Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessing Consumer Preferences for Sustainability, Equity, and Welfare in the Aquarium Trade

Each year millions of fish and invertebrates are traded to support the home aquaria industry. Aquarium keeping is a popular hobby worldwide and the trade has the potential to provide socio-economic benefits to reef-adjacent communities while promoting environmental stewardship by consumers. However, current practices are negatively impacting the industry as the supply chain can be environmentally unsustainable and socially unequitable. Poor industry practices compromise the welfare of the organisms, leading to immense supply chain losses which exacerbate the sustainability and equity issues. Since the trade is demand-driven, consumers can play a role in addressing poor industry practices by using their substantial market power to endorse sustainably, equitably, and ethically sourced organisms. To better understand the consumer population and explore purchasing behaviors, an online survey of 304 aquarium hobbyists was conducted. Both saltwater and freshwater aquarists were targeted, making this the first known study to include freshwater hobbyist preferences with consideration for their potential entrance to the marine aquaria market. Results indicate that consumers have strong preferences for organisms with attributes that positively reflect sustainability, equity, and welfare in the aquarium trade. Aquarium hobbyists are knowledgeable about their organisms as well as the supply chain that produces them and are willing to offer at least 20% more than the commercial price of an animal to have these attributes realized. This study does not evaluate the consumers’ explicit attitudes toward a certification scheme, but instead uses respondents’ stated values as implicit support for a market-based reform of the industry. The preferences and associated price premiums indicated by hobbyists can be useful in leveraging consumer market power to reduce the environmental and socio-economic impacts of the aquarium trade through a certification scheme.
A FCVAR model for the Central American economy

In this article we propose the use of univariate and multivariate fractionally integrated techniques in the analysis of the Central American economy by means of investigating three series (prices, interest rates and monetary base) in a group of the six countries that form the CMCA (i.e., Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Dominican Republic). The univariate results indicate that the series are highly persistent with orders of integration close to 1 in the majority of the cases. The main exceptionsare found for the cases of Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, especially for the monetary base and the interest rate, where mean reversion is found in some cases. The multivariate results show evidence of one long run equilibrium relationship between broad money, interest rates and inflation for Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador and Dominican Republic, and two equilibrium relationships for the remaining countries, i.e., Guatemala and Nicaragua.
Eye detection and localization in a facial image based on partial geometric shape of iris and eyelid under practical scenarios

Abstract. The accurate detection and localization of an eye in a facial image is important for many computer vision applications, such as face recognition, fatigued driving detection, and gaze estimation. Although research on eye detection has matured, most existing eye detection methods produce poor performance in various practical scenarios where there exists variation in facial expressions or illumination, people wearing clear eyeglasses, and so on. We have proposed a method that can locate eyes under the above-mentioned varied environmental conditions. The proposed approach follows two steps: eye candidate detection and eye candidate verification. In the first step, two features, namely semicircular edge shape and semiellipse edge shape features, are proposed to detect the eye candidates. In the second step, all of the selected eye candidates are verified using a support vector machine trained with the fusion of local binary pattern, cell mean intensity, and histogram of oriented gradients features. The proposed method has been tested under different conditions of AR, the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Pose, Expression, Accessories, and Lighting, and the facial recognition technology databases. The experimental results suggest that the proposed method provides better performance as compared to the existing methods in terms of precision and recall.
A new configuration of patch antenna array for rectenna array applications

The performance and advantages of microstrip patch antennas made them a field of interest for wireless power transmission applications, especially for rectenna systems where the choice of the antenna is a crucial step. In this paper, a 5.8 GHz circularly polarized patch antenna has been designed and fabricated, then mounted by using 4 elements to achieve an antenna array to enhance the captured power to be converted by the rectifier circuit. The antenna array is well matched at 5.8 GHz in terms of reflection coefficient and has a directivity of 11dB and a gain of 6 dB. Results have been confirmed by fabrication.
Unfair Rules for Unequal Pay: Wage Discrimination and Procedural Justice

Abstract Do people judge some forms of wage discrimination to be more unfair than others? We report an experiment in an online labor market in which participants were paid based on discriminatory rules. We test hypotheses about fairness based on procedural justice, divisiveness, and affective polarization between partisans. Workers transcribed text and then learned that they earned more or less money than other workers for doing the same job. We manipulated whether the unequal pay was based on their political party, eye color, or an arbitrary choice between two doors. Consistent with the divisiveness hypothesis, participants judged discriminatory pay to be less fair when it was based on a stable characteristic, political party, or eye color, compared to a transient choice (between doors). We find mixed evidence about how affective polarization exacerbates the unfairness of partisan discrimination. We discuss implications for the procedural justice of wage discrimination.
Bush encroachment in Namibia 222 In

222 In Namibia the phenomenon of bush encroachment is regarded to be part of the process of desertification since the increase in the extent and density of woody vegetation occurs at the expense of other desirable grasses and forbs, resulting in an alarming reduction in productivity. The following definition of bush encroachment was accepted by a Namibian Technical Working Group consisting of rangeland specialists, ecologists, livestock specialists and farmers:
Counterfeit Detection with Multispectral Imaging

Multispectral imaging is becoming more practical for a variety of applications due to its ability to provide hyper specific information through a non-destructive analysis. Multispectral imaging cameras can detect light reflectance from different spectral bands of visible and nonvisible wavelengths. Based on the different amount of band reflectance, information can be deduced on the subject. Counterfeit detection applications of multispectral imaging will be decomposed and analyzed in this thesis. Relations between light reflectance and objects’ features will be addressed. The process of the analysis will be broken down to show how this information can be used to provide more insight on the object. This technology provides desired and viable information that can greatly improve multiple fields. For this paper, the multispectral imaging research process of element solution concentrations and counterfeit detection applications of multispectral imaging will be discussed. BaySpec’s OCI-M Ultra Compact Multispectral Imager is used for data collection. This camera is capable of capturing light reflectance from wavelengths of 400 – 1000 nm. Further research opportunities of developing self-automated unmanned aerial vehicles for precision agriculture and extending counterfeit detection applications will also be explored.
A dynamic model of power metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor half-bridges for the fast simulation of switching induced electromagnetic emissions

ABSTRACT Hard switching of semiconductors is the main source of conducted electromagnetic emissions (EME) in pulse-width modulation (PWM) driven power inverters. The requirements on the electromagnetic compatibility grow with the increasing number of installed electric motor drives and inductive power converters. An accurate prediction of the conducted EME requires a model which considers the switching transition of the power semiconductors and the parasitic elements. This typically leads to complex SPICE models, which are hardly suitable for fast dynamic simulations and model-based controller design. This paper presents a compact mathematical model of a low voltage half-bridge inverter, which is based on large-signal models for the individual components and allows for the fast simulation of the conducted EME and switching losses. The high accuracy of the proposed mathematical model is demonstrated by measurement results. In particular, it is shown that the model is able to accurately predict the conducted electromagnetic emissions up to 100 MHz.
Construction of Training Data for Price Prediction of a Real Estate from Internet Ads

The paper presents a model for constructing a data set aimed at predicting a price of a real estate (houses and flats) from the standard Internet ads. The model for predicting a real estate price includes, in addition to standard real estate's features (area, number of bedrooms, etc.) appearing in ad, attractiveness of a real estate location as well as information on some additional interior facilities (e.g., refrigerator, dish-washing machine, stove, etc.). The proposed training set construction model uses OpenStreetMap's Overpass API for determining attractiveness of a real estate's location, and a convolution neural network for detecting interior facilities from real estate photos.
Adopting an Activity-Based Cost Management Model at A Community College: A Case Study

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the key findings from a qualitative case study examining the implementation of an activity-based cost management model (ABC model) at a large community college. In a climate of fiscal uncertainty, the college adopted this model with the goal of improving budgetary decision-making. The paper examines faculty and administrators’ perceptions about the model, specifically surrounding the model’s potential to improve institutional functioning. We also examine stakeholder perceptions of potential barriers to successful campus-wide implementation, as well as its potential impact on the college’s culture surrounding cost management. Findings indicate that key stakeholders believe the ABC model has potential to increase efficiency by providing more holistic cost allocation data that better capture granular organizational cost drivers. However, stakeholders also believe that full implementation will hinge on a common, campus-wide understanding of the model’s benefits, as well as campus-wide shift in cost management culture.
Careers or Stop Gap Work?: Panel Data Analysis of Wives' Labor Supply Choices in Spain

I include the variables wives' age and cohort and children in a female participation equation to explore how the following two economic issues affect participation. First, a structural change in terms of participation over the life-cycle. Because a structural change does not affect all women of the young cohorts, I distinguish between long-run participating women (i.e., those whose participation behavior resembles that found after the structural change) and a priori inactive women (i.e., those with a traditional behavior). Second, it explores the impact of current social policies on mothers' participation. Despite that a negative correlation between children and mothers' participation (especially pre-scholars) is considered a stylized fact in the literature, long-run participating women may not withdraw from the labor market after maternity to avoid the likely experience loss (i.e., real wage decline) due to long absences. This analysis is carried out by exploiting a longitudinal Spanish survey (the ECPF). Despite some lacking variables, the use of panel data methods yields to satisfactory results.
Live football and tourism expenditure: match attendance effects in the UK

ABSTRACT Research question: The inbound tourist expenditure generating role of football (soccer), particularly the English Premier League (EPL), is evaluated. An enhanced economic and management understanding of the role of regular sporting fixtures emerges, as well as quantification of their impact. Expenditure on football tickets is isolated to identify local economic spillovers outside the stadium walls. Research methods: Using the UK International Passenger Survey, unconditional quantile regressions (UQR) are used to evaluate the distributional impact of football attendance on tourist expenditures. Both total expenditure and a new measure which adjusts expenditures for football ticket prices are considered. UQR is a novel technique which is as yet underexploited within sport economics and management and confers important methodological advantages over both ordinary least squares and quantile regressions. Results and findings: Significant cross quantile variation is found. High spending football fans spend more, even after ticket prices are excluded. Surprisingly, spending effects owing to attendance are strongest for those who overall spend the least, confirming the role of sport as a generator of tourist expenditure. Though the attendance effect is smaller for higher aggregate spenders, there is nevertheless a significant impact across the distribution. Implications: Distributional expenditure impacts highlight clear differentials between attendance by high and low spenders. Similar analysis is applicable to other global brands such as the National Football League (NFL), in the United States (American football) and the Indian Premier (cricket) League. The EPL's global popularity can be leveraged for achieving enhanced tourist expenditure.
Classification of Image using Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)

Computer vision is concerned with the automatic extraction, analysis, and understanding of useful information from a single image or a sequence of images. We have used Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) in automatic image classification systems. In most cases, we utilize the features from the top layer of the CNN for classification; however, those features may not contain enough useful information to predict an image correctly. In some cases, features from the lower layer carry more discriminative power than those from the top. Therefore, applying features from a specific layer only to classification seems to be a process that does not utilize learned CNN’s potential discriminant power to its full extent. Because of this property we are in need of fusion of features from multiple layers. We want to create a model with multiple layers that will be able to recognize and classify the images. We want to complete our model by using the concepts of Convolutional Neural Network and CIFAR-10 dataset. Moreover, we will show how MatConvNet can be used to implement our model with CPU training as well as less training time. The objective of our work is to learn and practically apply the concepts of Convolutional Neural Network.
An SDN-Based Multipath GridFTP for High-Speed Data Transfer

We demonstrate high-speed data transfer GridFTP using a multipath control mechanism with SDN (Software-Defined Networking). GridFTP is a typical tool that has been developed and widely used for bulk data transfer over a wide area network in the field. GridFTP supports a parallel high-speed data transfer scheme using multiple TCP streams. However, one of the shortest paths is used solely for data transfer in the default IP routing while there are multiple network paths (multipath) exist between widely-distributed sites. In this study, we propose a system that distributes the parallel TCP streams of GridFTP into multiple network paths by a traffic engineering technique brought by SDN. Our proposed system has achieved approximately 20% better performance than the conventional method in the best case in a global-scale real enviroment.
HAS INFLATION TARGETING BEEN SUCCESSFUL? EVIDENCE FROM UNIT ROOT TESTS

<p class="run-in" align="center"><strong>ABSTRACT</strong></p><p>The popularity of inflation targeting has risen in the last decade and the number of countries that adopted inflation targeting as their monetary policy framework surpassed 40 by the end of 2016. This study analyzes whether inflation targeting around the world has been successful in terms of achieving the announced target and keeping inflation rate around it. We argue that a successful inflation targeting necessitates the deviation of inflation from the target be stationary. We employ both time series and panel unit root tests in order to analyze the stationarity properties of deviation of inflation from the target. Results of unit root tests provide evidence in favor of the success of inflation targeting framework around the world. </p><p align="center"><strong> </strong></p><p align="center"><strong>¿HAN SIDO EXITOSAS LAS METAS DE INFLACIÓN? RESULTADOS DE LAS PRUEBAS DE RAÍZ UNITARIA</strong></p><p class="run-in" align="center"><strong>RESUMEN</strong></p>La popularidad de las metas de inflación ha aumentado en la última década y el número de países que adoptaron metas de inflación como su marco de política monetaria sobrepasó los 40 a finales del 2016. Este estudio analiza si las metas de inflación alrededor del mundo han tenido éxito en términos de alcanzar el objetivo anunciado y mantener la tasa de inflación alrededor de su meta. Argumentamos que una meta exitosa de inflación requiere que la desviación de la inflación respecto a la meta sea estacionaria. Empleamos tanto series de tiempo como pruebas de raíz unitaria en panel con el fin de analizar las propiedades estacionarias de la desviación de la inflación en relación con el objetivo. Los resultados de las pruebas de raíz unitaria proporcionan evidencia a favor del éxito del marco de metas de inflación en todo el mundo.
The effects of L2 motivational strategies: within and beyond the L2 classroom

ABSTRACT Previous studies have associated L2 teachers’ use of motivational strategies with learners’ motivated behaviours in class such as raised attention and participation. The after-class effects of L2 motivational strategies, in contrast, have drawn less attention. This paper reports a study examining how L2 teachers’ motivational interventions cause changes in learners’ perceived attitudes and behaviours, both within and beyond the L2 classroom. To this end, 84 reflective journals were collected over one semester from 42 tertiary students in Hong Kong enrolled in a range of English courses. The results indicate that reported increases in the use of additional self-learning materials, attempts to put newly acquired English knowledge into practice, efforts to reduce mistakes, and in-class engagement were attributable to L2 teachers’ motivational efforts. This provides evidence that the benefits brought by L2 teachers’ motivational practice can transcend the classroom.
The Impact of Service Delivery System Process and Moderating Effect of Perceived Value in Internet Banking Adoption

This study identifies the impact of Internet banking service delivery system (IBSDS) process on consumer behaviour; the mediating effect of customer satisfaction on the relationship between IBSDS process and behavioural intention; and the moderating effect of the customer’s perceived value. The study uses a quantitative method using the data collected from 416 respondents. Mediated regression is used to examine the mediating effect of customer satisfaction. SPSS Process v2.16. 3 is employed to analyse the moderating effect of the perceived value. The results indicate that IBSDS process impacts customer satisfaction and behavioural intention. Further, customer satisfaction plays a partial mediating role between the association of IBSDS process and behavioural intention. This study provides evidence that the technological capabilities embedded in the bank website processes are an important factor in determining customer satisfaction and ultimately behavioural intention. The study also reveals that perceived value moderates the relationship between IBSDS process and customer satisfaction, and between customer satisfaction, and, behavioural intention. It also adds to the existing knowledge on the adoption of Internet banking literature. Academicians and information systems researchers may use these findings for further research. Financial service providers or related agencies may consider the attributes of the IBSDS process (e.g., navigation, searching, transacting, etc.) while designing their Internet banking services to provide enhanced customer experiences. The paper also highlights the research limitations and scope for future research.
Error-Correcting WOM Codes: Concatenation and Joint Design

We construct error-correcting write-once memory (WOM) codes that guarantee correction of any specified number of errors in <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$q$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-level memories. The constructions use suitably designed short <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$q$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-ary WOM codes and concatenate them with outer error-correcting codes over different alphabets using suitably designed mappings. With a new storage-efficiency measure, we call EC-rate and show that for common error types the codes save redundancy and implementation complexity over straightforward concatenation. In addition to constructions for guaranteed error correction, we extend the error-correcting WOM scheme to binary multi-level coding for random errors, and toward soft-decision decoding provide an efficient way to extract reliability information without using higher-precision readout.
Evaluative Influences of CS-US Pairings Are Non-Reciprocal

Three experiments examined the reciprocity of evaluative effects following CS-US pairing. In all three experiments, CS evaluations were assimilated to the valence of the US they were paired with (i.e., an evaluative conditioning effect), whereas US evaluations became less extreme (i.e., a US devaluation effect). Of importance, however, US devaluation proved to be independent of CS-US pairing. Experiment 1 replicated previous evidence for US devaluation: USs were less intensely evaluated after a conditioning procedure as compared to their normative ratings. Experiment 2 controlled for the effect of CS-US pairing: A US devaluation effect of similar magnitude was observed for USs paired with the CSs or presented alone during the conditioning procedure. Experiment 3 indicated that US habituation drives US devaluation: USs presented and evaluated only once were less devalued than USs paired with CSs or USs presented alone during the conditioning procedure, with the latter two US types not differing from each other. Together, these findings suggest that US devaluation is driven by US habituation rather than by a CS-to-US influence in an associative learning procedure. The theoretical implications of these findings for associative and propositional accounts of evaluative learning are discussed.