Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tax Incentives and Equipment Investment

OVER THE PAST FORTY YEARS, tax treatment of income from capital in general, and income from producer's durable equipment in particular, has been changed in the United States an amazing number of times. Depreciation allowances have been accelerated and then retarded; depreciation methods have ranged from straight line to double-decliningbalance; investment tax credits have been enacted, suspended, reinstated, eliminated, re-enacted, and most recently, repealed again. In addition, both corporate and personal tax rates have moved over a substantial range. All of this tinkering with the tax structure is hard to justify on any economic basis; the long-run attitude of investors would be better served by a stable policy that insures that political risk will not be added to the already considerable uncertainty about future after-tax returns. Why the frequent changes in business taxation have occurred is not clear. In general, the trend in tax rates has been downward, and reaching political consensus on this trend has been an uneven and contentious process. Inflation has at times created serious distortions in effective tax rates, and changes in the tax code may have been aimed at mitigating these effects. Most importantly, various administrations have attempted to use tax stimulus for investment as part of their efforts to fine-tune economic activity through short-term fiscal policy changes.
Non-coronavirus Genome Sequences Identified from Metagenomic Analysis of Clinical Samples from COVID-19 Infected Patients: An Evidence for Co-infection

In December 2019, pneumonia caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection emerged in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China. Early in 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced a new name for the 2019-nCoV-caused epidemic disease: coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and declared COVID-19 to be the sixth international public health emergency. Cellular co-infection is a critical determinant of both viral fitness and infection outcome and plays a crucial role in shaping the host immune response to infections. In this study, sixty-eight public next-generation sequencing libraries from SARS-CoV-2 infected patients were retrieved from the NCBI Sequence Read Archive database using SRA-Toolkit. Using an alignment-free method based on K-mer mapping and extension, SARS-CoV-2 was identified in all except three patients. Influenza A H7N9 (3/68), Human immunodeficiency virus 1 (1/68), rhabdovirus isolate (3/68), Human metapneumovirus (1/68), coronaviruses NL63 (1/68), Parvovirus (1/68), Simian virus 40 (1/68), and hepatitis virus (1/68) genome sequences were detected in SARS-CoV-2 infected patients.
Availability and Utilization of ICT for Information Retrieval ByUndergraduate Students In Ramat Library , University of Maiduguri : A Case Study

The study determined availability and utilization of information and communication technology (ICT) for information retrieval in Ramat Library University of Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria. The study was guided by four (4) objectives and four research questions, questionnaire was used to survey 400 registered users through convenience sampling technique out of 10,600 registered users for 2016/2017 academic session. Meanwhile, 44 questionnaire were rejected for wrong and incomplete entries and the remaining 356 valid questionnaire was considered acceptable. Descriptive analyses was applied while results were presented in tables of frequency counts and percentages. Findings revealed low level of computer utilization for information retrieval in the library under study, utilization of CD –ROM was very low, low level of Internet utilization. Also, majority of the respondents do not use e-mail for information retrieval in the Library. The study made recommendations for adequate power supply for effective computer utilization, information literacy training and awareness on the availability of CD-ROM and how to use them for effective information retrieval. Also, free access to the Internet as against fee payment which poses great hindrance to utilization of ICT by the library users. Also, strong network and adequate bandwidth to ensure quick information retrieval and downloading in the library.
3 D Tracking via Body Radio Reflections Citation

This paper introduces WiTrack, a system that tracks the 3D motion of a user from the radio signals reflected off her body. It works even if the person is occluded from the WiTrack device or in a different room. WiTrack does not require the user to carry any wireless device, yet its accuracy exceeds current RF localization systems, which require the user to hold a transceiver. Empirical measurements with a WiTrack prototype show that, on average, it localizes the center of a human body to within a median of 10 to 13 cm in the x and y dimensions, and 21 cm in the z dimension. It also provides coarse tracking of body parts, identifying the direction of a pointing hand with a median of 11.2◦. WiTrack bridges a gap between RF-based localization systems which locate a user through walls and occlusions, and human-computer interaction systems like Kinect, which can track a user without instrumenting her body, but require the user to stay within the direct line of sight of the device.
Dissipation kinetics, decontamination and risk assessment of chlorantraniliprole in okra and soil under open field condition using GC-MS

ABSTRACT A rapid, sensitive and selective analytical method was validated for the determination of chlorantraniliprole residue in okra and soil using single quadrupole gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The analytical method showed good linearity in selected matrices and the limit of quantification was 0.01 mg/kg. Recoveries were ranged from 94.19–97.82% with the relative standard deviation (RSD) of 0.74–3.93%. Under the optimised parameters, the developed method was applied to analyse the dissipation kinetics of chlorantraniliprole residue from field samples. Field results showed that half-lives of chlorantraniliprole in okra and soil were 2.21 and 2.16 days, respectively and a harvest withholding period of one day suggested for safe consumption. The residue concentrations were reduced from okra fruit using simple decontamination processes and could remove residues in the range of 11–61%. The dietary risk assessment of chlorantraniliprole on okra was negligible depending on the RQ value of less than one and the ecological risk assessment was found to be less than one (RQ < 0.1) for earthworms and arthropods.
Water film falling down an ice sheet

A gravity-driven water film falling down an ice sheet is considered within the framework of a long-wave approximation. The integral-boundary-layer method, modified with the account of the phase transition, is adopted to describe the evolution of both the free surface of a water film and the interface between the ice and water. A set of governing equations consisting of five coupled nonlinear partial differential equations is established. The linear instability analysis of the uniform base flow is performed, and the result is in good agreement with the Orr–Sommerfeld analysis of the linearized Navier–Stokes equations. The phase transition at the interface between the ice and water plays a role in stabilizing the system linearly with long-wavelength perturbations. The nonlinear solutions of the steady travelling waves are constructed numerically. The phase transition tends to suppress the dispersion of the interfacial wave. Comparisons to direct numerical simulation of the Navier–Stokes equations, which are performed with an extended marker and cell method, show a remarkable agreement. The integral-boundary-layer method captures the water film thickness and the topography of the ice sheet satisfactorily. The phase transition is observed to enhance the backflow phenomenon in the capillary region of the solitary-like interfacial wave.
Attjector : An Attention Following Wearable Micro-Projector

Mobile handheld projectors in small form factors, e.g., integrated into mobile phones, are getting more common. However, managing the projection puts a burden on the user as it requires holding the hand steady over an extended period of time and draws attention away from the actual task to solve. To address this problem, we propose a body worn projector that follows the user’s locus of attention. The idea is to take the user’s hand and dominant fingers as an indication of the current locus of attention and focus the projection on that area. Technically, a wearable and steerable camera– projector system positioned above the shoulder tracks the fingers and follows their movement. In this paper, we justify our approach and explore further ideas on how to apply steerable projection for wearable interfaces. Additionally, we describe a Kinect-based prototype of the wearable and steerable projector system we developed.
Symplectic convexity theorems and coadjoint orbits

© Foundation Compositio Mathematica, 1994, tous droits réservés. L’accès aux archives de la revue « Compositio Mathematica » (http: //http://www.compositio.nl/) implique l’accord avec les conditions générales d’utilisation (http://www.numdam.org/legal.php). Toute utilisation commerciale ou impression systématique est constitutive d’une infraction pénale. Toute copie ou impression de ce fichier doit contenir la présente mention de copyright.
Form Finding of Shell Bridges Using the Pneumatic Forming of Hardened Concrete Construction Principle

Concrete shells are fascinating structures. Even thin shells can span over large areas without requiring any columns. If a form-defining load case exists, the shape of the shell can be designed to ensure that the forces in the structure are transferred primarily by the membrane action, which leads to an even distribution of the stresses across the shell surface. Concrete as a material, characterized by high compressive strength and low tensile strength, can be used with a very high degree of utilization. A fundamental problem with building concrete shells is the high effort required for the production of the complicated formwork. A new construction principle called Pneumatic Forming of Hardened Concrete (PFHC) was invented at TU Wien and requires no traditional formwork or falsework during the construction process. An air cushion is used to lift a flat hardened concrete plate, and at the same time, additional post-tensioning cables are tightened to support the transformation of the flat plate into a double-curved shell. One possible application of PFHC is the construction of shell bridges. Here, the shape of the shell has to be designed according to the acting loads and the boundary conditions of the construction method. This paper describes the partly conflicting factors involved in the form-finding process for practical application and the semiautomated workflow for optimizing the geometry of shell bridges. In the first optimization step, the final bridge shape is determined using a particle-spring system or alternatively a thrust-network approach. In the second optimization step, the shell is completed to form a full dome—this is called the reference geometry and is required for the new construction method. Finally, the reference geometry is discretized into single-curved panels by using a mesh-based optimization framework. To frame the presented work, an overview of different experimental and computer-aided form-finding methods is given.
International Taxation and M&A Prices

We show that corporate taxation systems regarding foreign dividends and capital gains across 49 countries differ in many aspects, contradicting the requirements for capital ownership neutrality and indicating that ownership patterns are distorted. Consequently, a national tax policy maker may ask which taxation system improves the position of its multinational entreprises in bidding for foreign targets. To address this question, we develop a theoretical model on the impact of foreign dividends and capital gains taxation on cross-border M&A prices from the acquirer’s perspective and theoretically compare different taxation systems. In a next step, we empirically validate our model in a regression analysis on a large cross-border M&A data set. Based on this analysis, we find that foreign dividends taxation rather than capital gains taxation impacts M&A prices. Finally, we provide tax policy suggestions.
Some further evidence on successive and simultaneous integration and individual differences

Hierarchical factor structures of 11 cognitive tasks for 169 10-year-old boys and 158 10-yearold giris are discussed. Three of these tasks were investigated by classifying children as low and high on the basis of a median split of simultaneous and successive factor scores obtained from the other eight tasks. Visual-Reconstruction (V-R), Visual-Verbal (V-VL), and VerbalReconstruction (VL-R) tasks, when used as dependent variable vectors, indicated significant simultaneous and successive MANOVA effects. A significant simultaneous x successive interaction was obtained for V-VL and VL-R tasks. The results are discussed in terms of developmental hemispheric lateralization and integrational synthesis. Das (1973) has proposed a new model of cognitive abilities based on Luria's (1966a, b) work. He proposed as alternatives to reasoning and memory two modes of information integration, simultaneous and successive, and showed the existence and generality of these two processes by a factor analysis study of the cognitive test scores of 9- to 11-year-old children from Canada and India. In another factor analytic study, Das and Molloy (1975) found that simultaneous, successive, and speed factors existed in each of grade one and grade four samples. In this particular study, one of the questions considered was whether or not the three factors identified were orthogonal to school achievement. Das (1973) had found that a school achievement factor based on tests of reading and mathematics achievement and IQ was "independent" of the other three factors. Again, Das and Molloy (1975) found that reading achievement emerged as a separate factor with significant loadings on the vocabulary and comprehension subscores of the reading achievement test. Their final exploratory factor analysis involving 14 measures of grade four children did not include the two reading achievement, vocabulary, and comprehension scores. As a result of this factor analysis they identified five factors as successive, simultaneous, socio-economic-status-cultural, speed, and spatial imagery which they found difficult to explain. McGlone (Note 1) has demonstrated sex differences in functional brain asymmetry, and the reliability of the sex variable in cognitive tasks has been established without question (see Bloom, 1964). Is it not, therefore, reasonable to expect different factor structures on successive and simultaneous tasks for male and female subjects? The first part of the present
Profits , Redistribution of Income and Dynamic Efficiency

The issue of dynamic efficiency is central to the analysis of household savings, firm investment, and government debt. However, previous tests for dynamic efficiency do not account for the increase in the profit share of output over the last thirty years. In this paper, I present a model in which an increase in markups increases capital accumulation and pushes the economy toward dynamic inefficiency. In the model, an increase in markups redistributes income from households with a low marginal propensity to save to households with a high marginal propensity to save, thus increasing the aggregate savings rate and depressing the marginal product of capital and the interest rate. Using the model, I derive a measurable test of dynamic efficiency that accounts for imperfect competition and markups. I implement the test using data for the U.S. non-financial corporate sector and I find that the economy fails to satisfy my criteria for dynamic efficiency. At the same time, the existing test of dynamic efficiency, which does not account for markups, falsely concludes that the economy satisfies the criteria for dynamic efficiency by a wide margin. ∗I thank Lars Hansen, Stavros Panageas, Amit Seru, Hugo Sonnenschein, Amir Sufi, Willem van Vliet, Tony Zhang, Luigi Zingales, Eric Zwick, and seminar participants at the University of Chicago and MFM summer session for their comments and feedback. Email address: sbarkai@chicagobooth.edu.
Automatic Generation of Vivid LEGO Architectural Sculptures

Brick elements are very popular and have been widely used in many areas, such as toy design and architectural fields. Designing a vivid brick sculpture to represent a three‐dimensional (3D) model is a very challenging task, which requires professional skills and experience to convey unique visual characteristics. We introduce an automatic system to convert an architectural model into a LEGO sculpture while preserving the original model's shape features. Unlike previous legolization techniques that generate a LEGO sculpture exactly based on the input model's voxel representation, we extract the model's visual features, including repeating components, shape details and planarity. Then, we translate these visual features into the final LEGO sculpture by employing various brick types. We propose a deformation algorithm in order to resolve discrepancies between an input mesh's continuous 3D shape and the discrete positions of bricks in a LEGO sculpture. We evaluate our system on various architectural models and compare our method with previous voxelization‐based methods. The results demonstrate that our approach successfully conveys important visual features from digital models and generates vivid LEGO sculptures.
Spin-3 fields in Mielke–Baekler gravity

Mielke–Baekler gravity consists in the usual Einstein–Hilbert action with a cosmological term and rotational and translational Chern–Simons terms with arbitrary couplings. For a particular choice of these couplings, we can obtain Einstein–Hilbert action, its teleparallel equivalent and the exotic Witten’s gravity. In this work, we use the Chern–Simons formalism to generalize the three dimensional Mielke–Baekler gravity theory in order to introduce spin-3 fields. We study its asymptotic symmetries, black hole solution and also analyse its canonical structure at its singular point.
Master report : Mitigating stellar activity in radial velocities Improvement towards the lightest planets searching quest

We investigated the radial velocities (RV) of each spectral line in HARPS and HARPS-N spectra to see if some of them are more sensitive or not to stellar activity. We used as test case the K dwarf star α Cen B exhibiting, in the 2010 radial velocity data from HARPS, a strong modulation due to stellar activity, with peak-to-peak variations of 10 m/s. By carefully selecting the spectral lines, we can mitigate stellar activity effects and bring the rms down to a level of 77 cm/s. Machine learning algorithms have been used to increase the number of lines, that are not correlated with activity, based on their physical properties. The same protocol has then been applied for 2009 and 2011 α Cen B’s data and for our own star : the Sun. If our method successfully mitigates stellar activity on stellar rotational timescale for both stars, the particular long and well sampled data of the Sun, distributed over 2 years, show that also long-period magnetic cycle contamination can be reduced from −3.57 m/s/year down to 0.18 m/s/year. The activity signal in radial velocity according to our reduction is strongly correlated with the logR′ HK index without being utterly explained by it. It confirms that our method is mitigating the activity and that the logR′ HK cannot be used to correct efficiently the stellar activity signal. As a final point, simulations of planetary detection have been performed, injecting planetary signals in the 2-years RV data of the Sun. With our best selection of lines unaffected by activity, the detection limits can be improved down to a level of 40 cm/s, compared to 60 cm/s when using all the spectral lines. Also, planets with orbital periods close to the rotational period are now less affected by activity and allow easier planetary detections. We note however, that our best selection of unaffected lines only contain 10% of the RV information present in HARPS or HARPS-N spectra. Thus the photon noise on the RVs derived by such a line selection is increased by a factor of 3. This is not a problem for stars where the photon noise is not limiting, however we still have to investigate the effect on stars with a low SNR. Although it seems that this factor of 3 will kill such type of analysis on star with low SNR, it is not straightforward as reducing strongly the correlated noise induced by activity can strongly counter balance the increase of white photon noise.
The Performance of CRTN Model in a Motorcycle City

The Calculation of Road Traffic Noise (CRTN) model is one of the first traffic noise prediction models in the world and has been widely used in many Western countries. However, its performance in a motorcycle city has not been well assessed. This study aims to examine the accuracy of the CRTN model in predicting traffic noise in an Asian city with over half of motor vehicles being motorcycles. The performance of the CRTN model in predicting both roadside and vertical distributions of traffic noise levels is assessed. The results show that the performance of the CRTN model is satisfactory in predicting roadside traffic noise levels, with an of 0.832 and a mean difference of
Composition and quantitation of saponins in alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) seedlings

The concentrations of individual saponins in germinating alfalfa seeds and seedlings between 1 and 16 days of growth were determined by HPLC. It was shown that monodesmosidic medicagenic acid glycoside was synthesized after 4 days of germination and subsequently followed by bidesmosidic saponin production. The total saponin concentration increased from 2.12 μmol/g of dry matter at the beginning of germination to around 6 μmol/g after 8−16 days of seedling growth. It was concluded that previous reports on saponin concentration in alfalfa seedlings (8−10% in dry matter) as measured by biological tests were highly overestimated; the real concentration is several times lower. Keywords: Medicago sativa; seedlings; saponins; germination; secondary metabolites
Three-year-olds are sensitive to semantic prominence during online language comprehension: A visual world study of pronoun resolution

Recent evidence from adult pronoun comprehension suggests that semantic factors such as verb transitivity affect referent salience and thereby anaphora resolution. We tested whether the same semantic factors influence pronoun comprehension in young children. In a visual world study, 3-year-olds heard stories that began with a sentence containing either a high or a low transitivity verb. Looking behaviour to pictures depicting the subject and object of this sentence was recorded as children listened to a subsequent sentence containing a pronoun. Children showed a stronger preference to look to the subject as opposed to the object antecedent in the low transitivity condition. In addition there were general preferences (1) to look to the subject in both conditions and (2) to look more at both potential antecedents in the high transitivity condition. This suggests that children, like adults, are affected by semantic factors, specifically semantic prominence, when interpreting anaphoric pronouns.