Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
INDIVIDUAL VERSUS GROUP INTEREST VIOLATION: SURPRISE AS A DETERMINANT OF ARGUMENT SCRUTINY AND PERSUASION

Abstract Previous studies based on an attributional analysis of persuasion have suggested that a source who takes an unexpected position is perceived as more trustworthy and accurate than one who argues for an expected position. As a result, message processing is decreased when expectancies are violated compared to when they are confirmed. The current research suggests that these findings are limited to cases in which the unexpected position violates individual self-interest. When a source's unexpected position violates individual self-interest, attributions of trustworthiness are enhanced, but when the unexpected position violates group interest, this does not occur (Experiment 1). Instead, a violation of group interest induces surprise (Experiment 1) and produces enhanced rather than reduced message processing (Experiment 2).
Automatic Vehicle Trajectory Extraction for Traffic Analysis from Aerial Video Data

Abstract. This paper presents a new approach to simultaneous detection and tracking of vehicles moving through an intersection in aerial images acquired by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Detailed analysis of spatial and temporal utilization of an intersection is an important step for its design evaluation and further traffic inspection. Traffic flow at intersections is typically very dynamic and requires continuous and accurate monitoring systems. Conventional traffic surveillance relies on a set of fixed cameras or other detectors, requiring a high density of the said devices in order to monitor the intersection in its entirety and to provide data in sufficient quality. Alternatively, a UAV can be converted to a very agile and responsive mobile sensing platform for data collection from such large scenes. However, manual vehicle annotation in aerial images would involve tremendous effort. In this paper, the proposed combination of vehicle detection and tracking aims to tackle the problem of automatic traffic analysis at an intersection from visual data. The presented method has been evaluated in several real-life scenarios.
The chaos of software development

We present a new perspective on the problem of complexity in software, using sound mathematical concepts from information theory such as Shannon's entropy [S. Weaver, (1949)]. We study the complexity of the development process by examining the logs of the source control repository for large software projects. We hypothesize that the process of developing code is a good indicator of the current and future problems in the code and the project. A complex process will have negative affects on its outcome, such as producing a complex system or delaying releases. We validate our work by studying the evolution of six large open source projects (three operating systems, a window manager, an office productivity suite, and a database).
Growing Through Cycles

This paper puts the neoclassical and neo-Schumpetarian growth models in a unified framework. In doing so, it is argued that these two views of growth, one based on factor accumulation and the other based on innovation, are complementary in that they may capture different phases of a single growth experience. In the models presented here, the economy achieves sustainable growth through cycles, perpetually moving back and forth between two phases, under an empirically plausible condition. One phase is characterized by higher output growth, higher investment, no innovation and a competitive market structure. The other phases is characterized by lower output growth, lower investment, high innovation, and a more monopolistic market structure. Both investment and innovation are essential in sustaining growth indefinitely, and yet only one of them appears to play a domimant role in each phase.
A Changing Turkey: The Challenge to Europe and the United States

Turkey is a longstanding ally of the United States and Europe. After the demise of the Soviet empire, Turkey's strategic importance has changed but not diminished. Today Turkey is facing a completely different foreign and security policy environment. However, Turkey is also undergoing extraordinary internal change. Many established political truths of the Republic's seventy-five-year-long tradition are increasingly questioned by a growing part of its people. Above all, there is the rise of political Islam and the ensuing clash of ideologies between "secularists" and "Islamists" as well as the debate about Turkey's "Kurdish reality. " Turkey's allies will have to respond to this development by adapting their policies. Nothing less than a re-evaluation and, eventually, a re-orientation in relations with both the United States and Europe is required if Turkey is to remain anchored in the West. This book undertakes a comprehensive overview and analysis of Turkey's internal and external changes and provides elements of a new European and American policy toward a key strategic partner.
Antibacterial Activities of Ginkgo biloba L. Leaf Extracts

The antibacterial activity of methanol, ethanol, chloroform, and hexane extracts of the leaves of Himalayan gymnospermous plant Ginkgo biloba L. was assessed against five animal and plant pathogenic strains (Agrobacterium tumefaciens, Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli, Erwinia chrysanthemi, and Xanthomonas phaseoli) employing disc-diffusion and broth-dilution assays. The methanol extract showed the highest activity (zone of inhibition of 15–21 mm) followed by ethanol (14–19 mm), chloroform (15–20 mm), and hexane (14–19 mm) extracts at 250 μg/mL. A minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of 7.8 μg/mL was found for the methanol extract against most of the pathogens tested.
The Effects of the Level of Assurance, Accounting Firm, Capital Structure, and Bank Size on Bank Lending Decisions

This study examines the effect of the type of accounting service (audit, review, compilation, and no report), the accounting firm providing the service, the capital structure of the borrower, and the bank size on loan officers' lending decisions. The findings show the level of service had an impact on the amount of the loan, but not on the interest rate awarded nor on the decision whether or not to grant a line of credit. The accounting firm (large international with good reputation versus local with unknown reputation) providing the accounting service, however, did not significantly affect the bank loan decision. Capital structure of the borrower had a significant impact on the decision to grant a line of credit, the loan size, and the interest rate. In addition, the loan size and interest rate were significantly influenced by the size of the bank granting the loan.
Effect of Different Pollens on Development, Survivorship and Reproduction of Euseius finlandicus (Acari: Phytoseiidae)

Abstract Development, imaginal survivorship, adult longevity and fecundity of the predatory phytoseiid mite Euseius (Amblyseius) finlandicus Oudemans reared on seven different plant pollens were determined in the laboratory. The rationale behind these experiments was to assess the nutritional value and the possible effect on development and population dynamics of the mite. Mites were kept individually on bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) leaf disks at 20 ± 1°C and a photoperiod of 16:8 (L:D) h, with a sufficient quantity of pollen of apple (Malus silvestris M.), pear (Pyrus communis L.), cherry (Prunus avium L.), peach (Prunus persica L.), apricot (Prunus armeniaca L.), walnut (Juglans regia L.), or poppy (Papaver rhoeas L.). Developmental time from neonate larva to adult emergence varied between the different pollens from 6.03 to 6.62 d for females and from 5.46 to 6.14 d for males. Survivorship during immature development varied from 67.2 to 95.9% with the lowest value recorded on peach pollen. The average life span of adult females reared on the different pollens varied from 18.2 to 56.2 d, whereas the respective total fecundity ranged from 2.5 to 46.5 eggs per female. The estimated values of the intrinsic rate of increase (rm) varied from 0.012 to 0.150. The analysis of these results show that cherry, peach, apricot, walnut, and poppy pollens are of higher nutritional value for E. finlandicus than apple and pear pollens and thus may play an important role in the field for sustaining and increasing the predator’s population.
A bivariate causality link between foreign direct investment and economic growth

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the causal relationship between economic growth and foreign direct investment (FDI) in context of India.Design/methodology/approach – Using Toda‐Yamamoto granger causality technique, authors tried to examine the causal link between GDP per capita (proxy for economic growth) and FDI. The data is tested for stationarity using Augmented Dickey‐Fuller test and Phillips Peron test. Authors also examined the co integration properties using Johansen test to identify long run relationship between the two variables.Findings – It was found that GDP per capita and FDI are integrated in long run. There also exist a bidirectional between FDI and growth in post liberalization period, i.e. post 1991. There is also evidence of FDI led growth in the pre‐liberalization period, i.e. pre 1991.Research limitations/implications – There are many factors which contribute to FDI and GDP per capita. A comprehensive study can be done to explore other determinants of FDI and GDP per .
Stress Tests for the Austrian FSAP Update 2007: Methodology, Scenarios and Results

This paper presents the methodology, scenarios and results of the stress tests conducted for the update of Austria’s Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) in 2007. The focus of the paper lies in particular on the following two macroeconomic stress scenarios: (a) a regional shock in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe hitting Austrian banks through their large exposure in the region, and (b) a global downturn in economic activity causing a deterioration of Austrian banks’ domestic loan portfolios, whereby in the second scenario, contagion risk within the Austrian interbank market was also taken into account. Stress test calculations were performed by the OeNB for all Austrian banks (top-down approach) as well as by the six largest Austrian banking groups for their respective exposure (bottom-up approach). The paper describes the methodologies for scenario construction and the stress tests themselves and then discusses the scenarios as well as the stress test results in detail, including a comparison of the two approaches. Finally, the paper presents the results of additional sensitivity stress tests for credit risk emanating from foreign currency lending, for the most important categories of market risk and for liquidity risk. Overall, the update of Austria’s FSAP 2007 confirmed the results of previous stress testing exercises, in particular for the large Austrian banking groups that show considerable shock resistance mainly as a result of their generally sound capital buffers and high profitability.
Fast and Eecient Reinforcement Learning with Truncated Temporal Diierences

The problem of temporal credit assignment in reinforcement learning is typically solved using algorithms based on the methods of temporal diierences TD(). Of those, Q-learning is currently best understood and most widely used. Using TD-based algorithms with > 0 often allows one to speed up the propagation of credit signiicantly, but it involves certain implementational problems. The traditional implementation of TD(> 0) based on eligibility traces suuers from lack of generality and computational ineeciency. The TTD (Truncated Temporal Diierences) procedure is a simple TD() approximation technique that appears to overcome these drawbacks of eligibility traces. The paper outlines this technique, discusses its computational eeciency advantages, and presents experimental studies with the combination of TTD and Q-learning in deter-ministic and stochastic environments. These experiments show that TTD makes it possible to obtain a signiicant learning speedup without reducing reliability at essentially the same computational cost as usual TD(0) learning. We conclude that the TTD procedure is probably the most promising way of using TD methods for reinforcement learning , especially for tasks with large state spaces and a hard temporal credit assignment problem.
Growth and Welfare in a Small Open Economy

We construct a model of growth based on endogenous technological change in a small, open economy. Entrepreneurs develop new intermediate products whenever the present value of potential profits exceeds the cost of R&D. Diversity of intermediates contributes to total factor productivity in the production of final goods. The economy produces two such final goods, and trades these at exogenously given world prices. We study the welfare implications of R&D subsidies and commercial policy. There exists an optimal subsidy to R&D that speeds growth relative to the market-determined rate. The optimal subsidy achieves the first-best rate of growth, but not the first-best level of welfare. Small tariffs and export subsidies also affect both growth and welfare. Growth may increase or decrease, depending upon which sector is promoted by the trade policy. But an increase in the growth rate is neither necessary nor sufficient for a trade policy to improve welfare. Finally, we compare tariffs and quotas, when the latter give rise to rent-seeking behavior. The diversion of resources from innovative activities to rent seeking can have dire implications for growth and welfare.
Modelling the Linkages between Cross‐Compliance and Agri‐Environmental Schemes Under Asymmetric Information

Agri-environmental schemes (AESs) and cross-compliance (CC) are the two main components of the common agricultural policy (CAP) that address environmental issues. Under regulation 1698/2005, agri-environmental scheme design has been established in such a way as to use CC as the baseline against which prescriptions and payments are identified. In this framework, agri-environmental payments to farmers are justified only for the component of public goods produced (if any) above the CC prescription level. This constraint has become a major determinant of the design of agri-environmental schemes in all EU Member States in which both instruments are implemented. This paper investigates farmer participation, compliance choices and the socially optimal level of monitoring when CC and agri-environmental schemes are jointly considered, and when information about compliance is asymmetrically distributed between farmers and the public regulator. The results show that the two policy instruments interact with each other, with agri-environmental payments actually providing incentives for CC, when the CC monitoring and sanction system does not guarantee full compliance. However, the numerical example in Emilia-Romagna (Italy) demonstrates that with the present combination of controls and sanctions, farmers have very little incentive to be compliant with both cross compliance and agri-environmental schemes. Hence, the results highlight that monitoring in CC or in AES does not have the same effect on the farmers’ compliance. This underscores the need for further research in this field, particularly as provision of environmental goods becomes more important in the future CAP.
Foreign Direct Investment Inflows and Economic Growth in Ghana

There exists mixed empirical evidence on the size of gains from Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows for the economies of different countries. The paper thus investigated the relationship between economic growth and FDI inflows a dynamic framework. A study of this sort would inform policy on the role of lagged, coincident and leading effects of FDI on economic growth. An Engle-Granger two-step methodology for error correction was employed. The major empirical and methodological contribution of this study is the use of Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) technique. Dynamic OLS becomes better than OLS by coping with small sample sources of bias. The elasticity of economic growth with respect to FDI had a positive sign and also significant at the 1% level. However, the effect of a three (3) year lag of FDI on economic growth had a negative sign and significant at the 5% level. Policy makers should thus not concentrate on current macroeconomic inflows of FDI but consider effects of past FDI inflows on current levels of economic growth.
Increasing risk aversion and life-cycle investing

We derive the optimal portfolio for an investor with increasing relative risk aversion in a complete continuous-time securities market. The IRRA assumption helps to mitigate the criticism of constant relative risk aversion that it implies an unreasonably large aversion to large gambles, given reasonable aversion to small gambles. The model provides theoretical support for the common recommendation of financial advisors that older investors should reduce their allocations to risky assets, and it is consistent with empirical relations between age, wealth, and portfolios.
Feature Selection for Text Classification Based on Gini Coefficient of Inequality

A number of feature selection mechanisms have been explored in text categorization, among which mutual information, information gain and chi-square are considered most effective. In this paper, we study another method known as within class popularity to deal with feature selection based on the concept Gini coefficient of inequality (a commonly used measure of inequality of income). The proposed measure explores the relative distribution of a feature among different classes. From extensive experiments with four text classifiers over three datasets of different levels of heterogeneity, we observe that the proposed measure outperforms the mutual information, information gain and chi-square static with an average improvement of approximately 28.5%, 19% and 9.2% respectively.
Prevalence of Congenital Anomalies and Non-Communicable Diseases in Women of Age 12-75 Years in District Bhimber, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan

Abstract Background The advancement in the healthcare systems, stringent interventions for infectious diseases and improved diet has significantly shifted the patterns of morbidities, and consequently hereditary and congenital anomalies (CA) and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) have emerged as the most common causes of morbidity and mortality. In Pakistan, there is no systematic health surveillance system to assess the impact of such diseases particularly on the young and adult populations. Methods In order to glean into the health and morbidity profile of Azad Jammu and Kashmir we have carried out an epidemiological study in Bhimber District in the north-east of Pakistan. A total of 1,731 female subjects of age 12-75 yr originating from Bhimber were recruited through a cross-sectional study. Results There were 74 cases (and 15 types) of CA with a prevalence estimate of 42.75/1,000. CA was significantly higher in subjects who were illiterate and married, speaking Pahari language and belonged to rural areas and nuclear families. Additionally, there were 104 cases (and 21 types) of NCDs (prevalence 60.08/1,000). NCDs were observed to have higher prevalence in subjects who were illiterate and married, speaking Punjabi language, and belonged to higher age groups and nuclear families. Conclusion This study explores the types and dynamics of morbidity across the major socio-demographic parameters of adult females of Bhimber and would be helpful in estimating the impact of morbidity in this population. A comprehensive country-wide study is the need of the time to identify specific risk factors associated with certain morbidity types and help prioritize areas for interventions.
Intrinsic optical signal imaging of neocortical seizures: the ‘epileptic dip’

Focal neocortical seizures, induced by injection of 4-aminopyridine, were imaged in the rat neocortex using the intrinsic optical signal, with incident light at various wavelengths. We observed focal, reproducible and prolonged reflectance drops following seizure onset, regardless of wavelength, in the ictal onset zone. A persistent drop in light reflectance with incident orange light, which corresponds to a decrease in oxygenated hemoglobin, was observed. We describe this phenomenon as an ‘epileptic dip’ as it is reminiscent of the ‘initial dip’ observed using the intrinsic optical signal, and also with blood oxygen level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging, after normal sensory processing, although with much longer duration. This persistent ictal ischemia was confirmed by direct measurement of tissue oxygenation using oxygen-sensitive electrodes.
Financial Integration And Real Activity

This timely book provides an overview of recent work on international capital mobility and optimum currency areas, exploring how increasing financial integration affects saving, investment, and consumption across countries, and how the choice of monetary regime is affected by a country's circumstances. At a time of unprecedented change in the international financial system, it provides a holistic view of the interaction between financial integration and macroeconomic activity.The first part of the book critically reviews and extends the existing debate on how easily capital flows between countries. The second half surveys and expands the theoretical and empirical evidence on choosing between having a single currency or multiple moneys.These two aspects of the international economy are integrated into one readily accessible volume, which is comprehensive enough to be useful to specialists in international finance and sufficiently approachable to appeal to other academics, students, and policy makers. As trade deals like NAFTA and EMU seek higher levels of economic integration, this book will become essential reading.Tamim Bayoumi is an economist with the International Monetary Fund.This title was formally part of the Studies in International Trade Policy Series, now called Studies in International Economics.
Does ICT boost Dutch productivity growth

From an historical and international perspective, Dutch labour productivity growth rates have been lacklustre. Using a growth accounting framework, this document analyses whether ICT has recently boosted Dutch labour productivity growth, similar to developments in the US. Labour productivity growth in the Dutch market sector slightly accelerated in the second half of the 1990s. The acceleration seems to be related to the production and use of ICT. The productivity performance of the Dutch ICT sector accounts for a large share in the rebound of labour productivity growth. Strong productivity growth in the ICT sector is partly due to increased efficiency in the production of ICT products, particularly ICT-services. Users of ICT benefit from its opportunities as well. Labour productivity growth rates markedly accelerated in ICT-intensive industries in the late 1990s. The effect of ICT on Dutch labour productivity growth is not lower than that witnessed in other OECD countries (except for the US). Nevertheless, Dutch labour productivity grew slower than productivity in most other OECD countries because of lagging productivity growth rates, particularly in the services sector. Due to slower growth rates of labour supply, Dutch labour productivity growth must increase in upcoming years in order to prevent a substantial decline in GDP growth. Labour productivity growth may be boosted by larger investments in and better use of ICT. The role of the government is mainly to facilitate the diffusion of ICT and other innovations across the economy, because these are the engines of economic growth. Based on studies for the US, one of the most efficient policy options seems to be creating a more competitive environment, which will cause firms to increase efficiency and to explore new ways of doing business.