Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Asset Management

Stocks and bonds? Real estate? Hedge funds? Private equity? If you think those are the things to focus on in building an investment portfolio, Andrew Ang has accumulated a body of research that will prove otherwise. In his new book Asset Management: A Systematic Approach to Factor Investing, Ang upends the conventional wisdom about asset allocation by showing that what matters aren't asset class labels but the bundles of overlapping risks they represent. Making investments is like eating a healthy diet, Ang says: you've got to look through the foods you eat to focus on the nutrients they contain. Failing to do so can lead to a serious case of malnutrition-for investors as well as diners. The key, in Ang's view, is bad times, and the fact that every investor's bad times are somewhat different. The notion that bad times are paramount is the guiding principle of the book, which offers a new approach to the age-old problem of where do you put your money? Years of experience, both as a finance professor and as a consultant, have led Ang to see that the traditional approach, with its focus on asset classes, is too crude and ultimately too costly to serve investors adequately. He focuses instead on "factor risks," the peculiar sets of hard times that cut across asset classes, and that must be the focus of our attention if we are to weather market turmoil and receive the rewards that come with doing so. Optimally harvesting factor premiums-on our own or by hiring others-requires identifying your particular set of hard times, and exploiting the difference between them and those of the average investor. Clearly written yet chock-full of the latest research and data, Asset Management will be indispensable reading for trustees, professional money managers, smart private investors, and business students who want to understand the economics behind factor risk premiums, harvest them efficiently in their portfolios, and embark on the search for true alpha. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship. com/oso/public/content/economicsfinance/9780199959327/toc.html
A perception-action model for empathy

23.1 IntroductionT his chapter describes an d au gm en ts the perception -action m odel(P A M ) of em pa-thy,firstdetailed in P reston an d de W aal(2002b). E m pathy,iron ically,is a term thatm ean s differen tthin gs to differen tpeople.Ithas been difficu ltto distin gu ish em pathyfrom sym pathy becau se they both in volve the em otion al state of on e related to thestate ofan other.T his problem w as com pou n ded by the fact that the m apping oftheterm s has recen tly reversed:w hat is n ow com m on ly called em pathy w as referred tobefore the m iddle of the tw en tieth cen tu ry as sym pathy (see W ispe«, 1986 for a fu lldiscu ssion ) an d som e researchers stillu se the old con n otation s (e.g.B atson ,1997). According to a PAM, empathy is defined as a shared emotional experienceoccurring when one person (the subject) comes to feel a similar emotion to another(the object) as a result of perceiving the otherOs state. This process results from thefact that the subjectOs representations of the emotional state are automaticallyactivated when the subject pays attention to the emotional state of the object.The neural mechanism assumes that brain areas have processing domains based ontheir cellular composition and connectivity; as such, there isno Oempathy areaO andbrain areas are recruited when the relevant domain is required by the task. Thisdefinition contains much information, so the model will be detailed in this chapterby deconstructing the definition, focusing on the italicized words.23. 2 Breaking down the PAM
Mapping pipelined applications onto heterogeneous embedded systems: a bayesian optimization algorithm based approach

In this paper we propose a flow based on the Bayesian Optimization Algorithm (BOA) for mapping pipelined applications on a heterogeneous multiprocessor platform on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) with customizable processors. BOA is a Probabilistic Model Building Genetic Algorithm (PMBGA) that, substituting the classical mutation and crossover operators with the construction and the sampling of a Bayesian network, is able to identify correlated sub-structures within the problem to be maintained while generating new solutions. The paper introduces the model adopted for pipelined applications and then shows why BOA fits the problem better than other search algorithms, like Genetic Algorithm (GA), Simulated Annealing (SA) and Tabu Search (TS). We also show that our algorithm is able to cope with data parallel pipelined algorithms. We finally validate our flow on realistic applications like JPEG and ADPCM coding by executing the resulting mapping on our platform.
Range of neuropsychiatric disturbances in patients with Parkinson’s disease

OBJECTIVES Disturbances of cognition and emotion are common in patients with Parkinson’s disease. Most previous studies of psychopathology in Parkinson’s disease have focused on a single psychiatric diagnosis or condition. The objective of this study was to describe the range of neuropsychiatric symptoms in a representative sample of patients with Parkinson’s disease. METHODS The sample of 139 patients was drawn from an epidemiological study of Parkinson’s disease in Rogaland county, Norway, and represented 93% of those who had survived during the 4 years since the initial assessment. The diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease was based on published criteria. Neuropsychiatric symptoms were assessed using the neuropsychiatric inventory, a caregiver based structured interview, which assesses severity and frequency of 10 psychiatric symptoms present during the past month. RESULTS At least one psychiatric symptom was reported in 61% of the sample. The most common behaviours were depression (38%) and hallucinations (27%), and the least common symptoms were euphoria and disinhibition. The highest mean scores were found for depression, apathy, and hallucinations. Factor analysis showed that hallucinations, delusions, and irritability clustered into one factor, and apathy and anxiety constituted another factor. Psychiatric symptoms were more common among patients living in nursing homes compared with home dwelling patients, and correlated with stage of disease and cognitive impairment, but not with age or duration of disease. No relation to left or right sided parkinsonism was found. CONCLUSION This study emphasises the importance of psychiatric symptoms in Parkinson’s disease, which were present in most patients. Clinicians should focus on the emotional and cognitive disturbances in addition to the motor manifestations of the disease.
A Cointegration Analysis of Latin American Stock Markets and the U.S.

This paper investigates the long run relationship between four major Latin American stock markets (Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico) and the United States for the period 1976-1998. Using Johansen's multivariate cointegration analysis, we find a stationary long run relationship between the stock indices during the 1976-1998 period, and also during the post-October 1987 stock market crash period (1987-1998). No stationary relationship was found during the pre-crash period (1976-1987). Finally, an important role is played by the markets' degree of development and cooperation among themselves.
A STUDY OF ROBOT BEHAVIOUR IN THE ANIMAT ENVIRONMENT

In the late eighties and early nineties two closely related areas of cybernetic research emerged: artificial life and adaptive behaviour. The main motivation of the artificial life research is a wish to understand and model formal principles of biological life organisation. The main approach of adaptive behaviour is designing and searching for artificial organisms (in the form of computer program or robot) that could adapt to the environment. These artificial organisms are commonly called animats. The aim of the research is studying the architecture and principles of functioning that enable animals or robots to live and act in a variable environment. Systems of adaptive behaviour can be implemented with the help of both neural networks and classifier systems. The present study deals with robot behaviour examination implemented on the basis of a classifier system (CS). An analysis of robot behaviour and its learning effectiveness is performed and the reasons are elicited why the system cannot reach the optimal performance.
The Problem with Phi: A Critique of Integrated Information Theory

Summary In the last decade, Guilio Tononi has developed the Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness. IIT postulates that consciousness is equal to integrated information (F). The goal of this paper is to show that IIT fails in its stated goal of quantifying consciousness. The paper will challenge the theoretical and empirical arguments in support of IIT. The main theoretical argument for the relevance of integrated information to consciousness is the principle of information exclusion. Yet, no justification is given to support this principle. Tononi claims there is significant empirical support for IIT, but this is called into question by the creation of a trivial theory of consciousness with equal explanatory power. After examining the theoretical and empirical evidence for IIT, arguments from philosophy of mind and epistemology will be examined. Since IIT is not a form of computational functionalism, it is vulnerable to fading/ dancing qualia arguments. Finally, the limitations of the phenomenological approach to studying consciousness are examined, and it will be shown that IIT is a theory of protoconsciousness rather than a theory of consciousness.
Bayesian Activity Recognition in Residence for Elders

The growing population of elders in our society calls for a new approach in caregiving. By inferring what activities elderly are performing in their houses it is possible to determine their physical and cognitive capabilities. In this paper we describe probabilistic models for performing activity recognition from sensor patterns. We introduce a new observation model which takes the history of sensor readings into account. Results show that the new observation model improves accuracy, but a description using less parameters is likely to give even better results.
Clinical Outcomes of Thromboendarterectomy for Chronic Thromboembolic Pulmonary Hypertension: 12-Year Experience

Background We present our 12-year experience of pulmonary thromboendarterectomy in patients with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension. Materials and Methods Between January 1999 and March 2011, 16 patients underwent pulmonary thromboendarterectomy. Eleven patients (69%) were classified as functional class III or IV based on the New York Heart Association (NYHA) classification. Seven patients had a history of inferior vena cava filter insertion, and 5 patients showed coagulation disorders. Pulmonary thromboendarterectomy was performed during total circulatory arrest with deep hypothermia in 14 patients. Results In-hospital mortality and late death occurred in 2 patients (12.5%) and 1 patient (6.3%), respectively. Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation support was required in 4 patients who developed severe hypoxemia after surgery. Thirteen of the 14 survivors have been followed up for 54 months (range, 2 to 141 months). The pulmonary arterial systolic pressure and cardiothoracic ratio on chest radiography was significantly decreased after surgery (76±26 mmHg vs. 41±17 mmHg, p=0.001; 55%±8% vs. 48%±3%, p=0.003). Tricuspid regurgitation was reduced from 2.1±1.1 to 0.7±0.6 (p=0.007), and the NYHA functional class was also improved to I or II in 13 patients (81%). These symptomatic and hemodynamic improvements maintained during the late follow-up period. Conclusion Pulmonary thromboendarterectomy for chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension shows good clinical outcomes with acceptable early and long term mortality.
ALICE a multi-processor reduction machine for the parallel evaluation CF applicative languages

The functional or applicative languages have long been regarded as suitable vehicles for overcoming many of the problems involved in the production and maintenance of correct and reliable software. However, their inherent inefficiences when run on conventional von Neumann style machines have prevented their widespread acceptance. With the declining cost of hardware and the increasing feasibility of multi-processor architectures this position is changing, for, in contrast to conventional programs where it is difficult to detect those parts that may be executed, concurrently, applicative programs are ideally suited to parallel evaluation. In this paper we present a scheme for the parallel evaluation of a wide variety of applicative languages and provide an overview of the architecture of a machine on which it may be implemented. First we describe the scheme, which may be characterized as performing graph reduction, at the abstract level and discuss mechanisms that allow several modes of parallel evaluation to be achieved efficiently. We also show how a variety of languages are supported. We then suggest an implementation of the scheme that has the property of being highly modular; larger and faster machines being built by joining together smaller ones. Performance estimates illustrate that a small machine (of the size that we envisage would form the basic building block of large systems) would provide an efficient desk-top personal applicative computer, while the larger versions promise very high levels of performance Indeed. The machine is designed to be ultimately constructed from a small number of types of VLSI component. Finally we compare our approach with the other proposes schemes for the parallel evaluation of applicative languages and discuss planned future developments.
A Counts-in-Cells Analysis Of Lyman-break Galaxies At Redshift z ~ 3

We have measured the counts-in-cells fluctuations of 268 Lyman-break galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts in six 9' × 9' fields at z ~ 3. The variance of galaxy counts in cubes of comoving side length 7.7, 11.9, 11.4 h100−1 Mpc is σ gal2 ~1.3±0.4 for ΩM = 1, 0.2 open, 0.3 flat, implying on these scales a bias of σgal/σmass = 6.0 ± 1.1, 1.9 ± 0.4, and 4.0 ± 0.7. The bias and abundance of Lyman-break galaxies are surprisingly consistent with a simple model of structure formation that assumes only that galaxies form within dark matter halos, that Lyman-break galaxies' rest-UV luminosities are tightly correlated with their dark masses, and that matter fluctuations are Gaussian and have a linear power-spectrum shape at z ~ 3 similar to that determined locally (Γ ~ 0.2). This conclusion is largely independent of cosmology or spectral normalization σ8. A measurement of the masses of Lyman-break galaxies would in principle distinguish between different cosmological scenarios.
Numerical simulations of continuum-driven winds of super-Eddington stars

We present the results of numerical simulations of continuum-driven winds of stars that exceed the Eddington limit and compare these against predictions from earlier analytical solutions. Our models are based on the assumption that the stellar atmosphere consists of clumped matter, where the individual clumps have a much larger optical thickness than the matter between the clumps. This ‘porosity’ of the stellar atmosphere reduces the coupling between radiation and matter, since photons tend to escape through the more tenuous gas between the clumps. This allows a star that formally exceeds the Eddington limit to remain stable, yet produce a steady outflow from the region where the clumps become optically thin. We have made a parameter study of wind models for a variety of input conditions in order to explore the properties of continuum-driven winds. The results show that the numerical simulations reproduce quite closely the analytical scalings. The mass loss rates produced in our models are much larger than can be achieved by line driving. This makes continuum driving a good mechanism to explain the large mass loss and flow speeds of giant outbursts, as observed in η Carinae and other luminous blue variable (LBV) stars. Continuum driving may also be important in population III stars, since line driving becomes ineffective at low metalicities. We also explore the effect of photon tiring and the limits it places on the wind parameters.
Tele-Operated Lunar Rover Navigation Using Lidar

Near real-time tele-operated driving on the lunar surface remains constrained by bandwidth and signal latency despite the Moon s relative proximity. As part of our work within NASA s Human-Robotic Systems Project (HRS), we have developed a stand-alone modular LIDAR based safeguarded tele-operation system of hardware, middleware, navigation software and user interface. The system has been installed and tested on two distinct NASA rovers-JSC s Centaur2 lunar rover prototype and ARC s KRex research rover- and tested over several kilometers of tele-operated driving at average sustained speeds of 0.15 - 0.25 m/s around rocks, slopes and simulated lunar craters using a deliberately constrained telemetry link. The navigation system builds onboard terrain and hazard maps, returning highest priority sections to the off-board operator as permitted by bandwidth availability. It also analyzes hazard maps onboard and can stop the vehicle prior to contacting hazards. It is robust to severe pose errors and uses a novel scan alignment algorithm to compensate for attitude and elevation errors.
Average cost optimal threshold strategies for remote estimation with communication cost

In this paper, we consider a remote sensing system that consists of a sensor and an estimator. A sensor observes a first order Markov source and must communicate it to a remote estimator. Communication is noiseless but expensive. At each time, based on the history of its observations and decisions, the sensor chooses whether to transmit or not. If the sensor does not transmit, then the estimator must estimate the Markov process using its past observations. We study the average cost problem in the light of vanishing discount approach. The problem was studied previously by Lipsa and Martins, IEEE TAC, 2011 and by Nayyar et al, IEEE TAC, 2013, where it was shown that the optimal estimation policy is Kalman-like and the optimal communication policy is to communicate when the estimation error is greater than a threshold. In the discounted set-up, we had earlier characterized the optimal policy and the optimal thresholds as a function of communication cost. The average cost problem is investigated as the limiting case of the discounted cost problem as the discount factor approaches one. The average cost and the optimal values of the thresholds are provided in terms of the communication cost. Lastly, we present an example of birth-death Markov chain to illustrate our results.
Determination of time to contact and application to timing control of mobile robot

Usually, robots have some sensors that measure the distance between the robots and any obstacles, for example, ultrasonic sensors, infrared distance sensors, and etc. On the other hand, although animals and insects do not have distance sensors, they can behave adaptively in unknown environments. The mechanism of adaptive behavior has been studied in ecological psychology, and it is assumed that animals and insects employ time-to-contact information instead of distance information. This time-to-contact is called the “tau-margin,” and animals and insects obtain this information from the apparent size of objects and the temporal changes in the size. In this paper, we propose a visual system to determinate the tau-margin, and we apply the tau-margin for controlling a mobile robot. Experiments using the real robot have been conducted and effective behaviors have been realized.
Assessing Earthquake-Induced Tree Mortality in Temperate Forest Ecosystems: A Case Study from Wenchuan, China

Earthquakes can produce significant tree mortality, and consequently affect regional carbon dynamics. Unfortunately, detailed studies quantifying the influence of earthquake on forest mortality are currently rare. The committed forest biomass carbon loss associated with the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China is assessed by a synthetic approach in this study that integrated field investigation, remote sensing analysis, empirical models and Monte Carlo simulation. The newly developed approach significantly improved the forest disturbance evaluation by quantitatively defining the earthquake impact boundary and detailed field survey to validate the mortality models. Based on our approach, a total biomass carbon of 10.9 Tg∙C was lost in Wenchuan earthquake, which offset 0.23% of the living biomass carbon stock in Chinese forests. Tree mortality was highly clustered at epicenter, and declined rapidly with distance away from the fault zone. It is suggested that earthquakes represent a significant driver to forest carbon dynamics, and the earthquake-induced biomass carbon loss should be included in estimating forest carbon budgets.
Time-Inconsistent Preferences and Social Security

In this paper we examine the role of social security in an economy populated by overlapping generations of individuals with time-inconsistent preferences who face mortality risk, individual income risk, and borrowing constraints. Agents in this economy are heterogeneous with respect to age, employment status, retirement status, hours worked, and asset holdings. We consider two cases of time-inconsistent preferences. First, we model agents as quasi-hyperbolic discounters. They can be sophisticated and play a symmetric Nash game against their future selves; or they can be naive and believe that their future selves will exponentially discount. Second, we consider retrospective time inconsistency. We find that (1) there are substantial welfare costs to quasi-hyperbolic discounters of their time-inconsistent behavior, (2) social security is a poor substitute for a perfect commitment technology in maintaining old-age consumption, (3) there is little scope for social security in a world of quasi-hyperbolic discounters (with a short-term discount rate up to 15%), and, (4) the ex ante annual discount rate must be at least 10% greater than seems warranted ex post in order for a majority of individuals with retrospective time inconsistency to prefer a social security tax rate of 10% to no social security. Our findings question the effectiveness of unfunded social security in correcting for the undersaving resulting from time-inconsistent preferences.
Unequal channel error protection of multiple description codes for wireless media streaming

We investigate the problem of optimal channel protection of multiple-description coded (MDC) multimedia contents at a wireless access point (WAP). For each MDC packet, the WAP has the option to protect and broadcast the packet using one of the available channel coders, or to drop the packet altogether. For a fixed FEC-based MDC, we show how this optimization can be approximated by a convex optimization problem with linear constraints, and thus, can be solved efficiently. We verify the validity of our results through extensive simulations of a wireless image streaming application that employs multiple turbo channel coders, where we report gains of more than 2.50 dB PSNR in average reconstruction quality at receivers. We also devise an iterative algorithm for joint optimization of the channel code rate assignment and the design of the MDC. Our simulations show further gains of up to 5.40 dB in average PSNR when this joint optimization is employed.