The effects of lender-borrower communication on P2P lending outcomes

Conference Theme: Exploring the Information FrontierLenders face great uncertainty because of the information asymmetry problem in peerto-peer (P2P) marketplaces. This paper studies an online feature on a P2P platform, which allows lenders to seek information directly from the borrower of a loan, and examines the impact of the direct lender-borrower communication on the funding outcomes and the loan performance. Our analysis results show that the number of lender comments is negatively associated with funding success. This implies that as a listing receives more comments from lenders, the chance of getting funded is lower. On the other hand, the number of borrower responses and response length are positively associated with funding success, although they cannot help reduce the final interest rate. The role of borrower response is even stronger for listings with poor credit grades. The loan performance (i.e., default ratio), however, cannot be predicted based on the amount of lender-borrower communication.postprin

On the Performance Prediction of BLAS-based Tensor Contractions

Tensor operations are surging as the computational building blocks for a variety of scientific simulations and the development of high-performance kernels for such operations is known to be a challenging task. While for operations on one- and two-dimensional tensors there exist standardized interfaces and highly-optimized libraries (BLAS), for higher dimensional tensors neither standards nor highly-tuned implementations exist yet. In this paper, we consider contractions between two tensors of arbitrary dimensionality and take on the challenge of generating high-performance implementations by resorting to sequences of BLAS kernels. The approach consists in breaking the contraction down into operations that only involve matrices or vectors. Since in general there are many alternative ways of decomposing a contraction, we are able to methodically derive a large family of algorithms. The main contribution of this paper is a systematic methodology to accurately identify the fastest algorithms in the bunch, without executing them. The goal is instead accomplished with the help of a set of cache-aware micro-benchmarks for the underlying BLAS kernels. The predictions we construct from such benchmarks allow us to reliably single out the best-performing algorithms in a tiny fraction of the time taken by the direct execution of the algorithms.Comment: Submitted to PMBS1

In vitro propagation and homing of liver-derived dendritic cell progenitors to lymphoid tissues of allogeneic recipients: Implications for the establishment and maintenance of donor cell chimerism following liver transplantation

Dendritic cell (DC) progenitors were propagated in liquid culture from nonparenchymal cells resident in normal mouse (B10.BR; H-2k, I-E+) liver in response to granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF). The liver-derived DC progenitors were MHC class II-/dim and did not express counter receptors for CTLA-4, a structural homologue of the Т cell activation molecule CD28. Following subcutaneous or intravenous injection, these liver-derived cells migrated to Т cell-dependent areas of lymph nodes and spleen of unmodified, allogeneic (BIO; H-2b; I-E_) recipients, where they were identified 1-5 days, and 1 and 2 months after injection by their strong surface expression of donor MHC class II (I-Ek) and their dendritic morphology. Maximal numbers of liver-derived DC in the spleen were recorded 5 days after injection. Both clusters of strongly donor MHC class II+ cells— and (more rarely) dividing cells—could also be identified, suggesting cell replication in situ. Using the same techniques employed to generate DC progenitors from normal liver, GM-CSF-stimulated cells were propagated for 10 days from the bone marrow and spleen of nonimmunosuppressed mice sacrificed 14 days after orthotopic liver transplantation (B10;H-2b → C3H;H-2k). Immunocytochemical staining for recipient and donor MHC class II phenotype revealed the growth both of host cells with DC characteristics, and of cells expressing donor alloantigens (I-Ab). These results are consistent with the growth, in response to GM-CSF, of donor-derived DC from progenitors seeded from the liver allograft to recipient lymphoid tissue. The functional activity of the progenitors of chimeric DC and the possible role of these cells in the establishment and maintenance of donor-specific tolerance following liver transplantation remain to be determined. © 1995 by Williams and Wilkins

Growth of donor-derived dendritic cells from the bone marrow of murine liver auograft recipients in response to granulocyte/macrophage colony-stimulating factor

Allografts of the liver, which has a comparatively heavy leukocyte content compared with other vascularized organs, are accepted permanently across major histocompatibility complex barriers in many murine strain combinations without immunosuppressive therapy. It has been postulated that this inherent tolerogenicity of the liver may be a consequence of the migration and perpetuation within host lymphoid tissues of potentially tolerogenic donor-derived ("chimeric") leukocytes, in particular, the precursors of chimeric dendritic cells (DC). In this study, we have used granulocyte/macrophage colony-stimulating factor to induce the propagation of progenitors that give rise to DC (CD45+, CDllc+, 33D1+, nonlymphoid dendritic cell 145 +, major histocompatibility complex class II+, B7-1+) in li-tuid cultures of murine bone marrow cells. Using this technique, together with immunocytochemical and molecular methods, we show that, in addition to cells expressing female host (C3H) phenotype (H-2Kk+; I-E+; Y chromosome-), a minor population of male donor (B10)-derived cells (H-2Kb+; I-A+; Y chromosome+) can also be grown in 10-d DC cultures from the bone marrow of liver allograft recipients 14 d after transplant. Highly purified nonlymphoid dendritic cell 145+ DC sorted from these bone marrow-derived cell cultures were shown to comprise ~1-10% cells of donor origin (Y chromosome +) by polymerase chain reaction analysis. In addition, sorted DC stimulated naive, recipient strain T lymphocytes in primary mixed leukocyte cultures. Evidence was also obtained for the growth of donor-derived cells from the spleen but not the thymus. In contrast, donor ceils could not be propagated from the bone marrow or other lymphoid tissues of nonimmunosuppressed C3H mice rejecting cardiac allografrs from the same donor strain (B10). These findings provide a basis for the establishment and perpetuation of cell chimerism after organ transplantation. © 1995, Rockefeller University Press., All rights reserved

Self Management and Telehealth: Lessons Learnt from the Evaluation of a Dorset Telehealth Program

Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group