operation of changing the relative plausibility orderings which agents have on the universe of possible worlds. And finally, going back to the traditional heartland of logic, we show how we can read standard predicate-logical axioms as constraints on the sort of abstract 'process models' that lie at the heart of first-order semantics, properly understood. In all these cases, in order for the inversion to work and illuminate a given subject, we need to step back and reconsider our standard modeling. But that, I think, is what Shahid Rahman is all about. 2 Standard modal frame correspondences One of the most attractive features of the semantics of modal logic is the match between modal axioms and corresponding patterns in the accessibility relation between worlds. This can be seen by giving a class of models, say temporal or epistemic, and then axiomatizing its set of modal validities. On top of the minimal modal logic which holds under all circumstances, one gets additional axioms reflecting more specific structure. For general background to modal completeness theory, as well as the rest of this paper, we refer to the Handbook of Modal Logic (P. Blackburn, J. van Benthem & F. Wolter, eds.) which has just come out with Elsevier Science Publishers, Amsterdam, 1997.
Information measures in fuzzy decision trees

Decision trees are a popular form of classification models. It is well known that classical trees lack the ability of modelling vagueness. By connecting fuzzy systems and classical decision trees, we try to achieve classifiers that can model vagueness and are comprehensible. We discuss the core problem of how to compute the information measure used in the induction of fuzzy trees and propose some improvements. In addition, we consider fuzzy rule bases derived from fuzzy decision trees and present some heuristic strategies to prune them. We report the results of experiments in which we compare our approach to other well-known classification methods.
Golden Pigment Production and Virulence Gene Expression Are Affected by Metabolisms in Staphylococcus aureus

ABSTRACT The pathogenesis of staphylococcal infections is multifactorial. Golden pigment is an eponymous feature of the human pathogen Staphylococcus aureus that shields the microbe from oxidation-based clearance, an innate host immune response to infection. Here, we screened a collection of S. aureus transposon mutants for pigment production variants. A total of 15 previously unidentified genes were discovered. Notably, disrupting metabolic pathways such as the tricarboxylic acid cycle, purine biosynthesis, and oxidative phosphorylation yields mutants with enhanced pigmentation. The dramatic effect on pigment production seems to correlate with altered expression of virulence determinants. Microarray analysis further indicates that purine biosynthesis impacts the expression of ∼400 genes involved in a broad spectrum of functions including virulence. The purine biosynthesis mutant and oxidative phosphorylation mutant strains exhibit significantly attenuated virulence in a murine abscess model of infection. Inhibition of purine biosynthesis with a known small-molecule inhibitor results in altered virulence gene expression and virulence attenuation during infection. Taken together, these results suggest an intimate link between metabolic processes and virulence gene expression in S. aureus. This study also establishes the importance of purine biosynthesis and oxidative phosphorylation for in vivo survival.
Rural Community Life and the Importance of Reciprocal Survival Strategies

Although Belgian poverty is mainly concentrated in urban regions, the profound restructuring of labour and food markets, the dismantling of the welfare state and the growth of new types of households are also producing poverty and social exclusion in rural areas. This paper stresses that not every deprived rural household should be regarded as excluded from society. By developing survival strategies, households attempt to escape from social marginalization. To understand these responses, a typology of survival strategies is constructed, based on Polanyi’s spheres of economic integration (market exchange, redistribution and reciprocity). These survival strategies, including agricultural and non-agricultural activities, are analysed in relation to the Hageland,a peripheral rural area in Flanders. Based upon Doreen Massey’s geological metaphor, the current potentials and obstacles embedded in the historical layers of the socio-spatial structure of the area, are assessed. By comparing the results of this research with similar research amongst urban households, some particularities of rural poverty are distinguished.
Mutual entrainment and electrical coupling as mechanisms for synchronous firing of rabbit sino‐atrial pace‐maker cells.

The mechanisms of synchronous firing of cardiac pace‐makers were studied using thin (0.3‐0.5 mm) rabbit sino‐atrial (s.a.) node strips placed in a three‐compartment tissue bath. Superfusion of the central segment (1 mm in length) with ion‐free sucrose solution permitted the electrical insulation of the external segments and the development of two independent pace‐maker 'centres': one fast (F); one slow (S). An external shunt pathway was used to modulate the degree of coupling between F and S. Superfusion of the central segment with Tyrode solution containing heptanol (3.5 mM) instead of sucrose induced progressive decrease in the amplitude of responses in this segment and led to progressive loss of F:S synchronization. Eventually the two pace‐makers became totally independent from each other. These changes were reversible upon wash‐out of heptanol. When a pace‐maker centre was within the range of influence of local circuit (i.e. electronic) currents from the pace‐maker in the opposite side of the sucrose (or heptanol) compartment, its period was prolonged or abbreviated, depending on phase and frequency relations. Dynamic F:S interactions at various degrees of electrical coupling resulted in mutual entrainment with both pace‐makers beating at simple harmonic (i.e. 1:1, 2:1, 1:2, etc.) or more complex (3:2, 5:4, etc.) ratios that depended on the degree of coupling and the intrinsic periods of the individual pace‐maker centres. The patterns of synchronization could be predicted by the phasic sensitivity of each pace‐maker to brief electrotonic inputs. The results suggest that when two individual pace‐maker cells are connected through low resistance junctions, the period resulting from their mutual entrainment should be a function of their respective intrinsic frequencies, their phase relations and the degree of electrical coupling. The data further suggest that the heart beat is initiated by a 'democratic' type of synchronous firing of cells in the s.a. node, with each pace‐maker cell contributing to an aggregate signal and involving mutual entrainment between cells.
Creature Smarts: The Art and Architecture of a Virtual Brain

That’s the question that drives the Synthetic Characters group at the MIT Media Lab. We draw inspiration from animal behavior, experimental biology, and the brain and cognitive sciences, and apply lessons learned from those fields to the study of artificial intelligence. While there are many research groups that focus on a particular cognitive ability, we have found it instructive to build complete systems – creatures that can interact with each other and with human participants.
Nexus of learning style with satisfaction and success of accounting students: a cross-cultural study at an Australian university

This paper examines the associations of cultural factors and learning styles with the satisfaction and success of undergraduate accounting students in Australia. Using a structured questionnaire, responses from 189 students were collected randomly from domestic and international students enrolled in an accounting programme at the University of Canberra. Results reveal that a large number of international students studying accounting at the university are from China and they possess a collectivistic cultural background. The learning style of these international students is more reflective but less inclusive and concrete. They are also quite satisfied and successful with their programme. In contrast, it was found that Australian students prefer a more inclusive and concrete learning style, but they show much less satisfaction when studying accounting. Furthermore, students who have characteristics of logical thinking, hard working and feel personally involved in things show significantly higher levels of satisfaction in terms of learning outcomes and success in their accounting programme.
Norm Commitment and Conformity to Role-Status Obligations

Formal definitions of role and status are typically ignored in actual research analyses, and the term "role" has begun to supplant that of "status. " The contexts in which "status" is still used suggest that it refers to "more institutionalized roles. " All roles contain elements which are more or less institutionalized, though in any specific roles relationship there may be disagreement, concerning appropriate norms, among ego, alter, and the social networks of "third parties" involved. Thus, pressure toward fulfilment of role obligations is analyzed in terms of (1) ego's socialized emotional commitment to his appropiate role behavior; (2) alter's requirement that ego performs appropriately; and (3) the rewards and punishments of "third parties. " In secular societies, where ego's role commitments tend to be weak, these other sources of social control become increasingly important. Series of propositions are developed from a consideration of these structural elements.
Tier-partitioning for power delivery vs cooling tradeoff in 3D VLSI for mobile applications

Power delivery to the tier farthest away from the package in 3D VLSI is challenging. This is because the current provided by the package on the bottom is (1) first used by other tiers before it reaches the top, and (2) delivered using extremely small-size intra and inter-tier vias. Our solution is a tier partitioning method that assigns power hungry cells to the tier closer to the package, which is farther away from the heat spreader. Our study shows that this approach alleviates the IR-drop, power delivery network (PDN) resource usage, and power consumption in the top tier. Moreover, moving the cells to the bottom tier, unlike popular belief, does not cause any serious thermal issues. This is especially true in mobile applications, where heat is dissipated by both the heat spreader and printed circuit board. In summary, our tier-partitioning leads to 24.66% IR-drop reduction, 28.57% PDN resource reduction, and 4% wirelength reduction, with <; 1°C increase in temperature.
Estimating Local Child Abuse

Three conceptual approaches to estimating local child abuse rates using conventional data available at the local level are discussed and evaluated. The first approach assumes that local abuse rates can be approximated by the national abuse rates. The second approach assumes that known abuse rates must be decomposed into rates applicable to sub-groups in the population, then used to estimate local levels of abuse. The third approach assumes that social and demographic variations across counties must be accounted for before adequate estimates can be obtained The National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect data set is used to illustrate the alternative methods. The methods are then applied to obtain estimates of child abuse cases in a single county outside of the sample. The conclusion is that estimates of actual abuse cases far exceed the number of reported cases regardless of the method employed
Assessing cognitive interference in sport: Development of the thought occurrence questionnaire for sport

Abstract This paper outlines the development of an instrument to assess cognitive interference athletes may experience during competition. The investigation was based on an instrument developed in educational settings, namely the Thought Occurrence Questionnaire (TOQ). At the initial stage of the investigation interviews with athletes were conducted to establish items for TOQ item modification. The face validity of items was evaluated through a content analytic method. The pool of items which was selected was factor analysed. Finally, the psychometric properties of the questionnaire which emerged were evaluated through examination of convergent validity, discriminant validity, concurrent validity, and reliability. The results provide adequate psychometric support for the instrument. The modified questionnaire (Thought Occurrence Questionnaire for Sport) seems a promising tool for the investigation of the role that thoughts athletes experience during competition play in sports.
The Macroscopic Limit in a Stochastic Reaction-Diffusion Process

Extensive numerical simulation of a reaction-diffusion system reveals an unusual system size dependence of the fluctuation magnitude. If Ω denotes the system size parameter, e.g. particle number, fluctuations are usually predicted to be of order Ω0. 5 (stable case) or Ω1 (diffusion-type case). In contrast, a scaling like Ω0. 84 is observed in a combined birth-death and random walk process, which is described by a multivariate chemical master equation and corresponds to the Fisher equation in the mascoscopic limit.
A Low-Cost Robust Distributed Linearly Constrained Beamformer for Wireless Acoustic Sensor Networks With Arbitrary Topology

We propose a new robust distributed linearly constrained beamformer that utilizes a set of linear equality constraints to reduce the cross power spectral density matrix to a block-diagonal form. The proposed beamformer has a convenient objective function for use in arbitrary distributed network topologies while having identical performance to a centralized implementation. Moreover, the new optimization problem is robust to relative acoustic transfer function (RATF) estimation errors and to target activity detection (TAD) errors. Two variants of the proposed beamformer are presented and evaluated in the context of multimicrophone speech enhancement in a wireless acoustic sensor network, and are compared with other state-of-the-art distributed beamformers in terms of communication costs and robustness to RATF estimation errors and TAD errors.
ThermoTRP Channels in Nociceptors: Taking a Lead from Capsaicin Receptor TRPV1

Nociceptors with peripheral and central projections express temperature sensitive transient receptor potential (TRP) ion channels, also called thermoTRP’s. Chemosensitivity of thermoTRP’s to certain natural compounds eliciting pain or exhibiting thermal properties has proven to be a good tool in characterizing these receptors. Capsaicin, a pungent chemical in hot peppers, has assisted in the cloning of the first thermoTRP, TRPV1. This discovery initiated the search for other receptors encoding the response to a wide range of temperatures encountered by the body. Of these, TRPV1 and TRPV2 encode unique modalities of thermal pain when exposed to noxious heat. The ability of TRPA1 to encode noxious cold is presently being debated. The role of TRPV1 in peripheral inflammatory pain and central sensitization during chronic pain is well known. In addition to endogenous agonists, a wide variety of chemical agonists and antagonists have been discovered to activate and inhibit TRPV1. Efforts are underway to determine conditions under which agonist-mediated desensitization of TRPV1 or inhibition by antagonists can produce analgesia. Also, identification of specific second messenger molecules that regulate phosphorylation of TRPV1 has been the focus of intense research, to exploit a broader approach to pain treatment. The search for a role of TRPV2 in pain remains dormant due to the lack of suitable experimental models. However, progress into TRPA1’s role in pain has received much attention recently. Another thermoTRP, TRPM8, encoding for the cool sensation and also expressed in nociceptors, has recently been shown to reduce pain via a central mechanism, thus opening a novel strategy for achieving analgesia. The role of other thermoTRP’s (TRPV3 and TRPV4) encoding for detection of warm temperatures and expressed in nociceptors cannot be excluded. This review will discuss current knowledge on the role of nociceptor thermoTRPs in pain and therapy and describes the activator and inhibitor molecules known to interact with them and modulate their activity.
Backlash Effects in Attack Politics1

The effects of insulting political campaign rhetoric were examined in a laboratory setting. In Study 1, subjects categorized as for, against, or undecided about the issue of French language rights in English Canada read a political debate transcript focusing on this issue in which one candidate insulted or did not insult the other candidate. Backlash was evident on trait ratings: the insult source was rated more negatively in the insult condition than in the control condition, whereas ratings of the target were unaffected. Affective ratings of both candidates were lower in the insult condition than in the control condition. Subjects’ attitudes about French language rights also influenced their impressions of the candidates, but did not interact with the insult manipulation. In Study 2, subjects read debate transcripts embedded with insults that attacked either controllable target attributes, uncontrollable target attributes, or that contained no insults. The major findings of Study 1 were replicated, with the additional finding that insults directed at uncontrollable traits of the target produced effects in the same direction as but more extreme than those effects noted for controllable-trait insults. These findings are discussed in terms of political campaign tactics and the application of attribution theory to political person perception.
The Plastid Genome of Najas flexilis: Adaptation to Submersed Environments Is Accompanied by the Complete Loss of the NDH Complex in an Aquatic Angiosperm

The re-colonization of aquatic habitats by angiosperms has presented a difficult challenge to plants whose long evolutionary history primarily reflects adaptations to terrestrial conditions. Many aquatics must complete vital stages of their life cycle on the water surface by means of floating or emergent leaves and flowers. Only a few species, mainly within the order Alismatales, are able to complete all aspects of their life cycle including pollination, entirely underwater. Water-pollinated Alismatales include seagrasses and water nymphs (Najas), the latter being the only freshwater genus in the family Hydrocharitaceae with subsurface water-pollination. We have determined the complete nucleotide sequence of the plastid genome of Najas flexilis. The plastid genome of N. flexilis is a circular AT-rich DNA molecule of 156 kb, which displays a quadripartite structure with two inverted repeats (IR) separating the large single copy (LSC) from the small single copy (SSC) regions. In N. flexilis, as in other Alismatales, the rps19 and trnH genes are localized in the LSC region instead of within the IR regions as in other monocots. However, the N. flexilis plastid genome presents some anomalous modifications. The size of the SSC region is only one third of that reported for closely related species. The number of genes in the plastid is considerably less. Both features are due to loss of the eleven ndh genes in the Najas flexilis plastid. In angiosperms, the absence of ndh genes has been related mainly to the loss of photosynthetic function in parasitic plants. The ndh genes encode the NAD(P)H dehydrogenase complex, believed essential in terrestrial environments, where it increases photosynthetic efficiency in variable light intensities. The modified structure of the N. flexilis plastid genome suggests that adaptation to submersed environments, where light is scarce, has involved the loss of the NDH complex in at least some photosynthetic angiosperms.
Playing Favorites: Public Attitudes toward Race-and Gender-Targeted Anti-discrimination Policy

While support for affirmative action and other anti-discrimination policies has declined markedly during the last ten years, a decade of survey data show that anti-discrimination programs for women consistently generate between 10 to 20 percent more public support than analogous programs for blacks (Steeh and Krysan 1996; Moore 1995; Norman 1995). Using data from the 1991 Race and Politics Survey, I examine why gender-targeted anti-discrimination policyis less controversial than analogous policies targeting blacks, and whether the predictors of public support for gender-based anti-discrimination policy differ from the predictors of support for anti-discrimination protections for blacks. I find that respondents'race is an important factor in determining attitudes toward anti-discrimination protections for African Americans, and that gender is an even more important determinant of support for anti-discrimination protections for women, providing some support for "self-interest" and "group self-interest" theories. The analysis also furnishes evidence in support of "modern racism" theories and against "American values" theories by showing that different antecedents do determine a portion of the support for raceand gender-targeted policies. Specifically, the analysis finds that discriminatory beliefs, individualism, and attitudes about the role of govemment are predictive of support for anti-discrimination policy for African Americans, but not of support for gender-targeted policies.