Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
LIDAR POINT CLOUD BASED FULLY AUTOMATIC 3 D SINGL TREE MODELLING IN FOREST AND EVALUATIONS OF THE PROCEDURE

A whole procedure of fully automatic 3D single tree modelling based on LIDAR point cloud is introduced in the paper. The evaluation of the procedure is then delivered by verifying the modelling results with field collecting data in sample plots. With the procedure, individual trees are extracted not only from the top canopy layer but also from the sub canopy layer, 3D shape of the extracted individual tree crowns are reconstructed, from which important parameters such as crown height range, crown volume and crown contours at different height levels can be derived. For the evaluation of the performance, the procedure is implemented with LIDAR data of 25 sample plots where detailed field inventories have been accomplished. Results of the procedure such as the number of individual trees in each sample plot, the location of the detected individual trees are verified by a statistical comparison with the field collecting data. Further analysis on the evaluation results is delivered at the final.
Myths of Timbuktu : From African El Dorado to Desertification

Few cities and places in the world are surrounded by as many myths as is Timbuktu. The city was, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, an important center for Islamic learning, and it blossomed during this time as a junction for the caravan trade across the Sahara. The main commodity in the trans-Saharan trade was gold. In the later medieval period, West Africa may have been producing almost two-thirds of the world’s gold supply (Dunn 1989). Later, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a gold coin was in fact called a “guinea. ” In other words, the gold came from Guinea, the tropical forest belt in West Africa. Large quantities of the gold were transported north and traded at the market in Timbuktu. From there, the gold was shipped with camel caravans across the Sahara to cities such as Fez or Tripoli in North Africa. Much of the gold was then sold to Europe, where, as time went on, it became general knowledge that it came from Timbuktu. The image of Timbuktu as an El Dorado started to take shape, becoming widespread during the Romance period in Europe in the first part of the nineteenth century. The city was imagined to be a metropolis overlaid with gold, with alternating roofs and streets of gold—a place south of the Sahara, but with an unknown location. The Timbuktu myth grew in Eu-
Roles of p-ERM and Rho–ROCK signaling in lymphocyte polarity and uropod formation

Front–rear asymmetry in motile cells is crucial for efficient directional movement. The uropod in migrating lymphocytes is a posterior protrusion in which several proteins, including CD44 and ezrin/radixin/moesin (ERM), are concentrated. In EL4.G8 T-lymphoma cells, Thr567 phosphorylation in the COOH-terminal domain of ezrin regulates the selective localization of ezrin in the uropod. Overexpression of the phosphorylation-mimetic T567D ezrin enhances uropod size and cell migration. T567D ezrin also induces construction of the CD44-associated polar cap, which covers the posterior cytoplasm in staurosporine-treated, uropod-disrupted EL4.G8 cells or in naturally unpolarized X63.653 myeloma cells in an actin cytoskeleton–dependent manner. Rho-associated coiled coil–containing protein kinase (ROCK) inhibitor Y-27632 disrupts the uropod but not the polar cap, indicating that Rho–ROCK signaling is required for posterior protrusion but not for ERM phosphorylation. Phosphorylated ezrin associates with Dbl through its NH2-terminal domain and causes Rho activation. Moreover, constitutively active Q63L RhoA is selectively localized in the rear part of the cells. Thus, phosphorylated ERM has a potential function in establishing plasma membrane “posteriority” in the induction of the uropod in T lymphocytes.
Gender based taxation

Gender Based Taxation (GBT) satisfies the Ramsey criterion of optimal taxation by taxing less the more elastic labor supply of (married) women. In this paper we endogenously derive differences in gender elasticities from a model in which spouses bargain over the allocation of home duties and family shocks. GBT changes spouses’ implicit bargaining power and induces a more balanced allocation of house work and working opportunities between males and females. Because of decreasing returns to specialization in home and market work, social welfare improves by taxing conditional on gender. When income sharing within the family is substantial, both spouses may gain from GBT. JEL-Code: D13, H21, J16, J20.
The Origins of Mutual Forbearance: Learning to Trust to Mutually Forbear

Multi-market contact can either escalate or deescalate rivalry. Recent empirical work has revealed an inverted U-shaped relationship between multi-market contact and rivalry. These findings have lead many to suggest that mutual forbearance (MF), a switch from competition to cooperation across markets, is a natural outcome of increasing multi-market contact between two firms. Despite the relatively widespread acceptance of this suggestion, we do not have a theoretically grounded explanation for how this switch from rivalry to mutual forbearance occurs. This dissertation takes up this task. Theories of learning and trust are used as the grounding for the development of a theoretical model of the process by which multi-market rivals switch from competition to cooperation across markets. The model is tested using data from the U.S. Scheduled Passenger Airline Industry. Results support the general theoretical foundations of the model and provide new insights into the genesis of mutual forbearance.
Discussion—Accruals, Accounting-Based Valuation Models, and the Prediction of Equity Values

Barth, Beaver, Hand and Landsman (hereafter BBHL) address an important issue in empirical financial accounting research-namely, the incremental valuerelevance of accruals and accruals components beyond earnings. If accruals are incrementally value relevant, then earnings components do not aggregate to a fully informative “bottom line” number, and information from income statement line items and comparative balance sheets can help improve the accuracy of intrinsic value estimates. BBHL adopt an “out of sample” prediction error criterion and test the impact on prediction errors of (1) using progressively finer information on accounting accruals and its components; (2) imposing restrictions on valuation function coefficients derived from (abnormal) earnings forecasting systems; and (3) using industry-level valuation and LIM estimation. The link between valuation and forecasting is based on the Ohlson linear information model (LIM) framework (Ohlson [1995, 19991). The authors should be commended for a paper that presents results from estimating a series of progressively more complex empirical models in a very clear fashion. I see the paper’s main contributions to be threefold. First, it develops further the research design in Barth et al. (1999) in considering the impact on the quality of value estimates of adding theoretical structure derived from (abnormal) earnings forecasting models. In principle, LIM-consistent estimation reduces the likelihood of “overfitting” and false inference concerning the value-relevance of accounting items by imposing restrictions on coefficient estimates based on theoretical priors. BBHL’s results indicate that LIM-consistent estimation improves valuation accuracy when modeling is based on the pooled, broad cross section of filXlS. The second main contribution of the paper is the industry-level analysis. This indicates that the accuracy of industry-level valuation estimates is considerably higher than that of pooled estimates, and that LIM-consistent estimation does not improve the accuracy of valuation estimates when modeling is performed at the industry level. The results suggest cross-industry variation in valuation coefficients
FIU Digital Commons FIU Digital Commons The impacts of oil palm on recent deforestation and biodiversity The impacts of oil palm on recent deforestation and biodiversity loss loss

Palm oil is the most widely traded vegetable oil globally, with demand projected to increase substantially in the future. Almost all oil palm grows in areas that were once tropical moist forests, some of them quite recently. The conversion to date, and future expansion, threatens biodiversity and increases greenhouse gas emissions. Today, consumer pressure is pushing companies toward deforestation-free sources of palm oil. To guide interventions aimed at reducing tropical deforestation due to oil palm, we analysed recent expansions and modelled likely future ones. We assessed sample areas to find where oil palm plantations have recently replaced forests in 20 countries, using a combination of high-resolution imagery from Google Earth and Landsat. We then compared these trends to countrywide trends in FAO data for oil palm planted area. Finally, we assessed which forests have high agricultural suitability for future oil palm development, which we refer to as vulnerable forests, and identified critical areas for biodiversity that oil palm expansion threatens. Our analysis reveals regional trends in deforestation associated with oil palm agriculture. In Southeast Asia, 45% of sampled oil palm plantations came from areas that were forests in 1989. For South America, the percentage was 31%. By contrast, in Mesoamerica and Africa, we observed only 2% and 7% of oil palm plantations coming from areas that were forest in 1989. The largest areas of vulnerable forest are in Africa and South America. Vulnerable forests in all four regions of production contain globally high concentrations of mammal and bird species at risk of extinction. However, priority areas for biodiversity conservation differ based on taxa and criteria used. Government regulation and voluntary market interventions can help incentivize the expansion of oil palm plantations in ways that protect biodiversity-rich ecosystems.
Metabolic syndrome and mortality in older adults: the Cardiovascular Health Study.

BACKGROUND The utility of metabolic syndrome (MetS) for predicting mortality among older adults, the highest-risk population, is not well established. In addition, few studies have compared the predictive utility of MetS to that of its individual risk factors. METHODS We evaluated relationships of MetS (as defined by the National Cholesterol Education Program Expert Panel on Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Cholesterol in Adults [Adult Treatment Panel III (ATPIII)], International Diabetes Foundation [IDF], and World Health Organization [WHO]) and individual MetS criteria with mortality between 1989 and 2004 among 4258 US adults 65 years or older and free of prevalent cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the Cardiovascular Health Study, a multicenter, population-based, prospective cohort. Total, CVD, and non-CVD mortality were evaluated. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate the mortality hazard ratio (relative risk [RR]) predicted by MetS. RESULTS At baseline (mean age, 73 years), 31% of men and 38% of women had MetS (ATPIII). During 15 years of follow-up, 2116 deaths occurred. After multivariable adjustment, compared with persons without MetS, those with MetS had a 22% higher mortality (RR, 1.22; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.11-1.34). Higher risk with MetS was confined to persons having elevated fasting glucose level (EFG) (defined as > or = 110 mg/dL [> or = 6.1 mmol/L] or treated diabetes mellitus) (RR, 1.41; 95% CI, 1.27-1.57) or hypertension (RR, 1.26; 95% CI, 1.15-1.39) as one of the criteria; persons having MetS without EFG (RR, 0.97; 95% CI, 0.85-1.11) or MetS without hypertension (RR, 0.92; 95% CI, 0.71-1.19) did not have higher risk. Evaluating MetS criteria individually, we found that only hypertension and EFG predicted higher mortality; persons having both hypertension and EFG had 82% higher mortality (RR, 1.82; 95% CI, 1.58-109). Substantially higher proportions of deaths were attributable to EFG and hypertension (population attributable risk fraction [PAR%], 22.2%) than to MetS (PAR%, 6.3%). Results were similar when we used WHO or IDF criteria, when we evaluated different cut points of each individual criterion, and when we evaluated CVD mortality. CONCLUSION These findings suggest limited utility of MetS for predicting total or CVD mortality in older adults compared with assessment of fasting glucose and blood pressure alone.
Scripted dialogs versus improvisation: lessons learned about emotional elicitation techniques from the IEMOCAP database

Recording high quality data is an important step in the study of emotions. Given the inherent limitations and complexities of the current approaches to capture natural emotions collected in real-life scenarios, the use of professional actors appears to be a viable research methodology. To avoid stereotypical realization of the emotions, better elicitation techniques rooted in theatrical performance are needed. Based on the lessons learned from the collection of the IEMOCAP database, this paper analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of two of the most appealing elic- itation approaches: improvisation, and scripted dialogs. These methods are studied in terms of the lexical content, disﬂuen- cies, facial activity and emotional content. The results indicate that spontaneous sessions have higher levels of disﬂuencies and overlapped speech. Also, the emotional content seems to be more intense than in scripted sessions, as revealed in subjective evaluations.
Rehabilitation of face-processing skills in an adolescent with prosopagnosia: Evaluation of an online perceptual training programme

In this paper we describe the case of EM, a female adolescent who acquired prosopagnosia following encephalitis at the age of eight. Initial neuropsychological and eye-movement investigations indicated that EM had profound difficulties in face perception as well as face recognition. EM underwent 14 weeks of perceptual training in an online programme that attempted to improve her ability to make fine-grained discriminations between faces. Following training, EM's face perception skills had improved, and the effect generalised to untrained faces. Eye-movement analyses also indicated that EM spent more time viewing the inner facial features post-training. Examination of EM's face recognition skills revealed an improvement in her recognition of personally-known faces when presented in a laboratory-based test, although the same gains were not noted in her everyday experiences with these faces. In addition, EM did not improve on a test assessing the recognition of newly encoded faces. One month after training, EM had maintained the improvement on the eye-tracking test, and to a lesser extent, her performance on the familiar faces test. This pattern of findings is interpreted as promising evidence that the programme can improve face perception skills, and with some adjustments, may at least partially improve face recognition skills.
Short-term Marginal Costs in French Agriculture

The paper investigates short-term marginal costs in French agriculture for field cropping, beef cattle, and dairy farms during the period 1995-2006. The multi-input multi-output Symmetric Generalised MacFadden cost function is used, with three variable inputs (crop-specific, animal-specific, energy costs), four outputs and three quasi-fixed inputs. Results indicate that marginal costs are on average lower for crop farms than for livestock samples. However, for crop farms, Common Agricultural Policy crop direct payments are related to high production costs, while livestock direct payments have no relation to production costs for dairy farms.
Infinitesimal Deformations of Complete Vector Fields are Complete

Recall that a vector field X on a smooth manifold M is complete if it generates a global flow ξ : M × R → M . If Xǫ is a smoothly parametrized family of vector fields (ǫ ∈ R), it may happen that X0 is complete but all Xǫ with ǫ 6= 0 are incomplete. This is the case for instance with the family of vector fields ǫ · x · ∂ ∂x on R. We shall prove, however, that in the context of synthetic differential geometry, if X0 is complete, then so is Xǫ for any ǫ with ǫ 2 = 0. We presuppose some general notions from synthetic differential geometry (SDG), cf. [3], but also some more particular results [5]. The notion ‘connection in a groupoid’, ‘deplacement’ and ‘deplacement field’ that we use, are essentially due to Ehresmann, cf. [1]. The results in the present note were presented at the PSSL meeting in Amsterdam, June 1984.
Structural Characterization and In Vitro Antioxidant Activity of Kojic Dipalmitate Loaded W/O/W Multiple Emulsions Intended for Skin Disorders

Multiple emulsions (MEs) are intensively being studied for drug delivery due to their ability to load and increase the bioavailability of active lipophilic antioxidant, such as kojic dipalmitate (KDP). The aim of this study was to structurally characterize developed MEs by determining the average droplet size (Dnm) and zeta potential (ZP), performing macroscopic and microscopic analysis and analyzing their rheological behavior and in vitro bioadhesion. Furthermore, the in vitro safety profile and antioxidant activity of KDP-loaded MEs were evaluated. The developed MEs showed a Dnm of approximately 1 micrometer and a ZP of −13 mV, and no change was observed in Dnm or ZP of the system with the addition of KDP. KDP-unloaded MEs exhibited ‘‘shear thinning” flow behavior whereas KDP-loaded MEs exhibited Newtonian behavior, which are both characteristic of antithixotropic materials. MEs have bioadhesion properties that were not influenced by the incorporation of KDP. The results showed that the incorporation of KDP into MEs improved the safety profile of the drug. The in vitro antioxidant activity assay suggested that MEs presented a higher capacity for maintaining the antioxidant activity of KDP. ME-based systems may be a promising platform for the topical application of KDP in the treatment of skin disorders.
Exploring the Underlying Genetics of Craniofacial Morphology through Various Sources of Knowledge

The craniofacial complex is the billboard of sorts containing information about sex, health, ancestry, kinship, genes, and environment. A thorough knowledge of the genes underlying craniofacial morphology is fundamental to understanding craniofacial biology and evolution. These genes can also provide an important foundation for practical efforts like predicting faces from DNA and phenotype-based facial diagnostics. In this work, we focus on the various sources of knowledge regarding the genes that affect patterns of craniofacial development. Although tremendous successes recently have been made using these sources in both methodology and biology, many challenges remain. Primary among these are precise phenotyping techniques and efficient modeling methods.
Optimal Pricing and Capacity Allocation in Vertically Differentiated Web Caching Services

Internet infrastructure is a key enabler of e-business. The infrastructure consists of backbone networks (such as UUNET and AT&T), access networks (such as AOL and Earthlink), content delivery networks (CDNs, such as Akamai) and other caching service providers. Together, all of the players make up the digital supply chain for information goods. Caches provisioned by CDNs and other entities are the storage centers, the digital equivalent of warehouses. These caches store and deliver information from the edge of the network and serve to stabilize and add efficiency to content delivery. While the benefits of caching to content providers with regard to scaling content delivery globally, reducing bandwidth costs and response times are well recognized, caching has not become pervasive. This is largely due to misaligned incentives in the delivery chain. Much of the work done to date on Web caching has focused on the technology to provision quality of service and has not dealt with issues of fundamental importance to the business of provisioning caching services, specifically, the design of incentive compatible services, appropriate pricing schemes, and associated resource allocation issues that arise in operating a caching service. We discuss the design of incentive compatible caching services that we refer to as quality of service caching. Pricing plays an important role in aligning the incentives. We develop an analytic model to study the IAP’s optimal pricing and capacity allocation policies.
Effect of speaker gaze on word learning in fragile X syndrome: a comparison with nonsyndromic autism spectrum disorder.

PURPOSE This study examined use of a speaker's direction of gaze during word learning by boys with fragile X syndrome (FXS), boys with nonsyndromic autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and typically developing (TD) boys. METHOD A fast-mapping task with follow-in and discrepant labeling conditions was administered. We expected that the use of speaker gaze would lead to participants selecting as the referent of the novel label the object to which they attended in follow-in trials and the object to which the examiner attended in the discrepant labeling trials. Participants were school-aged boys with FXS (n=18) or ASD (n=18) matched on age, intelligence quotient, and nonverbal cognition and younger TD boys (n=18) matched on nonverbal cognition. RESULTS All groups performed above chance in both conditions, although the TD boys performed closest to the expected pattern. Boys with FXS performed better during follow-in than in discrepant label trials, whereas TD boys and boys with ASD did equally well in both trial types. The type of trial administered first influenced subsequent responding. Error patterns also distinguished the groups. CONCLUSION The ability to utilize a speaker's gaze during word learning is not as well developed in boys with FXS or nonsyndromic ASD as in TD boys of the same developmental level.
Low complexity adaptive code tracking with improved multipath resolution for DS-CDMA communications over fading channels

A new adaptive timing error detector (TED) embedded in a code-tracking loop for RAKE reception of direct sequence-CDMA signals is presented. The loop consists of a digital coherent TED and a loop filter with lowpass characteristic. In a multipath fading environment, one such loop can be allocated for each finger in a RAKE receiver and the interference from adjacent paths can be mitigated by adaptively prefiltering the signal prior to the correlation process. The filter coefficients are computed online in order to minimize an interference cost function. Multipaths whose delays differ by as little as one chip duration become resolvable and can be tracked, resulting in significant performance gains of the overall system, especially if the channel delay spread is small. The tracking performance of the proposed loop is assessed by computer simulation.
Do Nonfinancial Firms Use Interest Rate Derivatives to Hedge?

We compile and analyze detailed information on the debt structure and interest rate derivative positions of nonfinancial firms in 2000 and 2002. We find that differences in debt structure across firms and time tend to be counterbalanced by difference in derivative positions. In particular, among derivative users, smaller firms tend to have relatively more interest rate exposure from liabilities than larger firms and tend to use derivatives that offset these exposures. Larger firms also tend to limit their interest rate exposures, but they do so through their choice of debt structure rather than with derivatives. On the other hand, we find that a large fraction of the change in derivative positions over time cannot be explained by changes in debt structure. Finally, we find no evidence that nonfinancial firms hedge interest rate exposures from their operating assets, but do not see this as supporting the hypothesis that firms use derivatives to speculate.