Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Conflicts and refugees in developing countries

Many reasons have been put forward explaining the rate of economic growth in developing countries. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate whether refugees and conflict help to explain Africa and other developing regions’ rate of economic growth. Economists, especially development economists, have been long engaged with the question of what makes different countries more or less successful economically and what explains their rate of economic growth. Different authors select their own favorite explanatory variables ranging from purely economic, geographic, legal, political, cultural, religious and historical ones. In this work, the flow of refugees and the prevalence conflict in developing countries is introduced as key variables among others as possible factors that could explain the rate of economic growth in Africa and other regions of the developing world. The poorest countries have provided asylum and shelter for almost three quarter of the world’s refugees over the past decade. However, statistics on refugees in these countries suffer from unavailability, periodical lags and some times contradictions. This study takes the initiative, with these problems in mind, to do a quantitative analysis of the effects of refugees on developing countries. The dataset consists of 72 countries, of which 40 countries are in sub-Saharan Africa, 4 in North Africa and 14 in Asia and South America respectively. The inclusion of countries from other parts of the developing world-Asia and South America- is driven by comparative motives. Using econometric methods on cross sectional data, the study finds very interesting results on the economic relationship between refugees and refugee-receiving developing countries, refugees and conflict and both variables’ effect on developing countries. In addition, several socio-economic variables-trade, life expectancy, illiteracy rate, gross capital formation and gross foreign direct investment- are significantly affected if a country’s neighbour(s) is/are in conflict and when countries receive large influx of refugees. The study also uses standard methods of panel data estimation (fixed effects and random effects) which makes it possible to control for time-invariant country-specific effects in further establishing short run effects of refugees and conflict in developing countries. Empirical analysis is also carried out, with the use of pooled cross sectional data, on factors affecting the flow of refugees, the effects of refugees on ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ ( rich and poor developing countries are defined by the author in relation to countries in the study) and factors attracting/distracting refugees to /from certain developing countries. The study also looks at the spill over effects of conflicts in neighbouring countries.
Do fiscal variables affect private consumption? Evidence from Australia and the United States

This study examines the effect of fiscal measures on real private consumption using an error correction model. On balance, the empirical results of the study provided some evidence against the Ricardian equivalence hypothesis. In particular, responses to real government consumption and taxes in the United States and responses to real government debt and transfer payments in Australia were significant with their dynamic paths moving opposite to Ricardian proposition.
Vanishing tan and unfaithfulness

Adrenal tuberculosis is a rare manifestation of active tuberculosis and is a difficult diagnosis to make if its presentation is sole manifestation of tuberculosis. We present an interesting case of a young male who presented only with symptoms of hyper pigmentation and was diagnosed as adrenal tuberculosis. Also, this report highlights the importance of drug interaction between antitubercular drug and steroid which lead to the deterioration in the early part of treatment and, later on was corrected by increasing the dose of steroids.
Crystal Structure of the Yeast TFIIA/TBP/DNA Complex

The crystal structure of the yeast TFIIA/TBP/TATA promoter complex was solved to 3 angstrom resolution by double-edge multiple wavelength anomalous diffraction from two different species of anomalous scattering elements in the same crystal. The large and small subunits of TFIIA associate intimately to form both domains of a two-domain folding pattern. TFIIA binds as a heterodimer to the side of the TBP/TATA complex opposite to the side that binds TFIIB and does not alter the TBP/DNA interaction. The six-stranded β-sandwich domain interacts with the amino-terminal end of TBP through a stereospecific parallel β-strand interface and with the backbone of the TATA box and the 5′-flanking B-DNA segment. The four-helix-bundle domain projects away from the TBP/TATA complex, thereby presenting a substantial surface for further protein-protein interactions.
Image-Specific Classification With Local and Global Discriminations

Most image classification methods try to learn classifiers for each class using training images alone. Due to the interclass and intraclass variations, it would be more effective to take the testing images into consideration for classifier learning. In this brief, we propose a novel image-specific classification method by combing the local and global discriminations of training images. We adaptively train classifier for each testing image instead of generating classifiers for each class with training images alone. For each testing image, we first select its ${k}$ nearest neighbors in the training set with the corresponding labels for local classifier training. This helps to model the distinctive characters of each testing image. Besides, we also use all the training images for global discrimination modeling. The local and global discriminations are combined for final classification. In this way, we could not only model the specific character of each testing image but also avoid the local optimum by jointly considering all the training images. To evaluate the usefulness of the proposed image-specific classification with local and global discrimination (ISC-LG) method, we conduct image classification experiments on several public image data sets. The superior performances over other baseline methods prove the effectiveness of the proposed ISC-LG method.
Fuzzy markup language for university assessment

The goal of higher education evaluation and accreditation is to ensure that education provided by institutions meets acceptable levels of quality. In 2011, the higher education evaluation and accreditation council of Taiwan (HEEACT) starts to evaluate the eighty-one higher education institutions through five predefined items, including (1) university goal, (2) university administration and management, (3) teaching and learning resource, (4) performance and society responsibility, and (5) improvement and quality assurance mechanism. As a result, in this paper, a novel fuzzy markup language (FML)-based university assessment system is developed to infer the passing possibility of the university assessment. Additionally, a fuzzy ontology model is utilized to represent the university evaluation and accreditation domain knowledge predefined by domain experts. Then, the FML is adopted to describe the knowledge base and rule base of the university assessment. Simulation results indicate that the proposed approach can effectively infer the passing level of the university assessment.
Analysis of the Determinants of Adoption of Organic Horticultural Techniques in the UK

The determinants of the decision to adopt organic production techniques are examined by applying binomial and multinomial logit techniques to a sample of 237 horticultural producers from the UK. The analysis indicates that organic horticultural producers are more likely to be younger, run smaller enterprises and be female than their conventional counterparts, and that there are significant non‐economic aspects to the decision to adopt organic techniques which may be missed in comparative profitability studies. In addition, the analysis indicates that the registered and unregistered organic producers should not be regarded as a homogenous group, with significant differences in terms of the influence of gender and information sources observed.
Incomplete Contracts, Specific Investments, and Risk Sharing

An optimal contract design problem is considered. Contracts which are incomplete and simple are used to investigate the extent to which constrained revisions can mitigate inefficiencies resulting from contractual incompleteness. An optimal contract is characterized in two cases. First, when a contract is being used to facilitate trade between two risk-neutral parties who must make relationship-specific investments, it is possible to implement the first-best by a simple contract. Second, when a contract is being used to share risk, it is generally not possible to implement the first-best. When one party is risk neutral, however, it is possible to implement the first-best by assigning all the ex post decision rights to that party.
Time-Accuracy Tradeoffs in Kernel Prediction: Controlling Prediction Quality

Kernel regression or classification (also referred to as weighted e-NN methods in Machine Learning) are appealing for their simplicity and therefore ubiquitous in data analysis. However, practical implementations of kernel regression or classification consist of quantizing or sub-sampling data for improving time efficiency, often at the cost of prediction quality. While such tradeoffs are necessary in practice, their statistical implications are generally not well understood, hence practical implementations come with few performance guarantees. In particular, it is unclear whether it is possible to maintain the statistical accuracy of kernel prediction--crucial in some applications--while improving prediction time. The present work provides guiding principles for combining kernel prediction with data-quantization so as to guarantee good tradeoffs between prediction time and accuracy, and in particular so as to approximately maintain the good accuracy of vanilla kernel prediction. Furthermore, our tradeoff guarantees are worked out explicitly in terms of a tuning parameter which acts as a knob that favors either time or accuracy depending on practical needs. On one end of the knob, prediction time is of the same order as that of single-nearestneighbor prediction (which is statistically inconsistent) while maintaining consistency; on the other end of the knob, the prediction risk is nearly minimax-optimal (in terms of the original data size) while still reducing time complexity. The analysis thus reveals the interaction between the data-quantization approach and the kernel prediction method, and most importantly gives explicit control of the tradeoff to the practitioner rather than fixing the tradeoff in advance or leaving it opaque. The theoretical results are validated on data from a range of real-world application domains; in particular we demonstrate that the theoretical knob performs as expected.
Estimation of airfield pavement void thickness using GPR

Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) technique has been successfully used in the detection and identification of void under airfield pavement, but the estimation of void thickness is still in need of solving. In this paper, the seismic thin-layer theory is first introduced to analyze the amplitude response of void reflection. Then a new method was proposed for the determination of void thickness by the modified quantitative calculation formula. Simulation results show that the proposed method can outperform the conventional tuning thickness method.
State Postsecondary Policy Innovation: Politics, Competition, and the Interstate Migration of Policy Ideas

Lingering questions about the effects of postsecondary governance structure on the policy-adoption behavior of state governments have assumed new significance in light of a recent wave of financing and accountability policy innovation in the postsecondary-education sector. Using longitudinal analysis, this study tests the effects of postsecondary governance structure, state socioeconomic and political characteristics, and interstate "diffusion" dynamics on state policy innovation patterns in the postsecondary-education sector between 1981 and 1998. Governance arrangements showed only a weak relationship to innovation patterns, but legislative party control and interstate diffusion had a strong effect upon the adoption of new postsecondary financing policies.
Strategic operations and logistics planning process for an integrated supply chain strategy

This paper examines the design and implementation of an effective process of operations and logistics strategy. A process called Strategic Operations and Logistics Planning (SOLP) is developed from the Manufacturing Audit Approach to encompass operations, both internal to enterprises, and across the extended enterprise. The paper posits that SOLP can be used in enterprises with weak strategic planning skills based on successful testing of the process in three Australian meat processing companies. The comparative success of the SOLP process is underpinned by the use of action research involving external facilitation, group consensus and tailoring the process to meet the enterprise needs. The results suggest that the SOLP process is successful and that repeated use by a planning team improves its effectiveness in formulation and integration.
Experimental evaluation of a novel fast beamsteering algorithm for link re-establishment in mm-wave indoor WLANs

The millimeter-wave (mm-wave) bands are currently being explored for multi-Gbps wireless local area networks (WLANs). Directional antennas are required to overcome the high attenuation inherent at the mm-wave frequencies. However, directionality makes link maintenance and establishment tasks complex, especially under node mobility, as slight misalignment of antenna beams between nodes leads to link disruption. Consequently, low latency beamsteering algorithms are needed for fast link re-establishment to support seamless data provisioning. Solutions based on exhaustive sequential scanning induce high latency, thereby disrupting communication. On the other hand, existing low latency proposals typically consider only static links, depend on additional hardware, or require a priori information about the network environment. In this paper, we propose a generic, fast mm-wave beamsteering algorithm that utilizes the previous valid link information to initiate the feasible antenna sector pair search and adaptively increases the sector search space around it to re-establish a link. Additionally, we experimentally evaluate the performance of our algorithm through measurements conducted in a real indoor environment using 60 GHz packet-radio transceivers. The results show that, compared to exhaustive sequential scanning, our algorithm reduces the required sector search space, and thereby the link re-establishment latency, by 89% on average compared to exhaustive sequential scanning.
Simulation-based tracing and profiling for system software development

Tracing and profiling low-level kernel functions (e.g. as found in the process scheduler) is a challenging task, though, necessary in both research and production in order to acquire detailed insights and achieve peak performance. Several kernel functions are known to be not traceable because of architectural limitations, whereas tracking other functions causes side effects and skews profiling results. In this paper, we present a novel, simulation-based approach to analyze the behavior and performance of kernel functions. Kernel code is executed on a simulated hardware platform avoiding the bias caused by collecting the tracing data within the system under observation. From the flat call trace generated by the simulator, we reconstruct the entire call graph and enrich it with detailed profiling statistics. Specifying regions of interest enables developers to systematically explore the system behavior and identify performance bottlenecks. As case study, we analyze the process scheduler of the Linux kernel. We are interested in quantifying the synchronization overhead caused by a growing number of CPU cores in a custom, semi-partitioned scheduler design. Conventional tracing methods were not able to obtain measurements with the required accuracy and granularity.
Uniform bounds on symbolic powers in regular rings

We prove a uniform bound on the growth of symbolic powers of arbitrary (not necessarily radical) ideals in arbitrary (not necessarily excellent) regular rings of all characteristics. This gives a complete answer to a question of Hochster and Huneke. In equal characteristic, this result was proved by Ein, Lazarsfeld, and Smith and by Hochster and Huneke. For radical ideals in excellent regular rings of mixed characteristic, this result was proved by Ma and Schwede. We also prove a generalization of these results involving products of various symbolic powers and a uniform bound for regular local rings related to a conjecture of Eisenbud and Mazur, which are completely new in mixed characteristic. In equal characteristic, these results are due to Johnson and to Hochster-Huneke, Takagi-Yoshida, and Johnson, respectively.
The adaptation research about ICS and Chinese management scenario

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to manifest how intellectual capital statement (ICS) adapts the Chinese management scenario. ICS has become a key management instrument for securing competitiveness and sustainable growth in European small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). However, if the approach rooted in Europe can have a good effect in China is still unknown. Design/methodology/approach - – The paper analyzes the reasons why ICS appears in Europe on a macro-level including innovation culture, innovation policy and innovation paths. These aspects are also characterized for China to describe the Chinese management scenario and innovation environment. Further, the paper divides ICS into three parts: model layer, indicators layer and operating layer on a micro-level. For the management scenario of China, it explains the adaptation of the three layers for application in a Chinese context. Findings - – The innovation culture, innovation policy and innovation paths are different in Europe and China. Therefore, the applications of model, indicator and operating layers of ICS are also different in China. The paper indicates that it needs some adjustments when applying ICS in Chinese enterprises. Research limitations/implications - – There are no application practices of ICS in China until now, so the analysis of this paper is based on the theoretical level. Moreover, in the part of innovation culture, the paper is limited to comparing the cultures of Germany and China. Originality/value - – This is the first paper which investigates the application of ICS in China.
Pursuing Happiness: American Consumers in the Twentieth Century

Whether watching baseball or undergoing heart surgery, Americans have bought a variety of goods and services to achieve happiness. Here is a provocative look at what they have chosen to purchase. Stanley Lebergott maintains that the average consumer has behaved more reasonably than many distinguished critics of "materialism" have suggested. He sees consumers seeking to make an uncertain and often cruel world into a pleasanter and more convenient place--and, for the most part, succeeding. With refreshing common sense, he reminds us of what many "luxuries" have meant, especially for women: increased income since 1900 has been used largely to lighten the backbreaking labor once required by household chores.Whether watching baseball or undergoing heart surgery, Americans have bought a variety of goods and services to achieve happiness. Here is a provocative look at what they have chosen to purchase. Stanley Lebergott maintains that the average consumer has behaved more reasonably than many distinguished critics of "materialism" have suggested. He sees consumers seeking to make an uncertain and often cruel world into a pleasanter and more convenient place--and, for the most part, succeeding. With refreshing common sense, he reminds us of what many "luxuries" have meant, especially for women: increased income since 1900 has been used largely to lighten the backbreaking labor once required by household chores.
Time change of perceptual reversal of ambiguous figures by rTMS

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of stimulus frequency and number of pulses during rTMS (repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation) on the phenomenon of perceptual reversal. Particularly, we focused on the temporal dynamics of perceptual reversal in the right SPL (superior parietal lobule), using the spinning wheel illusion. We measured the IRT (inter-reversal time) of perceptual reversal. To investigate whether stimulus frequency or the number of pulses is critical for the rTMS effect, we applied the following schedules over the right SPL and the right PTL (posterior temporal lobe): 0.25Hz 60pulses, 0.25Hz 120pulses, 0.5Hz 120pulses, and 1Hz 120pulses biphasic rTMS at 90% of the resting motor threshold. As a control, we included a No-TMS condition. The results showed that rTMS with 0.25Hz 60pulses over the right SPL caused shorter IRT. There were no significant differences between IRTs for rTMS with 0.25Hz 120pulses, 0.5Hz 120pulses or 1Hz 120pulses over the right SPL. Comparing these results with those of a previous study, we found that an rTMS condition with 60pulses causes shorter IRT; 240pulses causes longer IRT; and 120pulses does not change IRT. Therefore, when applying rTMS over the right SPL, the IRT of perceptual reversal is primarily affected by the number of pulses.
Affirmative constituents in European Portuguese dialogues: Prosodic and pragmatic properties

This paper investigates the correlation between the prosodic properties and pragmatic functions of affirmative constituents in adult-adult interactions in European Portuguese (CORAL corpus). 515 affirmative constituents produced in 460 answers, extracted from 11 dialogues between 12 speakers, were analyzed. Results show that: i) sim ‘yes’, ok and grunts are the most frequent affirmative constituents; ii) sim ‘yes’ is associated with all the communicative functions analyzed, agreement, auto positive and confirm, ok tends to occur with agreement, and grunts are mainly associated to auto positive; iii) affirmative constituents have different prosodic properties according to their pragmatic function: agreement and confirm show a similar behavior, being auto positive the most distinct function. Agreement and confirm are commonly uttered with (H+)L* L%, whereas auto positive is commonly uttered with L*+H / (L+)H* H%. When affirmative constituents co-occur in the same answer, there are evidences of tone copying between them. Correlations between constituents were also found in the following parameters: energy, pitch mean, maxima and minima, as well as pitch range. As for context--answer pairs, a pitch concord effect is also found between the pairs instruct-agreement and propositional question-confirm, although expressed in different degrees.
Surface Flashover Phenomenon Under 180-ns Quasi-Square Wave With Voltage of Several Hundred Kilovolts

Experiments on the surface flashover under 180-ns quasi-square waves with voltage of several hundred kilovolts are reported. In the experiments, employing a 280-kV 180-ns full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) voltage on the load, no flashover occurred. When the voltage was up to 350 kV, even 420 kV, surface flashover along the insulator occurred, and it started at the top part of the applied voltage pulse, so the FWHM of the output voltage of pulse generator was reduced to 150 ns, even 120 ns. Also, the experiment results show that surface flashover channel could be recovered quickly if a heteropolarity voltage was applied on the flashover channel. Finally, the characteristics of the surface flashover are present, including the flashover time, flashover current, and resistance.