Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Time-varying exposure to permanent and short-term risk and stock price momentum

This paper provides an explanation for the documented link between earnings and stock price momentum. A simple dynamic model that accounts for firms’ exposures to both short-term and long-term earnings shocks produces momentum-like effects. Price sensitivities to the two types of shocks vary in the cross-section depending on firm fundamentals and change over time depending on firm financial health. The combined effects of short-term and long-term earnings shocks lead to a positive relationship between cumulative past and expected returns of winner and loser momentum portfolios. The model predicts greater profitability of momentum strategies in the subset of companies that are more sensitive to short-term shocks and temporarily financially constrained. Empirical tests support the model predictions.
Risk Stratification of Metastatic Neck Nodes by Computed Tomogram and Positron Emission Tomogram in Patients with Head and Neck Cancer Receiving Definitive Radiotherapy

To investigate the prognostic impact of computed tomogram (CT) and 18 Fluoro-deoxyglucose PET/CT on the outcome of metastatic neck node (MNN) in patients with head and neck cancer receiving definitive radiotherapy (RT) or chemoradiotherapy (CRT). Methods: This patient-based study included 91 patients diagnosed with pharyngeal cancers with MNN (N1: 15, N2: 70, N3: 6). All had pretreatment CT and PET/CT before definitive CRT/RT. Parameters of MNNs for each patient, including maximal diameter, nodal volume, radiological central necrosis, maximum standardized uptake, metabolic tumor volume, and total lesion glycolysis (TLG) were retrieved for the analysis. Nodal relapse-free survival (NRFS) and survivals were calculated using the Kaplan-Meier method. Independent predictors were identified using Cox regression analysis. Results: After a median follow-up of 18 months, 64 patients remained nodal relapse-free, and 27 experienced neck recurrence. Multivariate analysis showed that the application of 40% of the maximal uptake of nodal TLG (N-TLG40%) ≧ 38 g [ P = 0.03, Hazard ratio (HR) 2.63, 95 % Confidence interval (CI) 1.10 ~ 6.30] and radiological necrosis on CT scan ( P = 0.001, HR 10.99, 95% CI 2.56 ~ 47.62) were two adverse features for NRFS. Patients who had a N-TLG40% ≧ 38 g and central radiological necrosis had significantly inferior 2-year NRFS (53% vs. 77% and 45% vs. 95%, respectively). Conclusion: The outcome of MNNs in patients with head and neck cancer receiving CRT/RT can be predicted according to radiological necrosis and N-TLG40% value. The two adverse features should be validated in future trials. By this way, patients can be treated alternatively or aggressively.
A Deep Learning Approach to Rhythm Modelling with Applications

This paper presents a deep-learning architecture which is capable of modelling signatures that represent the rhythm of music recordings. The proposed architecture consists of a stack of Restricted Boltzmann Machines on top of which lies an associative memory. In the current study, we operate this architecture as a classifier which can discriminate among genres of rhythm. As a proof of concept, our method is applied on a standard corpus of ballroom dances. The results indicate that the proposed architecture exhibits promising learning capabilities and satisfactory generalization performance.
Protecting Home Networks From Insecure IoT Devices

We present our ongoing work on SPIN, a muchneeded open source measurement platform that enables researchers and other users to easily analyze the security features of devices in the "Internet of Things" (IoT), specifically in-home networks. SPIN accomplishes this by mapping and enhancing network-level measurements in the home network and by making them available through a well-defined interface. This enables all kinds of new applications for research and commercial purposes, such as privacy managers for consumers that visualize insecure IoT devices and their connections, and new algorithms that automatically block botnet traffic to protect the public Internet against IoT-powered DDoS attacks. SPIN is a flexible distributed system that runs in the home network and that keeps users in control. We have validated SPIN in our lab through prototype implementations.
First version of the DSL based on the model

Today’s software systems require an evolution in order to both satisfy stakeholders’ increasing requirements and to react to possible faults. The advancement cannot be confined to phases, as it happens continuously. Software systems are typically not considered monolithic but organized in packages, brought to popularity by Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) distributions. Packages promote the philosophy of system evolution, which typically is implemented as upgrades, but they do not solve all management problems of large software collections. These problems are mainly caused by implicit inter-package dependencies that cannot be handled by upgrades that are typically non-transactional. This deliverable presents a first version of the Domain Specific Language (DSL) based on the model-driven approach presented in WP2 to support the upgrades of FOSS distributions. Both static and dynamic aspects of packages are taken into account: the former relies on implicit inter-package dependencies, whereas the latter depends on the execution of specific scripts which are executed during package upgrades. Scripts are implemented in Turing-complete languages, and all non-trivial properties about them are undecidable, including determining a priori their effects to be able to revert them upon failure. In this respect, a new model-based Domain Specific Language is provided for specifying and to simulate the behavior of the scripts which are executed during package upgrades. There are two benefits of this approach: i) by simulating the upgrade on the models, our proposed technique is able to predict some upgrade failures, and ii) the models and transactional logs can drive at run-time the roll-back of residual effects of failed or undesired upgrades. The aim of creating the DSL is to be able to provide the language to capture the atomic operations performed and modelled in such a way that we can simulate the effect of transactional upgrades and roll-backs before applying them to the system. The effectiveness of the approach is investigated by applying it to some Linux distributions.
Under Pressure? Performance Evaluation of Police Officers as an Incentive to Cheat: Evidence from Drug Crimes in Russia

This paper provides an empirical analysis of manipulations of seized drug amounts by police officers, based on a unique dataset that contains full information on drug crimes in Russia reported during 2013-2014. First, using a bunching estimator, I document a significant excess mass of heroin cases above the punishment cliff. The mass is 6.325 times greater than the average number of cases in a counterfactual scenario without manipulation. Next, I employ an event study approach to investigate the incentives for police officers to manipulate and find that the motivation arises from the officers’ performance evaluation system. One of the main indicators applied for evaluation is the number of serious and most serious drug crimes, which can be easily increased by moving offenders from below to above the threshold. Exploring the dynamics of this indicator during a calendar year, I document that it increases by 23% in the month when a police station is close to reaching the previous year’s level of performance, current target. Comparing the performance evaluation systems of two separate drug control agencies, I find further evidence of this response to performance requirements. Finally, applying a novel bunching technique, I determine that police officers are more likely to manipulate the drug amounts seized from repeat offenders. The overall effect of manipulation on the sentence length of drug users is an additional year of incarceration, which is a 67% increase, compared to the average sentence length without manipulation. JEL Classification: H11, H76, K14, K42.
Stochastic Modeling Techniques and Data Analysis International Conference with Demographics Workshop SMTDA 2018

Objective: This work explores the performance of popular classification methods and multivariate indices on binary classification tasks, for datasets that comprise discrete valued features. This is directly applicable in the evaluation of the diagnostic accuracy of composite health related indices or screening tests, which combine multiple discrete-valued attributes (variables), usually using a weighted sum. Methodology: Several classification methods (e.g. logistic regression, classification trees, neural networks, support vector machines, ensemble classifiers etc) and multivariate indices that combine feature weighting techniques, are evaluated in this study using both simulated and actual medical-dietary data collected from the “ATTICA study” in Greece. A variety of scenarios that modify the discrete values’ distribution parameters of the variables, and the number of variables as well as, are tested. All methods were assessed as to their classification performance by using a set of classification validity criteria such as: area under the ROC curve, true positive and true negative rates, positive and negative predictive value. The predictability of methods and the statistical significance of the results are evaluated using Monte-Carlo cross validation. Results: Results indicate that specific classification methods outperform all others in almost all the validity criteria and they also perform better than multivariate indices in certain cases, with regards to the data distribution, the number of features used and the number of their possible values. However, multivariate indices demonstrate a better performance when the number of features is small and the number of possible values in these features is also small.Conclusion: This work’s findings propose a methodology for selecting more suitable techniques for predicting the clinical status of a person in the case of general or specific populations, depending on the data nature.
Detection of Siderite (FeCO3) in Glen Torridon Samples by the Mars Science Laboratory Rover

drill sites (bottom). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS DETECTION OF SIDERITE (FeCO3) IN GLEN TORRIDON SAMPLES BY THE MARS SCIENCE LABORATORY ROVER. P. D. Archer, Jr.1, E. B. Rampe2, J. V. Clark3, V. Tu1, B. Sutter1, D. Vaniman4, D. W. Ming2, H. B. Franz5, A. C. McAdam5, T. F. Bristow6, C. N. Achilles5, S. J. Chipera7, S. M. Morrison8, M. T. Thorpe2, D. J. Des Marais6, R. T. Downs9, R. M. Hazen8, R. V. Morris2, A. H. Treiman10, C. R. Webster11, and A. S. Yen11, 1Jacobs, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, 2NASA JSC, 3Geocontrols Systems – Jacobs JETS Contract, NASA JSC, 4Planetary Science Institute, 5NASA GSFC, 6NASA Ames, 7CHX Energy, 8Carnegie Institution for Science, 9University of Arizona, 10Lunar and Planetary Institute, 11Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Adhesion Enhancement of Poly (acrylamide -co- Acrylic Acid)/ Polyethylene Glycol anti-Biofouling Coating using Fly Ash based Geopolymer

Hydrogel has been used as an alternative to replace biocide-based paint in preventing biofouling. However, hydrogel has low adhesion on metallic substrate, hindering its application for coating. Therefore, the aim of this project is to enhance the adhesion strength and anti-biofouling properties of the poly(acrylamide-co-acrylic acid)/polyethylene-glycol hydrogel, poly(AAm-co-AAc/EG) coating via the incorporation of fly ash-based geopolymer that range from 0.5 wt% to 2.5 wt%. The hydrogel coating was synthesised via free radical polymerisation with the aid of N,N-methylenebisacrylamide (MBA) as the crosslinker, and ammonium persulfate (APS) as the initiator. The Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra of the hybrid hydrogel had proved the presence of geopolymer with the availability of significant peaks at 3,294 cm-1 (N-H bond), 2,946 cm-1 (O-H bond), 1,545 cm-1 (C-O-C bond) and 1,113 cm-1 (Si-O-Si or Al-O-Si bond). The average swelling capacity of the hybrid hydrogel coating in distilled water (up to 50,000%) was significantly higher than in artificial seawater (up to 5,000%) due to osmotic pressure difference. The anti-biofouling performance test by using algae (Chlorella vulgaris sp.) suspension showed that the incorporation of 2.0 wt% geopolymer into hybrid hydrogel coating had successfully reduced the algae attachment on the substrate by 92% as compared to the control sample. The adhesion strength of all hydrogel coatings was investigated by using the pull-off adhesion test in accordance to ASTM D4541. The incorporation of 2.0 wt% geopolymer into hydrogel matrices demonstrated an increment of 58% in adhesion strength on steel plate as compared to neat hydrogel. The results showed that geopolymer has the potential to improve the anti-biofouling and adhesion strength of hydrogel coating.
Characterizing how Visual Question Answering models scale with the world

Detecting differences in generalization ability between models for visual question answering tasks has proven to be surprisingly difficult. We propose a new statistic, asymptotic sample complexity, for model comparison, and construct a synthetic data distribution to compare a strong baseline CNN-LSTM model to a structured neural network with powerful inductive biases. Our metric identifies a clear improvement in the structured model’s generalization ability relative to the baseline despite their similarity under existing metrics.
A Novel High Speed FIR Filter with Reconfigurable Architecture to Surpass Filter Performance for Dynamic Power Utilization

An expressive arts way to deal with vogue low power reconfigurable limited motivation reaction (LPRFIR) channel. The LPRFIR is closely resembling personality once the channel arrange is mounted and not changed for express applications and the prudent exchange off between control reserve funds and channel execution is actualized exploitation the anticipated style. For the most part, FIR channel has enormous sufficiency varieties in information record and coefficients. Thinking about the sufficiency of each the channel coefficients and sources of info, anticipated FIR channel progressively changes the channel arrange. Numerical investigation on control reserve funds and channel execution debasement and its trial comes about demonstrates that the anticipated approach accomplishes key power investment funds though not genuinely trading off the channel execution. The capacity funds are up to 20.6% with minor execution corruption and hence the house overhead of the anticipated topic could be a littler amount than 5.5% contrasted with this quality outlook.
Die gegenw/irtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik,

§ 6. Der bewuflte Wechsel des erkenntnistheoretischen Standpunkts. I m v ie r t en Abschn i t t h a t t e n wir gesehen, dab es n icht m6glich ist, die Modelle g la t t zu fibernehmen nnd den jeweils unbekann ten oder n icht genau bekann ten Var iablen doch auch b e s t i m m t e W e r t e zuznschreiben, die wir bloB nicht k e n n e n . I m § 5 sahen wir, dab die U n b e s t i m m t h e i t auch n ich t eine wirkl iche Verwaschenhei t ist, denn es gibt jedenfalls Fglle, wo eine leicht ausf i ihrbare Beobach tung die fehlende Kenntn is verschaff t . W'as ble ibt nun iibrig ? Aus diesem sehr schwierigen Di l emma hi l f t sich oder uns die herrschende Lehrme inung du t ch Zuf lucht znr Erkenntn is theor ie . Man bedeu te t nns, dab kein Unte rsch ied zu machen sei zwischen dem wirkl iehen Zus tand des Na tu rob jek t s nnd dem, was ich darf iber weiB, oder besser viel le icht dem, was ich darfiber wissen kann, wenn ieh mir Mfihe gebe. Wirklich so sagt m a n s ind j a e igent l ich nur Wahrnehmung , Beobachtung, Messung. H a b e ich mi r du tch sie in e inem gegebenen Augenbl ick die bes tm6gl iche Kenn tn i s v o m Zus tande des physikal ischen Objekts verschaff t , die na turgesetz l ich er langbar ist, so dar l ich jede darf iber h inausgehende F rage naeh dem , ,wirklichen Zus tand" als gegenstandslos abweisen, sofern ich i iberzeugt bin, dab keine wei tere Beobach tung meine Kenn tn i s davon erwei te rn kann wenigstens nicht, ohne sie in anderer Hins ich t u m ebensoviei zu schm~lern (n~mlich du tch VerAnderung des Zustandes, s. w. u.). Das wirf t nun einiges L ich t auf die Genesis der Behaup tung , die ieh a m E n d e yon § 2 als e twas sehr wei tgehend bezeichnete : dab alle Modellgr6gen prinzipiell m e g b a r sind. Man kann dieses Glaubenssatzes k a u m entra ten , wenn m a n sich gezwungen sieht, den eben erw~ihnten philosophischen Grundsatz , d e m als obers ten Schirmhe r rn aller Empi r i c kein Verstfindiger die Ach tung versagen wird, als D ik t a to r zu Hilfe zu rufen in den NSten physikal ischer 3£ethodik. Die Wirk l ichke i t widers t reb t der gedankl iehen Naehbi ldung du tch ein l~Iodell. Man l~gt d a r u m
Study on the Status and Improvement Path of Entrepreneurship Practice Teaching in China’s Local Colleges

Practical teaching of entrepreneurship has become a key part of entrepreneurship education. Due to various subjective and objective constraints, the status quo of entrepreneurship practice teaching in China’s local colleges is not ideal. This work analyzed the problem and necessity of entrepreneurial practice teaching, then discussed the experience of entrepreneurship practice teaching at home and abroad, and the advantage of crowdfunding in promoting entrepreneurship, and finally put forward the ways to enhance the practice teaching in China’s local colleges. Keywords—entrepreneurship education; practical teaching; crowd-funding; start-up financing
Data Denoising and Post-Denoising Corrections in Single Cell RNA Sequencing

Single cell sequencing technologies are transforming biomedical research. However, due to the inherent nature of the data, single cell RNA sequencing analysis poses new computational and statistical challenges. We begin with a survey of a selection of topics in this field, with a gentle introduction to the biology and a more detailed exploration of the technical noise. We consider in detail the problem of single cell data denoising, sometimes referred to as “imputation” in the relevant literature. We discuss why this is not a typical statistical imputation problem, and review current approaches to this problem. We then explore why the use of denoised values in downstream analyses invites novel statistical insights, and how denoising uncertainty should be accounted for to yield valid statistical inference. The utilization of denoised or imputed matrices in statistical inference is not unique to single cell genomics, and arises in many other fields. We describe the challenges in this type of analysis, discuss some preliminary solutions, and highlight unresolved issues.
From Events to Futures and Promises and back

Events based on channel communications and futures/promises are powerful but seemingly diﬀerent concepts for concurrent programming. We show that one concept can be expressed in terms of the other with surprisingly little eﬀort. Our results oﬀer light-weight library based approaches to implement events and futures/promises. Empirical results show that our approach works well in practice.
VOL 17 NO . 2 COM WINTER 1992 The Journal of the Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry

An intenlisciplimry survey of 777/> Ohio health care provider* in five different disciplines including optometry is ilescribed. Key issues for planning continuing education programs uvre surveyed and arc reported. These results provide a framework for program development and design of individual and interdisciplinary continuing professional educational experiences in the health sciences. The study slunocd that program content, date, lime and location are the most important factors influencing program attendance. General optometric educators will he interested in the comparisons of opinions of optometrists and other health care providers toward continuing education.
Does a bias toward the present influence exploratory choice?

Time is a central aspect of exploratory choice. People must balance the immediate rewards of exploiting known alternatives against the long-term rewards of exploring uncertain alternatives. However, little research has investigated how this temporal aspect affects the exploratory decisions people make. In other intertemporal choices, people display a bias towards immediate rewards. We hypothesize that in exploratory choice, this present bias will cause them to underexplore. Across three experiments, including a preregistered design, we find no evidence that present bias influences exploratory choice, but also conclude that our stimuli may not effectively induce present bias. We discuss how present bias might better be investigated, and possible reasons that present bias may not affect exploratory choice.
Preliminary Observations on the Antihypertension Action of Dabigatran Etexilate in Patients With Nonvalvular Atrial Fibrillation: A Prospective Multicenter Single-Arm Interventional Study

Background In Japan, the number of patients with atrial fibrillation continues to grow with the aging of the population. Prevention of cardiogenic cerebral embolism is extremely important in patients with atrial fibrillation. While warfarin has long played a major role for this purpose, a new oral anticoagulant, dabigatran etexilate (dabigatran), has demonstrated superior efficacy and safety in recent years. We conducted a multicenter prospective interventional study to examine whether dabigatran could demonstrate superiority over warfarin in practical clinical situation. Methods Among outpatients attending Fukuoka University Chikushi Hospital or clinics registered with the Chikushi Cardiovascular Disease Clinical Research Network (Chikushi-JRN), 143 patients with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF) were enrolled in this study and followed up for 12 months after initiation of dabigatran therapy. The primary endpoint was occurrence of cerebral embolism or systemic embolism, while secondary endpoints were: 1) Bleeding events; 2) Changes in the activated partial thromboplastin time (aPTT); 3) Adverse events; and 4) Changes in blood pressure and pulse rate. Results During the follow-up period, none of the patients developed cerebral or systemic embolism (the primary endpoint). In addition, there were no bleeding events or other adverse events (the secondary endpoints). aPTT remained stable throughout the 12-month observation period. A significant decrease in systolic blood pressure was observed at 1 month after initiation of dabigatran therapy, and blood pressure was reduced up to 12 months. Blood pressure showed a significant decrease in patients with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, but not in patients with chronic atrial fibrillation. Conclusions Dabigatran showed a stable anticoagulant effect, and its safety was confirmed. Dabigatran also reduced blood pressure, which may help to explain why it causes fewer major bleeding events than warfarin.