Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Indicadores de ciencia y tecnología en Iberoamérica: agenda 2008

"El VII Congreso Iberoamericano de Indicadores de Ciencia y Tecnologia muestra a la Red Iberoamericana de Indicadores de Ciencia y Tecnologia (RICYT) en un momento de plena maduracion. No se trata, sin embargo, de que los proximos pasos deban estar inexorablemente guiados hacia una repeticion automatica de lo realizado hasta el presente. Por el contrario, una de las claves del exito de la red –medido en su capacidad de convocatoria- ha sido su flexibilidad para adaptarse a la cambiante situacion de la ciencia y la tecnologia en Iberoamerica y el Caribe. Hoy el mundo esta cambiando en un escenario dominado, de una parte, por la emergencia de una economia y un modelo de sociedad basados en el conocimiento y, de otra parte, por la agudizacion de las tensiones sociales; particularmente, la expansion de la pobreza a nivel mundial, la crisis de la energia y de los alimentos y la degradacion ambiental. Nuevos indicadores son necesarios. Nuevos enfoques de politica demandan nueva informacion. La RICYT tiene ante si demandas novedosas a las que debe tratar de dar respuesta. Este conjunto de saberes y desafios da forma a la nueva agenda de la RICYT, en cuya construccion y despliegue debe ocupar sus energias en el futuro proximo. "
Multiagent Intelligent System of Convergent Sensor Data Processing for the Smart&Safe Road

The results of monitoring and analyzing traffic accidents, fixed by an intelligent monitoring system with photoradar complexes, are considered. The system works with a network of distributed photoradar vehicle detectors for road accidents, video surveillance cameras, vehicle information and communication systems, built-in car navigation equipment and mobile communication equipment. A multiagent approach developed to address the tasks of sensor data collecting and processing. The system functionality is implemented by several agents that perform data collecting, cleaning, clustering, comparing time series, retrieving data for visualization, preparing charts and reports, performing spatial and intellectual analysis, etc. Convergent approach is the convergence of cloud, fog and mobile data processing technologies. The diagnostic system is necessary for remote maintenance of photoradar equipment. The structure of the neural network is adapted to the diagnosing problems and forecasting. The tasks of intellectual analysis and forecasting traffic accidents are solved. The hybrid fuzzy neural network is synthesized. Because of the comparison of time series of traffic accidents and time series of meteorological factors, the presence of factors to become determinants for an abnormal change in the traffic situation in controlled areas is established.
A semidefinite relaxation scheme for quadratically constrained

Semidefinite optimization relaxations are among the widely used approaches to find global optimal or approximate solutions for many nonconvex problems. Here, we consider a specific quadratically constrained quadratic problem with an additional linear constraint. We prove that under certain conditions the semidefinite relaxation approach enables us to find a global optimal solution of the underlying problem in polynomial time.
Effects of Marketing Assets and Capabilities on Performance: An Empirical Investigation of Banks Operating in Jordan

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between marketing assets and capabilities and performance in banks operating in Jordan. Further, the study aimed at examining the moderation effects of some variables on this relationship as well as examining the effect of top management support and commitment on building marketing assets and capabilities. A model was developed and hypotheses were stated to achieve the research objectives. Data were collected from banks’ marketing and branch managers operating in Jordan by using a self-administered questionnaire which was developed for the purpose of this research. Multiple regression analysis findings indicate that marketing assets and capabilities have positively affected banks’ performance that was measured based on financial and customer measures. Simple regression analysis findings indicate that top management support and commitment have positively affected building marketing assets and capabilities overtime. The strongest effect of marketing assets and capabilities is on banks’ profitability, total revenues and customer satisfaction, respectively. The findings of ANOVA analysis indicate that bank marketing experience and managers’ background moderate the relationship between marketing assets and capabilities and banks’ performance indicators. It is concluded that marketing assets and capabilities have a strategic role to play on banks’ ability to achieve long-term objectives and enjoy competitive advantages. Finally, research conclusions, contribution and limitation and future research directions are outlined.
Stepchildren’s Communicative and Emotional Journey from Divorce to Remarriage: Predictors of Stepfamily Satisfaction

ABSTRACT This study explores the emotional and communicative profiles of young adults who have experienced a parental divorce and the emergence of a stepfamily to better understand influences on stepfamily satisfaction. Results of regression analyses indicate that strong negative emotions experienced at the time of the divorce are a negative predictor of current stepfamily satisfaction, even after controlling for age at the time of the divorce. In addition, level of open self-disclosure to a stepparent, although not parents, is a positive predictor of current stepfamily satisfaction. Finally, the extent to which the father has now fully explained the circumstances of the divorce is a positive predictor of current stepfamily satisfaction, whereas the extent to which mother has now fully explained the circumstances of the divorce is a negative predictor of current stepfamily satisfaction. These findings are discussed and future directions for research on stepfamily interaction and satisfaction are offered.
Macro-segmentation sémantique des documents audiovisuels à l'aide des indices spatio-temporels

Suite a une convergence rapide de l'informatique et l'audiovisuel, nous assistons a l'heure actuelle a une profusion de documents audiovisuels (dav). Cependant, l'appropriation d'informations visuelles dans le contexte actuel, par une recherche et une navigation intelligente, est difficile. Il est necessaire de proposer des outils, par la creation de tables des matieres ou d'index, permettant aux utilisateurs de maitriser cette abondance d'informations. Dans cette these, nous nous somme principalement interesses au probleme de la segmentation semantique, connue encore sous le nom de macro-segmentation, des documents audiovisuels. L'objectif ici est de mettre en place des techniques permettant d'aider a la creation automatique des tables de matieres, appelees aussi storyboard, associees aux davs en explicitant la structure hierarchique de ceux-ci, en plans, en scenes et en sequences. Notre contribution principale est la mise au point d'une nouvelle methode most (methode spatio-temporel) de macro-segmentation en scenes par une analyse du canal d'images d'un dav en nous focalisant sur des films de fiction. Notre approche trouve son originalite dans la prise en compte des indices spatio-temporels contenus dans un dav, des regles basees sur des conventions du langage audiovisuels reconnues par le spectateur (les ponctuations et le rythme), et aussi des regles basees sur des principes de perception (classification des plan selon le lieu exterieur ou interieur, le temps jour ou nuit). Les resultats experimentaux de notre methode most sur un corpus significatif de sequences video sont tres satisfaisants et tres proches d'une segmentation manuelle realisee par des experts.
Quality Controlled Radiocarbon Dating of Bones and Charcoal from the Early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) of Motza (Israel)

Radiocarbon dating of early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) deposits at the site of Motza, Israel, was achieved by first prescreening many charcoal and bone samples in order to identify those that are in the most suitable state of preservation for dating. For assessing bone preservation, we determined the collagen contents, and by infrared spectroscopy the collagen purity. The collagen samples of the best preserved bones were then further characterized by their C/N ratios and amino acid compositions. Prescreening of the charcoal samples involved monitoring the changes in infrared and Raman spectra during the acid-alkali-acid treatments. In some samples, we noted that the clay content increased with additional alkali treatments. These samples were rejected, as this could result in erroneous dates. No differences were observed in the 14C dates between charcoal and bone collagen samples. The dates range from 10,600–10,100 cal BP, which is consistent with dates for the early PPNB from other sites. This is of much interest in terms of better understanding where and when domestication of animals began in this period, and how agriculture spread throughout the Levant.
The invention of invention

This paper models an industrial revolution as a qualitative transition from a world where innovation is infrequent and haphazard to one where it is continuous and systematic. Pre-industrial innovation is treated as a social process where an individual's effectiveness as an innovator depends on the skills of other individuals in his social network. As technology improves, individuals invest more time in learning through social contact. This gradual increase in linkage formation leads to a sudden change in the size of knowledge networks from small, isolated clusters, to a large connected cluster spanning most of the economy, causing a sudden increase in the effectiveness of innovation: an industrial revolution. The predicted sequence of typical innovators - from gifted amateurs, to lucky amateurs, to professionals - is consistent with empirical evidence. This paper is part of the International Trade and Investment Programme of the Geary Institute at UCD.
The awareness and willingness of air travellers to pay for voluntary carbon offsets and their co-benefits

Several airlines in Australia have initiated voluntary carbon offset (VCO) programs, called 'Fly Carbon Neutral', to encourage their customers to offset the carbon emissions of their flight. A VCO scheme aims to 'neutralise' emissions from a particular activity, by compensating with carbon reduction projects in another sector. As well as carbon sequestration, these activities often bring secondary benefits such as wildlife protection. There are currently few studies about the awareness and willingness to pay to offset carbon emission from flying. This paper conducted a choice experiment study to address this knowledge gap, by estimating Australian air travellers' willingness to pay for different attributes of carbon offset projects. Analyses reveal that values for carbon offset projects depend on respondent's perceptions of the importance of the aviation industry's contribution to the global carbon emissions, membership of environmental organisation, education level, income and their age. Results show that the majority of respondents preferred to not buy an offset. Of those respondents willing to buy an offset, most preferred renewable energy projects located in their own state over reforestation or forest protection projects in other states or overseas. The results will provide a better understanding of air travellers' preference, thus to improve future carbon offset policies making.
Reliability assessment of existing bridge constructions based on results of non-destructive testing

The non-destructive testing methods available for civil engineering (NDT-CE) enable the measurements of quantitative parameters, which realistically describe the characteristics of existing buildings. In the past, methods for quality evaluation and concepts for validation expanded into NDT-CE to improve the objectivity of measured data. Thereby, a metrological foundation was developed to collect statistically sound and structurally relevant information about the inner construction of structures without destructive interventions. More recently, the demand for recalculations of structural safety was identified. This paper summarizes a basic research study on structural analyses of bridges in combination with NDT. The aim is to use measurement data of nondestructive testing methods as stochastic quantities in static calculations. Therefore, a methodical interface between the guide to the expression of uncertainty in measurement and probabilistic approximation procedures (e.g. FORM) has been proven to be suitable. The motivation is to relate the scientific approach of the structural analysis with real information coming from existing structures and not with those found in the literature. A case study about the probabilistic bending proof of a reinforced concrete bridge with statistically verified data from ultrasonic measurements shows that the measuring results fulfil the requirements concerning precision, trueness, objectivity
CloudSim-A Survey on VM Management Techniques

2 Abstract: With the initiation of internet in the 1990s to the present day facilities of universal computing, the internet has reformed the computing world in a drastic way. It has travelled from the concept of parallel computing to distributed computing to cluster computing to grid computing to utility computing to virtualization and recently to cloud computing, in future Internet of Things. Virtualization and utility computing can be stated as key concept of cloud. As cloud computing can be specified as a realization of utility computing. Although the idea of cloud computing has been around for quite some time, it is an evolving field of computer science. Since the evolution of cloud computing: Load balancing, energy management, VM migration, server consolidation, cost modelling and security issues are the popular research topic in this field. Deploying real cloud for testing or for commercial use is very costly. Cloud computing model have complex provisioning, composition, configuration, and deployment requirements. Evaluating the performance of Cloud provisioning policies, application workload models, and resources performance models in a repeatable and controllable manner under varying system and user configurations and requirements is difficult to accomplish. To overcome this challenge, cloud simulator is needed. In this paper basic of cloud simulator is discussed, and major focus is on cloudsim- a simulator for management of vm. The CloudSim toolkit supports both system and behaviour modeling of Cloud system components such as data centers, virtual machines (VMs) and resource provisioning policies. It implements generic application provisioning techniques that can be extended with ease and limited effort. Currently, it supports modeling and simulation of Cloud computing environments consisting of both single and inter-networked clouds (federation of clouds). In this paper how cloudsim work, its architectural design, highlighting important features and give brief overview of its functionalities is presented.
Effect of Cellulolytic Pretreatment of Agricultural Waste on Organic Matter Degradation

Cellulose is biologically renewable resource abundantly found in agriculture waste. Thecellulosic waste material can be hydrolysed to glucose and other soluble sugars by using cellulase enzymes of bacteria and fungi. The reducing sugars obtained can be further used for the production of ethanol as biofuel (Acharya et al., 2012). The potential cellulose producing bacteria are Cellulomonas, Pseudomonas, Thermoactinomycetes and Bacillus spp. (Godana, 2007). Sustainable resources, which are in need of human being, are derived from plant biomass. Cellulose is the major component of plant biomass (Camassola and Dillon, 2007). Cellulolysis is basically the biological process controlled and processed by the enzymes of cellulase system. Cellulase enzyme system comprises three classes of soluble extracellular enzymes: 1, 4-β-endoglucanase, 1, 4-βexoglucanase, and β-glucosidase (β-Dglucoside glucohydrolase or cellobiase). Endoglucanase is responsible for random cleavage of β-1, 4glycosidic bonds along a cellulose chain. Exoglucanase is necessary for cleavage of the non-reducing end of a cellulose chain and splitting of the elementary fibrils from the crystalline cellulose, and β-1, 4-glucosidase hydrolyses International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 5 Number 12 (2016) pp. 23-35 Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas. com
The Interdomain Region of Dengue NS5 Protein Interacts with NS3 and Host Proteins

Although dengue virus genome replication occurs in the cytoplasm of infected cells, it has been shown that the NS5 protein (RNA-dependent RNA polymerase) is hyperphosphorylated at a late stage in infection and localized to the cell nucleus. A 37 amino acid sequence of NS5 (residues 369-405) was shown to contain a functional nuclear localization signal (NLS) that interacted with the cellular nuclear transport factor, importin α/β heterodimer. Further studies using the yeast two-hybrid system revealed that the NS5 region (residues 320-368) immediately adjacent to the NLS contained an importin βbinding site that abuts or overlaps the binding site for the NS3 protein (protease/helicase). The importin β-binding site has also been shown to be a functional NLS (bNLS). Intriguingly, when both bNLS and NLS (residues 320-405) were present, the fused β -galactosidase protein did not accumulate in the nucleus. Here we provide a review of our studies on the NS5 interdomain region and compare it to other members of the Flavivirus genus in order to highlight the importance of this region as a possible target for developing broad-acting antiviral agent against dengue and other mechanistically-related viruses.
The Impact of Percieved Usefulness, Ease of Use and Trust on Managers’ Acceptance of e-Commerce Services in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Palestine

The internet revolution, specifically using the internet in business environment has resulted into significant changes in how business is conducted in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Recent research has pointed to the important role that electronic commerce (EC) plays in improving the performance of SMEs. Yet, in the context of Palestine, adoption of EC in SMEs is still slow. Therefore, the current study aimed to investigate the effect of perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and perceived trust on managers’ acceptance of EC in SMEs. In order to achieve this, the study used the technology acceptance model (TAM). The study used a survey that was administered to 250 managers of SMEs from Palestine. The data was analysed employing a structural equation modelling (SEM) approach through partial least square (PLS) software. The results revealed that perceived trust and perceived usefulness had positive effect on the participating managers’ behavioural intention to adopt EC services. It was also found that the manager’s perception, including their perceived ease of use significantly affected their perceived trust of using EC services. Moreover, perceived ease of use had a significant impact on perceived usefulness. However, the managers’ perceived ease of use failed to predict their intention to adopt such EC services, and perceived usefulness failed to predict their perceived trust. Based on these results, the study offers a developed research model of the major factors that affect managers’ trust to accept and use EC services in SMEs.
Application of real-time PCR assay for detection and quantification of bloom-forming diatom Chaetoceros tenuissimus

Viral infection of the bloom-forming diatom Chaetoceros tenuissimus was discovered in 2008, and is now assumed to have a significant influence on the dynamics of C. tenuissimus populations in natural environments. Enumeration of C. tenuissimus and its viruses is essential when examining the host-virus relationship in situ; however, the diatom species is so small in size that its identification and counting by optical microscope is almost impossible. To resolve this problem, we have developed a TaqMan-based real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method for detection and quantification of C. tenuissimus. We designed primers and a TaqMan probe to target the D1 region of its 28S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene; the established real-time PCR was specific at the species level by testing 41 microalgal strains including C. tenuissimus. Tris–EDTA buffer-based boiling method was shown to be efficient for extracting DNA from filter-trapped C. tenuissimus cells in this study. The detection range of the established TaqMan-based real-time PCR method for C. tenuissimus was 10 to 10 cells collected on a filter; the method was applicable for C. tenuissimus cells accompanied with natural microorganisms.
Boundary Profile Representation for Objects and Their Surroundings in Outdoor Videos

A novel approach to represent the profile of objects using Gaussian models is presented. The profile is a representation of the object and its surrounding regions. The object profile can be viewed as a comprehensive feature of that object and its surrounding regions. Different algorithms to estimate the profile are described. Geometric descriptors of the model are also proposed. The profile model is empirically shown to be effective and easily applicable to certain object recognition and segmentation tasks. Application experiments include modeling thin and thick objects as straight-lines, curves, and blobs using different primitives such as gray-level intensities, RGB, and HSV color. The datasets used for empirical validation are quite challenging. Datasets include images and videos corresponding to outdoor video, most of them with moving cameras. Some of the typical problems faced with the used datasets are: digital scaling, compression artifacts, camera jitter, weather effects, and cluttered backgrounds. We demonstrate the potential of leveraging the context of objects of interest as a part of an online detection process. Sample applications including detection of wires, sea horizon, street, and vehicles in outdoor videos are considered.