Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pfeffer, Jeffrey, Competitive Advantage Through People : Unleashing the Power of the Work ForcePfeffer, Jeffrey, Competitive Advantage Through People : Unleashing the Power of the Work Force

Citer cet article Villeneuve, F. (1997). Pfeffer, Jeffrey, Competitive Advantage Through People : Unleashing the Power of the Work Force. Relations industrielles, 52 (2), 463–466. https://doi.org/10.7202/051179ar Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d'utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. [https://apropos.erudit. org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/]
A survey on Information Flow Control mechanisms in web applications

Web applications are nowadays ubiquitous channels that provide access to valuable information. However, web application security remains problematic, with Information Leakage, Cross-Site Scripting and SQL-Injection vulnerabilities - which all present threats to information - standing among the most common ones. On the other hand, Information Flow Control is a mature and well-studied area, providing techniques to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of information. Thus, numerous works were made proposing the use of these techniques to improve web application security. This paper provides a survey on some of these works that propose server-side only mechanisms, which operate in association with standard browsers. It also provides a brief overview of the information flow control techniques themselves. At the end, we draw a comparative scenario between the surveyed works, highlighting the environments for which they were designed and the security guarantees they provide, also suggesting directions in which they may evolve.
PUMA: Placement Unification with Mapping and Guaranteed Throughput Allocation on an FPGA Using a Hardwired NoC

Platform-based Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have gained popularity for implementing multiprocessor system on chips (MPSoCs). The applications in an MPSoC can have high complexities and stringent Quality-of-Service (QoS) demands. Consequently, the problem of binding an application on an FPGA has become more challenging. An application requires logic and communication resources for computing and transporting data among its IPs. This in turn divides an FPGA into two virtual planes, i.e., logic and communication. Therefore, the available resources in both the FPGA planes should be taken into account by an application binding solution. Our proposed scheme performs placement unification with mapping and allocation (PUMA). This means PUMA accounts for the required (application) to the available (FPGA) resources in both the logic plane and the communication plane, simultaneously. A hardwired Network on Chip (HWNoC) serves as the communication plane for our FPGA, because of its scalable and isolated nature. Moreover, PUMA ensures that a successful binding solution fulfills an application QoS constraints. PUMA is implemented by using cycle-accurate transaction-level SystemC. PUMA performance and scalability is evaluated by using a number of synthetic applications. The PUMA application binding success rate exists in between 35% and 90%. Additionally, the cost of PUMA is evaluated against a real-world H.264 encoder.
A Hybrid Algorithm Using a Genetic Algorithm and Cuckoo Search Algorithm to Solve the Traveling Salesman Problem and its Application to Multiple Sequence Alignment

The traveling salesman problem (TSP) is one of the most studied in operations research and computer science. Research has led to a large number of techniques to solve this problem; in particular, genetic algorithms (GA) produce good results compared to other techniques. A disadvantage of GA, though, is that they easily become trapped in the local minima. In this paper, a cuckoo search optimizer (CS) is used along with a GA in order to avoid the local minima problem and to benefit from the advantages of both types of algorithms. A 2-opt operation was added to the algorithm to improve the results. The suggested algorithm was applied to multiple sequence alignment and compared with the previous algorithms.
International Journal of Pure and Applied Sciences and Technology Effect of Volatility on Binomial Model for the Valuation of American Options

This paper presents the effect of volatility on binomial model for the valuation of American options. Volatility is a measure of the dispersion of an asset price about its mean level over a fixed time interval. Binomial model is a widespread numerical method of calculating the price of American options as it takes into consideration the possibilities of early exercise and other factors like dividends. The strength and weakness of volatility on the valuation of options were considered. Binomial model is computationally efficient, good for pricing American options but not adequate to price path dependent options.
Return Predictability in Corporate Bond Market Along the Supply Chain

We explore how efficiently new information transmits along the supply chain in the corporate bond market. We find a strong predictability of the lagged bond returns of customers for related firm- and industry-level future bond returns. This is likely due to investors’ inattention to cash flow-related news along the supply chain. Moreover, the lagged bond returns of suppliers only predict the future bond returns of those firms that have less bargaining power. Overall, our results suggest that information along the supply chain travels more gradually in the bond market than the stock market.
Knowledge intensive entrepreneurship : networking within and across boundaries

Entrepreneurship & Technology. Scientific advances are accelerating, changing technological and business paradigms while impacting firm organizations and industrial structures. One could assume technology entrepreneurship, the creation of new ventures based on technological innovations, is well researched. However, as Shane & Venkataraman (2003) note technology entrepreneurship while resting between two well researched areas, innovations management and entrepreneurship, has yet to be fully explored. Innovations management has often been synonymous with R&D management and product development and has been studied from numerous perspectives. There are different forms of innovative activity with different contextual origins and there has been substantial effort since Schumpeter (1934) in defining common elements of a wide range of innovations. The nature of different kinds of innovations have been studied, i.e. product, process, business concept, business model, incremental, radical, architectural, disruptive, and value innovations. Context has also been studied through the role of regional agglomerations of high technology high growth firms (see, for example, Van de Ven, 1986; Dosi, 1988; Dosi & Orseniego, 1988; Teece, 1988; 2000; Henderson & Clarke, 1990; Flynn, 1993; Saxenian, 1994; Henderson & Cockburn, 1994; Chan & Mauborgne, 1997, 1999; Russell, 1999; Koschatzky, 1999; Pitt & Clarke, 1999; Ensign, 1999; Leifer et al. 2000; Christensen & Overdorf, 2000; Westhead et al. 2000). Entrepreneurship is also a large discipline, but when focused on technology based firms the research has addressed such topics as the transfer process to entrepreneurial firms, strategy and financing in venture capital backed firms, intensity and diversity in early stage technology firms, the effects of the competitive environment on new technology firms, triggering factors for technology start-ups, etc. (Feldman & Ronzio, 2001; Autio & Kauranen, 1994; Thierstein & Wilhelm, 2001; Simon et al. 2000; Preece et al. 1999; Fried et al. 1998; Harmon et al. 1997; Low & Abrahamson, 1997; Carsrud et al. 1999; Roberts, 1991).
The decomposition of a blocking model for connection-oriented networks

Two general-purpose decomposition methods to calculate the blocking probabilities of connection-oriented networks are presented. The methods are based on either the call status or the link status of the networks, and can significantly reduce the required computational times. A heuristic is presented to simplify the application of the proposed decomposition methods on networks with irregular topologies. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate the applications of the proposed methods.
Some New Evidence on Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment in Developing Countries

The authors of this paper expand on earlier studies of the determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) by empirically analyzing various factors - including political risk, business conditions, and macroeconomic variables - that influence direct investment flows to developing countries. They try to fill a gap in the literature by examining qualitative factors. Using a pooled model of developing countries, they test three groups of hypotheses on what influences direct investment. Tests of the first hypothesis indicate that a qualitative index of political risk is a significant determinant of FDI flows for countries that have historically attracted high FDI flows. For countries that have not attracted such flows, sociopolitical instability has a negative impact on investment flows. Tests of the second hypothesis show that a general qualitative index of business operation conditions is an important determinant of FDI in countries that receive high flows. This country group also shows a positive relationship between taxes on international transactions and FDI flows. Results from tests of the third hypothesis reveal that exports generally, especially manufacturing exports, are significant determinant of FDI flows for countries in which FDI is high. Finally, export orientation is the strongest variable for explaining why a country attracts FDI. This finding is in line with the secular trend toward increasing complementarity between trade and FDI.
Indeterminate lupus anticoagulant results: Prevalence and clinical significance

Background Reports of indeterminate lupus anticoagulant (LAC) results are common; however, no published data on their prevalence or clinical significance are available. We investigated the prevalence and clinical characteristics of patients with indeterminate LAC. Methods We retrospectively reviewed the clinical and serologic characteristics of 256 unselected patients with LAC results. Results Indeterminate results were observed in 32.7% of LAC profiles that were least frequent (25.4%) when activated partial thromboplastin time (aPTT) was normal, most frequent (39.8%) when aPTT was elevated, and were observed in 35% of patients taking warfarin. The final indeterminate LAC cohort included 65 patients with a mean follow-up of 18 months. Malignancy and autoimmune disease were present in 29% and 25% of patients, respectively. The most common thrombotic events were deep vein thrombosis (DVT) (28%), cerebral ischemic stroke (14%) and pulmonary embolism (14%). Patients with indeterminate results were more likely to be men, older, and with a history of DVT, superficial thrombosis, or myocardial infarction than patients with negative tests (N=106). Concurrent warfarin therapy was more prevalent in the indeterminate group, but was not statistically significant. In the multivariate analysis, none of the variables showed statistical significance. During follow-up, 10 of 16 patients with indeterminate results showed change in classification upon retesting. Conclusion Patients with indeterminate LAC results were common, and their clinical characteristics differed from those with negative results. There is a need for a prospective study of the clinical history of patients with indeterminate LAC results.
NWU-EECS-0703 July 12 th , 2006 Online Training of a Music Search Engine

Query-by-Humming (QBH) systems transcribe a sung or hummed query and search for related musical themes in a database, returning the most similar themes as a play list. A major obstacle to effective QBH is variation between user queries and the melodic targets used as database search keys. Since it is not possible to predict all individual singer profiles before system deployment, a robust QBH system should be able to adapt to different singers after deployment. Currently deployed systems do not have this capability. We describe a new QBH system that learns from user provided feedback on the search results, letting the system improve while deployed, after only a few queries. This is made possible by a trainable note segmentation system, an easily parameterized singer error model and a straight-forward genetic algorithm. Results show significant improvement in performance given only ten example queries from a particular user.
L evy ights in random searches

We review the general search problem of how to nd randomly located objects that can only be detected in the limited vicinity of a forager, and discuss its quantitative description using the theory of random walks. We illustrate L evy ight foraging by comparison to Brownian random walks and discuss experimental observations of L evy ights in biological foraging. We review recent ndings suggesting that an inverse square probability density distribution P(‘) ∼ ‘ of step lengths ‘ can lead to optimal searches. Finally, we survey the explanations put forth to account for these unexpected ndings. c © 2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Evaluating Statistical Machine Translation from English to Dutch

this paper, I attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of using statistical machine translation to translate an English text into Dutch, using empirical evaluation and the Bleu evaluation metric. I also give a brief overview of the theory behind statistical machine translation and automated translation evaluation metrics. I have translated a sample of the English proceedings of the European Parliament into Dutch and compared it to reference translations from the Dutch proceedings. I also compared them to translations of the same texts using the Babelfish translation service. I concluded that statistical machine translation can provide a rough translation from English to Dutch, but it requires help from other translation techniques to produce a well-formed sentence.
Toward Comprehensive Traffic Generation for Online IDS Evaluation

We describe a traffic generation framework for conducting on line evaluations of network intrusion detection systems over a w ide range of realistic conditions. The framework integrates both ben ign and malicious traffic, enabling generation of IP packet streams with diverse characteristics from the perspective of ( i) packet content (both header and payload), ( ii ) packet mix(order of packets in streams) and ( iii ) packet volume(arrival rate of packets in streams). We begin by describing a methodology for benign traffic gener ation that combines payload pools (possibly culled from trac es of live traffic) with application-specific automata to generat s reams with representative characteristics. Next, we describe a m ethodology for malicious traffic generation, and techniques for i ntegration with benign traffic to produce a range of realistic workl ad compositions. We realize our traffic generation framework i n a tool we call Trident, and demonstrate its utility through a s eries of laboratory-based experiments using traces collected from our departmental border router, the DARPA Intrusion Detection Ev aluation data sets provided by Lincoln Lab, and a suite of malicio us traffic modules that reproduce a broad range of attacks commo nly seen in today’s networks. Our experiments demonstrate the e ffects of varying packet content, mix, and volume on the performanc e of intrusion detection systems.
UPSTREAM AND DOWNSTREAM RESOURCES AS DETERMINANTS OF INTERNATIONAL ACQUISITIONS*

We analyze capability-seeking aspects of foreign direct investment by examining the relationship between upstream (technological) and downstream (marketing) capabilities and the choice between acquisition and greenfield modes of international entry. In analyzing 2,175 entries by British, German and Japanese investors into the United States, we find that for downstream capabilities, which tend not to be geographically fungible, the absolute level of capabilities in the entered industry explains the mode choice. However, for upstream capabilities, which tend to be geographically fungible, the acquisition motive stems from a relative capability differential between host and home country firms. These results have implications for the concept of fungibility in the resource-based view of the firm as well as for the literature on sourcing of resident assets by foreign firms, which has thus far ignored issues of entry mode and downstream assets.
Why Do Children Pick on Gender-Nonconforming Boys? A Longitudinal Test of Target-Specific Aggression

However, only some children who view physical attractiveness as important are able to achieve a strong sense of self-worth; some are unable to do so, and for them the gap between the high value they place on attractiveness and their low self-esteem may be a painful self-discrepancy conducive to aggression (Higgins, 1987). This research focuses on an underrepresented group of participants, gender-nonconforming preadolescent boys.
A Survey of Results from Voucher Experiments: Where We Are and What We Know. Civic Report.

When I began doing research on school choice in 1995 there was little solid, empirical information on the subject. At that time there was only one choice program, in Milwaukee, and the data from that program was not available to the research community.1 Researchers wishing to examine the effects of school choice were limited to collecting evidence from public and private schools and extrapolating to what would happen under a choice system. A leading researcher James Coleman followed this approach and consistently found, after controlling for background differences, that private school students performed better academically than public schools students.2 Coleman and others also found that private schools, while educating a lower proportion of minority students than public schools, distributed their minority students more evenly, producing racial integration better than that found in public schools. From these findings Coleman and others suggested that providing vouchers or tax credits for families to select their choice of private or public schools would increase academic achievement and improve racial integration in schools.
Liquidity Constraints and the Cyclicality of College Enrollment

Liquidity constraints have a procyclical influence on college enrollment, as people with limited borrowing power have more trouble affording college during recessions. Consequently, if enrollment is influenced by liquidity constraints, people who are more likely to be constrained may enroll more procyclically. Using Current Population Survey data over 1968--2000, I do not find substantive differences in the cyclicality of enrollment across homeowning and non-homeowning households. However, I find significantly more procyclical enrollment among people in households expected to have lower incomes. These findings offer mixed evidence for the historical influence of liquidity constraints on college enrollment in the United States. Copyright 2007, Oxford University Press.
Fuzzy cognitive Vehicular Ad hoc Networks

The Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments (WAVE) protocol stack is one of the most important protocols proposed to standardize and allocate spectrum for vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. In a previous work, we proved that WAVE faces a spectrum scarcity problem which hinders reliable exchange of safety information. To overcome this problem, we proposed a system that applies cognitive networks principles to WAVE as to increase the spectrum allocated to the control channel (CCH) by the IEEE 802.11p amendment, where all safety information is transmitted. However, the decision making process in our previous work did not utilize the extra spectrum efficiently as it was not allocated according to the contention level experienced by the vehicle. In this paper, we suggest a system that employs a fuzzy logic system (FLS) to dynamically assign additional spectrum from the ISM band to the CCH. This system, which we call FCVANET, assigns the minimum necessary additional bandwidth to relieve the contention. The FLS takes as input 2 parameters, the message delay and the un-transmitted packets and utilizes a feedback loop. Our simulations show that the proposed system allocates bandwidth more efficiently in accordance with the contention level faced by the vehicles. The system succeeds to relieve contention by reducing delay and the number of un-transmitted packets.
Router supported data regeneration protocols in distributed storage systems

Distributed storage systems provide reliable data storage by keeping redundancy over a large number of storage nodes in the network. Due to the large number of storage nodes, they can not be regarded as always available. Compared with replications, erasure codes can achieve higher data integrity, such that any k among n storage nodes can recover the original data. Moreover, in order to maintain a consistent degree of redundancy, it is necessary to regenerate new data in a replacement node after a node failure. However, erasure codes require k blocks to be transmitted from other storage nodes to generate a new block, resulting in a high volume of network traffic and a significant bandwidth bottleneck in the network. In this paper, we present a novel idea that we can both save the traffic and time consumed during the regeneration with the support of routers. With the enhanced computing ability, some reconstruction operations in the regeneration process can be performed by supporting routers rather than by the replacement node solely. We also design two router supported data regeneration protocols that make supporting routers provide support transparently to storage nodes and utilize the bandwidth diversity in the network, respectively. Simulation results show that with the help of supporting routers and our protocols, the traffic and time spent during the regeneration can be both reduced significantly.
The relationship between resilience and quality of life in family caregivers of patients with mental disorders

Introduction: In the past, patients with mental disorders were often isolated, but these patients now-a-days enter the society, as therapeutic interventions have advanced. Family members play an important role in the life of many adults with mental disorders and are under considerable amounts of stress that may affect caregiver’s physical health, quality of life and resilience. Aim: The present study aimed to determine the relationship between the resilience and quality of life in family caregivers of patients with mental disorders. Materials and Methods: The present cross-sectional, correlational, descriptive study was conducted on 238 family caregivers of patients with mental disorders. The Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) was used to measure the quality of life and the Connor and Davidson Resilience Scale was used to measure resilience in the participants. The SF-36 consists of two general dimensions and eight domains of health and the resilience scale consists of 25 items. The data obtained through the questionnaires were analysed in SPSS version 16.0 using Pearson’s correlation test. Results: The majority of the family caregivers were the patients’ mothers. The results showed a significant direct relationship between resilience and quality of life (p<0.001, r=0.40). Conclusion: Resilience is a personal resource that affects quality of life directly. Resilience can enhance quality of life. The design and implementation of programs to enhance resilience and improve quality of life in family caregivers in line with the emerging needs of this group are therefore necessary. © 2018, Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research. All rights reserved.