Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Auditing Your Human Resources Department: A Step-by-Step Guide

Part 1 Information gathering: department mission department organization department employees labour relations recruitment and selection education, training and development employee relations benefits compensation. Part 2 Evaluation: department mission department organization department employees labour relations recruitment and selection education, training and development employee relations benefits compensation. Part 3 Analysis: total category ratings department mission department organization department employees labour relations recruitment and selection education, training and development employee relations benefits compensation functional category grouping analysis summary analysis human resources survey category and analysis perception analysis summary human resources department analysis comparison with advisory board weightings human resource department analysis using your weightings cost comparison analysis asset comparison matrix final analysis. Part 4 Action planning: action planning charts.
Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia

My goal is to show the reader that the Soviet political and economic system was unstable by its very nature. It was just a question of when and how it would collapse. -From the Introduction to Collapse of an Empire The Soviet Union was an empire in many senses of the word -a vast mix of far-flung regions and accidental citizens by way of conquest or annexation. Typical of such empires, it was built on shaky foundations. That instability made its demise inevitable, asserts Yegor Gaidar, former prime minister of Russia and architect of the "shock therapy" economic reforms of the 1990s. Yet a growing desire to return to the glory days of empire is pushing today's Russia backward into many of the same traps that made the Soviet Union untenable. In this important new book, Gaidar clearly illustrates why Russian nostalgia for empire is dangerous and ill-fated: "Dreams of returning to another era are illusory. Attempts to do so will lead to defeat. " Gaidar uses world history, the Soviet experience, and economic analysis to demonstrate why swimming against this tide of history would be a huge mistake. The USSR sowed the seeds of its own economic destruction, and Gaidar worries that Russia is repeating some of those mistakes. Once again, for example, the nation is putting too many eggs into one basket, leaving the nation vulnerable to fluctuations in the energy market. The Soviets had used revenues from energy sales to prop up struggling sectors such as agriculture, which was so thoroughly ravaged by hyperindustrialization that the Soviet Union became a net importer of food. When oil prices dropped in the 1980s, that revenue stream diminished, and dependent sectors suffered heavily. Although strategies requiring austerity or sacrifice can be politically difficult, Russia needs to prepare for such downturns and restrain spending during prosperous times. Collapse of an Empire shows why it is imperative to fix the roof before it starts to rain, and why sometimes the past should be left in the past.
Mr. Holland's failure : how ethnic discrimination by teachers affects future student success

This thesis analyzes student responses in the Children of Immigr ants Longitudinal Study to explore the effects that reported teacher discriminati on has on future student success. The analysis finds that while the magnitude of estimate d effect varies between measures of success, there is a clear association between ex p riencing or perceiving teacher discrimination and negative outcomes for students.
Appendix S1. the Deterministic Sirs Model S2. the Gillespie Algorithm

The deterministic SIRS model is defined by the following system of differential equations: dS dt = −βSI + αR (1) dI dt = βSI − γI (2) dR dt = γI − αR. This system cannot be solved analytically due to the nonlinear term βSI in equations 1 and 2. However, we may approach its behavior qualitatively. If every species is initially susceptible, then a newly introduced Wolbachia-infected species is expected to infect others at the rate β during the expected infectious period 1/γ. Therefore, this infectious species is expected to infect on average β/γ species. This quantity is called the basic reproduction number (or basic reproductive ratio) and is denoted by R 0 : R 0 = β γ. (4) Verbally, R 0 is defined as the average number of secondary infections that occur when one infective is introduced into a completely susceptible host population. An infection can invade and persist in a new host assemblage if and only if R 0 > 1; otherwise, the infection should die out. Any infection that, on average, is not transmitted to more than one new host is not going to spread (Keeling and Rohani, 2008). In order to analyze the long-term behavior of the epidemic, we consider the equilibrium states of the system, with dS dt = dI dt = dR dt = 0. The disease-free equilibrium can be expressed as (S * det , I * det , R * det) = (1, 0, 0). With regard to the (positive) endemic equilibrium, we are mainly interested in the proportion of infected species at equilibrium, I * det. The endemic equilibrium for the proportion of infecteds is given by I * det = 1 − γ/β 1 + γ/α = 1 − 1/R 0 1 + γ/α. (5) Obviously, the endemic equilibrium is only feasible if R 0 > 1; otherwise, it would be less than or equal to zero. This agrees with the condition for an infection to be able to spread initially. We make use of the direct method of the Gillespie algorithm which is a procedure for generating time-evolution trajectories of finite populations in continuous time (Gillespie, 1977). Here, we follow the approach by Keeling and Rohani (2008). We consider a network (species assemblage) of size N. Every node in the network is represented by its current infection state. The state vector s(t) = (s 1 (t),. …
Exploiting the Web of Data to provide descriptions of ICT tools: a preliminary report about SEEK-AT-WD

In order to support educators when selecting ICT tools, several educational organizations provide ICT tool registries whose functionality is limited by the data they contain. These registries could reduce the cost of creating and updating their datasets obtaining ICT tool descriptions from the Web of Data. However, some problems hinder the educational consumption of these descriptions: they are not described using an appropriate vocabulary for this specic domain and registries do not discriminate which tools are useful for education. SEEK-AT-WD is proposed as an infrastructure that overcomes these problems and consumes ICT tool descriptions from the Web of Data, publishing them back once they are related to educational concepts. This paper discusses the challenges found when developing SEEK-AT-WD, and how they were solved to take advantage of data from the Web in the educational applications.
Modeling biological systems with Answer Set Programming

Biology has made great progress in identifying and measuring the building blocks of life. The availability of high-throughput methods in molecular biology has dramatically accelerated the growth of biological knowledge for various organisms. The advancements in genomic, proteomic and metabolomic technologies allow for constructing complex models of biological systems. An increasing number of biological repositories is available on the web, incorporating thousands of biochemical reactions and genetic regulations. Systems Biology is a recent research trend in life science, which fosters a systemic view on biology. In Systems Biology one is interested in integrating the knowledge from all these different sources into models that capture the interaction of these entities. By studying these models one wants to understand the emerging properties of the whole system, such as robustness. However, both measurements as well as biological networks are prone to considerable incompleteness, heterogeneity and mutual inconsistency, which makes it highly nontrivial to draw biologically meaningful conclusions in an automated way. Therefore, we want to promote Answer Set Programming (ASP) as a tool for discrete modeling in Systems Biology. ASP is a declarative problem solving paradigm, in which a problem is encoded as a logic program such that its answer sets represent solutions to the problem. ASP has intrinsic features to cope with incompleteness, offers a rich modeling language and highly efficient solving technology. We present ASP solutions, for the analysis of genetic regulatory networks, determining consistency with observed measurements and identifying minimal causes for inconsistency. We extend this approach for computing minimal repairs on model and data that restore consistency. This method allows for predicting unobserved data even in case of inconsistency. Further, we present an ASP approach to metabolic network expansion. This approach exploits the easy characterization of reachability in ASP and its various reasoning methods, to explore the biosynthetic capabilities of metabolic reaction networks and generate hypotheses for extending the network. Finally, we present the BioASP library, a Python library which encapsulates our ASP solutions into the imperative programming paradigm. The library allows for an easy integration of ASP solution into system rich environments, as they exist in Systems Biology.
A Comprehensive View of the 2006 December 13 CME: From the Sun to Interplanetary Space

The biggest halo coronal mass ejection (CME) since the Halloween storm in 2003, which occurred on 2006 December 13, is studied in terms of its solar source and heliospheric consequences. The CME was accompanied by an X3.4 flare, EUV dimmings, and coronal waves. It generated significant space weather effects such as an interplanetary shock, radio bursts, major solar energetic particle (SEP) events, and a magnetic cloud (MC) that were detected by a fleet of spacecraft including STEREO, ACE, WIND, and Ulysses. Reconstruction of the MC with the Grad-Shafranov (GS) method yields an axis orientation oblique to the flare ribbons. Observations of the SEP intensities and anisotropies show that the particles can be trapped, deflected, and reaccelerated by the large-scale transient structures. The CME-driven shock was observed at both the Earth and Ulysses when they were separated by 74° in latitude and 117° in longitude, which is the largest shock extent ever detected. The ejecta seem to have been missed at Ulysses. The shock arrival time at Ulysses is well predicted by an MHD model that can propagate the 1 AU data outward. The CME/shock is tracked remarkably well from the Sun all the way to Ulysses by coronagraph images, type II frequency drift, in situ measurements, and the MHD model. These results reveal a technique that combines MHD propagation of the solar wind and type II emissions to predict the shock arrival time at the Earth, which is a significant advance for space weather forecasting, especially when in situ data become available from the Solar Orbiter and Solar Sentinels.
Joint Estimation of Mark-up and Bargaining Power Parameters for Belgian Manufacturing

This paper applies several extensions of Hall's (1988) methodology to analyse imperfections in both the product and the labour market for firms in the Belgian manufacturing industry over the period 1988-1995. We investigate (1) the heterogeneity in mark-up and bargaining power parameters among 17 sectors within the manufacturing industry, (2) whether higher bargaining power parameters are associated with higher mark-ups and (3) whether both parameters are influenced by cyclical and competition effects. Our GMM results indicate that ignoring imperfection in the labour market leads to an underestimation in the price-cost margin of Belgian manufacturing firms. These findings are confirmed in the sectoral analysis. As expected, higher bargaining power parameters are associated with higher price-cost margins at the sectoral level. We find that both the mark-up and the bargaining power parameter move procyclically. Finally, after controlling for cyclical effects, our results show that the introduction of a new competition policy in Belgium in 1993 has exerted a statistically significant negative effect on the price mark-ups, leaving the bargaining strength of the workers unchanged. Hence, the stringent competition law seems to have disciplined firms? pricing behaviour.
In vitro correction of JAK3-deficient severe combined immunodeficiency by retroviral-mediated gene transduction

Mutations affecting the expression of the Janus family kinase JAK3 were recently shown to be responsible for autosomal recessive severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID). JAK3-deficient patients present with a clinical phenotype virtually indistinguishable from boys affected by X-linked SCID, a disease caused by genetic defects of the common gamma chain (gamma c) that is a shared component of the receptors for IL-2, IL-4, IL-7, IL-9, and IL-15. The specific interaction of JAK3 and gamma c represents the biochemical basis for the similarities between these two immunodeficiencies. Both forms of SCID are characterized by recurrent, severe infections leading to death in infancy unless successfully treated by allogeneic bone marrow transplantation. Because of the potentially lethal complications associated with allogeneic bone marrow transplantation and the frequent lack of suitable marrow donors, the development of alternative forms of therapy is highly desirable. To this end, we investigated a retroviral-mediated gene correction approach for JAK3-deficiency. A vector carrying a copy of JAK3 cDNA was constructed and used to transduce B cell lines derived from patients with JAK3-deficient SCID. We demonstrate restoration of JAK3 expression and phosphorylation upon IL-2 and IL-4 stimulation. Furthermore, patients' cells transduced with JAK3 acquired the ability to proliferate normally in response to IL-2. These data indicate that the biological defects of JAK3-deficient cells can be efficiently corrected in vitro by retroviral-mediated gene transfer, thus providing the basis for future investigation of gene therapy as treatment for JAK3- deficient SCID.
Inter Subject Variability and Reproducibility of Diffusion Tensor Imaging within and between Different Imaging Sessions

The aim of these studies was to provide reference data on intersubject variability and reproducibility of diffusion tensor imaging. Healthy volunteers underwent imaging on two occasions using the same 3T Siemens Verio magnetic resonance scanner. At each session two identical diffusion tensor sequences were obtained along with standard structural imaging. Fractional anisotropy, apparent diffusion coefficient, axial and radial diffusivity maps were created and regions of interest applied in normalised space. The baseline data from all 26 volunteers were used to calculate the intersubject variability, while within session and between session reproducibility were calculated from all the available data. The reproducibility of measurements were used to calculate the overall and within session 95% prediction interval for zero change. The within and between session reproducibility data were lower than the values for intersubject variability, and were different across the brain. The regional mean (range) coefficient of variation figures for within session reproducibility were 2.1 (0.9–5.5%), 1.2 (0.4–3.9%), 1.2 (0.4–3.8%) and 1.8 (0.4–4.3%) for fractional anisotropy, apparent diffusion coefficient, axial and radial diffusivity, and were lower than between session reproducibility measurements (2.4 (1.1–5.9%), 1.9 (0.7–5.7%), 1.7 (0.7–4.7%) and 2.4 (0.9–5.8%); p<0.001). The calculated overall and within session 95% prediction intervals for zero change were similar. This study provides additional reference data concerning intersubject variability and reproducibility of diffusion tensor imaging conducted within the same imaging session and different imaging sessions. These data can be utilised in interventional studies to quantify change within a single imaging session, or to assess the significance of change in longitudinal studies of brain injury and disease.
dMath: Distributed Linear Algebra for DL

The paper presents a parallel math library, dMath, that demonstrates leading scaling when using intranode, internode, and hybrid-parallelism for deep learning (DL). dMath provides easy-to-use distributed primitives and a variety of domain-specific algorithms including matrix multiplication, convolutions, and others allowing for rapid development of scalable applications like deep neural networks (DNNs). Persistent data stored in GPU memory and advanced memory management techniques avoid costly transfers between host and device. dMath delivers performance, portability, and productivity to its specific domain of support.
Aerobic Physical Exercise Improved the Cognitive Function of Elderly Males but Did Not Modify Their Blood Homocysteine Levels

Background: Physical exercise influences homocysteine (Hcy) concentrations, cognitive function and the metabolic profile. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of regular physical exercise on Hcy levels, the metabolic profile and cognitive function in healthy elderly males before and after an endurance exercise program. Methods: Forty-five healthy and sedentary volunteers were randomized into 2 groups: (1) a control group asked not to change their normal everyday activities and not to start any regular physical exercise program and (2) an experimental group trained at a heart rate intensity corresponding to ventilatory threshold 1 (VT-1) for 60 min/day 3 times weekly on alternate days for 6 months using a cycle ergometer. All volunteers underwent cognitive evaluations, blood sample analyses and ergospirometric assessments. Results: A significant improvement in cognitive function was observed in the experimental group compared with the control group (p < 0.05). No significant changes in Hcy levels were observed in the experimental group (p > 0.05), but there was a significant increase in peak oxygen consumption and workload at VT-1 as well as a significant improvement in cholesterol, triglycerides, HDL, glucose, alkaline phosphatase, urea, T3, T4 and prostate-specific antigen compared with the control group (p < 0.05). Conclusion: The data suggest that a physical exercise program does not reduce Hcy levels in healthy elderly males, although it improves the cardiovascular and metabolic profile as well as cognitive function.
Color and/or texture segmentation using deterministic relaxation and fast marching algorithms

The segmentation of colored texture images is considered. Either luminance, color, and/or texture features could be used for segmentation. For luminance and color the classes are described using the corresponding empirical probability distributions. The discrete wavelet frames analysis is used for obtaining features of texture patterns. At a first stage, pattern analysis is performed for extracting the features using the Bhattacharya distance. Two labeling algorithms are proposed. A deterministic relaxation algorithm using a likelihood based distance yields the labeling of pixels to the different color-texture patterns. In addition, a multi-label fast marching level set algorithm is utilized for the determination of the segment boundaries.
Ju l 2 00 3 Double-Peaked Low-Ionization Emission Lines in Active Galactic Nuclei

We present a new sample of 116 double-peaked Balmer line Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Double-peaked emission lines are believed to originate in the accretion disks of AGN, a few hundred gravitational radii (RG) from the supermassive black hole. We investigate the properties of the candidate disk emitters with respect to the full sample of AGN over the same redshifts, focusing on optical, radio and X-ray flux, broad line shapes and narrow line equivalent widths and line flux-ratios. We find that the disk-emitters have medium luminosities (∼1044 erg s−1) and FWHM on average six times broader than the AGN in the parent sample. The double-peaked AGN are 1.6 times more likely to be radio-sources and are predominantly (76%) radio quiet, with about 12% of the objects classified as LINERs. Statistical comparison of the observed double-peaked line profiles with those produced by axisymmetric and non-axisymmetric accretion disk models allows us to impose constraints on accretion disk parameters. The observed Hα line profiles are consistent with accretion disks with inclinations smaller than 50, surface emissivity slopes of 1.0–2.5, outer radii larger than ∼2000RG, inner radii between 200–800RG , and local turbulent broadening of 780–1800 kms−1. The comparison suggests that 60% of accretion disks require some form of asymmetry (e.g., elliptical disks, warps, spiral shocks or hot spots). Subject headings: active galactic nuclei, accretion disks, broad line emission, emission line profiles Princeton University Observatory, Princeton, NJ 08544 Departamento de Astronomı́a y Astrof́ısica, Facultad de F́ısica, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Casilla 306, Santiago 22, Chile Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik Giessenbachstr.1, D-85748 Garching, Germany Astronomy Department, University of Washington, Box 351580, Seattle, WA 98195-1580 Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 504 Davey Laboratory, University Park, PA 16802 Apache Point Observatory, P.O. Box 59, Sunspot, NM 88349-0059 Department of Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
A Novel Method of Mesh Simplification Using Hausdoff Distance

This paper describes a novel method for surface mesh simplification. Given an initial surface mesh, the goal is to reduce the number of mesh elements and preserve the geometric approximation as well as the shape quality of the resulting mesh. We present a novel method - triangle contraction to simplify the mesh, and two tolerance areas with respect to the reference mesh have been introduced to preserve the geometry of the surface. The reference mesh is then simplified and optimized in order that the resulting mesh belongs to these tolerance areas.