Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Essays on the modeling of risks in interest-rate and inflation markets

In this paper we model the stochastic skewness present in interest-rate options. More precisely, we show model-free evidence of time-varying skewness in the LIBOR distributions and use the intuition from these results to specify a model based on a Heath-Jarrow-Morton framework and time-changed Levy processes. The model framework allows for semi-analytical solutions of caplet prices and moments of the LIBOR distribution. By using these model-based moments, we calibrate a simple case of the model to timeseries of the model-free volatility and skewness and show that the model is able to capture the volatility and skewness in the data. Stochastic skewness, HJM framework, Time-changed Levy processes, Markov Chain Monte Carlo JEL Classification: G12, G13, C11, C58 Parts of this paper are based on the previous paper ’A tractable Heath-JarrowMorton framework based on time changed Levy processes’. I would like to thank Bjarne Astrup Jensen, Fred Espen Benth, and Anne-Sofie Reng Rasmussen for useful comments.
Atomic layer deposition of HfO2 gate dielectric with surface treatments and post-metallization annealing for germanium MOSFETs

HfO2 gate dielectric is fabricated by atomic layer deposition on an n-type germanium (Ge) substrate to form p-type Ge MOS capacitors. Three solution-based chemical treatments of the Ge surface using propanethiol, octanethiol and (NH4)2S solutions respectively as well as post-metallization annealing are investigated to improve the interface quality of HfO2 gate dielectric on the Ge substrate. Experimental results show improvement in the electrical characteristics of the Ge MOS devices with a 20-nm HfO2 gate dielectric. In particular, the gate leakage current density is improved by one order of magnitude using the straightforward processing techniques.
A 28nm 6T SRAM memory compiler with a variation tolerant replica circuit

We propose an SRAM replica tracking circuit that reduces divergence of the replica path relative to normal read path (6-16% less Sense differential Requirement), thus improving the access time by 5-8%. The approach is compatible to power managed SRAMs having Retain till Access feature and also for non power managed SRAMs with no sense differential impact. Using This Replica tracing circuit Sense differential has been well tracked across all array and periphery voltages combinations which further improve the access time by 4-6%. Instances with this method 0.5-256Kb have been tested on a 28nm CMOS LP process.
Chimney sublaminar decompression for degenerative lumbar spinal stenosis.

OBJECT The authors evaluated the efficacy and safety of so-called chimney sublaminar decompression, a new technique to decompress the degenerative stenotic lumbar spinal canal without stripping of the paravertebral muscles. METHODS Eighteen patients (nine men and nine women whose mean age was 67 years) with symptoms of claudication were selected to undergo chimney sublaminar decompression. The duration of symptoms was greater than 6 months in 17 patients. Two lumbar segments were involved in seven patients, three in eight, and four in the remaining three patients. Central canal stenosis was present in 13 patients, and lateral recess stenosis in five patients. Mild spondylolisthesis was noted in seven patients. All the patients underwent chimney sublaminar decompression. After surgery, mild wound pain developed in 14 patients, moderate wound pain in two, and severe wound pain in two. The postoperative hospital stay was 4 days or fewer in 14 patients. At follow-up examination, excellent, good, and fair outcomes were achieved in 11, five, and two patients, respectively. No patient required a body brace, and no worsening of preexisting spondylolisthesis was detected. The spinal canal was increased to two- to 6.8-fold (mean 4.2-fold) the preoperative size. CONCLUSIONS Compared with laminectomy or endoscopic surgery, the aforementioned chimney sublaminar decompression technique was an equally effective and less invasive technique in the treatment of degenerative lumbar canal stenosis.
NKT cells are dispensable in the induction of oral tolerance but are indispensable in the abrogation of oral tolerance by prostaglandin E

NK1.1+ α β T cells (NKT cells) regulate the Th1/Th2 balance in response to dietary Ag, which may be involved in regulation of oral tolerance. OVA‐specific IgE and IgG1 Ab levels were significantly lower following an i.p. injection of OVA (in CFA) in C57BL/6 mice orally given a single, high dose (25 mg) of OVA than in those orally given PBS. The oral tolerance was normally induced in Jα281–/– mice which lack Vα14+ NKT cells, suggesting that NKT cells are dispensable for induction of oral tolerance. Treatment with PGE1 or PGE2 abrogated the oral tolerance in Jα281+/+ mice; this abrogation was accompanied by an OVA‐specific Th2‐dominant response. The abrogation of oral tolerance by PGE1 was not evident in Jα281–/– mice. Treatment with PGE1 induced an early increase in IL‐4 production by liver NKT cells in normal mice and neutralization of the early IL‐4 by administration of anti‐IL‐4 mAb abolished PGE1‐induced abrogation of oral tolerance. These results suggest that liver NKT cells producing IL‐4 are responsible for the down‐regulation of oral tolerance that is caused by the PGE molecules.
Competitive Representative Claimsmaking: Party Politicians and Institutional Factors in the Case of EU Budget Negotiations

This study provides an empirical comparative case study of representative claims-making in EU budget negotiations. Two questions are addressed in this paper. First, the paper asks what the role of elected or appointed partisan politicians is in comparison to other representatives. This question is relevant given the reported increasing importance of non-elected representatives. Secondly, the paper asks what the influence of institutional factors is on the practice of representative claims-making. As representative claims-making unfolds in the public sphere, the institutional factors of the public sphere may affect both the claimants it provides a platform for as well as constituencies represented. The paper finds that politicians continue to perform a crucial role in representation, both with regards to their prominence in the public sphere and with regards to the plurality of constituencies represented in their claims. Although institutional factors clearly affect claimants, there are much less pronounced – though noticeable – differences in the constituencies represented in different public spheres. The overall picture is one of a highly plural representative space in which multiple claimants compete with each other to get their message across. In doing so, claimants address the interests of multiple constituencies. It may well be the inherent competition among claimants, fostered by institutional factors, that ensures the plurality of the EU representative space.
An efficient unity power factor battery charging/discharging unit

Rechargeable battery is considered to be one of the main electric energy storage devices. Due to the problem of possible shortage of energy resources, cost or environmental considerations, a power saving and energy efficient devices become frequent request and important need. Therefore, within this appear a single phase battery charger/discharger set is proposed, which operates in two different modes. An empty battery is charged directly from ac source through the control of a PWM rectifier converter, followed by a dc/dc buck regulator in the first mode, which is called charging mode. Second mode is discharging mode, as the set is utilized to discharge and transfer the energy from a charged battery to charge another empty battery, hence a power saving has been obtained. Such charging and discharging operations could be frequently required, particularly during batteries manufacturing, tests, maintenance and also can be adopted to be utilized within recent vehicle to grid applications. The proposed PWM rectifier offers a sinusoidal supply current at unity power factor and improves the total harmonic distortion during the two modes of operations, hence providing high power quality operating conditions. The proposed set is simulated using PSCAD software to evaluate the system performance. Furthermore, experimental setup of the proposed system is implemented and experimental results have been agreed with simulation results, validating the proposed set for practical applications.
Efficacy of Melatonin Treatment in Jet Lag, Shift Work, and Blindness

Melatonin has chronobiotic properties in humans. It is able to phase shift strongly endogenous rhythms, such as core temperature and its own endogenous rhythm, together with the sleep-wake cycle. Its ability to synchronize free-running rhythms has not been fully investigated in humans. There is evidence for synchronization of the sleep-wake cycle, but the available data suggest that it is less effective with regard to endogenous melatonin and core temperature rhythms. When suitably timed, most studies indicate that fast release preparations are able to hasten adaptation to phase shift in both field and simulation studies of jet lag and shift work. Both subjective and objective measures support this statement. However, not all studies have been successful. Careful evaluation of the effects on work-related performance is required. When used to alleviate the non-24-h sleep-wake disorder in blind subjects, again most studies report a successful outcome using behavioral measures, albeit in a small number of individuals. The pres suggest, however, that although leep-wake can be stabilized to 24 h, entrainment of other rhythms is exceptionally rare.
The Association Between Health Risk Change and Presenteeism Change

Objective: This prospective study investigates whether changes in health risks are associated with changes in presenteeism (on-the-job productivity loss). Method: A total of 7026 employees of a national financial services company responded to a health risk appraisal (HRA), which included a modified version of the Work Limitation Questionnaire (WLQ) in both 2002 and 2004. The association between changes in health risks and changes in self-reported presenteeism was examined. Results: Changes in perceptual/psychologic health risks had a strong association with changes in presenteeism. Individuals who reduced their risks generally saw an improvement in productivity, whereas those who gained risks or remained high-risk status saw deterioration in productivity. Each risk factor increased or reduced was associated with a commensurate change in 1.9% productivity loss over time and estimated to be $950 per year per risk changed. Conclusions: Positive and negative changes in health risks are associated with same-direction changes in presenteeism.
Works council effectiveness in subsidiaries of MNCs during reorganizations: Case study evidence from the Netherlands

Internationalization of organizations has been a threat for (national) industrial relations. This study compares three cases to test the influence of works councils on decision-making in multinational companies (MNCs), going through reorganizations. The authors argue it is important to take account of internal factors in the subsidiary, namely the power capabilities and interests of the actors involved. They study these by looking at the network partners of works councils and aligned interests of local management and works council. The findings show that aligned interests form an important prerequisite for positive management attitude, trust and informal relations, positively affecting reorganizations in subsidiaries of MNCs.
Fine‐scaled geographical population structuring in a highly mobile marine species: the Atlantic cod

Compared with many terrestrial and freshwater environments, dispersal and interbreeding is generally much less restricted in the marine environment. We studied the tendency for a marine species, the Atlantic cod, to be sub‐structured into genetically differentiated populations on a fine geographical scale. We selected a coastal area free of any obvious physical barriers and restricted sampling to a 300‐km region, well within the dispersal ability of this species. Screening 10 polymorphic microsatellite loci in 6 samples we detected a weak, but consistent, differentiation at all 10 loci. The average FST over loci was small (0.0023) but highly significant statistically, demonstrating that genetically differentiated populations can arise and persist in the absence of physical barriers or great distance. We found no geographical pattern in the genetic differentiation and there was no apparent trend of isolation by distance along the coastline. These findings lend support to the notion that low levels of differentiation are due to passive transport of eggs or larvae by the ocean currents rather than to adult dispersal, the latter being strongly dependent on distance.
An Improved Multilevel Green's Function Interpolation Method With Adaptive Phase Compensation

An improved multilevel Green's function interpolation method (MLGFIM) with adaptive phase compensation (APC) is proposed. The difficulty in applying interpolation approaches to the fast varying phase term in the integral equation kernel for full-wave electromagnetic (EM) simulations is eradicated by using the phase compensation and adaptive direction separation (ADS). The multilevel tree structure in MLGFIM keeps the number of direction separation invariant at all levels, attributing to the recursive interpolation with multilevel phase compensation. The proposed MLGFIM-APC in conjunction with the Lagrange-Chebyshev interpolation yield an O(N log N) CPU time and O(N) computer memory requirement for surface scattering problems. By introducing a transition level, the MLGFIM-APC can adaptively incorporate interpolation techniques of conventional interpolation (CI), transition interpolation (TI) and phase-compensation interpolation (PI), corresponding to electromagnetic simulation of problems of small, moderate, and large electrical sizes, respectively. Large-scale microstrip antenna arrays are simulated to illustrate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method. It is found that the CPU time scales better than O(N log N) for these co-planar problems.
Clinical and therapeutic impact of 18F-FDG PET/CT whole-body acquisition including lower limbs in patients with malignant melanoma

ObjectivesTo assess the added benefit of scanning lower limbs in addition to the usual whole-body positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) scan in patients with no known or suspected primary or metastatic melanoma involving the lower limbs. Materials and methodsThis is a retrospective study of 122 consecutive patients [174 2-[18F]-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose (FDG) PET/CT] who underwent FDG PET/CT for staging of melanoma at different time points in the course of the disease from October 2005 to February 2009 at the Brest University Hospital. Reports of whole-body PET/CT scans including lower limbs were reviewed. PET/CT abnormalities on the lower extremities were tabulated by location and correlated with pathology, other imaging studies and at least a 6-month clinical follow-up. The usefulness of lower limbs acquisition in clinical management was evaluated according to imagery findings. ResultsAmong the 174 consecutive PET/CT scans performed in 122 patients, 33 scans in 28 patients highlighted abnormal FDG uptakes considered as equivocal or suggestive of malignancy in the lower limbs. In 28 cases, uptakes were located at once in the lower limbs and in the rest of the body (lung, liver, mediastinal and sub-diaphragmatic lymph nodes, adrenal glands, bone) corresponding to disseminated disease. In five cases, PET/CT uptakes were located only in lower limbs; each pathological uptake corresponded to benign lesions. Lower limbs findings never impacted clinical and therapeutic decision. ConclusionLower limbs additional PET/CT acquisition seems to offer poor additional benefit with none unexpected lesion detected and routine skull base to upper thigh images might be sufficient for this subset of patients.
Doctors who qualified in the UK between 1974 and 1993: age, gender, nationality, marital status and family formation

We report on some demographic characteristics of junior doctors in the United Kingdom, studied in six national cohorts of qualifiers between 1974 and 1993. Over the 20 years covered by the data, the percentage of qualifiers who were women increased substantially (from 27% in 1974 to 47% in 1993). Between 1983 and 1993, the number of women qualifiers rose by 242 (a 17% rise) and the number of men fell by 430 (a fall of 18%). Of all doctors, 52% were aged 23 years or less when they qualified and there was no increase over time in mature qualifiers. We report on increases in the percentage of doctors who qualified in the UK but who were born outside it (from 11% to 16%). The percentage of respondents who were married at the end of the first year after qualification declined from 45% in 1974 to 15% in 1993. At 25 years of age, 2% of the women doctors who qualified in 1983 had children compared with 45% of women aged 25 in the general population. Two‐thirds of the women doctors had children by their mid‐30s.
A weight-based approach for node failure detection and recovery in mobile cloud computing

The alluring benefits of Mobile Cloud Computing have attracted many mobile device users. The moving property of the mobile devices can serve as the boon to its user but curse for its developers. The moving devices cause the problems of the link faults, less available resources and unreliable dynamic networking conditions. The link failure of the nodes in the changing network decreases the performance of the network. Many multipath routing algorithms have been constructed so far to provide the stable paths but fails in recovery of the left-out node from network. A novel weight based approach has been proposed to detect the failed node and discover the alternate node to provide the seamless services. The approach works upon taking two parameters of working nodes (i) failure rate (ii) execution time. A master node is selected and its parameters are stated as Threshold values. The alternate node is selected by comparing the values with threshold values.
Not So Different from Non‐Traders

This paper uses a unique, comparable firm‐level dataset covering more than 80 developing middle‐income economies to provide a novel set of stylized facts on firms engaging in international trade, focusing on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. We show that firms in MENA are more likely to export and/or import than their counterparts elsewhere. However, we only find the expected positive and significant productivity premia for exporters outside of MENA. While MENA's larger exporters are indeed more productive than non‐exporters, a large share of exporters – the comparatively low‐volume ones – are not. We also confirm positive and significant size and productivity premia for manufacturers that import only, with productivity premia in MENA at least double of those in middle‐income economies elsewhere. In contrast, we find no size or productivity premia for MENA's manufacturers that export, but do not import. These patterns are consistent with substantial distortions in the relative fixed and variable costs of trading, likely a reflection of selectively applied policies.
Transformation of cluster specialization in the wake of globalization

Abstract In the light of increasing globalization and the rising spatial distribution of production activities, different scenarios for geographical agglomerations, such as clusters, are discussed. Nonetheless, the literature provides only scant knowledge about how cluster specialization transforms due to the globalization of production activities. The paper addresses this research gap based on a comparative case study of two Danish clusters, and by applying the literature on the global division of labour, global value chains and clusters. The main conclusion is that the specialization of clusters either changes or deepens in response to the globalization of production activities. However, which of these two outcomes it will be depends on the prioritization and localization of specific production activities in relation to the current cluster specialization, and on the governance executed by cluster lead firms.
The Threshold Level of the Sensor Histidine Kinase KinA Governs Entry into Sporulation in Bacillus subtilis

ABSTRACT Sporulation in Bacillus subtilis is controlled by a complex gene regulatory circuit that is activated upon nutrient deprivation. The initial process is directed by the phosphorelay, involving the major sporulation histidine kinase (KinA) and two additional phosphotransferases (Spo0F and Spo0B), that activates the master transcription factor Spo0A. Little is known about the initial event and mechanisms that trigger sporulation. Using a strain in which the synthesis of KinA is under the control of an IPTG (isopropyl-β-d-thiogalactopyranoside)-inducible promoter, here we demonstrate that inducing the synthesis of the KinA beyond a certain level leads to the entry of the irreversible process of sporulation irrespective of nutrient availability. Moreover, the engineered cells expressing KinA under a σH-dependent promoter that is similar to but stronger than the endogenous kinA promoter induce sporulation during growth. These cells, which we designated COS (constitutive sporulation) cells, exhibit the morphology and properties of sporulating cells and express sporulation marker genes under nutrient-rich conditions. Thus, we created an engineered strain displaying two cell cycles (growth and sporulation) integrated into one cycle irrespective of culture conditions, while in the wild type, the appropriate cell fate decision is made depending on nutrient availability. These results suggest that the threshold level of the major sporulation kinase acts as a molecular switch to determine cell fate and may rule out the possibility that the activity of KinA is regulated in response to the unknown signal(s).
Ideological Signaling and Incumbency Advantage

This article develops a novel explanation for the incumbency advantage based on incumbents’ ability to signal positions that are ideologically distinct from those of their parties. Using voter-level data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study and controlling for unobserved district heterogeneity, the study finds that voters in US House elections primarily use information about the ideology of candidates’ parties to infer the location of challengers, while they instead rely on information about the individual candidates’ ideologies to place incumbents. In higher-profile Senate elections, the difference between challengers and incumbents is trivial. Decomposing the incumbency advantage into valence and signaling components, the study finds that the signaling mechanism explains 14 per cent of the incumbency advantage in House elections, but only 5 per cent of the advantage in Senate contests. It also finds that a 50 per cent increase in party polarization increases the incumbency advantage by 3 percentage points.