Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Accelerating OpenVG with multimedia processors on mobile phones

Various handheld devices, in the first place mobile phones, have strong needs regarding 2D vector & bitmap graphics capabilities, including high performance and quality requirements. OpenVG is one of widely used low-level 2D vector graphics API's. Currently, fully dedicated OpenVG semiconductor chips are relatively expensive and require high power consumption. In contrast, full software implementations show lower performance even with almost 100% of CPU usage, which would disrupt other concurrent applications. In this paper, we present a new cost-effective way of accelerating OpenVG, based on wide-spread and inexpensive multimedia-processing hardwares, presently on the mobile phones. Through an extensive use of these multimedia processors, we successfully accelerated our AlexVG, an OpenVG software-based implementation, especially on its fundamental OpenVG features: bit-block transfer, masking, scissoring, color conversion, image transformation, etc. This accelerated implementation comes with a lower power consumption. It exhibits appropriate performance, reaching more than 20 frames per second, even for complicated graphical user experiences. Its CPU utilization ranges from 20% to 30%, while the remaining CPU power remains available for other real-time tasks and user applications. This implementation is now commercially available and used in several mid-tier mobile phones.
Default prediction of small and medium-sized enterprises with industry effects

Financial statements vary between industries. Therefore, economic intuition suggests that industry effects should be an important component in bankruptcy prediction; however, in previous academic literature on default prediction, not much attention has been paid to these effects. In this study a number of questions concerning credit risk modelling of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and industry are answered. The results indicate that financial ratios of SMEs differ between industries. Industry, measured by the weight-of-evidence (WoE), is a significant variable in default prediction of SMEs. Rating models designed for a specific industry (trade, service, or manufacturing) contain other variables and/or variables have other weights than for a generic PD model. Industry specific default prediction models perform slightly better than the generic model with industry effects, except for the service industry, where the industry specific model considerably outperforms the generic PD model.
STCOMPADJ: Stata module to estimate the covariate-adjusted cumulative incidence function in the presence of competing risks

stcompadj estimates the adjusted cumulative incidence function based on a Cox or a flexible parametric regression model in the presence of competing risks. Cox regression in the presence of competing risks is usually performed by fitting separate models for each failure type. It is possible to obtain the same results by using a single analysis after appropriately adapting the data set. In short this consists of expanding each observation for each cause of failure, creating a stratum indicator taking on a value of 1 for the first n records, 2 for the following n records and so on, and modifying the failure indicator so that it attains the value 1 for each observation of death caused by the main event in the first stratum, for each observation of death caused by the competing event in the second stratum and so on. This way of representing data (expanded format) allows to model both identical and different effects of the same covariate on the main and competing events.
Ripples Through Markets: Inter-Market Impacts Generated by Large Trades

This paper investigates the impacts of very large trades for cross-listed companies where parallel markets suffer from information frictions. We use a sample of large trades executed on London Stock Exchange's SEAQ-I market for European cross-quoted firms and investigate their impact on home market prices when transparency is opaque. We find that (a) London large trades produce price impacts in home markets even though no timely information is published, (b) market makers appear to pre- and postposition their inventories by splitting orders across markets, and (c) the price discovery process across markets changes significantly around large trades with the foreign market making a significantly bigger contribution to price discovery, even though information opaqueness exists.
Pathways and Strategies of Urban Regeneration—Deindustrialized Cities in Eastern Germany

Following the collapse of the German Democratic Republic in 1989, many cities of Eastern Germany embarked on a long-term process of shrinking, characterized by the complex interplay of changes in the demographic, socio-economic and urbanistic structure of the cities. Shrinking processes can be traced back to the complex interplay of processes associated with post-socialist transformation with overall processes of economic re-structuring in globalization context. The article begins with an overview of research on characteristics of shrinking processes in different medium-sized cities of the new federal states. Next, the article researches the political responses and the development policies of selected cities as a means of managing shifts in basic social, economic and investment conditions. The principal focus here is the different institutional pathways of regeneration that cities have embarked upon as a consequence of “shrinkage” and the concrete strategies that have emerged. As yet, however, no long-term or dominant development paths can be discerned in local governance modes and the formulation of new regeneration strategies. The regeneration of shrinking cities and the associated development of new futures for these cities must be understood as part of a long process, in which many paths of development can emerge through the long selection process, as each competes for acknowledgement, attention and limited financial resources.
Linkage map of Escherichia coli K-12, edition 8

The linkage map of Escherichia coli K-12 depicts the arrangement of genes on the circular chromosome of this organism. The basic units of the map are minutes, determined by the time-of-entry of markers from Hfr into F- strains in interrupted-conjugation experiments. The time-of-entry distances have been refined over the years by determination of the frequency of cotransduction of loci in transduction experiments utilizing bacteriophage P1, which transduces segments of DNA approximately 2 min in length. In recent years, the relative positions of many genes have been determined even more precisely by physical techniques, including the mapping of restriction fragments and the sequencing of many small regions of the chromosome. On the whole, the agreement between results obtained by genetic and physical methods has been remarkably good considering the different levels of accuracy to be expected of the methods used. There are now few regions of the map whose length is still in some doubt. In some regions, genetic experiments utilizing different mutant strains give different map distances. In other regions, the genetic markers available have not been close enough to give accurate cotransduction data. The chromosome is now known to contain several inserted elements apparently derived from lambdoid phages and other sources. The nature of the region in which the termination of replication of the chromosome occurs is now known to be much more complex than the picture given in the previous map. The present map is based upon the published literature through June of 1988. There are now 1,403 loci placed on the linkage group, which may represent between one-third and one-half of the genes in this organism.
Dutch Disease in Saudi Arabia

The aim of this study is to examine whether Saudi Arabia has suffered from Dutch Disease or not, and to examine how Saudi Arabia has managed symptoms related to Dutch Disease. Initially, the theory of Dutch Disease and different policy suggestions for Dutch Disease management are presented as a framework for the study. The results show that Saudi has depended heavily on its oil revenues and has experienced changes to its real effective exchange rate. Further, inflation was high in the early 1970s and the country suffered from an overheated labour market. These aspects are all symptoms of Dutch Disease. However, the manufacturing sector increased as well as agricultural production. More over, industrialization and infrastructure was developed through government support. These are results that are in contrast with the predictions of the Dutch Disease theory. The conclusion is that Saudi Arabia has suffered negative economic effects related to Dutch Disease symptoms. However, it has not suffered from Dutch Disease.
A Tale of Two Cities: A Comparative Study on the Welfare Regimes of Hong Kong and Macao

Despite their geographical proximity, and similarities in ethnic composition and political contexts, Hong Kong's and Macao's social policies have not been compared in the literature. This article aims to compare the welfare regimes between these two city-states. The comparison involves two dimensions: the pattern of welfare mix, and the modification impact of social policy on the capitalist social structure. It is found that the two states’ patterns of welfare mix have much in common, and their social policies are both marked by a relatively low level of modification impact. Therefore, the conclusion is drawn that Hong Kong and Macao can be grouped into a distinct welfare regime. The major contributions of this study are that it helps add to the understanding of East Asian social policy and suggests a useful framework for comparing welfare regimes.
Financial Viability of an Apex Cooperative Credit Institution — A Case Study of the HARCO Bank

Cooperative Credit Institutions have played a vital role in the financing of diverse activities in rural India. In recent times, these institutions have seen a very challenging environment to question their business model and perennially raise doubts at their sustained viability. The present study was conceptualized to examine the financial viability of the apex level cooperative credit institution based on the case study methodology. On balance sheet data, the study diagnosed financial health of this premiere cooperative credit institution for eight financial years, Y2K-2007 in terms of Altman (1968) multivariate Z-score analysis and CAMEL framework. The HARCO Bank, a conglomerate of 19 DCCBs and 336 branches, operates throughout the length and breadth of the State, Haryana. It has many past accolades and been rated as the best performing cooperative bank in the country by NABARD for three years in a row, 2001–04. However, the analytical presentations in this study has highlighted its poor performance on various parameters. Its asset quality has been good and the recovery position been very comfortable, but the financial position in terms of capital adequacy, liquidity, earning quality and the management efficiency parameters was very lackadaisical necessitating immediate intervention. CAMEL Model has further endorsed and validated study findings drawn from Z-score analysis.
Supervised Speech Act Classification of Messages in German Online Discussions

University lectures often offer online discussion forums for students to discuss and solve issues with other students and instructors. Correlating the participation of a student in a discussion forum to his performance in the course is subject of current research. Therefore, to qualify the different parts a student plays in a discussion, be it asking or answering a question, is sought in this paper. In current analysis of online discussion forums, such parts are annotated by hand. Thereby, identifying corresponding roles manually is a costly task, which requires the work of more than one person to annotate and approve the chosen roles. The desired step to a better understanding of student online discussion forums is the automated annotation of student roles. A student's role is determined by classifying the student's message into different speech act categories. This paper introduces a supervised speech act classification method for messages in German discussion forums that aims at solving the problem of manually detecting speech acts in online discussion for further discourse analysis. A comparative evaluation shows the significant improvements of the new classifier and its appropriateness for the German language.
Designing efficient combinational compression architecture for testing industrial circuits

As scan compression matures, the focus is changing from delivering QoR to other pressing requirements like hierarchical DFT implementation, pin-limited test and enabling high speed shifting of scan chains. Combinational compression schemes have had great success in the last decade in delivering a solution that provided a fast transition from traditional scan based test to compression based test. In this paper, a more efficient combinational test compression technique called zScan is presented. We show that this technology is able to meet tough requirements demanded by todays system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs while delivering competitive test data volume and test application time reduction.
Economic Deprivation and Civil War Events: A Disaggregated Study of Liberia

This paper examines the link between absolute and relative poverty and the location of civil war events. Drawing on the ACLED dataset, which breaks internal conflicts down to individual events at the local level, this paper takes a disaggregated approach to the study of conflict. The conflict data are linked with geographically referenced socioeconomic data from the Liberian Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) conducted in 1986. With geographical units (grid cells) of approximately 76 km as the units of analysis, we test how both absolute and relative welfare levels affect the presence and number of conflict events in Liberia during the civil war in 1989–2002. We include a number of geographically disaggregated control variables, such as neighboring conflict events, distance to national borders, distance to the capital, population density, diamond deposit, and ethnic affiliations. Negative binomial regression results indicate that civil war events predominantly happen in the relatively richer provinces. We argue that this finding reflects the relative strength of the rebel group(s). Paper prepared for the 48 Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, Chicago, MI, USA, 28 February–3 March 2007 *This is work in progress – comments are welcome! Corresponding author: Håvard Hegre; hhegre@prio.no. Thanks to Joachim Carlsen for programming tools to generate several of the variables used in the analysis and to Håvard Strand for facilitating the generation of the survey-based variables.
Seeing the forest as more than its trees: local stakeholders' perceptions of natural forest benefits in Gorontalo, Indonesia

Gorontalo's tropical forest is of global importance and is the last stronghold for conserving Sulawesi's unique biodiversity. However, implementation of biodiversity conservation at the local level has been fraught with very complex, rooted in increased pressures on natural resources and its ecological services to meet the socioeconomic development goals. One problem in implementing forest conservation lies in defining the benefits local people receive from it and who enjoys these benefits. This paper explores local perceptions of forest biodiversity conservation. Understanding local perceptions is necessary for successful implementation of conservation activities. Interviews and a ranking exercise were conducted in the Gorontalo Province, Sulawesi and Indonesia. Data were collected in 2005, involving 152 participants from 6 distinct stakeholder groups, from both government and non-government organisations. The results presented here is based on the analysis of findings from the ranking exercise. Local stakeholders valued the natural forest most highly for its ecological services.
Catching Up in Education in the Economic Catch‐up of Japan with the United States, 1890–1990*

I. The Problem and the Approach The record of “modern economic growth” a la Simon Kuznets shows that sustained increases in real national income in advanced market economies depend predominantly on improved efficiency as measured by the growth of total factor productivity (TFP). Real national income is less dependent on increases in conventional inputs, that is, physical capital and labor in personhours. With the strong advocacy of economists such as Theodore Schultz, it has been established that investment in education is a major source of growth in TFP and, hence, national income. Estimations of the contribution of TFP to economic growth in advanced market economies have hitherto been limited to periods after these economies reached a stage of relatively high income. However, recent extensions of growth accounting analysis for earlier stages of industrialization in the United States as well as in Japan show that the contribution of TFP growth to national income growth was relatively minor. These historical findings are also consistent with other studies, indicating that the contribution of TFP growth to economic growth was small in comparison to the contribution of physical capital accumulation in newly industrialized economies (NIEs) in recent decades. Such observations suggest that the role of education may be different between the earlier and the later stages of modern economic growth. The validity of this hypothesis is critical for drawing relevant policy implications for developing economies from the historical experiences of developed economies. Nevertheless, a comprehensive analysis on the role of education covering the entire span of modern economic growth has been stymied by the sheer
Accounting is an Evolved Economic Institution

We consider accounting from an evolutionary perspective. Accounting encompasses the creation of transactional records, the summarization of records in t-accounts, and the preparation of audited financial statements. Accounting's history spans at least 10,000 years dating back to the first human settlements in ancient Mesopotamia. Our focus is on the study of accounting history in three ways: providing useful thoughts experiments valuable to researchers interested in the development of modern practices, the use of historical data to test formal hypotheses about the origins of accounting practices, and the development of theories and related empirical evidence that explain accounting based on evolution and ecological rationality. Within this third area, we describe the basis for hypotheses and empirical analyses concerning six issues: (1) the emergence of recordkeeping, (2) the effect of double-entry bookkeeping on the scale and scope of economic organization, (3) the spontaneous emergence of norms of practice in accounting, (4) the impact of law, regulation, and taxation on accounting, (5) the demand for broad principles in evaluating accounting method choices, and (6) the relation between economic crises and major discontinuities in accounting practice.
Starfire: extending the SMP envelope

Like most multiboard systems, Starfire has a two-level interconnect. The on-board interconnect conveys traffic from the processors, SBus cards, and memory to the off-board address and data ports. The centerplane interconnect transfers addresses and data benveen the boards. Memory accesses always traverse the global interconnect, even if the requested memory location is physically on the same board. Addresses must be sent off board anyway to accomplish global snooping. Data transfers are highly pipelined, and local shortcuts to save a few cycles would have unduly complicated the design. As with the rest of the Ultra server family, Starfire's uniform-memory-access time is independent of the board where memory is located.
Toxoplasma gondii exploits UHRF1 and induces host cell cycle arrest at G2 to enable its proliferation

Toxoplasma gondii is an obligate intracellular parasite that causes severe disease in humans. It is able to infect all nucleated mammalian cells leading to lifelong persistence of the parasite in the host. Here, we studied the effect of T. gondii infection on host cell proliferation and explored the molecular mechanisms involved in host cell cycle progression. We found that T. gondii induced G1/S transition in host cells in the presence of UHRF1, followed by G2 arrest after cyclin B1 downregulation which is probably the major cause of the arrest. Other molecules at the G2/M checkpoint including p53, p21 and Cdk1 were normally regulated. Interestingly, while parasite proliferation was normal in cells that were in the G2 phase, it was suppressed in G1‐arrested cells induced by UHRF1‐siRNA, indicating the importance of the G2 phase via UHRF1‐induced G1/S transition for T. gondii growth.
How Well Does the Firm Know its Customers? The Moderating Effect of Market Orientation in the Hospitality Industry

This paper examines to what extent firms in the competitive hospitality industry know their customers. In a study of manager assessments and customer self-reports on customer satisfaction with a product/service, it was found that a firm's knowledge about their customers is modest, indicating that market knowledge does not come easily. The study also shows that market oriented firms hold more accurate perceptions of their customers' satisfaction than their less market oriented counterparts. The paper concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and managerial implications of the empirical findings.
Detailed analysis of the serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4) shows no association with bipolar disorder in the Northern Swedish population

Through active reuptake of serotonin into presynaptic neurons, the serotonin transporter (5‐HTT) plays an important role in regulating serotonin concentrations in the brain, and it is the site of binding for tricyclic antidepressants and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Therefore it has been hypothesized that this transporter is involved in the etiology of bipolar (BP) disorder. Inconsistent association study results for the SLC6A4 gene encoding 5‐HTT reported in literature emphasize the need for more systematic and detailed analyses of this candidate gene. We performed an extensive analysis of SLC6A4 on DNA of 254 BPI patients and 364 control individuals from a Northern Swedish isolated population. This analysis consisted of a HapMap LD‐based association study including three widely investigated polymorphisms (5‐HTTVNTR, 5‐HTTLPR, and rs3813034), a copy‐number variation (CNV) analysis and a mutation analysis of the complete coding sequence and the 3′‐UTR of SLC6A4. No single marker showed statistically significant association with BPI, nor did any of the haplotypes. In the mutation analysis 13 novel variants were detected, including 2 amino acid substitutions M389V and I587L, but these are probably not implicated in risk for BP. No deletions or duplications were detected in the CNV analysis. We conclude that variation in the SLC6A4 gene or its regulatory regions does not contribute to the susceptibility for BP disorder in the Northern Swedish population. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.