Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the Effectiveness of Debt Brakes: The Swiss Experience

The Swiss fiscal system is characterised by an extensive fiscal federalism with high fiscal autonomy at all governmental levels, by direct popular rights which include fiscal referenda at the cantonal and local levels, and by particular constitutional and/or statutory fiscal restraints in order to prevent excessive public debt. In this paper, the effects of these constitutional clauses on public deficit and debt are investigated. Using a panel of the 26 Swiss cantons from 1980 to 1998, we provide evidence that fiscal constraints significantly reduce budget deficits, while direct democracy leads to significantly lower public debt.
MICROPROPAGATION OF Coelogyne stricta (D.Don) Schltr. VIA PSEUDOBULB SEGMENT CULTURES (MICROPROPAGACIÓN DE Coelogyne stricta (D.Don) Schltr. VIA CULTIVO DE SEGMENTOS DE PSEUDOBULBOS)

Reproducible protocols for micropropagation of Coelogyne stricta via pseudobulb segments were developed. In vitro grown pseudobulb segments responded positively by induction shoot buds on half strength Murashige and Skoog’s (MS) medium supplemented with growth regulators α-naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) and Benzyl Adenine (BA) individually and in combinations. The combination of NAA (1.0 mg/l) + BA (2.0mg/l) and BA individually induced maximum number of multiple shoots. Root number proved to increase with NAA (1.0 and 2.0 mg/l) in the MS medium. The well developed rooted plantlets were hardened successfully in the potting mixture containing coconut husk, perlite, charcoal, broken tiles, brick pieces in the ratio of 2:1:1:1:1.
Income inequality and intimate partner violence against women: Evidence from India

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) has been consistently linked to poor health and adverse social outcomes. Though there is substantial empirical evidence on the determinants of IPV, little attention has been given to the potential impact of income inequality on domestic violence, especially in the developing world. This study aims to investigate the relationship between the IPV and contextual income inequality in India, a country with high prevalence of IPV and substantial income inequality. We use data on a nationally representative sample of 69,704 women from the third National Family Health Survey for India, conducted in 2005-06. Standard logistic regression and a Tobit model are used to examine the effect of income inequality, measured by the Gini-index, on different forms of IPV: physical, and sexual. In addition to income inequality, the multivariate analyses also control for other IPV determinants that are widely used in the literature. Results show a robust statistically significant positive association between income inequality and IPV in India. A one unit increase in the Gini-index increases the odds of sexual violence by 6.2% and less severe form of violence by 2.1%. Results of the Tobit model show that the intensity of violence against women increases by 0.0317 when the Gini-index increases by one unit. As for the other covariates, we find education level, husband's employment status, living in rural areas, being from non-scheduled caste, and the economic status of household to be protective factors from IPV. We also find the type of religion and caste/tribe to influence the likelihood of experiencing IPV. Policies that reduce income inequality would help in reducing the level of IPV against women.
PRESENT AND FUTURE OF RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES ONBOARD SHIPS. CASE STUDY: SOLAR - THERMAL SYSTEMS

In recent years, sustainability in a climate and an environmental perspective has become an issue of highest priority. This is an agenda that cannot and should not be ignored. The financial crisis has revealed a vulnerable global society. Fortu- nately, the latest developments have shown signs of recovery thanks to deliberate and well-coordinated global political actions which have created new confidence among companies and consumers. This political commitment can be seen as recognition that global production and trade create wealth for all of us, with shipping and associated maritime industries as the primary enablers. In order to keep focus on the important agenda of sustainable and green shipping attention must turn towards innov a- tion and efficient regulation. Nowadays, shipping industry is dependent on fossil fuels. As oil price is constantly increasing, solu- tions must be found in order to ensure industry sustainability. Developing and implementing energy efficient and environmentally friendly technologies for energy production and propulsion of the ship will conduct to a valid non - fossil future. In this context, present paper makes a review of alternative sources of energy used in shipping and also reveals concepts of future ships. The novelty is represented by authors vision regarding implementing solar thermal systems onboard, in order to comply with thermal need of the ship.
The effects of marketing activities on fast moving consumer good purchases: the case of yoghurt Italian market

This paper examines whether sales promotions effectiveness depends upon the consumer’s brand loyalty and her buying behaviour and whether consumer’s behavioural characteristics in term of purchase frequency and level affect the response to promotional activities and moderate the effect of brand loyalty during the consumer choice process. Different specifications for the utility function, exploiting information on selling price, promotional activities such as displays usage, ad features in the store, 3x2 and discount, and differently brand loyalty measures have been estimated into a discrete choice framework, that is into the rational brand choice paradigm, paying attention to their effects on individuals’ probabilities to choose the specific brand during each purchase occasion. The application is run on a ACNielsen dataset of Italian households consumer panel, observed to buy at least two yoghurt packages during a year, matched to store panel data with respect to quantities, prices and promotions.
Modelling systemic price cojumps with Hawkes factor models

Instabilities in the price dynamics of a large number of financial assets are a clear sign of systemic events. By investigating portfolios of highly liquid stocks, we find that there are a large number of high-frequency cojumps. We show that the dynamics of these jumps is described neither by a multivariate Poisson nor by a multivariate Hawkes model. We introduce a Hawkes one-factor model which is able to capture simultaneously the time clustering of jumps and the high synchronization of jumps across assets.
Estimation of Acid-Hydrolyzed Cellulose Fiber Size Distribution with Exponential and Rosin-Rammler (R-R) Laws

A new method was developed to characterize the cellulose fiber (hardwood dissolving pulp) size distribution after 50 wt% sulfuric acid hydrolysis at different hydrolysis temperatures with exponential and Rosin-Rammler (R-R) laws. The results show that the two above laws can be effective to explain the cellulose hydrolysis process. The exponential and the R-R laws were found to be well fitted to the sulfuric acid hydrolyzed cellulose fiber length distribution. The cumulative number distribution from Fiber Tester was shown to fit the exponential distribution well, while the cumulative mass distribution obtained from the acid hydrolysis was found to be suitable to the R-R law via an approximation process. The results from SEM analyses also supported the above conclusions. This approach can be used to characterize the cellulosic fiber properties before a further process of biorefinery, nanocellulose preparation, or other application of lignocellulosic fibers.
Telestration in Mobile Telementoring

The paper analyses the domain of modern video conferencing-based mentoring systems applied in surgery. We aim to introduce mobility to telementoring, accompanied with telestration as an obligatory feature for telementoring systems. A detailed outlook to the domain resulted in encountering the camera movement problem, reported in the paper. As no direct solution was identified, a set of ideas towards the resolution of the problem is presented for further discussion and research. Keywords-telementoring, telestration, annotation, camera movement
Network Co-Operation As a Source of Competitiveness in Medium-Sized Finnish Sawmills

2011. Network co-operation as a source of competitiveness in medium-sized Finnish sawmills. Silva Fennica 45(4): 743–759.In the Finnish sawmill industry, inter-firm collaboration has often been brought up as a means of creating a competitive edge in global markets by achieving economies of scale. Accord-ing to the resource-based view (RBV), a firm can evaluate its current or potential partners by considering firm-level collaboration as a portfolio of complementary strategic resources. The specific focus of the study is on examining the types and forms of sawmill co-operation, how the co-operation emerged and which firm-specific resources are mainly related to co-operation. Based upon this, we can see how the managers of medium-sized sawmills perceive network co-operation as facilitating the achievement of a sustainable competitive advantage. The empirical data for this study were collected by interviewing 16 managers and employees in medium-sized non-integrated sawmills, a joint-venture marketing company and other co-operative partners. The findings of the study show that meaningful and beneficial co-operation partnerships exist in the Finnish sawmilling industry, but the sawmill managers do not perceive this collaboration as a strategic resource. The marketing company was the only firm in this study that relied on its co-operative networks in seeking a sustainable competitive advantage. To make more of co-operative partnerships, the principles of co-operative networking should be understood better in the sawmilling industry in order to know what to expect from co-operation. Furthermore, the managers should have the courage to engage in more extensive co-operation in order for strategic rents to materialize. Since the selection of the right partners is fundamental, further studies could be conducted on the reasons behind failed or terminated co-operative arrangements to gather further empirical knowledge in this subject area.
Techniques for Online Diagnosis of Stator Shorted Turns in Induction Motors

In low voltage induction motors, the first indication of a stator fault is the appearance of an interturn short circuit. For this reason, several attempts to diagnose reliably these short circuits have been made. Although considerable research has been carried out, the diagnosis of interturn short circuits is not a mature technique yet. This article presents and analyzes the online interturn short circuit diagnostic techniques developed so far for line-connected induction motors. By means of a comparative study, their advantages and drawbacks are highlighted.
Sub-wavelength imaging and field mapping via electromagnetically induced transparency and Autler-Townes splitting in Rydberg atoms

We present a technique for measuring radio-frequency (RF) electric field strengths with sub-wavelength resolution. We use Rydberg states of rubidium atoms to probe the RF field. The RF field causes an energy splitting of the Rydberg states via the Autler-Townes effect, and we detect the splitting via electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). We use this technique to measure the electric field distribution inside a glass cylinder with applied RF fields at 17.04 GHz and 104.77 GHz. We achieve a spatial resolution of ≈100 μm, limited by the widths of the laser beams utilized for the EIT spectroscopy. We numerically simulate the fields in the glass cylinder and find good agreement with the measured fields. Our results suggest that this technique could be applied to image fields on a small spatial scale over a large range of frequencies, up into the sub-terahertz regime.
Testing The Moderating Effect of the Strategy on the Relationship between Human Resources Management and Performance: A Subgroup Analysis. The Case of Tunisia

In a fast movement environment where organizations are struggling to survive and succeed in the market, the focus is increasingly placed on resources that can provide a sustainable competitive advantage. Wright, McMahan and McWilliams (1994), like other researchers have realized that human resources can generate this advantage since they are rare, difficult to substitute and imperfectly imitable. The more human resources are exploited and the more they get enriched and provide added value to the organization through creativity and innovation. We note that the prerequisite for the added value creation is individual motivation and competence at work. Thus, it is assumed that the development of human resources management enables to meet the competitiveness challenge. Human resources managers have to enhance staff motivation and to ensure continuous knowledge improvement. In this research, we try to explain the link between the human resource management practices and performance through the contingency approach. To do this, we opt for the subgroup analysis as a methodological framework. Our results lead to recognize that the interaction effect between certain human resource management practices and innovation level can provide an explanation as to changes in the level of performance of the Tunisian industrial firms.
Testing mark-specific vaccine efficacy with missing marks

This article develops hypothesis testing procedures for th e stratified mark-specific proportional hazards model in the presence of missing marks. The motivating application is placebo-controlled preventive human immunodeficiency vir us (HIV) vaccine efficacy trials, which have objective to test if the mark-specific relati ve hazard rate (vaccine versus placebo) is unity for all mark values, and to test whether it c hanges with the mark (the mark is the genetic distance of an infecting HIV sequence to an HIV sequence represented inside the tested vaccine). These tests inform on whether the vaccine affects the rate of HIV infection for any HIV genotype and whether the vaccine effect differs by HIV genotype, respectively, and guide vaccine development. One difficulty w ith these assessments is that the mark may be missing from many HIV infected subjects, predominantly due to rapid evolution of the infecting HIV. The test statistics are construct ed based on a two-stage efficient estimator which utilizes auxiliary predictors of the missi ng marks. The asymptotic properties of the testing procedures are investigated. In additio n, their finite-sample performances are investigated in simulations, which verify the double-r obustness property under missing at random marks and demonstrate effectiveness of the predictive auxiliaries to recover efficiency. One of the simulations models the recent landmark trial in Thailand, which was the first trial to demonstrate partial efficacy of an HIV vaccine. The new methods are applied to the real data set.
Continuation Analysis of Aircraft Ground Loads During High-Speed Turns

The current lateral ground loads requirement for an aircraft during a high-speed turn was written in the middle of the last century when relatively small aircraft with tricycle landing gear arrangements started to emerge. This requirement is known to be conservative when applied to large modern passenger aircraft. Nonlinearities (such as tire forces) have a significant effect at the edge of operating envelopes, placing a renewed interest on analysis methods that can classify the dynamics in these regions. In this paper, a continuation analysis is used to assess the loads that can be generated for different aircraft configurations during high-speed turns and to compare the results to the original requirement. A comparison is made between test results from a Federal Aviation Admistration study and continuation results, where all of the significant test data points are located within an envelope constructed from a continuation analysis. Continuation analysis, therefore, provides a conservative estimate of th.
On comparative analyses involving non-heritable traits: why half a loaf is sometimes worse than none

Question: Should phylogenetically informed (PI) analyses be used when not all variables in an analysis are heritable? Methods: I simulated phylogenetic trees, with randomized traits (1) inherited with variation, (2) assigned directly to extant species, or (3) made partially dependent on a heritable variable, testing the frequency of ‘significant’ correlations between variables using conventional and two different PI techniques. Results: ‘Significance’ was inflated in analyses of heritable variables, and this was corrected by both PI methods. However, where one variable was heritable and the other not, conventional analyses provided unbiased probability estimates. Modelled correlations between heritable and non-heritable traits were more readily detected by conventional analyses, but analyses involving ‘incorrect’ heritable traits sometimes showed spurious correlations. Conclusions: The results suggest that PI analyses are inappropriate when only one of a pair of variables displays phylogenetic pattern. Where intrinsically non-heritable traits display phylogenetic pattern, conventional analyses are appropriate as an initial approach, but residuals should be tested for phylogenetic patterning.
Explaining ICT consumption: the case of the home computer

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A numerical test of long‐time stability for rigid body integrators

In the context of Hamiltonian ODEs, a necessary condition for an integrator to be symplectic or conjugate‐symplectic is that it nearly preserves the exact Hamiltonian. This paper introduces a numerical test of this necessity for rigid body methods. It turns out that several rigid body integrators proposed in literature fail this test. Hence, these integrators should be used with caution for long‐time simulation. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Application of response surface method in reverse osmosis membrane to optimize BOD, COD and colour removal from palm oil mill effluent

Palm oil mill effluent (POME) is typically non-biodegradable and has high concentration of organic matter that represented as COD, BOD and Colour values. The correlation of concentration and pH of POME, and Trans membrane pressure (TMP) of Reverse Osmosis (RO) membrane was optimized by response surface method using a second order polynomial model with central composite design (CCD) which is a part model of response surface method (RSM) in Design-Expert® software. The main limits that influenced the parameters removal i.e. concentration of POME, pH of solution and transmembrane pressure were empirically determined at laboratory level and successfully optimized using RSM. The best conditions were determined from 3D response surface and 2D contour graphs i.e. 10.05% of POME concentration at pH 3.0 and TMP 0.50 kPa to yield the last values of COD, BOD and Colour i.e. 24.1372 mg/L, 24.33 mg/L and 11.76 PtCo, respectively. The results show that the response surface method effective to reduce the number of experiment.
Trends in behavioural ecology: Putting South African research in a global perspective

FUNDING: None South Africa remains at the leading edge of scientific publishing on the African continent, yet few analyses of publication patterns exist outside the biomedical field. Considering the large number of protected areas and mammalian guilds within the country, I examined trends in South African ecological research as it pertains to the behaviour of mammals. I assessed the topics and taxonomic focus of mammalogists at South African institutes over the span of 15 years (2001–2015), and contrasted local research with the shifting focus of international behavioural research. This review of more than 1000 publications indicates that South African based researchers exhibit a strong tendency towards field-based research, as opposed to laboratory-centred experiments. In terms of topical focus, local ecologists place significant weight on the behavioural categories of mating, social and foraging behaviour – reflecting a global priority for these topics. This finding contrasts with an increased emphasis on animal cognition and communication research in the international research arena, including field-based studies on these themes. I make suggestions on how behavioural ecologists in South Africa can align themselves with global trends while also continuing to distinguish those facets that make South African behavioural ecology unique.
Proactive Fault Tolerance Technique for Scientific Applications in Cloud

Cloud Computing means hosted services are delivered over Internet. Instead of building their own computing infrastructures, consumers can buy the computing resources like virtual machines, storage as a utility just like an electricity. Cloud computing gives advantages to consumers like on demand service, rapid elasticity, resource sharing and pooling, scalability and many more. But there are many issues related with the cloud computing which need to be addressed properly like fault tolerance, resource scheduling and effective pricing of cloud resources etc. Making cloud environment fault tolerant is the major challenge these days. In order to improve reliability and achieve robustness in cloud computing, failures should be assessed and handled effectively. As the cloud environment is dynamic, unpredictable system operation occurs, causing problems and failures. When Cloudlets or tasks of any application are executing on Cloud platform , then effective allocation of cloud resources like virtual machines to the cloudlets is very important such that no cloudlet gets failed or no virtual machine is left out for the execution. If there is no proper allocation of cloud resources to the cloudlets , it is considered as a big failure in the effective working of any application on Cloud platform. This fault or failure needs to be handled carefully by the fault tolerance techniques. The used techniques for the fault tolerance comes in the category of reactive (fault is handled after it has occurred) and proactive (fault is predicted before it actually happens). Much work has been done in the area of reactive techniques. The existing proactive techniques are not that much reliable in fault tolerance as compared to reactive techniques. Moreover, fault tolerance techniques work more efficiently in case of real time applications rather than scientific applications . Consequently, an approach based on proactive technique need to be proposed that can proficiently resolve the fault tolerance problem for effective allocation of cloud resources for scientific applications. This thesis focuses on providing an efficient proactive fault tolerant technique for scientific application in which above mentioned fault is predicted proactively and handled efficiently such that all cloudlets finish their tasks before or on deadline and no virtual machine has been left out for execution. Table of Content Content Page No. Certificate.i Acknowledgement.ii Abstract.iii List of Figures.vi-vii List of Tables.viii Chapter 1 : Introduction.1-11 1.1 Cloud Computing.1 1.2 Cloud Computing Characteristics.3 1.3 Cloud Computing Service Models.3 1.4 Cloud Computing Deployment Models.5 1.5 Cloud Computing Applications.5 1.6 Cloud Computing Challenges.9 1.7 Research Motivation.10 1.8 Organisation of Thesis.11 Chapter 2 : Literature Survey.12-22 2.