Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ethical consumers and ethical trade: a review of currentliterature (NRI Policy Series 12)

This publication reviews the large number of consumer surveys of ethical consumerism, and describes the different types of ethical consumer, their motivation and concerns, their willingness to pay an ethical premium, and the ways they learn about ethical products. It shows how different survey methodologies affect what we know and do not know about ethical consumerism, and highlights how methodological shortcomings are starting to be addressed.The publication reveals that ethical consumerism is a complex phenomenon, something that those calling for greater consumer awareness of ethical issues need to understand when promoting different forms of ethical trade. The fair-trade and organic movements have been at the forefront of understanding this phenomenon, and their experiences offer lessons for the commercial mainstream, particularly the importance of information and awareness as a prerequisite for action. These lessons are also crucial for international development agencies that need to understand the operation of Northern markets if their investment in ethical approaches to trade in developing countries is to pay dividends.
Tunable magnetism on the lateral mesoscale by post-processing of Co/Pt heterostructures

Controlling magnetic properties on the nanometer-scale is essential for basic research in micro-magnetism and spin-dependent transport, as well as for various applications such as magnetic recording, imaging and sensing. This has been accomplished to a very high degree by means of layered heterostructures in the vertical dimension. Here we present a complementary approach that allows for a controlled tuning of the magnetic properties of Co/Pt heterostructures on the lateral mesoscale. By means of in situ post-processing of Pt- and Co-based nano-stripes prepared by focused electron beam induced deposition (FEBID) we are able to locally tune their coercive field and remanent magnetization. Whereas single Co-FEBID nano-stripes show no hysteresis, we find hard-magnetic behavior for post-processed Co/Pt nano-stripes with coercive fields up to 850 Oe. We attribute the observed effects to the locally controlled formation of the CoPt L10 phase, whose presence has been revealed by transmission electron microscopy.
Dynamical friction in interacting relativistic systems

We study dynamical friction in interacting relativistic systems with arbitrary mean free paths and medium constituent masses. Our novel framework recovers the known limits of ideal gas and ideal fluid when the mean free path goes to infinity or zero, respectively, and allows for a smooth interpolation between these limits. We find that in an infinite system the drag force can be expressed as a sum of ideal-gas-like and ideal-fluid-like contributions leading to a finite friction even at subsonic velocities. This simple picture receives corrections in any finite system and the corrections become especially significant for a projectile moving at a velocity v close to the speed of sound v≈ cs. These corrections smoothen the ideal fluid discontinuity around the speed of sound and render the drag force a continuous function of velocity. We show that these corrections can be computed to a good approximation within effective theory of viscous fluid dynamics.
Collusion-resistant privacy-preserving data mining

Recent research in privacy-preserving data mining (PPDM) has become increasingly popular due to the wide application of data mining and the increased concern regarding the protection of private and personal information. Lately, numerous methods of privacy-preserving data mining have been proposed. Most of these methods are based on an assumption that semi-honest is and collusion is not present. In other words, every party follows such protocol properly with the exception that it keeps a record of all its intermediate computations without sharing the record with others. In this paper, we focus our attention on the problem of collusions, in which some parties may collude and share their record to deduce the private information of other parties. In particular, we consider a general problem in PPDM - multiparty secure computation of some functions of secure summations of data spreading around multiple parties. To solve such a problem, we propose a new method that entails a high level of security - full-privacy. With this method, no sensitive information of a party will be revealed even when all other parties collude. In addition, this method is efficient with a running time of O(m). We will also show that by applying this general method, a large number of problems in PPDM can be solved with enhanced security.
The impact of voluntary disclosure on cost of equity capital estimates in a temporal setting

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the association between the level of voluntary disclosure and cost of equity capital (COEC). Design/methodology/approach – Two disclosure indices following Botosan and Hail are developed and applied in an OLS regression on 95 listed companies from Austria, Germany, Sweden, and Denmark; the indices are defined according to the temporal context (historical, forward‐oriented) of information provided in annual reports.Findings – An expected negative relationship is found between the level of forward‐oriented information and COEC, and an unexpected positive relationship is found between the level of historical information and COEC.Research limitations/implications – The sample is restricted to 95 listed companies in 2005. The disclosure index and COEC are not directly observable, and thus rely on constructs. Methodological drawbacks might include an endogeneity bias as well as investors not having homogeneous expectations and knowledge about capital markets.Practical imp.
Dynamic Indoor Localization Based on Active RFID for Healthcare Applications: A Shape Constraint Approach

RFID-based localization has received considerable attention within the healthcare industry and has made a major impact on the healthcare system in hospitals. In this paper, we propose a new location tracking algorithm that aims to improve the accuracy of indoor localization for healthcare applications. In our approach, a cost function associated with a shape constraint factor is used to find the optimal reference tag positions that enclose the tracking tag. The cost function consists of the similarity and disparity of signal strength between the tracking and reference tags, as well as geometrical correlation properties. The experimental results indicate that the proposed shape constraint algorithm provides considerable improvement in average estimation error as compared with existing methods. We believe that this new algorithm is of potential value in dynamic location tracking of objects for healthcare applications.
A modified two-scale fractal sea model of the non-fully developed full-range sea spectrum

The determination of backscattering coefficients is important to analyze echoes objective signals. To describe a rough sea surface naturally, a non-fully developed full-range sea spectrum (NDFSS) is reconstructed, and a fractal sea model based on NDFSS is presented. Based on the conventional two-scale model for backscattering coefficients, a complementary term is added for considering the skewness of sea waves. The additional part is proportional to the surface bispecctrum and it is a critical part in explaining the scattering difference between upwind and downwind observations. The numerical results show this modified model is consistent with the real radar data.
Marginalised youth, violence and policing: a qualitative study in Recife, Brazil

ABSTRACT Few studies have examined the relations between urban marginalised youth and the public security system in the northeast of Brazil. This article addresses this gap in the literature through an examination of youth perceptions of a security programme aimed at reducing violence. It also analyses the effects of this security programme by interrogating the hegemonic discourses of state-actors in the region, namely, agents of the criminal justice system. The analysis draws on ethnographic data collected between 2012 and 2016 in Recife, the capital city of the state of Pernambuco in the northeast of Brazil. This approach permits an examination of the nature of new security interventions, and a comparison between two distinct narratives about this new securitisation agenda. One overarching narrative focuses on young people’s vulnerabilities, the other on claims of successful securitisation. An analysis of these narratives widens understandings of the effects and risks of security interventions, contributing to a debate about their impact on young people’s lives and society at large.
Cost-Effectiveness of Vaccinating Immunocompetent ≥65 Year Olds with the 13-Valent Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine in England

Background Recently a large clinical trial showed that the use of 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV13) among immunocompetent individuals aged 65 years and over was safe and efficacious. The aim of this study was to assess the cost-effectiveness of vaccinating immunocompetent 65 year olds with PCV13 vaccine in England. England is a country with universal childhood pneumococcal conjugate vaccination programme in place (7-valent (PCV7) since 2006 and PCV13 since 2010), as well as a 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide (PPV23) vaccination programme targeting clinical risk-groups and those ≥65 years. Method A static cohort cost-effectiveness model was developed to follow a cohort of 65 year olds until death, which will be vaccinated in the autumn of 2016 with PCV13. Sensitivity analysis was performed to test the robustness of the results. Results The childhood vaccination programme with PCV7 has induced herd protection among older unvaccinated age groups, with a resultant low residual disease burden caused by PCV7 vaccine types. We show similar herd protection effects for the 6 additional serotypes included in PCV13, and project a new low post-introduction equilibrium of vaccine-type disease in 2018/19. Applying these incidence projections for both invasive disease and community-acquired pneumonia (CAP), and using recent measures of vaccine efficacy against these endpoints for ≥65 year olds, we estimate that vaccination of a cohort of immunocompetent 65 year olds with PCV13 would directly prevent 26 cases of IPD, 69 cases of CAP and 15 deaths. The associated cost-effectiveness ratio is £257,771 per QALY gained (using list price of £49.10 per dose and £7.51 administration costs) and is therefore considered not cost-effective. To obtain a cost-effective programme the price per dose would need to be negative. The results were sensitive to disease incidence, waning vaccine protection and case fatality rate; despite this, the overall conclusion was robust. Conclusions Vaccinating immunocompetent individuals aged ≥65 years with PCV13 is efficacious. However the absolute incidence of vaccine-type disease will likely become very low due to wider benefits of the childhood PCV13 vaccination programme, such that a specific PCV13 vaccination programme targeting the immunocompetent elderly would not be cost-effective.
Supporting collaborative writing of hyperdocuments in SEPIA

Today, most cooperative systems support primarily either asynchronous or synchronous (real time) cooperative work. We feel that both synchronous and asynchronous cooperation are extremely important aspects of working in groups, and to ignore one or the other is to supply only half a solution to users. In this paper, we describe the extension of the hypertext authoring system SEPIA developed at GMD-IPSI to support cooperative work among hypertext authors. Cooperative SEPIA is unique not only in its ability to support cooperative work in both of these categories, but also in how smoothly and naturally it supports the transition between these two categories.
The Impact of Customization and Pricing on Surpluses in a Digital Economy with Digital Goods

Many researchers show that “market institutions” are an ideal means to exchange and allocate resources under the assumptions of perfect and symmetric information and perfect competition. However, in the real world, we observe many instances in which these assumptions are not satisfied due to imperfect competition, incomplete information, transaction costs, and externalities. In this study we found that a posted-price market for digital goods with dynamic-price-update in a digital economy is efficient and the resulting market statistics are close to the competitive market equilibrium under a competitive environment. Another interesting finding from this research is that sellers with customization failed to capture all the consumers’ surplus, defying the prevalent myth that sellers may extract the entire surplus from the market by using customization on the Internet and by using information technology tools to identify individual customers. One major explanation for this result is that competition among sellers prohibits them from charging prices according to customers’ demand for each product, in cases where switching from one seller to another is not so difficult for the customers.
Complex networks measures for differentiation between normal and shuffled Croatian texts

This paper studies the properties of the Croatian texts via complex networks. We present network properties of normal and shuffled Croatian texts for different shuffling principles: on the sentence level and on the text level. In both experiments we preserved the vocabulary size, word and sentence frequency distributions. Additionally, in the first shuffling approach we preserved the sentence structure of the text and the number of words per sentence. Obtained results showed that degree rank distributions exhibit no substantial deviation in shuffled networks, and strength rank distributions are preserved due to the same word frequencies. Therefore, standard approach to study the structure of linguistic co-occurrence networks showed no clear difference among the topologies of normal and shuffled texts. Finally, we showed that the in- and out- selectivity values from shuffled texts are constantly below selectivity values calculated from normal texts. Our results corroborate that the node selectivity measure can capture structural differences between original and shuffled Croatian texts.
Analog Network Coding Without Restrictions on Superimposed Frames

The applicability of analog network coding (ANC) to a wireless network is constrained by several limitations: 1) some ANC schemes demand fine-grained frame-level synchronization, which cannot be practically achieved in a wireless network; 2) others support only a specific type of modulation or require equal frame size in concurrent transmissions. In this paper, a new ANC scheme, called restriction-free analog network coding (RANC), is developed to eliminate the above limitations. It incorporates several function blocks, including frame boundary detection, joint channel estimation, waveform recovery, circular channel estimation, and frequency offset estimation, to support random concurrent transmissions with arbitrary frame sizes in a wireless network with various linear modulation schemes. To demonstrate the distinguished features of RANC, two network applications are studied. In the first application, RANC is applied to support a new relaying scheme called multi-way relaying, which significantly improves the spectrum efficiency as compared to two-way relaying. In the second application, RANC enables random-access-based ANC in an ad hoc network where flow compensation can be gracefully exploited to further improve the throughput performance. RANC and its network applications are implemented and evaluated on universal software radio peripheral (USRP) software radio platforms. Extensive experiments confirm that all function blocks of RANC work effectively without being constrained by the above limitations. The overall performance of RANC is shown to approach the ideal case of interference-free communications. The results of experiments in a real network setup demonstrate that RANC significantly outperforms existing ANC schemes and achieves constraint-free ANC in wireless networks.
Field Theory on Noncommutative Space-Time and the Deformed Virasoro Algebra

We consider a field theoretical model on the noncommutative cylinder which leads to a discrete-time evolution. Its Euclidean version is shown to be equivalent to a model on the complex $q$-plane. We reveal a direct link between the model on a noncommutative cylinder and the deformed Virasoro algebra constructed earlier on an abstract mathematical background. As it was shown, the deformed Virasoro generators necessarily carry a second index (in addition to the usual one), whose meaning, however, remained unknown. The present field theoretical approach allows one to ascribe a clear meaning to this second index: its origin is related to the noncommutativity of the underlying space-time. The problems with the supersymmetric extension of the model on a noncommutative super-space are briefly discussed.
Inhibition and Structure of Toxoplasma gondii Purine Nucleoside Phosphorylase

ABSTRACT The intracellular pathogen Toxoplasma gondii is a purine auxotroph that relies on purine salvage for proliferation. We have optimized T. gondii purine nucleoside phosphorylase (TgPNP) stability and crystallized TgPNP with phosphate and immucillin-H, a transition-state analogue that has high affinity for the enzyme. Immucillin-H bound to TgPNP with a dissociation constant of 370 pM, the highest affinity of 11 immucillins selected to probe the catalytic site. The specificity for transition-state analogues indicated an early dissociative transition state for TgPNP. Compared to Plasmodium falciparum PNP, large substituents surrounding the 5′-hydroxyl group of inhibitors demonstrate reduced capacity for TgPNP inhibition. Catalytic discrimination against large 5′ groups is consistent with the inability of TgPNP to catalyze the phosphorolysis of 5′-methylthioinosine to hypoxanthine. In contrast to mammalian PNP, the 2′-hydroxyl group is crucial for inhibitor binding in the catalytic site of TgPNP. This first crystal structure of TgPNP describes the basis for discrimination against 5′-methylthioinosine and similarly 5′-hydroxy-substituted immucillins; structural differences reflect the unique adaptations of purine salvage pathways of Apicomplexa.
Best Possible Approximation Algorithms for Single Machine Scheduling with Increasing Linear Maintenance Durations

We consider a single machine scheduling problem with multiple maintenance activities, where the maintenance duration function is of the linear form f(t) = a+bt with a ≥ 0 and b > 1. We propose an approximation algorithm named FFD-LS2I with a worst-case bound of 2 for problem. We also show that there is no polynomial time approximation algorithm with a worst-case bound less than 2 for the problem with b ≥ 0 unless P = NP, which implies that the FFD-LS2I algorithm is the best possible algorithm for the case b > 1 and that the FFD-LS algorithm, which is proposed in the literature, is the best possible algorithm for the case b ≤ 1 both from the worst-case bound point of view.
Peculiar velocities and the mean density parameter

ABSTRA C T We study the peculiar velocity field inferred from the Mark III spirals using a new method of analysis. We estimate optimal values of Tully‐Fisher scatter and zero-point offset, and we derive the three-dimensional rms peculiar velocity (s v) of the galaxies in the samples analysed. We check our statistical analysis using mock catalogues derived from numerical simulations of cold dark matter (CDM) models considering measurement uncertainties and sampling variations. Our best determination for the observations is svaO660 ^ 50U km s 21 . We use the linear theory relation between s v, the density parameter V, and the galaxy correlation function j(r) to infer the quantity ba V 0:6 =ba 0:60 a0:13 20:11 , where b is the linear bias parameter of optical galaxies and the uncertainties correspond to bootstrap resampling and an estimated cosmic variance added in quadrature. Our findings are consistent with the results of cluster abundances and redshift-space distortion of the two-point correlation function. These statistical measurements suggest a low value of the density parameter V , 0:4 if optical galaxies are not strongly biased tracers of mass.
The influence of seasonal climate variability on mortality in pre-industrial Sweden

Background Recent studies have shown an association between weather and climatic factors with mortality, cardiovascular and infectious diseases. We used historical data to investigate the impact of seasonal temperature and precipitation on total mortality in Uppsala, Sweden, during the first two stages of the demographic transition, 1749–1859. Design We retrieved mortality and population numbers of the Uppsala Domkyrka parish from digitised parish records and obtained monthly temperature and precipitation measures recorded in Uppsala during that time. Statistical models were established for year-to-year variability in deaths by annual and seasonal temperature and precipitation, adjusting for longer time trends. In a second step, a model was established for three different periods to study changes in the association of climate variability and mortality over time. Relative risks (RR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated. Results Precipitation during spring and autumn was significantly associated with annual mortality (spring RR 0.982, CI 0.965–1.000; autumn RR 1.018, CI 1.004–1.032, respectively, per centimetre increase of precipitation). Higher springtime temperature decreased annual mortality, while higher summer temperature increased the death toll; however, both were only borderline significant (p=0.07). The significant effect of springtime precipitation for mortality was present only in the first two periods (1749–1785 and 1786–1824). On the contrary, the overall effect of autumn precipitation was mainly due to its relevance during the last period, 1825–1859 (RR 1.024, CI 0.997–1.052). At that time, higher winter precipitation was found to decrease mortality. Conclusions In urban Uppsala, during the 18th and 19th century, precipitation appeared to be a stronger predictor for mortality than temperature. Higher spring precipitation decreased and higher autumn precipitation increased the number of deaths. However, this association differed before and during the early stages of industrialisation. Further research shall take age-specific differences into account, as well as changes in socio-economic conditions during that time. This paper is part of the thematic cluster Global Health Beyond 2015 - more papers from this cluster can be found at http://www.globalhealthaction. net