nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
QE in the Future: The Central Bank's Balance Sheet in a Fiscal Crisis

Analyses of quantitative easing (QE) typically focus on the recent past studying the policy's effectiveness during a financial crisis when nominal interest rates are zero. This paper examines instead the usefulness of QE in a future fiscal crisis, modeled as a situation where the fiscal outlook is inconsistent with both stable inflation and no sovereign default. The crisis can lower welfare through two channels, the first via aggregate demand and nominal rigidities, and the second via contractions in credit and disruption in financial markets. Managing the size and composition of the central bank's balance sheet can interfere with each of these channels, stabilizing inflation and economic activity. The power of QE comes from interest paying reserves being a special public liability, neither substitutable by currency nor by government debt.
Fiscal Implications of Central Bank Balance Sheet Policies

Under ordinary circumstances, the fiscal implications of central bank policies tend to be seen as relatively minor and escape close scrutiny. The global financial crisis of 2008, however, demanded an extraordinary response by central banks which brought to light the immense power of central bank balance sheet policies as well as their major fiscal implications. Once the zero lower bound on interest rates is reached, expanding a central bank's balance sheet becomes the central instrument for providing additional monetary policy accommodation. However, with interest rates near zero, the line separating fiscal and monetary policy is blurred. Furthermore, discretionary decisions associated with asset purchases and liquidity provision, as well as with lender of last resort operations benefiting private entities, can have major distributional effects that are ordinarily associated with fiscal policy. In the euro area, discretionary central bank decisions can have immense distributional effects across member states. However, decisions of this nature are incompatible with the role of unelected officials in democratic societies. Drawing on the response to the crisis by the Federal Reserve and the ECB, this paper explores the tensions arising from central bank balance sheet policies and addresses pertinent questions about the governance and accountability of independent central banks in a democratic society.
Lactococcus lactis NCDO2118 produces anti hypertensive GABA and exerts acute hypotensive in spontaneously hypertensive rats

Gamma (g) aminobutyric acid (GABA) is a molecule with nutraceutical interest since it is recognized for its health promoting properties such as hypotensive effects. Some lactic acid bacteria (LAB) have been shown to be able to produce GABA. In the present investigation, Lactococcus (L. lactis NCDO2118, a probiotic LAB, was cultured in a medium supplemented with different concentration of glutamate, the substrate for GABA production. This strain was evaluated in SHRSP (Spontaneously Hypertensive Stroke Prone Rats) to assess its hypotensive effect. The evaluation showed that GABA production is variable depending on the glutamate concentration and incubation time and that the increased GABA production potentiates its hypotensive effect. This work demonstrates that L. lactis NCDO 2118 could be used as a tool for developing health promoting foods, such as those enriched with GABA as an interesting and novel pharmacological strategy.
A model that connects information technology and hotel performance

Despite vast investments in IT, there is scant research and empirical data that connects, in depth, IT with firm performance in the hospitality industry. However, the literature does show partial evidence and examples of particular technologies. After an extensive literature review, we posit four global paths through which IT can impact hotel performance and, for each one, the precise mechanisms that cause these influences. These four proposals are further developed and refined using in depth interviews with a group of 30 managers of different areas from several hotels. A final comprehensive model that shows the specific routes that IT can follow in order to improve hotel organizational performance is presented. This model can be taken as a frame of reference by academics and can also be used by both practitioners and IT producers to assess particular IT options.
The Materials Data Facility: Data Services to Advance Materials Science Research

With increasingly strict data management requirements from funding agencies and institutions, expanding focus on the challenges of research replicability, and growing data sizes and heterogeneity, new data needs are emerging in the materials community. The materials data facility (MDF) operates two cloud hosted services, data publication and data discovery, with features to promote open data sharing, self service data publication and curation, and encourage data reuse, layered with powerful data discovery tools. The data publication service simplifies the process of copying data to a secure storage location, assigning data a citable persistent identifier, and recording custom (e.g. material, technique, or instrument specific) and automatically extracted metadata in a registry while the data discovery service will provide advanced search capabilities (e.g. faceting, free text range querying, and full text search) against the registered data and metadata. The MDF services empower individual researchers, research projects, and institutions to (I) publish research datasets, regardless of size, from local storage, institutional data stores, or cloud storage, without involvement of third party publishers; (II) build, share, and enforce extensible domain specific custom metadata schemas; (III) interact with published data and metadata via representational state transfer (REST) application program interfaces (APIs) to facilitate automation, analysis, and feedback; and (IV) access a data discovery model that allows researchers to search, interrogate, and eventually build on existing published data. We describe MDF's design, current status, and future plans.
Electronic and optical properties of advance semiconductor materials: BN, AlN and GaN nanosheets from first principles

We investigate the electronic and linear optical properties of BN, AlN and GaN hexagonal nanosheets using the band structure results obtained through the full potential linearized augmented plane wave (FP LAPW) method within the density functional theory (DFT) The dielectric tensor and corresponding optical properties are derived within the random phase approximation (RPA) Specifically, the dielectric function, absorption coefficient, optical conductivity, extinction index, reflectivity, loss function and the refraction index of these above mentioned nanosheets are calculated for both parallel E x and perpendicular E z electric field polarizations. Calculated results show that the hexagonal XN (X B, Al and Ga) nanosheets have semiconductor characters with wide band gap of about 4.96, 2.73 and 1.95 eV respectively. The optical conductivity in E x and E z starts with a gap about 2.92 eV and 6.73 eV for BN, 2.73 eV and 3.52 eV for AlN and 1.61 eV and 3.58 eV for GaN, confirms that these nanosheets have semiconductor properties moreover the optical spectra are isotropic along these two polarizations. These results propose potential application for the development of BN, AlN and GaN nano structures in electronic and optoelectronic devices.
Recycling Approach towards Sustainability Advance of Composite Materials' Industry

Worldwide volume production and consumption of engineered composite materials, namely fiber reinforced polymers (FRP) have increased in the last decades, mostly in the construction, automobile, aeronautic and wind energy sectors. This rising production and consumption have also led to an increasing amount of FRP waste, either end of life (EoL) products or manufacturing rejects. Taking into account the actual and impending EU framework on waste management, in which clear targets are set with concrete measures to ensure effective implementation, landfill and incineration will be progressively unavailable as traditional end routes for this kind of waste. Recycling techniques and end use applications for the recyclates have been investigated over the past twenty years, but even so, more cost effective and feasible market outlets for the recyclates should be identified that meet both the economic and the environmental points of view. This paper is aimed at enclosing and summarizing an update overview regarding all these issues: current legislation, recycling techniques and end use applications for the recyclates. Additionally, as a case study, the assessment of the potential improvements that could be made on the eco efficiency performance (sustainability) of a typical FRP composite materials' industry by recycling and re engineering process approaches is also reported.
Effects of the Integrated Online Advance Organizer Teaching Materials on Students' Science Achievement and Attitude

This two group quasi experimental study investigated the effects of the Online Advance Organizer Concept Teaching Material (ONACOM) integrated with inquiry teaching and expository teaching methods. Grade 7 students' posttest performances on the light unit achievement and light unit attitude tests controlled for gender, previous semester science grade, and pretest scores were analyzed. No significant treatment effects were found between the inquiry and expository approaches. However, both groups demonstrated significant pretest posttest gains in achievement and attitude. Independent from the method used, ONACOM was judged effective in both groups as students demonstrated increased achievement and attitude scores. ONACOM has a social and semantic network aided infrastructure that can be adapted to both methods to increase students' achievement and improve their attitude.
Exploring Gender Differences in Spatial Orientation Ability on Representing Cognitive Map

This study examines that there are gender differences of spatial orientation skills in drawing cognitive maps which represent narrative space after reading a book. Because there was no previous research proposing specific way of measuring accuracy of spatial orientation skill in cognitive map, we propose a new experimental tool which helps interpret cognitive maps quantitatively in the aspect of spatial orientation ability. Result from this experiment shows there is no significant gender difference in recalling the number of places of narrative spaces. However, we found that men perform better than women in locating places accurately in cognitive map. This result provides evidence that men have better spatial orientation ability in representing cognitive map of narrative space. Finally, we discuss various possibilities of interpretation, the visuo spatial working memory (VSWM) span and systemizing information. The limitation will be discussed.
Places: An Image Database for Deep Scene Understanding
Venue: ArXiv

The rise of multi million item dataset initiatives has enabled data hungry machine learning algorithms to reach near human semantic classification at tasks such as object and scene recognition. Here we describe the Places Database, a repository of 10 million scene photographs, labeled with scene semantic categories and attributes, comprising a quasi exhaustive list of the types of environments encountered in the world. Using state of the art Convolutional Neural Networks, we provide impressive baseline performances at scene classification. With its high coverage and high diversity of exemplars, the Places Database offers an ecosystem to guide future progress on currently intractable visual recognition problems.
An empirical investigation into the effectiveness of consumer generated content on the purchase intention of sports apparel brands

Social media represents a revolutionary new trend that has introduced a substantial change in the way communication takes place. Marketers are therefore converting to consumer generated content (CGC) to act as an advertising tool in creating awareness and promoting their brands. Although a number of studies have explored this subject, few studies have looked at this topic among the youth in Johannesburg with a focus on sports apparel brands. By means of a conceptual model, brand exposure (to CGC) is the predictor variable, while consumer purchase intention is the outcome variable, and the mediating variables are brand familiarity, brand preference, brand attitude and brand knowledge. The article undertook a quantitative approach in which 150 self administered surveys were distributed among students from the University of the Witwatersrand. The findings indicated that eight of the nine hypotheses are supported. The findings from the article contribute to both academic literature by adding to theory in the field of e marketing which is a rapidly growing field of interest. From a practical perspective, it will provide marketers with insight into the effectiveness of CGC as an advertising platform.
A Formalisation of Nominal a equivalence with A and AC Function Symbols
Venue: LSFA

A formalisation of soundness of the notion of a equivalence in nominal abstract syntax modulo associative (A) and associative commutative (AC) equational theories is described. Initially, the notion of a equivalence is specified based on a so called "weak" nominal relation as suggested by Urban in his nominal development in Isabelle/HOL. Then, it is formalised in Coq that this equality is indeed an equivalence relation. After that, general a equivalence with A and AC function symbols is specified and formally proved to be an equivalence relation. As corollaries, the soundness a equivalence modulo A and modulo AC is obtained. Finally, an algorithm for checking a equivalence modulo A and AC is proposed. General a equivalence problems are log linearly solved while AC and the combination of A and AC a equivalence problems have the same complexity as standard first order approaches. This development is a first step towards verification of nominal matching, unification and narrowing algorithms modulo equational theories in general.
Real Time Classification of Patients with Balance Disorders vs. Normal Subjects Using a Low Cost Small Wireless Wearable Gait Sensor
Venue: Biosensors

Gait analysis using wearable wireless sensors can be an economical, convenient and effective way to provide diagnostic and clinical information for various health related issues. In this work, our custom designed low cost wireless gait analysis sensor that contains a basic inertial measurement unit (IMU) was used to collect the gait data for four patients diagnosed with balance disorders and additionally three normal subjects, each performing the Dynamic Gait Index (DGI) tests while wearing the custom wireless gait analysis sensor (WGAS) The small WGAS includes a tri axial accelerometer integrated circuit (IC) two gyroscopes ICs and a Texas Instruments (TI) MSP430 microcontroller and is worn by each subject at the T4 position during the DGI tests. The raw gait data are wirelessly transmitted from the WGAS to a near by PC for real time gait data collection and analysis. In order to perform successful classification of patients vs. normal subjects, we used several different classification algorithms, such as the back propagation artificial neural network (BP ANN) support vector machine (SVM) k nearest neighbors (KNN) and binary decision trees (BDT) based on features extracted from the raw gait data of the gyroscopes and accelerometers. When the range was used as the input feature, the overall classification accuracy obtained is 100% with BP ANN, 98% with SVM, 96% with KNN and 94% using BDT. Similar high classification accuracy results were also achieved when the standard deviation or other values were used as input features to these classifiers. These results show that gait data collected from our very low cost wearable wireless gait sensor can effectively differentiate patients with balance disorders from normal subjects in real time using various classifiers, the success of which may eventually lead to accurate and objective diagnosis of abnormal human gaits and their underlying etiologies in the future, as more patient data are being collected.
MORPHOMETRY AND SEXUAL DIMORPHISM IN FORAMEN MAGNUM: A STUDY OF HUMAN SKULL BONES

Address for Correspondence: Dr Vinutha. S.P, Assistant Professor, Department of Anatomy, JSS Medical College, Mysuru 570015, Karnataka, India. Mobile No: +919481155140, +919916372652 E Mail: drvinutha.sp@gmail.com  The foramen magnum is a fundamental component in the interaction of bony, ligamentous and muscular structures composing the craniovertebral junction. The measurements of the foramen magnum have a crucial importance in surgical resection and thereby reaching the lower clivus and premedullary region in transcondylar approach. The objectives of the present study are to find out the shape and dimensions of foramen magnum in human skull bones.  The study sample comprised of 200 skull bones (100 males and 100 females) of south Indian origin. Measurements were taken using sliding vernier calipers. The parameters were noted meticulously and the statistical analysis for sex comparison was made by student's t test and was considered significant whenever p 0.05.  The Foramen magnums were classified into 8 types based on shape. Commonest being oval and pentagonal was the least common type. The mean APD of FM in male and female skull bones were found to be 33.37 mm 2.33 and 29.72 mm 1.89 respectively. The mean TD of FM in male and female skull bones were found to be 27.40 mm 2.44 and 24.73 mm 2.05 respectively. The mean circumference of FM in male and female skull bones was found to be 102.58 mm 4.68 and 92.65 mm 4.37 respectively. The area of the FM was calculated using three different formulas. The mean area 1 of FM in male and female skull bones was found to be 718.41 mm2 83.75 and 577.52 mm2 64.36 respectively. The mean area 2 of FM in male and female skull bones was found to be 727.50 mm2 83.12 and 583.71 mm2 63.58 respectively. The mean area 3 of FM in male and female skull bones was found to be 838.77 mm2 75.94 and 684.36 mm2 64.10 respectively. All parameters were significantly greater in males than in females (P<0.001)  The data obtained may be useful to the neurosurgeon in analyzing the morphological anatomy of the craniovertebral junction. The findings are of particular interest in anthropology, anatomy, forensic medicine and other medical fields.
Learning face recognition from limited training data using deep neural networks
Venue: 2016 23rd International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR)

Often deep learning methods are associated with huge amounts of training data. The deeper the network gets, the larger is the need for training data. A large amount of labeled data helps the network learn about the variations it needs to handle in the prediction stage. It is not easy for everyone to get access to huge amounts of labeled data leaving a few to have the luxury to design very deep networks. In this paper, we propose to flatten the disparity by using the modeling methods to minimize the need for huge amounts of data for training a deep network. Using face recognition as an example, we demonstrate how limited labeled data can be leveraged to obtain near state of the art performance with generalization capability across multiple databases. In addition, we show that the normalization in the overall network can improve the speed and resource requirement for the prediction/inferencing stage.
The New Zealand Active Faults Database

The New Zealand Active Faults Database (NZAFD) is a national geospatial database of active faults including their locations, names and degrees of activity that have deformed the ground surface of New Zealand within the last 125,000 years. The NZAFD is used for geological research, hazard modelling and infrastructure planning and is an underlying dataset for other nationally significant hazard applications such as the National Seismic Hazard Model. Recent refinements to the data structure have improved the accuracy of active fault locations and characteristics. A subset of active fault information from the NZAFD, generalised for portrayal and use at a scale of 1:250,000 (and referred to as NZAFD250) is freely available online and can be downloaded in several different formats to suit the needs of a range of users including scientists, governmental authorities and the general public. To achieve a uniform spatial scale of 1:250,000 a simplification of detailed fault locational data was required in some areas, while in other areas new mapping was necessary to provide a consistent level of coverage. Future improvements to the NZAFD will include the incorporation of data on active folds and offshore active faults.
Biology, ecology and distribution of the tick, Haemaphysalis longicornis Neumann (Acari: Ixodidae) in New Zealand
Venue: New Zealand veterinary journal

Haemaphysalis longicornis is the only tick in New Zealand that infests livestock. Throughout its range H. longicornis is exposed to and exhibits tolerance to a wide range of environmental conditions, although it flourishes more in moist, warm temperate environments. This review examines aspects of the biology, physiology and ecology of H. longicornis that determine its distribution and seasonal activity in New Zealand, based on laboratory and field studies. Examples are also drawn from studies outside New Zealand for comparative purposes, especially in the context of seasonal activity as seen in less temperate latitudes. The tick is able to withstand a wide range of temperature, from its developmental threshold of ~12degC to nearly 40degC at its lethal limit, but its tolerance of dehydration is less wide, especially in the larva and adult, the former especially being the stage that largely determines suitable biotopes for the tick and its present distributional limits. The importance of H. longicornis to the New Zealand livestock industry has recently increased through the establishment and spread of Theileria orientalis Ikeda among dairy and beef cattle, although the tick has always posed production limiting problems for cattle, deer and to a lesser extent, sheep. The tick's role as a vector of theileriosis and how aspects of the tick's biology affect the spread and maintenance of this disease are discussed. It is proposed that, of available wildlife hosts, the brown hare with its wide ranging habits, is an important disseminator of ticks. Currently control of ticks is difficult partly because of their wide host range, overlapping activity periods of stadia, and also because the greater part of their annual cycle is spent on pasture. This means that acaricides alone do not satisfactorily reduce tick populations or provide comprehensive protection to stock, so integrated management combining pasture management with good husbandry and chemical prophylaxis is advocated.
The New Zealand Health Strategy 2016: whither health equity?
Venue: The New Zealand medical journal

New Zealand's core health policy document the New Zealand Health Strategy (NZHS) was released in its final form in April 2016. This paper provides a critique of the strategy in particular, as it relates to health equity particularly for Maori. We introduce the five NZHS themes of people powered, closer to home, value and high performance, one team and smart system to focus on the aspirational goal of eliminating health inequities. Our critical framework is informed by Te Tiriti o Waitangi. We identified that the NZHS relies on the isolated efforts of committed individuals and organisations to achieve health equity and Te Tiriti engagement, rather than through a planned systems viewpoint. Evidence on health equity and Te Tiriti application suggests efforts need to be sustained, systematic and multi levelled to be successful, rather than ad hoc and piecemeal.