Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Democracy, Credibility and Clientelism

Despite having adopted the political institutions of established democracies, democratizing countries display a systematically different pattern of fiscal outcomes. This article attributes these differences to the low credibility of electoral promises in new democracies. We study a model of electoral competition where candidates have two costly means to make themselves credible: spending resources to communicate directly with voters and exploiting preexisting patron-client networks. The costs of building credibility are endogenous and lead to higher targeted transfers and corruption and lower public good provision. The analysis demonstrates that in low-credibility states, political appeals to patron-client networks may be welfare enhancing, but in the long run, they delay political development by discouraging direct appeals to voters that are essential for credible mass-based political parties. The model explains why public investment and corruption are higher in younger democracies and why democratizing reforms had greater success in Victorian England than in the Dominican Republic. (JEL D720, H110, H300, H400, H500, O100)
Working Paper Are Household Portfolios Efficient ? An Analisis Conditional on Housing

Standard tests of portfolio efficiency neglect the existence of illiquid wealth. The most important illiquid asset in household portfolios is housing: if housing stock adjustments are infrequent, optimal portfolios in periods of no adjustment are affected by housing price risk through a hedge term and tests for portfolio efficiency of financial assets must be run conditionally upon housing wealth. We use Italian household portfolio data and time series on financial assets and housing stock returns to assess whether actual portfolios are efficient. We find that housing wealth plays a key role in determining whether portfolios chosen by home-owners are efficient.
LINEAR-TO-CIRCULAR POLARIZERS FOR MULTI-OCTAVE BANDWIDTHS AND WIDE SCAN ANGLES AT MM-WAVE FREQUENCIES USING ROTATED ANISOTROPIC LAYERS

Linear-to-circular polarizers operating from roughly 17 to 65 GHz, and angles of incidence up to 60◦ are reported. These polarizers convert incident linearly polarized radiation into circular polarization upon transmission. First, previous designs inspired by the optics community using cascaded waveplates are scaled down to mm-wave frequencies. The naturally occurring anisotropic crystals that the optics community employed are replaced here with metamaterials. The range of incidence angles is improved by utilizing biaxial artificial dielectrics whose permittivity in the x, y and z directions are all engineered. Next, an ultra-wideband linear-to-circular polarizer consisting of cascaded sheet impedances is reported. The cascaded sheet impedance polarizer utilizes a combination of meanderline and metallic patch geometries. The principal axes of each patterned metallic sheet are oriented at an optimized angle, which increases the design degrees of freedom and performance. This polarizer has the advantages of being thinner and easier to fabricate than the polarizer utilizing cascaded waveplates, but is more difficult to design. Both polarizers rely heavily on genetic algorithm optimization in the design process to realize multiple octaves of bandwidths and robust performance at wide angles of incidence. The polarizers are fabricated with commercial printed-circuit-boards and then experimentally characterized.
Hempseed cake as a protein feed for ruminants

Increasing the use of locally produced protein feeds in ruminant production systems in northern Europe would be a valuable development. Hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) can be cultivated at high latitudes and cold-pressing the seeds to extract the oil produces a residue, hempseed cake (HC), with a high protein content. The overall aim of the studies presented in this thesis was to investigate the possibilities of using HC as a protein feed for ruminants. The in vitro gas production technique was developed further in order to estimate rumen protein degradation; the effective protein degradation (EPD) of HC determined by this method was low (0.33). When calculated from in situ crude protein (CP) disappearance, HC had a high EPD value (0.71-0.84) and a low in vitro intestinal digestibility (0.18-0.31) for the rumen undegradable protein (RUP). Moist heat treatment could be used to shift the site of CP digestion from the rumen to the small intestine. The highest temperature considered, 130°C, was associated with the largest amount of RUP and rumen undegraded amino acids with the highest intestinal digestibility. A high proportion of the neutral detergent fibre in HC was indigestible (0.85), which contributed to a low calculated metabolisable energy value (9.5 MJ/kg dry matter). Increasing the proportion of HC (0, 143, 233 or 318 g/kg dry matter) in the diet of dairy cows produced effects on the yields of milk, energy corrected milk and milk protein, fat and lactose that could be described by quadratic functions; the highest production was achieved by cows fed the diet containing 143 g HC/kg dry matter. There were linear decreases in the concentration of milk fat and protein and CP efficiency (milk protein/CP intake), and a linear increase in milk urea, with increasing proportions of HC. Supplementing barley-based diets with peas or rapeseed cake improved the growth performance of lambs, but inclusion of HC resulted in an average daily gain similar to that achieved with the control diet containing no protein supplement. The results from the studies underlying this thesis indicate that the nutritional value of HC will limit its use as a protein feed for ruminants.
Reinforcement Learning for Automatic Financial Trading: Introduction and Some Applications

The construction of automatic Financial Trading Systems (FTSs) is a subject of research of high interest for both academic environment and financial one due to the potential promises by self-learning methodologies and by the increasing power of actual computers. In this paper we consider Reinforcement Learning (RL) type algorithms, that is algorithms that optimize their behavior in relation to the responses they get from the environment in which they operate, without the need for a supervisor. In particular, first we introduce the essential aspects of RL which are of interest for our purposes, then we present some original automatic FTSs based on differently configured RL algorithms and apply such FTSs to artificial and real time series of daily financial asset prices.
Evaluation of a computer aided 3D lip sync instructional model using virtual reality objects

Lip sync model is one of the aspects in computer facial animation. To create realistic lip sync model, a facial animation system needs extremely smooth lip motion with the deformation of the lips synchronized with the audio portion of speech. A deformable, parametric model of the lips was developed to achieve the desired effect. In order to create realistic speech animation, the articulatory modeling of the lip alone is insufficient. The other major articulators such as the tongue and jaw must also be considered. This lip sync model was initially developed by using polygonal model and blended key shape techniques and then parameterized by using 36 control points. The data for lip sync model was collected from video image and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques. The articulatory movements of our lip sync model were presented along with virtual reality (VR) objects in an interactive multimedia (IMM) interface. This IMM interface was used to teach small vocabulary of hearing impaired (HI) children. Virtual reality objects used to increase the cognitive process within HI children. The bilabial speech sounds were differentiated by using appropriate visual cues. Control panel was developed to present articulatory movements at different speed. For this study, six hearing impaired children were selected between the ages 4 and 7 and they were trained for 10 hours across 2 weeks on 18 meaningful words. The intelligibility of hearing impaired children was experimented to find out their performance in articulation and in memory retention. The results indicated that 65-75% of given words were articulated well and 75-85% of words were identified by all children.
Application of Asiatic Honey Bees (Apis cerana) and Stingless Bees (Trigona laeviceps) as Pollinator Agents of Hot Pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) at Local Indonesia Farm System

In Indonesia, hot pepper (Capsicum annuum) is one of the most important spices. Despite the fact that high yield cultivars and fertilizers have been applied to increase the annual production of this spice, local farming is always unable to maintain constant production. Studies to find the explanation of this problem mostly focused on pest attack while possibility of low fruit production due to lack of pollination was neglected. In this study, the effect of pollinator visitation to fruit set and quality was assessed by application of two local domesticated honey bees, Asiatic honey bees (Apis cerana) and stingless bees (Trigona laeviceps) as potential pollinator agents at hot pepper plantation. This study found that both bees had similar visitation rate while A. cerana spend less time in flowers. Visitation by A. cerana and Trigona laeviceps improved fruit set, fruit production per plant, average fruit weight, and fruit size. This result confirms the importance of cross pollination for hot pepper production and both species could be used as pollination agent for hot pepper. Advantages and disadvantages for each species as pollination agent for local Indonesia farm system are discussed in this paper.
Linking food security, climate change adaptation and mitigation: the case of sustainable land management in Malawi

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) aims at enhancing the capacity of farming systems to sustainably support food security in the context of climatic changes (CC). Questions arise about the profitability of alternative farming options and their cost-effectiveness in mitigating CC. A large dataset has been built through household surveys, key informant interviews and focus group discussions conducted in different agro ecological zones of Malawi. Farmers adopt a wide combination of sustainable land management (SLM) practices, earning often higher yields, profits and returns to labor than under conventional farming. Differences are more significant in dry areas indicating potential for CC adaptation. However, this may come at excessive costs in terms of capital and labor. Negative marginal abatement costs for most SLM options show synergies between increased farm incomes and CC mitigation. Cost- effectiveness of agriculture management practices is proposed as policy decision criterion to prioritize CSA interventions on the basis of economic efficiency in greenhouse gases abatement.
A new approach for solving the first-order linear matrix differential equations

Abstract. The main contribution of the current paper is to propose a new effective numerical method for solving the first-order linear matrix differential equations. Properties of the Legendre basis operational matrix of integration together with a collocation method are applied to reduce the problem to a coupled linear matrix equations. Afterwards, an iterative algorithm is examined for solving the obtained coupled linear matrix equations. Numerical experiments are presented to demonstrate the applicably and efficiency of our method.
A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW: BUTEA MONOSPERMA (LAM.) KUNTZE

Butea monosperma (Lam.) Kuntze, frequently known as Flame of forest, belongs to the family Fabaceae. In traditional medicine, there are many natural crude drugs that have the prospective to take care of many disease and disorders one of them is Butea monosperma (Lam.). It is one of the most attractive tree has been put to some useful purpose in Ayurveda, Unani and Homeopathic medicine and has become a cynosure of modern medicine. The plant is highly used by the rural and tribal community in curing diverse disorders. Commonly it is used as tonic, astringent, aphrodisiac and diuretics. Thus it holds a significant place because of its medicinal and other miscellaneous uses of economic values. This Review particularly deals with the Phytoconstituents, Ayurvedic importance along with the pharmacological aspects of Butea monosperma (Lam.) Kuntze.
VYSOKÉ UČENÍ TECHNICKÉ V BRNĚ Fakulta strojního inženýrství DIPLOMOVÁ PRÁCE

The diploma thesis is divided into two main parts. The first part describes the production of chrome and cobalt tips for SP-STM with subsequent testing of chrome tips on the Fe-Ir system (111). Furthermore, the first results from the growth studies of niobium on iridium(111) are presented. In the second part is described in detail the experimental LT-STM microscope of the Faculty of Physical Engineering. The chapter deals with the development of the microscope and its testing on a HOPG sample under atmospheric and vacuum conditions. The chapter describes the biggest problems which were solved when the microscope was puting into operation state. The second part also introduces the design of a new vacuum transport system, which consists of a tip and sample transport pallet. At the end of the second part is described the testing of cooling systems for LT-STM and the design of their modifications.
NEW DEVELOPMENTS OF A LASER ION SOURCE FOR ION SYNCHROTRONS

Laser Ion Sources (LIS) are well suited to filling synchrotron rings with highly charged ions of almost any element in a single turn injection mode. We report the first measurements of the LIS output parameters for Pb 27+ ions generated by the new 100 J/1 Hz Master Oscillator – Power Amplifier CO2-laser system. A new LIS has been designed, built and tested at CERN, as an ion source for ITEP-TWAC accelerator/accumulator facility, and as a possible future source for an upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) injector chain. The use of the LIS based on 100 J/1 Hz CO2-laser together with the new ion LINAC, as injector for ITEP-TWAC project, is discussed.
Reduced rank estimation of (co)-variance components for international evaluation using AI-REML

In multiple across country evaluations (MACE) of dairy bulls, (Shaeffer & Zhang, 1993), different national evaluations are regarded as different traits. This has the advantage of taking differences in trait definitions and national evaluation systems into account as well as possible genotype by environment interactions due to e.g. climate and/or differences in productions-systems and circumstances. The disadvantage is that a genetic (co)-variance matrix of dimension corresponding to the number of traits included is required. The expression of similar traits in different countries tends to be highly correlated. As the number of countries increases, the corresponding covariance matrix will tend to have one or more non-positive eigenvalues, indicating that it is not of full rank. Previous methods for the estimation of (co)-variance matrices for MACE have been REML based on the EM algorithm of Dempster et al. (1977). This algorithm is generally known to have very slow convergence properties, and furthermore it is difficult to estimate standard errors of the estimates obtained with the EMalgorithm. The multivariate AI-REML algorithm of Jensen et al. (1997) generally has very good convergence properties, and in most cases, it can provide standard errors of resulting estimates.
Higher education and economic development: can public funding restrain the returns from tertiary education?

This paper examines whether the contribution of tertiary education to economic growth and income per capita depends on the structure of public education budgets. The analysis resorts to a panel of 41 countries over the period 1970-2010. The empirical approach is based on system GMM regressions and Hierarchical Linear Models, which allow dealing with endogeneity concerns and parameter heterogeneity. The estimates show that budget imbalances against basic schooling seem to undermine the achievement of productivity gains from higher education.
Promotion Opportunity on Employee Career Change Decision : The Case of a Selected Learning Institution in Kenya

Employees are a vital competitive tool for organisations; given that success of organisation is determined by its human resources; however career change intention is little known. Knowing the implication of career change in terms of direct cost; replacement, recruitment and selection, temporary staff, management time, or in terms of indirect costs like morale, pressure on remaining staff, cost of learning, organizational can take appropriate measures to reduce career change. Thus, this study examined the effect of promotion opportunity on non teaching staff career change intention in Moi University Eldoret Municipality Kenya. Herzberg’s two factor theory guided this study. The research design was a survey. Individual elements were selected using stratified systematic random sampling techniques and the sample size determination was based on Nassiuma method. Data was analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The specific analysis methods in this study included frequencies, percentages, spearman correlation, phi and ordinal regression. The findings indicated that; promotion opportunity had a significant relationship with non teaching staff career change intention. The findings indicated that non teaching staff considered promotion opportunity as the critical indicator of their perception of job satisfaction. This study concludes that promotion opportunity as perceived by non teaching staff had a higher effect on career change intention in Moi University Eldoret Municipality Kenya. Arising from the conclusion of this study, it is recommended that, Moi University ensure that promotion should be based on merit to reduce chances of career change.
MPPT Based on Sinusoidal Extremum-Seeking Control in PV Generation

The paper analyses extremum-seeking control technique for maximum power point tracking circuits in PV systems. Specifically, the paper describes and analyses the sinusoidal extremum-seeking control considering stability issues by means a Lyapunov function. Based on this technique, a new architecture of MPPT for PV generation is proposed. In order to assess the proposed solution, the paper provides some experimental measurements in a 100 W prototype which corroborate the effectiveness of the approach.
Repeated exposure to smoking warning labels : the effect on smoking related cognitions

Cigarette smoking remains one of the most significant preventable causes of mortality and disease in Australia. The most prominent and most visible approach to stop the uptake of smoking and reduce smoking rates are warning labels on cigarette packs. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of anti-smoking warning labels on smoking related cognitions derived from the Extended Parallel Processing Model (EPPM), in particular fear, severity, susceptibility, self-efficacy and intentions. A total of 62 participants (25 smokers and 37 never-smokers) aged between 19 years and 70 years (M = 34.03, SD = 13.87) were recruited for this study. Participants were required to monitor their intake of cigarettes in real time, and to report when they were exposed to smoking warning labels, through entering information into an Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) device. The present study has provided support for the effective use of EMA devices to determine the effects of encountering smoking warning labels on smoking cognitions, with exposure to smoking warning labels indicating an increase on a smoker’s self-efficacy in belief around ability to not smoke cigarettes. It is suggested that a focus within future anti-smoking campaigns, should incorporate more meaningful messages around an individual’s self-efficacy, as this may further assist in smokers achieving smoking cessation.
The use of injectable Chitosan/Nanohydroxyapatite/collagen composites with bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells to promote ectopic bone formation in vivo

The aim of this study was to evaluate ectopic in vivo bone formation with or without rat bone mesenchymal stem cells (rBMSCs) of an injectable Chitosan/Nanohydroxyapatite/Collagen (CS/nHAC) composite. The CS/nHAC composites were injected subcutaneously into the backs of Wistar rats with freshly loaded rBMSCs at a density of 10 × 106 cells/mL, and the CS/nHAC composites without cellswere used as negative controls. Newbone formation, degradation of composites, and degree of calcification were evaluated by Computed Tomography (CT) and three-dimensional (3D) CT reconstruction. Histological evaluations were performed to further assess bone structure and extracellular matrix by HE and Masson staining. The inflammatory reactions related to osteogenesis were also investigated in the present study. In comparison with the CS/nHAC composites, this study revealed that CS/nHAC/rBMSCs composites showed relatively higher percentage of calcification, better establishment of ECM, and less degradation rate. Meanwhile, different extents of inflammatory reactions were also observed in the CS/nHAC and CS/nHAC/rBMSCs explants at 2 and 4 weeks after implantation. Altogether, CS/nHAC/rBMSCs composites are superior to CS/nHAC composites in ectopic bone formation. In conclusion, the rBMSCs-seeded CS/nHAC composites may be beneficial to enhancing ectopic bone formation in vivo.
Study of the Relationship between Dependent and Independent Variable Groups by Using Canonical Correlation Analysis with Application

Canonical correlation analysis is used to study the relationship between two groups of variables (dependent and independent). Since each group represents the linear combination to a number of variables, canonical correlation analysis measures the relationship between these variables that maximally correlate with linear combinations of another subset of variables. Statistical analysis involves canonical correlation between two groups of variables, canonical variates, standard canonical variates, canonical factor loadings, canonical cross factor loadings for both groups. Test of significance of canonical correlation using Wilk's Lambda showed that the first and second canonical correlation were significant and the third and fourth canonical correlation were insignificant. This method is illustrated by using a real data set. Results obtained by using SPSS program.
Novel mechanism of modulation at a ligand-gated ion channel ; action of 5-Cl-indole at the 5-HT 3 A Receptor Cryptic Orthosteric Modulation of 5-HT 3 A

Background and purpose The 5-HT3 receptor is a prototypical member of the Cys-loop ligand-gated ion channel (LGIC) superfamily and an established therapeutic target. In addition to activation via the orthosteric site, receptor function can be modulated by allosteric ligands. We have investigated the pharmacological action of Cl-indole upon the 5HT3A receptor and identified that this positive allosteric modulator possesses a novel mechanism of action for LGICs. Experimental approach The impact of Cl-indole upon the 5-HT3 receptor was assessed using single cell electrophysiological recordings and [H]granisetron binding with HEK293 cells stably expressing the 5-HT3 receptor.