Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Capital Inflows and the Real Exchange Rate: Evidence from Emerging Market and Developing Economies

ABSTRACT:Capital inflows play a crucial role in financing savings-investment gaps, which could result in higher economic growth and better living standards, but capital inflows are associated with the risk of real exchange rate (RER) appreciation. The empirical evidence on the nexus between capital flows and RER is limited and inconclusive. This study empirically investigates the impacts of capital inflows on the RER for a sample of 114 emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) from 1991-2015. This study's large sample, making it one of the most comprehensive studies, renders us to undertake a more granular analysis on the capital inflows–RER nexus, which has not been conducted in the literature. The study employs the two-step system generalized method of moment technique to estimate dynamic panel data models. The results show that capital inflows exert the RER appreciation impacts in EMDEs. However, the composition of capital inflows matters. When gross capital inflows are analyzed at disaggregated levels, only foreign direct investment (FDI) generates RER appreciation effects while the other forms of capital inflows, including portfolio equity, portfolio debt, and other investment, do not. Further, the absorptive capacity of the capital-recipient economy plays a role in mediating the capital inflows-RER relationship. There is a positive feedback loop between capital inflows and exchange rate flexibility although the evidence is weak. In a more flexible exchange rate regime, capital inflows cause RER to appreciate further. In contrast, the empirical results show substantial evidence that financial development helps dampen the RER appreciation impacts of capital inflows. When a capital-recipient economy possesses a certain threshold of financial sector development, the appreciation impacts of capital inflows are neutralized. The findings have important policy implications. First, although it is generally considered that FDI positively contributes to economic growth in the capital-recipient economy, the FDI movements should be actively monitored and analyzed because the FDI inflows can cause the RER appreciation that could, in turn, reduce export competitiveness. Second, financial sector development should be a policy priority for EMDEs because it plays a crucial role in weakening the RER appreciation effects caused by capital inflows.
Multi-Resolution Approximate Inverses

I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. I authorize the University of Waterloo to lend this thesis to other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly research. I further authorize the University of Waterloo to reproduce this thesis by photocopying or by other means, in total or in part, at the request of other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly research. ii The University of Waterloo requires the signatures of all persons using or photocopying this thesis. Please sign below, and give address and date. This thesis presents a new preconditioner for elliptic PDE problems on unstructured meshes. Using ideas from second generation wavelets, a multi-resolution basis is constructed to effectively compress the inverse of the matrix, resolving the sparsity vs. quality problem of standard approximate inverses. This finally allows the approximate inverse approach to scale well, giving fast convergence for Krylov subspace accelerators on a wide variety of large unstructured problems. Implementation details are discussed, including ordering and construction of fac-tored approximate inverses, discretization and basis construction in one and two dimensions, and possibilities for parallelism. The numerical experiments in one and two dimensions confirm the capabilities of the scheme. Along the way I highlight many new avenues for research, including the connections to multigrid and other multi-resolution schemes. iv Acknowledgements I would like to first thank Wei-Pai Tang for his excellent ideas, support, and guidance. I'm also indebted to Peter Forsyth for advice on discretization and multigrid, and very helpful suggestions for revisions; to Sivabal Sivaloganathan for introducing me to Green's functions and reading the drafts; to Rob Zvan for getting me started on irregular meshes; to Justin Wan for some fruitful conversations and sample meshes; to David Pooley for the barrier option pricing problem; and of course to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada for their financial support. I especially want to thank my family for their much needed love and encouragement throughout the last year and particularly the final hectic weeks.
Spatial discretization of the shallow water equations in spherical geometryusing Osher's scheme

textabstractThe shallow water equations in spherical geometry provide a first prototype for developing and testing numerical algorithms for atmospheric circulation models. Since the seventies these models are often solved with spectral methods. Increasing demands on grid resolution combined with massive parallelism and local grid refinement seem to offer significantly better perspectives for gridpoint methods. In this paper we study the use of Osher's finite-volume scheme for the spatial discretization of the shallow water equations on the rotating sphere. This high-order finite volume scheme of upwind type is well suited to solve a hyperbolic system of equations. Special attention is paid to the pole problem. To that end Osher's scheme is applied on the common (reduced) latitude-longitude grid and on a stereographic grid. The latter is most appropriate in the polar region as in stereographic coordinates the pole singularity does not exist. The latitude-longitude grid is preferred on lower latitudes. Therefore, across the sphere we apply Osher's scheme on a combined grid connecting the two grids at high latitude. We will show that this provides an attractive spatial discretization for explicit integration methods, as it can greatly reduce the time step limitation incurred by the pole singularity when using a latitude-longitude grid only. When time step limitation plays no significant role, the standard (reduced) latitude-longitude grid is advocated provided that the grid is kept sufficiently fine in the polar region to resolve flow over the poles.
Attitude And Perception Of Egyptian Undergraduate Dental Students To E-Learning During COVID-19 At North-Sinai Egypt

Objective: To identify the readiness, preference, and perception of undergraduate Egyptian dental students at north Sinai toward online learning. Background: In the last academic year, the world faced the Covid-19 pandemic, which disrupts everyday life worldwide. Moreover, it affects and disturbs teaching in almost all the educational institutes and jeopardizes
Observer‐based active fault‐tolerant control for a class of pure‐feedback switched nonlinear systems

An active fault‐tolerant control (FTC) strategy for a class of switched nonlinear systems in pure‐feedback form by using average dwell time method is investigated in this article. The unknown functions in the system are approximated directly by fuzzy logic systems. A fuzzy state observer is designed to estimate the unavailable states, based on which, a fault detection project is designed. In fault‐free case, all the signals in the closed‐loop system are proved to be bounded under the control of the designed input. The fault estimation and FTC projects will be activated after a fault has been detected. In addition, the active FTC is constructed in the framework of backstepping design technique. The proposed controller guarantee that all the closed‐loop signals remain bounded under a class of switching signals with average dwell time. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Power spectrum for fractal distributions

We study the behaviour of the power spectrum (PS) in the case of fractal structures. We show that in this case the main observational features of the PS, the large scale flattening and the scaling of the amplitude with sample depth, are related to finite size effects, due to the fractal nature of galaxy distribution in the sample. Comparing with the recent results of the PS for the CfA2 we conclude that this catalog is consistent with the fractal description.
Single-charge rotating black holes in four-dimensional gauged supergravity

We consider four-dimensional U(1)4 gauged supergravity, and obtain asymptotically AdS4, non-extremal, charged, rotating black holes with one non-zero U(1) charge. The thermodynamic quantities are computed. We obtain a generalization that includes a NUT parameter. The general solution has a discrete symmetry involving inversion of the rotation parameter, and has a string frame metric that admits a rank-2 Killing–Stäckel tensor.
Rendimiento y caracterización fisicoquímica del aceite esencial de cilantro extraído por arrastre de vapor en un equipo modular

Este trabajo presenta un estudio de la caracterización fisicoquímica, compuestos del aceite esencial de cilantro (coriandrum sativum) y el rendimiento extraído por arrastre de vapor. Para tal fin se optó por la cromatografía de gases, la determinación de las variables que influyen en la extracción y la evaluación del rendimiento del aceite esencial de cilantro. El proceso de extracción se realizó mediante arrastre de vapor, donde se analizó los siguientes parámetros: cantidad de materia prima, caudal de agua y tiempo. Con el fin de obtener el mejor rendimiento de la extracción del aceite esencial. Para los resultados se usó el diseño factorial 23 sin repeticiones así obteniendo el mejor resultado dándonos el rendimiento óptimo 0,07625 % (1.1 ml) de 4,0 kg de la muestra de cilantro en las siguientes condiciones: Caudal de agua 150 L/h y a un tiempo de 120 minutos, de acuerdo a la caracterización fisicoquímica la densidad 0,9400 g/mL, índice de refracción 1,513, índice de acidez 4,29% e índice de peróxidos 0,84 meq/kg, asimismo, se encontró que contiene compuestos aromáticos: Nonyl acetate (15,70%), n– decanal (15,13%), trans-2-octenal (13,23%), lauric aldehyde (5,08%), linalol (1,58%), trans-2-nonenal (1,12%), geraniol (0,08%). Se concluye que el tiempo influye en la extracción de la materia prima. En el caso de la cantidad y el caudal de agua existe influencia en la extracción de aceite, sin embargo, estos no son significativos, verificando que si contiene compuestos químicos aromáticos.
Multi-source Drive/Transmission System Electromechanical Coupling Modeling and Synchronization Characteristic Research

： Multi-source driving transmission system, in which the gear transmission assembly is driven by multiple motors, is extensively used in the major equipments of new energy, aerospace, marine engineering, and other fields. Aiming at the problem of speed and torque out-sync existing in the working process of multi-source drive/transmission system, and combed with its complex coupling nonlinear structure characteristics. An electromechanical coupling dynamic model of multi-source drive/transmission system is proposed based on the shafting unit method. The driving motor, gear transmission assembly and load characteristics are considered in this model. The influence of different load change rate and motor fault on synchronization characteristics of system is investigated. The research results show that the influence of the load change rate on the speed synchronization characteristics of the system is minor, but has a significant influence on the torque synchronization characteristics. When motor fault occurs, the speed and torque synchronization characteristics between the non-fault motors remain essentially unchanged. The proposed research provides the theoretical basis for the formulation of the synchronization control strategy for multi-source driving transmission system.
Hybrid optimization for fault‐tolerant and accurate localization in mobility assisted underwater wireless sensor networks

Mobility prediction and fault tolerance are extremely difficult due to underwater characteristics. Energy drain is one of the major causes for node faults. Hence, in this research article, a hybrid optimization algorithm is developed for fault‐tolerant and accurate localization in UWSN. In this technique, Artificial Butterfly Optimization (ABO) algorithm is applied for finding the distance between the anchors and the sensors. Each non‐localized node runs ABO algorithm for finding the distance amid the anchor or beacon nodes. Then, applying Quaternion‐based Backtracking Search Optimization (QBSA) algorithm, non‐localized sensor nodes are localized and to decrease the localization error based on the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI), battery energy, and distance parameters. Aqua‐Sim a tool kit of NS2 is an open‐source software developed for Underwater Wireless Sensor Network research, and this proposed algorithm will be implemented using this software. By simulation results, it is shown that the proposed optimization algorithm reduces the localization error, latency, and cost and energy consumption.
A comprehensive literature review and meta‐analysis of the prevalence of pan‐cancer BRCA mutations, homologous recombination repair gene mutations, and homologous recombination deficiencies

There is significant improvement in the outcomes following treatment with PARP inhibitors among patients with certain tumors that have BRCA mutations (BRCAm), homologous recombination repair (HRR) gene mutations, or homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) positivity. We performed a literature review and meta‐analysis to evaluate the prevalence of BRCA1/2m, HRR gene mutations, and HRD positivity across multiple cancers. There were 265 publications on BRCA1/2 mutation prevalence, 189 on HRR gene mutation prevalence, and 7 on HRD positivity prevalence. The prevalences of germline BRCA1m and BRCA2m were 7.8% and 5.7% for breast cancer, 13.5% and 6.6% for ovarian cancer, 0.5% and 3.5% for prostate cancer, and 1.1% and 4.1% for pancreatic cancer, respectively. The prevalences of somatic BRCA1m and BRCA2m were 3.4% and 2.7% for breast cancer, 4.7% and 2.9% for ovarian cancer, 5.7% and 3.2% for prostate cancer, and 1.2% and 2.9% for pancreatic cancer, respectively. We identified 189 studies with over 418,649 samples across 25 tumor types that examined mutations in one or more HRR genes other than BRCA1/2. The prevalence of mutations among HRR genes remained low (less than 1%), with ATM (5.2%), CHEK2 (1.6%), and PALB2 (0.9%) exhibiting the highest prevalence. Seven studies evaluated HRD positivity in breast, ovarian, and prostate cancer patients. The prevalence of HRD positivity was 56% overall (95% CI = 48%–64%). The understanding of biomarker prevalence across tumor types and standardization of biomarker assays could have important clinical implications.
Current advances in ischemic stroke management

Stroke is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide with 24.1 million new stroke cases in 2017 and 700,000 more stroke-related deaths, as compared to 2016. Although some patients recover after a stroke, the significant majority continue to have numerous health problems resulting in substantial decrease of life quality. This article reviews the evaluation and the current advances in the management of acute ischemic stroke, starting in the prehospital setting followed by stroke hospital management. Conclusions: Appropriate treatment of ischemic stroke is essential in the reduction of mortality and morbidity. Therapeutic methods have greatly expanded beyond the utility of intravenous thrombolysis, with more advanced and complex techniques. Mechanical thrombectomy has revolutionised the management through the clot retrieval techniques improving patient outcomes. Appropriate application of the available treatment methods is crucial to optimising outcomes of patients with stroke, starting from pre-hospital accurate assessment. High-quality care of patients with ischemic stroke requires efficient cooperation of multidisciplinary medical staff.
Assessment of Physicochemical Characteristics of Waters in Santa Barbara River, Bayelsa State, Nigeria

Effluents received by surface water increase the concentration of heavy metals and nutrients in the water to a level that is harmful to the aquatic organism and pose a health risk to humans. Santa Barbara River is known for its rich biodiversity; and is a fishing site in Bayelsa state, Nigeria. This study examines the physicochemical characteristics of waters in the Santa Barbara River to ascertain anthropogenic influence on the water quality. In two seasons (wet and dry), surface water samples were collected from 20 sampling stations along the Santa Barbara River and from 4 control points and analyzed according to standard methods and procedures. Total suspended solids, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, and sodium were the only parameters that showed a statistical difference between values obtained in the control and study area (p > 0.05) at 95% confidence interval. The results of polyaromatic hydrocarbons, lead, chromium and sulphate observed indicated anthropogenic influence on the water quality that may be due to the use of lead in fishing net, combustion of fossil fuel, and waste discharge into the River. Impact mitigation measures are therefore recommended to improve the water quality of the River.
Bias Reduction of MLEs for Weibull Distributions under Grouped Lifetime Data

ABSTRACT Accelerated life tests (ALTs) usually contain subsampling because of the cost-effective evaluation. The two-stage method can deal with grouped data with subsampling, but the bias of maximum likelihood estimates (MLEs) can be alarmingly high. In this article, we propose reducing the bias of MLEs for grouped data via an unbiasing factor method. We introduce the procedures and give the unbiasing factor values. The proposed method is studied and compared with the modified maximum likelihood method for relative bias (RB) and mean square error (MSE) in Monte Carlo simulations. The results show that the unbiasing factor method is better in most cases.
Low-Discrepancy Sequences: Theory and Applications

The main topic of this present thesis is the study of the asymptotic behaviour of sequences modulo 1. In particular, by using ergodic and dynamical methods, a new insight to problems concerning the asymptotic behaviour of multidimensional sequences can be given, and a criterion to construct new multidimensional uniformly distributed sequences is provided. The starting point to do this, is to look at the orbit, i.e. the sequence of iterates, of a uniquely ergodic transformation T defined on [0,1]. The unique ergodicity of the transformation has the following consequence: the orbit of x under T is a uniformly distributed sequence. We devoted the first chapter entirely on classical topics in uniform distribution theory (UDT) and ergodic theory. This provides the basic requirements for a complete understanding of the following chapters, even to a reader who is not familiar with the subject. Chapter 2 deals with the LS-sequences of points. In Chapter 3, the method used to construct the transformation T is the so-called cutting-stacking technique. In particular, we were able to prove the ergodicity of T and that the orbit of the origin under this map coincides with an LS-sequence which turns out to be a low-discrepancy one. In Chapter 4, another approach from ergodic theory is used. This approach is based on the study of dynamical systems arising from numeration systems defined by linear recurrences. In this way we could not only prove that the transformation T defined in Chapter 3 is uniquely ergodic, but we could also construct multidimensional uniformly distributed sequences. In Chapter 5 we found bounds for integrals of two-dimensional, piecewise constant functions with respect to copulas. To solve this problem, we drew a connection to linear assignment problems. The approximation technique was applied to problems in financial mathematics and UDT.
Comparing Results from Unobserved Components Model and Hodrick-Prescott Filter of Output-Gap in Barbados

ABSTRACT:An important macro-economic issue of developed and developing countries is how best to decompose an economic time series into permanent (trend) and transitory (cycle) components. The issue is vital in empirical macroeconomics since, among other things, it relates to how one can estimate the output gap-the deviation of an economy's output from its potential or trend output. This paper considers how well the unobserved components model and the Hodrick Prescott (HP) filter decomposes real gross domestic product (GDP) in a small island developing state, the state of Barbados. The correlated unobserved components model for Barbados studied in the Agbeyegbe (2020) is modified to allow a second-order Markov trend. The effect of this modification is to make it possible to recover the HP trend as a particular case. The paper then compares several methods useful for trend decomposition of real GDP in Barbados. The competing methods are variants of two widely used trend-cycle decompositions of GDP that give markedly different estimates. Namely, methods based on the unobserved components model (UC) and the HP filter. The correlated unobserved components model produces smaller output gaps in amplitude, whereas the HP filter generates significant and persistent cycles. More specifically, the methods are: (i) the HP filter; (ii) an augmented HP filter (HP-AR), that allows for cyclical components to be serially correlated, introduced by Grant and Chan (2017b); (iii) the correlated unobserved components model (UCUR), without a break; (iv) the correlated unobserved components model (UCUR-t), with a break at time t; and (v) a correlated unobserved components model that allows for a second-order Markov trend process UCUR-2M. The result shows that for Barbados, with data covering the period 1967-2017, the correlated unobserved components model that allows for a break in trend fits the data better than the HP specification. These results are significant from a policy perspective. Knowing the correct duration of the business cycle is essential to providing appropriate recommendations; the result argues against the use of HP-filter in analyzing Barbados' business cycle. The result also finds that for Barbados, it is empirically important to correlate permanent and transitory shocks. By ignoring this correlation, researchers risk providing a misleading analysis of how the Barbadian economy works.