Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluating the effects of labour market reforms "at the margin" on unemployment and employment stability:: the Spanish case

This study analyses the effects on unemployment and the quality of employment of the Spanish labour market reform in 2001 for the most important age groups. The content of the reform was based on the implementation of two policies: (i) a new permanent contract with lower firing costs than the ordinary one, and (ii) the reduction of the payroll taxes paid by firms to foster creation/ conversion of/ into permanent contracts. This reform extended to further groups of workers similar measures adopted in a previous reform in 1997. Using a data base of unemployed workers in the region of Madrid from January 1997 up to September 2003, and methods for non-experimental data, the results suggest that, regardless of gender, workers below 30 years are negatively affected by the reform, and workers above 55 years show positive but small effects. The influence of the reform for workers between 45 and 50 years is negligible. As regards education, graduates are more sensitive to the reform than workers with a lower level of education (primary and secondary education).
IMPLIKASI MODEL UTAUT DALAM MENJELASKAN FAKTOR NIAT DAN PENGGUNAAN SIPKD KABUPATEN TABANAN

Model Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) used in this study to explain factors of interest and the use of financial management information system ( SIPKD ) on 42 SKPDs Tabanan Regency. The results of this study are based on 77 answers SIPKD operators who responded. Respondents were determined using nonprobability and purposive sampling technique. Researchers distributed questionnaires to collect data and tested by multiple linear regreli analysis techniques. UTAUT were tested in this study are prepared on the 2 dependent variable is the intention to use and system usage behavior as well as four independent variables are expectations of performance, effort expectancy, social influence and support conditions. Results of the study showed no effect on the effort expectancy of intention to use but performance expectations and social influence significant positive effect on intention to use . Supporting conditions and interest significant positive effect on system usage behavior .
Is There a Real Preferential Detection of Negative Stimuli?

In a recent article, Dijksterhuis and Aarts (2003) investigated the preferential detection of negative stimuli. According to them, their data clearly indicate that it requires less stimulus input or less stimulus exposure to detect a negative stimulus than to detect a positive stimulus. However, we believe their research suffers from a number of limitations and methodological flaws that cast doubt on their conclusions. Using signal detection analyses, we demonstrate that none of their three studies provides sufficiently informative data with respect to their hypotheses. Moreover, we show that their experimental designs seem to be inadequate to test their hypotheses.
Market Expectation of Appreciation of the Renminbi

This paper proposes a path-dependent approach for estimating maximum appreciations of the renminbi expected by the market based on first-passage-time distributions. Using market data of the renminbi spot exchange rates, non-deliverable forward rates and currency option prices from 21 July 2005 (the reform of the exchange rate regime) to 28 February 2008 for model parameters, the maximum appreciations of the renminbi estimated under the proposed approach show that the market expected another large movement of the exchange rate during the 14 months after the reform. Subsequently, the few occasions of appreciations beyond the expected maximums coincided with trade-related issues and speculation that greater momentum of appreciation would be allowed by the authorities. The PBoCi¦s measures were however largely incorporated into the derivativesi¦ prices. The proposed approach can be used to gauge the range of appreciations of the renminbi anticipated in the market and to identify any exchange rate movements beyond market expectations.
Mortality prediction for ICU patients using just-in-time learning and extreme learning machine

Many types of severity or prognostic scoring systems have been developed for patients in intensive care units (ICUs). They provide evaluation of patients' status so that they can get the best distribution of the intensive care. However, the accuracy and reliability of the existing systems is still not ideal. A new combination of just-in-time learning (JITL) and extreme learning machine (ELM) was proposed, aiming at improving mortality prediction accuracy. JITL was utilized to gather the most relevant data samples for patient-specific modeling while ELM was chosen for fast model building. In this study, 4000 records of ICU patients from PhysioNet database were selected, including 554 dead and 3446 survival records in which physiological parameters values were used for mortality prediction. In terms of the area under receiver-operating curve (AUC), JITL-ELM achieved the best performance, compared with ELM, BP neural network, logistic regression model and traditional score models.
The Impact of Age on the Value of Historic Homes in a Nationally Recognized Historic District

This paper uses hedonic modeling to test the effects of age, both actual and effective, on the value of historic properties within a nationally recognized historic district. Findings show that there is a critical point where the value of historic properties is affected by actual age and the depreciation schedule turns upward. Effective age is used to develop a variant of Tobin's Q which provides evidence that inter-district price differentials often attributed to historic designation are at least partially a function of investment differentials between districts.
Data Jacket Retrieval Based on Explicit Semantic Analysis

By using the market of data, we are able to make decision and solve problem for new business based on real-world data to do. When someone needs to find some suitable data employed to ideas that are going to be realized, we can use keywords derived from the ideas as query to search in the market of data. However, sometimes the keywords are not included in the descriptions of data in the database, even for human, it is difficult to choose proper keywords. Therefore, the searching results are usually not satisfying in aspect of either quantity or relevancy. This paper presents two approaches of using Wikipedia-based Explicit Semantic Analysis (ESA) for retrieving relevant data, and compares them with the traditional TF·IDF based full-text retrieval method by experiment.
Sp6 and Sp8 Transcription Factors Control AER Formation and Dorsal-Ventral Patterning in Limb Development

The formation and maintenance of the apical ectodermal ridge (AER) is critical for the outgrowth and patterning of the vertebrate limb. The induction of the AER is a complex process that relies on integrated interactions among the Fgf, Wnt, and Bmp signaling pathways that operate within the ectoderm and between the ectoderm and the mesoderm of the early limb bud. The transcription factors Sp6 and Sp8 are expressed in the limb ectoderm and AER during limb development. Sp6 mutant mice display a mild syndactyly phenotype while Sp8 mutants exhibit severe limb truncations. Both mutants show defects in AER maturation and in dorsal-ventral patterning. To gain further insights into the role Sp6 and Sp8 play in limb development, we have produced mice lacking both Sp6 and Sp8 activity in the limb ectoderm. Remarkably, the elimination or significant reduction in Sp6;Sp8 gene dosage leads to tetra-amelia; initial budding occurs, but neither Fgf8 nor En1 are activated. Mutants bearing a single functional allele of Sp8 (Sp6−/−;Sp8+/−) exhibit a split-hand/foot malformation phenotype with double dorsal digit tips probably due to an irregular and immature AER that is not maintained in the center of the bud and on the abnormal expansion of Wnt7a expression to the ventral ectoderm. Our data are compatible with Sp6 and Sp8 working together and in a dose-dependent manner as indispensable mediators of Wnt/βcatenin and Bmp signaling in the limb ectoderm. We suggest that the function of these factors links proximal-distal and dorsal-ventral patterning.
A Parallel Free Surface Lattice Boltzmann Method for Large-Scale Applications

In recent years the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) has been established as a popular alternative to conventional computational fluid dynamics. With a free surface extension to the method, simulation of bubbly flows and even metal foaming processes is possible. The extension is based on a volume of fluid approach and an explicit tracking of the interface, including a reconstruction of the curvature to model surface tension. In order to accomplish realistic engineering applications, large domain sizes are required, and thus efficient parallelization for several thousand processes is inevitable. Our previous implementation of the parallel free surface algorithm used all-to-all communication schemes resulting in only moderate parallel efficiency when using more than hundred processes. Therefore, the algorithm has been adapted to communicate updates only locally in a restricted neighborhood, which complicates data exchange between processes, in particular when bubbles extend across several subdomains and in case topological changes occur through the coalescence of bubbles. The novel algorithm increases parallel efficiency and enables usage of several thousand processors, rendering large-scale engineering applications like simulation of liquid water in a fuel cell possible. It has been integrated into the waLBerla LBM framework, which features basic tools for communication and data management, designed for massively parallel flow simulations. With this implementation, free surface simulations exhibit parallel efficiency of 90% on up to 4 080 cores.
GmSALT3, Which Confers Improved Soybean Salt Tolerance in the Field, Increases Leaf Cl- Exclusion Prior to Na+ Exclusion But Does Not Improve Early Vigor under Salinity

Soil salinity reduces soybean growth and yield. The recently identified GmSALT3 (Glycine max salt Tolerance-associated gene on chromosome 3) has the potential to improve soybean yields in salinized conditions. Here we evaluate the impact of GmSALT3 on soybean performance under saline or non-saline conditions. Three sets of near isogenic lines (NILs), with genetic similarity of 95.6–99.3% between each pair of NIL-T and NIL-S, were generated from a cross between two varieties 85–140 (salt-sensitive, S) and Tiefeng 8 (salt-tolerant, T) by using marker-assisted selection. Each NIL-T; 782-T, 820-T and 860-T, contained a common ~1000 kb fragment on chromosome 3 where GmSALT3 was located. We show that GmSALT3 does not contribute to an improvement in seedling emergence rate or early vigor under salt stress. However, when 12-day-old seedlings were exposed to NaCl stress, the NIL-T lines accumulated significantly less leaf Na+ compared with their corresponding NIL-S, while no significant difference of K+ concentration was observed between NIL-T and NIL-S; the magnitude of Na+ accumulation within each NIL-T set was influenced by the different genetic backgrounds. In addition, NIL-T lines accumulated less Cl- in the leaf and more in the root prior to any difference in Na+; in the field they accumulated less pod wall Cl- than the corresponding NIL-S lines. Under non-saline field conditions, no significant differences were observed for yield related traits within each pair of NIL-T and NIL-S lines, indicating there was no yield penalty for having the GmSALT3 gene. In contrast, under saline field conditions the NIL-T lines had significantly greater plant seed weight and 100-seed weight than the corresponding NIL-S lines, meaning GmSALT3 conferred a yield advantage to soybean plants in salinized fields. Our results indicated that GmSALT3 mediated regulation of both Na+ and Cl- accumulation in soybean, and contributes to improved soybean yield through maintaining a higher seed weight under saline stress.
EVALUATION OF QUERYLENS : IMPLICATIONS FOR CONTEXT-AWARE INFORMATION SHARING USING RFID

RFID Technology allows us to easily capture and access information anywhere at anytime. However, RFID-based information sharing systems will likely fail if they cannot provide the right information in the right way. This paper describes design and usability evaluations of QueryLens, a system that accumulates queries and answers in relation to RFID-tagged physical objects and discusses the implications of our in-depth usability analysis for RFID-based context-aware information sharing in general.
Ranking of New Sponsored Online Ads Using Semantically Related Historical Ads

Online advertising in search engines is a wide and growing market. In this market, revenue of search engines depends on the number of user clicks received on displayed ads. Thus, in order to increase the revenue, search engines try to select top ads and rank them based on the expected number of clicks they will receive. For ads that were in the system for a period of time, the expected number of clicks could be estimated based on historical data. For new ads, or those ads without enough historical data, search engines need to predict the potential of these ads in attracting user clicks. We purpose a method to estimate the potential of new ads in attracting user’s clicks. We use semantic and feature based similarity algorithms to predict the click through rate of new ads using historical similar ads. Our trace-based evaluations show that the proposed method outperforms other approaches in the literature in terms of the accuracy of prediction. In addition, the proposed method is less computationally expensive than previous methods and it can run in real time.
Viral RNAs Are Unusually Compact

A majority of viruses are composed of long single-stranded genomic RNA molecules encapsulated by protein shells with diameters of just a few tens of nanometers. We examine the extent to which these viral RNAs have evolved to be physically compact molecules to facilitate encapsulation. Measurements of equal-length viral, non-viral, coding and non-coding RNAs show viral RNAs to have among the smallest sizes in solution, i.e., the highest gel-electrophoretic mobilities and the smallest hydrodynamic radii. Using graph-theoretical analyses we demonstrate that their sizes correlate with the compactness of branching patterns in predicted secondary structure ensembles. The density of branching is determined by the number and relative positions of 3-helix junctions, and is highly sensitive to the presence of rare higher-order junctions with 4 or more helices. Compact branching arises from a preponderance of base pairing between nucleotides close to each other in the primary sequence. The density of branching represents a degree of freedom optimized by viral RNA genomes in response to the evolutionary pressure to be packaged reliably. Several families of viruses are analyzed to delineate the effects of capsid geometry, size and charge stabilization on the selective pressure for RNA compactness. Compact branching has important implications for RNA folding and viral assembly.
Institutions, Economic Freedom, and Cross‐Country Differences in Performance

This address describes the history of the Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) project and the development of the EFW index. This index is a measure of the extent to which the institutions and policies of various countries are coordinated by personal choice, voluntary exchange, open markets, and clearly defined and enforced property rights. The index contains 42 different components and is currently available for 141 countries. Data for approximately 100 countries are available back to 1980. The EFW index incorporates many of the elements that new institutional economists argue are important sources of growth. Thus, it facilitates empirical investigation of the institutional theory of growth and crosscountry comparisons of economic performance. In this regard, the paper considers 10 propositions that have been addressed with the index, and what has been learned from this analysis.
A User Friendly TSC Clock

Recently a new software clock and synchronisation algorithm based on the TSC register (clock cycle counter) was developed, with several advantages over the existing system clock. However, as it uses a modified kernel to support driver timestamping, installation is non-trivial, limiting its use. We present a modified TSC clock without the need for kernel modifications, using only user-level timestamps and existing system kernel timestamps exploited in a careful way. Using weeks of test data, we show how the system performance is virtually identical to that of a kernel implementation. Compared against a GPS synchronised DAG card reference, it performs very well under both BSD and Linux. We also show how the system can replace ntpd to improve the existing system clock. The software allows for significantly improved timestamping for both packet and internal system events, and is trivial to install. It is publicly available.
Meta-analysis: A Tool for Upgrading Inputs of Macroeconomic Policy Models

Meta-analysis is a research method to synthesise previously obtained researchresults. It is best seen as a statistical approach towards reviewing and summarising theliterature. This paper aims to introduce and critically review the research method ofmeta-analysis and to illustrate its potential use in applied economic policy analysis.Special attention will be paid to the possibilities for value transfer and thepossibilities to improve the calibration of existing macroeconomic policy models.
Notes on Adjoint Methods for 18.335

Given the solution x of a discretized PDE or some other set of M equations parameterized by P variables p (design parameters, a.k.a. control variables or decision parameters), we often wish to compute some function g(x,p) based on the parameters and the solution. For example, if the PDE is a wave equation, we might want to know the scattered power in some direction. Or, for a mechanical simulation, we might want to know the load-bearing capacity of the structure. Or for a fluid, we might wish to know the flow rate somewhere. Often, however, we want to know more than just the value of g—we also want to know its gradient dg dp . Adjoint methods give an efficient way to evaluate dg dp , with a cost independent of P and usually comparable to the cost of solving for x once. The gradient of g with respect to p is extremely useful. It gives a measure of the sensitivity of our answer to the parameters p (which may, for example, come from some experimental measurements with some associated uncertainties). Or, we may want to perform an optimization of g, picking the p that produce some desired result; in this case the gradient indicates a useful search direction (e.g. for nonlinear conjugate-gradient optimization). For largescale optimization problems, the number P of design parameters can be hundreds, thousands, or more— this is common in shape or topology optimization, in which p controls the placement and shape of arbitrary blobs of different materials constituting a given structure/design. Sometimes, this process is called inverse design: finding the problem that yields a given solution instead of the other way around. When P 1, the amazing efficiency of adjoint methods makes inverse design possible. I hadn’t found any textbook description of adjoint methods that I particularly like, which is part of my motivation for writing up these notes. One introduction can be found in [1], and a more general treatment can be found in [2]. Subsequently, Gil Strang wrote a nice introduction to adjoint methods in his book [3], including a discussion of the important topic of automatic differentiation (for which adjoint or “reverse” differentiation is a key idea).
A sparse representation for efficient bandwidth utilization in wireless surveillance networks

We propose a low-cost low-rank-based framework for the operation of wireless surveillance systems. The proposed framework has two modes of operations: an initialization offline mode, in which low-rank terms of few initial frames are recovered using RPCA. Then these recovered low-rank terms are transmitted over the wireless network to the receiver. In the real-time mode of operation, sparse terms of the captured frames are calculated using FRPCA, then transmitted to the receiver. Transmission of only the sparse terms greatly saves the used bandwidth and hence the cost of the transmission process.
An Effective Multicast Mechanism in On-chip Networks

With the evolution of applications, the on-chip networks need to support one-to-many (multicast) communication efficiently. In this paper, we propose a new multicast mechanism, called multi-cycle (MC), for on-chip networks. MC mechanism takes reliable communication into explicit consideration. More precisely, in MC, in order to avoid the sending of |k| separate acknowledgement packets, the node which is the last destination of the multicast packet sends back the multicast packet to the source node on receipt of the packet. In addition, a recovery approach, instead of avoidance, is developed to deal with the deadlock issue caused by the simultaneous transmission of multicast packets. Simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed MC mechanism compared to both the tree-based and path-based multicast methods.
CAPACITY COORDINATION MECHANISM FOR SUPPLY CHAIN UNDER SUPPLY-DEMAND UNCERTAINTY

In consideration of the supply-demand uncertainty, this paper mainly discussed the capacity coordination of product service supply chain. Facing supply uncertainty, it built a subcontractor-supplier coordination model based on penalty contracts. It was found that if the subcontractor takes punitive measures, the benefits caused by the increased subcontract demand can offset the supplier’s shortage loss. As to the demand uncertainty, we constructed a coordination model consisting of subcontractors and integrated service suppliers based on the benefit sharing contract. The results found that the integrated service suppliers’ order quantity and the expected joined revenue of subcontractors and integrated service suppliers will increase. Besides, considering suppliers’ shared capability information, we built a product service supply chain coordination model based on penalty-benefit sharing joined contracts. The results showed that the joined contracts can decrease the uncertainty of capacity supply and soften the impact of demand uncertainty, thus raising the whole benefits of the product service supply chain, and ensuring the benefit increase of all related enterprises. (Received, processed and accepted by the Chinese Representative Office.)
Image classification based on local spatial pyramid Kernel

This paper develops a new algorithm based on Bag-of-Word to reflect spatial relationship of objects for visual object categorization. Beyond existing spatial pyramid for image representation, our contributions are the following: 1) we propose a combinational detector based on Maximally Stable Extremal Regions detector and Hessian-Laplacian detector to extract more discriminative features; 2) for object categorization, we propose local spatial pyramid kernel which encodes spatial information of objects and is robust to spatial transformation of objects. The proposed approach is evaluated on two popular image databases: Xerox7 and ImageNet. Experimental results demonstrate that our method gives better recognition rates in comparison with spatial pyramid.