Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Elements of the Modern Application Software Development

 Abstract—This article is aimed on the software development process of modern applications. The first part of article starts with the general classification of information system based on user interaction characteristic. After that insight into methodologies, methods, design patterns and tools which are part of modern software development life cycle is presented. Second part is devoted to implementation details of presented modern trends in real world application. Finally selected drawbacks with proposal of theirs solutions are presented. The main goal of this article it to provide overview of current modern trends in software development and point out problems which could be uncovered during adaptation phase of these disciplines.
Do Incentive Hierarchies Induce User Effort? Evidence from an Online Knowledge Exchange

To motivate user contributions, user-generated content sites routinely deploy incentive hierarchies, where users achieve increasingly higher statuses in the community after achieving increasingly more difficult goals. Yet the existing empirical literature remains largely unclear whether such hierarchies are indeed effective in inducing user contributions. We gather data from a large online crowd-based knowledge exchange to answer this question, and draw on goal setting and status hierarchy theories to study users’ contributions before and after they reach consecutive ranks on a vertical incentive hierarchy. We find evidence that even though these glory-based incentives may motivate users to contribute more before the goals are reached, user contribution levels drop significantly after that. The positive effect on user contribution appears only temporary. Moreover, such impacts are increasingly smaller for higher ranks. Our results highlight some unintended and heretofore undocumented effects of incentive .
Modern Portfolio Management with Conditioning Information

This paper studies models in which active portfolio managers utilize conditioning information unavailable to their clients to optimize performance relative to a benchmark. We derive explicit solutions for the optimal strategies with multiple risky assets, with or without a risk-free asset, and consider various constraints on portfolio risks or weights. The optimal strategies feature a mean–variance efficient component (to minimize portfolio variance), and a hedging demand for the benchmark portfolio (to maximize correlation with the benchmark). A currency portfolio example shows that the optimal strategies improve the measured performance by 53% out of sample, compared with portfolios ignoring conditioning information.
Debt Covenant Design and Creditor Control Rights : Evidence from Covenant Restrictiveness and Loan Outcomes

Using three measures of covenant restrictiveness, I examine the association between the ex ante design of debt covenant restrictiveness and the ex post exercise of creditor control rights. I find that contracts with higher level of covenant restrictiveness at loan origination are more likely to subsequently experience both covenant violations and renegotiations, suggesting that stricter covenants translate into more frequent exercise of creditor control rights. Further, I find that the specific channel through which creditor control rights are exercised is influenced by the type of the most restrictive covenant in the original contract. Overall, my results imply that the ex ante design of covenant restrictiveness plays an important role in the ex post transfer of control rights. * I thank David Denis, Mara Faccio, John McConnell, Jin Xu and Deniz Yavuz and seminar participants at Purdue University for helpful comments and suggestions. † Department of Finance, Fisher College of Business, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210. Email: wang.4718@fisher.osu. edu.
Earned Income Tax Credit Recipients: Income, Marginal Tax Rates, Wealth, and Credit Constraints

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) has evolved into the largest anti-poverty program in the United States by providing tax credits for low and moderate income working families. In this paper, we describe the characteristics of EITC recipients at various ages using Current Population Survey data. In addition, we discuss the relevance of the EITC in affecting marginal income tax rates in the United States and discuss the effects of the EITC on household labor supply decisions. Lastly, using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances, we estimate wealth distributions for EITC recipients and analyze the extent to which EITC recipients are credit constrained.
Futures Markets and Bubble Formation in Experimental Asset Markets

We construct asset markets of the type studied in Smith et al. (1988) , in which price bubbles and crashes are widely observed. In addition to a spot market, there are futures markets in operation, one maturing at the beginning of each period of the life of the asset. We find that when futures markets are present, bubbles do not occur in the spot markets. The futures markets seem to reduce the speculation and the decision errors that appear to give rise to price bubbles in experimental asset markets. Copyright 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
The isotopic and hydrologic response of small, closed‐basin lakes to climate forcing from predictive models: Application to paleoclimate studies in the upper Columbia River basin

Simulations conducted using a coupled lake‐catchment, hydrologic and isotope mass‐balance model indicate that small, closed‐basin lakes in north‐central Washington are isotopically sensitive to changes in precipitation, relative humidity, and temperature. Most notably, model simulations predicted inconsistent lake responses to precipitation changes due to differences in lake outseepage rates and surface area to volume (SA :V) ratios. Greater outseepage within model experiments resulted in increased sensitivity to changes in mean precipitation. Moreover, simulations suggest that, in lakes with appreciable outseepage, SA :V ratio changes resulting from lake‐level variations control the direction of changes in lake water oxygen isotope composition (δ18O). Specifically, in lakes with a SA:V ratio that increases at higher lake levels, steady state δ18O values will increase in response to greater long‐term average precipitation. These results suggest that closed‐basin lakes with low outseepage rates will exhibit a transient isotopic response to stochastic variability in hydrologic forcing but will not strongly respond at steady state to variation in mean hydrologic conditions. Conversely, closed‐basin lakes with appreciable outseepage will exhibit strong isotopic responses to both stochastic variability and variation in mean hydrologic conditions (i.e., mean precipitation, relative humidity, and temperature control of catchment hydrologic inputs to the lake). These relationships provide a mechanism for explaining inconsistencies in the isotopic responses of lakes within a given region to hydrologic forcing and demonstrate that semiquantitative models for describing the relationship between lake hydrologic and isotopic responses to climate variability are not appropriate for all closed‐basin lakes.
Stabilization of Takagi–Sugeno Model via Nonparallel Distributed Compensation Law

This paper addresses the stabilization of nonlinear systems, which is represented by a Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) model. Based on the extended nonquadratic Lyapunov function and the nonparallel distributed compensation law, three new results are obtained by using appropriate slack matrices, collection matrices, and the higher dimensional collection matrix. The first two results are less conservative, and computationally less expensive, than some of the existing results. The third result combines the procedures of the first two results, and is less conservative, but is computationally more expensive than the first two results. The effectiveness of the new results is validated by two numerical examples.
Likelihood-Based Sufficient Dimension Reduction

We obtain the maximum likelihood estimator of the central subspace under conditional normality of the predictors given the response. Analytically and in simulations we found that our new estimator can preform much better than sliced inverse regression, sliced average variance estimation and directional regression, and that it seems quite robust to deviations from normality.
3D occupancy grid mapping using statistical radar models

We have developed a numerically efficient occupancy grid mapping method in three dimensions for automotive radar, where we take into account the radar measurement signal-to-noise ratio. The mapping performance, i.e. to estimate length, height, and in-between spacing of parked cars, is demonstrated as we use acquired data from a radar prototype developed in collaboration with Qamcom Research and Technology3. The radar has a unique antenna providing unambiguous azimuth and elevation for a wide field of view radar, covering -50° in both dimensions, making mapping in three dimensions feasible. Employing self-developed off-line radar signal processing on raw data, we extract SNR which is used together with a Swerling 1 model to compute the probability of detection for grid map update. Moreover, we present a novel very simplistic way of updating the grid as we use fast trilinear interpolation in the measurement domain, in which the grid spacing is uniform. Having mounted the radar in forward direction the EGO-vehicle drive parallel to four parked cars with different inter-spacing, and we manage to measure the distances within the error of the grid spacing, 0.2 m.
Research on Coordination of Fresh Produce Supply Chain in Big Market Sales Environment

In this paper, we propose two decision models for decentralized and centralized fresh produce supply chains with stochastic supply and demand and controllable transportation time. The optimal order quantity and the optimal transportation time in these two supply chain systems are derived. To improve profits in a decentralized supply chain, based on analyzing the risk taken by each participant in the supply chain, we design a set of contracts which can coordinate this type of fresh produce supply chain with stochastic supply and stochastic demand, and controllable transportation time as well. We also obtain a value range of contract parameters that can increase profits of all participants in the decentralized supply chain. The expected profits of the decentralized setting and the centralized setting are compared with respect to given numerical examples. Furthermore, the sensitivity analyses of the deterioration rate factor and the freshness factor are performed. The results of numerical examples show that the transportation time is shorter, the order quantity is smaller, the total profit of whole supply chain is less, and the possibility of cooperation between supplier and retailer is higher for the fresh produce which is more perishable and its quality decays more quickly.
Determinants of Egypt's economic growth for the period 1985-2007

APA Citation Hammam, R. (2010). Determinants of Egypt's economic growth for the period 1985-2007 [Master’s thesis, the American University in Cairo]. AUC Knowledge Fountain. https://fount.aucegypt. edu/etds/898 MLA Citation Hammam, Rasha Mostafa. Determinants of Egypt's economic growth for the period 1985-2007. 2010. American University in Cairo, Master's thesis. AUC Knowledge Fountain. https://fount.aucegypt. edu/etds/898
Qualitative research methodology: a neo-empiricist perspective

A commitment to empiricism is evident in much of the published research, in the business and management field, which extols the virtues of ‘qualitative research’ approaches. Yet just what their implicit assumptions to empiricism suggest in terms of the epistemological positioning of the research often remains problematic. It is our position that management researchers need to be more aware of the philosophical commitments they make through their methodological choices if they are to understand what they are investigating. In this paper we argue for the importance of neo-empiricism as a distinct interpretivist mode of engagement with qualitative methods and its position as a response to the criticisms of positivism with respect to developing meaningful understandings of social phenomena is discussed. With the focus of neo-empiricism on developing theory that is grounded in observations of empirical reality, we offer two examples, from Forensic Accounting and International Joint Venture Management, to highlight the general inductive data (thematic) analysis processes associated with such data oriented empirical perspectives. The main focus of the paper is to ‘forefront’ the role of the neo-empiricist perspective as an important interpretive approach in business and management research and to provide a basic understanding of the theoretical commitments of such perspectives
Cirrus cloud occurrence as function of ambient relative humidity: A comparison of observations from the Southern and Northern Hemisphere midlatitudes obtained during the INCA experiment

The occurrence frequency of cirrus clouds as function of ambient relative humidity over ice, based on in-situ observations performed during the INCA experiment, show a clear difference between the campaign carried out at Southern Hemisphere (SH) midlatitudes and the campaign carried out at Northern Hemisphere (NH) midlatitudes. At a given relative humidity above ice saturation, clouds are more frequent in the NH. At relative humidities near ice saturation, clouds defined as containing particles with sizes larger than 0.55 µm diameter and an integral number density above 0.2 cm -3 were present 70% of the time during the SH campaign, whereas clouds where present 95% of the time during the NH campaign. Using a size threshold of 1 µm diameter to define the presence of clouds result in a less frequent occurrence of 60% of the time in the SH campaign and 75% of the time in the NH campaign. The data show that the presence of particles is a common characteristic of cirrus clouds. Clouds at ice saturation defined as having crystal sizes of at least 5 µm diameter and a number density exceeding 0.001 cm -3 were present in about 80% of the time during the SH campaign, and almost 90% of the time during the NH campaign. The observations reveal a significant cloud presence fraction at humidities well below ice saturation. Local minima in the cloud presence fraction as a function of relative humidity are interpreted as systematic underestimation of cloud presence because cloud particles may become invisible to cloud probes. Based on this interpretation the data suggests that clouds in the SH form preferentially at relative humidities between 140 and 155%, whereas clouds in the NH formed at relative humidities less than 130%. A simple assumption about the probability to reach successively higher humidities in an ice supersaturated air parcel provides a model that explains the main trend of the cloud presence fraction as function of relative humidity. If adiabatic processes are assumed a cloud water content distribution can be derived from this probability model. The resulting distribution agrees well in shape compared to observations, but the observed mean cloud water content is less than expected from simply adiabatic processes.
Eigenvalues, Expanders and Superconcentrators (Extended Abstract)

Explicit construction of families of linear expanders and superconcentrators is relevant to theoretical computer science in several ways. There is essentially only one known explicit construction. Here we show a correspondence between the eigenvalues of the adjacency matrix of a graph and its expansion properties, and combine it with results on Group Representations to obtain many new examples of families of linear expanders. We also obtain better expanders than those previously known and use them to construct explicitly n-superconcentrators with 157.4 n edges, much less than the previous most economical construction.
Decoding the Semantic Content of Natural Movies from Human Brain Activity

One crucial test for any quantitative model of the brain is to show that the model can be used to accurately decode information from evoked brain activity. Several recent neuroimaging studies have decoded the structure or semantic content of static visual images from human brain activity. Here we present a decoding algorithm that makes it possible to decode detailed information about the object and action categories present in natural movies from human brain activity signals measured by functional MRI. Decoding is accomplished using a hierarchical logistic regression (HLR) model that is based on labels that were manually assigned from the WordNet semantic taxonomy. This model makes it possible to simultaneously decode information about both specific and general categories, while respecting the relationships between them. Our results show that we can decode the presence of many object and action categories from averaged blood-oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) responses with a high degree of accuracy (area under the ROC curve > 0.9). Furthermore, we used this framework to test whether semantic relationships defined in the WordNet taxonomy are represented the same way in the human brain. This analysis showed that hierarchical relationships between general categories and atypical examples, such as organism and plant, did not seem to be reflected in representations measured by BOLD fMRI.
Investigating the Influence of Brand on Customer Loyalty, a Study in B2B Marketing

The present research aims to study the influence of brand on customer loyalty in B2B marketing related to pump and compressor industry. So research hypotheses were proposed to examine the relationship between customer loyalty and the six construct of satisfaction, value, resistance to change, affect and trust and brand equity. As a test sample of the research a total of 160 questionnaires were distributed to respondent and 144 questionnaires were found to be usable in this study. Collected data were tested using SPSS software program. The findings indicated that among the effective constructs of brands on customer loyalty, the relationship of brand equity and trust with both the behavioral and attitudinal loyalty is highly significant. Therefore the managers and executives must focus more on brand equity and trust to support customer loyalty. Considering the limitations of this research, some cautions should be considered in the generalization of its results just like other studies. Future research can identify those factors that influence customer loyalty and not considered in this study and it is possible to compare the influence of brands on the customer loyalty in different cultures and different industries.
Fourier tansform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy: A rapid tool for detection and analysis of foodborne pathogenic bacteria

Fourier transform infrared (FT&IR) spectroscopy is a physico&chemical method based on measurement of vibration of a molecule excited by IR radiation at a specific wavelength range. FT&IR spectra of bacterial cells can be used to analyze their total composition, including proteins, fatty acids, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, and lipopolysacharides. FT&IR techniques coupled with different chemometrics analyses of the spectra offer a wide range of applications for food microbiology, including detection, differentiation, quantification, and taxonomic level classification of bacteria from culture broth or food matrices. FT&IR spectroscopy is a reliable, rapid, and economic technique which could be explored as a routine diagnostic tool for bacterial analysis by the food industry, diagnostic laboratories, and public health authorities. This chapter highlights the principles of FT&IR spectroscopic analysis of bacteria, the advantages and disadvantages of FT& IR applied to bacterial analysis, various sampling techniques, spectral manipulation, statistical analysis of spectra, and applications in pathogen detection.
Object-Based Attentional Modulation of Biological Motion Processing: Spatiotemporal Dynamics Using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Electroencephalography

Although it is well documented that the ability to perceive biological motion is mediated by the lateral temporal cortex, whether and when neural activity in this brain region is modulated by attention is unknown. In particular, it is unclear whether the processing of biological motion requires attention or whether such stimuli are processed preattentively. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging, high-density electroencephalography, and cortically constrained source estimation methods to investigate the spatiotemporal effects of attention on the processing of biological motion. Directing attention to tool motion in overlapping movies of biological motion and tool motion suppressed the blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) response of the right superior temporal sulcus (STS)/middle temporal gyrus (MTG), while directing attention to biological motion suppressed the BOLD response of the left inferior temporal sulcus (ITS)/MTG. Similarly, category-based modulation of the cortical current source density estimates from the right STS/MTG and left ITS was observed beginning at ∼450 ms following stimulus onset. Our results indicate that the cortical processing of biological motion is strongly modulated by attention. These findings argue against preattentive processing of biological motion in the presence of stimuli that compete for attention. Our findings also suggest that the attention-based segregation of motion category-specific responses only emerges relatively late (several hundred milliseconds) in processing.
An investigation into the winner-loser and momentum anomalies in four medium-sized European markets

The allocative efficiency of financial markets is of central importance to academics, investors, and regulators. However, there is a dearth of research relating to the efficiency of medium-sized European markets. This thesis addresses this research gap by examining the winner-loser and momentum anomalies in Ireland, Greece, Norway, and Denmark. The profitability of contrarian and strength rule strategies is examined using a variety of models and rank and holding periods of differing lengths. Existing research establishes a strong link between the two anomalies under review and the behaviour of brokers. Therefore, this study also analyses the economic value and impact of brokers’ recommendations and forecasts in the Irish market. There is substantial evidence of market inefficiency with significant return continuation in Ireland and reversals in the other three markets. Risk-adjusted returns are significantly higher when portfolios are comprised of extreme winners and losers. There is evidence of momentum followed by reversal in two of the four markets. Average monthly momentum returns peak after approximately two months in Ireland, while the optimum approach in the other three markets involves skipping one year before implementing the contrarian strategy. Brokers’ recommendations earn modest abnormal returns by exploiting the superior performance of small firms with positive momentum. However, such returns are significantly reduced by the relatively poor performance of stocks with low book-to-market and high earnings-to-price ratios that brokers favourably recommend. Recommendation revisions are of greater value but fail to outperform relatively straightforward trading strategies based on momentum, size, book-to-market, and price-earnings ratios. Brokers’ recommendations do not induce a significant increase in trading activity. Taken together, this suggests that brokers follow momentum strategies but are not a key driver of momentum.