Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Merit order effect and strategic investments in intermittent generation technologies

This paper studies the strategic interactions between two electricity generators, the first producing with a \traditional" technology and the second employing a \renewable" technology characterized by the random availability of capacity due to the intermittency of its power source. The competition between the \traditional" and the \renewable" power producers is examined through a modified version of the two stage Dixit model for entry deterrence (Dixit, 1980) with Cournot competition in the post entry stage. The outcome of the game suggests that the \renewable" generator exploits the merit order rule which governs spot electricity markets to invest and produce as if it were a sort of Stackelberg leader. While in most cases producer's preferences over strategies do not depend on the average value of capacity availability, according to the value of this parameter the market may lead to an equilibrium which benefits both the \renewable" producer and the consumers. Given that production of electricity from the renewable source depends on actual weather conditions, the analysis of ex-post payoffs reveals that \renewable" producer's preferences over strategies may be reversed for small errors in the forecasting of the true value of the average capacity availability factor when the investment cost in the renewable technology is relatively low. In this case, the incentives for strategic behaviour of the \renewable" producer may be even stronger. The main insights of the model seem to be barely sensitive to changes in the market power of competitors: even when the \renewable" generator behaves as a competitive fringe in the spot market, it is able to infuence equilibrium outcome to its own advantage through investment choices although to a smaller degree than in the standard setting.
"Stratégie de Lisbonne": les promesses sociales non tenues

From 2004 on a new Lisbon strategy was in force, after the Commission and Council's decisions to refocus the previous European Employment strategy and associated Open methods of coordination in the social area. After Kok's taskforce report, the order of the day was to focus on structurall reforms and on the economy. Other important events also happened at that time : the first was a new Commission, the second enlargement bringing in 12 new member states with vastly differing social protection systems and living conditions. Not to mention the economic crisis that emerged as a key development from 2007-2008. It is time to take stock of what is often called "Lisbon" by way of metonymy. The present text tries to contribute to this goal. As for example the flexicurity promotion demonstrates, the Lisbon strategy was largely short of delivering its initial promises. More realistically, it should mainly be seen as a discourse disseminated as coming along economic reform being pursued under the auspices of EU law, thus most often promoting economic freedoms at the expense of social rights.
The financial crisis and competition in retail banking : Insights from the academic literature

The interdependence between the current financial crisis and competition in retail banking in general is the focus of this paper. In particular, we aim to provide insights from recent academic literature on this interdependence, although of course research related to the crisis is ongoing. This paper is partly based upon previous work, the OECD competition background paper, which was written before the crisis and a recent book that we have co-authored with Moshe Kim on several of these issues.
The Eyes and Games: A Survey of Visual Attention and Eye Tracking Input in Video Games

V ideo games have existed for over half a century. Visual attention and eye movement studies, as well as techniques to analyze these movements, have occupied the attention of researchers since late 19 th century. This paper presents a review of the state of the art on how video games and visual attention relate as well as how eye tracking has been used to the benefit of video games, both as a form of input as well as a method of evaluation and analysis. To conclude, a brief look into future perspectives of visual attention and eye tracking with video games will be presented.
Active User-Based and Ontology-Based Web Log Data Preprocessing for Web Usage Mining

User identification and session identification are two major steps in preprocessing Web log data for Web usage mining. This paper introduces a fast active user-based user identification algorithm with time complexity O(n). The algorithm uses both an IP address and a finite users' inactive time to identify different users in the Web log. Web site ontology is useful for identifying Web site structure and break points for browsing behavior. For session identification, we present an ontology-based method that utilizes the Web site structure and functionalities to identify different sessions
Trade and growth in the relation between China and Selected African countries

China’s economic engagement with African countries has been substantially increasing, since 2001. The trade has accelerated as never before, African countries’ exports to China increased dramatically from US$ 3.1 billion in 2001 to US $31.2 billion in 2007. The growth of China – African relations has increased interest in trade, because it involves crucial issues for the development of African. Consequently, this thesis is trying to assess to what extent does Chinese stateled drive for resources in Africa, especially SubSaharan countries affect the economic growth of these countries. The answer to this question is quantitatively assessed, showing that those countries which are highly involved in trade with China exhibit higher growth than those which are not involved, through using t-test and regression analysis. The t-test assesses whether the means of two groups are statistically different from each other or not and the regression analysis is used to show the relation between the trade and the economic growth. The results of the thesis imply that China has opened up new economic, political, diplomatic and strategic avenues for African states, yet it isn’t limited to the African leaders but it also down to Africans, both people in power and the man on the street to negotiate on their terms, identify priorities and leverage opportunities to further their own interests.
Brand engagement : how employees make or break brands

Prologue - Brand Engagement in Context ACT 1: BRAND ENGAGEMENT, EVERYMAN AND THE HERO LEADER What does great brand engagement feel like? The CEO is dead - long live the ceo! Are we at the tail end of spin? What characterises an effective chief engagement officer? ACT 2: DECONSTRUCTING BRAND ('BUT WE DON'T EVEN BRAND ANIMALS ANY MORE') Brand and authenticity Brand anthropology New ways of telling old stories Leadership engagement Brand and motivation The national perspective - nation branding The ARM Holdings story ACT 3: THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS What's been happening in the communication market? Employment brand Engage people by letting them play Inside-out communication (the power of partnership) Behaviour brand creep Brandscape and the brand engagement journey Mergers and acquisitions The quest for balance What do committed employees look like? Zurich Financial Services case study ACT 4: CULTURE AS A WEAPON OF MASS CONSTRUCTION What's culture got to do with it? The culture development process A culture-first approach to change (Motability Case Study) The use of tools ACT 5: BRING YOURSELF TO WORK Everything begins with a story Mythology, the ancient arts and employee engagement The story of Good Company Authenticity and engagement John Lewis Group A Case study in engagement Becoming comfortable with the emotional dimension In conversation with an industry expert Retention Issues? The story of the Yorkshire Building Society - a true mutual In conclusion
A Three-Dimensional Atlas of the Honeybee Neck

Three-dimensional digital atlases are rapidly becoming indispensible in modern biology. We used serial sectioning combined with manual registration and segmentation of images to develop a comprehensive and detailed three-dimensional atlas of the honeybee head-neck system. This interactive atlas includes skeletal structures of the head and prothorax, the neck musculature, and the nervous system. The scope and resolution of the model exceeds atlases previously developed on similar sized animals, and the interactive nature of the model provides a far more accessible means of interpreting and comprehending insect anatomy and neuroanatomy.
Coping with bank failures: some lessons from the United States and the United Kingdom

In a banking panic, the failure of one bank leads people to fear for’ the safety of their hinds at othei’ banks. Subsequent attempts to withdraw their deposits h’om other’ banks put these banks in jeopardy as well. Recent experience suggests that bank failures no longer’ cause banking panics. There ar’e now well— established and lrequentlv tested principles fbr ~ir’e— yen titig a bank failure fronl turning illto a panic.
Knowledge Representation by Concept Mining & Fuzzy Relation from Unstructured Data

Concept hierarchies or Taxonomies are crucial for any knowledge representation system. It’s important because it allow formulating rules in an abstract and concise way and thus facilitating the development, refinement and reuse of knowledge. Making the knowledge implicitly contained in the texts explicitly is a great challenge. Knowledge can be found in texts at different levels of explicitness depending on the sort of text considered. However, it is also well known that any knowledge-based system suffers from the so-called knowledge acquisition bottleneck. In order to partially overcome this problem we present a novel approach to automatically learning a concept hierarchy from a text corpus. We focus on learning composite concepts and building up a knowledge base from existing documents. We have then proposed our design for extracting concepts from the unstructured document, although it can be generalized for html, pdf, ppt and so on, but accuracy of the algorithm can be checked at few documents only. From the extracted concept, we have calculated the fuzzy distance among concepts. Then we have some rules on the basis of experimental results.
Polo-like Kinase 1 and Chk2 Interact and Co-localize to Centrosomes and the Midbody*

Chk2 is a protein kinase intermediary in DNA damage checkpoint pathways. DNA damage induces phosphorylation of Chk2 at multiple sites concomitant with activation. Chk2 phosphorylated at Thr-68 is found in nuclear foci at sites of DNA damage (1). We report here that Chk2 phosphorylated at Thr-68 and Thr-26 or Ser-28 is localized to centrosomes and midbodies in the absence of DNA damage. In a search for interactions between Chk2 and proteins with similar subcellular localization patterns, we found that Chk2 coimmunoprecipitates with Polo-like kinase 1, a regulator of chromosome segregation, mitotic entry, and mitotic exit. Plk1 overexpression enhances phosphorylation of Chk2 at Thr-68. Plk1 phosphorylates recombinant Chk2 in vitro. Indirect immunofluorescence (IF) microscopy revealed the co-localization of Chk2 and Plk1 to centrosomes in early mitosis and to the midbody in late mitosis. These findings suggest lateral communication between the DNA damage and mitotic checkpoints.
Charge Scheduling of Electric Vehicles in Highways through Mobile Computing

Today, charging stations (CSs) for electric vehicles (EVs) are much less popular than gas stations. Therefore, searching and selecting CSs is an important issue for the drivers of EVs. This paper investigates the EV charging problem. We propose two types of CS-selection algorithms. The first type only utilizes local information of an EV. The second type utilizes the global information obtained from mobile computing. Specifically, the EVs interact with a Global CS-selection (GCS) server through the mobile telecommunications network. Our study indicates that by using the global information (specifically the workload status of each CS), the EVs can be effectively charged with short waiting times at the CSs.
Developing a research and action agenda for examining urbanization and caregiving

The UNICEF-expanded model for nutrition is used to analyze the circumstances of care in urban environments. The model postulates that there are six major types of care behaviors: feeding and breast-feeding, food preparation and handling, hygiene behavior, psychosocial care, care for women, and home health practices. These behaviors require the resources of education and knowledge of the caregivers, the physical and mental health of caregivers, autonomy in decisionmaking, time availability, and the social support of the family and community in order to ensure adequate care for the child. This paper describes each of these constraints, and two of the behaviors (feeding and health care utilization) in urban and rural areas. Data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) in eight countries in Eastern and Southern Africa were used to illustrate how existing data can be used to examine care, and what research questions remain to be addressed to understand care in the urban setting. A number of differences favor the urban environment over the rural environment: in general, child malnutrition is less (though this may not be true in poor urban areas), maternal education levels are higher, and knowledge of health care practices is greater. On the other hand, breast-feeding seems to be less frequent and of shorter duration. It is argued that care may be even more important in urban rather than rural settings for child health and survival in low-income neighborhoods. Caution is needed when comparing urban and rural areas, however, because there are often enormous care, health, and nutrition differences between poor-income and middle-to-high-income areas of cities. Through the application of the expanded UNICEF model, a research agenda was developed.
Explaining the swollen middle : Why most transactions are a mix of market and hierarchy

Why are firms sometimes more efficient than markets at organizing transactions? Why are most transactions arrayed neither at the pure “market” nor at the pure “hierarchy” end of the continuum, but rather in the “swollen middle,” incorporating features of both “market” and “hierarchy”? Why don't firms make greater use of price incentives? This paper addresses these three questions by developing a model of the choice of institution.One key building block is the distinction between organizing methods (hierarchy and the price system) and institutions (firms and markets). Hierarchy and the price system are two distinct methods for organizing transactions, each with particular costs and benefits. Markets and firms are institutions which use one or both of these methods. Although markets predominantly use prices and firms rely principally on hierarchy, there is not a one-to-one correspondence between prices and markets or between hierarchy and firms. Indeed, the paper argues that it is generally more efficient to use a mix of both methods than to specialize in either.The paper focuses on the enforcement properties of prices and hierarchy. Hierarchy controls individuals directly by constraining their behavior (by imposing behavior constraints) while prices do it indirectly by measuring their outputs (through price constraints). Under hierarchy, individuals receive a salary to do as told, while self-employed individuals governed by the price system are rewarded on the basis of their output. Each system has its own biases: using prices maximizes effort (minimizes shirking) but incites individuals to inflate the price and/or reduce the quality of their output. (It encourages cheating.) Relying on hierarchy results in the opposite bias: under hierarchy individuals are not paid in function of their output, but instead are rewarded for following directives. They have, thus, strong incentives to minimize effort (to shirk) unless properly supervised, but, being paid a fixed sum to (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
Economic valuation with stated preference techniques : a manual : department for transport

Part 1 The foundations of economic valuation: the uses of economic valuation the nature of economic valuation and economic efficiency economic valuation and other values economic valuation when there are no markets economic valuation and the demand curve willingness to pay and willingness to accept total economic value and aggregation total economic value aggregating across individuals - stakeholder analysis aggregating across individuals - distributional adjustments aggregation over time stated preferences and public participation. Part 2 Commissioning a stated preference study: defining the context is economic valuation necessary and credible? what alternative and appropriate procedures are available? how credible will the results be? the cost of the study "mixed" valuation and non-valuation approaches choosing between economic valuation techniques use and non-use values attributes and total values hard versus soft data contexts where given techniques cannot be applied other considerations commissioning a valuation study - a checklist social goals and CBA the required level of accuracy the issue of "standing" issues with stated preference techniques using expert advice assessing the consultants a typical workplan for a stated preference study. Part 3 Population, sample and survey mode: defining the target population the need for and the importance of sampling the sampling frame choosing the sample non-probabilistic design probabilistic design choosing the survey mode choosing the sample size. Part 4 Designing a contingent valuation questionnaire: useful lessons from other disciplines the stages of designing a CV questionnaire what is the policy change being valued? constructing the valuation scenario eliciting monetary values debriefing and follow-up questions attitudes, opinions, knowledge and uses demographics questionnaire structure pre-testing the main survey. Part 5 Contingent valuation - analyzing the results: contingent valuation data sets data on WTP missing data on WTP data on determinants of WTP missing data on household characteristics specification of the bid function the theoretical model the analyst's model -the utility difference approach the analyst's model - the bid function approach which are better - utility difference models or bid function models? estimating mean and median WTP models for testing the validity of WTP values models for benefits transfer exercises conclusions. Part 6 Designing a choice modelling questionnaire: what is choice modelling? main CM approaches choice experiments contingent ranking contingent rating paired comparisons common design stages selection of attributes assignment of levels choice of experimental design construction of choice sets measurement of preferences advantages and disadvantages of choice experiments relative to other economic valuation techniques advantages disadvantages do choice modelling approaches solve a
From Fit to Knowing Approaches to Strategizing HRM Practices: an Empirical Research on ICT Corporations

Page In the knowing approach, rather than study knowledge as something that people have, the authors focus the process of knowing regarded as something that people do. The social dimension of knowing, enhanced the tacitness of collective knowledge instead of individual mastery within communities of practices and communities of knowing. The assumption of a coherent research perspective based on knowing and communities approaches could offer several insights to face some open problems in the current debate on the integration between strategic management and human resource management [HRM]. We contend that a complete integration between strategic management and HRM philosophies, policies and practices requires a double conceptual shift, firstly from “fit approaches” to “dynamic knowledge-based approaches”, then from these to a “knowing communities approach”, able to offer a deep understanding of casually ambiguous, socially complex, historically evolved processes underlying the complex links between individual knowledge, organizational knowledge, HRM policies, competitive advantage. In order to give a contribution to the need for an operazionalization of this theoretical framework we propose the concept of Knowing Community of HRM Practices as Cognitive
Categorical Perception of Morphed Facial Expressions

Using computer-generated line-drawings, Etcoff and Magee (1992) found evidence of categorical perception of facial expressions. We report four experiments that replicated and extended Etcoff and Magee's findings with photographic-quality stimuli. Experiments 1 and 2 measured identification of the individual stimuli falling along particular expression continua (e.g. from happiness to sadness) and discrimination of these stimuli with an ABX task in which stimuli A, B, and X were presented sequentially; subjects had to decide whether X was the same as A or B. Our identification data showed that each expression continuum was perceived as two distinct sections separated by a category boundary. From these identification data we were able to predict subjects' performance in the ABX discrimination task and to demonstrate better discrimination of cross-boundary than within-category pairs; that is, two faces identified as different expressions (e.g. happy and sad) were easier to discriminate than two faces of equal.
Insight Derived from Molecular Dynamics Simulations into Molecular Motions, Thermodynamics and Kinetics of HIV-1 gp120

Although the crystal structures of the HIV-1 gp120 core bound and pre-bound by CD4 are known, the details of dynamics involved in conformational equilibrium and transition in relation to gp120 function have remained elusive. The homology models of gp120 comprising the N- and C-termini and loops V3 and V4 in the CD4-bound and CD4-unbound states were built and subjected to molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to investigate the differences in dynamic properties and molecular motions between them. The results indicate that the CD4-bound gp120 adopted a more compact and stable conformation than the unbound form during simulations. For both the unbound and bound gp120, the large concerted motions derived from essential dynamics (ED) analyses can influence the size/shape of the ligand-binding channel/cavity of gp120 and, therefore, were related to its functional properties. The differences in motion direction between certain structural components of these two forms of gp120 were related to the conformational interconversion between them. The free energy calculations based on the metadynamics simulations reveal a more rugged and complex free energy landscape (FEL) for the unbound than for the bound gp120, implying that gp120 has a richer conformational diversity in the unbound form. The estimated free energy difference of ∼−6.0 kJ/mol between the global minimum free energy states of the unbound and bound gp120 indicates that gp120 can transform spontaneously from the unbound to bound states, revealing that the bound state represents a high-probability “ground state” for gp120 and explaining why the unbound state resists crystallization. Our results provide insight into the dynamics-and-function relationship of gp120, and facilitate understandings of the thermodynamics, kinetics and conformational control mechanism of HIV-1 gp120.