Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Wrong End of the Telescope: Economic Migrants, Immigration Policy, and How it Looks from Albania

The prevailing orthodoxy has long been that the only effective way to deal with pressure from ‘economic migrants’ who seek to enter Britain and western Europe by illegal means or by claiming asylum is to implement ever more draconian, and costly, measures to keep them out. Yet so far that has simply led to migrants taking ever more dangerous routes to their destinations, and has failed to curb the activities of those who make money out of smuggling people. In the sending countries, such as Albania, the effect has been negligible. At the heart of the problem lie a whole series of misconceptions on the part of Western governments (and Western publics). There is an unexamined assumption that, simply because they arrive, most migrants want to stay for good. Governments seek to influence migrants’ behaviour without taking into account what it is that impels them to move. There is little serious questioning of their aims or intentions, or whether, given a realistic choice, they would want to come at all. When these questions are looked at more closely, it becomes clear that not only are western Europe’s politicians and commentators looking through the wrong end of the telescope, they are doing so with their blind eye.
Repurposing of the Open Access Malaria Box for Kinetoplastid Diseases Identifies Novel Active Scaffolds against Trypanosomatids

Phenotypic screening had successfully been used for hit generation, especially in the field of neglected diseases, in which feeding the drug pipeline with new chemotypes remains a constant challenge. Here, we catalyze drug discovery research using a publicly available screening tool to boost drug discovery. The Malaria Box, assembled by the Medicines for Malaria Venture, is a structurally diverse set of 200 druglike and 200 probelike compounds distilled from more than 20,000 antimalarial hits from corporate and academic libraries. Repurposing such compounds has already identified new scaffolds against cryptosporidiosis and schistosomiasis. In addition to initiating new hit-to-lead activities, screening the Malaria Box against a plethora of other parasites would enable the community to better understand the similarities and differences between them. We describe the screening of the Malaria Box and triaging of the identified hits against kinetoplastids responsible for human African trypanosomiasis (Trypanosoma brucei), Chagas disease (Trypanosoma cruzi), and visceral leishmaniasis (Leishmania donovani and Leishmania infantum). The in vitro and in vivo profiling of the most promising active compounds with respect to efficacy, toxicity, pharmacokinetics, and complementary druggable properties are presented and a collaborative model used as a way to accelerate the discovery process discussed.
Asystole during Pulse Generator Change: Unexpected Failure of Pacemaker Implant Autoinitialization

A 58-year-old woman had a history of surgically corrected ventricular septal defect, sinus node disease, and right bundle branch block. She had a dual-chamber pacemaker implanted 8 years ago (Insignia Plus, Model 1297, Boston Scientific, Natick, MA, USA) and was admitted for a pulse generator (PG) replacement. The PG used was a Boston Scientific Advantio DDDR pacemaker (Model J067). The PG was in the shipment mode and equipped with autoinitialization technology. At the time of PG replacement, she was pacemaker-dependent at the slowest programmed rate of the old PG. As her atrioventricular nodal conduction was capable to sustain 1:1 conduction at 80 beats/min, it was decided to use the old PG for backup pacing without inserting a temporary pacing lead. The steps for the lead disconnection (old PG) and reconnection (new PG) are detailed in Figure 1.
Epipolar geometry in practice : 3 D runtime odometry with a web-camera

This paper intends to present and analyze all the necessary steps one needs to take in order to build a simple application for structure from motion in practice using only the epipolar constraint. In other words, toillustratein practice (i.e,, cook-book style) about how the most fundamental of concepts in epipolar geometry can be combined into a complete and disambiguated series of steps for camera motion estimation and 3D reconstruction in a relatively simple computer program.In particular, the essential matrix is re-introduced in order to avoid misconceptions regarding the nature of the rotation matrix and translation between two camera positions during consequent computations. Strictly based on the formulation of the essential matrix in this paper, the most important of its properties are given with proofs, merely to provide necessary intuition into the series of derivations that ultimately lead to the recovery of the orientation and baseline vector (up-to-scale). Finally, an application that performs 3D position tracking of a simple web-camera is implemented (and source code made available) in order to demonstrate the practical value of the essential matrix with only a few of assumptions loosely in place (still background and relatively reliable point tracking).
Tourism Distribution Channels: The Visitors’ Perspective

This article extends research on tourism distribution channels, a topic dominated by studies of providers and intermediaries, by addressing the use of multiple channels from the visitors’ perspective. The article reports the results of intercept surveys of international and domestic independent visitors, and their use of a range of distribution channels to make travel, accommodation, and attractions arrangements at two New Zealand destinations: Rotorua and Wellington. Emphasis is given in turn to the different functions of distribution—information search, booking, and payment—and to the factors that influence the channels selected for each of these functions. Similarities and differences are found among the three sectors and between the destinations and segments analyzed.
The relationship between total quality management and project performance in building planning phase: An empirical study of real estate industries in Taiwan

This study examines the relationship between total quality management (TQM) activities and project performance in the architectural planning phase as perceived by top managers in building industries in Taiwan within the time frame between 1997 and 1998. The result shows that quality management activities agree with the theoretical considerations of TQM. The performance in the architectural planning phase guided by TQM was also appraised. Five major factors of TQM are proposed: leadership ability; human resource management; process management; suppliers' management; and continuous quality improvement and information management. The sample firms in this study are classified into three groups using TQM criteria. It can be seen that no significant difference in architectural planning technique exists among the three groups. However, they are found to be significantly different in user satisfaction, profit of product, utilization of product and availability of maintenance.
Geostatistical Characterization of Snow-Depth Structures on Sea Ice Near Point Barrow, Alaska&#8212;A Contribution to the AMSR-Ice03 Field Validation Campaign

The objective of this paper is to characterize spatial properties of snow-depth structures and their role as indicators of sea-ice properties and sea-ice-morphogenetic processes, and to provide quantitative measures of sea-ice properties that may be utilized in analyses of passive-microwave data. Snow-depth data collected near Point Barrow, Alaska, as part of the AMSRIce03 Field Validation Campaign for Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR)-E-Sea-Ice Products from NASA earth-observing-systems satellite AQUA, are analyzed and compared to P-3 polarimetric scanning radiometer (PSR) data, a proxy for AMSR-E brightness temperatures. The approach taken in the analysis is geostatistical characterization. Various functions of first and second order are calculated for the snow-depth profiles, then geostatistical classification parameters are extracted and combined into feature vectors, on which the characterization is based. The complexity of sea ice requires a generalization of the method by introduction of the hyperparameter concept. Results include a quantitative characterization of sea-ice provinces from field transects in the Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, and Elson Lagoon, which represent a good subset of Arctic sea-ice types, an internal segmentation of the longer profiles, and a derivation of surface-roughness length and of sea-ice-type complexity. PSR data reflect complexity of spatial snow-depth structures as captured in multidimensional feature vectors and, less directly, snow-depth and surface-roughness length. These results indicate that passive-microwave data in general may be affected by spatial snow depth and surface roughness, with a dependence on scale and quantified by geostatistical classification
Reporting PFI in Annual Accounts: A User's Perspective

Deciding how to account for public sector financing provided under Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contracts has engendered considerable debate which revolves around whether they should be 'on balance sheet' or 'off balance sheet'. The Accounting Standards Board (ASB) provides the underpinning in FRS 5, interpreted through an ASB Application Note 'Private Finance Initiative and Similar Contracts' and the Treasury Technical Note 'How to Account for PFI Transactions'. This article illustrates the impact of the alternative accountings. It provides an analysis of the annual accounts of two NHS trusts whose assets are financed through PFI contracts, but which use different accounting approaches. There are considerable difficulties for the user of the accounts when attempting to interpret the comparative financial results of the two trusts in the light of these reporting differences and the financing of public services is less than adequately reflected in these resource accounting based financial statements.
A Timed Extension of Property Sequence Chart

Property sequence chart (PSC) is a novel scenarios based notation, which is proposed to represent the temporal properties for concurrent system. It represents a first step toward languages that try to balance expressive power and simplicity of use. Thus, PSC is more intuitive and easily understandable than the traditional temporal logic, such as linear-time temporal logic or computation tree logic. However, the current version of PSC just represents the order of eventpsilas occurrence and lacks the ability to express timed properties. In real-time systems, it is well known that some timed requirements are also very important and need to be specified clearly. Thus, in this paper, in order to make PSC have timed expressiveness, we extend PSC into Timed PSC (TPSC) and give the semantics of TPSC in terms of timed Buchi automaton. Then, we measure the expressive power of TPSC by the use of recently proposed real-time specification pattern. Finally, we illustrate the use of TPSC in the context of a Web service application which requires special timed requirements.
Russia, the West, and World Order

There is a feeling abroad today that Western civilization is on trial before history. One of the clearest signs of it is the increasing frequency with which we hear the word “challenge” in connection with the policies and progress of Soviet Russia and the Communist world at large. The challenge of the sputniks, of Soviet science and education, of Soviet economic development—these phrases, and variations on them, have recently grown all too familiar in America and Europe. We realize, of course, that the situation is not wholly a dark one for the West, that our Communist adversaries have serious internal problems of their own to contend with, that they too face some challenges. Still, nowadays few in the West find grounds for complacency in that fact.
Dictionary-learning-based post-filter for HMM-based speech synthesis

Oversmoothing of speech parameter trajectories is one of the causes for quality degradation of HMM-based speech synthesis. Various methods have been proposed to overcome this effect, the most recent ones being global variance (GV) and modulation-spectrum-based post-filter (MSPF). However, there is still a significant quality gap between natural and synthesized speech. In this paper, we propose a two-fold post-filtering technique to alleviate to a certain extent the oversmoothing of spectral and excitation parameter trajectories of HMM-based speech synthesis. For the spectral parameters, we propose a sparse-coding-based post-filter to match the trajectories of synthetic speech to that of natural speech, and for the excitation trajectory, we introduce a perceptually motivated post-filter. Experimental evaluations show quality improvement compared with existing methods.
Legal Advocacy Against Domestic Violence

The law is a tool that can help constrain the violence of batterers and assist battered women and children in their efforts to achieve lives free of violence. Historically, this was not the case. This paper presents a brief history of the evolving law on domestic violence. It then describes how research on domestic violence has informed legal reform. Finally, it provides an overview of current law designed to end the violence, afford battered women safeguards against future abuse, mandate restitution and offer resources for independent, violence-free living. The search for freedom from domestic violence is often a long and arduous process and it cannot occur until battering and terrorism cease. Even then, it is obstructed unless the battered woman can achieve autonomy and self-determination. The law is a tool that can facilitate the search for safety and freedom. But, historically, the law protected perpetrators. This paper first presents a brief history of the evolving law on domestic violence. It then examines the phenomenon of domestic violence and its impact on battered women and children. Finally, it provides an overview of the legal strategies now available in most states that may put an end to the violence, afford battered women safeguards against future abuse, mandate compensation for the losses imposed by the abuse, and offer resources essential for independence and safety. History of Law on Domestic Violence Violence against wives is a right men exercised with impunity for centuries. This prerogative of men has been articulated in the precepts of religion, philosophy and law throughout the northern hemisphere. Physical violence against wives was deemed necessary for the "well-being" of women. It was coached in terms of corrective discipline and chastisement of erring wives (Davis, 1972). A medieval Christian scholar propagated Rules of Marriage in the late 15th Century. These specified: When you see your wife commit an offense, don't rush at her with insults and violent blows. Scold her sharply, bully and terrify her. And if this doesn't work.take up a stick and beat her soundly, for it is better to punish the body and correct the soul than to damage the soul and spare the body. Then readily beat her, not in rage but out of charity and concern for her soul, so that the beating will redound to your merit and her good. (Davidson, 1978, at p. 99) British common law later embraced, but limited, the husband's authority to assault wives by adopting the "rule of thumb" which permitted a man to beat his wife with a "rod not thicker than his thumb"(Davidson, 1977). 2 Legal Advocacy Against Domestic Violence
Laryngeal modeling: Theoretical, in vitro, in vivo

Because the larynx is situated anatomically in an area which is difficult to measure and visualize, theoretical, in vitro, and in vivo models are used in laryngeal research. Vocal fold vibration was studied in anesthetized dogs, while electrically stimulating independently the superior and recurrent laryngeal nerves under conditions of constant airflow. Photoglottographic (PGG), electroglottographic (EGG), and subglottic pressure signals were obtained while stroboscopically photographing the larynx. Specific points along PGG, EGG, and subglottic pressure waveforms were correlated with laryngeal events which occurred during vibration. The canine larynx, in an experimentally produced phonatory mode, vibrates in a two mass (upper and lower margin) system and appears comparable to modal human voice production. The recorded glottogrophic waveforms from experimentally produced phonation in the canine are similar to signals recorded from humans. However, observed differences can be related to anatomic differences.
Adaptive finite-time stabilisation of a class of high-order nonlinear systems with inverse dynamics

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the adaptive finite-time stabilisation of a class of high-order nonlinear systems with inverse dynamics and time-varying control coefficients. Under the assumptions that the inverse dynamics of the subsystem are input-to-state stable , and nonlinear terms depend upon the inverse dynamics, the states and unknown parameters, we present a systematic design procedure for an adaptive finite-time state-feedback control law by using a recursive design approach. It is shown that under the proposed adaptive control law, the state of the closed-loop system is finite-time convergent. Two examples are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.
The triage of low-grade cytological abnormalities by the immunocytological expression of cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p16INK4a versus Human Papillomavirus test: a real possibility to predict cervical intraepithelial neoplasia CIN2 or CIN2+.

OBJECTIVE Assessing the hypothesis that p16(INK4a) immunocytochemistry (ICC) has better relevance than Human Papillomavirus (HPV) testing at detecting high-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (HGCIN) upon histopathological diagnosis in women with abnormal cytologies such atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance (ASC-US) or low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (LSIL). MATERIALS AND METHODS A retrospective study of 63 selected cases (22 with ASC-US and 41 with LSIL) was performed at "St. Pantelimon" Clinical Hospital, Bucharest, Romania, using p16(INK4a) ICC and Linear Array HPV Genotyping Test. All cases have been followed-up by colposcopy and biopsies. The sensitivity and specificity of p16(INK4a) and HPV were analyzed by chi-squared test. RESULTS LSIL cytologies were more likely to be p16(INK4a) positive than those with ASC-US: OR=3.1, 95% CI (1.06-9.11). The processed data show that in women with LSIL the sensitivity of p16(INK4a) is 37.5% higher than that of high-risk(hr)-HPV (p=0.0050), whereas in ASC-US it is 44.5% higher (p=0.0577). In ASC-US, p16(INK4a) has a higher specificity (84.62%) than hr-HPV (53.85%); for LSIL cytologies, this difference is less steep: 58.82% for p16(INK4a) as compared to 47.06% for HPV. CONCLUSIONS The p16(INK4a) is significantly more sensitive than hr-HPV in both low-grade abnormal cytologies and has higher specificity than HPV testing to detect HGCIN, mainly in women with ASC-US cytologies. Only women with ASC-US and LSIL cytologies who test positive for p16(INK4a) should be directed to colposcopy and/or biopsy. p16(INK4a) is a suitable immunocytochemical marker which increases the accuracy of diagnosis at women with low-grade cytologic abnormality.
Impact of Human Resource Information System on Firm Financial Performance

This study analyzed the impact of the applications of human resource information system (HRIS) on firms’ financial performance. Performance estimation models developed based on five years performance related data extracted from annual reports of total 41 (89%) banks operated under four strata: state-owned commercial (9%), specialized (6%), private commercial (63%), and foreign commercial banks (11%) in Bangladesh while multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) tested to examine the varied corporate financial performance according to ownership patterns. The study found direct and positive relations of HRIS applications with the firm’s financial results. However, the corporate performance does not vary significantly according to the ownership patterns. Moreover, the findings of the study may lead human resource (HR) professionals and other stakeholders to enhance their financial intelligence about its applications in business which may eventually enable them to be strategic partners in the acute global market environment.
Euroization: what factors drive its persistence? Household data evidence for Croatia, Slovenia and Slovakia

The question asked in this article is why people continue to use foreign currencies even after their economies have stabilized. Survey data for Croatia, Slovenia and Slovakia are employed to provide an answer. The results confirm the role of network effects and of remittances. Furthermore, the extent of currency substitution is found to be positively associated with the level of income and education. An important aspect of euroization seems to be age (older people are more likely to hold foreign currencies). In contrast, neither expectations about inflation rates, nor about exchange rates, do seem to affect the degree of euroization in a systematic and predictable way. Trust in the banking system is found to affect the choice between foreign currency cash and foreign currency deposits. Overall, the results support the view that the persistence in the use of foreign currencies is driven to a large extent by factors that are related to the past.
Failed States in a World of Terror

IN THE WAKE of September 1i, the threat of terrorism has given the problem of failed nation-states an immediacy and importance that transcends its previous humanitarian dimension. Since the early 199os, wars in and among failed states have killed about eight million people, most of them civilians, and displaced another four million. The number of those impoverished, malnourished, and deprived of fundamental needs such as security, health care, and education has totaled in the hundreds of millions. Although the phenomenon of state failure is not new, it has become much more relevant and worrying than ever before. In less interconnected eras, state weakness could be isolated and kept distant. Failure had fewer implications for peace and security. Now, these states pose dangers not only to themselves and their neighbors but also to peoples around the globe. Preventing states from failing, and resuscitating those that do fail, are thus strategic and moral imperatives. But failed states are not homogeneous. The nature of state failure varies from place to place, sometimes dramatically. Failure and weak ness can flow from a nation's geographical, physical, historical, and
Imperfect Competition in Auction Designs

We study the competition between two owners of identical goods who wish to sell them to a pool of potential buyers. The sellers compete simultaneously setting reserve prices for their second price sealed bid auctions. Upon observing the set reserve prices, the buyers decide simultaneously in which auction to bid. We show that this game has (at least) one equilibrium and that all equilibria are inefficient: reserve prices are not driven to zero (cost). We also discuss where and why the parallel between optimal auction design and optimal pricing in the case of monopoly breaks down for oligopoly. Copyright 1999 by Economics Department of the University of Pennsylvania and the Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association.
IT strategy and decision-making: a comparison of four universities

Universities are increasingly dependent on information technology (IT) to support delivery of their objectives. It is crucial, therefore, that the IT investments made lead to successful outcomes. This study analyses the governance structures and decision-making processes used to approve and prioritise IT projects. Factors influencing an institution’s ability to identify and approve the projects that will maximise contributions to overall mission are examined. From this a framework for improved IT governance and decision-making in a university context is proposed.