Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Bird's Eye View of OECD Housing Markets

Housing markets have played a prominent role in macroeconomic developments over recent years. For a great part of the 2000s, buoyant housing markets have contributed to sustained economic activity in most OECD countries. But many markets overheated and the collapse of the US subprime mortgage market has been at the epicentre of a deep financial and economic crisis. Against this background, this paper: i) documents housing market developments in 18 OECD countries since the 1970s, putting recent evolutions into historical perspective; ii) examines the drivers of supply and demand for housing; iii) investigates the interactions between housing markets and the wider economy; iv) assesses the responsibilities of housing taxation, monetary policy and financial supervision and regulation in fuelling or amplifying housing booms; v) explores the link between global imbalances and housing booms. Un survol des marches immobiliers de l'OCDE Les marches immobiliers ont joue un role important dans les evolutions macroeconomiques de ces dernieres annees. Durant une grande partie des annees 2000, des marches immobiliers dynamiques ont contribue a une activite economique soutenue dans la plupart des pays de l’OCDE. Mais de nombreux marches se sont emballes et l’ecroulement du marche hypothecaire « subprime » aux Etats-Unis a ete a l’epicentre d’une profonde crise financiere et economique. Dans ce contexte, ce document : i) analyse les evolutions des marches immobiliers dans 18 pays de l’OCDE depuis les annees 1970, replacant les developpements recents dans une perspective historique ; ii) examine les determinants de l’offre et de la demande de logements ; iii) etudie les interactions entre les marches immobiliers et l’economie dans son ensemble ; iv) evalue les responsabilites de la fiscalite du logement, de la politique monetaire, de la regulation et de la supervision financieres dans l’alimentation ou l’amplification des « booms » immobiliers ; v) considere le lien entre desequilibres mondiaux et envolees immobilieres.
SOAP-enabled web services for knowledge management

The widespread diffusion of the World Wide Web among medium/small companies yields a huge amount of information to make business available online. Nevertheless the heterogeneity of that information, forces even trading partners involved in the same business process to face daily interoperability issues. The challenge is the integration of distributed business processes, which, in turn, means integration of heterogeneous data coming from distributed sources. This paper presents the new web services-based architecture of the MOMIS (Mediator envirOnment for Multiple Information Sources) framework that enhances the semantic integration features of MOMIS, leveraging new technologies such as XML web services and the SOAP protocol. The new architecture decouples the different MOMIS modules, publishing them as XML web services. Since the SOAP protocol used to access XML web services requires the same network security settings as a normal internet browser, companies are enabled to share knowledge without softening their protection strategies.
Glyceraldehyde-3-Phosphate Dehydrogenase Is a GABAA Receptor Kinase Linking Glycolysis to Neuronal Inhibition

Protein phosphorylation is crucial for regulating synaptic transmission. We describe a novel mechanism for the phosphorylation of the GABAA receptor, which mediates fast inhibition in the brain. A protein copurified and coimmunoprecipitated with the phosphorylated receptor α1 subunit; this receptor-associated protein was identified by purification and microsequencing as the key glycolytic enzyme glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH). Molecular constructs demonstrated that GAPDH directly phosphorylates the long intracellular loop of GABAA receptor α1 subunit at identified serine and threonine residues. GAPDH and the α1 subunit were found to be colocalized at the neuronal plasma membrane. In keeping with the GAPDH/GABAA receptor molecular association, glycolytic ATP produced locally at plasma membranes was consumed for this α1 subunit phosphorylation, possibly within a single macrocomplex. The membrane-attached GAPDH is thus a dual-purpose enzyme, a glycolytic dehydrogenase, and a receptor-associated kinase. In acutely dissociated cortical neurons, the rundown of the GABAA responses was essentially attributable to a Mg2+-dependent phosphatase activity, which was sensitive to vanadate but insensitive to okadaic acid or fluoride. Rundown was significantly reduced by the addition of GAPDH or its reduced cofactor NADH and nearly abolished by the addition of its substrate glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate (G3P). The prevention of rundown by G3P was abolished by iodoacetamide, an inhibitor of the dehydrogenase activity of GAPDH, indicating that the GABAA responses are maintained by a glycolysis-dependent phosphorylation. Our results provide a molecular mechanism for the direct involvement of glycolysis in neurotransmission.
The role of ontologies in the verification and validation of knowledge based systems

The author gives some preliminary examination of the ways in which an ontology-an explicit specification of the conceptualisation of the domain-can support the verification and validation of a knowledge based system. The discussion is focussed on a simple, well known example, relating to the identification of animals. Key elements of the support provided by the ontology relate to: attempting to give coherence to the domain conceptualisation; making the role of experts in verification and validation more structured and less at the mercy of interpretation; constraining the number of test cases required to give good coverage of the possible cases; and structuring the testing to give better assurance of its efficacy, and a possible basis for greater automation of the testing process. Finally the author makes some brief remarks on the relation between the ontology of a knowledge based system, and a database and its schema.
Considerations Regarding The Concept And Indicators Of The Economic-Financial Performance

Nowadays there is a series of controversies between specialists regarding both the definition of the company performance and its measuring. Each category of users of the financial information appreciate performance according to its objectives. The economicfinancial analysis uses a complex system of indicators by means of which it measures performance, taking into consideration all the sides of the activity of the company. In the conditions of the actual economy, the main objective of the company is represented by the raise of its market value, obtaining profit being the main means of accomplishment of this objective. The article proposes the presentation of opinions regarding the significance of the concept of performance, the indicators system used for the appreciation of performance and the way in which the economic-financial analysis can offer to those interested the information they require for the substantiation of decisions.
The Civil Corporation: The New Economy of Corporate Citizenship

Can corporations be civil? Part 1 The new economy of corporate citizenship: opening minds ethical futures breaking the trust barrier civil regulation framing the business case the future of civil regulators the new civil governance. Part 2 The civil corporation: foundations of sustainability sustainability as the art of the possible civil learning. Part 3 Building the civil corporation: building civil corporations how much is enough useful measures conversational corporations professionalizing credibility. Part 4 Conclusions: how civil can corporations be?
Search for the plasmon in condensed water

Creation of plasmons in water by energetic particles in biological tissue is important because this form of energy can migrate from the place of excitation and be transferred to nearby molecules like DNA. We have searched for evidence of plasmons in solid water, using electron-energy-loss and secondary electron spectroscopies excited by 70–1000-eV electrons. We find that the energy of the main excitation, often attributed to plasmons, depends on the energy of the exciting electron, unlike the expected plasmon behavior. The energy spectrum of secondary electrons shows the presence of autoionization, but no evidence of plasmon decay.
HyperFlow: A Distributed Control Plane for OpenFlow

OpenFlow assumes a logically centralized controller, which ideally can be physically distributed. However, current deployments rely on a single controller which has major drawbacks including lack of scalability. We present HyperFlow, a distributed event-based control plane for OpenFlow. HyperFlow is logically centralized but physically distributed: it provides scalability while keeping the benefits of network control centralization. By passively synchronizing network-wide views of OpenFlow controllers, HyperFlow localizes decision making to individual controllers, thus minimizing the control plane response time to data plane requests. HyperFlow is resilient to network partitioning and component failures. It also enables interconnecting independently managed OpenFlow networks, an essential feature missing in current OpenFlow deployments. We have implemented HyperFlow as an application for NOX. Our implementation requires minimal changes to NOX, and allows reuse of existing NOX applications with minor modifications. Our preliminary evaluation shows that, assuming sufficient control bandwidth, to bound the window of inconsistency among controllers by a factor of the delay between the farthest controllers, the network changes must occur at a rate lower than 1000 events per second across the network.
Fuzzy density based clustering with generalized centroids

Fuzzy density-based clustering has been a challenge. Research has been focused on fuzzyfying the DBSCAN algorithm. Different methods have been proposed that use a fuzzy definition of core points within the DBSCAN algorithm. Our approach adapts the membership degree calculation known from fuzzy c-means by replacing the need for a distinguished centroid point by a more general cluster skeleton. These skeletons represent the clusters' shapes more accurately than a single point. We show how membership degrees can be calculated and that the resulting partitioning matrices allow the selection of more favorable parameters in the clustering process.
Crystal Structural and Functional Analysis of the Putative Dipeptidase from Pyrococcus horikoshii OT3

The crystal structure of a putative dipeptidase (Phdpd) from Pyrococcus horikoshii OT3 was solved using X-ray data at 2.4 Å resolution. The protein is folded into two distinct entities. The N-terminal domain consists of the general topology of the α/β fold, and the C-terminal domain consists of five long mixed strands, four helices, and two 310 helices. The structure of Phdpd is quite similar to reported structures of prolidases from P. furiosus (Zn-Pfprol) and P. horikoshii (Zn-Phdpd), where Zn ions are observed in the active site resulting in an inactive form. However, Phdpd did not contain metals in the crystal structure and showed prolidase activity in the absence of additional Co ions, whereas the specific activities increased by 5 times in the presence of a sufficient concentration (1.2 mM) of Co ions. The substrate specificities (X-Pro) of Phdpd were broad compared with those of Zn-Phdpd in the presence of Co ions, whose relative activities are 10% or less for substrates other than Met-Pro, which is the most favorable substrate. The binding constants of Zn-Phdpd with three metals (Zn, Co, and Mn) were higher than those of Phdpd and that with Zn was higher by greater than 2 orders, which were determined by DSC experiments. From the structural comparison of both forms and the above experimental results, it could be elucidated why the protein with Zn2+ ions is inactive.
Data agglomeration in wireless sensor networks

The nodes which can conjointly send anticipated data to base terminal is called sensor networks. The critical coercion is consumption of power for sensors. The sensors can transmit inapplicable power origins which are confined. When the sensors are dispersed in any circumstances it is quite possible that these are placed farther from the terminal and in actual the sensors are in actual are at some distant from each other. The sensors are operable through battery therefore it can utilize power systematically for tapering data traffic and thus boosting the life span of the network. The wireless sensor networks have these sensors which are used for gathering and agglomerating data competently. We have discussed few aspects of wireless sensors associated with data agglomeration. As the wireless sensors have networks which are used for various applications like observing habitation, administering calamity, military and security, etc, its limited operational functionality and limited battery made a bigger issue in today's scenario. Thus data agglomeration techniques are being used for discarding similar data in order for saving energy and battery. In this paper, we focused on various approaches which are useful in data agglomeration efficiently in WSN.
Building Deformation Assessment by Means of Persistent Scatterer Interferometry Analysis on a Landslide-Affected Area: The Volterra (Italy) Case Study

In recent years, space-borne InSAR (interferometric synthetic aperture radar) techniques have shown their capabilities to provide precise measurements of Earth surface displacements for monitoring natural processes. Landslides threaten human lives and structures, especially in urbanized areas, where the density of elements at risk sensitive to ground movements is high. The methodology described in this paper aims at detecting terrain motions and building deformations at the local scale, by means of satellite radar data combined with in situ validation campaigns. The proposed approach consists of deriving maximum settlement directions of the investigated buildings from displacement data revealed by radar measurements and then in the cross-comparison of these values with background geological data, constructive features and on-field evidence. This validation permits better understanding whether or not the detected movements correspond to visible and effective damages to buildings. The method has been applied to the southwestern sector of Volterra (Tuscany region, Italy), which is a landslide-affected and partially urbanized area, through the use of COSMO-SkyMed satellite images as input data. Moreover, we discuss issues and possible misinterpretations when dealing with PSI (Persistent Scatterer Interferometry) data referring to single manufactures and the consequent difficulty of attributing the motion rate to ground displacements, rather than to structural failures.
Analysis of Synchronization and Aliasing with Abstract Interpretation

We present a framework for the automatic determination of synchronization and aliasing properties of a functional language extended with concurrency constructs (a subset of Concurrent ML). Synchronization properties state which processes, and at what process histories, may be simultaneously active during evaluation. Aliasing properties state which data, on what processes and at what process histories, may be shared. First, we develop a semantics in which the usual arbitrary set of channel identifiers is rendered unnecessary by a semantic notion of aliasing, and in which the usual arbitrary set of process identifiers is rendered unnecessary by a semantic notion of process history as control path. The result is a semantics in which synchronization properties and aliasing properties are mutually dependent, and this provides a rich framework for reasoning about these properties. We then present an abstract interpretation that isolates regular languages for control paths and data location paths and uses Deutsch’s lattice of exponential prefix monomial relations on strings from these languages [11]. The algorithm handles difficult cases such as relating recursively dynamically created processes and channels, recursive data structures, and channel migration between processes, and it may be used for program verification (e.g., deadlock, termination, critical regions) and for implementation support (e.g., sequentialization, communication topology, interprocess data sharing).
Four Symmetry Classes of Plane Partitions under One Roof

In a previous paper, the author applied the permanent-determinant method of Kasteleyn and its non-bipartite generalization, the Hafnian? Pfaffian method, to obtain a determinant or a Pfaffian that enumerates each of the ten symmetry classes of plane partitions. After a cosmetic generalization of the Kasteleyn method, we identify the matrices in the four determinantal cases (plain plane partitions, cyclically symmetric plane partitions, transpose-complement plane partitions, and the intersection of the last two types) in the representation theory of sl(2, C). The result is a unified proof of the four enumerations.
Fuzzy Signature Neural Networks for Rule Discovery

Classification is one of the most frequently encountered decision making tasks of human activity and thus, is an important subject for a variety of fields. Hence, there is a need for developing tools which solve classification problems efficiently and correctly. In this paper we introduce the concept of Fuzzy Signature Neural Networks. A fuzzy signature neural network is an artificial neural network that uses fuzzy signatures as activation functions. We discuss the theory and methodology behind creating such a neural network. A Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) pre-clinical diagnosis system using fuzzy signatures is constructed as an example to show the use of the fuzzy signature neural network. The paper ends with a short discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of such a neural network and future research work possible in connection with fuzzy signature neural networks.
Forward node-selecting queries over trees

Node-selecting queries over trees lie at the core of several important XML languages for the web, such as the node-selection language XPath, the query language XQuery, and the transformation language XSLT. The main syntactic constructs of such queries are the backward predicates, for example, ancestor and preceding, and the forward predicates, for example, descendant and following. Forward predicates are included in the depth-first, left-to-right preorder relation associated with the input tree, whereas backward predicates are included in the inverse of this preorder relation. This work is devoted to an expressiveness study of node-selecting queries with proven theoretical and practical applicability, especially in the field of query evaluation against XML streams. The main question it answers positively is whether, for each input query with forward and backward predicates, there exists an equivalent forward-only output query. This question is then positively answered for input and output queries of varying structural complexity, using LOGLIN and PSPACE reductions. Various existing applications based on the results of this work are reported, including query optimization and streamed evaluation.
Self-adaptation of a query service using reconfigurable components

Over the last ten years, evolutions in nomadic terminals and mobile networks led to ubiquitous and pervasive computing. Existing query evaluation and optimization techniques for distributed databases using global schemas and cost models are no longer relevant. Query service, the key element allowing users to access data, must adapt itself to frequent changes in pervasive environments (application constraints, user preferences, connectivity, etc.). In this paper, we propose a flexible architecture of a self-adaptive query service using Fractal reconfigurable components. Our proposition is based on two definitions of adaptability; the first one is a static adaptability by providing five different personalities of a query service, the second one is a dynamic adaptability controlled by a rule based mechanism. The architecture also provides adaptive query evaluation techniques in order to improve performance.
Reducing influence of robot’s motion on tactile sensor based on partially linear model

Robots that are supposed to work and communicate with humans in our daily life have been developed in recent years. For this kind of robots, sensitive tactile sensors are necessary to achieve haptic interactions. However, influences of its own motion on tactile sensors sometimes become larger than the signal to be detected. This paper proposes a method to reduce such noises. It is enabled by estimating and subtracting the influences from sensor outputs. The influences of robotpsilas motions on tactile sensors are estimated by using the sequence of joint angles of the robot. In our method, a partially linear model is built to estimate the influences on a tactile sensor. The robotpsilas posture space, which is represented by its joint angles, is divided into several subspaces to fit to a linear model. We conducted an experiment with a robot covered with tactile sensors to verify the validity of our method. This paper shows that the robot is able to estimate the influences on a tactile sensor in high accuracy by the model.
Social Stream Organization Based on User Role Analysis for Participatory Information Recommendation

In this study, we propose an integrated approach to organize and refine the social streams in accordance with the analysis of both social data and social roles within a social group. The social stream data will be first collected and organized based on users' individual needs. After the calculation and analysis of users' importance based on the identification and classification of users' dynamical social roles within a user group, a mechanism is developed to organize and refine social streams and further provide users with more suitable and useful information that best fits their needs from more related users, in order to better assist the participatory information search and recommendation process in the social networking environment.
Student Moderators in Asynchronous Online Discussion: A Question of Questions

Much current research exalts the benefits of having students facilitate weekly discussions in asynchronous online courses. This study seeks to add to what is known about student moderation through an analysis of the types of questions students use to spur each discussion. Prior experimental work has demonstrated that the types of questions posed by instructors influence the cognitive levels of responses, but little is known about the extent to which student moderators use these various question forms. Question types and the cognitive levels of responses in an online graduate course were analyzed, and it was found that students relied on a small number of question forms. In particular, students rarely asked questions directly related to weekly course readings, and did not ask any questions that made connections to previously studied course material. Questions that constrained student choice led to lower levels of responses compared to other question types.
Using an Intermediate Representation to Map Workloads on Heterogeneous Parallel Systems

Current trends in computer architecture show that we are aiming toward more cores and even more heterogeneity. As an extensive knowledge of processor's internals cannot be a prerequisite to their programming and for the sake of portability, these systems necessitate the compilation flow to evolve and cope with heterogeneity issues. This is even more so true for embedded systems. In this paper, we show how to start from a specific Intermediate Representation (IR) to explore the configuration space of program-part mappings on heterogeneous targets thank to a GCC pluggin. Then we define a simple execution model with predictable performance and use execution time from generated elementary kernels to predict the performance of the whole application. We show a very good accuracy of this framework to predict real world performance on experimental results and how we can use it to choose the best parallel configuration.