Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean: growth transitions rather than steady states

Recent evidence on economic growth indicates that growth fluctuations at frequencies of a decade or so are at the centre of the Latin American countries'growth story. In this context, investment has played an important role as a source of growth, while national saving has been the main source of investment financing. Foreign saving has played a secondary role and has generally been substituted for national saving, rather than augmenting the total amount of savings available in Latin America. The high volatility and vulnerability to external swings exhibited by foreign capital have made foreign saving an unstable source of investment financing. This study on Latin America helps to provide a statistical framework for analysing the growth story of Latin America. Transitions affecting per capita GDP growth, investment and national and foreign savings rates are identified, as are common and country-specific transitions, based on comparisons of a sample group of eight Latin American countries with the Latin American and Caribbean region as a whole for the period 1960-2005. This research also helps to demonstrate that some growth episodes are not well captured by standard growth theories and econometric work developed and based on different economic contexts and time periods. The study confirms some general conclusions reached in the literature but provides evidence that raises doubts about others. Although growth needs to be sustained by higher investment rates, an initial impulse from investment is not required in order for growth to accelerate. It is not always the case that growth accelerations are accompanied by rising national savings rates; the latter may also decline. Foreign saving does not, in most cases, add to total saving (equal to investment), and the crowding out of national saving by foreign saving seems to be positively biased (being stronger when foreign saving is rising).
Independent Speaker Identification using Wavelet Transform

The purpose of this paper is to evolve a robust text independent speaker identification system based on the wavelet transform, which is able to analyze signal at multiple resolutions. The proposed system identifies speakers by their acoustic characteristics embedded in speech signal of speakers. Features are obtained from approximation and detail coefficients by calculating entropy, standard deviation and mean at each decomposition level. The similarity between the extracted features and a set of reference features is calculated by means of K-NN classifier to determine the speaker’s identity. The results are evaluated with VoxForge speech corpus containing more than 200 speakers and each speaker profile contains ten speech signals. The results achieved are promising with 83.9 % accuracy for 200 speakers. Some popular existing methods are also evaluated for comparison in this paper. The result shows that the proposed method is more effective and robust than other methods. The performance of our system is very good with noisy dataset at different SNR. KeywordsDiscrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) Classifier, Speaker Identification System
Adjustable Autonomy for Route-Direction Following

In 2002 and 2003, five government, scholastic, and industry research groups worked together to attempt the AAAI Robot Challenge. In short, autonomous robots are to attempt the roles of graduate students at the American Association of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) conference. Two of the main thrusts of the Robot Challenge are for robots to demonstrate autonomy and to interact with people in natural and dynamic environments. This paper focuses on the task of the robot finding its way from the front door of the conference center to the registration desk by asking for directions. Asking for and following route directions in a partially known environment provides a rich testbed for interacting with an autonomous system. This paper describes the task and the environment, details the adjustable autonomy architecture implemented for the Robot Challenge, and compares it against other approaches. It also presents the problems encountered using this architecture, and suggests further refinements.
COMPACT MAXIMUM ENTROPY LANGUAGE MODELS

In language modeling we are always confronted with a sparse d ata problem. The Maximum Entropy formalism allows to fully inte grate complementary statistical properties of limited cor pora. The focus of the present paper is twofold. The new smoothing tech nique ofLM-induced marginals is introduced and discussed. We then highlight the advantages resulting from a combination of robust features and show that the brute-force inclusion of t oo many constraints may deteriorate the performance due to overtra ining effects. Very good LMs may be trained on the basis of pair correlations which are supplemented by heavily pruned N -grams. This is especially true ifword andclass based features are combined. Tests were carried out for the German Verbmobil task and on WSJ data. The test-set perplexities were reduced by 3-7% and the number of free parameters was reduced by 60-75%. At the same time overtraining effects are considerably reduced.
A Chip-Multiprocessor Architecture with Speculative Multithreading

Much emphasis is now being placed on chip-multiprocessor (CMP) architectures for exploiting thread-level parallelism in applications. In such architectures, speculation may be employed to execute applications that cannot be parallelized statically. In this paper, we present an efficient CMP architecture for the speculative execution of sequential binaries without source recompilation. We present software support that enables the identification of threads from a sequential binary. The hardware includes a memory disambiguation mechanism that enables the detection of interthread memory dependence violations during speculative execution. This hardware is different from past proposals in that it does not rely on a snoopy-based cache-coherence protocol. Instead, it uses an approach similar to a directory-based scheme. Furthermore, the architecture includes a simple and efficient hardware mechanism to enable register-level communication between on-chip processors. Evaluation of this software-hardware approach shows that it is quite effective in achieving high performance when running sequential binaries.
High IMFDR 3 Switched-Capacitor Amplifier design in CMOS 65nm

Abstract: Due to the continuous feature size downscaling trend of integrated circuit (IC) technologies and their corresponding supply voltages realizing high dynamic range (DR) receiver (RX) front-ends becomes increasingly problematic. Therefore a new „mixer-first‟ receiver front-end is envisioned, in which the mixer (MIX) is directly connected to the antenna, instead of using a traditional receiver front-end, in which the mixer is preceded with a low noise amplifier (LNA) stage limiting the dynamic range. A proper subsequent amplifier (AMP) stage is however still lacking being the focus in this document. Since the mixer stage already limits the noise performance the initial focus is upon realizing a highly linear amplifier. Knowing the initial desire to design a highly linear amplifier an amplifier topology is proposed, the dominant distortion mechanism determined and an optimization for high linearity suggested. Regarding the noise also the dominant contributing mechanism and an optimization method are revealed. Both parameters are considered for complementary metal-oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) 65nm integrated circuit technology being the current design technology node. Regarding the already existing literature, uniqueness is found in applying capacitive- rather than resistive feedback, with high linearity as the dominant design consideration. Also the switched biasing inside the capacitive feedback network is uncommon, allowing different Op Amp input- and output common-mode (CM) voltages. Finally the majority of the research already available is for old integrated circuit technologies and this document may hence provide additional insights for upcoming technology design nodes. The obtained amplifier performance specifications are an input-referred third-order intercept point (IIP3) of 19.6dBm. An equivalent input-referred noise voltage (EIRNV) of 2.93nV/Hz (at 20MHz). A closed-loop (CL) gain (ACL) and bandwidth (BWCL) of 11.9dB respectively 88.5MHz with a power consumption of 11.2mW.
Discourse Relation Recognition by Comparing Various Units of Sentence Expression with Recursive Neural Network

We propose a method for implicit discourse relation recognition using a recursive neural network (RNN). Many previous studies have used the word-pair feature to compare the meaning of two sentences for implicit discourse relation recognition. Our proposed method differs in that we use various-sized sentence expression units and compare the meaning of the expressions between two sentences by converting the expressions into vectors using the RNN. Experiments showed that our method significantly improves the accuracy of identifying implicit discourse relations compared with the word-pair method.
How does the stock market affect the economy

The three feature articles in this issue were written before the tragic events of September 11. The delays at our borders with both Mexico and Canada subsequent to September 11 underscore the thrust of the article on U.S.–Mexico trade. And the sharp decline in stock prices the week of September 17, when the markets reopened, reinforces John Duca’s conclusion that the stock market plays a very important role in the U.S. economy. Harvey Rosenblum Senior Vice President and Director of Research September 24, 2001 Issue 5 September/October 2001
Practical and Verifiable C++ Dynamic Cast for Hard Real-Time Systems

The dynamic cast operation allows flexibility in the design and use of data management facilities in object-oriented programs. Dynamic cast has an important role in the implementation of the Data Management Services (DMS) of the Mission Data System Project (MDS), the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s experimental work for providing a state-based and goal-oriented unified architecture for testing and development of mission software. DMS is responsible for the storage and transport of control and scientific data in a remote autonomous spacecraft. Like similar operators in other languages, the C++ dynamic cast operator does not provide the timing guarantees needed for hard real-time embedded systems. In a recent study, Gibbs and Stroustrup (G&S) devised a dynamic cast implementation strategy that guarantees fast constant-time performance. This paper presents the definition and application of a cosimulation framework to formally verify and evaluate the G&S fast dynamic casting scheme and its applicability in the Mission Data System DMS application. We describe the systematic process of model-based simulation and analysis that has led to performance improvement of the G&S algorithm’s heuristics by about a factor of 2. In this work we introduce and apply a library for extracting semantic information from C++ source code that helps us deliver a practical and verifiable implementation of the fast dynamic casting algorithm.
Vulnerable to (un)employment during the Great Recession

This thesis investigates the vulnerability to unemployment of employees in the Netherlands during the Great Recession which started in 2008. The effects on the labour market of an economic recession and the subsequent demand shock are mainly through the labour demand side of the labour market. The theoretical framework is shows that the labour demand depends on the marginal benefits and the marginal costs of labour. The marginal benefits of labour are determined by the marginal product of labour and the marginal costs of labour are determined by the wages and labour adjustment costs. The costs of other production factors could also affect the demand of labour, especially in the long run. From the theory is expected that younger employees, employees with flexible contracts, unskilled and low skilled employees and employees working in occupations sensitive to demand shocks, are most likely to become unemployed during an economic recession. The likelihood to inflow in unemployment benefits or benefit income support is empirically estimated by a logistic model using data of employees in the Netherlands between 2008 and 2013. Besides demographic characteristics are socio-economic, regional and sectoral data used to estimate the vulnerability to unemployment. The results demonstrates that prime age men with foreign origin and low income level are vulnerable to inflow in unemployment benefits or benefits income support. Employees living in the more rural areas of the Netherlands or living in high urbanized areas are more likely to become unemployed. Workers employed in temporary jobs or occupations sensitive to demand shocks are also more likely to lose their job.
Does it Matter Who Has the Right to Patent: First-to-Invent or First-to-File? Lessons from Canada

A switch to a first-to-file patent regime from its first-to-invent system has become imminent for the U.S. To learn about probable effects of such a policy change, we examine a similar switch that occurred in Canada in 1989. We find that the switch failed to stimulate Canadian R&D efforts. Nor did it have any effects on overall patenting. However, the reforms had a small adverse effect on domestic-oriented industries and skewed the ownership structure of patented inventions towards large corporations, away from independent inventors and small businesses. These findings challenge the merits of adopting a first-to-file patent regime.
Development and Stem Cells Research Article

INTRODUCTION Complex behaviors require the coordinated action of diverse ensembles of neurons. Each neuron contains a distinct combination of neural function genes, which include genes encoding neurotransmitter biosynthetic enzymes, neuropeptides, vesicular transporters, membrane transporters, neurotransmitter receptors and axon guidance proteins. One of the key goals in developmental neuroscience is to understand how neural gene expression is regulated, and how this defines each neuron and its precursors during development. Not only will this help explain how neuronal diversity is generated, but provide insights into the origins of human nervous system disease and the development of effective therapies. Efforts to reach these goals have been systematically applied towards studying the development of dopaminergic neurons because of their prominent neurobiological roles in reward, emotion and locomotory pathways, and their importance in neurodegenerative diseases. Parkinson's disease is characterized by the loss of midbrain dopaminergic neurons, and a major goal of neural stem cell research is to generate dopaminergic neurons in vitro for cell replacement therapies to counteract Parkinson's disease. Studies in vertebrates have identified multiple regulatory proteins that are required for controlling gene expression and
Teachers’ perceptions about ICTs for teaching, professional development, administration and personal use

Tanzania has been investing in the integration of information and communications technologies (ICT) in education for several decades. However, little is known about teachers’ perceptions about ICT integration in education. This study examined teachers’ perceptions about the use of ICT tools for teaching, administration, professional development and personal use. Seventy four teachers were involved in the study. Data were collected through an online survey using SurveyMonkey and postings generated from the researcher’s blog. Qualitative data were downloaded from the blog and from SurveyMonkey; read word for word; and analysed using Weft QDA where themes related to the research questions were coded while quantitative data from SurveyMonkey were analysed online in the form of percentages. Results indicate that while the frequency of use of ICT was influenced by access, the competence of ICT use was influenced by training; teachers used ICT in a wide range for teaching, administration, professional development and personal use. However, teachers did not use ICT to radically change their pedagogical practices, but rather to sustain their traditional practices. Future research could focus on classroom observations to ascertain the actual use of ICT as data for this study have solely depended on self-reports; and the role of school leadership for integration of ICT in the teachinglearning process needs to be examined.
The changing structure of relationships between foreign aid and local systems

This dissertation project examines the extent to which the interaction between the international aid and the public health systems in Thailand generates change in both systems by examining the Global Fund process over the last ten years. This research uses complexity science, network theory, and organizational collaboration literatures, taking Elinor Ostrom’s institutional analysis and development framework as its theoretical foundation. The Global Fund is an action arena that bridges both the local public health action arena and the Thai foreign aid action arena. It creates structures that result in organizational interactions, program design and implementation, and program evaluations that feed back into both the local public health and foreign aid action arenas, resulting in change in both. This project uses document analysis, network analysis and interviews conducted during fieldwork in Thailand to examine how interactions between organizations change the structure of relationships, organizational roles and influence and program outcomes. It finds that the Global Fund process results in network structural and substantive changes, including changes in density, development of sub-network structures and changes in participants and program focus. Through these changes, the process engenders positive adaptation within the public health sector in Thailand, by improving human, organizational and community capacity and by reaching previously underserved populations, and positive adaptation in the foreign aid system in Thailand through the changing the roles of these organizations, adapting from agenda setters to providers of technical assistance. This study makes important contributions to the fields of complexity and systems, organizational collaboration and network theory. It finds that the bridging action arena creates and enhances relationships between organizational members, resulting in adaptation within the arenas it overlaps. The results are changes in the attributes of the community and the rules in which they operate within both systems. It also changes the material conditions of both the systems it overlaps. This study is an exploratory endeavor that seeks to expand the understanding of overlapping systems and contribute to theories surrounding this phenomenon. In the process of this research, theoretical questions emerged about the nature of these overlapping systems, about the participants within them, and about how they develop over time that will inform future research agendas.
Towards a legitimate compromise? An exploration of Integrated Reporting in the Netherlands

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to examine the multiplicity of views on integrated reporting and to consider the possibility of, and impediments to, reconciling these multiple rationales (“orders of worth”) and thus gain legitimacy through a compromise. This sheds light on the understanding of integrated reporting as such, as well as shows how legitimacy struggles are resolved in practice around complex accounting practices in heterogeneous environments. Design/methodology/approach - – This explorative paper empirically applies Boltanski and Thevenot's sociology of worth (SOW) framework to analyse integrated reporting in the Dutch reporting field. Data were collected using multiple methods, including 64 semi-structured in-depth interviews with a wide range of relevant actors, and documentary analysis. Data were coded for the presence of orders of worth and legitimating compromise mechanisms. Findings - – The author's analysis suggests that integrated reporting combines the disparate domains of industrial, market, civic and green order of worth. These different logics of valuation need to be reconciled in a compromise in order for integrated reporting to become a legitimate practice. Such a compromise requires a common interest, avoidance of clarification and maintenance of ambiguity. The author's analysis suggests these mechanisms are violated though, with the risk that integrated reporting gets captured by investors and accountants, leading to local private arrangements rather than durable legitimate compromise. Research limitations/implications - – First, SOW informs the understanding of integrated reporting. It highlights in particular its fragility as fundamentally different rationales need to be reconciled, which is a challenge yet also gives rise to creative frictions. Second, the SOW framework creates the possibility for scholars to look closer at the dynamics of legitimacy and at the possible mechanisms to attain legitimacy in fragmented and heterogeneous environment. Practical implications - – The SOW framework offers tools for practitioners, in particular those working within a pluralistic context. The various mechanisms of compromise discussed in this paper provide practical guidelines for how to manage this complexity and gain or maintain legitimacy. Originality/value - – This rich empirical study combines a novel theoretical approach (the SOW framework) with an analysis of the relatively unexplored topic of integrated reporting. At the same time it introduces a conceptualisation of legitimacy that highlights communicative and constitutive dialogue and goes beyond fit and compliance.
Assessing the biodegradability of terrestrially-derived organic matter in Scottish sea loch sediments

Abstract. Lignin oxidation products, oxygen uptake rates, molar organic carbon to nitrogen (OC/N) ratio (from bulk elemental analysis) and Rp values (from loss on ignition experiments, the ratio of the refractory to total organic matter, OM) were determined for sediments along transects of Loch Creran and Loch Etive. Lignin data indicated the importance of riverine inputs contributing to land-derived carbon in the lochs as total lignin (Λ, mg/100 mg organic carbon, OC) decreased from 0.69 to 0.45 and 0.70 to 0.29 from the head to outside of Loch Creran and Loch Etive, respectively. In addition, significant correlations of lignin content against total OM and OC (p
Neuroplasticity explained by broad-scale networks and modularity?

The human brain is a formidably complex network, the seat of cognition and consciousness and many other remarkable features, including the capacities of growth, self-organisation, reorganisation and the ability to recover from significant damage. This combined dynamic capability is known as plasticity. Considerable neuro-reorganisation is a feature of the brain commonly thought to be restricted to childhood (the Kennard Principle); however, it is known to be a feature of adult brains as well. This paper provides a brief history of early theory and research, still valid today, on brain or neuroplasticity before discussing how current network theory and new brain mapping research on modularity can be synthesised to provide insight into this adaptive function from structure.