Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exploring the Impact of COVID-19 on Financial Derivatives Markets

Currently, financial derivatives are important financial instruments. Financial derivatives can provide investors with the opportunity to hedge, speculate, and arbitrage. But due to the impact of COVID-19. The performance of financial derivatives has changed dramatically compared to the pre-epidemic period. This dissertation focuses on the performance of three major financial derivatives which include futures, options, and credit under COVID-19. The phenotypes of these three major financial derivatives are analyzed separately. In this paper, we examine the extensive literature to demonstrate the changes in financial derivatives during COVID-19. By collecting a large amount of data about financial derivatives during the COVID-19 period and before. And the data are quantitatively analyzed to show the specific performance of financial derivatives under COVID-19. The study found that there is a huge variation in the performance of these three financial derivatives in COVID-19. For futures, foreign performance futures can bring a negative impact on financial markets. As for domestic, the performance is different during the emergency resistance period and the normalized resistance period. The performance of the emergency resistance period is significantly less than the normalized resistance period. For options, the volatile market sentiment and panic caused by recurring epidemics affect investors' judgment, which leads to changes in the implied volatility of options and affects the price of options. For swap specify its basic means of operation in an epidemic state and the basic types.
Hölder continuity of bounded generalized solutions for some degenerated quasilinear elliptic equations with natural growth terms

We prove the local Holder continuity of bounded generalized solutions of the Dirichlet problem associated to the equation $\sum_{i =1}^{m} \frac{\partial}{\partial x_i} a_i (x, u, \nabla u) - c_0 |u|^{p-2} u = f(x, u, \nabla u),$ assuming that the principal part of the equation satisfies the following degenerate ellipticity condition $\lambda (|u|) \sum_{i=1}^m a_i (x,u, \eta) \eta_i \geq \nu(x) |\eta|^p,$ and the lower-order term $f$ has a natural growth with respect to $\nabla u$.
Faster R-CNN-Based Method for Detecting Contraband Targets in X-ray Images

Security screening is the first line of defence for the safety of people’s lives and property, and intelligent security screening is an inevitable trend for the future development of the security industry. x-ray security screening images have complex backgrounds, various scales of contraband and mutual occlusion, which lead to unsatisfactory results of traditional target detection algorithms. This is proposes a multi-scale contraband detection model for X-ray security images based on the Faster R-CNN framework. The detection network is improved with two modules: K-means improves the RPN structure to form the K-means+RPN module, and CBAM improves the FC structure to form the CBAM+FC module. k-means helps the model to generate a priori frames that better fit the size of X-ray contraband, and CBAM can better notice the feature information of contraband in X-ray images. In simulation experiments, using publicly available datasets in the X-ray security field, the model in this paper achieves satisfactory results in terms of detection accuracy.
Association of Body Condition Score with Lactation and Reproductive Performance in Murrah Cross Buffaloes in Chitwan, Nepal

Body condition score (BCS) is a precise method for determining the stored energy reserves of dairy animals, which are located in the form of subcutaneous fat tissue, indicated by the animal’s degree of accomplished nutrition, and could be used as a management and selection tool to improve reproductive performance. The objective of this research was to investigate and quantify relationships between BCS and milk production, milk composition, and reproductive performance in Murrah cross buffalo. For this purpose, a semi-structured questionnaire was created and BCS was calculated using a visual technique based on a BCS chart. The sampling approach employed was a completely randomized design. A total of 165 Murrah cross buffaloes from 59 household farms were used in the study, where 130 milk samples were collected and used to assess the milk parameters by lacto-scan. Four BCS groups were namely 2.5-2.99, 3.0-3.49, 3.5-3.99, and 4.0-4.99 where the BCS score was found to grow during the dry period until calving, then decreased as milk production increased. BCS group (3.5-3.99) had higher performance during all the lactation periods with a peak milk yield of 11.4 ± 1.1 kg. At the late lactation stage BCS group (3.5-3.99) showed higher values of SNF (9.77), protein (4.01), and lactose (3.82), followed by BCS groups 4.0-4.49, 3.0-3.49, and 2.5-2.99. At the early, lactation stages, the BCS group (3.5-3.99) had the highest (P<0.01) average milk yield of 10.28, 9.50, 9.37 kg, and the BCS group (4- 4.49) had highest (P<0.01) average fat percent of 9.19, 10.20, and 10.32, respectively. The buffaloes of BCS group 3.5-3.99 had shorter post-partum estrus (61.14days) (P<0.01), fewer services for conception (1.30) (P<0.01) and higher first service conception rate (79.87%) (P<0.01). Similarly, the incidence of associated reproductive disorders such as uterine prolapse, retained placenta, metritis, and mastitis are lowest in BCS group 3.5-3.99 with values of 7.69%, 3.44%, 3.44%, and 6.89% respectively. It can be concluded that the BCS group (3.5–3.99) provided the greatest production results in both milk and reproductive function. For optimal animal lactation and reproductive performance, the nutrition management of dairy cows should be necessarily monitored using the BCS score.
Internal quality attributes of chicken eggs coated with Hik (Lannea
 coromandelica) and Mango (Mangifera indica) wax stored at room
 temperature

Eggshell coating is a common practice used to improve the shelf-life of table eggs while mineral oils have been widely utilized as an effective coating material. Hik ( Lannea coromandelica) and Mango ( Mangifera indica ) are tropical trees grown in the dry zone of Sri Lanka and their wax has film-forming properties. However, information on using Hik and Mango wax as a surface coating material on egg quality attributes is scarce and yet to be elucidated. Therefore, this study aimed to check the effect of Hik and Mango tree waxes as external coating materials and to evaluate the internal qualities and shelf life of eggs during storage. A total of 408 freshly laid, white, medium-sized (55–60 g), clean eggs were purchased, individually weighed, and arranged under a completely randomized design to obtain four different coating treatments as; 1) Negative control (non-coated eggs, NC), 2) Positive control (mineral oil-coated eggs, PC), 3) Hik Wax coated eggs (HW), and 4) Mango Wax coated eggs (MW) and stored at room temperature (27 ± 2 ℃ ) for five wks. Weight losses and internal quality parameters (Haugh unit [HU], albumen and yolk pH values, and microbial analysis) of eggs were measured weekly. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis was conducted to analyze the structural changes of egg albumen. Results revealed that HW and MW eggs had low weight loss ( p < 0.05) than NC eggs. Compared with NC, PC, and HW eggs had significantly higher HU ( p < 0.05) during the storage. Both plant wax coatings effectively reduced ( p < 0.05) the albumen and yolk pH when compared to non-coated eggs. The egg yolk color did not change ( p > 0.05) upon the coating treatment. All eggs were negatively performed for the Salmonella test. FTIR analysis confirmed that no chemical changes occurred in wax-coated eggs during the storage. In conclusion, coating eggs with Hik and Mango wax are not as effective as mineral oil, however, it was still effective in enhancing the shelf-life and improving the internal qualities of eggs rather than non-coating.
Constructive and destructive optimization methods for predictive ensemble learning

An ensemble is a group of classifiers that jointly solve a classification problem. Both theoretical and empirical findings support that an ensemble will often outperform a single classifier. In addition, the ensemble learning framework provides tools to tackle complicated or large problems that were once infeasible for traditional algorithms. The key issue of ensemble learning is how to create a relatively small-sized ensemble with a good bias and variance trade-off. Currently, there are two general approaches to achieve that goal: constructive building, e.g. bagging and boosting, and destructive pruning, e.g. Kappa pruning. Two new ensemble algorithms, bagging with adaptive cost (bacing) and semi-definite-programming (SDP)-based pruning, are proposed in this dissertation. By iteratively changing the weights of the training points, bacing is able to focus on the boundary points that the current ensemble barely predicts right or wrong so that the margins on these "difficult" points can be maximized. SDP-based pruning, on the other hand, attempts to pick a subset of classifiers from an existing ensemble to improve the effectiveness and the efficiency of the ensemble. Along with standard computational experiments that compare these two algorithms with other peer algorithms on a variety of datasets, several new problems are used to demonstrate the capabilities of the new algorithms. Specifically, bacing is applied to point-wise lift curve optimization. SDP-based pruning is evaluated in the classifier sharing scenario, where classifiers from different but related problem domains are pooled, and a subset of them are selected for each domain. The effect of classifier sharing under the condition of data scarcity is also studied. Our results indicate that bacing outperforms bagging and boosting, and a variation of bacing is able to marginally improve targeted points on a lift curve. SDP-based pruning is also ahead of its peer algorithms in terms of accuracy. Its application in the classifier sharing scenario substantially improves the effectiveness and robustness of the selected ensembles.
Pait at Paet (Pain and Chisel): The Struggles and Victories of a Santo Maker

Religious arts and crafts are culturally and spiritually relevant for many, leading to an interest for deeper understanding. The emergence of religious carving industries is essential to exploring this field. However, there has been limited research on people who decided to pursue this line of work. This study then aimed to provide a thorough understanding of the experience of individuals who start their own religious carving business. Using a case study design, results of the study provided in-depth account of the journey of individuals who start their own religious carving business which also included their motivations, difficulties, approaches, and coping techniques. Individuals in this venture can work toward achieving both personal and professional well-being by understanding the complex relationship between familial and entrepreneurial roles, addressing the challenges encountered, and putting into practice effective marketing and coping mechanisms.
Diseño de módulo de visión para celda de manufactura flexible

Luis Alberto López Estrada [1], Guillermo Ramírez Prado [2] [1] Alumno de Posgrado, [2] Profesor Investigador, Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes Contacto: imt.luis. lopez@gmail.com RESUMEN La visión artificial es un elemento fundamental para el control de calidad en los sistemas de manufactura actuales, en el presente artículo se presenta los fundamentos teóricos, la aplicación y el diseño de un módulo de visión para la universidad tecnológica de Aguascalientes el cual se tiene planeado implementar en la actualización de sus equipos e instalaciones. Por medio del uso de la plataforma de Matlab [1] se diseña una interfaz de usuario que sea capaz de identificar formas (clasificación de elementos) y se contrasta la velocidad del módulo con lo que se espera en sistemas industriales de similar aplicación.
Multi-Stage Spatio-Temporal Fusion Network for Fast and Accurate Video Bit-Depth Enhancement

For video bit-depth enhancement (VBDE) tasks, inter-frame information is critical for removing false contours and recovering the details in low bit-depth (LBD) videos. However, due to different structural distortions and complex motions in the neighboring frames, it is difficult to effectively utilized inter-frame information. Most algorithms rely on alignment operations to provide information of neighboring frames, suffering from slow inference speed due to the complex alignment module design. Meanwhile, most existing methods sequentially perform the intra-frame feature extractions and inter-frame information fusions, but fail to efficiently fuse spatio-temporal information. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a two-stage progressive group (TSPG) network to find complementary information related to the target frame without adopting an alignment operation. To simultaneously achieve intra-frame feature extractions and inter-frame feature fusions, we propose a parallel spatio-temporal fusion (PSTF) module with a dual-branch spatial-temporal residual (DSTR) block to focus on more useful temporal information while ensuring a faster inference speeds. Extensive experiments on public datasets demonstrate that our proposed multi-stage spatio-temporal fusion network (named MSTFN) can quickly and effectively eliminate false contours and recover high quality target frames. Furthermore, our method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods in terms of both PSNR and SSIM, and can reach faster inference speeds.
A Method for Robot Indoor Path Planning Using BIM Based on A* Algorithm

As for map generation, the robot usually scans the surrounding building environment through its lidar camera and converts the 3D obstacle information into 2D grid information to build a map model. The advantage of this method is that it can significantly compress unnecessary information and improve the efficiency of information utilization. But at the same time, for some cases where it is not possible to go to the site for scanning, this method which requires field scanning, is not applicable. To improve this situation, it generally uses the Gazebo software in ROS (Robot Operating System) to reconstruct the building scenes that need to be converted to map information and simulate the process of lidar camera scanning to generate 2D grid maps. However, the problem with this method is that it is not possible to make the dimensions of the reconstructed buildings in Gazebo the same as the original building. To solve this problem, this project uses the existing BIM model of the building to import into Gazebo's reconstructed environment and adjusts the scale so that the reconstructed model simulated in the software matches the real size, thus achieving the maximum reproduction of the real environment. For robot navigation, the most important thing is the path planning of the robot. The A* algorithm is currently the most commonly used in implementing global path planning. In this project, the mathematical aspects of the heuristic function in the A* algorithm are optimized, and the effect of the optimization on the computational speed of path generation is compared before and after the optimization to verify the impact of the optimization and improve the computational speed.
Soybean Calmodulin-Binding Transcription Activators, GmCAMTA2 and GmCAMTA8, Coordinate the Circadian Regulation of Developmental Processes and Drought Stress Responses

The calmodulin-binding transcription activators (CAMTAs) mediate transcriptional regulation of development, growth, and responses to various environmental stresses in plants. To understand the biological roles of soybean CAMTA (GmCAMTA) family members in response to abiotic stresses, we characterized expression patterns of 15 GmCAMTA genes in response to various abiotic stresses. The GmCAMTA genes exhibited distinct circadian regulation expression patterns and were differently expressed in response to salt, drought, and cold stresses. Interestingly, the expression levels of GmCAMTA2, GmCAMTA8, and GmCAMTA12 were higher in stem tissue than in other soybean tissues. To determine the roles of GmCAMTAs in the regulation of developmental processes and stress responses, we isolated GmCAMTA2 and GmCAMTA8 cDNAs from soybean and generated Arabidopsis overexpressing transgenic plants. The GmCAMTA2-OX and GmCAMTA8-OX plants showed hypersensitivity to drought stress. The water in the leaves of GmCAMTA2-OX and GmCAMTA8-OX plants was lost faster than that in wild-type (WT) plants under drought-stress conditions. In addition, stress-responsive genes were down-regulated in the GmCAMTA2-OX and GmCAMTA8-OX plants under drought stress conditions compared to WT plants. Our results suggest that GmCAMTA2 and GmCAMTA8 genes are regulated by circadian rhythms and function as negative regulators in development and drought stress responses.
Some classes of graphs that are nearly cycle-free

A graph is almost series-parallel if there is some edge that one can add to the graph and then contract out to leave a series-parallel graph, that is, a graph with no K4-minor. In this dissertation, we find the full list of excluded minors for the class of graphs that are almost series-parallel. We also obtain the corresponding result for the class of graphs such that uncontracting an edge and then deleting the uncontracted edge produces a series-parallel graph. A notable feature of a 3-connected almost series-parallel graph is that it has two vertices whose removal leaves a tree. This motivates consideration of those graphs for which there are two vertices whose removal is cycle-free. We find the full list of excluded minors for the class of graphs that have a set of at most two vertices whose removal is cycle-free.
On the cross-sectional measurement points necessary for point correlation dimension analysis of two-phase flow

This study experimentally investigated cross- sectional measuring points necessary for point correlation dimension analysis of fully developed slug flow. Applying an optimal delay time reconstruction method and a point correlation dimension method to cross-sectional void fraction time series greatly improves the reliability of analyses. Results show that nine-point averaging is sufficient for a broad range of airflow rates. When the air flow rate is low, one-point measurement, except in the area near a pipe wall, yields reliable results.
Efficient Algorithms for RIS Aided Hybrid Beamforming With MSE Constraints

In this paper, to stabilize the users’ quality of service (QoS), the symbol detection mean squared error (MSE) constrained hybrid analog and digital beamforming is proposed in millimeter wave (mmWave) system, and the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is proposed to assist the mmWave system. The inner majorization-minimization (iMM) method is proposed to obtain analog transmitter, RIS and analog receivers, and the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) method is proposed to obtain digital transmitter. The proposed iMM and ADMM methods are faster than the semidefinite relaxation (SDR) and interior point methods, respectively. In order to counter against the changing large-scale path loss, the iMM method is helped by channel normalization to reduce the computational complexity, while the ADMM method is helped by the adaptive parameterizations to robust against the changing large-scale path loss. Simulation results show that the computational times of the proposed method are much faster than other methods, the proposed method is robust against the changing large-scale path loss, and the user’s bit error rate (BER) is stable under small to medium channel estimation errors.
A 80 GHz VCO using Transformer Based Frequency Doubler

This paper presents a 80 GHz voltage-controlled-oscillator (VCO) based in a transformer push-push frequency doubler designed in 40 nm RF CMOS technology. For proper driving of the upcoming RF Mixer and to isolate the VCO a high frequency buffer has also been designed. The presented millimeter-wave VCO is based on an LC-tank architecture with n-type cross- coupled transistors. N-type varactors serve as both coarse and fine-tuning elements leading to better phase noise performance compared to low Q and prone to process variations switched capacitors. The integrated VCO covers a tuning range of 8.31 GHz oscillating from 79 to 87.31 GHz with a simulated phase noise (PN) lower than -92.3 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz frequency offset in all bands dissipating 18.8 mW, included the buffer, from a 1.1 voltage supply. The simulated output power is higher than -8.1 dBm across all bands.
Continuous Eplerenone Treatment in Chronic Central Serous Chorioretinopathy: Long-Term Results from a Pilot Study

Purpose To assess the long-term morpho-functional retinal and choroidal changes in chronic central serous chorioretinopathy (cCSC) pachychoroid eyes in response to continuous oral eplerenone (EPL) treatment. Methods This pilot study was conducted on patients with unilateral exudative cCSC. We enrolled a total of 17 exudative cCSC and 17 non-exudative fellow eyes of 17 patients. Baseline best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) and anatomical (structural optical coherence tomography [OCT] and OCT angiography) parameters in both eyes were collected at baseline. Follow-up data were collected at 6, 12, and 48 months after initiation of EPL treatment. Results (i) Exudative cCSC eyes: Compared with baseline (0.34±0.13 LogMAR), BCVA significantly improved at follow-up examinations (6 months: 0.28±0.13 LogMAR, p=0.039; 12 months: 0.22±0.11 LogMAR, p=0.025; 48 months: 0.21±0.08 LogMAR, p=0.028). Furthermore, there was a significant reduction from baseline in all structural OCT parameters (subretinal fluid and subfoveal choroidal thickness [SFCT]; p<0.05). (ii) Non-exudative fellow eyes: There was no significant change in BCVA. There was a significant reduction from baseline in SFCT and choriocapillaris flow deficit percentage (p<0.05). Conclusion In this pilot study, continuous oral EPL therapy in cCSC pachychoroid eyes resulted in long-term morpho-functional improvement. The beneficial effect of EPL occurred within the first year and was maintained after four years. Based on these preliminary observations, EPL may be effective in the exudative forms of CSC.
Digital Capability and Sustainable Development of Enterprises: the Role of Long-Term Competitive Advantage

: With the arrival of the VUCA digital economy era, digital resources have become an important factor of production. How to effectively utilize digital resources to build and develop digital capabilities, thereby promoting the sustainable development of enterprises, has attracted academic attention. Based on the Dynamic Capability Theory, this study introduces long-term competitive advantage and demonstrates the impact mechanism model of digital capabilities on the sustainable development of enterprises. The study aims to explore the antecedents of promoting sustainable development of enterprises and the role of digital capabilities, providing theoretical guidance for enterprises to effectively build and enhance digital capabilities to promote sustainable development