Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Alliances, balance, and stability

Alliances and alignments are surely among the most central phenomena in international politics. Yet we have no theory about them that remotely approaches the richness of our theories about war, crisis, deterrence, and other manifestations of conflict. What might explain this? Perhaps it is their ubiquity, given their informal as well as their formal manifestations, and consequently the difficulty of isolating them as objects of study. George Liska, in the opening sentences of his Nations in Alliance, which after nearly three decades remains the only comprehensive theoretical treatment, put it this way: "It is impossible to speak of international relations without referring to alliances; the two often merge in all but name. For the same reason, it has always been difficult to say much that is peculiar to alliances on the plane of general analysis. " ' Thus, would-be alliance theorists, realizing that they do not really want to write a general theory of international relations, retreat to something manageable-another analysis of NATO, perhaps. However, we do have various partial theories, each focusing on a particular aspect of alliances or approaching them from a distinctive perspective. For example, the theory of collective goods was in vogue during the 1970s
On‐line real‐time physics‐based predictive motion control with balance recovery

In this paper, we present an on‐line real‐time physics‐based approach to motion control with contact repositioning based on a low‐dimensional dynamics model using example motion data. Our approach first generates a reference motion in run time according to an on‐line user request by transforming an example motion extracted from a motion library. Guided by the reference motion, it repeatedly generates an optimal control policy for a small time window one at a time for a sequence of partially overlapping windows, each covering a couple of footsteps of the reference motion, which supports an on‐line performance. On top of this, our system dynamics and problem formulation allow to derive closed‐form derivative functions by exploiting the low‐dimensional dynamics model together with example motion data. These derivative functions and their sparse structures facilitate a real‐time performance. Our approach also allows contact foot repositioning so as to robustly respond to an external perturbation or an environmental change as well as to perform locomotion tasks such as stepping on stones effectively.
Retailer Supply Chain and Market Access: Evidence from French Agri‐Food Firms Certified with Private Standards

This paper explores an original data set identifying French agri‐food firms certified with two European private standards: the International Food Standard and/or the British Retail Consortium standard (BRC). Certified firms complying with such requirements are able to supply some European retailers with products sold under their retailers' own private label. Our analysis revealed that certified firms were among the biggest and most productive firms in the sample. Then, based on recent developments in international economics, we propose a modification of Chaney's model and estimations to test for the hypothesis that entering retailer networks reduces export costs faced by certified firms to access European union (EU) markets. After controlling for size and productivity effects, model estimations show that French firms who adopt BRC and enter the corresponding network benefit from better access through a significant decrease in their entry costs to certain EU markets.
Improving Food Safety at the Dairy Farm Level: Farmers' and Experts' Perceptions

This study examines farmers' and experts' perceptions of important action points for improving food safety on the dairy farm. Adaptive conjoint analysis is used to elicit these perceptions. A comparison on the basis of professional background (farmers versus experts) shows no major differences in the perceptions regarding chemical and microbiological hazards. Two-stage cluster analysis of individual perceptions regarding chemical and microbiological hazards results in four and three distinct groups, respectively. Although results indicate a rather good level of farmers' knowledge of most important action points, the findings can be used to modify current education programs aimed at improving farm-level food safety.
Comparison of total variation algorithms for electrical impedance tomography

The applications of total variation (TV) algorithms for electrical impedance tomography (EIT) have been investigated. The use of the TV regularisation technique helps to preserve discontinuities in reconstruction, such as the boundaries of perturbations and sharp changes in conductivity, which are unintentionally smoothed by traditional l2 ? > norm regularisation. However, the non-differentiability of TV regularisation has led to the use of different algorithms. Recent advances in TV algorithms such as the primal dual interior point method (PDIPM), the linearised alternating direction method of multipliers (LADMM) and the spilt Bregman (SB) method have all been demonstrated successful EIT applications, but no direct comparison of the techniques has been made. Their noise performance, spatial resolution and convergence rate applied to time difference EIT were studied in simulations on 2D cylindrical meshes with different noise levels, 2D cylindrical tank and 3D anatomically head-shaped phantoms containing vegetable material with complex conductivity. LADMM had the fastest calculation speed but worst resolution due to the exclusion of the second-derivative; PDIPM reconstructed the sharpest change in conductivity but with lower contrast than SB; SB had a faster convergence rate than PDIPM and the lowest image errors.
Active Grasp Synthesis for Grasping Unknown Objects

Grasping unknown objects is a crucial necessity for robots that operate in unstructured environment. In this paper, we propose a novel grasping algorithm that uses active vision as basis. The algorithm uses the curvature information obtained from the silhouette of the object. By maximizing the curvature value, the pose of the robot is updated and a suitable grasping configuration is achieved. The algorithm has certain advantages over the existing methods: It does not require a 3D model of the object to be extracted, and it does not rely on any knowledge base obtained offline. This leads to a faster and still reliable grasping of the target
Association of smoking with serum and dietary levels of antioxidants in adults: NHANES III, 1988-1994.

OBJECTIVES This study examined the association of smoking with serum levels and dietary intakes of antioxidants in a nationally representative sample. METHODS This study classified 7873 apparently healthy adults aged 17 to 50 years from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey III (NHANES III) data as nonsmokers or as smokers if their serum cotinine levels were either lower than 14 ng/mL or 14 ng/mL or greater, respectively. SUDAAN software was used for the statistical analysis. RESULTS Smokers of both sexes had significantly (P < .001) lower serum levels of vitamin C, alpha-carotene, beta-carotene, beta-cryptoxanthin, and lutein/zeaxanthin. Reduction in the serum vitamin E, lycopene, and selenium levels in smokers was slight. Smokers also had significantly lower dietary intakes of vitamin C and beta-carotene. A significant (P < .001) inverse relation was found between serum vitamin C and beta-carotene levels and cotinine levels independent of diet effect, and a positive relation (P < .001) was found between serum levels and dietary intakes. CONCLUSIONS Antioxidants appear to have differing declines in serum levels as a result of reduced dietary intakes and the effects of smoking.
Foreign Aid Allocation Tactics and Democratic Change in Africa

Over the past two decades, donors increasingly link foreign aid to democracy objectives in Africa. This study investigates whether and how foreign aid influences specific outcomes associated with democratic transition and consolidation. Using an instrumental variables approach for the period from 1989 to 2008, we show that economic aid increases the likelihood of transition to multiparty politics, while democracy aid furthers democratic consolidation by reducing the incidence of multiparty failure and electoral misconduct. However, we find little evidence that either economic or democracy aid influences opposition support in multiparty elections. These findings have implications for understanding how donors allocate aid and the political consequences of foreign assistance in Africa.
Farm income variability and off‐farm diversification among Canadian farm operators

Purpose - For many farm families and operators across the OECD countries, off-farm income has become a major determinant of their well-being. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential role of off-farm employment as a risk management tool among farm operators. Design/methodology/approach - A two-part model is applied to a longitudinal farm-level data set for about 20,000 Canadian farms, from 2001 to 2006, in order to estimate the relationship between farm income risk and the decision to participate in the off-farm labor market and the level of off-farm employment income. Findings - The variability of farm market revenue is found to be positively related to the likelihood of off-farm work and the level of off-farm employment income, in particular for operators of relatively large farms. Hence, farm operators' production decisions appear to be conditioned on an income portfolio that includes a substantial amount of off-farm income for all sizes of farms. Social implications - These results reinforce the need to consider the portfolio effect induced by the integration of farm resources within the non-farm sector. This is particularly relevant to risk management farm policies that have typically considered decisions made in the agricultural sector in isolation. Originality/value - This paper uses a true farm-level panel data set to investigate the relationship between farm income risk and off-farm work. The size of the data set also allows the robustness of the results across farm typologies and size to be tested. This study contributes to the understanding of structural changes in the farm sector, and their potential implications for both rural and agricultural policies.
The Impact of the Assessment of Practice Teaching on Beginning Teaching: Learning To Ask Different Questions.

In our everyday work, we teachers are expected to be diplomats, philosophers, psychologists, referees, police people, quiz program conductors, and an authority on almost everything. My story is not a fairy tale, but a true story about a boy, who hardly comes to my lessons. Our ‘romance’ started at the beginning of the year when Dotan kept interrupting everyone around him, and coming late constantly to class, and as a result I couldn’t teach much. That day, when he came in late again, I asked him to stand for a few seconds. Of course he refused. He threw his bag on the floor and left the room in anger. Then he blew back into the room and yelled, ‘I swear I’ll kill you ! ’ I was shocked. I had never been threatened before, certainly not by a pupil. And just like ‘the never ending story,’ this also seems endless. Now, towards the end of the year, he comes some of the time but simply does nothing. I can’t teach . and I have tried to turn to him with a positive and encouraging approach, but nothing is really changing. How should I go from here ? What can I do ?
Classroom Community and Student Engagement in Online Courses

The purpose of this study was to examine correlates of both online classroom community and student engagement in online learning, as well as to compare community and engagement across disciplines in higher education. Participants (n=1,410) in online courses across five colleges and in both graduate and undergraduate courses were asked to complete an online survey. The survey consisted of 23 items measuring community and engagement as well as an additional six demographic items. Factor analysis yielded the following three factors accounting for approximately 58% of the total variance: classroom community with instructors (eight items), classroom community with classmates (eight items), and engagement in learning (seven items). Discipline differences were found when examining the three factors across the colleges. Students taking courses in the College of Education reported significantly stronger feelings of community with instructors and classmates compared to all other colleges; students taking courses in the College of Health Sciences reported significantly stronger feelings of community with classmates compared to students in Business and Arts and Sciences courses. Also, students in Education and Health Science courses reported significantly stronger engagement compared to students in Arts and Sciences courses.
Dynamic allocation decisions in the presence of funding ratio constraints*

Abstract This paper introduces a continuous-time allocation model for an investor facing stochastic liability commitments indexed with respect to inflation. In the presence of funding ratio constraints, the optimal policy is shown to involve dynamic allocation strategies that are reminiscent of portfolio insurance strategies, extended to an asset–liability management (ALM) context. Empirical tests suggest that their benefits are relatively robust with respect to changes in the objective function and the introduction of various forms of market incompleteness. We also show that the introduction of maximum funding ratio targets would allow pension funds to decrease the cost of downside liability risk protection.
The Development of Embedded Audit Modules to Support Continuous Monitoring in the Electronic Commerce Environment

An important developing area of assurance is continuous audit. Because of the real-time, computer-to-computer characteristics of electronic commerce, the development of continuous audit techniques is even more critical. Proponents of continuous audit point to a future where auditors monitor entity's accounting information systems in real-time or in quasi real-time. A predecessor technology to continuous audit is the Embedded Audit Module (EAM). This study investigates the challenges in developing EAMs. These challenges are analyzed by the development of ten examples of EAM alerts in a fraud environment. The alerts employ stored database procedures and triggers to monitor the internal control environment. The alerts are complementary to the strengthening of a firm's internal control system by monitoring and reporting the irregularities in the control environment. The study provides guidance on the construction of EAMs and points to a number of limitations in their development. These limitations raise a number of issues that must be considered before continuous audit can be widely adopted. The study sets out a number of issues for future research.
An Algorithm for the Design of Labeled-Transition Finite-State Vector Quantizers

A finite-state vector quantizer (FSVQ) is a switched vector quantizer where the sequence of quantizers selected by the encoder can be tracked by the decoder. It can be viewed as an adaptive vector quantizer with backward estimation, a vector generalization of an AQB system. Recently a family of algorithms for the design of FSVQ's for waveform coding application has been introduced. These algorithms first design an initial set of vector quantizers together with a next-state function giving the rule by which the next quantizer is selected. The codebooks of this initial FSVQ are then iteratively improved by a natural extension of the usual memoryless vector quantizer design algorithm. The next-state function, however, is not modified from its initial form. In this paper we present two extensions of the FSVQ design algorithms. First, the algorithm for FSVQ design for waveform coders is extended to FSVQ design of linear predictive coded (LPC) speech parameter vectors using an Itakura-Saito distortion measure. Second, we introduce a new technique for the iterative improvement of the next-state function based on an algorithm from adaptive stochastic automata theory. The design algorithms are simulated for an LPC FSVQ and the results are compared with each other and to ordinary memoryless vector quantization. Several open problems suggested by the simulation results are presented.
The Effect of Control Systems on Teams and Alliances: Trust and Cooperation in the New Collaborative Environment

Because of conflicting incentives among participants, inter-firm (e.g., strategic alliances and joint ventures) and intra-firm (e.g., work teams) collaborations present a significant control challenge to managerial accountants. On the one hand, formal controls such as sanctioning and monitoring systems improve cooperation by reducing the incentives for opportunistic behavior. On the other hand, prior research finds that the mere presence of a control system causes decision makers to view the collaborative setting as inherently non-cooperative, and teammates and partners as inherently untrustworthy. In this paper, we conduct two experiments in which participants act as business collaborators. Through these experiments, we examine the effects of control on trust and cooperation in collaborative settings. Using the social psychological foundations of Attribution Theory, we posit and provide evidence that a strong control system can actually enhance the level of trust among collaborators. The mediating role of control-induced cooperation, along with the tendency of individuals to commit the Fundamental Attribution Error, provide the mechanism by which control systems can increase trust in collaborative environments. Further, we show that this increased trust has a positive effect on the subsequent level of cooperation among collaborators.
Forecasting Macroeconomic Variables Using Disaggregate Survey Data

We construct factor models based on disaggregate survey data for forecasting national aggregate macroeconomic variables. Our methodology applies regional and sectoral factor models to Norges Bank’s regional survey and to the Swedish Business Tendency Survey. The analysis identifies which of the pieces of information extracted from the individual regions in Norges Bank’s survey and the sectors for the two surveys perform particularly well at forecasting different variables at various horizons. The results show that several factor models beat an autoregressive benchmark in forecasting inflation and the unemployment rate. However, the factor models are most successful at forecasting GDP growth. Forecast combinations using the past performances of regional and sectoral factor models yield the most accurate forecasts in the majority of the cases.
Heart-rate recovery immediately after exercise as a predictor of mortality.

BACKGROUND The increase in heart rate that accompanies exercise is due in part to a reduction in vagal tone. Recovery of the heart rate immediately after exercise is a function of vagal reactivation. Because a generalized decrease in vagal activity is known to be a risk factor for death, we hypothesized that a delayed fall in the heart rate after exercise might be an important prognostic marker. METHODS For six years we followed 2428 consecutive adults (mean [+/-SD] age, 57+/-12 years; 63 percent men) without a history of heart failure or coronary revascularization and without pacemakers. The patients were undergoing symptom-limited exercise testing and single-photon-emission computed tomography with thallium scintigraphy for diagnostic purposes. The value for the recovery of heart rate was defined as the decrease in the heart rate from peak exercise to one minute after the cessation of exercise. An abnormal value for the recovery of heart rate was defined as a reduction of 12 beats per minute or less from the heart rate at peak exercise. RESULTS There were 213 deaths from all causes. A total of 639 patients (26 percent) had abnormal values for heart-rate recovery. In univariate analyses, a low value for the recovery of heart rate was strongly predictive of death (relative risk, 4.0; 95 percent confidence interval, 3.0 to 5.2; P<0.001). After adjustments were made for age, sex, the use or nonuse of medications, the presence or absence of myocardial perfusion defects on thallium scintigraphy, standard cardiac risk factors, the resting heart rate, the change in heart rate during exercise, and workload achieved, a low value for heart-rate recovery remained predictive of death (adjusted relative risk, 2.0; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.5 to 2.7; P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS A delayed decrease in the heart rate during the first minute after graded exercise, which may be a reflection of decreased vagal activity, is a powerful predictor of overall mortality, independent of workload, the presence or absence of myocardial perfusion defects, and changes in heart rate during exercise.
Bi-Directional Isolated DC-DC Converter for Next-Generation Power Distribution - Comparison of Converters using Si and SiC Devices

In this paper two bi-directional DC-DC converters for a 1MW next-generation BTB system of a distribution system, as it is applied in Japan, are presented and compared with respect to design, efficiency and power density. One DC-DC converter applies commercially available Si-devices and the other one high voltage SiC switch, which consists of a SiC JFET cascode (MOSFET+1 JFET) in series with five SiC JFETs. In the comparison also the high frequency, high voltage transformer, which ensures galvanic isolation and which is a core element of the DC-DC converter, is examined in detail by analytic calculations and FEM simulations. For validating the analytical considerations a 20kW SiC DC-DC converter has been designed in detail. Measurement results for the switching and conduction losses have been acquired from the SiC and also for a Si system for calculating the losses of the scaled 1MW system.
Modeling the “ rapid ” part of the velocity / pressure-gradient correlation in inhomogeneous turbulence

The Reynolds-stress transport equation (RSTE) includes the velocity/pressure-gradient correlation < p,jui >. Following Rotta (1951), it is common practice to split this correlation into two parts: the pressure-strain correlation < pui,j > and the pressure-diffusion part < pui >,j . This approach has advantages if one simulates homogeneous turbulence with a two-equation turbulence model. In homogeneous turbulence, both the pressure diffusion term < pui >,i and the pressure-strain term < pui,i > do not contribute to the transport of the turbulent kinetic energy (k). In inhomogeneous turbulent flows, however, the modeling of the pressure-diffusion term in the k-equation is challenging. Direct numerical simulation (DNS) data from free shear flows (Rogers & Moser 1994; Moser et al. 1998) show that the contribution of the pressure diffusion in the turbulent kinetic energy balance is not negligible, especially in the central core of the flow. The current practice of using a single model for both the pressure diffusion and the turbulent diffusion is not likely to be successful because the two have qualitatively different profiles. It was shown by Lumley (1978), that in homogeneous turbulence the “slow” part of the pressure diffusion term can be modeled as
The Impact of Interest Rate Liberalization Announcement in China on the Market Value of Hong Kong Listed Chinese Commercial Banks

This paper examines the impact of the announcement of interest rate liberalization by the Peopleâ€™s Bank of China on the market value of Hong Kong listed Chinese commercial banks by using the econometrics of event study. We find that their stock prices fall significantly in response to the announcement of interest rate liberalization. This finding supports our belief that interest rate liberalization narrows the net interest margin and profitability of the banking system.