Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Regulation and Foreign Direct Investment in Infrastructure in Developing Countries: Does Regulation Make a Difference?

Since the mid-1980s, governments around the world have pursued policies to encourage private sector participation in the financing and delivery of infrastructure services. The natural monopoly characteristics of infrastructure utilities mean, however, that the privatization of these industries risks the creation of private-sector monopolies. Therefore, governments need to develop strong regulatory capabilities to police the revenues and costs of the privatized utility firms, while, at the same time, establishing regulatory credibility among investors. This article provides an empirical examination of the relationship between the quality of the regulatory framework and foreign direct investment (FDI) in infrastructure in middle and lower income developing countries during the period 1990 to 2002. The results confirm that FDI in infrastructure responded positively to an effective domestic regulatory framework. By implication, where regulatory institutions are weak and vulnerable to “capture” by the government (or the private sector), foreign investors may be more reluctant to make a major commitment to large scale infrastructure projects in developing countries.
Concurrency and discrete event control

Much of discrete event control theory has been developed within the framework of automata and formal languages. An alternative approach inspired by the theories of process-algebra as developed in the computer science literature is presented. The framework, which rests on a new formalism of concurrency, can adequately handle nondeterminism and can be used for analysis of a wide range of discrete event phenomena. <<ETX>>
Normalized Polarization Ratios for the Analysis of Cell Polarity

The quantification and analysis of molecular localization in living cells is increasingly important for elucidating biological pathways, and new methods are rapidly emerging. The quantification of cell polarity has generated much interest recently, and ratiometric analysis of fluorescence microscopy images provides one means to quantify cell polarity. However, detection of fluorescence, and the ratiometric measurement, is likely to be sensitive to acquisition settings and image processing parameters. Using imaging of EGFP-expressing cells and computer simulations of variations in fluorescence ratios, we characterized the dependence of ratiometric measurements on processing parameters. This analysis showed that image settings alter polarization measurements; and that clustered localization is more susceptible to artifacts than homogeneous localization. To correct for such inconsistencies, we developed and validated a method for choosing the most appropriate analysis settings, and for incorporating internal controls to ensure fidelity of polarity measurements. This approach is applicable to testing polarity in all cells where the axis of polarity is known.
SIG: end-user programming

As users continue to grow in number and diversity, end-user programming is playing an increasingly central role in shaping software to meet the broad, varied, rapidly changing needs of the world. Numerous companies have therefore begun to sell tools enabling end users to create programs. In parallel, ongoing academic research is aimed at helping end-user programmers create and adapt new kinds of programs in new ways. This special interest group meeting will bring together the community of researchers and companies focused on creating end-user programming tools, thereby facilitating technology transfer and future collaboration.
Robust visual analysis for planogram compliance problem

This paper presents a novel visual analysis based framework for automated planogram compliance check in retail stores. Our framework provides an efficient and convenient solution for ensuring planogram compliance by real-time analysis of the shelf image acquired in freehand manner. We present a novel application of Hausdorff metric for occupancy computation in product shelf images. Subsequently, we present a robust solution for product counting which applies robust row detection algorithm, and exploits texture and color feature for accurate counting. In this context, our system addresses the most general scenario of multiple varieties in single product type. The empirical validation of our framework is demonstrated on range of real-life images from stores located across different geographies, where it has achieved satisfactory and encouraging results.
Coronary Artery Disease Coronary Artery Superoxide Production and Nox Isoform Expression in Human

Tomasz J. Guzik, Jerzy Sadowski, Bartlomiej Guzik, Andrew Jopek, Boguslaw Kapelak, Piotr Coronary Artery Disease Coronary Artery Superoxide Production and Nox Isoform Expression in Human Print ISSN: 1079-5642. Online ISSN: 1524-4636 Copyright © 2005 American Heart Association, Inc. All rights reserved. Greenville Avenue, Dallas, TX 75231 is published by the American Heart Association, 7272 Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology doi: 10.1161/01.ATV. 0000196651.64776. 51 2005; 2006;26:333-339; originally published online November 17, Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol. http://atvb.ahajournals. org/content/26/2/333 World Wide Web at: The online version of this article, along with updated information and services, is located on the http://atvb.ahajournals. org/content/suppl/2005/11/17/01.ATV. 0000196651.64776. 51.DC1. html Data Supplement (unedited) at:
The Large Crater on Asteroid Steins: Is it Abnormally Large?

Introduction: The Rosetta mission to comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko is also scheduled to do two asteroid fly bys. The first of these was on Sept. 5 th , 2008, when the spacecraft flew within 800 km of asteroid 2867 Steins. The timing of the encounter meant that the surface of the asteroid (as seen from the spacecraft) was well illuminated, providing good imaging conditions. As well as providing an opportunity for checking out the instruments on the Rosetta spacecraft, the encounter also provided high quality data concerning this E type asteroid. Full publication of this data is eagerly awaited, but early reports noted a major crater like feature on the asteroid. Asteroid Steins is a small, irregularly shaped object. Before the encounter, its size had been estimated as typically 4.6 km based on its light curve and albedo [1-3]. Estimates of the albedo vary somewhat, an initial 0.45±0.10 was determined by polarimetry [1] but was later lowered to 0.34±0.06 based on modeling of the spectrum over the range 5 – 38 μm [3]. Features in its spectra suggest an enstatite like composition and an E[II] type asteroid classification [4-5]. The asteroid is located at 2.36 AU, i.e., well within the main belt, and rotates with a period initially estimated as 6.052±0.007 hrs [6], and later refined as 6.04681±0.00002 hrs [3]. Based on 26 visible light curves, obtained from ground telescopes and the Rosetta spacecraft itself, a shape model of the asteroid was made in [3] which gave the 3 axis dimensions as 5.73±0.52, 4.95±0.45, and 4.58±0.41 km, where the ratios of the main axes were given as a/b = 1.17 and a/c = 1.25 and total volume as 64.3 km 3 . One aspect taken from the shape model in [3] is shown in Fig. 1. Observations: Shortly after the encounter the Rosetta team publicly showed images taken of the asteroid during the flyby. A typical montage (source the ESA web site accessed Dec 2008: http://www.esa.int/esammg/mmg.pl? mission=Rosetta&type=I) is shown in Fig. 2. The agreement with the shape model developed preencounter is testament to the precision of that work. However, a major type of surface feature can now be observed which could not be previously modeled based on light curves, namely craters Craters: Three types of craters were noted on the surface of asteroid Steins by the Rosetta team in their initial press announcements; small craters randomly distributed across the surface, a chain of (small) craters Fig. 1 One view of the pre-encounter 3 dimensional shape model of asteroid Steins. Taken from Fig. 12 in [3].
Burden of influenza-associated deaths in the Americas, 2002–2008

Influenza disease is a vaccine‐preventable cause of morbidity and mortality. The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) region has invested in influenza vaccines, but few estimates of influenza burden exist to justify these investments. We estimated influenza‐associated deaths for 35 PAHO countries during 2002–2008.
Educational potentials of ePortfolio systems: Student evaluations of Mahara and Elgg

This paper provides an overview of some of the basic features of ePortfolio systems regarding their maturity level, purpose, typolology and potential for student reflection. It also presents the results of the evaluation of two ePortfolio systems based on a student survey. In order to choose the appropriate ePortfolio system to be implemented, two systems (Mahara and Elgg) were tested in a concrete setting of a hybrid university course. Both systems were positively evaluated but the Mahara system was better accepted in terms of most of the evaluated attributes.
Hierarchical Finite State Controllers for Generalized Planning

Finite State Controllers (FSCs) are an effective way to represent sequential plans compactly. By imposing appropriate conditions on transitions, FSCs can also represent generalized plans that solve a range of planning problems from a given domain. In this paper we introduce the concept of hierarchical FSCs for planning by allowing controllers to call other controllers. We show that hierarchical FSCs can represent generalized plans more compactly than individual FSCs. Moreover, our call mechanism makes it possible to generate hierarchical FSCs in a modular fashion, or even to apply recursion. We also introduce a compilation that enables a classical planner to generate hierarchical FSCs that solve challenging generalized planning problems. The compilation takes as input a set of planning problems from a given domain and outputs a single classical planning problem, whose solution corresponds to a hierarchical FSC.
Femtosecond electron diffraction: Direct probe of ultrafast structural dynamics in metal films

Femtosecond electron diffraction is a rapidly advancing technique that holds a great promise for studying ultrafast structural dynamics in phase transitions, chemical reactions, and function of biological molecules at the atomic time and length scales. In this paper, we summarize our development of a tabletop femtosecond electron diffractometer. Using a delicate instrument design and careful experimental configurations, we demonstrate the unprecedented capability of detecting submilli‐ångström lattice spacing change on a subpicosecond timescale with this new technique. We have conducted an in‐depth investigation of ultrafast coherent phonon dynamics induced by an impulsive optical excitation in thin‐film metals. By probing both coherent acoustic and random thermal lattice motions simultaneously in real time, we have provided the first and unambiguous experimental evidence that the pressure of hot electrons contributes significantly to the generation of coherent acoustic phonons under nonequilibrium conditions when electrons and phonons are not thermalized. Based on these observations, we also propose an innovative approach to measure the electronic Grüneisen parameter in magnetic materials at and above room temperature, which provides a way to gain new insights into electronic thermal expansion in ferromagnetic transition metals. Microsc. Res. Tech. 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
On the Complexity of the Shapley-Scarf Economy with Several Types of Goods

In the Shapley-Scarf economy each agent is endowed with one unit of an indivisible good (house) and wants to exchange it for another, possibly the most preferred one among the houses in the market. In this economy, core is always nonempty and a core allocation can be found by the famous Top Trading Cycles algorithm. Recently, a modification of this economy, containing Q ≥ 2 types of goods (say, houses and cars for Q = 2) has been introduced. We show that if the number of agents is 2, a complete description of the core can be found efficiently. However, when the number of agents is not restricted, the problem to decide the nonemptyness of the core becomes NP-hard already in the case of two types of goods. We also show that even the problem to decide whether an allocation exists in which each agent strictly improves compared to his endowment, is NP-complete.
"The Pain, the Pain": Modelling Music Information Behavior and the Songs We Hate

The paper presents a grounded theory analysis of 395 user responses to the survey question, “What is the worst song ever? ” Important factors uncovered include: lyric quality, the “earworm” effect, voice quality, the influence of associated music videos, over-exposure, perceptions of pretentiousness, and associations with unpleasant personal experiences.
Global life satisfaction in adolescence: The role of personality traits, self-esteem, and self-efficacy.

Abstract. Positive levels of global life satisfaction are associated with a broad range of positive personal, psychological, and social outcomes both in the present and future. However, for adolescents, little is known about the underlying personal characteristics that predict global life satisfaction. Thus, the aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between personality traits, self-esteem, self-efficacy, and global life satisfaction in a sample of 437 Swiss adolescents attending the second last year of compulsory school. Results have shown that conscientiousness, neuroticism, extraversion, self-esteem, and self-efficacy are significantly associated with global life satisfaction. Moreover, self-esteem seems to be a mediator of the relationship between personality traits and global life satisfaction, suggesting that it might be considered as a process variable regulating behaviors, feelings, and thoughts that are related to personality dimensions.
Place recognition based on Latent Dirichlet Allocation using Markov chain Monte Carlo method

Place or scene recognition is an important competence of mobile robots for operating in a real dynamic environment. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), a popular probabilistic model, can achieve outstanding performance in image recognition, and it has been attracted the attention of a large number of researchers. Parameter estimation is a key step for the learning procedure of LDA. In this paper, we propose a novel place recognition approach based on LDA using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) for approximate inference technique. Firstly, the training images of each category are represented as a set of different themes. And MCMC is employed to estimate parameters of LDA instead of variational inference. Then an unknown test image can be recognized according to its themes distribution. Experimental results show that our method can perform better than the variational inference algorithm over IDOL2 database and our own image set captured under different imaging conditions in our campus.
Efficient Large Scale Content Distribution

This paper considers the problem of supporting high-bandwidth, scalable application level multicast. It provides a formal treatment of the problem which takes into consideration network distances. It presents the Julia locality-aware content dissemination scheme, a highly efficient and fast method whose distribution is both time-aware and proximity-aware. A for mal comparison of Julia with several reference protocols is given. keywords: locality aware networks, large scale content distribution, high width data dissemination, application multicast.
Breeding places for ethnic entrepreneurs: a comparative marketing approach

This paper aims to examine the performance conditions of ethnic (migrant) entrepreneurs in a modern economy. After a broad overview of key issues, an analytical tool from marketing theory is proposed, based on the five Ps (Product, Price, Place, Personnel and Promotion). Next, an empirical application is presented, in which results from an in-depth interview study on Moroccan entrepreneurs in Amsterdam are discussed. Given the linguistic and qualitative information in our data base, two recently developed pattern recognition methods for categorized information, namely Apriori and rough set methods, are deployed in order to derive meaningful association and classification rules that are helpful to identify conditional success or performance rules.
Image-based illumination on the GPU

In many computer graphics applications it is desirable to augment virtual objects with high dynamic range images representing the real environment. In order to provide an illusion that virtual objects are part of the real scene, illumination of the environment should be taken into account when rendering them. Proper calculation of the illumination from an environment map may be extremely expensive if we wish to account for occlusion, self shadowing and specular materials. In this paper we present a method that performs all the calculations on a per-frame basis, and is already real-time on non-cutting-edge hardware.
Stochastic Rendezvous Analysis on Multi Server Markovian Queueing Network

in the area of web-applications such as electronic commerce, web service, search engines etc., Multi-tiered system architectures have a client tier to provide an interface to the end users, a business logic tier to synchronize information salvage and processing. One of the most important quality of service parameters for these applications is expected response time, which is the total time it takes a users request to be processed. In multi-programmed computer system, scheduling plays a key role to optimize the CPU utilization. Thus, CPU scheduling is vital for the operating-system design. CPU scheduling determines which process runs when there are multiple processes. CPU scheduling is important because it can have a big effect on resource utilization and the overall performance of the system. The Multi-Layer Feedback Queue (MLFQ) can be considered as the apt scheduling algorithm for multi queues with different quanta. In MLFQ the optimized number of the queues is not define, and quantum of each queue, which is the starvation of this algorithm. In distributed multi-server network in which the customer transitions have exemplified by more than one closed Markov chain. Generating function has implemented to derive closed form of solutions and product form solution with the parameters such as stability, normalizations constant and marginal distributions.
Cooperation and the evolution of symbolic communication

Humans are the only animals who can deliberately plan for future needs. Our ability to have a ”theory of mind” is also a factor that facilitates advanced forms of cooperation and communication. The main thesis of this article is that symbolic communication evolved in order to make cooperation about future goals possible. A consequence of this position is that the meanings of symbolic expressions emerge from the cooperation between individuals. I will discuss how constraints on semantic representations evolve through processes of cooperative sharing of knowledge and plans. As a paradigmatic case, I describe pragmatic settings of referential communication and provide a model of how the roles of names, nouns and adjectives can be explained by a process of abstraction that is based on principles of cognitive economy. 1. WHAT IS THE EVOLUTIONARY
Marital Power in Inter-Hukou Families in China: An Intersectionality Approach 1

China’s household registration system (hukou) that assigns citizens into “rural” or “urban” status is a stratifying tool that shapes people’s social rights based on parents’ place of origin. This ethnographic research on inter-hukou couples suggests that the interlinked institutions of state and patriarchy construct differentiated and uneven marital power dynamics whereby inequalities are reproduced and/or transformed through everyday interactions. Rural wives of urban men are socially stigmatized and are treated by their husbands’ families as “unpaid reproductive workers,” depriving them of full membership in the urban family and the urban society. To resist overlapping oppression, rural women mask themselves as appropriate wives and filial daughters-in-law, achieving “urbanness” at the frontstage. At the same time, they secretly make gender alliances in both virtual and real spaces and lobby for their urban husbands’ support at the backstage, slowly eroding the dual structure of gender and hukou through family dynamics.
Scalable Transaction Management for Partially Replicated Data in Cloud Computing Environments

We present here a scalable protocol for transaction management in key-value based multi-version data storage systems supporting partial replication of data in cloud and cluster computing environments. We consider here systems in which the database is sharded into partitions, a partition is replicated only at a subset of the nodes in the system, and no node contains all partitions. The protocol presented here is based on the Partitioned Causal Snapshot Isolation (PCSI) model and it enhances the scalability of that model. The PCSI protocol is scalable for update transactions which involve updating of only local partitions. However, it faces scalability limitations when transactions update non-local partitions. This limitation stems from the scheme used for obtaining update timestamps for remote partitions, causing vector clocks to grow with the system configuration size. We present here a new protocol based on the notion of sequence number escrow and address the underlying technical problems. Our experimental evaluations show that this protocol scales out almost linearly when workloads involve transactions with remote partition updates. We present here the performance of this protocol for three different workloads with varying mix of transaction characteristics.
Towards Automated 3D Reconstruction of Defective Cultural Heritage Objects

Due to recent improvements in 3D acquisition and shape processing technology, the digitization of Cultural Heritage (CH) artifacts is gaining increased application in context of archival and archaeological research. This increasing availability of acquisition technologies also implies a need for intelligent processing methods that can cope with imperfect object scans. Specifically for Cultural Heritage objects, besides imperfections given by the digitization process, also the original artifact objects may be imperfect due to deterioration or fragmentation processes. Currently, the reconstruction of previously digitized CH artifacts is mostly performed manually by expert users reassembling fragment parts and completing imperfect objects by modeling. However, more automatic methods for CH object repair and completion are needed to cope with increasingly large data becoming available. In this conceptual paper, we first provide a brief survey of typical imperfections in CH artifact scan data and in turn motivate the need for respective repair methods. We survey and classify a selection of existing reconstruction methods with respect to their applicability for CH objects, and then discuss how these approaches can be extended and combined to address various types of physical defects that are encountered in CH artifacts by proposing a flexible repair workflow for 3D digitizations of CH objects. The workflow accommodates an automatic reassembly step which can deal with fragmented input data. It also includes the similarity-based retrieval of appropriate complementary object data which is used to repair local and global object defects. Finally, we discuss options for evaluation of the effectiveness of such a CH repair workflow.