Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Social perceptions of stalking in Spain: The behaviour’s seriousness and legal response

The recent process of criminalization of stalking in various European countries has proved to be complex, due to the diffuse nature of the phenomenon. One tool for helping to identify the most appropriate legal response to this issue is social perception studies. This article presents the findings of one such study conducted with a sample of 1010 university students, one of the population segments most victimized by stalking, based on two case scenarios. The aim was to determine, first, this population segment’s perceptions of the incidence and seriousness of the stalking phenomenon and, second, their attitude regarding the proportionate legal response in cases of stalking, depending on both certain personal characteristics of the sample members and other variables related to the case scenario itself. The results show that the sample population’s attitude with regard to the appropriate legal response in such cases is relatively nonpunitive. They also reveal distortions in the sample population’s view of the incidence and seriousness of these behaviours: in contrast to the findings of stalking victimization studies, the respondents considered cases of stalking by strangers to be more serious.
Characterization of the Xiamenmycin Biosynthesis Gene Cluster in Streptomyces xiamenensis 318

Xiamenmycin (1) is a prenylated benzopyran derivative with anti-fibrotic activity. To investigate the genetic basis of xiamenmycin biosynthesis, we performed genome mining in the xiamenmycin-producing Streptomyces xiamenensis wild-type strain 318 to identify a candidate gene cluster. The complete gene cluster, consisting of five genes, was confirmed by a series of gene inactivations and heterologous expression. Based on bioinformatics analyses of each gene and feeding experiments, we found that the structure of an intermediate xiamenmycin B (3) accumulated in a ximA inactivation mutant, allowing us to propose a biosynthetic pathway. All five of the genes in the pathway were genetically and biochemically characterized. XimA was biochemically characterized as an ATP-dependent amide synthetase, catalyzing an amide bond formation in the presence of ATP as the final step in Xiamenmycin biosynthesis. The K m value of XimA was determined to be 474.38 µM for the substrate xiamenmycin B. These studies provide opportunities to use genetic and chemo-enzymatic methods to create new benzopyran derivatives as potential therapeutic agents.
High frequency isolated three-phase rectifier for electric vehicles fast charging

This paper presents the development of a three-phase system for fast charging electric vehicle batteries, with high input power factor, high frequency isolated and reduced current efforts. The fast charging system is essential because of widespread growth in the use of this type of vehicle. The proposed system is based on a single-stage structure by integrating the three-phase rectifier stage with a DC-DC high frequency isolated converter. It was carried out a project and results will be presented and discussed.
On the angular resolution of planar graphs

A famous theorem of I. Fa`ry states that any planar graph can be drawn in the plane so that all edges are straight-line segments and no two edges cross. The <italic>angular resolution</italic> of such a drawing is the minimum angle subtended by any pair of incident edges. The <italic>angular resolution</italic> of a planar graph is the maximum angular resolution over all such planar straight-line drawings of the graph. In a recent paper by Formann et al., <italic>Drawing graphs in the plane with high resolution</italic>, Symp. on Found. of Comp. Sci. (1990), the following question is posed: does there exist a constant <italic>r(d)</italic> > 0 such that every planar graph of maximum degree <italic>d</italic> has angular resolution ≥ <italic>r(d)</italic>? We answer this question in the affirmative by showing that any planar graph of maximum degree <italic>d</italic> has angular resolution at least α<supscrpt><italic>d</italic></supscrpt> radians where 0 < α < 1 is a constant. In an effort to assess whether or not this lower bound is existentially tight (up to constant α), we analyze a very natural linear program that bounds the angular resolution of any fixed planar graph <italic>G</italic> from &OHgr;(1/<italic>d</italic>), although currently, we are unable to settle this issue for general planar graphs. For the class of outerplanar graphs with triangulated interior and maximum degree <italic>d</italic>, although currently, we are unable to settle this issue for general planar graphs. For the class of outerplanar graphs with triangulated interior and maximum degree <italic>d</italic>, we show not only that &OHgr;(1/<italic>d</italic>) is lower bound on angular resolution, but in fact, this angular resolution can be achieved in a planar straight-line drawing where all interior faces are <italic>similar</italic> isosceles triangles. Additional results are contained in the full paper.
Sim-spm: A SimpleScalar-Based Simulator for Multi-level SPM Memory Hierarchy Architecture

As a fast on-chip SRAM managed by software (the application and/or compiler), Scratchpad Memory (SPM) is widely used in many fields. This paper presents a Simple Scalar-based multi-level SPM memory hierarchy architecture simulator Sim-spm. We simulate the hardware of the multi-level SPM memory hierarchy successfully by extending Sim-outorder, which is an out-of-order simulator from Simple Scalar. Through the simulating memory method, the simulation framework of the multi-level SPM memory hierarchy has been built under the existing ISA (Instruction Set Architecture), which largely reduces the requirement to modify the existing compiler. The experimental results show that Sim-spm can accurately simulate the running state of the processor with a multi-level SPM memory hierarchy architecture, and it has a good prospect for the research of multi-level SPM memory hierarchy architecture.
High Tech and High Touch: Headhunting, Technology, and Economic Transformation

I n 2002, Coverdill and Finlay published a book about contingent headhunters, the labor market intermediaries who earn their living as matchmakers between workers and jobs. The following year, LinkedIn was launched. A casual observer of the labor market might expect that all the new online tools and sites enabling workers and employers to gather information about and connect with one another would threaten the livelihoods of these recruiters. However, as is documented in High Tech and High Touch, although the internet has changed many things about how headhunters do their jobs, it has not fundamentally changed what they do, nor why firms pay them. This book, drawing on interviews with headhunters across several firms and articles from an industry newsletter, describes the impact of two key 21st Century developments that shook the world of contingency headhunting: the internet as a locus for job searching and hiring, and the Great Recession. The ways that these changes have affected contingent headhunters, as well as the adaptations they have made, provides useful insights into the labor market in general as well as providing a fascinating portrait of a profession few have studied. The most common way contingency headhunters earn their pay is to receive a fee for successfully filling an open position with a candidate. According to industry estimates, headhunters account for about 7–10 percent of external hires, often recruiting in highly skilled occupations. The authors draw on concepts from transaction cost economics to explain why this profession exists, but also challenge them. Although headhunters’ livelihoods require firms to hire externally rather than promote from within, this “make or buy” decision itself is one that the headhunters themselves work to disrupt. They do not simply fill job orders given to them by firms who decide they need a worker, rather the headhunters actively use sales techniques to create and shape this labor demand. The first three chapters describe the key components of the headhunter’s job, the basic structure of which has remained unchanged by technology: they must find clients and jobs to fill, identify candidates to fill them, and perform the “double sale” on both sides. Headhunters accept jobs from firms, but also build
Brain Activity in Bimanual Object Manipulation

Several previous studies have dealt with bimanual coordination and more recent studies have addressed brain areas implicated in the control of bimanual movements. These previous studies have focused on the temporal coordination between the arms and hands in various gestures, such as finger tapping and bimanual drawing tasks. However, most natural bimanual tasks involve object manipulation where the hands collaborate towards a common goal. In such tasks the actions of the hands must be coordinated not only in the temporal but also in the spatial domain. Although, recent brain imaging studies have mapped the engagement of various human brain areas during object manipulation, little is known about bimanual object manipulations. The present account reviews literature concerning handedness, bimanual manipulation and its neural correlates with emphasis on results obtained in brain imaging studies. Based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) an experiment is proposed that analyzes fundamental aspects of intermanual coordination representative for bimanual object manipulation. This experiment is based on results from a behavioral study were subjects performed goal directed uniand bimanual object manipulation tasks.
Does other information improve the usefulness of management earnings forecasts

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether other information included with management earnings forecasts can help analysts to formulate better earnings predictions. Design/methodology/approach - This study uses ordinary least squares regression analysis of 373 management earnings forecasts and compares changes in analyst forecast characteristics surrounding the release of a management forecast of earnings from the same firms which sometimes include other information with their forecasts and sometimes do not. Findings - Analysts make larger forecast revisions when other information is included with a surprising management earnings forecast, especially if the forecast contains good news. This information reduces subsequent analyst forecast error for firms with negative earnings. Research limitations/implications - Results of this study may not extend to smaller firms or to firms that have disclosure policies of always including other information with their forecasts. Originality/value - Prior research has yielded mixed results on whether other information included with management forecasts of earnings is useful to the market directly by examining stock market reactions to forecast announcements. This study reveals that this information may be useful to the market through the filter of financial analysts since they are able to use the other information in management forecasts to improve their own predictions.
Constrained Viterbi decoding for embedded user-customised password speaker recognition

Embedded speaker recognition in mobile devices could involve several ergonomic constraints and a limited amount of computing resources. GMM/UBM systems have proved their efficiency in more classical contexts where good accuracy depends on a relatively large quantity of speech data. The proposed GMM/UBM extension addresses the situations with limited resources and takes advantage from the temporal structure of speech by using client-customised utterances harnessed by a Markov model. New temporal information is then used to enhance discrimination with Viterbi decoding increasing the gap between client and impostor scores. Experiments on the MyIdea database are performed when impostors know the client-utterance and also when they do not, highlighting the potential of this new approach. A relative gain up to 64% in terms of EER is achieved when impostors do not know the client utterances and performance is equivalent to the GMM/UBM baseline system in other configurations.
A case study on graph-based planning for emergency evacuation

We present a pilot study on the implementation of a software, based on declarative knowledge representation and logic-based automated planning, which assists the management of severe Chemical hazard events, e.g. fire or emissions that may require the evacuation of the area surrounding the affected Chemical plant. We model the geography, the road network and the population of the chemical plant and the surroundings by weighted, labeled graphs, which are updated as the hazardous situation develops. Intervening factors, e.g. the spread of toxic in the air, are represented in the graph in terms of their effects. Risk for the resident population and possible evacuation plans are evaluated and re-evaluated as the accident develops. Also evacuation plans are contingent and as conditions change may be re-evaluated from scratch; moreover, they may involve complex coordinated actions among the rescue units. Both the evaluation of the emergency scenario and the evacuation planning phases have been prototyped by means of an Answer Set Programming planner.
Appendix S1: Details on the Method S1. the Analog Method

The multi-proxy reconstruction of climate is a difficult problem as the proxy series have different lengths and some of them, especially the historical document-based series, have gaps. When the problem is limited to the heterogeneity in series length, one may use the nested regression, i.e. a regression is calibrated for each different subset of available predictors. This heavy procedure often leads to reconstructions with a variance decreasing with the number of really included predictors [1]. An alternative method, which is able to deal with missing data anywhere in the time-series, is the regularized expectation maximization (REGEM) algorithm [2]. It imputes missing values in a manner that makes optimal use of spatial and temporal information in the dataset. [3] have proposed another method, the modern analog method, which has proved his efficiency in other domains of paleoclimatology [4,5]. S1.1. Description of the method It consists in infilling the missing data in the proxy matrix on the basis of the similarity between the annual vectors (and not on the basis of the correlation between variables, as most of the methods do). We define a distance index between year i (for which we need an estimate) and year k (used to fill the gaps in year i). This distance measures how close these two vectors of data are: (1) where x ij represents the value of variable j in year i, x kj the value of variable j in year k, is the amplitude (difference between maximum M and minimum m, both being determined on the interannual variability of each proxy) of variable j calculated using all data available. is an index equal to 1 if a value is available for variable j in year i as well k, and 0 otherwise. The sum is computed for the m ik components of the m-vector where data are available for both years k and i, i.e. (2) Equation (1) has the squared m ik at the denominator to make all the distances comparable, i.e. independent of the number of proxies available. We use the best analog available for year i, i.e. the vector satisfying the conditions of having the smallest distance and data available for variable j. This is a difference with the method used by [3] who used a mean of all the analogs with a distance <0.5, with the risk to smooth the reconstructed variance. The choice of distance metric has an …
The Relationship between Narrative Proficiency and Syntactic Complexity of Story Retells Elicited from Children with ASD Spectrum Disorders (ASD)

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the syntactic complexity of story retells of 5 children ranging in age from 8-12 with ASD Spectrum Disorder before, during and after narrative intervention. Method: Children participated in narrative intervention for 45 minutes, twice weekly for a period of time ranging from 19 to 33 sessions. Results: Results indicated that during baseline when children were not receiving instruction, their story retells contained more simple sentences than complex sentences. The use of complex sentences was observed to increase as children became more proficient in their narrative production skills. Discussion: Students generally improved on narrative discourse skills as a result of participating in the narrative intervention. The implications for clinicians working with students with ASD are compelling and suggest that narrative intervention may be associated with the additional benefit of improved complex sentence use.
Robust spoken dialogue management for driver information systems

Considering the limitations of Speech Recognition for the development of user-system dialogues in real applications, robustness is a primary objective. In this paper, we describe the most essential characteristics of the Dialogue Manager of a driver information system that is controlled by voice, mainly showing how its design has been driven by the characteristics of voice in such a dialogue. We present the main methods used by the Dialogue Manager to come to an effective balance between robustness and efficiency. We illustrate them with examples from the first implementation of the system.
Disclosing Toxic PIPEs: Why the SEC Can and Should Expand the Reporting Requirements Surrounding Private Investments in Public Equities

In 1995, Stanley Keller wrote, "[p]rivate placements, particularly in connection with public offerings, can be dangerous to your health. "1 Keller's statement was the introductory sentence of his outline intended to educate practitioners about the regulatory requirements of private placements connected with public offerings and to give caution to the pitfalls the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules impose on the capital formation process.2 Seven years later, Keller's warning is particularly appropriate specifically with regard to Private Investment in Public Equity (PIPE) transactions. This time, however, the warning is not only to the lawyers working on the transactions, but also to the private issuers of these types of securities, as well as to the existing investors in the company The current health risk of PIPEs can bankrupt a company, leaving its original shareholders with nothing while quite possibly enriching the short-term PIPE investors. A PIPE is an investment method where investors guarantee their ability to resell their restricted securities in the public markets.3 Specifically, a PIPE transaction
Community College Presidency: What Are the Challenges To Be Encountered and Traits To Be Successful?.

This study highlights many of the unique challenges the 21st century will pose for those who aspire to be community college presidents. Specifically, the author summarizes Sullivan's (2001) list of 21st century challenges (e.g., a continuing scarcity of resources, changing student and staff demographics, and competition from private-sector providers of highquality training) and discusses the relevance of these issues for the next generation of community college leaders. The author asserts that knowing and understanding these emerging challenges will aid the community college president in goal accomplishment within his or her institution. The leadership skills and traits needed by the 21st century community college president are also reviewed. The author summarizes previous research on essential community college leadership traits and behavior patterns and gives special attention to the leadership traits of African-American and female leaders. The author concludes with the assertion that the community college president must have the skills necessary to ensure success during his or her presidency. Leadership skills and traits will need to be developed as the future community college president transitions from faculty, department chair, dean, vice president, and provost into the presidency. (Contains 16 references.) (RC) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document
Rhetoric, repetition, reporting and the “dot.com” era: words, pictures, intangibles

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to add to theoretical and empirical work on the rhetoric of narratives and pictures in annual reporting by using the lens of repetition to examine the Design/methodology/approach - The study constructs a conceptual framework of repetition in signifiants (from rhetoric) and signifies (from philosophy, notably Barthes, Deleuze, Eliade and Jankelevitch). Signifiants are established by reference to rhetorical figures based in repetition: anadiplosis, anaphora, alliteration/rhyme and lists. Signifies are indicated as conscious rhetorical emphasis, and unconscious reflections of sameness and difference; networks and links; and, of particular interest during the “dot.com” years, exuberance and compulsion; differentiation, ritual and reassurance. The framework is used to analyse BT plc's Findings - The application of the framework is enlightening: repetition is shown to be prevalent in BT plc's Research limitations/implications - The paper provides a model which may be applied to the wealth of discretionary narratives and pictures in contemporary annual reporting. It would also benefit from the assessment of readership impact. Practical implications - The analysis is of interest to accounting researchers, practitioners, trainees, auditors and any user of accounting and accountability statements. It illuminates the way in which discretionary words and pictures highlight and supplement accounting information. Originality/value - The paper augments theoretical and empirical work on the significance of narratives and pictures in accounting.
Nevsehir University, Department of Economics, Nevsehir, Turkey

This paper assesses the relationship among oil prices, real output growth and employment in Turkey over the period 2000:1-2012:4 by using vector error correction methodology. Empirical findings indicate a long-run relationship among the variables. Besides, short-run causality results based on vector error correction model provide an evidence of bi-directional causality linkage between oil prices and output, where uni-directional causality from oil prices and output to employment is established. The long-run causality analysis on the other hand shows that (i) the oil prices and real output do not cause employment, (ii) employment and real output do not cause oil prices, and however (iii) the oil price and employment cause output.
Experience-dependent neural representation of dynamic pitch in the brainstem

Brainstem frequency-following responses were recorded from Chinese and English participants in response to an iterated rippled noise homologue of Mandarin Tone 2 (T2) and linear and inverted curvilinear variants. Pitch-tracking accuracy and pitch strength analyses showed advantages for the Chinese group over the English in response to T2 only. Pitch strength was larger for the Chinese group in rapidly changing sections of T2 compared with corresponding sections of a linear ramp. We conclude that experience-dependent neural plasticity at subcortical levels of representation is highly sensitive to specific features of pitch patterns in one's native language. Such experience-dependent effects suggest that subcortical sensory encoding interacts with cognitive processing in the cerebral cortex to shape the perceptual system's response to pitch patterns.