Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Introducere În Finanţele Comportamentale – Partea Întâi (An Introduction to Behavioral Finance – Part 1)

<b>Romanian Abstract:</b> Această lucrare aduce în atenţie caracteristicile domeniului finanţelor comportamentale. Vom discuta despre posibilitatea de a utiliza metode ale psihologiei cognitive pentru a înţelege dimensiunea iraţională a deciziilor financiare. Vom aborda, de asemenea, procesele mentale care ar putea explica unele evoluţii iraţionale ale pieţelor financiare, în special cele asociate bulelor şi crahurilor. În final, vom prezenta unele diferenţe între finanţele comportamentale şi cele tradiţionale. <b>English Abstract:</b> This paper explores the characteristics of the behavioral finance field. We discuss the possibility of employing some methods of the cognitive psychology to understand the irrational dimension of the financial decisions. We also approach the mental processes that could explain some irrational evolutions of the financial markets, especially those associated to bubbles and crashes. Finally, we present the main differences between the behavioral finance and the traditional finance.
Genetic relatedness among strains of Heterobasidion annosum as detected by random amplified polymorphic DNA markers

Heterobasidion annosum, the casual agent of root and butt rots of trees is one of the most important plant pathogens in temperate coniferous regions of the world. It is comprised of several intersterility groups with different host preferences. Of the H. annosum isolates from various geographical regions belonging to various intersterility groups, 36 showed group-specific banding patterns in RAPD assay. More polymorphisms were found within the S- and F-group isolates than in the P group. Genetic similarities among the isolates were determined by UPGMA clustering revealing the presence of four major clusters: P, S, F, and the North American S. The P group was the most distinctive of all the other groups, while the European S and F and the North American S were more closely related. The P group showed only 20% similarity to the other groups and may be referred to as a subspecies. The North American S group was separate from the European S group. The potential influence of the historical spread of coniferous trees in the isolate genetic differentiation in Europe is discussed.
Deflation and Depression: Is There and Empirical Link?

Are deflation and depression empirically linked? No, concludes a broad historical study of inflation and real output growth rates. Deflation and depression do seem to have been linked during the 1930s. But in the rest of the data for 17 countries and more than 100 years, there is virtually no evidence of such a link.
Housing Wealth and Residential Energy Consumption in the UK

Housing wealth effect often manifests as a positive relationship between consumption and perceived housing wealth (e.g., the perceived value of houses). When the perceived value of a property rises, homeowners may feel more comfortable and secure about their wealth, causing them to spend more. This study adopts a behavioural approach to verify if this relationship holds true for residential energy consumption in the UK. While controlling for property characteristics as well as a large number of demographic, socioeconomic and energy-use behaviour variables, we identified a significant relationship between housing wealth and energy consumption. Our models also considered psychological biases in energy consumption behaviours such as the framing effect. Our findings not only shed light on the behavioural aspects of housing wealth effect on residential energy consumption, but also demonstrates the possibility and potential to ‘nudge’ households towards energy conservation. Most importantly, we also provide empirical evidences on the intriguing relations among housing wealth, residential energy consumption, and fuel poverty. We argue that overlooking the presence of fuel poverty risks a superficial interpretation of any identified housing wealth effect on residential energy consumption. The fuel vulnerable group should be analysed separately from the rest of the population due to their different energy consumption patterns. This finding is particularly helpful to design and implement energy consumption policies that can strike a balance between social justice and economic efficiency.
Phylloplane microfungal metabolite influences activity of RuBisCO

The phylloplane microbes are known to affect systemic acquired resistance in plants against a broad spectrum of pathogens. The influence of phylloplane microbes and their metabolites on physiology and biochemistry of plants is well-documented but their effect on the physiology and functioning of chloroplasts and mitochondria is not well understood. The present study was conducted to understand the impact of metabolite of a dominant phylloplane microfungi (Fusarium oxysporum) isolated from the phylloplane of Lycopersicon esculentum on activity of RuBisCO. Activity of RuBisCO (EC 4.1.1.39) in chloroplasts of fungal metabolite treated and untreated eight-week old tomato plants were studied. Significant increase in the activity of RuBisCO (P ⩽ 0.01), isolated from plants inoculated with the fungal metabolite was observed. The fungal metabolite could elicit the enzyme activity by about two folds (P ⩽ 0.05) within 72–96 h of treatment of tomato plants. The result demonstrates that probably phylloplane microfungi and/or their metabolites influence the photosynthetic efficiency of plants.
Impact of Social Ties on Dispersal, Reproduction and Dominance in Feral House Mice (Mus musculus domesticus)

The existence of a relationship between the social ties an individual has to other family members and its further role within the family was tested in feral house mice (Mus musculus domesticus), according to the ‘Social cohesions hypothesis’. It is predicted by the hypothesis that individuals not forming strong social ties are the first who emigrate. House mice were studied using a population cage system that allowed continuous observation of individually marked animals. Data on time staying with other animals (social ties), aggressive interactions, body weight, reproduction, and emigration were collected daily. The results may be summarized as follows: 1 Male emigrants were less integrated in cohorts of male littermates compared with their brothers of the same age. These male cohorts appeared to protect single males from attacks by the dominant male. No difference could be observed in social ties to other family members. 2 After weaning, there was no difference in social ties of male and female offspring. However, after sexual maturation social ties of males decreased significantly while those of females remained almost constant. 3 Female emigrants showed the same intensity of social ties as their resident sisters. 4 No difference could be found between social ties of females becoming pregnant and their nonreproductive sisters of the same age. Reproduction or reproductive suppression could not be explained by having more or less contact with other reproductive females. 5 Dominant males spent least of all time with other family members. The social cohesions hypothesis has to be rejected in analysing proximate causes of emigration. In house mice, male emigration was caused by aggression of the dominant male in competition for the top rank within the group. This was enhanced by a lower integration in the group of same-aged brothers but is not related to a lack of integration into the family.
Predator-inducible defences and local intrapopulation variability of the intertidal mussel Semimytilus algosus in central Chile

Predator-inducible defences have a strong influence on the expression of morphological traits of intertidal invertebrates. For instance, mussels exposed to predators often have thicker shells than non-exposed. On the intertidal rocky shores of Chile, the mussel Semimytilus algosus is a pre- ferred prey of many carnivorous invertebrates, including the snails Nucella crassilabrum and Con- cholepas concholepas, and the crab Acanthocyclus gayi. Preliminary observations indicated that S. algosus exists as 2 morphotypes: a thick, smooth shell and a thinner, ringed shell. The thick-shell morphotype was found mostly on compact, rocky platforms, whereas the thin one was found on emer- gent rocks. We examined the role of invertebrate predators in determining the morphological differ- ences observed in S. algosus as a process of defence induction. The density and size of mussel preda- tors showed significant differences between habitats: A. gayi dominating the platforms and N. crassilabrum emergent rocks. C. concholepas did not show differences between habitats. Water- borne cue experiments demonstrated that the mussel shell thickness is increased by the presence of predators, especially A. gayi. Furthermore, in contrast to the other predators, A. gayi preferentially selects mussels of the thin-shell morphotype. We demonstrate the cause and effect connection between variation in mussel shell morphology in the laboratory and their associated spatial distribu- tion in the field, as well as the ecological role played by predators. We propose that, at local scales, the distribution and abundance of predators in the field explain the inter-population morphological differences of the mussel S. algosus.
Would it Have Paid to Be in the Eurozone?

Giving up an independent monetary policy and a flexible exchange rate are the key sources of costs and benefits entailed to joining a monetary union. In this paper we analyze their ex post impact on the stability of the Polish economy during the recent financial crisis. To this end we construct a small open economy DSGE model and estimate it for Poland and the euro area. Then we run a counterfactual simulation, assuming Poland’s euro area accession in 1q2007. The results are striking - volatilities of GDP and inflation increase substantially. In particular, had Poland adopted the euro, GDP growth would have oscillated between -6% and 9% (-9% to 11% under more extreme assumptions) instead of between 1% and 7%. We conclude that during the analyzed period independent monetary policy and, in particular, the flexible exchange rate played an important stabilizing role for the Polish economy.
Short-Term Response of Soil Enzyme Activity and Soil Respiration to Repeated Carbon Nanotubes Exposure

Nanomaterials such as single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) may repeatedly enter the soil environment with unknown adverse consequences. To provide the information on the effects of repeated exposure of CNTs, we determined the response of soil enzyme activity and soil basal respiration (SBR) through a two-week incubation of farmland soil repeatedly treated with different concentrations of CNTs (100, 200, 500 mg kg−1 for SWCNTs and 100, 500, 1000 mg Kg−1 for MWCNTs). The activities of catalase, alkaline phosphatase, and invertase and SBR were measured after one- and two-time treatments. The repeated contamination of SWCNTs and MWCNTs repressed the activity of alkaline phosphatase and invertase in the 14-day incubation. Alkaline phosphatase and invertase were more sensitive indicators of CNTs’ contamination than catalase and soil basal respiration. High concentration of the SWCNTs stimulated SBR while the lower concentration suppressed SBR. The recurred exposure of SWCNTs and MWCNTs repressed the activity of catalase and invertase. The obtained results indicated that the soil microorganisms were suppressed under repeated pollution, as suggested by the same suppressed response of SBR between SWCNTs and MWCNTs treatment, except for the concentration of 500 mg kg−1.
First confirmation of a native bird‐pollinated plant in Europe

The pollination of Anagyris foetida L. (Fabaceae), a Mediterranean species that is a relict of the Tertiary, was studied in two populations of SW Spain over a three-year period. Numerous censuses of birds and insects were carried out, the floral nectar was quantified, and specific tests were performed to determine the pollinators' pollen load, the pollen's effective transfer to the pistil, and spontaneous self-pollination. The most important pollinators were three species of passeriforms Phylloscopus collybita Vieillot, Sylvia atricapilla L. and S. melanocephala Gmelin - a result coherent with findings in populations of S and E Spain. The negligible existence of insect visitors and pollinators of A. foetida flowers could be explained by the early flowering of this species during the autumn-winter, coinciding with the coolest and wettest months of the year (cold, high winds, almost daily mists that persist until nightfall, and above all, abundant rainfall). The pollen loads carried by the birds were high, as were also the loads transferred to the pistil. The fruit-set of bagged flowers was very low, evidence of the plant's need for the birds as pollinators. This is the first proof of the existence of a native European bird-pollinated plant, since besides ifs peculaliarities (flowers odourless, pseudotubular, with no landing platform, pendulous, diurnal populations were mainly pollinated by three passeriform species.
Peripheral Deiodination of Thyroid Hormones: Biological Significance

The main secretory product of the thyroid gland is thyroxine (T4), which is a relatively inactive prohormone serving as a substrate for deiodination processes in peripheral tissues. Activation and inactivation of 3,5,3'-triiodo-L-thyronine (T3) occurs in the presence of outer-ring (ORD) and inner-ring deiodinases (IRD), respectively. During ontogenesis high plasma levels of T3 occur at parturition or hatching in precocial mammals and birds and at metamorphic climax in amphibians. These high levels may be obtained by increased T4 ORD activity and also by decreased T3 IRD activity resulting in an inhibition of T3 degradation. In mammals, birds and fish growth hormone (GH) has been described as a stimulatory agent for ORD activity. In the chick embryo, GH does not increase the amount of T4 ORD but inhibits T3 IRD activity and T3 degradation.
Rana ridibunda varies geographically in inducing clonal gametogenesis in interspecies hybrids

Diploid F1 hybrids between Rana ridibunda from Adriatic SW Yugoslavia and Polish R. lessonae, and between Polish R. ridibunda and an unnamed species from SW Yugoslavia are shown by electrophoresis and examination of lampbrush chromosomes to contain both parental genomes in their diploid oocytes I. In contrast, central European R. ridibunda genomes in diploid hybrids, whether F1s or from natural hemiclonal lineages, induce exclusion of the lessonae genome in the germ line, only ridibunda translation products and endoreduplicated ridibunda chromosomes being detected in their diploid oocytes I. The data demonstrate geographic variation of R. ridibunda in the ability of its genomes to induce clonal gametogenesis in interspecies hybrids. They also suggest that genomes of the unnamed Yugoslavian species may be resistant to such exclusion.
A Joint Analysis of the KOSPI 200 Option and ODAX Option Markets Dynamics

As a function of strike and time to maturity the implied volatility estimation is a challenging task in nancial econometrics. Dynamic Semiparametric Factor Models (DSFM) are a model class that allows for the estimation of the implied volatility surface (IVS) in a dynamic context, employing semiparametric factor functions and time-varying loadings. Because nancial asset volatilities move over time, across assets and over markets, this paper analyses volatility interaction between German and Korean stock markets. As proxy for the volatility, factor loadings series derived from a DSFM application on option prices are employed. We examine volatility transmission between the markets under the vector autoregressive (VAR) model framework. Our results show that a shock in the volatility of one market may not translate directly into greater uncertainty in another market and it is unlikely that portfolio investors can benet from diversication among these markets due to cointegration.
Uncertainty-aware Self-training for Low-resource Neural Sequence Labeling

Neural sequence labeling (NSL) aims at assigning labels for input language tokens, which covers a broad range of applications, such as named entity recognition (NER) and slot filling, etc. However, the satisfying results achieved by traditional supervised-based approaches heavily depend on the large amounts of human annotation data, which may not be feasible in real-world scenarios due to data privacy and computation efficiency issues. This paper presents SeqUST, a novel uncertain-aware self-training framework for NSL to address the labeled data scarcity issue and to effectively utilize unlabeled data. Specifically, we incorporate Monte Carlo (MC) dropout in Bayesian neural network (BNN) to perform uncertainty estimation at the token level and then select reliable language tokens from unlabeled data based on the model confidence and certainty. A well-designed masked sequence labeling task with a noise-robust loss supports robust training, which aims to suppress the problem of noisy pseudo labels. In addition, we develop a Gaussian-based consistency regularization technique to further improve the model robustness on Gaussian-distributed perturbed representations. This effectively alleviates the over-fitting dilemma originating from pseudo-labeled augmented data. Extensive experiments over six benchmarks demonstrate that our SeqUST framework effectively improves the performance of self-training, and consistently outperforms strong baselines by a large margin in low-resource scenarios.
Unfolding Proactive Processes for Creativity: Integration of Employee Proactivity, Information Exchange, and Psychological Safety Perspectives

The authors integrate the employee proactivity, information exchange, and psychological safety perspectives to develop a model of individual creativity. Proactive employees prepare themselves with resources in anticipation of effecting changes. The authors propose that proactive employees seek informational resources through exchanging with others in the workplace. Information exchange, in turn, fosters the development of trust relationships that provide psychological safety for creative endeavors. The authors collected time-lagged data from a sample of 190 matched employee-manager pairs in a specialty retail chain. The results showed that proactive employees engaged in more information exchange and, by so doing, built stronger trust relationships with supervisors and colleagues. These trust relationships, in turn, increased employee creativity. The relationship between information exchange and employee creativity was fully mediated by trust. The authors discuss the implications of the findings for creativity theory and research.
U.S. Presidential Elections and Implied Volatility: The Role of Political Uncertainty

This paper focuses on the effects of political uncertainty and the political process on implied stock market volatility during US presidential election cycles. Using monthly Iowa Electronic Markets data over five elections, we document that stock market uncertainty, as measured by the VIX volatility index, increases along with positive changes in the probability of success of the eventual winner. The association between implied volatility and the election probability of the eventual winner is positive even after controlling for changes in overall election uncertainty. These findings indicate that the presidential election process engenders market anxiety as investors form and revise their expectations regarding future macroeconomic policy.
Predicting Conflict Events in Africa at Subnational Level

This study reviews the contribution in predictive accuracy of a number of geographic and socio-economic factors that are commonly linked to conflict incidence. A logit model is fitted to sub-national data for Africa at grid-cell level covering the years 2000-2009, generating an out-of-sample forecast for the period 2010-2015. Results show that the strongest predictor of future conflict is current conflict incidence in the grid-cell and neighbouring cells. Additionally, the infant mortality rate, which serves as a proxy for socio-economic well-being, shows some prowess in contributing to accurate predictions. This in contrast with factors such as the share of mountainous terrain. Travel time to the nearest city, to proxy for urban-rural differences, is also a strong predictor, but it must be noted that this could be the result of reporting bias in the outcome variable. In general the results highlight that it is difficult to improve accuracy beyond the contribution of conflict dynamics. Finally, the presented results are based on a relatively simple regression model commonly used in the literature and more sophisticated statistical techniques such as machine learning could improve predictions.
When Does the Ecological Fallacy Vanish in Linear Regressions?

As regards regressions, the ecological fallacy suggests that coefficients obtained from aggregate (or group) data often differ from those of the same statistical model and data at the individual level. Comparing the linear regression frameworks of Firebaugh (1978) and Piantadosi et al. (1988), this paper shows that the ecological fallacy vanishes when group effects, due to which the statistical relationship could depend on the group environment, are absent.
Effects of Proto-oncogene Protein DEK on PCAF Localization

The proto-oncogene protein DEK is a nuclear binding phosphoprotein that has been associated with various human diseases including leukemia. Histone acetylation is an important post-translational modification which plays important role in transcriptional regulation. Auto-acetylation of histone acetyltransferase PCAF results in increment of its HAT activity and facilitation of its nuclear localization. In this study, we report that DEK inhibits PCAF auto-acetylation through direct interaction. The C-terminal acidic domains of DEK are responsible for the interaction with PCAF. Using confocal microscopy, we have shown that nuclear localization of PCAF is severely inhibited by DEK. Taken together, our results suggest that DEK may be involved in various cellular signal transduction pathways accommodated by PCAF through the regulation of PCAF auto-acetylation.
Hypernetworks: Cluster Synchronization Is a Higher-Order Effect

Many networked systems are governed by non-pairwise interactions between nodes. The resulting higher-order interaction structure can then be encoded by means of a hypernetwork. In this paper we consider dynamical systems on hypernetworks by defining a class of admissible maps for every such hypernetwork. We explain how to classify robust cluster synchronisation patterns on hypernetworks by finding balanced partitions, and we generalize the concept of a graph fibration to the hypernetwork context. We also show that robust synchronisation patterns are only fully determined by polynomial admissible maps of high order. This means that, unlike in dyadic networks, cluster synchronisation on hypernetworks is a higher-order, i.e., nonlinear effect. We give a formula, in terms of the order of the hypernetwork, for the degree of the polynomial admissible maps that determine robust synchronisation patterns. We also demonstrate that this degree is optimal by investigating a class of examples. We conclude by displaying how this effect may cause remarkable synchrony breaking bifurcations that occur at high polynomial degree.
Acceleration of the Strike Calculation for Foreign Exchange Options Using FPGA

Traditionally GPU and multi-core CPUs are used for task parallelism. In recent years the use of FPGA for Monte Carlo simulation had been researched. The strength of FPGA lies in the pipeline parallelism which can be beneﬁcial not only for Monte Carlo simulations. In this paper we demonstrate that the pipeline parallelism of Newton method can be eﬃciently implemented on FPGA cards. We apply Newton method to determine the strike of the foreign exchange options when the convention is to include the premium in delta quotation. Moreover, we improve the initial guess of the iterative method through the Taylor expansion of the delta equation. <br>