Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ownership Strategy of Japanese Firms: Transactional, Institutional and Experience Influences

We compare the effects of transactional, institutional and experience influences on the ownership strategies of Japanese investors. Our theoretical development suggests that the equity position of a foreign investor should increase as the specificity of the assets transferred to the foreign affiliate in an FDI increases, but a lower equity position should be assumed when the foreign investor requires complementary assets to establish a foreign entry. International experience and a strong institutional environment also should lead to increases in the equity position of the foreign investor. These relationships were tested with data on more than 1,000 Japanese investments in nine countries of East and South East Asia. The results demonstrate that experience and institutional factors were the most important influences on the ownership position taken in the foreign investment, while transactional factors had a much less important and a more ambiguous role.
A Scalable and Eecient Storage Allocator on Shared-memory Multiprocessors

An eecient dynamic storage allocator is important for time-critical parallel programs. In this paper, we present a fast and simple parallel allocator for xed size block on shared-memory multiprocessors. We show both theoretically and empirically that the allocator incurs very low lock contention. The allocator is tested with parallel simulation applications with frequent allocation and release requests. The results connrm that our allocator is highly eecient and is scalable to more processors.
Towards Self Configured Multi-Agent Resource Allocation Framework for Cloud Computing Environments

The construction of virtualization and Cloud computing environment to assure numerous features such as improved flexibility, stabilized energy efficiency with minimal operating costs for IT industry. However, highly unpredictable workloads can create demands to promote quality-of-service assurance in the mean while promising competent resource utilization. To evade breach on SLA's (Service-Level Agreements) or may have unproductive resource utilization, In a virtual environment resource allocations must be tailored endlessly during the execution for the dynamic application workloads. In this proposed work, we described a hybrid approach on self-configured resource allocation model in cloud environments based on dynamic workloads application models. We narrated a comprehensive setup of a delegate stimulated enterprise application, the new Virtenterprise_Cloudapp benchmark, deployed on dynamic virtualized cloud platform. 2
Two-levels of adaptive buffer for virtual channel router in NoCs

NoC designs are based on a compromise of latency, power dissipation or energy, usually defined at design time. However, setting all parameters at design time can cause either excessive power dissipation (originated by router underutilization), or a higher latency. Moreover, routers with virtual channels have larger buffer sizes and more complex control, increasing the total costs. The situation worsens whenever the application changes its communication pattern, i.e., when a portable phone downloads a new service. In this paper we propose the use of a two-level adaptive buffer for a virtual channel router, where the buffers units and the virtual channels are dynamically allocated to increase router efficiency in a NoC, even under rather different communication loads. With the proposed architecture the buffer and virtual channels in the input channels of the routers can be adapted at run time. The adaptive virtual channel router decreases the latency in the worst case by 10%, and a reduction of 80% in the best case is achieved when compared to previous works.
Interobserver reproducibility of radiographic evaluation of lumbar spine instability

ABSTRACT Objective: To measure the interobserver reproducibility of the radiographic evaluation of lumbar spine instability. Methods: Measurements of the dynamic radiographs of the lumbar spine in lateral view were performed, evaluating the anterior translation and the angulation among the vertebral bodies. The tests were evaluated at workstations of the organization, through the Carestream Health Vue RIS (PACS), version 11.0. 12.14 Inc. 2009© system. Results: Agreement in detecting cases of radiographic instability among the observers varied from 88.1 to 94.4%, and the agreement coefficients AC1 were all above 0.8, indicating excellent agreement. Conclusion: The interobserver analysis performed among orthopedic surgeons with different levels of training in dynamic radiographs of the spine obtained high reproducibility and agreement. However, some factors, such as the manual method of measurement and the presence of vertebral osteophytes, might have generated a few less accurate results in this comparative evaluation of measurements.
How to securely compute the modulo-two sum of binary sources

In secure multiparty computation, mutually distrusting users in a network want to collaborate to compute functions of data which is distributed among the users. The users should not learn any additional information about the data of others than what they may infer from their own data and the functions they are computing. Previous works have mostly considered the worst case context (i.e., without assuming any distribution for the data); Lee and Abbe (2014) is a notable exception. Here, we study the average case (i.e., we work with a distribution on the data) where correctness and privacy is only desired asymptotically. For concreteness and simplicity, we consider a secure version of the function computation problem of Körner and Marton (1979) where two users observe a doubly symmetric binary source with parameter p and the third user wants to compute the XOR. We show that the amount of communication and randomness resources required depends on the level of correctness desired. When zero-error and perfect privacy are required, the results of Data et al. (2014) show that it can be achieved if and only if a total rate of 1 bit is communicated between every pair of users and private randomness at the rate of 1 is used up. In contrast, we show here that, if we only want the probability of error to vanish asymptotically in blocklength, it can be achieved by a lower rate (binary entropy of p) for all the links and for private randomness; this also guarantees perfect privacy. We also show that no smaller rates are possible even if privacy is only required asymptotically.
Human Platelet Lysate as a Xeno Free Alternative of Fetal Bovine Serum for the In Vitro Expansion of Human Mesenchymal Stromal Cells

Background: Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) are employed in various different clinical settings in order to modulate immune response. Human autologous and allogeneic supplements including platelet derivatives such as platelet lysate (PL), platelet-released factors (PRF) and serum are assessed in clinical studies to replace fetal bovine serum (FBS). The immunosuppressive activity and multi-potential characteristic of MSCs appear to be maintained when the cells are expanded in platelet derivatives. Materials and Methods: Platelet-rich plasma was collected from umbrical cord blood (UCB). Platelet-derived growth factors obtained by freeze and thaw methods. CD62P expression was determined by flow cytometry. The concentration of PDGF-BB and PDGF-AB was detemined by ELISA. We tested the ability of a different concentration of PL-supplemented medium to support the ex vivo expansion of Wharton's jelly derived MSCs. We also investigated the biological/functional properties of expanded MSCs in presence of different concentration of PL. The conventional karyotyping was performed in order to study the chromosomal stability. The gene expression of Collagen I and II aggrecan and SOX-9 in the presence of different concentrations of PL was evaluated by Real-time PCR. Results: We observed 5% and 10% PL, causing greater effects on proliferation of MSCs . These cells exhibited typical morphology, immunophenotype and differentiation capacity. The genetic stability of these derivative cells from Wharton's jelly was demonstrated by a normal karyotype. Furthermore, the results of Real-time PCR analysis showed that the expression of chondrocyte specific genes was higher in MSCs in the presence of 5% and 10% PL, compared with FBS supplement. Conclusions: We demonstrated that PL could be used as an alternative safe source of growth factors for expansion of MSCs and also maintained similar growing potential and phenotype without any effect on chromosomal stability.
A novel user interface design for 3D model retrieval

With the increasing amount and extensive usage of 3D models in many areas, there is a demanding need for developing retrieval systems to help people find 3D models that satisfy their applications quickly and easily. As a result, designing a natural and interactive human-machine interface close to humanpsilas perception is necessary for this purpose. The paper presents a novel user interface design for 3D model retrieval systems. Firstly, the advantages for building a 3D user interface are analyzed. Then, a 3D user interface design adopting virtual reality techniques (e.g. VRML/X3D, Java3D) is proposed and described in detail. The paper finally concludes with some future directions in 3D user interfaces designing.
Attitudes, values, beliefs and practices in probation: continuity or change?

In recent decades theories of late modernity place the criminal justice system in a time of change and perceive amongst the general population growing levels of insecurity and intolerance of crime and offenders. Along with government policy and practice, these developments are seen as contributing to an increasingly punitive system that imprisons more than ever before and seeks to punish and manage offenders in the community, rather than to attempt their rehabilitation. For these reasons, along with a loss of faith in rehabilitation, the probation service is described by many as becoming a law enforcement agency, charged by government with the assessment and management of risk, the protection of the public and the management and punishment of offenders, rather than their transformation into pro-social citizens. This study seeks to discover the extent to which a sample of practitioners within the National Probation Service for England and Wales and the National Offender Management Service ascribe to the values, attitudes and beliefs associated with these macro and mezzo level changes and how much their practice has changed accordingly. It examines offender assessment, case management and supervision and the enforcement of community sentences and post-custody licences, concluding that whilst this group of practitioners do not reject these new approaches outright, they interpret them in ways that may be seen to differ somewhat from those of government, mainly around the aims and purposes of probation practice, the enforcement of orders and especially the invasive influence of managerialism. Based on these data, it would appear that successive governments have not succeeded in completely transforming the culture of the service, nor in recruiting and training a 'new breed' of technicians concerned only to manage and punish offenders and protect the public. As a result, 'real practice' may not be developing in quite the way intended by government and may have more links to 'traditional' modes of practice than has sometimes been assumed.
Tracking liver motion using 3-D ultrasound and a surface based statistical shape model

We present a technique for registering information from preoperative CT or MR images to physical space using intraoperatively acquired 3-D ultrasound data and a surface-based statistical shape model. The model is subject-specific and captures the statistical modes of variation of the liver surface through the breathing cycle. The registration uses a Bayesian formulation, which enables information about the likely position in the breathing cycle to be incorporated in the form of prior knowledge. It is computed using the model and the ultrasound image intensities, and is constrained by the model to produce 'realistic' surfaces. Once an initial registration is computed, the liver motion and deformation can be tracked using a single ultrasound image combined with the statistical model. The technique is demonstrated by registering models constructed for 3 different volunteers to ultrasound data acquired at different points in the breathing cycle. This method has potential application in treatment of any abdominal organ which is affected by breathing motion.
Self efficacy, information acquisition and utilization as correlates of effective decision making among managers in insurance companies in Nigeria

This paper examined the self-efficacy, information acquisition and utilization as correlates of effective decision making of managers in corporate insurance companies in Nigeria. Total enumeration technique called census coupled with a self-developed questionnaire was used to collect data on a population size of 153 managers in eleven corporate insurance companies in Nigeria, out of which 145 responded given a response rate of 94.8 percent. The study found that self-efficacy, information acquisition and utilization had significant collinear relationship with effective decision making of the respondents. In addition, self-efficacy, information acquisition and utilization significantly predict effective decision making of the respondents. More so, each of the independent variables, namely, self-efficacy, information acquisition and information utilization significantly predict effective decision making of the respondents. Nevertheless, information utilization was found to have the greatest percentage (65.22 percent) relative contribution to the prediction of effective decision making of the managers in Nigerian corporate insurance companies.
Research Joint Ventures and R&D Cartels

The authors analyze the effects of R&D cartelization and research joint ventures on firms that engage in either Cournot or Bertrand competition in their product market. Research efforts, which precede production, are directed to reducing unit cost and are subject to various degrees of spillovers. It is shown that creating a competitive research joint venture reduces the equilibrium level of technological improvement and increases equilibrium prices compared to when firms conduct R&D independently. A research joint venture that cooperates in its R&D decisions yields the highest consumer plus producer surplus under Cournot competition and, in most cases, under Bertrand competition. Copyright 1992 by American Economic Association.
ICCD2OWL: an ICCD to OWL Data Compiler

came across when, after the realization of ReMuNaICCD, an ontology supposed to allow a more articulate use of the present cultural heritage information system, they approached the task of populating it with instances. To permit immediate use of the ontology, it was necessary to develop ICCD2OWL, a data compiler able to translate the data recorded in the available ICCD cards into class instances and property instances for the ontology. The first task was to design formal codifications for both the ICCD attribute-value data model and the ReMuNaICCD ontological data model. Then a program for converting each of them into the other was required. Actually, the issue faced in this paper comes under the wider topic of the mappings between simple attribute-value data structures and ontological representations of the knowledge or, in more general terms, between not-object oriented models and object oriented models. The most remarkable conclusion is that part of the effort required is due to the semantic inadequacies of the ontology languages currently available. Such inadequacies make any attempt at accomplishing semantic interoperability based on those languages alone unproductive. Therefore, it is evident that the methodologies and results presented here could profitably be used in a more general framework like the Semantic Web.
Prediction of protein complexes using empirical free energy functions

A long sought goal in the physical chemistry of macromolecular structure, and one directly relevant to understanding the molecular basis of biological recognition, is predicting the geometry of bimolecular complexes from the geometries of their free monomers. Even when the monomers remain relatively unchanged by complex formation, prediction has been difficult because the free energies of alternative conformations of the complex have been difficult to evaluate quickly and accurately. This has forced the use of incomplete target functions, which typically do no better than to provide tens of possible complexes with no way of choosing between them. Here we present a general framework for empirical free energy evaluation and report calculations, based on a relatively complete and easily executable free energy function, that indicate that the structures of complexes can be predicted accurately from the structures of monomers, including close sequence homologues. The calculations also suggest that the binding free energies themselves may be predicted with reasonable accuracy. The method is compared to an alternative formulation that has also been applied recently to the same data set. Both approaches promise to open new opportunities in macromolecular design and specificity modification.
Detection of LSB Replacement and LSB Matching Steganography Using Gray Level Run Length Matrix

This paper introduces a novel method to detect the typical LSB (Least Significant Bit) embedding and the LSB matching steganography methods applied to grayscale images. The proposed method determines the changes made to some selected features extracted from the gray level run length matrix. It is shown that the run length characteristics can significantly be affected by the embedded message bits, so can be employed as a measure that is quite sensitive to the arrangements of the image pixel values. The extracted features are examined by a nonlinear SVM (Support Vector Machine) classifier with quadratic kernel that can distinguish between stego and clean images. Experimental results are given to demonstrate the competitively higher performance of the proposed method, as compared to other well-known steganalysis methods, at different embedding rates.
Concurrence in the ability for lipid synthesis between life stages in insects

The ability to synthesize lipids is critical for an organism’s fitness; hence, metabolic pathways, underlying lipid synthesis, tend to be highly conserved. Surprisingly, the majority of parasitoids deviate from this general metabolic model by lacking the ability to convert sugars and other carbohydrates into lipids. These insects spend the first part of their life feeding and developing in or on an arthropod host, during which they can carry over a substantial amount of lipid reserves. While many parasitoid species have been tested for lipogenic ability at the adult life stage, it has remained unclear whether parasitoid larvae can synthesize lipids. Here we investigate whether or not several insects can synthesize lipids during the larval stage using three ectoparasitic wasps (developing on the outside of the host) and the vinegar fly Drosophila melanogaster that differ in lipogenic ability in the adult life stage. Using feeding experiments and stable isotope tracing with gas chromatography/mass spectrometry, we first confirm lipogenic abilities in the adult life stage. Using topical application of stable isotopes in developing larvae, we then provide clear evidence of concurrence in lipogenic ability between larval and adult life stages in all species tested.
Not So Unique in the Crowd: a Simple and Effective Algorithm for Anonymizing Location Data

We study the problem of privacy in human mobility data, i.e., the re-identification risk of individuals in a trajectory dataset. We quantify the risk of being re-identified by the metric of uniqueness, the fraction of individuals in the dataset which are uniquely identifiable by a set of spatio-temporal points. We explore a human mobility dataset for more than half a million individuals over a period of one week. The location of an individual is specified every fifteen minutes. The results show that human mobility traces are highly identifiable with only a few spatio-temporal points. We propose a modification-based anonymization approach that is based on shorting the trajectories to reduce the risk of reidentification and information disclosure. Empirical, experimental results on the anonymized dataset show the decrease of uniqueness and suggest that anonymization techniques can help to improve the privacy protection and reduce privacy risks, although the anonymized data cannot provide full anonymity so far.
Analysis of the School Preferred Reading Program in Selected Los Angeles Minority Schools.

In 20 elementary schools participating in the Los Angeles School Preferred Reading Program, gains'in reading achievement were examined"in order to identify school and classroom policies that were most successful in raising reaaing scores of inner-city.children. All schools sampled displayed large or consistent gains for sixth-grade reading achievement, had predominantly minority-group student bodies, and were located in low-income neighborhoods. Data on schoOl and classroom practices were gathered by interview and questionnaire from principals, reading 'specialists, and classroom teaahers in the,,target schools. Background and demographic information and reading test scores for grades three through six were,recorded for members of the sixth-grade classes of 1974 and 1975 from their junior high school records. Background factors and reading test scores in earlier grades were found to account for the largest part of the variation in sixth-grade achievement, but variables reflecting particular sehool experiences 'also had signilicant influence.These factors are deScribed and illustrated in the report. Overall, the results are interpreted as supporting the continuation of the School Preferred Reading Program. (Author/AA) **********************************************************************1= Documents acquired by ERIC include many informal unpublished * . materials not available from other sources. ERIC makes every effort * * to obtain the best copy available. Nevertheless, items of marginal * * reproducibility are often encountered and this affects the quality * * of the microfiche and hardcopy, reproductions ERIC makes available * * via the ERIC Document Reproduction service (EDRS). EDRS is not * responsible for the quality of the original document. Reproductions * * supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original. ***********************************************************************
Decentralized caching with secure delivery

Caching has emerged as a vital tool in modern communication systems for reducing peak data rates by allowing popular fles to be pre-fetched and stored locally at end users' devices. In this paper, the concept of information theoretic security for content delivery with decentralized caching is introduced. The proposed secure caching scheme allows users to cache content in a decentralized manner and reduces the peak rate by leveraging local and global caching gains, while securely delivering requested content to the users. The analysis of the secure decentralized caching problem is presented which shows that the proposed scheme introduces security at a negligible cost in terms of achievable rate when compared to insecure decentralized caching schemes, particularly for large number of fles and users. It is also shown that the rate of the proposed secure scheme is within a constant multiplicative factor from the information theoretic optimal rate for feasible values of problem parameters.