Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The nonprofit sector in the global community : voices from many nations

PrefaceContirbutors 1. The Voluntary Sector in International Perspective: An Overview Part One: Global Comparisons 2. Tax Policy Toward Nonprofit Organizations: A Ten-Country Survey 3. Public Versus Private Provision of Social Services: Is There an Efficiency-Equity Tradeoff? 4. Local Governments and the IndepAndent Sector in the Third World 5. Privatization in the Personal Social Services in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Italy 6. U.S. Corporate Philanthropy in South Africa, 1977-1989: The Impact of the Sullivan Signatories and Their Projects 7. Private Philanthropy as a Necessity in Our InterdepAndent World: A Japanese Perspective Part Two: Modern Developed Democracies 8. The Voluntary Sector in Britian, 1975-1989: A Statistical Overview 9. The Role of Nonprofit Organizations in a Divided Society: The Case of Northern Ireland 10. Changing Relationshops Between Private Nonprofit Organizations and Government in the Netherlands 11. Government=Nonprofit Relationships in a Comparative Perspective: The Cases of Franxe and Germany 12. The Mission, Purposes, and Functions of Nonprofit Organizations in France 13. The Ties that Bind: The Nonprofit Sector and the State in Sweden 14. Government and the Nonprofit Sector in Australia 15. Changing Conepts of Voluntarism in Japan 16. The Role of Nonprofit Organizations Within the Ultra-Orthodox Community in Israel Part Three: Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union 17. The Revival of the Nonprofit Sector in Hungary 18. The IndepAndent Sector in Poland: Past and Present 19. The Emerging Nonprofit Sector in Bulgaria: Its Historical Dimensions 20. The IndepAndent Sector in the USSR: Formation. Purposes, and Effects 21. Philanthropy and Charity i the Soviet Union Part Four: Developing Countries Worldwide 22. Democracy and Development: The Role of Nongovernmental Organizations in Argentina, Chile, and Uraguay.
AEROSOL PROPERTIES OF DEBRIS FROM FRAGMENTS E/F OF COMET SHOEMAKER-LEVY 9

Abstract The physical properties of the aerosol debris of the E/F complex of Comet P/Shoemaker–Levy on Jupiter are analyzed and compared with the results obtained for the H impact (Moreno, F., O. Munoz, A. Molina, J. J. Lopez-Moreno, J. L. Ortiz, J. Rodriguez, A. Lopez-Jimenez, and F. Girela 1995. Geophys. Res. Lett. 22, 1609–1612). The observations were made at the 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope at La Plama (Spain). High spatial resolution images corresponding to the night of July 18 and July 21, 1994, are considered here. Radiative transfer models in combination with a Mie scattering program were used to retrieve the possible values of aerosol properties and their spatial distribution compatible with these observations. The resulting physical properties of the particles are in agreement with those obtained for H impact: The imaginary refractive index varies between 0.02 at 3600 A and 0.006 in the 9000 A region, and their mean radius is 0.15 μm. The particles are found to be distributed between 1 and 450 mbar with a total column concentration of 9.15 × 10 9 cm −2 . We estimated a lower limit to the volume of the impact debris aerosol for the E/F site corresponding to a sphere of 360 m in diameter.
Firefly algorithm for log-likelihood optimization problem on speech recognition

Speech Recognition System is a system that listens human speech and compares the speech with words or phrases that have been prepared in advance in order to obtain the data. To optimize the model we employ fireflies to search λ = (A, B, π) that produce maximum log-likelihood. We evaluate the performance we compare the technique with PSO. Firefly algorithm outperforms PSO on constructing HMM for speech recognition. FA performance can be seen on the log-likelihood values which are larger than PSO. FA guesses more words correctly indicating higher accuracy as well.
New Generation Sensor Web Enablement

Many sensor networks have been deployed to monitor Earth’s environment, and more will follow in the future. Environmental sensors have improved continuously by becoming smaller, cheaper, and more intelligent. Due to the large number of sensor manufacturers and differing accompanying protocols, integrating diverse sensors into observation systems is not straightforward. A coherent infrastructure is needed to treat sensors in an interoperable, platform-independent and uniform way. The concept of the Sensor Web reflects such a kind of infrastructure for sharing, finding, and accessing sensors and their data across different applications. It hides the heterogeneous sensor hardware and communication protocols from the applications built on top of it. The Sensor Web Enablement initiative of the Open Geospatial Consortium standardizes web service interfaces and data encodings which can be used as building blocks for a Sensor Web. This article illustrates and analyzes the recent developments of the new generation of the Sensor Web Enablement specification framework. Further, we relate the Sensor Web to other emerging concepts such as the Web of Things and point out challenges and resulting future work topics for research on Sensor Web Enablement.
A solution to the upper and lower bound of outage probability in ad hoc networks

In this paper, an easy solution to the upper and lower bound of the outage probability in ad hoc networks is presented. First we calculate the characteristic function of a model under power control. Then, we introduce some existing results under a special model which we call it the system model. By comparing the characteristic functions of the normalized interference under two models, we find that under the system model, if we change the node density λ into other parameters in the expression of the bounds, upper and lower bounds of other models (such as a model employing channel inversion as the power control strategy) can be obtained. This method is proved to be correct by comparing our results with the existing ones, and simple in the calculation.
Subband Architecture Based Exposure Fusion

In this paper, we present a novel detail-preserving fusion approach from multiple exposure images using sub band architecture. Given a sequence of different exposures, the Quadrature Mirror Filters (QMFs) based sub band architecture is first employed to decompose the original sequence into different frequency sub bands. After that, the importance weight maps are calculated according to the image appearance measurements, such as exposure, contrast and saturation. In order to remove the nonlinear distortion introduced by the sub band decomposition stage, we compute the gain control maps and modify these sub bands based on the calculated gain maps. Finally, the coefficients of sub bands are blended into a high-quality detail-preserving fusion image. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach successfully creates a visually pleasing exposure fusion image.
A method to transform object-oriented design into component-based design using object-Z

It has become a common practice to reuse validated software components to shorten development periods and to increase the software quality. Component-based development is an effective reuse technology, which extensively utilizes object-oriented design (OOD). Therefore, it is an economical approach to generate component-based design (CBD) from OOD. In this paper, we propose techniques for transforming OOD into CBD using Object-Z specifications. We first show how the structural, functional, and dynamic aspects of OOD can be specified in Object-Z. Then, we also present formal specifications of CBD in Component-Z, which is based on Object-Z and used to specify CBD. Using formal specifications of both OOD and CBD, we propose a set of rules for transforming OOD into CBD. By using our approach, OOD can be reused in generating CBD and the resulting CBD can be effectively implemented by utilizing objects in EJB, . NET, or CORBA. Also, this research provides a foundation for automating the transformation of OOD into CBD.
Development of autonomous robot for space servicing

This paper focuses on the development of a test platform for the capture of non-cooperative targets by an autonomous robotic manipulator. The paper describes the platform and subsystems involved in the capture operation with an emphasis on the vision system and controller. The vision system employs a custom algorithm, detecting the target, determining the quality of the lock and predicting the motion through the use of a Kalman filter. Photogrammetry uses the information obtained to determine the translational and rotational vectors linking the camera to the target that is fed into the controller that determines the optimal path for capture and deceleration. The controller is developed based on a hybrid force-impedance control that follows a force trajectory based on the motion of the target and decelerates the target smoothly while monitoring potential vibrations in the system. Currently, the system is being validated through a combination of simulations and experiments that take place on an air-bearing table as well as a mobile pendulum system that simulates free fall environments.
WEEKEND/WEEKDAY OZONE OBSERVATIONS IN THE SOUTH COAST AIR BASIN: VOLUME I - EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

(STI) conducted a study of the causes of elevated ozone levels on weekends in the South Coast (Los Angeles) Air Basin (SoCAB). This work was conducted over a period of 30 months beginning in December 1999. In the initial phase of the study, DRI examined the spatial, temporal, and statistical distributions of ozone, carbon monoxide, total non-methane hydrocarbons, and nitrogen oxides for routine monitoring sites in the SoCAB with continuous data from 1981 to 1998. STI reviewed available activity data for VOC and NOx emissions and investigated important meteorological phenomena in the SoCAB in the context of day-of-week variations. The results and findings from these retrospective analyses are summarized in the following three volumes: In the second phase of the study, a field measurement program was conducted in September-October 2000 to collect and assemble air quality and emission activity databases to examine relationships between emission patterns and key air quality parameters relevant to the weekend ozone effect. The following interim report presents preliminary results from the field study and describes the applicable measurement methods and approaches for data analysis: The final report of this study consists of the three volumes referenced below. The Executive Summary (Volume I) provides a synthesis of the results obtained by DRI and STI with respect to a variety of hypotheses for the weekend ozone effect. Volume II documents the results ii obtained by DRI from the Phase II field study. It also summarizes the retrospective analyses performed during Phase I and additional analyses that were conducted by DRI to update the findings from Phase I. Volume III is a summary of STI's analysis of the prevailing meteorology during the Phase II field study and their collection of emission activity data in support of this study. Volume III also includes a discussion of weekday/weekend differences in hydrocarbon emissions and ambient concentrations. We gratefully acknowledge the administrative and technical support provide by Dr. Douglas Lawson of NREL and Mr. Brent Bailey of the CRC. We thank the South Coast Air Quality Management District for access to the Azusa and Pico Rivera monitoring stations and for operating their continuous gas chromatograph at the Pico Rivera PAMS site during the study. We also thank the California Air Resources Board for collecting hydrocarbon speciation data at Los Angeles – North Main. We also gratefully acknowledge the Bay Area Air Quality Management District for use of their monitoring van and the …
Budgetary consolidation in EMU

There is a general consensus that monetary stability in Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) requires sustainable public finances of the member states. But how can a sufficient degree of budgetary discipline be maintained in Stage three of EMU? To answer this question, this study provides an empirical analysis of the budgetary consolidations in the EU member states by carrying out an analysis of: the importance of the quality of the budgetary adjustment for the success of the consolidations; the anatomy of fiscal adjustment processes in the EMU member states during the 1990s; the quality of the budgetary institutions of the member states and the changes in these institutions that have occurred during the 1990s; the macroeconomic aspects of fiscal consolidations. The results of the analysis support the proposition that, in order to maintain a high degree of sustainability in Stage three of EMU, attention might shift away from the numerical criteria regarding overall deficits and debts, and focus more on the quality of fiscal adjustments and of the institutions governing public finances in the member states.
CENTROIDS: A DECENTRALIZED APPROACH

The centroid of a graph is a structure composed of nodes closest from all others. This suggests the presence of center of mass average of all edges, weighted by the local density or specific weight. To compute this centroid in a classic way needs a global view of the graph environment. In this paper, we propose an algorithm using ant colony is proposed to compute an approximate solution of the centroid using a local view of the graph. This allows to study the centroids of complex networks such as protein-protein interaction networks and also those generated by social interactions or Internet, for example.
Candida parapsilosis Characterization in an Outbreak Setting

Candida parapsilosis is an important non-albicans species which infects hospitalized patients. No studies have correlated outbreak infections of C. parapsilosis with multiple virulence factors. We used DNA fingerprinting to determine genetic variability among isolates from a C. parapsilosis outbreak and from our clinical database. We compared phenotypic markers of pathogenesis, including adherence, biofilm formation, and protein secretion (secretory aspartic protease [SAP] and phospholipase). Adherence was measured as colony counts on silicone elastomer disks immersed in agar. Biofilms formed on disks were quantified by dry weight. SAP expression was measured by hydrolysis of bovine albumin; a colorimetric assay was used to quantitate phospholipase. DNA fingerprinting indicated that the outbreak isolates were clonal and genetically distinct from our database. Biofilm expression by the outbreak clone was greater than that of sporadic isolates (p < 0.0005). Adherence and protein secretion did not correlate with strain pathogenicity. These results suggest that biofilm production plays a role in C. parapsilosis outbreaks.
Research and application of Distributed Parallel Genetic Algorithm Based on PC Cluster

Summary A distributed parallel genetic algorithm based on PC cluster was proposed, aiming at the disadvantage of traditional genetic algorithm, such as the bad searching quality and long computation time. It adopts the improved genetic simulated annealing algorithm and distributed parallel technique MPI, to implement the distributed computing on PC cluster. The algorithm uses the individual migration strategy to collaboratively optimize every process. The dynamic demes are adopted to balance the CPU load. Computing efficiency is introduced to judge the computing load state. A singular function and an IEEE 14 test system in power system are tested. The results reveal that the algorithm has a good stable searching capacity and good parallel efficiency. Hence the proposed method should have a bright future in the application.
An Exact Approach to Learning Probabilistic Relational Model

Probabilistic Graphical Models (PGMs) offer a popular framework including a variety of statistical formalisms, such as Bayesian networks (BNs). These latter are able to depict real-world situations with high degree of uncertainty. Due to their power and flexibility, several extensions were proposed, ensuring thereby the suitability of their use. Probabilistic Relational Models (PRMs) extend BNs to work with relational databases rather than propositional data. Their construction represents an active area since it remains the most complicated issue. Only few works have been proposed in this direction, and most of them don’t guarantee an optimal identification of their dependency structure. In this paper we intend to propose an approach that ensures returning an optimal PRM structure. It is inspired from a BN method whose performance was already proven.
An efficient algorithm for induction with random sampling

Decision trees induction is among powerful and commonly encountered architecture for extracting of classification knowledge from datasets of labeled instances. However, learning decision trees from large irrelevant datasets is quite different from learning small and moderate sized datasets. In this paper, we propose a simple yet effective composite splitting criterion equal to a random sampling approach and gain ratio. Our random sampling method depends on small random subset of attributes and it is computationally cheap to act on such a set in a reasonable time. The superiority of the composite splitting criterion can persist when used for high dimensional datasets with irrelevant attributes. The empirical and theoretical prospective are validated by using 40 UCI datasets. The experimental results indicate that the proposed new heuristic function can result in much more simpler trees with almost unaffected or improved accuracy.
Optimizing playback quality of HTTP-based dynamic adaptive streaming on smartphones

Due to the seamlessly adaptation to variable wireless network conditions, Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) has been widely used in today's video streaming applications. Both the playback fluency and the average bitrate are significant performance metrics for mobile streaming users. However, the existing bitrate selection mechanisms based on the inaccurate throughput estimation will lead to a feedback loop, resulting in undesirably variable and low-quality video. In this paper, we first present a basic understanding of DASH system and make a simple analysis of the commercial players. We then model the bitrate selection problem under constrains of the buffer and the data requirement of users. To achieve high quality and smoothness playback, we propose an online dynamic video bitrate selection algorithm (DBS) based on the instant throughput and the buffer state. Parameters (α, β) in DBS can be set to adjust the bitrate switch frequency. The extensive simulation demonstrates that DBS can improve user's experience through video playback in different situations.
How Does Political Instability Affect Market Risk and the Risk Premium in Israel

Analysis and assessment of market risk and country risk premium have become a critical component of valuation in recent years in emerging markets. In these markets investors look for a higher rate of return on their investments than in developed countries. Israel is an attractive country for international investors. This is due to the fact that Israel has one of the highest concentrations of high-tech companies in the world and the tourism industry in the country which is highly attractive for its historical places; especially in a religious manner. Israel is a country located in Asia and has experienced many political changes (for many reasons). Thus, it is likely that political decisions taken by the governments affect the risk premium. In this paper I considered the issue of market risk and the issue of country risk that should be considered explicitly in valuation of the risk premium in emerging countries. Then, the focus, in this paper, is on how the "political instability" in Israel has affected the market risk and the risk premium in the last decade (from the year 5\2001 till 3\2010). Standard deviation of the returns (estimated by moving average method) of the Israeli stock market were used as a proxy for the market risk. The results show that the political instability affects the market risk. The "Country Default Spread" approach and the "Relative Equity Market Standard Deviation" approach were used to measure the risk premium in Israel. The effect of the political instability on the risk premium was thus found. Further, due to autocorrelation, the robustness of the results was tested by models including lags of the dependent variable. The results from the robustness test show, in most of the analyses, weak and less significant (low confidence level) effect of the political instability on the risk premium.
The Impact of Honeynets for CSIRTs

For the daily work of a CSIRT it is of major importance to know which vulnerabilities are currently abused to compromise computers and to timely warn the constituency if a zero-day exploit is found. Besides the traditional incident response work, honey-pots have shown to become more important to follow these aims. In this paper we give an overview on the NoAH project and related projects devoted to the deployment of distributed honeypots and show how CSIRTs and other security teams can beneﬁt from the deployment of their infrastructure.
A cross-country experimental comparison of preferences for redistribution

We examine experimentally individual preferences for redistributions in the US, Italy, and Norway. We decompose demand for redistribution due to luck vis-a-vis individual merit, and study how they are affected by individual and social characteristics. Experimental subjects made four different decisions on how much earning redistribution they wanted to implement in their group starting from a given initial distribution of earnings. The first decision measured preferences for inequality under a condition of impersonality. The second and third decisions were made behind a “veil of ignorance”, whereas the fourth decision was taken knowing one’s position in the earnings scale. Ambiguity and risk aversions were measured in an independent set of decisions. Between-country differences are sizable. Norwegian subjects were generally the most redistributive of the three, and the US subjects the least redistributive. Italian subjects seemed more willing to accept inequality differences due to individual merit than others. Conversely, Norwegian subjects demanded high levels of redistribution regardless of how inequality had been generated. Experimental redistribution is significantly higher in Norway than Italy, in spite of the two samples holding comparable views over social mobility. This calls for a re-examination of existing theories that see beliefs on mobility as the main explanation of demand for redistribution.
Cardiac troponin assays: a review of quantitative point-of-care devices and their efficacy in the diagnosis of myocardial infarction

Abstract Cardiac troponin (cTn) I and T are released from myocardial cells following necrosis, i.e., cell death. An accurate measure of cTn concentrations in a patient’s blood following ischemia/chest pain can enable providers to determine whether or not a myocardial infarction (MI) has occurred. Point-of-care (POC) devices that measure blood cTn concentrations in under 30 min may help to significantly reduce hospital costs by managing and triaging patients out of the emergency department as quickly as possible. The use of POC devices that measure cTnI and cTnT with a coefficient of variation (CV) ≤20% at the 99th percentile upper reference limit (URL) limits both false positive and negative results and provides clinically acceptable findings to assist in appropriate diagnoses. This article reviews nine POC devices that measure cTn in terms of their clinical sensitivity and specificity, analytical imprecision, sample type and preparation, and each assay’s principle of analysis.