Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The ABCs of HVDC transmission technologies

An overview of high voltage direct current systems and applications is presented in this paper. The favorable economics of long-distance bulk-power transmission with HVDC together with its controllability make it an interesting alternative or complement to AC transmission. The higher voltage levels, mature technology, and new converter designs have significantly increased the interest in HVDC transmission and expanded the range of applications
Principles Of Electoral Reform

A country's electoral system has a profound effect on its politics; its citizens ought therefore to ask themselves at frequest intervals whether that currently in force is satisfactory. This text does not argue for a particular answer, but aims to help people think about the question. Few realize how much thought it needs. One should not begin by asking whether this or that system is better, but by trying to make precise what we want an electoral system to do. A general election has two effects: it decides the composition of Parliament; and it decides who is going to represent each constituency. The question of what we want an electoral system to do therefore splits in two: how should Parliament be divided between the parties, given the voter's preferences? ; and which are the most representative local candidates, given the voter's preferences? Neither question is straightforward, but this text seeks to explain on what basis we should decide which electoral system we should have.
Engaging constable: revealing art with new technology

Museums increasingly deploy new technologies to enhance visitors' experience of their exhibitions. They primarily rely on touch-screen computer systems, PDAs and digital audio-guides. Tate Britain recently employed two innovative systems in one of their major exhibitions of John Constable's work; a gestural interface and a touch-screen panel, both connected to large projection screens. This paper reports on the analysis of video-recordings and field observations of visitors' action and interaction. It explores how people interact with and around the systems, how they configure the space around the installation and how they examine and discover their properties. It suggests that designers of interfaces and installations developed for museum exhibitions face particular challenges, such as the transparency of the relationship between people's actions and the system' response, the provision of opportunities for individual and collaborative experiences and the interweaving of technological and aesthetic experiences.
On the Nature of the Electric Charge

The geometry of the elementary charge is studied in the framework of the concept of space considered as a tessellation lattice ('tessellattice'), which has recently been developed by M. Bounias and the author. The descriptive-geometric sense of the electric and magnetic fields and their carriers - photons - is analyzed. The notion of the scalar and vector potentials of a charged particle and their behavior at the motion of the particle along a path is investigated in detail. Based on the potentials, the Lagrangian leading to the Maxwell equations is constructed. The distinctive properties of the inerton and the photon - two basic elementary excitations, or quasi-particles of the space tessellattice - are discussed. Summarizing, we may say that the work suggests the detailed interpretation of the Maxwell equations in terms of the submicroscopic approach to Nature.
Ja n 20 02 UNDQCG-02-02 Imperfect Detectors in Linear Optical Quantum Computers

We discuss the effects of imperfect photon detectors suffering from loss and noise on the reliability of linear optical quantum computers. We show that for a given detector efficiency, there is a maximum achievable success probability, and that increasing the number of ancillary photons and detectors used for one controlled sign flip gate beyond a critical point will decrease the probability that the computer will function correctly. We have also performed simulations of some small logic gates and estimate the efficiency and noise levels required for the linear optical quantum computer to function properly.
Glycoblocks: a schematic three-dimensional representation for glycans and their interactions

With structural glycoscience finally gaining popularity, the need for a clear way of depicting glycans and their interactions in three dimensions is more pressing than ever. Here the Glycoblocks representation is introduced, which combines a simplified bonding-network depiction with the familiar two-dimensional glycan notation brought into three-dimensions.
An investigation of the impact of torsion waves and friction characteristics on the playability of virtual bowed strings

"Playability" is measured for variations in a bowed string simulation model. The variations studied are (1) the effect of torsion waves, and (2) the effect of the choice of friction model. It is found that (1) elimination of torsion wave simulation does not degrade playability, and (2) the more recently developed "plastic" bowed-string friction model, in which the frictional force is a function of temperature, is more "playable" than prior friction models which depend only on relative sliding velocity.
An information theoretic privacy and utility measure for data sanitization mechanisms

Data collection agencies publish sensitive data for legitimate purposes, such as research, marketing and etc. Data publishing has attracted much interest in research community due to the important concerns over the protection of individuals privacy. As a result several sanitization mechanisms with different notions of privacy have been proposed. To be able to measure, set and compare the level of privacy protection, there is a need to translate these different mechanisms to a unified system. In this paper, we propose a novel information theoretic framework for representing a formal model of a mechanism as a noisy channel and evaluating its privacy and utility. We show that deterministic publishing property that is used in most of these mechanisms reduces the privacy guarantees and causes information to leak. The great effect of adversary's background knowledge on this metric is concluded. We also show that using this framework we can compute the sanitization mechanism's preserved utility from the point of view of a data user. By using the specifications of a popular sanitization mechanism, k-anonymity, we analytically provide a representation of this mechanism to be used for its evaluation.
Novel Processing Techniques for Small Breast Lesions Detection in DCE-MRI based on Image Registration and Integration of Morphologic and Dynamic Characteristics

Diagnostically challenging lesions comprise both foci (sm all lesions) and non-mass-like enhancing lesions and pose a challenge to current computer-aided diagno sis systems. Motion-based artifacts lead in dynamic contrast-enhanced breast magnetic resonance to diagnostic misinterpretation; therefore, motion compensation represents an important prerequisite to automatic lesion detection and diagnosis. In addition, the extraction of pertinent kinetic and mo rphologic features as lesion descriptors is an equally important task. In the present paper, we evaluate the performance of a computer-aided diagnosis system consisting of motion correction, lesion s egmentation, and feature extraction and classification. We develop a new feature extractor, the radi al Krawtchouk moment, which guarantees rotation invariance. Many novel feature extraction techni ques are proposed and tested in conjunction with lesion detection. Our simulation results have shown th at motion compensation combined with Minkowski functionals and Bayesian classifier can improve l esion detection and classification.
Improving Incentives in Unemployment Insurance: A Review of Recent Research

This paper provides a review of the recent literature on how incentives in unemployment insurance (UI) can be improved. We are particularly concerned with three instruments, viz. the duration of benefit payments (or more generally the time sequencing of benefits), monitoring in conjunction with sanctions, and workfare. Our reading of the theoretical literature is that the case for imposing a penalty on less active job search is fairly solid. A growing number of empirical studies, including randomized experiments, are in line with this conclusion.
Education and the Prevalence of Pain

Many Americans report chronic and disabling pain, even in the absence of identifiable clinical disorders. We first examine the prevalence of pain in the older U.S. population using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Among 50-59 year females, for example, pain rates ranged from 26 percent for college graduates to 55 percent for those without a high school degree. Occupation, industry, and marital status attenuated but did not erase these educational gradients. Second, we used a study of patients with lower back pain and sciatica arising from intervertebral disk herniation (IDH). Initially, nearly all patients reported considerable pain and discomfort, with a sizeable fraction undergoing surgery for their IDH. However, baseline severity measures and surgical or medical treatment explained little of the variation in 10-year outcomes. By contrast, education exerted a strong impact on changes over time in pain: just 9 percent of college graduates report leg or back pain "always" or "almost always" after 10 years, compared to 34 percent for people without a high school degree. This close association of education with pain is consistent with recent research emphasizing the importance of neurological -- and perhaps economic -- factors in the perception of pain.
Hiding Sequential and Spatiotemporal Patterns

The process of discovering relevant patterns holding in a database was first indicated as a threat to database security by O'Leary in. Since then, many different approaches for knowledge hiding have emerged over the years, mainly in the context of association rules and frequent item sets mining. Following many real-world data and application demands, in this paper, we shift the problem of knowledge hiding to contexts where both the data and the extracted knowledge have a sequential structure. We define the problem of hiding sequential patterns and show its NP-hardness. Thus, we devise heuristics and a polynomial sanitization algorithm. Starting from this framework, we specialize it to the more complex case of spatiotemporal patterns extracted from moving objects databases. Finally, we discuss a possible kind of attack to our model, which exploits the knowledge of the underlying road network, and enhance our model to protect from this kind of attack. An exhaustive experiential analysis on real-world data sets shows the effectiveness of our proposal.
Global Virtual Teams: How to Manage Them

The emergence of the internet, multimedia, collaborative software environments and group support systems has created new opportunities for organizations to form global virtual teams (GVTs) to work on complex virtual projects, and remain competitive. This development in information and communication technology over the last decade and a half has added a new dimension to management and has sparked a new line of research. This paper has collated literature to provide the reader with pertinent definitions and challenges faced by managers when managing virtual/distributed teams and projects and the different methods used to manage these challenges. One of the researchers has worked in a virtual team for 7 months, and conducted an ethnographical study. It was found that communication was the core challenge to the success of a global virtual team. Other issues linked to this core challenge of communication were trust, cultural differences, team cohesion, software, collaboration, and environmental challenges.
QoS optimized cross multi-layer transmission for SVC coded video stream over IEEE 802.16e network

The Scalable Video Coding (SVC) provides the spatial, temporal, and quality scalability of SVC with which a terminal station can have different playback video quality dynamically according to the radio channel condition and the capacity of the terminal station. Under the concept of layer-separation of the OSI layer model, however, existing access network techniques are upper layer-unaware. While the traffic loading in the access network becomes heavy, the video quality degrades dramatically. In this paper, a cross multi-layer mechanism is proposed to let the MAC layer of an IEEE 802.16e network system become aware to the importance of decoding dependency of each Network Abstraction Layer unit. Besides, according to the feature of SVC, the concept of seamless service is mentioned in this paper as well. According to the simulation results, the playback video quality is improved significantly.
Towards Diffusion of Innovations: Conceptual Commonalities and Contradictions

บทคดยอ บทความนมงเนนการขยายขอบเขตองคความรดานการแพรกระจายนวตกรรมผานทฤษฎสามดาน คอ ทฤษฎฐานทรพยากรขององคกร มมมองของลกคาทมตอการแพรกระจายนวตกรรม และรปแบบความสมพนธเชงเหตผลระหวางมมมองทงสอง การปรทศนวรรณกรรมจากสหสาขาวชานำมาซงการขยายคณลกษณะทสงเสรมการแพรกระจายของนวตกรรม กลาวโดยเจาะจงคอบทความนเสนอแนะวาคณลกษณะดานความคณความโดดเดนกวา และการแยกสวนไดของนวตกรรมควรปรบเปลยนเปนคณประโยชนทสงกวา และการลดความเสยงในการใชนวตกรรมซงเขากบแนวคดมมมองของลกคามากกวา นอกจากคณลกษณะของนวตกรรมแลวบทความนยงนำเสนอวาลกษณะภายในขององคกรสามดาน ไดแก การดำเนนงานอยางมประสทธผล โครงสรางและวฒนธรรมองคกร และความสามารถขององคกรในการบรณาการและแลกเปลยนทรพยากรกเปนปจจยนำสการแพรกระจากนวตกรรม นอกจากนบทความยงไดนำเสนอโมเดลเชงแนวคดจากผลการศกษาดงกลาวดวย คำสำคญ : การกระจายนวตกรรม นวตกรรม มมมองลกคา ทฤษฏมมมองฐานทรพยากรองคกร Abstract This paper aims to expand the diffusion of innovations theory in three theoretical dimensions: resource-based view of a firm, market viewpoint of innovation diffusion, and proposed causal relationship of the two views. The review of literature from interdisciplinary leads to the expansion of characteristics of innovations of which cause diffusion. Specifically, the paper suggests that the relative advantage and divisibility of an innovation should be viewed in terms of advantage superiority and uncertainty marginalization which are more customer-centric. Further, target customers’ affordability and firms’ resource compatibility are initiated as the additional key aspects that lead to the diffusion of innovations. Besides the characteristics of an innovation itself, the article proposes three internal characteristics of a firm that facilitates the diffusion—operation efficiency, firm structure and culture, and the ability to combine and exchange resources. The article concludes by offering a conceptual model based on the findings. Keywords : Innovation Diffusion, Innovation, Market Viewpoint, Resource-Based View of a Firm
Planning Shrinking Cities

Developed, modern cities throughout the world are facing population declines at an unprecedented scale. Over the last fifty years, 370 cities throughout the world with populations over 100,000 have shrunk by at least 10% (Oswalt and Rieniets 2007). Wide swaths of the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Japan are projecting double-digit declines in population in the coming decades. Internationally, scholars and practitioners of the built environment have responded to this crisis by reconceptualizing decline as shrinkage and have begun to explore creative and innovative ways for cities to successfully shrink (Stohr 2004; Swope 2006). Historically, planners have responded to population decline by instigating economic development strategies, but this conventional approach has failed in scores of places. This emerging new approach to rethinking decline provides a non-economic view of responding to depopulation.
Tools for Template Dependencies

Template dependencies (TD’s) are a class of data dependencies that include multivalued and join dependencies and embedded versions of these. A collection of techniques, examples and results about TD’s are presented. The principal results are: 1) Finite implication (implication over relations with a finite number of tuples) is distinct from unrestricted implication for TD’s. 2) There are, for TD’s over three or more attributes, infinite chains of increasingly weaker and increasingly stronger full TD’s. 3) However, there are weakest (nontrivial) and strongest full TD’s over any given set of attributes. 4) Over two attributes, there are only three distinct TD’s. 5) There is no weakest (not necessarily full) TD over any set of three or more attributes. 6) There is a finite relation that obeys every strictly partial TD but no full TD. 7) The conjunction of each finite set of full TD’s is equivalent to a single full TD. However, the conjunction of a finite set of (not necessarily full) TD’s is not necessarily e.
A methodology on extracting reusable software candidate components from open source games

Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE) focuses on the development of reusable components in order to enable their reuse in more systems, rather than only to be used to the original ones for which they have been implemented in the first place (i.e. development for reuse) and the development of new systems with reusable components (i.e. development with reuse). This paper aims at introducing a methodology for the extraction of candidate reusable software components from open source games. The extracted components have been empirically evaluated through a case study. Additionally, the component candidates that have been extracted are available for reuse through a web service.
Three-Dimensional Nonlinear Path-Following Guidance Law Based on Differential Geometry

Abstract A new three-dimensional nonlinear path-following guidance law is proposed using differential geometry. The guidance law is designed based on the look-ahead angle and the radially shifted distance which gives an additional degree of freedom to generate acceleration command for precise path-following. A modified Frenet-Serret frame is utilized to describe the desired path, and the closest projection point is taken as a reference point on the desired path. To implement the guidance law for the vehicle in a flow-field, a command modifying logic is proposed to generate the sideways command which is orthogonal to the flow-relative velocity. Numerical simulations are performed to verify the performance of the proposed guidance law.
SAMI: The SLA Management Instance

The vision for economies of reusable services that can be composed into business processes is still hindered by the lack of dependability as regards their execution. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are an instrument to express and codify requirements for services, so that an acceptable level of determinism can be provided, and customers can rely on them as such. In this work we present the SLA Management Instance (SAMI) architecture for a reusable autonomic entity that can support negotiation and runtime management of SLAs, without disruptive effects on the existing corresponding services. This architecture takes extra steps towards supporting hierarchies of cross-domain SLAs, reflecting similar hierarchies of cross-domain service compositions.
Reference Design for Smart Collaborative Telehealth and Telecare Services Based on IoT Technologies

The demographic development shows aging societies through-out the globe, leading to higher demands on the health and care systems due to age-related disabilities, chronic diseases, etc. Telehealth and telecare services for more efficient support of health and care providers are needed, which can be significantly improved by the continuous technological developments in areas such as sensor devices, Internet of Things (IoT), cloud services, and data analysis. This paper addresses the potential of selected emerging technologies to make eHealth systems smarter, more collaborative and more efficient. As a result of the analysis of the most promising technological trends, characteristics of future telehealth and telecare services are derived, requirements are identified, and a future eHealth reference design is proposed.
Testando a propriedade redistributiva do Sistema Previdenciário Brasileiro: uma abordagem semiparamétrica

It is consensual that the increasing on the Social Security? s deficit is one of the most important constraints imposed upon sustained economic growth in Brazil. Many proposals have been discussed, from adjustments on the age of retirement, equalizing men and women, to a complete reform, by substituting the PAYG system for a capitalization one. In this debate, income transfers are frequently presented as one of the main reasons for the existence of Social Security Systems. Under this approach, we analyze the Brazilian case. From Pnad data, we tested the system? s income distribution capability. The results lead us to the conclusion that the Brazilian Social Security System has a regressive distribution. This characteristic is glimpsed, mainly, through the inequality indicators (Gini and Theil): the Brazilian Social Security gets to explain more than 60% of total variation of those indexes for men older than 18. For women, though, we cannot state that the system is progressive. The results indicate that, although reducing the poverty level, it doesn`t possess the property of redistributing income for the poorest.
Socioeconomic Status, Sex, and Obesity in a Large National Cohort of 15–87-Year-Old Open University Students in Thailand

Background As obesity increases, middle-income countries are undergoing a health-risk transition. We examine the association between socioeconomic status (SES) and emerging obesity in Thailand, and ascertain if an inverse relationship between SES and obesity has appeared. Methods The data derived from 87 134 individuals (54% female; median age, 29 years) in a national cohort of distance-learning Open University students aged 15–87 years and living throughout Thailand. We calculated adjusted odds ratios for associations of SES with obesity (body mass index, ≥25) across 3 age groups by sex, after controlling for marital status, age, and urbanization. Results Obesity increased with age and was more prevalent among males than females (22.7% vs 9.9%); more females were underweight (21.8% vs 6.2%). Annual income was 2000 to 3000 US dollars for most participants. High SES, defined by education, income, household assets, and housing type, associated strongly with obesity—positively for males and inversely for females—especially for participants younger than 40 years. The OR for obesity associated with income was as high as 1.54 for males and as low as 0.68 for females (P for trend <0.001). Conclusions Our national Thai cohort has passed a tipping point and assumed a pattern seen in developed countries, ie, an inverse association between SES and obesity in females. We expect the overall population of Thailand to follow this pattern, as education spreads and incomes rise. A public health problem of underweight females could emerge. Recognition of these patterns is important for programs combating obesity. Many middle income countries are undergoing similar transitions.
XML: From Practice to Theory

The development of XML technology has occurred very rapidly, initially leaving theory behind. As is often the case in such situations, practical development sometimes seemed more ad-hoc than well principled. There is now a substantial body of work providing formal foundations for XML. This paper presents a personal perspective on some recent developments in the theory of XML.