Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Switching activity propagation of VHDL-RTL combinational designs through an automated tool

A probabilistic method and a tool for switching activity propagation of VHDL-RTL combinational designs is presented. The propagation of switching activities is performed through the extraction of the BDD (binary decision diagram) of the circuit logic. In order to avoid the memory explosion of BDDs, a novel representation for the switching activity which results in smaller BDDs is proposed. In addition, an automatic circuit partition of the circuit is performed taking advantage of the specific characteristics of some VHDL statements that permit the circuit division in exclusive regions. The tool is integrated in a design environment to support methods to improve the quality of VHDL based designs and reduce design time. The presented tool will be the base for further power and testability analysis, and estimation tools.
Restaurant Revenue Management

Revenue-management tools can be used by restaurant managers to analyze the effects of process-control changes. A dinner house seeking to shift demand and to achieve greater facility utilization during busy times analyzed the factors that caused delays in the service process—and thus increased the guest queue. Although the restaurant was able to hasten the actual dining time, much of the slack was found in the processes that occurred before and after the actual dining period. Moreover, the restaurant managers were able to analyze customer-arrival and market-mix data in relation to the restaurant’s table mix. Seat occupancy was improved by matching the table arrangement to the customer mix, and table turns were increased by improving the kitchen operations so that front-of-the-house functions could be tightened up. In particular, end-of-meal steps were speeded up. As a result of its process improvements, the restaurant enjoyed revenue growth greater than that of comparable restaurants.
Long term prediction of Tehran price index (TEPIX) using neural networks

It has been previously shown that the dynamics governing the share prices in Tehran Stock Exchange can be considered as a chaotic time series. Due to the initial sensitivity of the price generating process, it is shown that linear classical models such as ARIMA and ARCH are not able to efficiently model the dynamic of share prices in Tehran stock exchange for long term prediction purposes. However, non-linear neural network models are proposed to model the Tehran price index (TEPIX) daily data process and it is shown that such nonlinear models can successfully be used for the long term prediction of TEPIX daily data. Real data for the period of 1996 to 1999 are used to validate the prediction results.
Supply‐Chain Trade: A Portrait of Global Patterns and Several Testable Hypotheses

The trade linked to international production networks - supply-chain trade for short - is associated with momentous global economic changes. This paper presents a portrait of the global pattern of supply-chain trade and how it has evolved since 1995. The paper draws on a variety of data sources but most heavily on the recent World Input-Output Database. China's supply-chain trade receives special attention.
Teaching for Change: Teacher Candidates’ Anti-Oppression Elementary School Lesson Plans

This paper explores pre-service elementary teacher candidates’ written reflections on an assignment for a mandatory Bachelor of Education course in Ontario, Canada. The assignment required the teacher candidates (TCs) to create and teach one 40-minute anti-oppression lesson (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.) in a public elementary school with students in senior kindergarten to grade 6. Two key themes are discussed in the paper: first, the ways in which TCs found convenient excuses as to why they were unable to fully engage with a topic; and, second, the fears identified by the TCs in terms of teaching sensitive issues.
Emo2Val: Inferring Valence Scores from fine-grained Emotion Values

English. This paper studies the relationship between the valence, one of the psycholinguistic variables in the Italian version of ANEW (Montefinese et al., 2014), and emotive scores calculated by exploiting distributional methods (Passaro et al., 2015). We show two methods to infer valence from fine grained emotions and discuss their evaluation. Italiano. Questo lavoro studia la relazione tra la valenza, una delle variabili psicolinguistiche presenti nella versione italiana di ANEW (Montefinese et al., 2014) e degli score emotivi calcolati distribuzionalmente (Passaro et al., 2015). Mostriamo due metodi per inferire la valenza a partire da tali valori e ne discutiamo la valutazione.
Essays on Political Economy, Industrial Organization, and Public Economics

The first chapter of this dissertation analyzes voting behavior across multiple elections. The voting literature has largely analyzed voter turnout and voter behavior separately, focusing on individual elections. I present a model of voter turnout and behavior in multiple elections. The assumptions are consistent with individual election preferences and decision is derived from utility maximization. Additionally, I provide necessary moment conditions for identification. The framework is applied to the 2008 California elections. The exit polls made national headlines by linking the historic turnout of African-Americans for Presidential candidate Obama in helping pass Proposition 8. The results show that the African-American turnout and voting share for Proposition 8 was lower than indicated by the exit polls. As a counterfactual, I look at the turnout and outcome of Proposition 8, without the presidential race on the ballot. As predicted, there is lower voter turnout: on par with midterm elections. I also find a lower share of Yes votes on Proposition 8 – enough that the referendum would not have passed. The second chapter looks at whether policies shift preferences, an important component in policy design. We isolate exogenous variation in abortion jurisprudence using the random assignment of Democratic appointee judges, which strongly increases the probability of a liberal abortion decision. We also document that newspapers report appellate abortion decisions and conduct a field experiment assigning workers to transcribe these news reports. Using both sources of variation, we find that exposure to liberal abortion precedent initially leads to more conservative public opinions, and more liberal public opinions over time. The third chapter studies payments to physicians by pharmaceutical companies, traditionally a topic of considerable debate. I examine which types of physicians are iii targeted through payments, and find that physicians with published research are paid by more companies and for larger amounts than non-published physicians. The effect increases in states with existing disclosure laws, consistent with reputation effects. The pharmaceutical company payments are also targeting networks of researchers versus individual specialists. Coauthoring or citing increases the likelihood of being paid by the same company and category. This result is consistent with higher payments under disclosure.
Tracking and remote monitoring of an autonomous underwater vehicle using an unmanned surface vehicle in the Trondheim fjord

This paper presents a demonstration conducted in the Trondheim fjord, where an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) developed and operated by Maritime Robotics AS was used to relay acoustic information sent by a REMUS 100 autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), to an onshore operation center. The AUVs mission was to conduct a survey of a Short Sunderland type aircraft, which was sunk just outside Munkholmen in 1945. The progress of the AUV and the USV were available in real-time throughout the demonstration, and was presented in Maritime Robotics' in-house Vehicle Control Station (VCS) software. The acoustic telemetry data was also relayed to the REMUS Vehicle Interface Program (VIP), used for monitoring the health of the AUV. Furthermore, the USV used the telemetry messages sent by the AUV, containing e.g. position and heading, to autonomously track the AUV during the survey. Throughout the mission, only 63% of the modem messages was received by the USV, and the longest time between telemetry updates was 6 minutes, but the USVs ability to track the AUV and relay data was successfully demonstrated.
Cardiac rehabilitation in the United Kingdom. How complete is the provision?

PURPOSE To bring up-to-date information about all the cardiac rehabilitation (CR) units in the UK, including their staffing and the services they offer, and to determine the numbers and diagnoses of the patients they treat. METHODS Questionnaire survey to establish the continued functioning of the centers, the disciplines of their staff, the number of patients treated, their diagnoses, and the outcomes measured. RESULTS 286 centers were identified. Of the 236 who returned their questionnaires, 171 (72%) gave figures of the numbers and diagnoses of their patients. The median number treated in the different programs was 150, with a total of 32,499 patients. Of those, 63% were recovering from myocardial infarction, 25% from coronary artery bypass graft (CABG), and 4% from percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA). Twenty-four percent of patients were female, 87% were between the ages of 40 and 74, and 10% were older than 75. Of the responders, 80 (34%) performed an exercise test both before and after the course. Of the 171 who gave figures, 113 (66%) measured outcomes. CONCLUSIONS In the UK, between 14% and 23% of infarct patients, between 33% and 56% of CABG patients, and between 6% and 10% of PTCA patients are enrolled into CR programs.
Efficiency/Effectiveness Trade-offs in Learning to Rank

In the last years, Learning to Rank (LtR) had a significant influence on several tasks in the Information Retrieval field, with large research efforts coming both from the academia and the industry. Indeed, efficiency requirements must be fulfilled in order to make an effective research product deployable within an industrial environment. The evaluation of a model can be too expensive due to its size, the features used and several other factors. This tutorial discusses the recent solutions that allow to build an effective ranking model that satisfies temporal budget constrains at evaluation time.
The RMB Exchange Rate and Monetary Sterilisation in China

In contrast to previous economy-overheating episodes, foreign capital inflow among other factors constitutes one of the fundamental causes for the recent investment boom and economic overheating in China. The foreign reserves component in the monetary base has overtaken the domestic credit component in exerting a dominant influence on the money supply. Nevertheless, the conventional course of sterilisation implemented by the monetary authorities has not been sufficiently effective in mopping up the extra credit that foreign capital inflow brings in. Monetary sterilisation in China has been only partial and incomplete.
Leadership Behaviors In Hospitality Management Students

The importance of leadership in the hospitality field is recognized by industry professionals and educators. This study assessed self-reported leadership behaviors and leadership context of 345 undergraduate hospitality management students at eight universities in the United States. Students reported class and work as the context areas where they most frequently exhibited leadership behaviors. Mean leadership scores were higher for students who had held a position in a club, had leadership coursework, were junior or senior classification, or were female. No significant differences for mean leadership practice scores were seen based on age or having supervisory experience. Suggestions for integrating leadership into hospitality management curricula are provided.
Subcellular locations of MOD5 proteins: mapping of sequences sufficient for targeting to mitochondria and demonstration that mitochondrial and nuclear isoforms commingle in the cytosol

MOD5, a gene responsible for the modification of A37 to isopentenyl A37 of both cytosolic and mitochondrial tRNAs, encodes two isozymes. Initiation of translation at the first AUG of the MOD5 open reading frame generates delta 2-isopentenyl pyrophosphate:tRNA isopentanyl transferase I (IPPT-I), which is located predominantly, but not exclusively, in the mitochondria. Initiation of translation at a second AUG generates IPPT-II, which modifies cytoplasmic tRNA. IPPT-II is unable to target to mitochondria. The N-terminal sequence present in IPPT-I and absent in IPPT-II is therefore necessary for mitochondrial targeting. In these studies, we fused MOD5 sequences encoding N-terminal regions to genes encoding passenger proteins, pseudomature COXIV and dihydrofolate reductase, and studied the ability of these chimeric proteins to be imported into mitochondria both in vivo and in vitro. We found that the sequences necessary for mitochondrial import, amino acids 1 to 11, are not sufficient for efficient mitochondrial targeting and that at least some of the amino acids shared by IPPT-I and IPPT-II comprise part of the mitochondrial targeting information. We used indirect immunofluorescence and cell fractionation to locate the MOD5 isozymes in yeast. IPPT-I was found in two subcellular compartments: mitochondria and the cytosol. We also found that IPPT-II had two subcellular locations: nuclei and the cytosol. The nuclear location of this protein is surprising because the A37-->isopentenyl A37 modification had been predicted to occur in the cytoplasm. MOD5 is one of the first genes reported to encode isozymes found in three subcellular compartments.
A Measurement of Bank Efficiency, Ownership and Productivity Changes in Taiwan

This paper develops a non-parametric approach for rnerrsuring the relative operating efSiciency of 34 comnzerciccl banks in Taiwan. As initial estimates indicate cc lower level of technical efficiency in publicly-owned banks, this paper focuses on finding the main source of inefficiency and goes on to prove that it is due to pure technical efficiency rather than scale factor which exist in the publicly-owned banks. Finally, we confirm the above finding using panel datu and develop a Malmquist total factor productivity index to verib that there is a slight increase in the productivity of 34 banks.
Molecular Disruption of the Power Stroke in the ATP-binding Cassette Transport Protein MsbA*

Background: ATP-binding cassette exporters utilize ATP binding and hydrolysis to switch between the inward-facing and outward-facing state during transport. Results: Mutations in bacterial MsbA, in a conserved structural element termed the tetrahelix bundle, do not affect nucleotide binding but impair formation of the outward-facing conformation. Conclusion: The ATP-dependent switch requires robust tetrahelix bundle interactions. Significance: Agents that target the tetrahelix bundle might modulate clinically important ABC exporters. ATP-binding cassette transporters affect drug pharmacokinetics and are associated with inherited human diseases and impaired chemotherapeutic treatment of cancers and microbial infections. Current alternating access models for ATP-binding cassette exporter activity suggest that ATP binding at the two cytosolic nucleotide-binding domains provides a power stroke for the conformational switch of the two membrane domains from the inward-facing conformation to the outward-facing conformation. In outward-facing crystal structures of the bacterial homodimeric ATP-binding cassette transporters MsbA from Gram-negative bacteria and Sav1866 from Staphylococcus aureus, two transmembrane helices (3 and 4) in the membrane domains have their cytoplasmic extensions in close proximity, forming a tetrahelix bundle interface. In biochemical experiments on MsbA from Escherichia coli, we show for the first time that a robust network of inter-monomer interactions in the tetrahelix bundle is crucial for the transmission of nucleotide-dependent conformational changes to the extracellular side of the membrane domains. Our observations are the first to suggest that modulation of tetrahelix bundle interactions in ATP-binding cassette exporters might offer a potent strategy to alter their transport activity.
Asset Allocation by Surplus Optimization

A defined benefit pension plan is effectively an operating division of the sponsor. Thus, when evaluating risk and making asset allocation decisions, it is more appropriate to focus on the plan's net worth-the difference between its assets and liabilities-than on its assets only. This requires the development of probability distributions for both assets and liabilities. Liability modeling is still in its infancy, and different models lead to radically different notions of the riskiness of liabilities. In particular, the way in which a plan's actuarial assumption for inflationlsalary growth is modeled can have an enormous impact on the relative attractiveness of stocks and long bonds. Some simplified approaches to liability modeling focus on fixed dollar liabilities (the Accumulated Benefit Obligation) or on the responsiveness of inflation-sensitive liabilities (such as the Projected Benefit Obligation) to changes in discount rate assumptions. Under these approaches, liabilities behave like bonds, and long bonds constitute a large proportion of efficient pension portfolios. A model that assumes volatility in real rates, however, shows liabilities to be extremely volatile and results in efficient portfolios with a significant proportion of stocks.
International monetary transmission with bank heterogeneity and default risk

This paper compares the effectiveness, efficiency and robustness of standard and non-standard monetary policy tools, such as the banks’ refinancing interest rate, penalty interest rate on deposit facility holdings and minimum reserve requirements on attracted deposits. The assessment is performed on the basis of a numerically evaluated open economy general equilibrium model for macro-prudential analysis where optimal decisions by internationally linked banks are key determinants of international financial flows and wider economic outcomes. Banks differ in terms of balance sheet endowments and risk preferences and take decisions rationally and competitively. Default risk, borrowing and lending are endogenous results of individual decisions of private agents (banks and households), as well as systemic outcomes of market interaction.
Prediction of common mode conducted EMI in single phase PWM inverter

In PWM inverter system, the high dv/dt and di/dt due to the fast switching of IGBT could bring serious EMI issues. Based on the study of mechanisms on common mode conducted electromagnetic interference (CM EMI) associated with a single phase PWM inverter, the origin and propagation path of CM EMI noise are highlighted. Compared with buck converter, a simple equivalent circuit is proposed to study the CM EMI. The parameters of passive element are measured by experiment and Fourier transform of the voltage source in equivalent circuit is performed. Time and frequency domain analysis is conducted to obtain CM current waveforms and noise spectra in 10 kHz-30 MHz frequencies. The simulated CM EMI waveforms are compared with the actual experiments to verify the validity of the proposed model.
Methods for the recovery of mitochondrial DNA sequences from museum specimens of myiasis‐causing flies

Abstract Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences from eight species of myiasis‐causing flies, stored for up to 50 years, were amplified successfully. Universal primers were used to amplify six specific regions from total genomic DNA, including five mtDNA genes. The comparison of phenol/chloroform, DNAzol® and Chelex techniques for DNA extraction showed that the DNAzol® reagent was the most efficient in retrieving DNA from museum specimens, although the Chelex extraction procedure is currently the most frequently reported method. Comparison of the universal primer sequences with the homologous sequences of Cochliomyia hominivorax Coquerel and Chrysomya putoria Wiedemann (Diptera: Calliphoridae) revealed mismatches that could contribute to the low recovery of a short sequence from subunit II of cytochrome oxidase. The ability to characterize mtDNA markers from museum specimens should be useful in comparative studies of contemporary samples and should help in elucidating species introduction, colonization and dispersal.
Accurate forecasting models in predicting the inbound tourism demand in Vietnam

Abstract Tourism has been considered a complexly integrated and self-contained economic activity; however, it is one of the biggest industries in many countries. In order to make the tourism industry grow stably, it has been always an important issue to predict the tourism demand accurately. Though there have been many different studies in the methodologies, methods and models to forecast the tourism demand, there is no standard forecasting model that can be applied in different situations of the industry. In this study, two conventional models named ARIMA and Grey forecasting GM(1,1) were investigated. Their residuals were modified with Fourier series in order to improve the model accuracy level. In the empirical study of inbound tourism demand in Vietnam, the Fourier modified models called FARIMA(2,1,1) (1,0,2)12 and FGM(1,1) have very low values of mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 0.0055 and 0.0105, respectively. Both of them are excellent to forecast the inbound tourism demand in Vietnam but FARIMA(2,1,1)(1,0,2)12 is better and it is therefore suggested.
A Three-Time-Scale Approach for Design of Linear State Regulator for Spatial Control of Advanced Heavy Water Reactor

This paper introduces a technique for simultaneous decomposition of a non-autonomous singularly perturbed system into three subsystems namely “slow”, “fast 1” and “fast 2” respectively. Design of a composite controller in terms of the individual subsystem controllers is derived and the decomposition of the optimal control problem of the original high order system into three smaller order optimal control problems, with separate quadratic performance indexes extracted from the quadratic performance index of the original system, is discussed.
Computer Assisted Animation: 2D or not 2D?

2D animation can only be automated to the extent that the computer acts as an interactive assistant to the animator. The key problem is that the 3D information which is implicit in the animated drawings is unavailable and this has encouraged the view of 2D animation being a subset of 3D animation in its fullest generality. However, introducing more than the absolute minimum of 3D information, essentially that contained in a hierarchy of drawing overlays, has matching advantages and disadvantages because animators, for aesthetic reasons, deliberately break the rules of geometry and physics as they apply to real-world objects. A software environment which only supports 2D functionality and drawing overlays is sufficient to promote cost-effectively the full range of effects that animators use while the state of the 3D animation art is as yet incapable of this. Essentially the same techniques can be used on live-capture images once they have had a structure similar to that required for animation imposed on them.