Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analyzing the Idiosyncratic Volatility Character of Emerging Markets: A Post Crisis Investigation on Istanbul Stock Exchange

In this study, we aim to introduce behavior of idiosyncratic volatility and its forecasting ability in prediction of future return in Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) as an emerging market stock exchange, over the post World Economic Crisis in 2008. We measure equally weighted idiosyncratic volatility by following the Campbell's (2001) Indirect Method, by considering market size and weekly basis in the period of 2009:01 to 2011:12. Our results reveal that idiosyncratic volatility is the biggest component of total volatility and show no trend, although market volatility has a slow decreasing trend in this period. We also find that small size stocks have slightly higher volatility than the big size stocks but both portfolios have similar idiosyncratic risk behavior. Finally, the study found that idiosyncratic risk and systematic risk are jointly used in forecasting of subsequent returns.
Silicon Schottky Diode Power Converters Beyond 100 GHz

This paper presents circuits based on Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs) in IBM's 0.13-mum SiGe BiCMOS process. Circuits such as sub-harmonic up-conversion mixers and frequency doublers are demonstrated at frequencies beyond 100 GHz on silicon. These circuits enable power generation at millimeter wave frequencies on silicon. The frequency doublers can deliver >0 dBm output power at 110 GHz and the 2X sub-harmonic up converters exhibit peak conversion loss of <3 dB up to 120 GHz.
Finite element model of the knee for investigation of injury mechanisms: development and validation.

Multiple computational models have been developed to study knee biomechanics. However, the majority of these models are mainly validated against a limited range of loading conditions and/or do not include sufficient details of the critical anatomical structures within the joint. Due to the multifactorial dynamic nature of knee injuries, anatomic finite element (FE) models validated against multiple factors under a broad range of loading conditions are necessary. This study presents a validated FE model of the lower extremity with an anatomically accurate representation of the knee joint. The model was validated against tibiofemoral kinematics, ligaments strain/force, and articular cartilage pressure data measured directly from static, quasi-static, and dynamic cadaveric experiments. Strong correlations were observed between model predictions and experimental data (r > 0.8 and p < 0.0005 for all comparisons). FE predictions showed low deviations (root-mean-square (RMS) error) from average experimental data under all modes of static and quasi-static loading, falling within 2.5 deg of tibiofemoral rotation, 1% of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and medial collateral ligament (MCL) strains, 17 N of ACL load, and 1 mm of tibiofemoral center of pressure. Similarly, the FE model was able to accurately predict tibiofemoral kinematics and ACL and MCL strains during simulated bipedal landings (dynamic loading). In addition to minimal deviation from direct cadaveric measurements, all model predictions fell within 95% confidence intervals of the average experimental data. Agreement between model predictions and experimental data demonstrates the ability of the developed model to predict the kinematics of the human knee joint as well as the complex, nonuniform stress and strain fields that occur in biological soft tissue. Such a model will facilitate the in-depth understanding of a multitude of potential knee injury mechanisms with special emphasis on ACL injury.
Face Detection Using the 3X3 Block Rank Patterns of Gradient Magnitude Images

Face detection locates faces prior to various face-related applications. The objective of face detection is to determine whether or not there are any faces in an image and, if any, the location of each face is detected. Face detection in real images is challenging due to large variability of illumination and face appearances. This paper proposes a face detection algorithm using the 3×3 block rank patterns of gradient magnitude images and a geometrical face model. First, the illumination-corrected image of the face region is obtained using the brightness plane that is produced using the locally minimum brightness of each block. Next, the illumination-corrected image is histogram equalized, the face region is divided into nine (3×3) blocks, and two directional (horizontal and vertical) gradient magnitude images are computed, from which the 3×3 block rank patterns are obtained. For face detection, using the FERET and GT databases three types of the 3×3 block rank patterns are a priori determined as templates based on the distribution of the sum of the gradient magnitudes of each block in the face candidate region that is also composed of nine (3×3) blocks. The 3×3 block rank patterns roughly classify whether the detected face candidate region contains a face or not. Finally, facial features are detected and used to validate the face model. The face candidate is validated as a face if it is matched with the geometrical face model. The proposed algorithm is tested on the Caltech database images and real images. Experimental results with a number of test images show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
Economic Cost-Benefit Analysis of a Unified and Integrated European Patent Litigation System, Final Report to the European Commission

Executive Summary The patent system in Europe is still incomplete. Appropriating returns from patented technology is impaired by the fact that patent-holders may have to enforce their patent rights in multiple courts. Moreover, third parties interested in showing that particular patent rights have been granted erroneously are disadvantaged by having to initiate revocation proceedings in multiple jurisdictions. Given that the successful pursuit of these two objectives can generate welfare gains for the European economy, a unified European patent litigation system has immediate appeal. The current study seeks to provide approximate cost and benefit calculations in order to inform policy-makers in Europe about the choices they face in this important field of public policy. The study groups cost and benefit effects into the following categories: (i) effects from avoiding duplication of litigation; (ii) effects from changes in the demand for litigation, induced by changes in the cost structure; (iii) effects from changed incentives for patenting. Towards performing an assessment of the first two effects, the report collects data from a variety of sources in order to support the estimates and to test the plausibility of a number of necessary assumptions. Given that no official data on the incidence, outcomes and cost of patent litigation exist, an effort is made to triangulate data and estimates in order to demonstrate that the approximations are justified. The following results are particularly important. Avoiding duplication of infringement and revocation cases is likely to generate large benefits for the European economy. The results obtained here suggest that currently, between 146 and 311 infringement cases are being duplicated annually in the EU Member States. By 2013, this number is likely to increase to between 202 and 431 duplicated cases. Total private savings from having access to a unified Patent Court in 2013 would span the interval between EUR 148 and 289 million. An assessment of the operating costs of the proposed Patent Court is obviously subject to a large number of caveats. Based on data from earlier efforts (in particular the Working Party on Litigation set up under the auspices of the European Patent Organisation), an upper-bound estimate for the operating costs of a court with a capacity of 940 cases indicates that the Court would cause operating costs of EUR 27.5 million. Hence, the cost-benefit assessment focusing on avoided duplication leads to a highly positive evaluation of the proposal. Even if the low estimate of savings …
Oxidation of Carbon Disulphide as the Sole Source of Energy for the Autotrophic Growth of Thiobacillus thioparus Strain TK-m

Summary: The ability of micro-organisms to grow on carbon disulphide (CS2) as a sole source of carbon and energy appears to be very limited: none was obtained from enrichment culture and eight Thiobacillus species could not use it. Thiobacillus thioparus strain TK-m could grow autotrophically on either CS2 or carbonyl sulphide (COS) as sole substrates. Growth yield on CS2 was 7.9 ± 0.9 g cell-carbon (mol CS2)−1, and yields on COS, thiosulphate or thiocyanate were in the range 5.6—6.1. COS was detected as an intermediate during growth on CS2, and there was quantitative conversion of the sulphur of CS2 to sulphate during growth. Aerobic oxidation of CS2 by suspensions of strain TK-m exhibited a K s of 16.5 μM and a V max of 524 nmol O2 consumed min−1 (mg organism-protein)−1. When incubated anaerobically with CS2, strain TK-m sequentially produced COS and H2S. CS2 oxidation is proposed to proceed by its sequential hydrolytic cleavage to COS then H2S, with release of all the carbon as CO2, followed by oxidation of the sulphide to sulphate. This oxidation provides all the energy for growth, which is dependent on the autotrophic fixation of CO2, apparently by means of ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase.
FlexCase: Enhancing Mobile Interaction with a Flexible Sensing and Display Cover

FlexCase is a novel flip cover for smartphones, which brings flexible input and output capabilities to existing mobile phones. It combines an e-paper display with a pressure- and bend-sensitive input sensor to augment the capabilities of a phone. Due to the form factor, FlexCase can be easily transformed into several different configurations, each with different interaction possibilities. Users can use FlexCase to perform a variety of touch, pressure, grip and bend gestures in a natural manner, much like interacting with a sheet of paper. The secondary e-paper display can act as a mechanism for providing user feedback and persisting content from the main display. In this paper, we explore the rich design space of FlexCase and present a number of different interaction techniques. Beyond, we highlight how touch and flex sensing can be combined to support a novel type of gestures, which we call Grip & Bend gestures. We also describe the underlying technology and gesture sensing algorithms. Numerous applications apply the interaction techniques in convincing real-world examples, including enhanced e-paper reading and interaction, a new copy and paste metaphor, high degree of freedom 3D and 2D manipulation, and the ability to transfer content and support input between displays in a natural and flexible manner.
Texas Elective Workers' Compensation: A Model of Innovation?

Workers' Compensation is often described as a bargain between employers and employees. Employees give up the right to sue their employers in negligence for workplace injuries, and, in return, employers agree to pay predictable, statutorily mandated benefits to injured employees. Over time, this “bargain” became compulsory in every state but one. Texas is the only state in which employers and employees can decide whether or not to enter the workers' compensation bargain. This elective system has some fairly serious problems, and many have advocated its abandonment. This Note analyzes the system's history, compares the system to conventional compulsory systems, analyzes some of its weaknesses, and concludes that with some modifications, the system could be a useful model for other states interested in fostering innovation and cost reduction in their own occupational injury systems. This conclusion is based on the experience of a small but significant number of Texas employers that opt out of the workers' compensation system and yet provide, at a lower cost, substantially the same benefits to injured employees as would be available under workers' compensation. The existence of this parallel occupational injury system directly benefits those employers that are able to construct cost-saving alternative benefit programs. In addition, it has the potential to indirectly benefit even those employers that participate in the workers' compensation system as cost saving techniques innovated in the less regulated occupational injury benefits market trickle into the more highly-regulated workers' compensation market. 324 WILLIAM & MARY BUSINESS LAW REVIEW [Vol. 2:323
Reversal of Relative Thresholds for Synaptic Facilitation and Increased Excitability Induced by Serotonin and Tail Nerve Stimulation inAplysiaSensory Neurons

Tail shock induces reflex sensitization in Aplysia and, in parallel, induces a number of modulatory effects in central neurons, such as increased excitability in tail sensory neurons (SNs) and facilitation of synaptic transmission from SNs to motor neurons. Both of these modulatory effects are mimicked by exogenous application of serotonin (5HT) or electrical stimulation of the tail nerve P9. In the present study we examined the activation thresholds for increased excitability and synaptic facilitation induced by either 5HT or P9 stimulation. We found that the concentration of 5HT sufficient to produce a significant increase in excitability produced no significant synaptic facilitation and, conversely, that the intensity of nerve stimulation sufficient to produce significant synaptic facilitation produced no excitability changes. This reversal of relative thresholds for these modulatory effects may reflect the differential access of exogenous 5HT and endogenous 5HT (released by tail nerve stimulation) to the SN cell body and synaptic terminals, respectively.
Applied climatology: drought

I Introduction By linking climatic variations with the fundamental biological requirement of water availability , drought is a primary topic within applied climatology. Drought acts as a unifying climatological approach that provides valuable information for agricultural, ecological, and hydrological applications. While a lack of water is straightforward to comprehend and appreciate, a wide array of approaches are used in the analysis of drought. However defined, drought can be thought of as an extended period of time where water availability is lower than expected or needed. With growing population and resource pressures, as well as a number of severe and ongoing droughts worldwide, this is an active time for drought research. There has been a wide range of recent developments in drought research that include near real-time monitoring , improved drought reconstructions via proxies, and high-resolution simulations of future drought conditions. Although proxy records of drought continue to play an important role in the characterization of drought conditions, this brief report will focus on three topics within drought research that are most relevant to applied climatology: (1) modern drought monitoring using instrumental products, (2) impacts of recent climatic change on drought variability, and (3) modeling of modern and future drought. In all cases, a selection of the recent literature on precipitation variations and associated drought conditions is reviewed, synthesized, and critiqued. II Modern drought monitoring and analysis Despite a number of well-documented limitations (Guttman et al. Drought Severity Index (PDSI) continues to be a central approach in drought monitoring. The PDSI is useful because it (1) incorporates cumulative anomalies of both moisture supply and demand and (2) has recognized categories of moisture defi cit and surplus, even though the categories themselves are somewhat obscure. Use of the term 'PDSI' also can be somewhat ambiguous, as there are a number of different formulations, including recent contributions that allow spatial comparisons to be more meaningful (Wells et al., 2004) and that improve the identifi cation of drought onset (Rhee and Carbone, 2007). The complexity and limitations of the PDSI – primarily its lack of spatial and temporal stationarity, which make spatial comparisons difficult and change-detection *
Factors Influencing Customer Acceptance of M-Commerce Services in Jordan

The TAM (technology acceptance model) has been widely used to examine the factors that influence a person's acceptance of new technology. In mobile commerce, trust has been proposed as an important factor affecting the adoption of this new technology. The objective of this study is to test the impact of trust and other factors on mobile commerce adoption based on the technology acceptance model. A cross-sectional survey is conducted among 130 respondents from two universities samples. Bivariate correlations and multiple regressions were used to test the hypotheses. The results shows that trust significantly influence the attitude towards accepting mobile commerce.
Variation in use of Internet-based patient portals by parents of children with chronic disease.

OBJECTIVES To assess the use of Internet-based portals among families of children with chronic diseases and to describe characteristics of portal registrants and users. DESIGN Retrospective observational study. SETTING Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, using data from September 1, 2003, through February 29, 2008. Patients/ PARTICIPANTS Parents of children with diabetes mellitus, juvenile idiopathic arthritis, or cystic fibrosis. INTERVENTIONS Parents of children with a chronic disease were given the opportunity to access health-related information for their children via an Internet-based portal. OUTCOME MEASURES Percentage of families who obtained a portal account (registered), used the portal for the first time within 3 months and again 3 to 6 months after registration, number of times logged in, and session length. RESULTS Of 1900 families, 27.9% obtained a portal account. Of those, 47.8% used the portal within 3 months of registration and 15.9% continued to use the portal 3 to 6 months after registration. Families of African American patients and of patients insured by Medicaid were less likely to obtain a portal account. More outpatient visits and having private health insurance coverage were associated with increased portal registration and use. CONCLUSIONS Understanding the feasibility of portal use by parents is an important first step to using portals for improving self-management, patient-provider interactions, and outcomes for children with chronic diseases. Subsequent studies should address parent perceptions of the value portals add to the management of the chronic disease of their child and ways to increase that value. Barriers to using portals among racial minorities and publicly insured families should also be studied to address disparities.
Cellular Aspects of Shigella Pathogenesis: Focus on the Manipulation of Host Cell Processes

Shigella is a Gram-negative bacterium that is responsible for shigellosis. Over the years, the study of Shigella has provided a greater understanding of how the host responds to bacterial infection, and how bacteria have evolved to effectively counter the host defenses. In this review, we provide an update on some of the most recent advances in our understanding of pivotal processes associated with Shigella infection, including the invasion into host cells, the metabolic changes that occur within the bacterium and the infected cell, cell-to-cell spread mechanisms, autophagy and membrane trafficking, inflammatory signaling and cell death. This recent progress sheds a new light into the mechanisms underlying Shigella pathogenesis, and also more generally provides deeper understanding of the complex interplay between host cells and bacterial pathogens in general.
SOVEREIGN: A Self-Organizing, Vision, Expectation, Recognition, Emotion, Intelligent, Goal-Oriented Navigation System

Advanced Research Projects Agency (N00014-92-J-4015); Air Force Office of Scientific Research (F49620-92-J-0225, F49620-01-1-0397); National Science Foundation (IRI 90-24877, SBE-0354378); Office of Naval Research (N00014-91-J-4100, N00014-92-J-1309, N00014-95-1-0657, N00014-01-1-0624); Pacific Sierra Research (PSR 91-6075-2)
Bilingual Teaching in the Thai EFL Context: One Teacher's Practice

This paper examines a short bilingual episode observed in an English lesson conducted at a Thai university, and documents that teacher's own view on his use of both Thai and English in the classroom. It was found that the teacher employed considerable skill and creativity in making English accessible to this group of low-proficiency learners. Data also highlight the role of the learner's first culture and language in learning a second language, through which the meanings of the second language become embedded in those of the first. Following discussion of this EFL episode, the paper returns to document some strategies for L1 use which have been found to be successful in the Australian ESL context.
The case of Chelsea : The effects of late age at exposure to language on language performance and evidence for the modularity of language and mind

The bulk of this paper is devoted to describing and analyzing the language performance of a woman given the case name, “Chelsea,” who began first language acquisition at the age of thirty-two years. I conclude, based on these data, that given that Chelsea has not developed a grammar, that her case strongly supports there being a Critical Period for first language acquisition of grammar. As an addendum, I have added a second, far smaller part to this paper that discusses Chelsea’s number cognition— her knowledge of number concepts, her arithmetic abilities and more. Together with the first part, I then draw some conclusions regarding what this case can tell us about not only the Critical Period for first language acquisition but also specifically about the domain-specificity of grammar and number and about the issues of modularity of language and mind, more broadly.
Peri-Operative Management of Older Adults with Cancer—The Roles of the Surgeon and Geriatrician

Optimal surgical management of older adults with cancer starts pre-operatively. The surgeon plays a key role in the appropriate selection of patients and procedures, optimisation of their functional status prior to surgery, and provision of more intensive care for those who are at high risk of post-operative complications. The literature, mainly based on retrospective, non-randomised studies, suggests that factors such as age, co-morbidities, pre-operative cognitive function and intensity of the surgical procedure all appear to contribute to the development of post-operative complications. Several studies have shown that a pre-operative geriatric assessment predicts post-operative mortality and morbidity as well as survival in older surgical cancer patients. Geriatricians are used to working in multidisciplinary teams that assess older patients and make individual treatment plans. However, the role of the geriatrician in the surgical oncology setting is not well established. A geriatrician could be a valuable contribution to the treatment team both in the pre-operative stage (patient assessment and pre-operative optimisation) and the post-operative stage (patient assessment and treatment of medical complications as well as discharge planning).