Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimal model based anti-windup design

In this paper we discuss an optimal tuning strategy for a model based anti-windup (AW) compensator which is straightforward to use and can be tuned empirically with respect to a general cost-function. The presented cost-function is representative for the performance during saturation of the combination of a linear-controller and an AW-compensator. The simulation results showed that adding the tuned anti-windup compensator to the existing control structure can improve the performance of the closed loop system with respect to the minimized control-objectives of the cost-function. Simulation tests of a position control on a damped mass-spring system showed that the optimized anti-windup controller performance is closer to a MPC than a full-order anti-windup compensator derived by a linear matrix inequality.
World energy assessment : energy and the challenge of sustainability

This report is based on the premise that energy is an essential component of sustainable development of social and economic progress that meets the needs of both present and future generations. The report discusses the linkage between energy and economic, social, environmental, and security issues, and analyzes the contradictions between current patterns of use and objectives in these areas. Key features include reviews of energy resources and technology options from the point of view of sustainability including better end-use efficiency, greater reliance on renewable sources of energy, and next-generation nuclear and fossil-fuel technologies; examination of plausible scenarios for combining various options to achieve a sustainable and relatively prosperous future; and consideration of policy options for producing and using energy in ways that are compatible with sustainable development.
Automated modelling of real human faces for 3D animation

This paper describes the automated creation of a textured face mask of a natural person suitable for real time animation. A 3D surface polygon face mask is used. A set of muscles is defined to animate the mask. The mask is adapted to a real person using 3D surface data from a calibrated stereo sensor. First, the facial features of the mask are aligned to the 3D data by scaling the mask. Next, a local shape adaptation moves the mask vertices along their surface normals to be coplanar with the measured 3D surface. The adapted mask is textured from one of the stereo images yielding a highly realistic impression. The predefined muscles are used to animate the textured mask.
Local Fiscal Policy and Retiree Migration: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study

We use the 1992 to 2000 waves of HRS and town-level fiscal data from the Census of Governments, to examine whether moves by households near retirement age are motivated by local fiscal policy. The data show some evidence that movers lower their fiscal burden. Households that move across states the first time after their children have reached adulthood reduce their property tax liability by an average of $115. However, there is a great deal of heterogeneity across different types of movers. It is clear that while fiscal policy may factor into the move decision, it is just one of many variables upon which location choice by retirees is based.
Model Simpliication for Meshing Using Face Clustering

In this work a new method for CAD model simpliication is presented. The method is especially suited for simpliications performed in preparation for meshing the models. It uses a local analysis approach based on a clustering procedure. The method provides a generic approach for model simpliication. It is eecient and robust. It works on non-manifold models, free-form and linear faces, and models with large curved regions. It provides symmetric partitioning of details like blends and llets, resulting in more symmetric simpliied models.
Disjunctive Stable Models: Unfounded Sets, Fixpoint Semantics, and Computation

Disjunctive logic programs have become a powerful tool in knowledge representation and commonsense reasoning. This paper focuses on stable model semantics, currently the most widely acknowledged semantics for disjunctive logic programs. After presenting a new notion of unfounded sets for disjunctive logic programs, we provide two declarative characterizations of stable models in terms of unfounded sets. One shows that the set of stable models coincides with the family of unfounded-free models (i.e., a model is stable iff it contains no unfounded atoms). The other proves that stable models can be defined equivalently by a property of their false literals, as a model is stable iff the set of its false literals coincides with its greatest unfounded set. We then generalize the well-founded WPoperator to disjunctive logic programs, give a fixpoint semantics for disjunctive stable models and present an algorithm for computing the stable models of function-free programs. The algorithm's soundness and completeness are proved and some complexity issues are discussed.
Derivatives: The Theory and Practice of Financial Engineering

PART ONE BASIC THEORY OF DERIVATIVES Products and Markets Derivatives The Random Behavior Assets Elementary Stochastic Calculus The Black-Scholes Model Partial Differential Equations The Black-Scholes Formulae and the 'Greeks' Simple Generalizations of the Black-Scholes World Early Exercise and American Options Probability Density Function and First Exit Times Multi-asset Options The Binomial Model PART TWO PATH DEPENDENCY An Introduction to Exotic and Path-dependent Options Barrier Options Strongly Path-dependent Options Asian Options Lookback Options Miscellaneous Exotics PART THREE EXTENDING BLACK-SCHOLES Defects in the Black-Scholes Model Discrete Hedging Transaction Costs Volatility Smiles and Surfaces Stochastic Volatility Uncertain Parameters Empirical Analysis of Volatility Jump Diffusion Crash Modeling Speculating with Options The Feedback effect of Hedging in Illiquid Markets Static Hedging PART FOUR INTEREST RATES AND PRODUCTS Fixed-income Products and Analysis: Yield, Duration and Convexity Swaps One-factor Interest rate Modeling Yield Curve Fitting Interest rate Derivatives Convertible Bonds Two-factor Interest Rate Modeling Empirical Behavior of the Spot Interest rate Heath, Jarrow and Morton Interest-rate Modeling Without Probabilities PART FIVE RISK MEASUREMENT AND MANAGEMENT Portfolio Management Value at Risk Credit Risk Credit Derivatives RiskMetrics, CreditMetrics and CrashMetircs PART SIX NUMERICAL METHOD Finite-difference Methods for One-factor Models Further Finite-difference Methods for One-factor Models Finite-differences Methods for Two-factor Models Monte Carlo Simulation Related Methods Finite-differences Programs Epilog Bibliography Index .
Estimation of a Stochastic Model of Reproduction: An Econometric Approach

In the past few years, there has been substantial progress in the application of the economic theory of household decision making to human fertility behavior. Theoretical emphasis has been given to the effects of the costs of parental tine and money resources devoted to rearing children on the demand for the total number of children in a static framework under conditions of certainty. Empirical work has focused on explaining variation in the number of children ever born to women, who have completed their childbearing, as a function of measures of the household's total resources and the opportunity cost of time, especially the value of the wife's time. One important objection to static theories of fertility is their failure to deal with the implications of the simple fact that reproduction is a stochastic biological process in which the number and timing of births and the traits of children (e.g. sex, intelligence, health, etc.) are uncertain and not subject to direct control. In this paper, we report some initial results of a study in progress whose goal is to develop an integrated theoretical and econometric model of fertility behavior within a sequential stochastic framework. The principal contribution of the paper is to the development of an appropriate econometric methodology for dealing with some new econometric problems that arise in such models.
Size and Scope of Human Capital Intensive Firms

Very preliminary and incomplete We would like to thank Roman Inderst for very helpful comments. 1 Introduction This paper studies employee incentives to exert innovative e¤ort, and the importance of encouraging teamwork to promote innovation in human capital intensive …rms where …rm value primarily depends on employee generated innovations. In today's knowledge-based economy, ownership of physical assets no longer represents a source of comparative advantage for …rms since developments in …nancial markets and easier access to capital markets signi…cantly increased …rms' ability to invest in physical assets. Firms' value generating ability depends much more on the human capital they employ rather than on the physical capital they own, especially for entre-preneurial and innovative …rms. Thus, recruiting, retaining and motivating employees becomes a critical requirement for value creation. This paper studies the nature of employee incentives in human capital intensive …rms as a function of …rm size and scope. In addition, it shows the importance of promoting teamwork in promoting employee innovation e¤ort and in increasing innovative output of the …rm. We consider a setting where a …rm chooses …rst the number of employees to hire. We simplify the analysis by assuming that the …rm can hire either one or two employees. The …rm is human capital intensive in the sense that …rm value depends on innovations generated by the employees of the …rm. Each employee exerts unobservable e¤ort which determines the probability that the employee obtains an innovation. We show that the size and the scope of the …rm a¤ect employee incentives ex-ante to exert e¤ort as well as the …rm's rent extraction ability at the ex-post wage negotiation stage. When the …rm hires two employees, the …rm can choose to hire either substitute employees or complementary employees. This can be also interpreted as training employees in a way so that their contributions to …rm value are either substitutes or complements. With two substitute employees, compared to having only one employee, the …rm can extract higher rents from the employees as having two employees allows the …rm to depress the holdup power of each employee in the ex-post negotiations. Hence, hiring two employees is bene…cial for the …rm as it gives the 1 …rm a bargaining advantage. However, anticipating the bargaining advantage of the …rm, the employees exert lower e¤ort ex-ante. Hiring one employee eliminates the bargaining advantage of the …rm but it leads to stronger e¤ort incentives compared to …
Building quality housing services

Repair and maintenance play a key role in housing management and tenant satisfaction. In the UK, local authority housing departments have traditionally had these services carried out in‐house by local authority building services departments. For more than a decade, such departments have been under pressure to improve their efficiency and effectiveness from public policy initiatives such as compulsory competitive tendering and, more recently, best value. Within some authorities the transfer of housing stock from local authority control to housing associations with non‐profit‐making status is also adding to pressure for quality improvement by raising tenant expectations. Presents a case study of a total quality management initiative implemented within a local authority in Scotland facing precisely these pressures. The success of the quality improvement programme is examined, comparing the perceptions of the tenants and employees with key performance indicators. The pressures to succeed are high since, following an initial five‐year period of grace, the contract for the delivery of building services will only be renewed if the newly‐appointed housing association is satisfied with the efficiency and effectiveness of services delivered. The findings highlight the importance of managing the quality chain across organisational boundaries.
Representing the transistor by an equivalent resistor

During the analysis of circuits containing multi transistors, the researcher is faced with a tremendous problem. This is due to the fact the MOS/BJT transistor is a four/three-terminal device with a large number of specifying parameters. In order to simplify the analysis, the four/three-terminal complicated MOS/BJT transistor can be replaced by a two-terminal fictitious resistor with a proper resistance. In this paper, a procedure is described to find a formula for the equivalent resistance of the MOS or the BJT transistor, and thus simplifying the analysis of such circuits considerably. Also, the procedure is applied to circuits containing a single transistor and to circuits containing series and parallel connections of transistors in order to estimate the propagation delays. The derived formulas are verified by comparison with the simulation results adopting the 65 nm CMOS technology with a power-supply voltage of 1 V.
The Dilemma of Encapsulation vs . Query Optimization

There is a fundamental, irreconcilable conflict between the goals of encapsulation and the goals of query optimization [1] [2]. The object-oriented literature emphasizes encapsulation. An object should access only objects that are directly related. An object can access indirectly related objects via the methods of intervening objects. Encapsulation increases the resilience of an application; local changes to an application model cause local changes to application code. On the other hand, database management system (DBMS) optimizers take a logical request and generate an execution plan. If queries are broadly stated, the optimizer has greater freedom for devising an efficient plan. Thus encapsulation boosts resilience but limits optimization potential. On the other hand, broadly stating queries is conducive to optimization, but a small change to an application can affect many queries.
A study on the neural-based perceptron branch predictor and its behavior

Title of Document: A STUDY ON THE NEURAL-BASED PERCEPTRON BRANCH PREDICTOR AND ITS BEHAVIOR Priyadarshini Rajakumar, M.S, 2006 Directed By: Associate Professor, Dr. Manoj Franklin, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Branch predictors are very critical in modern superscalar processors and are responsible for achieving high performance. As the depth of pipeline and instruction issue rate of highperformance superscalar processors increase, a branch predictor with high accuracy becomes indispensable. It has been speculated that by 2010 branch prediction will become the most limiting factor in the performance of a processor, than the memory system. Branch mispredictions have heavy penalty, causing flushing of the pipeline and re-fetching of instructions from the correct location. In recent times, neural based branch predictors, like perceptron predictor, are found to have an edge over other popular two-level branch predictors. Branch predictors based on neural learning are the most accurate predictors in the literature as they have sophisticated learning ability to make predictions based on previous outcomes and predictions. However, they are expensive to implement. But perceptron based branch predictors are simple and are easy to implement with less hardware resources. One major advantage of perceptron predictors over the two-level schemes is that we can have longer global or local history length, and
Fried foods, olive oil and colorectal cancer.

BACKGROUND The epidemiologic evidence for an etiologic role of fried foods and heterocyclic amines in colorectal carcinogenesis is inconsistent. PATIENTS AND METHODS We have investigated the relation between fried foods and colorectal cancer risk using data from a large, multicentric case-control study conducted in Italy and Switzerland between 1992 and 2000, with 1394 cases of colon cancer, 886 cases of rectal cancer and 4765 controls. RESULTS After allowing for major relevant covariates, the multivariate odds ratios (ORs) for an increment of one portion per week of fried foods were 0.97 [95% confidence interval (CI)=0.93-1.01] for colon cancer and 1.04 (95% CI=1.00-1.09) for rectal cancer. When we analyzed the type of fats mainly used for frying, we found that olive oil, but not other types of oils, appeared to protect from colon cancer risk (OR=0.89, 95% CI=0.82-0.98). CONCLUSIONS Our results do not indicate a relevant role of fried foods on colorectal cancer risk. We found a possible favorable effect of (fried) olive oil on colon cancer risk but not on rectal cancer risk.
Social Capital. Trust and Ideology

The paper offers a critical analysis of the central concept around which the popular construct of social capital is organised, i.e. trust. To this end the views of Fukuyama, the leading exponent of the said concept are considered. As a result, the concept in question is found to be ideologically charged and substantively weak in many respects.
Quels facteurs pour expliquer les écarts de patrimoine entre hommes et femmes en France

Il existe une importante litterature analysant les ecarts de salaire ou de retraite entre sexes. En revanche, les inegalites de patrimoine restent un sujet relativement peu explore. Or, la richesse est un indicateur important de bien-etre economique, que l'on s'interesse aux inegalites dans la population dans son ensemble ou, plus specifiquement, aux inegalites au sein du menage. Nous utilisons les donnees des enquetes Patrimoine francaises 2004 et 2010, qui permettent d'allouer la richesse a chaque membre du menage, en particulier au sein des couples. Nous mettons ainsi en evidence un patrimoine brut moyen de l'ensemble des hommes superieur d'environ 15 % a celui des femmes. Lorsqu'on desagrege le patrimoine, on constate que les ecarts sont beaucoup plus forts pour les actifs financiers (environ 37 %) que pour le patrimoine immobilier (4 % pour la residence principale en 2010) qui constitue la part la plus importante de la richesse des menages. Ceci s'explique par une detention de la residence principale tres souvent a parts egales au sein des couples. Afin de mettre en evidence les facteurs explicatifs de ces ecarts de richesse, nous utilisons la methode de decomposition semi-parametrique de Di Nardo, Fortin & Lemieux (1996), qui permet de decomposer les ecarts non seulement a la moyenne (methode de Oaxaca et Blinder utilisee habituellement) mais aussi a d'autres endroits de la distribution de patrimoine. Cette derniere est en effet fortement dissymetrique. Nous montrons que les ecarts de richesse entre hommes et femmes sont essentiellement dus a des differences de distribution des caracteristiques individuelles, en particulier celles liees au marche du travail (revenu, situation et experience). Mais ceci est en partie compense par un patrimoine un peu plus eleve a caracteristiques donnees. Ce phenomene peut refleter des differences d'attitude face a l'epargne, mais egalement l'effet compensateur de la mutualisation partielle des ressources au sein des menages.
Performance Analysis of Multilayer Graphene Nano-Ribbon in Current-Mode Signaling Interconnect System

In nanometer regime, graphene nano-ribbon (GNR) has been identified as one of the prominent materials for on-chip interconnects. Current-mode signaling (CMS) has higher performance over conventional voltage-mode signaling (VMS) technique. VMS technique has received wide attention. However, impressive CMS technique has been less explored and needs more investigation. This paper efficiently analyzes multilayer graphene nano-ribbon (MLGNR) interconnect using current-mode signaling technique. Propagation delay, power dissipation and bandwidth are determined for CMS MLGNR interconnect. The performance of CMS MLGNR interconnect is compared with CMS copper interconnect. MLGNR interconnect is analyzed using equivalent single conductor (ESC) model and is driven by CMOS gate. It is analyzed that with increase in interconnect length, propagation delay increases while power dissipation and bandwidth decrease. The effect of variations in number of graphene layers in MLGNR interconnect is also analyzed. It is investigated that as the number of graphene layers increases, the performance of MLGNR interconnect improves. Further, the impact of variations in signal transition period is examined. The signal transition period variations severely affect the performance of the system. It is investigated that CMS MLGNR interconnect outperforms its counterpart CMS copper interconnect and is aptly suited for integrated circuit designs.
The impact of strategic human resource management on the performance of firms in India

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between strategic human resource management (SHRM) and performance in service sectors firms in India. Also, it has tried to explore whether the three main approaches in the area of SHRM – universalistic, contingency and configurational approaches hold true in an Indian setting.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 25 organizations, using two sets of questionnaires. Set 1 comprised measures of business strategy (n=98) and key informant approach was used to collect the data. Set 2 had measures of SHRM which consisted of two sections – human resource management (HRM) system orientation and HRM capabilities and organizational effectiveness (n=750). Performance was measured in terms of organizational effectiveness. Regression analysis was carried out at two levels: industry level and overall level.Findings – Results indicated that there is positive relationship between SHRM and effectiveness, business strategy has an impact.
Do Prior Alliances Influence Contract Structure? Evidence from Technology Alliance Contracts

We examine technology alliance contracts in detail, to explore if formal contract terms vary with prior alliances. Traditionally, formal governance has been viewed as the means to address the coordination difficulties inherent in alliances, via explicit contractual mechanisms. Formal contracting, however, is costly and not the only solution to the coordination problem. Relational governance, or discipline mechanisms outside the contract itself, can encourage cooperative behavior between partners. More specifically, repeated interactions can, through implicit mechanisms, reduce the threat of non-cooperative behavior in alliances. We use a case study approach to explore the contract mechanisms that reveal a possible interaction between contract structure and prior alliances. Based on our examination of contract terms, we devise a coding scheme to allow comparison of contracts empirically. Using our preliminary sample of 42 technology alliance contracts in the telecommunications equipment and microelectronics industries, we find that prior alliances are linked with contract structure. Interestingly, contracts are more complete or detailed when firms have prior alliances (whether with the same firm or other firms). This suggests that firms learn to draft more detailed contracts with prior alliance experience. In contrast, firms appear to draft less complete contracts when they have concurrent alliances with the same firm. Thus, concurrent alliances may represent the development of trust or the exchange of "mutual hostages", both of which deter non-cooperative behavior and, thus, substitute for more formal governance.