Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Simultaneous auctions are (almost) efficient

Simultaneous item auctions are simple and practical procedures for allocating items to bidders with potentially complex preferences. In a simultaneous auction, every bidder submits independent bids on all items simultaneously. The allocation and prices are then resolved for each item separately, based solely on the bids submitted on that item. We study the efficiency of Bayes-Nash equilibrium (BNE) outcomes of simultaneous first- and second-price auctions when bidders have complement-free (a.k.a. subadditive) valuations. While it is known that the social welfare of every pure Nash equilibrium (NE) constitutes a constant fraction of the optimal social welfare, a pure NE rarely exists, and moreover, the full information assumption is often unrealistic. Therefore, quantifying the welfare loss in Bayes-Nash equilibria is of particular interest. Previous work established a logarithmic bound on the ratio between the social welfare of a BNE and the expected optimal social welfare in both first-price auctions (Hassidim et al., 2011) and second-price auctions (Bhawalkar and Roughgarden, 2011), leaving a large gap between a constant and a logarithmic ratio. We introduce a new proof technique and use it to resolve both of these gaps in a unified way. Specifically, we show that the expected social welfare of any BNE is at least 1/2 of the optimal social welfare in the case of first-price auctions, and at least 1/4 in the case of second-price auctions.
Egogram characteristics in Japanese patients with Parkinson's disease

Personality has been investigated as a possible onset risk factor for Parkinson's disease (PD). Recently, personality has attracted increasing attention because certain non‐motor aspects may be associated with patients’ personality and deterioration of their quality of life. The Tokyo University Egogram version II (TEGII) is a reliable questionnaire for assessing personality in Japanese people, but few studies have reported personality assessments in Japanese PD patients.
Translittoral Talitridae (Crustacea: Amphipoda) and the need to reserve transitional habitats: examples from Tasmanian saltmarshes and other coastal sites

Richardson, A.M.M. , Swain, R. and Wong, V. , 1997. Translittoral Talitridae (Crustacea: Amphipoda) and the need to reserve transitional habitats: examples from Tasmanian saltmarshes and other coastal sites. Memoirs of the Museum of Victoria 56(2): 521-529. Transitional habitats, e.g., those that lie between sea and land, are often ignored because of the different backgrounds of marine and terrestrial biologists, but they are important for the series of species which span the boundary. The amphipod family Talitridae has perhaps the widest translittoral range and so provides evidence from which the evolutionary process of land colonisation can be deduced. The talitrids found on two sea-land transitions in Tasmania, a sandy-beach to rainforest and a saltmarsh to dry woodland, are described, and the significance of their distributions is discussed. The need to reserve the full range of such translittoral series is noted. This will not necessarily be achieved by establishing reserve boundaries on the basis of vegetation associations.
Charter Schools and the Achievement Gap

Abstract:On average, charter schools perform at about the same level as traditional public schools. But an overall estimate disguises considerable variation in charter school impacts. Urban charter schools and those serving low-income and minority students, a number of which share a no excuses philosophy, tend to produce the largest gains. Expanding these highly effective charters and their practices may be a way to close achievement gaps. Research shows that charters can expand successfully and that traditional public schools that adopt charter practices (or are taken over by charter operators) can also make large academic gains. But to have a meaningful impact on nationwide achievement gaps, charter school approaches would need to be adopted beyond the charter sector itself. Any interventions that are built around using charter schools to close achievement gaps should focus not on the type of school but on the practices that work in the most effective charter schools.
FOR DETECTING

Network monitoring and analysis has taken primordial role to understand the functioning of the internet and prevent it from any future probable attacks. Many publications treated the topic of the security as an interesting research domain. Due to the importance and the different applications of wireless sensor networks, the research of finding security solutions is always up but their limited resources (energy consumption, CPU capacity, limited memory…) make the application of classical protocols of security like cryptography, almost impossible. Therefore, recently machine learning is a new field which gets the interest of the majority of researchers. The solutions for providing security services conveyable of in this type of network, are proposed. In this paper we focus in the monitoring of wireless sensor network using machine learning as an intrusion detection system. We address in particular to active attacks. Because of the limitation of machine learning and to provide a high protection against attack we proposed a hash cryptographic function in order to protect the authenticity of information. Our interesting contribution aims three important axes of security: confidentiality, integrity and authentication.
Pesticide exposure from fresh tomatoes and its relationship with pesticide application practices in Meru district

Abstract Tomato pesticides health risk was assessed in Meru district of Arusha region, one of the key tomato producers in Tanzania. Tomato samples and consumption information were collected from 50 farmers using Food and Drug Administration standards and twice administered twenty-four hour recall questionnaire respectively. Analysis for pesticide residues was done using Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry. Dietary pesticide exposure was estimated deterministically by combining pesticide residue levels and tomato consumption levels. Pesticide levels were detected for; permethrin (mean, 5.2899 mg/kg), chlorpyrifos (mean, 7.5281 mg/kg) and ridomil (mean, 2,854.279 mg/kg) in 18% of samples. Health Risk Indices, determined as ratio of estimated daily intake to acceptable daily exposure, for chlorpyrifos, permethrin and ridomil were greater than one. This implies that, lifetime consumption of fresh tomatoes can pose health risk for chlorpyrifos, permethrin and ridomil. Awareness raising on good practices for pesticide application and food safety strengthening are recommended to protect public health against pesticides.
The Influence of High-Involvement Human Resources Practices, Procedural Justice, Organizational Commitment and Citizenship Behaviors on Information Technology Professionals’ Turnover Intentions

The present study investigates the role of high-involvement human resources practices, organizational commitment and citizenship behaviors on turnover intentions among a sample of highly skilled professionals. Five significant findings emerged: first, structural equation modeling analyses revealed that non-monetary recognition and competency development, and, to a lesser extent, fair rewards and information sharing practices, are negatively related to turnover intentions. Second, both forms of organizational commitment, together with citizenship behaviors, are negatively associated with turnover intentions. Third, we observed that extensive investment in competence development is strongly and positively associated with the development of perception of continuance commitment among IT professionals. Fourth, procedural justice mediated the influence of HR practices on organizational commitment behaviors and turnover intentions. Fifth, four out of five high involvement HR practices have a direct negative influence on turnover intentions among IT specialists. Implications of these results for practice and research are also discussed.
SAR and QSAR in Environmental Research

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Initial perception of junior high students on ethnomathematics-based online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic

This research aimed to determine the students' initial perception in Islamic-based junior high school and Madrasah Tsanawiyah (MTs) in Yogyakarta toward ethnomathematics-based online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The descriptive quantitative method was employed through a questionnaire for data collection followed by descriptive statistical analysis. The research population were 600 junior high students and MTs in Yogyakarta. The instrument was validated by expert judgment and proved reliable as research means with Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient of 0.873. Results indicated students' perception in several categories: strongly positive by 7% or 42 students, positive by 23% or 138 students, moderate by 40.67% or 244 students, negative by 24% or 144 students, and strongly negative by 5.33% or 32 students. The general conclusion was that junior high and MTs students in Yogyakarta had moderate initial perception toward ethnomathematics-based online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLEDGE Saliency Based Object Extraction in Single Concept Video Frames

: This paper presents saliency scheme based object extraction method to extract and fragment the objects from frames. At first visual and motion saliency feature information map are derived from input frames, and then that feature cosaliency informations are integrated with their color models. Then conditional random field (CRF) was applied for automatic object extraction. It will able to produces satisfactory result.
International Journal of Basic Sciences and Applied Computing (IJBSAC)

1 Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering & Sciences Publication © Copyright: All rights reserved. Retrieval Number: I0136082919/2019©BEIESP DOI:10.35940/ijbsac.I0136. 122919 Journal Website: www.ijbsac. org Independent mobility of children living in the barrack is declining over the last four decades due to its unfriendly environment. There are limited studies on children-environment relationships in Nigeria, especially in the barrack. Available studies from social sciences and public health studies lack policy connection with the child-friendly environment for improved independent mobility. Hence, this study aimed to develop a child-friendly barrack environment policy framework for enhanced independent movement of children. The safety and security, barrack environmental quality, basic services, quality of housing, and children’s participation were five characteristics of a child-friendly environment considered. They exogenously predicted improved independent mobility of children in the barrack. On the other hand, the endogenous construct consists of the land-use change, destination accessibility, home range, travel time, and population density of the barrack. A total of 390 parent and primary school children aged 5-12 living in the Nigerian Air Force Barrack in Kaduna jointly assessed the five barrack environment characteristics and five indicators of children’s independent mobility. The survey questionnaire was analysed using SPSS and PLS-SEM. Consequently, the principal component analysis showed high factor loading for the five characteristics and four independent mobility indicators except for the land use that fell below 0.7 thresholds. The outer weights of the reflexive measurement items were high which signified strong correlations. Hence, barrack environment characteristics strongly predicted improved independent mobility of children. Thus, the structural model’s path coefficient of 0.585 explained 58.5% variance in the independent mobility of children in the barrack residential area. The coefficient of determination R2 value is 0.342, and the p-value is at 0.000 level of significance. It provided an environment planning policy framework to monitor interventions and halt the declining rates of children's independent mobility in the military barrack of Nigeria. The conceptual framework developed is applicable in the para-military barrack, housing estates and compact cities in African countries including Nigeria.
Adaptive Information Processing: An Effective Way to Improve Perceptron Predictors.

Perceptron branch predictors achieve high prediction accuracy by capturing correlation from very long histories. The required hardware, however, limits the history length to be explored practically. In this paper, an important observation is made that the perceptron weights can be used to estimate the strength of branch correlation. Based such an estimate, adaptive schemes are proposed to preprocess history information so that the input vector to a perceptron predictor contains only those history bits with the strongest correlation. In this way, a much larger history-information set can be explored effectively without increasing the size of perceptron predictors. For the distributed Championship Branch Prediction (CBP-1) traces, our proposed scheme achieves a 47% improvement over a g-share predictor of the same size 1 . For SPEC2000 benchmarks, our proposed scheme outperforms the g-share predictor by 35% on average.
Template for Preparation of Manuscripts for Nano Research

Being simple, inexpensive, scalable and environmentally friendly, microporous biomass biochars have been attracting enthusiastic attention for application in lithium-sulfur (Li−S) batteries. Herein, porous bamboo biochar is activated via a KOH/annealing process that creates a microporous structure, boosts surface area and enhances electronic conductivity. The treated sample is used to encapsulate sulfur to prepare microporous bamboo carbon-sulfur (BC-S) nanocomposite as the cathode for Li–S batteries for the first time. The BC-S nanocomposite with 50 wt% sulfur content delivers a high initial capacity of 1295 mAh/g at a low discharge rate of 160 mA/g and high capacity retention of 550 mAh/g after 150 cycles at a high discharge rate of 800 mA/g with excellent coulombic efficiency (≥95%). This suggests that the BC-S nanocomposite could be a promising cathode material for Li–S batteries.
Evaluation of hyperspectral indices for retrieval of canopy equivalent water thickness and gravimetric water content

ABSTRACT There are two main parameters describing the amount of water in vegetation: the gravimetric water content (GWC) and the equivalent water thickness (EWT). In this study, we investigated the applicability of hyperspectral water-sensitive indices from canopy spectra for estimating canopy EWT (CEWT) and GWC. First, the spectral reflectance’s response to different levels of canopy water content was analysed and a noticeable increase in the slope of the near-infrared (NIR) shoulder of the canopy spectrum was observed. Next, the correlation between the CEWT and various hyperspectral water-sensitive indices was investigated. It was found that all of the indices could retrieve the CEWT of winter wheat well, with the coefficients of determination (R2) all being higher than 0.80. Finally, the retrieval performance of these indices for canopy GWC was evaluated and no significant correlation was observed between canopy GWC and the water-sensitive indices except for the spectral ratio index in the NIR shoulder region (NSRI). These results showed that the traditional water-sensitive vegetation indices are more sensitive to CEWT than to GWC, especially when the LAI is not highly correlated with the GWC, and that the NSRI is a potential vegetation index for use in the retrieval of GWC.
137Cs Environmental Half-life without Remediation: Impact on Radiation Dose

Fukushima accident. After this event, extensive amounts of time and money were invested to clean-up and limit the transport of 137Cs into the food chain. However, since the biological and environmental half-lives of 137Cs are short, they limit its availability and exposure in people. This paper demonstrates how historical data on the environmental half-life of 137Cs in both 137Cs activity in milk from selected dairy farms and total body burdens in the farmers exposed to fallout in Utah were determined. The activity in milk decreased each year from spring to summer, while the activity in the farmers increased with time and varied by a factor of about ten (100–1,400 Bq). Fallout provided a continuing resupply of 137Cs into humans. If resupply were to be prevented or limited by remediation, 137Cs would clear from the body as a function of the effective half-life of 104 days measured in Fukushima. Blocking the entry of 137Cs would have reduced the body-burden in Utah farmers by a factor of almost ten. Data in this
Optimal Codes for the Burst Erasure Channel

Deep space communications over noisy channels lead to certain packets that are not decodable. These packets leave gaps, or bursts of erasures, in the data stream. Burst erasure correcting codes overcome this problem. These are forward erasure correcting codes that allow one to recover the missing gaps of data. Much of the recent work on this topic concentrated on Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) codes. These are more complicated to encode and decode than Single Parity Check (SPC) codes or Reed-Solomon (RS) codes, and so far have not been able to achieve the theoretical limit for burst erasure protection. A block interleaved maximum distance separable (MDS) code (e.g., an SPC or RS code) offers near-optimal burst erasure protection, in the sense that no other scheme of equal total transmission length and code rate could improve the guaranteed correctible burst erasure length by more than one symbol. The optimality does not depend on the length of the code, i.e., a short MDS code block interleaved to a given length would perform as well as a longer MDS code interleaved to the same overall length. As a result, this approach offers lower decoding complexity with better burst erasure protection compared to other recent designs for the burst erasure channel (e.g., LDPC codes). A limitation of the design is its lack of robustness to channels that have impairments other than burst erasures (e.g., additive white Gaussian noise), making its application best suited for correcting data erasures in layers above the physical layer. The efficiency of a burst erasure code is the length of its burst erasure correction capability divided by the theoretical upper limit on this length. The inefficiency is one minus the efficiency. The illustration compares the inefficiency of interleaved RS codes to Quasi-Cyclic (QC) LDPC codes, Euclidean Geometry (EG) LDPC codes, extended Irregular Repeat Accumulate (eIRA) codes, array codes, and random LDPC codes previously proposed for burst erasure protection. As can be seen, the simple interleaved RS codes have substantially lower inefficiency over a wide range of transmission lengths.
Connecting Business and IT - A Model-driven Web Service based Approach

Service-oriented architectures focus on the alignment of business processes and the supporting information technology. To facilitate the alignment and to decrease administration costs we propose linking of SOA services to enterprise models respectively target state organisational models by using semantically enriched conceptual modelling languages. Acting on language meta-level means in this context the introduction of service related constructs into widely used visual modelling grammars. Vision is the situation dependent adaptation of software functionality to the actual business process requirements. An efficient adaptation is crucial in order to be able to respond quickly to environmental or system induced change.
ScholarWorks at University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana

Although a large body of quantitative environmental justice research exists, only a handful of studies have examined the processes by which racial and socioeconomic disparities in the location of polluting industrial facilities can occur. These studies have had mixed results, we contend, principally because of methodological differences, that is, the use of the unit-hazard coincidence method as compared to distance-based methods. This study is the ﬁ rst national-level environmental justice study to conduct longitudinal analyses using distance-based methods. Our purposes are to: ( 1 ) determine whether disparate siting, post-siting demographic change, or a combination of the two created present-day disparities; ( 2 ) test related explanations; and ( 3 ) determine whether the application of distance-based methods helps resolve the inconsistent ﬁ ndings of previous research. We used a national database of commercial hazardous waste facilities sited from 1966 to 1995 and examined the demographic composition of host neighborhoods around the time of siting and demographic changes that occurred after siting. We found strong evidence of disparate siting for facilities sited in all time periods. Although we found some evidence of post-siting demographic changes, they were mostly a continuation
Four Colors Suffice: How the Map Problem Was Solved

On October 23, 1852, Professor Augustus De Morgan wrote a letter to a colleague, unaware that he was launching one of the most famous mathematical conundrums in history--one that would confound thousands of puzzlers for more than a century. This is the amazing story of how the "map problem" was solved. The problem posed in the letter came from a former student: What is the least possible number of colors needed to fill in any map (real or invented) so that neighboring counties are always colored differently? This deceptively simple question was of minimal interest to cartographers, who saw little need to limit how many colors they used. But the problem set off a frenzy among professional mathematicians and amateur problem solvers, among them Lewis Carroll, an astronomer, a botanist, an obsessive golfer, the Bishop of London, a man who set his watch only once a year, a California traffic cop, and a bridegroom who spent his honeymoon coloring maps. In their pursuit of the solution, mathematicians painted maps on doughnuts and horseshoes and played with patterned soccer balls and the great rhombicuboctahedron. It would be more than one hundred years (and countless colored maps) later before the result was finally established. Even then, difficult questions remained, and the intricate solution--which involved no fewer than 1,200 hours of computer time--was greeted with as much dismay as enthusiasm. Providing a clear and elegant explanation of the problem and the proof, Robin Wilson tells how a seemingly innocuous question baffled great minds and stimulated exciting mathematics with far-flung applications. This is the entertaining story of those who failed to prove, and those who ultimately did prove, that four colors do indeed suffice to color any map.