Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Using Actor-Network Theory to trace an ICT (telecentre) implementation trajectory in an African women's micro-enterprise development organization

Arguments abound as to whether information and communication technologies (ICTs) can beneficially shape socioeconomic development and micro-enterprise, whether they are appropriate to local culture, and whether they fit with the development approach in use. This paper uses participative action research to explore the impact of network translations on the actor-network of a South African rural women's development organization. One of the three translations considered is the introduction of ICTs through a government-sponsored telecenter; in this case, inserted into a complex socio-political context among a myriad of actors and actor-networks. The due process model is applied to this translation to show the neglect of institutionalization factors. Using Actor-Network Theory to trace translation trajectories captures the effects of the inescapable "openness" of actor-networks, effects that lead to the inevitabilities of unanticipated consequences, which result in "messes" overflowing the frames constructed to contain them.
Covariance Matrices for Mean Field Variational Bayes

Mean Field Variational Bayes (MFVB) is a popular posterior approximation method due to its fast runtime on large-scale data sets. However, it is well known that a major failing of MFVB is its (sometimes severe) underestimates of the uncertainty of model variables and lack of information about model variable covariance. We develop a fast, general methodology for exponential families that augments MFVB to deliver accurate uncertainty estimates for model variables -- both for individual variables and coherently across variables. MFVB for exponential families defines a fixed-point equation in the means of the approximating posterior, and our approach yields a covariance estimate by perturbing this fixed point. Inspired by linear response theory, we call our method linear response variational Bayes (LRVB). We demonstrate the accuracy of our method on simulated data sets.
The Toxoplasma gondii rhoptry protein ROP 2 is inserted into the parasitophorous vacuole membrane, surrounding the intracellular parasite, and is exposed to the host cell cytoplasm

The origin of the vacuole membrane surrounding the intracellular protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii is not known. Although unique secretory organelles, the rhoptries, discharge during invasion of the host cell and may contribute to the formation of this parasitophorous vacuole membrane (PVM), no direct evidence for this hypothesis exists. Using a novel approach we have determined that parasite-encoded proteins are present in the PVM, exposed to the host cell cytoplasm. In infected cells incubated with streptolysin-O or low concentrations of digitonin, the host cell plasma membrane was selectively permeabilized without significantly affecting the integrity of the PVM. Antisera prepared against whole parasites or a parasite fraction enriched in rhoptries and dense granules reacted with the PVM in these permeabilized cells, indicating that parasite-encoded antigens were exposed on the cytoplasmic side of the PVM. Parasite antigens responsible for this staining of the PVM were identified by fractionating total parasite proteins by SDS-PAGE and velocity sedimentation, and then affinity purifying "fraction-specific" antibodies from the crude antisera. Proteins responsible for the PVM- staining, identified with fraction-specific antibodies, cofractionated with known rhoptry proteins. The gene encoding one of the rhoptry proteins, ROP 2, was cloned and sequenced, predicting and integral membrane protein. Antibodies specific for ROP 2 reacted with the intact PVM. These results provide the first direct evidence that rhoptry contents participate in the formation of the PVM of T. gondii and suggest a possible role of ROP 2 in parasite-host cell interactions.
An Algebraic Approach to XQuery View Maintenance

View maintenance is a problem in data management that arises whenever a view is materialized over a source that changes over time. When the source is large, or when the source and view reside on different hosts, it is not practical to recompute the view and retransmit it over the network each time the source is updated. A better idea, commonly used in systems built with view maintenance in mind, is to translate source updates to ones that can be applied to the view directly. The cost of calculating, transmitting, and applying a translated update is typically dramatically less than the cost of recomputing and retransmitting the entire view. This paper addresses the problem of maintaining XQuery views over XML data. The core algorithm translates updates through queries as expressed in the tree algebra used internally in the Galax engine. This algorithm extends previous work on maintenance for relational views, although there are significant complications due to the data model, which is both ordered and nested. To overcome these obstacles, we propose a scheme for storing auxiliary data that guides the translation of updates in this more complicated setting. A novel aspect of our approach compared to previous work is that the amount and content of annotations can be controlled by users, making it possible to balance the tradeoffs between the size of the auxiliary data and the quality of translated updates. We have built a prototype implementation to test these ideas. Our system extends Galax, and handles a core set of operators and built-in functions capable of expressing many typical firstorder queries. Its design is fully compositional, so it can easily be extended to new operators. We present preliminary results of experiments run on benchmark queries from the XMark suite.
Measuring and Reconstructing Pointing in Visual Contexts

We describe an experiment to gather original data on geometrical aspects of pointing. In particular, we are focusing upon the concept of the pointing cone, a geometrical model of a pointing’s extension. In our setting we employed methodological and technical procedures of a new type to integrate data from annotations as well as from tracker recordings. We combined exact information on position and orientation with rater’s classifications. Our first results seem to challenge classical linguistic and philosophical theories of demonstration in that they advise to separate pointings from reference. 1 Background
Courts under Constraints: Judges, Generals, and Presidents in Argentina

This study offers a new theoretical framework for understanding how institutional instability affects judicial behavior under dictatorship and democracy. In contrast to conventional wisdom, the central findings of the book challenge the longstanding assumption that only independent judges rule against the government of the day. Set in the context of Argentina, the study brings together qualitative case studies and statistical analyses with spatial and game theoretic models to explore the conditions under which courts rule against the government. In addition to shedding new light on the dynamics of court-executive relations in Argentina, the study provides general lessons about institutions, instability, and the rule of law. In the process, the study builds a new set of connections among diverse bodies of scholarship, including U.S. judicial politics, comparative institutional analysis, positive political theory, and Latin American politics.
Zero-forcing relay power allocation for TDBC-based bidirectional relay networks

Although the amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying is an effective and simple technique for cooperative communication networks, it introduces a noise enhancement problem. This problem occurs when the effects of interference and the multipath fades are amplified during the transmission from the source to the relay. AF is usually used with the multiple access broadcast (MABC) protocol which is a two phases transmission (2P) analog network coding (ANC) protocol for the half-duplex (HD) communication mode. However, MABC is not designed to utilize the direct link (DL) signal no matter how strong it is. To utilize the DL signal, a three transmission phases protocol known as time-division broadcast protocol (TDBC) was proposed at which both end nodes transmit their message at consecutive time slots and the relay nodes broadcasts a combined signal at the 3rd time slot. To deal with the noise enhancement problem and improve the system performance, this paper proposes a zero-forcing based relay power allocation (ZF-RPA) scheme to be used with TDBC protocol, where the noise enhancement is mitigated by introducing adaptive ZF gains at the relay node that inverses the channels effects between sources and relay when the signal is constructed to be transmitted at the third phase of the TDBC. Analytical results of the ZF-RPA scheme is compared to the traditional variable-gain (VG-RPA) scheme under the same nodes power allocation. Simulation results show that the ZF-RPA is superior for all channel qualities in terms of the outage probability compared to the traditional VG-RPA. The total system sum rate comparison reveals that the ZF-RPA scheme could outperform the VG-RPA scheme as long as the channel qualities of the relay-transceiver links are less than certain threshold. This paper also clarifies that it is effective to select either ZF or VG-RPA according to the channel qualities and it can be implemented with VHDL by introducing an adaptive control unit (ACU).
Deterrence by Market Sharing: A Strategic Incentive for Licensing

The potential of an incumbent firm to retain its dominant position in a market is a focal point of the modem theory of industrial organization. A recent literature examines this issue for markets in which challengers threaten an incumbent's position by engaging in research for a new technology. Richard Gilbert and David Newbery (1982) show that an incumbent firm with a firstmover advantage will preempt potential entrants by inventing a new technology slightly earlier than would its rivals. In a stochastic R D therefore its introduction does not alter the decision to research. When the pre-innovation market is characterized by an incumbent and potential entrants, Stephen Salant (1984) shows that licensing ex post to innovation can alter the research decision as anticipation of the returns from future licensing encourages research by the entrant. As a counterpoint to the Salant result, I find that licensing ex ante to research may discourage further research by the entrant. Indeed, this strategic incentive for licensing may be so strong as to persuade the incumbent as well as the entrant to terminate research activity. To isolate this incentive for licensing from the one discussed by Salant, a simple model is constructed in which licensing of future technologies is not desirable. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the strategic incentive does lead innovators in some markets to license their technologies. Examples of this information sharing are prevalent in markets where technological change is rapid. In the 1940's, Standard Oil of New Jersey discovered a process for synthetic rubber. It traded patent rights on this process for a synthetic oil production process discovered by Farben, a German rubber company. In both the synthetic oil and synthetic rubber markets, rival companies were *Department of Economics, Scarsborough College, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S lAl. I thank Jon Cohen and Ron Saunders for discussions that inspired this paper. I am also grateful to Yehuda Kotowitz, Andy McLennan, Jennifer Reinganum, Ralph Winter, Myma Wooders, two anonymous referees, and seminar participants at the University of Toronto for helpful comments on earlier drafts.
Reduced Node k-coverage in Dense Wireless Sensor Networks

Given a dense Wireless Sensor Network satisfying k-coverage, it is useful to be able to identify those nodes that can be turned off while still maintaining k-coverage. Since this is an NP-hard problem, this paper proposes a heuristic algorithm that iteratively selects a node with the highest current "coverage level," turns that node off, and repeats until k-coverage can no longer be maintained. Simulation results show that the proposed heuristic solution requires significantly fewer nodes, for k-coverage, than previously proposed methods for this problem. In addition, the proposed method is a fast, practical algorithm that can be efficiently implemented in a centralized or distributed manner.
Increasing kinect application development productivity by an enhanced hardware abstraction

Designing and implementing the interaction behavior for body tracking capable systems requires complex modeling of actions and extensive calibration. Being the most recent and successful device for robust interactive body tracking, Microsoft's Kinect has enabled natural interaction by the use of consumer hardware, providing detailed and powerful information to designers and developers, but little tooling. To fulfill this lack of adequate tools for helping developers in the prototyping and implementation of such interfaces, we present Kina, a toolkit that makes the development not fully conditional to the existence of a sensor. By providing playback capabilities together with an online movement database, it reduces the physical effort found while performing testing activities.
Investment Analysts' Forecasts of Earnings

The literature on investment analysts' forecasts of firms' earnings and their forecast errors is enormous. This paper summarizes the evidence on the distribution of analysts' forecasts and forecast errors using data for all U.S. firms from 1990 to 2004. The evidence indicates substantial asymmetry of earnings, earning forecasts, and forecast errors. There is strong support for average and median earning forecasts being higher than actual earnings a year before the earnings announcement. Such differences between earnings and forecasts also exist across time periods and industries. A month before the earnings announcement, the mean and median differences are small.
Variational convergence for functionals of Ginzburg-Landau type.

In the first part of this paper we prove that certain functionals of Ginzburg-Landau type for maps from a domain in R n+k into R k converge in a suitable sense to the area func- tional for surfaces of dimension n (Theorem 1.1). In the second part we modify this result in order to include Dirichlet boundary condition (Theorem 5.5), and, as a corollary, we show that the rescaled energy densities and the Jacobians of minimizers con- verge to minimal surfaces of dimension n (Corollaries 1.2 and 5.6). Some of these results were announced in (2).
Pre-Operative Planning of Brain Tumor Resections

We present our concepts for pre-operative planning of brain tumor resections. The proposed system uses a combination of traditional and novel visualization techniques in order to support the surgeon during the planning process. A set of multimodal 2D and 3D views conveys the relation between the lesion and the various structures at risk and also depicts data uncertainty. To facilitate efficient interactions while providing a comprehensible visualization, all views are linked. Furthermore, the system allows the surgeon to interactively define the access path by clicking in the 3D views as well as to perform distance measurements in 2D and 3D.
The effect of route routability procedure to the route optimization distribution binding update

— With the demand of mobility by users, wireless technologies have become the hotspot developing arena. Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) working group has developed Mobile IP (MIP) to support node mobility. The concept of node mobility indicates that in spite of the movement of the node, it is still connected to the internet and all data transactions are preserved . Network Mobility (NEMO) basic support protocol is proposed to describe the node mobility procedures, but NEMO suffers from many problems like pinball and security aspects. Route Optimization Distribution Binding Update (RODBU) is a routing mechanism proposed to eliminate these problems In this paper, we study the effect of the security aspects to RODBU mechanism and see how the performance will effect by adding RRP to the mentioned mechanism.
Clinical and sociodemographic predictors of oral pain and eating problems among adult and senior Spaniards in the national survey performed in 2010

Background Pain and chewing difficulties have been identified as the strongest predictors of oral disadvantage. The aim of this study is to analyze and quantify the sociodemographic, behavioral and clinical factors modulating the oral pain and eating difficulties reported by Spanish adults and elderly Spanish people in the last National Oral Health Survey performed in 2010. Material and Methods Data concerning pain and chewing difficulties were acquired on a Likert‑scale format from a representative sample of the Spanish general population with ages between 35-44 years (n=391) and 65‑74 years (n=405). Risk factors were identified using bivariate analysis, after which the crude association between risk factors (sociodemographic, behavioral and clinical) and outcome variables (pain and eating problems) was assessed by adjusted odds ratios, calculated by means of multivariate logistic regression. Results Eating problems and oral pain were mainly associated with prosthetic and caries treatment needs as clinical predictors, but female sex was also seen to be a relevant and significant risk factor for suffering pain and eating restrictions. Paradoxically, after taking into account all the aforementioned predictors, the adults had an almost two‑fold higher risk of reporting pain or eating difficulties than the elderly subjects. Conclusions In agreement with the results from the last national oral health survey, prosthetic and caries treatment needs should be considered key factors in determining the oral well‑being of the Spanish population. In sociodemographic terms, the women and adults were seen to be at a significantly higher risk of suffering pain and eating restrictions. Key words: Oral pain, eating difficulties, oral health‑related quality of life, epidemiological studies, self‑assessment.
How Large Looms the Ghost of the Past? State-Dependence vs. Heterogeneity in the Stag Hunt

In games with multiple, Pareto-rankable equilibria and repeated play, does a history of playing an inefficient equilibrium make it harder for the players to reach the efficient equilibrium? In other words, can people Oget stuckO in bad equilibria? Previous studies have found support for this, but they have relied on naturally occurring variation in precedent. I implement randomized control to establish that precedent effects are important, but that natural occurring variation exaggerates the importance of precedent. I present evidence that some of the endogeneity of naturally occurring precedents is due to variation in risk-attitudes. This is because in the coordination games used, the inefficient equilibrium is associated with a safe strategy. Understanding the causal effect of precedent is important since many development problems, such as institutional change and technological advancement, are viewed as coordination games with Pareto-rankable equilibria. Moreover an appreciation of how potential heterogeneity may interact with the policy is essential when trying to lift groups out of bad precedents.
High resolution direction-of-arrival estimation based on compressive sensing with noval compression matrix

In this paper, the narrowband DOA estimation problem is studied in compressive sensing (CS) perspective. A novel compression perception model is proposed making use of the spatial sparsity. Two novel approaches for constructing the compression matrix are also presented. The one is to design a new random compression matrix; the other is to apply approximate QR decomposition to form a main diagonal compression matrix. Moreover, singular value decomposition (SVD) is explored on the data matrix in order to lighten computational burden. We also propose two different kinds of methods for direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation based on new compression matrices: I.CS recovery: QR-SVD-MFOCUSS; II.CS beamforming: Random-SVD CS beamforming (RSVD-CSB) and QR-SVD CS beamforming (QRSVD-CSB). Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed methods possess high resolution, robust to additive noise, reduction computational burden and so on.
Beyond dichotomous life histories in partially migrating populations: cessation of anadromy in a long-lived fish.

Across animal taxa, migration allows individuals to exploit habitats and resources that predictably vary seasonally in suitability. Theory predicts that the "decision" to migrate or not is shaped by the relative fitness costs and benefits of exhibiting a given life history. Adoption of a migratory strategy is widely thought to reflect a dichotomous outcome; individuals are either resident or migratory, and continue to exhibit this life history until death. In fishes, anadromy and freshwater residency represents a well-studied life history dichotomy. Resident individuals may adopt a migratory life history later in life, but migratory individuals are not known to abandon this pattern. Here, we investigated the fitness benefits, as measured by body size, of residency and anadromy in a salmonid fish, Dolly Varden, Salvelinus malma, in Alaska, and reveal a novel life history: cessation of migration by older, larger individuals. Otolith microchemical analysis of Dolly Varden showed that while most fish migrated to sea at least once in their lives, lifelong resident fish exist in streams with close proximity to the ocean. Moreover, the probability of seaward migration in any year of life decreased annually after an individual's fourth year, and no fish migrated after their eighth year, while the oldest fish were captured in their 11th year. Migration conferred a size advantage in young fish, but the size benefits of marine foraging declined in older fish, at which time fish increasingly "retired from anadromy. " Additionally, measurement of both natal otolith chemistry and the gonadosomatic index indicated a continued contribution to lifetime fitness, rather than senescence, in retired individuals. We suggest that the novel life history of reversion to residency by older fish is viable because foraging opportunities are subsidized by the predictable annual supply of energy-rich eggs and carcasses of spawning Pacific salmon.
Aerosol microphysical impact on summertime convective precipitation in the Rocky Mountain region

We present an aerosol‐cloud‐precipitation modeling study of convective clouds using the Weather Research and Forecasting model fully coupled with Chemistry (WRF‐Chem) version 3.1. 1. Comparison of the model output with measurements from a research site in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado revealed that the fraction of organics in the model is underpredicted. This is most likely due to missing processes in the aerosol module in the model version used, such as new particle formation and growth of secondary organic aerosols. When boundary conditions and domain‐wide initial conditions of aerosol loading are changed in the model (factors of 0.1, 0.2, and 10 of initial aerosol mass of SO4−2, NH4+, and NO3−), the domain‐wide precipitation changes by about 5%. Analysis of the model results reveals that the Rocky Mountain region and Front Range environment is not conducive for convective invigoration to play a major role, in increasing precipitation, as seen in some other studies. When localized organic aerosol emission are increased to mimic new particle formation, the resulting increased aerosol loading leads to increases in domain‐wide precipitation, opposite to what is seen in the model simulations with changed boundary and initial conditions.