Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Producer Services as a Driver of High Technology Manufacturing in Europe

The share of producer services mostly consisting of technology intensive services has dramatically increased over the last decades. This rapid development of producer service enhance to economic growth strongly. Apart from the direct effect arising from the sector’s own dynamism on growth, the sector also leads to efficiency promotion in industries of national economy. In the present paper we examine how producer services sectors contributed significantly to European economic growth in terms of its effect on production, especially the high technology manufacturing. In this context, using Panel Cointegration and Causality Test for the available annual data from 1997 to 2007, we investigated the relationship between development of producer services and high technology manufacturing sectors in ten European countries. Empirical findings indicate that there is a significant effect of producer services upon the developments of high technology manufacturing sectors. Accordingly, there is a growing convergence between manufacturing and producer services sector against to the traditional approach leading to a view isolating sectors each other strictly in their operation process. The results also suggest that policymakers interested in high-technology growth should pay much more attention to the developments of producer service for enhancing innovation within manufacturing sector.
Using Multi-class AdaBoost Tree for Prediction Frequency of Auto Insurance

In this paper, AdaBoost algorithm, a popular and effective prediction method, is applied to predict the prediction of claim frequency of auto insurance, which plays an important part of property insurance companies. Using a real dataset of car insurance, we reduce the frequency prediction problem to be a multi-class problem, in turn we employ the mixed method called multi-class AdaBoost tree (a combination of decision tree with adaptive boosting) as our predictor. By comparing its results with some most popular predictors such as generalized linear models, neural networks, and SVM, we demonstrate that the AdaBoost predictor is more comparable in terms of both prediction ability and interpretability. The later objective is particularly important in business environments. As a result, we arrive at the conclusion that AdaBoost algorithm could be employed as a robust method to predict auto insurance. It is important to practical contribution for insurance company in terms of conclusion explanation and decision making suggestions.
The Effect of Relation-Specific Investments in the Supply Chain Triad on Innovation Performance

Using a comprehensive survey, this paper analyzes the effect of committed and heavy supply chain relationships characterized by high levels of relation-specific investments in innovation performance in Hungary, an emerging economy in Central and Eastern Europe. For this research, we carry out a two-step analysis. First, we investigate the effect of Relation Specific Investments (RSI) on four different innovation-related performance dimensions of a focal firm. In contrast to previous research, we did not limit our analysis to the dyadic relationship level, but rather, we analyzed the triadic supply chain relationships. Uniquely, this paper conceptualizes and measures innovation performance in a complex way, both product and process, but also analyzes incremental and radical innovations. As a second step, the effect of internationalization on the focal firm is tested. Triad level RSI has a positive effect on all innovation related performance dimensions. A test of the moderation effect produced mixed results, indicating the need to treat innovation in a complex, sophisticated way in future research.
H15-114 POLLUTANT REMOVAL MECHANISM FOR IDEALIZED 2D URBAN STREET CANYONS

In this paper, the large-eddy simulation (LES) is employed to elucidate the pollutant removal mechanism from street canyons to the urban boundary layer (UBL) aloft. Hypothetical urban roughness elements, which are constructed by identical 2D street canyons, are used to build an idealized urban area. The building-height-to-street-width (aspect) ratio is the key geometry parameter controlling the aerodynamic roughness and flow characteristics. In this preliminary attempt, the prevailing flow is normal to the axis of street canyon of unity aspect ratio (skimming flow regime) in order to consider the worst scenario of pollutant removal.
Ascaridoid nematodes of teleostean fishes from the eastern north Atlantic and seas of the north of Europe

Les especes d'Ascarides parasites de Poissons Teleosteens de l'Atlantique Nord-oriental et des mers du Nord de l'Europe presentes dans les collections du Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle de Paris sont etudiees. Les mesures relatives, longueur de l'œsophage/largeur des ailes cervicales et longueur de l'appendice l'œsophagien/largeur des ailes cervicales, permettent de distinguer deux sous-especes chez Hysterothylacium aduncum : H. aduncum aduncum est presente chez Alosa fallax, A. alosa, Belone belone, Psetta maxima, Lophius piscatorius, Trachurus trachurus, Merluccius merluccius et Trisopterus luscus , H. aduncum gadi est presente chez Pollachius pollachius, P. virens, Gadus morhua, Merlangius merlangus, Scomber scombrus et Salmo salar. Hysterothylacium cornutum, H. rigidum et Maricostula incurva sont signales respectivement chez Thunnus (Germo) alalunga, Lophius piscatorius et Xiphias gladius ; Hysrerorhy acium reliquens est redecrit chez Pagel us acarne et Microchirus azevia ; Hysterothylacium sp. et Goezia sp. sont decrits respectivement chez Callionymus lyra et Trisopterus luscus. Une clef dichotomique des especes de Raphidascaridinae parasites de Poissons Teleosteens de l'Atlantique Nord-oriental et des mers du Nord de l'Europe est donnee.
Retrospective study of function outcome in giant cell tumor treated by sandwich technique with internal fixation

Purpose: To evaluate outcomes of 27 patients who underwent curettage, use of phenol, and reconstruction using the sandwich technique with internal fixation with plate or k wires for giant cell tumor (GCT) of bone around the knee and ankle. Methods: 15 women and 12 men aged 19 to 46 (mean, 29.6) years underwent intralesional curettage, use of phenol, and reconstruction using the sandwich technique with internal fixatation with plate or k wires for GCT of the proximal tibia (n=12) or distal femur (n=13) or distal tibia (n=2). 1, 16, and 10 tumors were classified as grade I, grade II, and grade III, respectively. Four of the grade III tumors were associated with an extra-articular pathological fracture. Patients underwent intralesional curettage, use of phenol, and reconstruction with autograft (iliac crest), gel foam, and cement (the sandwich technique) with internal fixation with plates or k wires. Pathological fractures were fixed with plates. Results were based on serial radiographs showing consolidation of the lesion along with a subjective clinical examination and functional evaluation noted in the patient’s records. Functional outcome was evaluated using the Musculoskel et al Tumor Society (MSTS) score. Result: The mean follow-up period was 75.4 (60108) months. The mean MSTS score was 27.4 out of 30 (standard deviation, 3; range, 19–30). No patient had recurrence. No patient had malignant transformation. Conclusion: Intralesional curettage, use of phenol, and reconstruction with allograft, gel foam, and cement (the sandwich technique) for GCT of bone achieved good functional outcome and a low recurrence rate.
Formulation of Intervention to Arrows in Causal Diagram and Its Applications

変数間の因果関係が因果ダイアグラムと構造方程式モデルで表現される状況で,ダイアグラムの矢線へ介入する行為を考え,その効果を定式化する. この定式化は条件付き介入の枠組みにおいて記述される. 矢線への介入効果に対する識別可能条件についても考察した。 線形構造方程式モデルのもとで,興味ある特性変数の分散が,これへの有向道上の矢線を介入することで,どのように変化するかを具体的に求めた. 矢線への介入は,直接介入しにくい変数である中間特性を制御するうえで有用である. 適用例を通して,これらの定式化の有用性を主張した.
Cervical Screening a Study on the Prevalence of the Risk-factors for Developing Cervical Cancer Among Young Women

This study had three aims: to determine the prevalence of the risk-factors for contracting HPV (the Human Papillomavirus) and developing cervical cancer among young women; to establish if there are any links between the presence of these risk-factors, attendance for cervical screening and abnormal cervical screening results; and to ascertain the key barriers to the prevention of cervical cancer. The risk-factors were identified from literature as being sexually active at a young age, having increasing numbers of sexual partners for females and their partners, having had a sexually transmitted infection/disease (STI), smoking and long-term use of the oral contraceptive pill. The research was conducted through a quantitative, self-completion internet survey, completed by 242 women aged 1824 attending a third-level institute and analysed using SPSS (the Statistical Package for Social Sciences). The findings showed that the prevalence of the sexual behaviour risk-factors tended to occur concurrently; being sexually active before age 17 was linked to increasing numbers of sexual partners and the occurrence of STIs. The findings also showed that approximately one-quarter of participants had attended for cervical screening, of which, over one-third reported abnormal results. Additionally, the findings demonstrated that the presence of the abovementioned sexual behaviour risk-factors tended to increase the likelihood of cervical screening attendance and the reception of an abnormal result. The key barriers to the prevention of cervical cancer were identified as a lack of knowledge about the primary and secondary prevention of cervical cancer: HPV and cervical screening respectively. The present study recommended that firstly, as the prevalence of the risk-factors appear to be increasing, cervical screening should be initiated from age 20 onwards, on the basis of the presence of the riskfactors, rather than being age-standardised at 25, and secondly, greater education and communication on the primary and secondary prevention of cervical cancer should be disseminated to adolescents and young people.
A sign language recognition system using hidden markov model and context sensitive search

Hand gesture is one of the most natural and expressive ways for the hearing impaired. However, because of the complexity of dynamic gestures, most researches are focused either on static gestures, postures, or a small set of dynamic gestures. As real-time recognition of a large set of dynamic gestures is considered, some efficient algorithms and models are needed. To solve this problem in Taiwanese Sign Language, a statistics based context sensitive model is presented and both gestures and postures can be successfully recognized. A gesture is decomposed as a sequence of postures and the postures can be quickly recognized using hidden Markov model. With the probability resulted from hidden Markov model and the probability of each gesture in a lexicon, a gesture can be easily recognized in a linguistic way in real-time.
Effect of a dietary probiotic blend on performance, blood characteristics, meat quality and faecal microbial shedding in growing-finishing pigs

The current study aimed to evaluate the effect of a dietary probiotic blend on growth performance, blood characteristics, meat quality, and faecal microbial population in growing-finishing pigs in a 12-week experiment. Pigs were assigned to two dietary treatments: a control basal-diet without probiotic blend (No-Pro) and a test-diet including the probiotic blend (Pro) according to pig bodyweight (BW) at the dose of 100 mg/kg of BW. Pigs fed the probiotics had higher final BW and increased average daily gain (ADG), as well as improved feed conversion ratio (FCR). Blood parameters of pigs were not affected by dietary probiotic complex. Meat crude protein and polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) contents were increased in the group fed probiotics, whereas there were no significant differences in the other meat traits. Feeding of probiotics determined a decrease in faecal NH3-N (+15.5%) and butyric acid concentrations, whereas no effects were observed on faecal acetic acid and propionic acid. An increased faecal Lactobacillus concentration was found when pigs fed probiotic blend. Based on our findings, feeding probiotic blend enhanced growth performance and meat quality in growing-finishing pigs, and also decreased faecal NH3-N and butyric acid levels resulting in a viable approach to reduce animal excreta pollution. Keywords : Diet, growth, pig, probiotics
An End-to-End Traffic Vision and Counting System Using Computer Vision and Machine Learning: The Challenges in Real-Time Processing

The goal of this research is to design and develop an end-to-end system based on computer vision and machine learning to monitor, count, and manage traffic. The end goal of this study is to make our urban transportation safer for our people, especially for pedestrians and bicyclists, who are the most vulnerable components of traffic collisions. Several methods have been proposed for traffic vision, particularly for pedestrian recognition. However, when we want to implement it in real-time in the scale of a large city like Los Angles, and on live video streams captured by regular traffic cameras, we have to deal with many challenges. This paper introduces the main challenges in traffic vision in practice, and proposes an effective end-to-end system for traffic vision, detection, tracking, and counting to address the challenges.
Performance of a Highly Sensitive, 19-element, Dual-polarization, Cryogenic L-band Phased-array Feed on the Green Bank Telescope

A new 1.4 GHz, 19-element, dual-polarization, cryogenic phased-array feed (PAF) radio astronomy receiver has been developed for the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) as part of the Focal L-band Array for the GBT (FLAG) project. Commissioning observations of calibrator radio sources show that this receiver has the lowest reported beam-formed system temperature (Tsys) normalized by aperture efficiency (η) of any phased-array receiver to date. The measured Tsys/η is 25.4 ± 2.5 K near 1350 MHz for the boresight beam, which is comparable to the performance of the current 1.4 GHz cryogenic single-feed receiver on the GBT. The degradation in Tsys/η at ∼4′ (required for Nyquist sampling) and ∼8′ offsets from the boresight is, respectively, ∼1% and ∼20% of the boresight value. The survey speed of the PAF with seven formed beams is larger by a factor between 2.1 and 7 compared to a single-beam system, depending on the observing application. The measured performance, both in frequency and offset from the boresight, qualitatively agrees with predictions from a rigorous electromagnetic model of the PAF. The astronomical utility of the receiver is demonstrated by observations of the pulsar B0329+54 and an extended H ii region, the Rosette Nebula. The enhanced survey speed with the new PAF receiver will enable the GBT to carry out exciting new science, such as more efficient observations of diffuse, extended neutral hydrogen emission from galactic inflows and searches for fast radio bursts.
Information Needs and Seeking Patterns of Farmers within the Changing Information Environment: A Case of Sri Lankan Vegetable Farmers

Information plays a pivotal role in today’s agriculture whilst the ICTs have largely influenced the agriculture information and communication systems. In this context, gaining an in-depth knowledge of farmers’ information needs and seeking patterns is central to designing and executing prolific agriculture information systems. With respect to the vegetable farmers in Sri Lanka, recent and sufficient informational studies have not been carried. Thus, this study sets out to explore information needs and seeking patterns of vegetable farmers within the contemporary information environment. Data were gathered by interviewing 289 vegetable farmers and were analyzed by computing the relevant informational indices. The findings show that the majority of vegetable farmers exhibit a medium to a high level of information needs. Market-related information found to be the most prioritized informational need among vegetable farmers followed by information related to crop production, the environment, climate and policies, new technologies, and training and development, respectively. Furthermore, traditional sources and channels remain the most trusted and adopted sources and channels of the vegetable farmers, while the use of modern means of communication seems remarkably low. In selecting sources and channels, vegetable farmers look for the ones that are capable of delivering specific, localized, credible and up-to-date information in local languages. Keywords: Agricultural information needs, Sources and channels, Information indices, Vegetable farmers, Sri Lanka
Improving the quality and safety of organic and low input foods and maximizing the benefits to consumers and producers

‘Improving quality and safety and reduction of cost in the European organic and 'low input' supply chains' (QLIF) is an Integrated Project under the 6th Framework Programme of the European Commission which started in March 2004 and will end in February 2009. After three years of research by 31 QLIF partners, the scientific data on on the benefits of the system approach used in organic and ‘low input’ agriculture has expanded considerably. At the same time the project has developed an array of technological innovations that are applicable to a wide range of food production systems and novel approaches for whole food chain management. During the 3rd QLIF Congress held at the University of Hohenheim, Germany, in March 2007, these results were discussed in nine synthesis papers and in 37 in-depth papers.
Semi-nonparametric count data estimation with an endogenous binary variable

This paper proposes a semi-nonparametric Poisson model with an endogenous binary variable, which generalizes bivariate correlated unobserved heterogeneity using Hermite polynomials, and compares this model with a parametric one. The National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) data from 1990 shows the difference between the endogenous binary variable's coefficients of the semi-nonparametric and parametric models.
THE FEASIBILITY OF A FIXED EXCHANGE RATE REGIME FOR NEW EU-MEMBERS: EVIDENCE FROM REAL EXCHANGE RATES

In this paper, we estimate fundamental bilateral real exchange rates for a group of eight accession countries using a panel-cointegration approach for the period 1993-2003. We document a significant positive link between productivity levels and the corresponding real exchange rate levels. Future rises in productivity cannot be excluded on the basis of either our own analysis or the literature as a whole. Consequently, inflation pressure and real exchange rate appreciation in the accession countries probably remain a fact of life in the near future. The extent to which this is a problem for a fixed nominal exchange rate regime is hard to determine. Price dynamics in the accession countries are still quite flexible to accommodate substantial real exchange rate movements even when the nominal exchange rate is rather fixed; moreover, that price adjustment is mostly an internal process for the accession countries. Overall we conclude that a fixed exchange rate regime for each of the accession countries would be feasible in itself, despite possible future real exchange rate appreciations due to either the Balassa-Samuelson effect or demand shifts. We find current misalignments to be small, robust and generally in line with the literature. This implies current exchange rate levels provide a reasonable indication of the level at which a parity exchange rate could be set.
Antibacterial activity of Mentha piperita against selected food spoiling bacteria

Leaf and stem extracts of Mentha piperita plant were tested against four bacterial isolates namely: Bacillus sp. (S1), Bacillus sp. (S2), Bacillus halmapalus andStreptomyces sodiphilus, isolated from commercial Spirulina products. The extraction was carried out with solvents such as petroleum ether, acetone, methanol and ethanol. Antibacterial assay revealed that B. halmapalus was highly sensitive to both leaf and stem extracts. Bacillus sp. (S2) and S. sodiphilus was moderately sensitive to all extracts. Key words: Antibacterial activity, Mentha piperita.
The dynamics of spousal relationships after the loss of a child among bereaved Malay parents

The purpose of this study is to explore the dynamics of the relationship between bereaved parents after the loss of their child. Literature has attempted to understand how coping mechanisms related to gender characteristics, communication, and intimacy influence the spousal relationship after the loss of a child. However, this area is scarcely explored in a Malaysian context. This qualitative study involved 11 bereaved parents. These parents had lost their children due to accidents (n = 9) and homicide (n = 2). Open-ended questions that focused on the patterns of the spousal relationship were administered to the parents. The data were analysed using thematic analysis. Some of the main themes found were that constructive communication and intimacy are interrelated in helping bereaved parents to cope better. Nonverbal intimacy is helpful. Avoidance or limited communication and intimacy are influenced by religion and cultural beliefs. The bereavement responses influenced the spousal relationship, causing it to become stronger, weaker, or causing the parents to act like nothing had happened. This study helps us to understand the effects of the loss of a child on the spousal relationship of the bereaved parents. This study makes recommendations related to the adjustment and maintenance of a healthy spousal relationship after the loss of a child.
An Empirical Study on the Impact of Cultural Types on Resources Integration Model

From the perspective of Resource-based Theory (RBT), organizational culture can be a source of sustained competitive advantage. And resources integration models, divided by property rights of resource, not firm boundary, as internal and external resources integration models, are presented as being specific in different cultural contexts. However, the literature review shows the absences of an integrated framework, which can help to highlight the different role that context-specific facets of culture play. This paper develops a conceptual framework based upon the culture literatures and evolutionary theory to define the relationship between four different cultural types, namely team-long-developmental culture (TLD), team-authority-communicative culture (TAC), long-risk-developmental culture (LRD) and risk-control-authoritative culture (RCA), and two different resource integration models. Our study undertook a survey of 168 effective samples from manufacturing industries and developed a model of Partial Least Squares (PLS). The empirical results confirm the reliability and validity of measurement scales. The theoretical hypotheses of cultural evolution mechanism for resource integration are also supported by the empirical evidence.