Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance

There is a renewed interest in the debate on integration in Africa since the creation of the African Union in 2002. This study investigates the feasibility of a full-fledged economic union in Africa. Towards this goal, we examine the short- and long-term relationships among key macro-variables in eight largest African economies during the period from 1976 to 2005. We observe the existence of common long-term trends in real output, price level, private consumption, government consumption, investment and trade flows among these eight countries. In addition, we observe that there exists common cycles (short-term relationships) in real output, investment and trade flows for these countries. These two critical findings indicate the presence of macroeconomic interdependence among these countries which is a crucial factor for the success of integration in Africa led by these eight countries.
Decentralized supply chain coordination through auction markets: dynamic lot-sizing in distribution networks

As supply chains become bigger and dynamically structured involving multiple organizations with different interests, it is impossible for a single organization to control a whole supply chain. So, decentralization of decision rights is an inevitable facet of managing modern supply chains. However, controlling in a decentralized mode can fail without appropriate coordination mechanisms. When the agents of a supply chain are not willing to cooperate in terms of information sharing, the whole supply chain can exhibit expensive inefficiencies such as the bullwhip effect. In this paper, we design a trustworthy decentralized coordination mechanism for dynamic lot-sizing in distribution networks, as an effort to motivate information sharing. We design multiple auctions and each auction coordinates the plans of a supplier and its customers by trading the right of managing the supplier's inventory plan. The coordination mechanism makes a reasonable profit and the profit is divided in an agreeable way. Also, the profits are actual because of the capability of supporting a truth-telling environment. Therefore, the designed coordination mechanism is trustworthy in that it guarantees the right benefits to all the agents in return for information sharing.
Design and Planning of Heterogeneous Marine Sensor Networks for Marine Intelligent Transportation

To satisfy the stringent requirement of ocean monitoring in Marine Intelligent Transportation System, Marine Sensor Networks (MSNs) is envisioned as one of the most effective solutions. In this paper, we study the Heterogeneous and Double Paths MSNs (HDPM) architecture with Sensors (SNs) in view of the reliability of the networks. And we propose a generic integer linear programming (ILP) model to minimize the total cost under the condition of satisfying the performance of the network. We solve the model by Gurobi, which is the newest ILP solver by now. A series of case studies are conducted to validate the optimization framework and demonstrated the solvability and scalability of the ILP model. Computational results show the significant performance benefits of HDPM in Marine Intelligent Transportation System in terms of lower cost, prolonged lifetime and higher reliability.
Land Administration for Housing Production: Drivers, Concepts, and Analytical Tools

SUMMARY Housing production involves the processes and methods employed to construct or transform inputs like land, labour, capital, physical infrastructure, policies, ideas and information into dwellings. However, land as a major input is currently not well managed to facilitate housing production at scale due to lack of integration across land administration functions: land tenure, land value, land use and land development. The study on which this paper is based argues that the existing poor level of integration (in the context of policies, sub-functions, processes and spatial data services) across the four land administration functions and between levels of government impedes land delivery for housing production. This paper uses the organisation of housing production as the context to develop an analytical tool for understanding the integration across the land administration functions. The methodology is underpinned by the land management paradigm. Through the preliminary results from the case studies, an analytical framework is developed as a tool to develop a national integration assessment framework. This will provide an enabling platform to explore and improve the integration across the four land administration functions and between the different levels of government. Further studies are required to empirically test and validate the framework.
A study on the pass-through effect of international grain price fluctuations on pig feed prices and pig prices in Taiwan

Abstract This study aimed to explore the price pass-through effect among international grain price fluctuations, large pig feed prices (LPFP), and pig prices (PIGP). A DCC-GARCH model was applied as the estimation and data analysis method to study the sampling monthly data, dated from 2000 to 2009, to estimate the infl uential relationships among the three areas studied. Results suggested that the international grain price has a positive direct pass-through effect on LPFP, and an indirect pass-through effect on PIGP. LPFP has a mutual direct passthrough effect on PIGP and price fl uctuation, while price fluctuations of LPFP and PIGP result in a short-term impact. The understanding of the pass-through effect between international grain price fluctuations and the LPFP and PIGP in Taiwan can provide a reference to relevant organizations, pig farmers and dealers in price information and decision-making.
Measuring the Performance of Corporate Acquisitions: An Empirical Comparison of Alternative Metrics

The choice of performance measure has long been a difficult issue facing researchers. This article investigates the comparability of four common measures of acquisition performance: cumulative abnormal returns, managers' assessments, divestment data and expert informants' assessments. Independently each of these measures indicated a mean acquisition success rate of between 44-56%, within a sample of British cross-border acquisitions. However, with the exception of a positive relationship between managers' and expert informants' subjective assessments, no significant correlation was found between the performance data generated by the alternative metrics. In particular, ex-ante capital market reactions to an acquisition announcement exhibited little relation to corporate managers' ex-post assessment. This is seen to reflect the information asymmetry that can exist between investors and company management, particularly regarding implementation aspects. Overall, the results suggest that future acquisitions studies should consider employing multiple performance measures in order to gain a holistic view of outcome, while in the longer term, opportunities remain to identify and refine improved metrics.
Collaborative Partnerships and Crime in Disorganized Communities

Collaborative partnerships can be an effective strategy for crime prevention, especially in disorganized communities. Using ordinary least squares regression with 414 American cities, this article finds that police departments with many collaborative partnerships are able to promote informal social control within their communities and capitalize on the resources available to them with the help of other groups. This contention is supported by the effects of collaborative partnerships on crime rates in disorganized communities in comparison to well-organized communities. Thus, collaborative partnerships of public organizations with other groups may insulate disorganized communities from the effects of community disorganization on levels of crime.
RGS7 Is Palmitoylated and Exists as Biochemically Distinct Forms

Abstract: Regulator of G protein signaling (RGS) proteins are GTPase‐activating proteins that modulate neurotransmitter and G protein signaling. RGS7 and its binding partners Gα and Gβ5 are enriched in brain, but biochemical mechanisms governing RGS7/Gα/Gβ5 interactions and membrane association are poorly defined. We report that RGS7 exists as one cytosolic and three biochemically distinct membrane‐bound fractions (salt‐extractable, detergent‐extractable, and detergent‐insensitive) in brain. To define factors that determine RGS7 membrane attachment, we examined the biochemical properties of recombinant RGS7 and Gβ5 synthesized in Spodoptera frugiperda insect cells. We have found that membrane‐bound but not cytosolic RGS7 is covalently modified by the fatty acid palmitate. Gβ5 is not palmitoylated. Both unmodified (cytosolic) and palmitoylated (membrane‐derived) forms of RGS7, when complexed with Gβ5, are equally effective stimulators of Gαo GTPase activity, suggesting that palmitoylation does not prevent RGS7/Gαo interactions. The isolated core RGS domain of RGS7 selectively binds activated Gαi/o in brain extracts and is an effective stimulator of both Gαo and Gαi1 GTPase activities in vitro. In contrast, the RGS7/Gβ5 complex selectively interacts with Gαo only, suggesting that features outside the RGS domain and/or Gβ5 association dictate RGS7‐Gα interactions. These findings define previously unrecognized biochemical properties of RGS7, including the first demonstration that RGS7 is palmitoylated.
An Implementation of Hybrid Control Strategy for Distributed Generation System Interface Using Xilinx System Generator

This paper presents an analytical study and hardware-in-loop (HIL) cosimulation design of a grid-connected inverter system with a combinational robust observer-based modified repetitive current controller. In this study, main attention is paid to improve power quality and tracking performance of a distributed generation (DG) interfacing system under various perturbations. The inherent delay in convergence of conventional repetitive controller (RC) is reduced by introducing a low pass filter in delay line and this configuration is named as modified RC (MRC). By adding an observer with MRC, system states can be reconstructed, which improve the system dynamic response. Robust stability and convergence criterion are derived in terms of linear matrix inequality using combined Lyapunov function and singular value decomposition technique, which determine the suitable parameters of feedback control and state observer gains. By utilizing these gains, the switching signals are generated to operate the DG interfacing inverter effectively. The performance of proposed controller is compared with traditional proportional integral, proportional resonant, and MRC under both normal and fault conditions. Finally, HIL cosimulation is performed by realizing the power circuit in MATLAB/Simulink as a simulation model and a control structure using Xilinx system generator platform as burnt in hardware Virtex-6 field programmable gate array (FPGA) ML605 evaluation kit.
Reverse correlating trustworthy faces in young and older adults

Little is known about how older persons determine if someone deserves their trust or not based on their facial appearance, a process referred to as “facial trustworthiness. ”In the past few years, Todorov and colleagues have argued that, in young adults, trustworthiness judgments are an extension of emotional judgments, and therefore, that trust judgments are made based on a continuum between anger and happiness (Todorov, 2008; Engell et al., 2010). Evidence from the literature on emotion processing suggest that older adults tend to be less efficient than younger adults in the recognition of negative facial expressions (Calder et al., 2003; Firestone et al., 2007; Ruffman et al., 2008; Chaby and Narme, 2009). Based on Todorov';s theory and the fact that older adults seem to be less efficient than younger adults in identifying emotional expressions, one could expect that older individuals would have different representations of trustworthy faces and that they would use different cues than younger adults in order to make such judgments. We verified this hypothesis using a variation of Mangini and Biederman's (2004) reverse correlation method in order to test and compare classification images resulting from trustworthiness (in the context of money investment), from happiness, and from anger judgments in two groups of participants: young adults and older healthy adults. Our results show that for elderly participants, both happy and angry representations are correlated with trustworthiness judgments. However, in young adults, trustworthiness judgments are mainly correlated with happiness representations. These results suggest that young and older adults differ in their way of judging trustworthiness.
Lobe Identity in the Mongolian Gerbil Prostatic Complex: A New Rodent Model for Prostate Study

Knowledge of structural and physiological differences among the prostatic lobes (PL) is the basis for development of experimental studies in traditional laboratory rodents. Although Mongolian gerbil reproductive organs have been increasingly investigated, its prostate structure is far from being properly known, and investigations of this organ focused on the ventral lobe (VL). Thus, the present study provides a thorough morphological description of prostatic complex in the male adult gerbil on the basis of topographic, histological, and ultrastructural analysis and ductal branching. Like other rodents, four pairs of PL were observed. However, in contrast to the rat and mouse, the VL is the least voluminous component and the dorsolateral lobe (DLL) is the most prominent and spatially isolated from remaining PL. The occurrence of a dorsal lobe (DL), hidden between bladder and insertion of seminal vesicles, has not been mentioned in previous reports with Mongolian gerbil. Collagenase digestion followed by microdissection revealed that, except for DL, which has a tubular‐acinar organization, all PL exhibit tubular organization and variable ductal branching. Distinct histological and ultrastructural features such as secretory epithelium, aspect of luminal secretion and stromal organization are reported for each PL and are confirmed by morphometric and stereological methods. Histological sections showed at least three intralobar segments in VL and DL. Ultrastructural analysis evidenced that, although luminal epithelial cells of PL share typical features of exocrine secretory cells, there are striking lobe phenotypical variations. Both merocrine and apocrine pathways are observed in variable rates in all PL, with the predominance of the former in the DLL and the latter in the CG. The morphological observations presented herein point to distinct structural identities for each PL, which probably reflects specific functional compromise of seminal fluid secretion. These data also point to the gerbil as a good model for investigations concerning the regulation of prostate development and homeostasis, mainly with regard to the dorsal and dorsolateral PL. Anat Rec, 290:1233‐1247, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A case study of science teacher candidates’ understandings and actions related to the culturally responsive teaching of ‘Other’ students

The purpose of this explanatory case study using critical theory as a philosophical lens was to focus on two science teacher candidates‘ understandings of Otherness and their culturally responsive teaching (or the lack thereof) of students they believe are the Others‘. The researchers found that even though the participants had different goals for their students, they were not responsive to some of their students because of the students‘ culture, race, and/or ethnicity. Both of the participants believed their science teacher education program had shortcomings and did not provide all of the needed experiences for them to be successful in their science teaching of the Other‘ students.
Optimizing the stepping of a humanoid robot for a sequence of tasks

In this paper, we present a method to optimize the stepping plan of a humanoid robot according to a sequence of tasks. There is a gain in efficiency to expect from such a method as it helps reduce the time and energy spent by the robot in locomotion. In order to achieve this, we map a motion of the robot satisfying a sequence of tasks to the configuration of a virtual redundant manipulator. This sparse representation keeps track of the footsteps and a posture of the robot for each of the tasks motivating the motion. It leads us to transform the stepping plan optimization problem into an inverse kinematics problem on the virtual manipulator. We also propose an alternative method following a dynamic programming approach that optimizes the stepping plan by knowing one task ahead at a time. We will illustrate these methods in simulation on the humanoid robot HRP-2.
Assessing the Dutch Energy Transition Policy: How Does it Deal with Dilemmas of Managing Transitions?

In the Netherlands, the national government is committed towards altering the systems of energy, transport and agriculture in the name of sustainable development. A process of deliberation and change was started—aimed at achieving ‘transitions’—using a model of transition management. This paper examines how the new arrangements of governance for energy transition deal with six problems of steering: ambivalence about goals, uncertainty about cause–effect relations, distributed power of control, political myopia, determination of short-term steps for long-term change and the danger of lock-in to new systems. The Dutch experience shows that transition management is applied in ways different from the original model (established players play a too great role) but it appears a useful model of reflexive governance, combining advantages of incremental politics with those of planning. It helps to orientate innovation policy and sectoral policies to sustainable development goals and to exploit business interests in system innovations in a prudent manner.
Taking the halogen bonding-hydrogen bonding competition one step further: complexes of difluoroiodomethane with trimethylphosphine, dimethyl sulfide and chloromethane.

To rationalize the driving factors in the competition of halogen bonding and hydrogen bonding, the complexes of the combined halogen-/hydrogen-bond donor difluoroiodomethane with the Lewis bases trimethylphosphine, dimethyl sulfide and chloromethane are studied. For all Lewis bases, ab initio calculations lead to halogen- and hydrogen-bonded complexes. Fourier transform-IR experiments involving solutions of mixtures of difluoroiodomethane with trimethylphosphine(-d9) or dimethyl sulfide(-d6) in liquid krypton confirm the coexistence of a halogen-bonded and hydrogen-bonded complex. Also for solutions containing chloromethane, evidence of the formation of binary associations is found, but no definitive assignment of the multiple complex bands could be made. Using van't Hoff plots, the experimental complexation enthalpies for the halogen- and hydrogen-bonded complex of difluoroiodomethane with trimethylphosphine are determined to be -15.4 (4) and -10.5 (3) kJ mol-1, respectively, while for the halogen- and hydrogen-bonded complexes with dimethyl sulfide, the values are -11.3 (5) and -7.7 (6) kJ mol-1, respectively. The experimental observation that for both trimethylphospine and dimethyl sulfide the halogen-bonded complex is more stable than the hydrogen-bonded complex supports the finding that softer Lewis bases tend to favor iodine halogen bonding over hydrogen bonding.
Differences in Self-Reported Intellectual and Social Gains Between African American and White College Students at Predominantly White Institutions: Implications for Student Affairs Professionals

This study examined the extent to which racial differences existed in self-reported intellectual and social gains between African American and White college students at predominantly White institutions. Taking into account the influence of an array of intervening variables, African American and White students reported significantly different intellectual and social gains in college. Implications for student affairs professionals are discussed.
Job Search and (Re)employment: Taking the Time-varying Nature of Job-search Intensity into Consideration

Cilj naseg istraživanja bio je testirati pretpostavku prema kojoj intenzitet traženja posla ima kljucnu ulogu u zaposljavanju nezaposlenih osoba. U nasem istraživanju testirali smo heuristicki model koji je ukljucivao skupove varijabli koje potencijalno utjecu na (ponovno) zaposljavanje. To su bile biografske karakteristike, cimbenici motivacije za zaposlenjem, ogranicenja u traženju posla i intenzitet traženja posla. Ocekivali smo da intenzitet traženja posla predstavlja najsnažniju odrednicu zaposljavanja te glavni mehanizam kojim ove varijable djeluju na vjerojatnost ponovnog zaposljavanja. Rezultati upucuju da je, kada vodimo racuna o njegovim promjenama tijekom nezaposlenosti, intenzitet traženja posla važan prediktor zaposljavanja te da se veza dijela prediktorskih varijabli sa zaposljavanjem odvija preko njega. Međutim, snažniju odrednicu zaposljavanja predstavljaju biografske karakteristike nezaposlene osobe i njena financijska situacija koje svoj utjecaj na zaposljavanje ostvaruju izravno, mimo traženja posla.
High Stability Engine Control (HISTEC)

Future aircraft turbine engines, both commercial and military, must be able to successfully accommodate expected increased levels of steady-state and dynamic engine-face distortion. The current approach of incorporating a sufficient component design stall margin to tolerate these increased levels of distortion would significantly reduce performance. The objective of the High Stability Engine Control (HISTEC) program is to design, develop, and flight demonstrate an advanced, high-stability, integrated engine control system that uses measurement-based, real-time estimates of distortion to enhance engine stability. The resulting distortion tolerant control reduces the required design stall margin, with a corresponding increase in performance and decrease in fuel burn. The HISTEC concept, consisting of a Distortion Estimation System and a Stability Management Control, has been designed and developed. The Distortion Estimation System uses a small number of high-response pressure sensors at the engine face to calculate indicators of the type and extent of distortion in real time. The Stability Management Control, through direct control of the fan and compressor pressure ratio, accommodates the distortion by transiently increasing the amount of stall margin available based on information from the Distortion Estimation System. Simulation studies have shown the HISTEC distortion tolerant control is able to successfully estimate and accommodate time-varying distortion. Currently, hardware and software systems necessary for flight demonstration of the HISTEC concept are being designed and developed. The HISTEC concept will be flight tested in early 1997.