Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ROLE DES CONFLITS D'AGENCE, DE LA STRUCTURE D'ACTIONNARIAT ET DES MECANISMES DE GOUVERNANCE SUR LES POLITIQUES DE DISTRIBUTION : APPLICATION AUX DECISIONS DE DIVIDENDE ET DE RACHAT D'ACTIONS DES SOCIETES FRANÇAISES COTEES.

L’objectif de cette these est de mieux apprehender les decisions de distribution de liquidites aux actionnaires dans le cadre de la theorie de l’agence, ainsi que le choix de l’instrument de distribution : dividende ou rachat d’actions. La structure de l’actionnariat des entreprises europeennes pousse a elargir le cadre classique et a etudier a la fois l’influence des conflits entre actionnaires et dirigeants, et ceux entre actionnaires majoritaires et minoritaires. Cette analyse necessite la prise en compte des determinants de l’intensite de ces conflits, mais aussi du systeme de gouvernance auquel est soumis l’entreprise. A travers une etude empirique sur les societes francaises du SBF250, nous montrons la pertinence de ce cadre theorique, mais aussi les limites, en France, de l’utilisation des politiques de distribution pour resoudre les conflits d’agence. Si les distributions sont utilisees pour diminuer le risque de Free Cash Flow, elles ont un effet limite face au conflit entre actionnaires majoritaires et minoritaires. Faute de mecanismes de gouvernance alternatifs et efficaces, ces derniers ne parviennent pas a provoquer des distributions, laissant ainsi l’actionnaire dominant libre de diminuer les distributions pour faciliter l’extraction de benefices prives. Par ailleurs, cette these s’interesse au choix de l’instrument de distribution. Ainsi, conformement aux hypotheses issues de la litterature, nous montrons que le rachat est prefere lorsque les dirigeants detiennent des stock-options ou lorsque les revenus de la firme sont temporaires. En revanche, la fiscalite n’influence pas significativement le choix de l’instrument. Enfin, notre recherche souligne que le rachat est un outil de distribution peu utilise en France et que le dividende en reste le moyen privilegie.
The Case for Excluding the Criminal Confessions of the Mentally Ill

Edgar Allen Poe ends his thrilling story, "The Tell-Tale Heart," with a madman's confession, a plot device that provides the story with appropriate closure: the murderer is caught and justice can take place. At its endpoint, the story no longer holds secrets, for we can imagine the rest. The "dreadfully nervous" narrator will be tried in court for killing an old man because of the old man's "pale blue eye, with a film over it" (555). He had "loved" the old man (555), but the "vulture eye" had made the
Parallel techniques for improving three-dimensional models storing and accessing performance

Nowadays, the volume of multimedia and unstructured data has grown rapidly. More and more three-dimensional (3D) models are created for ever increasing applications. New storage and processing technologies are needed to keep pace with the continuous growth of big data. Hadoop is an attractive and open-source platform for large-scale data storage and analytics. Our previous research work has applied Hadoop distributed file system to efficiently manage 3D data for a 3D model retrieval system. To take better advantages of Hadoop, in this paper we propose two parallel strategies to improve the storing and accessing performance of 3D models. The MapReduce paradigm is adopted to provide a coarse grained parallelism for data loading, and a lightweight multithreaded algorithm is presented for data accesses. We conduct an extensive performance study on a cluster and the results show that significant performance increase can be gained for the parallel techniques.
Dynamic evaluation trees for novice C programmers

The dynamic evaluation tree is a method of visualizing expression evaluation that annotates a program’s source code with expression results. It is intended to reduce students’ visual attention problems by removing the need to alternate between disparate source code and expression evaluation windows. We generalise the dynamic evaluation tree to support arbitrary expressions in the C programming language, and present the rst ever implementation for a novicefocused program visualization and debugging tool.
Clinical Case Formulation in the Research Program Subjective Theories: Patients with Chronic Diseases

Summary: Clinical case formulation within the research program subjective theories is based on a constructivistic point of view. The relevance of the subjective constructions was first postulated by Kelly (1955) in his personal construct theory. In his model of “man the scientist” Kelly shows the core assumption of a parallelism between naive and scientific theories. Kelly's model was elaborated within the research program subjective theories (RPST). This article shows the clinical case formulation within the RPST with examples of patients suffering from chronic pancreatitis and from chronic back pain. The RPST proposes a two-phase model for the research process of communicative and explanatory validation. In the phase of communicative validation, we are asking whether patients hold subjective theories about their diseases. In the phase of explanatory validation, we are asking whether these theories influence their behavior during illness. The results of the phase of communicative validation reveal that t.
Using strict implication in background theories for abductive tasks

Abduction is usually defined in terms of classical logical consequence. In this paper we substitute this ’inferential parameter’ by the notion of strict implication. By doing so we hope to put more of the intended meaning of the abductive explanative relation into the background theory. By using strict rather than material implication static domain knowledge for abductive tasks can deal with some limitations of the truthfunctional nature of material implication. It can be proved that by using strict instead of material implication the same explanations can be computed according to a strict version of abduction.
Using Students as Experimental Subjects in Software Engineering Research - A Review and Discussion of the Evidence

Should students be used as experimental subjects in software engineering? Given that students are in many cases readily available and cheap it is no surprise that the vast majority of controlled experiments in software engineering use them. But they can be argued to constitute a convenience sample that may not represent the target population (typically "real" developers), especially in terms of experience and proficiency. This causes many researchers (and reviewers) to have reservations about the external validity of student-based experiments, and claim that students should not be used. Based on an extensive review of published works that have compared students to professionals, we find that picking on "students" is counterproductive for two main reasons. First, classifying experimental subjects by their status is merely a proxy for more important and meaningful classifications, such as classifying them according to their abilities, and effort should be invested in defining and using these more meaningful classifications. Second, in many cases using students is perfectly reasonable, and student subjects can be used to obtain reliable results and further the research goals. In particular, this appears to be the case when the study involves basic programming and comprehension skills, when tools or methodologies that do not require an extensive learning curve are being compared, and in the initial formative stages of large industrial research initiatives -- in other words, in many of the cases that are suitable for controlled experiments of limited scope.
Joint optimization of content caching and push in renewable energy powered small cells

In this paper, we explore the content information to design the joint caching and push mechanism in the small-cell base stations (SBSs) powered by renewable energy. The problem is formulated as a Markov decision process by exploring the features of content popularity and renewal and by taking into consideration the energy consumption for both content fetch from core network and push to the users. The objective is to minimize the number of requests which cannot be met by the SBSs. We adopt the policy iteration algorithm to obtain the optimal caching and push policy. According to the numerical results, the performance gain with large SBS cache size is marginal due to the limited energy. We also find that the optimal policy reveals noticeable performance gain compared with the greedy fetch policy and the non-push policy. In addition, simulations shows the tradeoff between the number of cached contents in the SBS and the available energy for content push.
Route classification using cellular handoff patterns

Understanding utilization of city roads is important for urban planners. In this paper, we show how to use handoff patterns from cellular phone networks to identify which routes people take through a city. Specifically, this paper makes three contributions. First, we show that cellular handoff patterns on a given route are stable across a range of conditions and propose a way to measure stability within and between routes using a variant of Earth Mover's Distance. Second, we present two accurate classification algorithms for matching cellular handoff patterns to routes: one requires test drives on the routes while the other uses signal strength data collected by high-resolution scanners. Finally, we present an application of our algorithms for measuring relative volumes of traffic on routes leading into and out of a specific city, and validate our methods using statistics published by a state transportation authority.
The Mechanisms and Boundary Conditions of the Einstellung Effect in Chess: Evidence from Eye Movements

In a wide range of problem-solving settings, the presence of a familiar solution can block the discovery of better solutions (i.e., the Einstellung effect). To investigate this effect, we monitored the eye movements of expert and novice chess players while they solved chess problems that contained a familiar move (i.e., the Einstellung move), as well as an optimal move that was located in a different region of the board. When the Einstellung move was an advantageous (but suboptimal) move, both the expert and novice chess players who chose the Einstellung move continued to look at this move throughout the trial, whereas the subset of expert players who chose the optimal move were able to gradually disengage their attention from the Einstellung move. However, when the Einstellung move was a blunder, all of the experts and the majority of the novices were able to avoid selecting the Einstellung move, and both the experts and novices gradually disengaged their attention from the Einstellung move. These findings shed light on the boundary conditions of the Einstellung effect, and provide convergent evidence for Bilalić, McLeod, & Gobet (2008)’s conclusion that the Einstellung effect operates by biasing attention towards problem features that are associated with the familiar solution rather than the optimal solution.
CrisisTracker: Crowdsourced social media curation for disaster awareness

Victims, volunteers, and relief organizations are increasingly using social media to report and act on large-scale events, as witnessed in the extensive coverage of the 2010-2012 Arab Spring uprisings and 2011 Japanese tsunami and nuclear disasters. Twitter® feeds consist of short messages, often in a nonstandard local language, requiring novel techniques to extract relevant situation awareness data. Existing approaches to mining social media are aimed at searching for specific information, or identifying aggregate trends, rather than providing narratives. We present CrisisTracker, an online system that in real time efficiently captures distributed situation awareness reports based on social media activity during large-scale events, such as natural disasters. CrisisTracker automatically tracks sets of keywords on Twitter and constructs stories by clustering related tweets on the basis of their lexical similarity. It integrates crowdsourcing techniques, enabling users to verify and analyze stories. We report our experiences from an 8-day CrisisTracker pilot deployment during 2012 focused on the Syrian civil war, which processed, on average, 446,000 tweets daily and reduced them to consumable stories through analytics and crowdsourcing. We discuss the effectiveness of CrisisTracker based on the usage and feedback from 48 domain experts and volunteer curators.
Quantitative Indicator of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Rupture Risk Based on its Geometric Parameters

Abdominal aortic aneurysms rupture (AAAs) is one of the main causes of death in the world. This is a very complex phenomenon that usually occurs “without previous warning”. Currently, criteria to assess the aneurysm rupture risk (peak diameter and growth rate) can not be considered as reliable indicators. In a first approach, the main geometric parameters of aneurysms have been linked into five biomechanical factors. These are combined to obtain a dimensionless rupture risk index, RI(t), which has been validated preliminarily with a clinical case and others from literature. This quantitative indicator is easy to understand, it allows estimating the aneurysms rupture risks and it is expected to be able to identify the one in aneurysm whose peak diameter is less than the threshold value. Based on initial results, a broader study has begun with twelve patients from the Clinic Hospital of Valladolid-Spain, which are submitted to periodic follow-up examinations. Keywords—AAA, Rupture risk prediction, Biomechanical factors, AAA geometric characterization.
A Class of Speed-Sensorless Sliding-Mode Observers for High-Performance Induction Motor Drives

A new family of speed-sensorless sliding-mode observers for induction motor drives has been developed. Three topologies are investigated in order to determine their feasibility, parameter sensitivity, and practical applicability. The most significant feature of all schemes is that they do not require the rotor speed adaptation, i.e., they are inherently sensorless observers. The most versatile and robust is a dual-reference-frame full-order flux observer. The other two schemes are flux observers implemented in stator frame and rotor frame, respectively. These are simpler than the first one and make use of the sliding-mode invariance over a specified range of modeling uncertainties and disturbances. Main theoretical aspects, results of parameter sensitivity analysis, and implementation details are given for each observer in order to allow the comparison. Experimental results with the dual-reference-frame observer, considered the most adequate for practical applications, are presented and discussed. Sensorless operation with a sliding-mode direct-torque-controlled drive at very low speeds is demonstrated. It is concluded that the new proposed observers represent a feasible alternative to the classical speed-adaptive flux observers.
Refined Probability of Differential Characteristics Including Dependency Between Multiple Rounds

The current paper studies the probability of differential characteristics for an unkeyed (or with a fixed key) construction. Most notably, it focuses on the gap between two probabilities of differential characteristics: probability with independent S-box assumption, pind, and exact probability, pexact. It turns out that pexact is larger than pind in Feistel network with some S-box based inner function. The mechanism of this gap is then theoretically analyzed. The gap is derived from interaction of S-boxes in three rounds, and the gap depends on the size and choice of the S-box. In particular the gap can never be zero when the S-box is bigger than six bits. To demonstrate the power of this improvement, a related-key differential characteristic is proposed against a lightweight block cipher RoadRunneR. For the 128-bit key version, pind of 2−48 is improved to pexact of 2−43. For the 80-bit key version, pind of 2−68 is improved to pexact of 2−62. The analysis is further extended to SPN with an almost-MDS binary matrix in the core primitive of the authenticated encryption scheme Minalpher: pind of 2−128 is improved to pexact of 2−96, which allows to extend the attack by two rounds.
Semantically enhanced pseudo relevance feedback for Arabic information retrieval

The conventional information retrieval (IR) framework consists of four primary phases, namely, pre-processing, indexing, querying and retrieving results. Some phases of the current Arabic IR (AIR) framework have several drawbacks. This research aims to enhance an AIR by improving the processes in a conventional IR framework. We introduce an enhanced stop-word list in the pre-processing level and investigate several Arabic stemmers. In addition, an Arabic WordNet was utilized in the corpus and query expansion levels. We also adopted semantic information for the Pseudo Relevance Feedback. The enhanced Arabic IR framework was built and evaluated using TREC 2001 data. The technique of using the Arabic WordNet to build a semantic relationship between query and corpus in two levels, that is, the corpus and query levels, is a new one. The enhanced AIR framework demonstrated an improvement by 49% in terms of mean average precision, with an increase of 7.3% in recall compared with the baseline framework.
Silicic volcanism on Mars evidenced by tridymite in high-SiO2 sedimentary rock at Gale crater

Significance Tridymite, a SiO2 mineral that crystallizes at low pressures and high temperatures (>870 °C) from high-SiO2 materials, was detected at high concentrations in a sedimentary mudstone in Gale crater, Mars. Mineralogy and abundance were determined by X-ray diffraction using the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument on the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity. Terrestrial tridymite is commonly associated with silicic volcanism where high temperatures and high-silica magmas prevail, so this occurrence is the first in situ mineralogical evidence for martian silicic volcanism. Multistep processes, including high-temperature alteration of silica-rich residues of acid sulfate leaching, are alternate formation pathways for martian tridymite but are less likely. The unexpected discovery of tridymite is further evidence of the complexity of igneous petrogenesis on Mars, with igneous evolution to high-SiO2 compositions. Tridymite, a low-pressure, high-temperature (>870 °C) SiO2 polymorph, was detected in a drill sample of laminated mudstone (Buckskin) at Marias Pass in Gale crater, Mars, by the Chemistry and Mineralogy X-ray diffraction instrument onboard the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity. The tridymitic mudstone has ∼40 wt. % crystalline and ∼60 wt. % X-ray amorphous material and a bulk composition with ∼74 wt. % SiO2 (Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer analysis). Plagioclase (∼17 wt.% of bulk sample), tridymite (∼14 wt.%), sanidine (∼3 wt.%), cation-deficient magnetite (∼3 wt.%), cristobalite (∼2 wt.%), and anhydrite (∼1 wt.%) are the mudstone crystalline minerals. Amorphous material is silica-rich (∼39 wt.% opal-A and/or high-SiO2 glass and opal-CT), volatile-bearing (16 wt.% mixed cation sulfates, phosphates, and chlorides−perchlorates−chlorates), and has minor TiO2 and Fe2O3T oxides (∼5 wt.%). Rietveld refinement yielded a monoclinic structural model for a well-crystalline tridymite, consistent with high formation temperatures. Terrestrial tridymite is commonly associated with silicic volcanism, and detritus from such volcanism in a “Lake Gale” catchment environment can account for Buckskin’s tridymite, cristobalite, feldspar, and any residual high-SiO2 glass. These cogenetic detrital phases are possibly sourced from the Gale crater wall/rim/central peak. Opaline silica could form during diagenesis from high-SiO2 glass, as amorphous precipitated silica, or as a residue of acidic leaching in the sediment source region or at Marias Pass. The amorphous mixed-cation salts and oxides and possibly the crystalline magnetite (otherwise detrital) are primary precipitates and/or their diagenesis products derived from multiple infiltrations of aqueous solutions having variable compositions, temperatures, and acidities. Anhydrite is post lithification fracture/vein fill.
Removal of Chromates and Sulphates by Mg/Fe LDH and Heterostructured LDH/Halloysite Materials: Efficiency, Selectivity, and Stability of Adsorbents in Single- and Multi-Element Systems

Industrial wastewaters often contain mobile and toxic anions that cannot be removed by precipitation techniques and most known adsorbents. Layered double hydroxides (LDH) are excellent scavengers of anions; however, their use in real applications is of minor importance owing to their swelling behavior and high cost of production. The performed research shows the possibility of obtaining Mg/Fe LDH using natural magnesite. Moreover, heterostructured LDH/halloysite materials were synthesized. The adsorption efficiency of these materials was very high in both single- and multi-element systems, confirming the LDH selectivity. This was with the exception of wastewaters containing a high concentration of chlorides, which clearly hampered the removal of Cr(VI) and S(VI). The measurements indicated that LDH dissolution took place to a small extent (<10 wt%). The LDH/halloysite materials showed lower efficiency than the raw LDH; however, the clay presence has several benefits in terms of future applications: (i) it significantly reduces the pH, especially in contrast to the calcined LDH, which enables the reuse or safe disposal of purified water; (ii) it reduces swelling of the composite, which opens the possibility for applications in column adsorption; (iii) it induces dual adsorption properties through additional cation adsorption; and (iv) it substantially lowers the price of the adsorbent.
MIRACLE at ImageCLEF 2004

The second participation of the MIRACLE (Multilingual Information RetrievAl for the CLEf campaign) research group in the ImageCLEF task is described in this paper. New techniques, devoted to the combination of linguistic and statistical language processing methods, have been tested, continuing with the experiments carried out in last year
Regulation of Linear Systems With Unknown Exosystems of Uncertain Order

The problem of designing an output feedback control law which exponentially achieves output regulation is considered for known stabilizable and detectable linear systems which are allowed to be non-minimum phase; output references and/or additive disturbances are both generated by a linear exosystem with unknown purely imaginary eigenvalues and uncertain order. The novelty of this note is to require only an upper bound on the exosystem order to achieve a global solution which includes exponentially convergent estimates of the exosystem unknown frequencies