Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Search for R&D Spillovers

R&D spillovers are, potentially, a major source of endogenous growth in various recent "new growth theory" models. This paper reviews the basic model of R&D spillovers and then focuses on the empirical evidence for their existence and magnitude. It surveys the older empirical literature with special attention to the economic difficulties of actually coming up with convincing evidence on this topic. Taken individually, many of the studies are flawed and subject to a variety of reservations, but the overall impression remains that R&D spillovers are both prevalent and important. Copyright 1992 by The editors of the Scandinavian Journal of Economics.
Binary space partitions for line segments with a limited number of directions

This paper considers binary space partitions (BSP) for <i>n</i> disjoint line segments in the plane. It is known that there is a BSP of size at most <i>O</i>(<i>n</i> log <i>n</i>), in general, and the smallest BSP can be as big as Ω(<i>n</i> log <i>n</i>/log log <i>n</i>) in the worst case. It is shown that there exists a BSP of size <i>O</i>(<i>kn</i>) if the line segments have at most <i>k</i> different orientations. No linear upper bound was known, so far, for any fixed <i>k</i> > 2.
Demographic Differences in Cyclical Employment Variation

Demographic differences in patterns of employment variation over the business cycle are examined in this paper. Three primary conclusions emerge. First, both participation and unemployment must be considered in any analysis of cyclical changes in the labor market. Second, young people bear a disproportionate share of cyclical employment variation. Third, failure to consider participation has led to undue pessimism about the effect of aggregate demand policy on high unemployment groups. If participation did not surge, reduction in overall unemployment to its 1969 level would reduce the unemployment of almost all demographic groups to very low levels.
Software tampering detection in embedded systems - A systematic literature review

Embedded systems (ES) become available anywhere and anytime as an established part of our daily routines. Their usage in sense, store, process, and transfer our personal and private data, such as ATM card, modern cars system, mobile phones, and etc., become irreplaceable. Developers of these systems face significant challenges in code and information security. Whereas, software tampering is one of these challenges, code integrity detection is one of the main approaches used to defeat it. Checking code integrity achieves tamper proofing by method of identification of unauthorized alteration to recognize any tampered code is executed or tampered data are used. For the purpose of this paper, we perform a research methodology based on systematic literature reviews in-order to present different techniques/approaches of code integrity checking in embedded systems. We briefly survey a number of research studies (specifically between 2008 and 2014) related to this issue and present their proposed solutions. Obviously, there is no complete solution, and our aim by conducting this review is to contribute (even a modest effort) on fighting against software tampering.
Diabetic macular oedema: a comparison of vitreous fluorometry, angiography, and retinopathy

Aim: To evaluate the relation between the quantitative measurement of vitreous fluorescein with fluorescein angiography and retinopathy in diabetic patients with and without clinically significant macular oedema (CSMO). Methods: In a prospective cross sectional study, passive permeability and active, outward transport of fluorescein across the blood-retinal barrier were quantitated with vitreous fluorometry in 61 eyes from 48 patients with CSMO and 22 fellow eyes without CSMO, after exclusion of eyes with previous macular laser treatment and vitreous liquification. All patients were recruited from the university hospital's outpatient clinic. Retinopathy and fluorescein angiograms were evaluated on 60 degree photographs. Results: The passive permeability in CSMO was significantly correlated with the severity of leakage on fluorescein angiograms (r=0.73), the level of retinopathy (r=0.61), and visual acuity (r=0.45). Significant differences between eyes with CSMO and eyes without CSMO were found for passive permeability (p<0.001), fluorescein leakage (p<0.001), visual acuity (p=0.02), and retinopathy (p=0.002). Conclusion: Passive permeability of fluorescein quantitated with vitreous fluorometry was correlated both with semiquantitative fluorescein angiography and retinopathy, and a significant increase in passive permeability was found when comparing eyes with CSMO to eyes without CSMO. No such pattern was found for the active transport indicating that passive and not the outward, active transport is the factor of most importance in the development of CSMO.
Application of S-transform to driving fatigue in EEG analysis

Based on the fact that S-transform enjoys many obvious advantages in non-stationary signal processing, the application of S-transform was presented in EEG analysis to explore the characters of drivers' EEG signals in this paper. Firstly, the result of all drivers' scores from FS-14 was analyzed. Then the EEG was divided into four different driving states according to the above analysis result, which were processed by using S-transform. The study shows that the different states can be distinguished well by the time-frequency spectrums. Thus, S-transform is expected to become an effective way in detecting driving fatigue.
Modeling Di erential Nonresponse in Sample Surveys

The standard analysis of unit nonresponse in sample surveys is to assume missing at random| that is, that the probability a person responds is independent of their response to the question of interest, y, conditional on fully-observed covariates x or on sampling weights w. In this paper, we discuss weakening these assumptions without the use of additional covariates in the special case of a binary outcome variable, y = 0 or 1. We note frequentist conndence bounds that do not rely on strong assumptions about the response mechanism. From a Bayesian perspective, we discuss using prior distributions to average over uncertainty in the missing data mechanism. Surprisingly, a natural-looking \noninformative" prior distribution yields unappealing posterior inferences. We discuss methods of constructing informative prior distributions using hierarchical data structures. We also show how to incorporate unequal sampling weights into the model using design-based sampling theory. This is important so that the nonresponse modeling can be an improvement upon rather than merely a replacement for standard weighted analysis of sample surveys. We illustrate the hierarchical model by applying it to the state-level analysis of a series of national pre-election opinion polls. The use of a reasonable prior distribution for the relative response probabilities leads to substantial improvements in coverage of posterior intervals and prediction error of point estimates. We also consider the sensitivity to the prior distribution and the eeect of including sampling weights in the analysis.
Finite-SNR diversity-multiplexing trade-off of dual hop relay channels

We analyze the diversity-multiplexing trade-off (DMT) of fixed-gain amplify-and-forward (AF) protocols for the dual hop relay channel. Contrary to most prior work, we characterize the finite signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) DMT using a non-asymptotic framework. Our results are based on a new exact closed-form expression which we derive for the distribution of the received SNR, which takes into account the direct transmission link. We also extract the conventional asymptotic DMT as a special case of the finite-SNR result, and demonstrate that the asymptotic DMT can significantly overestimate the level of diversity that is achievable for practical error rates and SNRs. We also present the finite-SNR DMT for decode-and-forward (DF) relaying protocols, and show the interesting result that fixed-gain AF outperforms DF at low SNR.
Fourier domain representation of non-binary LDPC codes

In this paper we propose a binary representation of non-binary codes, which consists in a q-fold covering of the non-binary graph, where q is the size of the non-binary alphabet. It is shown that this covering graph is actually the underlying graph of the Fourier-domain Belief-Propagation decoding, meaning that the exchanged messages carry information about the bit-nodes of the covering graph. Finally, a new coding scheme is proposed, in which the bits transmitted over the channel correspond to a set of bit-nodes of the Fourier domain representation. The proposed coding scheme allows using the same decoder, regardless of how many and which of the Fourier-domain bit-nodes have been transmitted. This considerably increases the flexibility of the system, without increasing its complexity.
Eating symptomatology and general psychopathology in patients with anorexia nervosa from China, UK and Spain: A cross-cultural study examining the role of social attitudes

Cultural studies exploring differences in the manifestation of anorexia nervosa (AN) have primarily focus on Western and non-Western cultures. However, no study so far has considered the role that social attitudes (i.e. Collectivist vs. Individualist cultural values) have in the clinical manifestations of eating disorders, including AN patients. With this in mind, the aim of this study is to compare eating and general psychopathology in a large sample of individuals diagnosed with AN from China, Spain, and United Kingdom (UK), in order to study the differences according to belonging to Western or non-Western country, or the country's Individualist Index (IDV). The total sample comprised on 544 adults with a diagnosis of AN recruited from People´s Republic of China (n = 72), UK (n = 117), and Spain (n = 355). Assessment measures included the Eating Disorders Inventory and the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised. Our results show significant differences in most of the eating and psychopathological indices between the three countries. Patients from Western societies (Spain and UK) share more similarities regarding psychopathological expression of AN than the non-Western country (China). While Western countries show higher levels of body dissatisfaction, somatization and overall psychopathology, Chinese patients tend to deny or minimize depression, anxiety and other psychopathological symptoms. Besides, the IDV shows cultural differences in the interpersonal sensitivity scale, being AN patients from UK (the more individualistic society) who presented with higher levels of interpersonal sensitivity (i.e. discomfort during interpersonal interactions and more negative expectations concerning interpersonal behavior). In conclusion, our findings suggest that psychopathological expression of AN is better explained by Western/Eastern influence than by individualist/collectivist values. Although the diagnosis for the eating disorder may be the same, differences in the psychopathology comorbid to the eating disorders may suggest the need for treatments to be modified according to the culture.
Sphere constrained block DFE with per-survivor intra-block processing for CCK transmission over ISI channels

In the wireless local area network (WLAN) standard IEEE 802.11b, complementary code keying (CCK) modulation has been adopted for the high data rate transmission mode. In this paper, complexity reduction for block decision-feedback equalization (bDFE), tailored for CCK transmission over frequency-selective channels, is considered. Since the CCK signal may be viewed as a linear block code with respect to the chip phases of the codeword, a trellis diagram with a minimum number of states can be designed that represents the properties of the CCK code set. The Viterbi algorithm (VA) with per-survivor processing is applied to the CCK trellis for decoding and accounting for the inter-chip interference, while inter-codeword interference is canceled by decision feedback. The resulting scheme is denoted as bDFE-pS and has a significantly lower complexity than bDFE with brute-force search. By introducing a sphere constraint on the CCK trellis (SC-bDFE-pS), the complexity of bDFE-pS can be further reduced. Omitting trellis states that violate the sphere constraint, edges that emanate from such states can be pruned, and the average number of metric calculations per CCK trellis segment can be reduced. Simulation results show that the performance of bDFE-pS and SC-bDFE-pS, respectively, is essentially equivalent to that of bDFE with brute-force search.
Business Cycle Persistence in Developing Countries : Can a DSGE Model with Production Chains and Sticky Prices Reproduce the Stylised Facts ?

It is well documented that business cycles of developed countries are characterised by persistent output fluctuations, and this has been the subject of much theoretical interest. However, the case for developing countries has been somewhat neglected in the literature. This paper addresses this imbalance revealing that whilst both developed and developing countries exhibit persistent output fluctuation, there is a significant positive relationship between the magnitude of output persistence and the level of economic development, with more economically developed countries exhibiting higher output persistence than less developed countries. To further investigate this relationship, the vertical production chain model of Huang and Liu (2001) was implemented. This model lends itself to such an analysis, as by altering the number of production stages (N) it is possible to represent economies at different levels of development. The results support the key premise of Huang and Liu (2001), namely that there is a strong positive relationship between the number of production stages and the magnitude of output persistence. However, the effect of increasing the number of stages is severely limited by the share of the composite of stage n-1 goods in i’s production (γ). This was particularly poignant in the modelling of the US and UK; calibration gave low values of γ which effectively inhibited the model from generating anywhere near enough persistence to match the observed level. Nonetheless, after abstracting from the US and UK results, there was found to be a strong significant positive relationship between the magnitude of output persistence generated by the model and economic development. However, a very significant finding of this analysis is that the model overestimates output persistence in high inflation countries and underestimates output persistence in low inflation countries. This has important implications not only for this model, but also for any economist attempting to construct a business cycle model capable of replicating the observed patterns of output persistence. JEL Classification: E31, E32, E52
The 2nd International Conference on Intelligent Control and Information Processing Progresses of Color Image Watermark Methods

Due to the advent of network and computer technology, there has been an explosion in the use of digital media through electronic commerce and on-line services. The increasing importance of watermarking technologies is proved by the need of very efficient methods in data security including copyright protection, data integrity detection. Existing digital watermarking algorithms are mostly designed for gray images but many are not for color images. This paper presents some color image watermark methods proposed in recent years so as to give help for researchers to study deeply.
Marker-Free Phenotyping of Tumor Cells by Fractal Analysis of Reflection Interference Contrast Microscopy Images

Phenotyping of tumor cells by marker-free quantification is important for cancer diagnostics. For the first time, fractal analysis of reflection interference contrast microscopy images of single living cells was employed as a new method to distinguish between different nanoscopic membrane features of tumor cells. Since tumor progression correlates with a higher degree of chaos within the cell, it can be quantified mathematically by fractality. Our results show a high accuracy in identifying malignant cells with a failure chance of 3%, which is far better than today’s applied methods.
I-PEDIA: Mobile application for paddy disease identification using fuzzy entropy and probabilistic neural network

This research developed a mobile application for paddy plant disease identification system using fuzzy entropy and classifier probabilistic neural network (PNN) that runs on Android mobile's operating system. Paddy diseases are a major cause of yield loss and lower profit in rice production. Paddy diseases are extracted from digital paddy leaf images using fuzzy entropy and then the diseases are classified using PNN. Cross validation is used for assessing how the results of a statistical analysis will generallize to an independent data set. The experiment result shows that the accuracy of paddy diseases identification is 91.46%.
EU external governance : projecting EU rules beyond membership

1. EU Rules Beyond EU Borders: Theorizing External Governance in European Politics Sandra Lavenex 2. Modes of External Governance: A Cross-National and Cross-Sectoral Comparison Sandra Lavenex, Dirk Lehmkuhl and Nicole Wichmann 3. Which Rules Shape EU External Governance? Patterns of Rule Selection in Foreign and Security Policies Esther Barbe, Oriol Costa, Anna Herranz and Michal Natorski 4. Constraining External Governance: Interdependence with Russia and the CIS as Limits to EU's Rule Transfer in the Ukraine Antoaneta Dimitrova and Rilka Dragneva 5. Hierarchy, Networks, or Markets: How does the EU Shape Environmental Policy Adoptions within and Beyond its Borders? Christoph Knill and Jale Tosun 6. Democracy Promotion as External Governance Richard Youngs 7. EU Promotion of Democratic Governance in the Neighborhood Tina Freyburg, Sandra Lavenex, Frank Schimmelfennig, Tatiana Skripka and Anne Wetzel
Crucial Dimensions of Human Altruism. Affective vs. Conceptual Factors Leading to Helping or Reinforcing Others

The aim of this article is to identify factors leading to favorable attitudes toward other people from different social categories. The parts of article reflect diverse levels of altruism regulation from primary affective responses to the environment, through social norms, to abstract moral concepts related to good and evil. The latter allow understanding of the perspective of other people (including those belonging to out-groups), acceptance of their values and engagement not only in helping behavior but also in supporting the development of others.
Fruit and Vegetable Consumption and Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Older Chinese: The Guangzhou Biobank Cohort Study

Objective To examine the adjusted associations of fruit consumption and vegetable consumption with the Framingham score and its components in the non-Western setting of Southern China, considering health status. Method Linear regression was used to assess the cross-sectional associations of fruit and vegetable consumption with the Framingham score and its components, among 19,518 older Chinese (≥50 years) from the Guangzhou Biobank Cohort Study in Southern China (2003–2006), and whether these differed by health status. Results The association of fruit consumption with the Framingham score varied by health status (P-value<0.001), but not vegetable consumption (P-value 0.51). Fruit consumption was associated with a lower Framingham score (-0.04 per portions/day, 95% confidence interval (CI) -0.08 to -0.004) among participants in poor health, adjusted for age, sex, recruitment phase, socio-economic position and lifestyle. However, similarly adjusted, fruit consumption was associated with a higher Framingham score (0.05, 95% CI 0.02 to 0.09) among participants in good health, perhaps due to a positive association of fruit consumption with fasting glucose. Similarly adjusted, vegetable consumption was associated with a higher Framingham score (0.03, 95% CI 0.01 to 0.05) among all participants, with no difference by health status. Conclusion This large study from a non-western setting found that fruit and vegetable consumption was barely associated with the Framingham score, or major CVD risk factors.
Personalized Question Answering System Based on Ontology and Semantic Web

Semantic Web technologies bring new benefits to knowledge-based question answering system. Especially, ontology is becoming the pivotal methodology to represent domain-specific conceptual knowledge in order to promote the semantic capability of a QA system. In this paper we present a QA system in which the domain knowledge is represented by means of ontology. In addition, personalized services are enabled through modeling users' profiles in the form of ontology, and a Chinese natural language human-machine interface is implemented mainly through a NL parser in this system. An initial evaluation result shows the feasibility to build such a semantic QA system based on ontology, the effectivity of personalized semantic QA, the extensibility of ontology and knowledge base, and the possibility of self-produced knowledge based on semantic relations in the ontology.
Stochastic resource-constrained project scheduling

PREFACE After having received my diploma from the Technische Universität Berlin in 1996, Rolf Möhring, the supervisor of my diploma thesis, offered me a research position in his group. At that time I was employed at a Berlin software company the head of which, Gert Scheschonk, strongly encouraged me to accept the offer. I accepted and in 1997 I began to work within a research initiative funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG. The members engaged in this initiative belong to five research groups in Germany which are located at universities in Bonn, Karlsruhe, Kiel, Osnabrück, and Berlin. In Berlin, the scope of the project was to develop algorithms and theory for stochastic resource-constrained project scheduling problems which is the main topic of this thesis. I am thankful to Rolf Möhring for his support, his encouragement, and the supervision of my thesis. In particular, I greatly benefited from his guidance during my work on AND/OR precedence constraints and scheduling policies. My special thanks go to my colleagues Martin Skutella and Marc Uetz. Martin greatly helped to establish, generalize, and improve many of my original considerations on AND/OR precedence constraints which finally led to the results presented in Chapters 2 and 3. The continuous fruitful discussion with Marc led to new insights in the field of deterministic resource-constrained project scheduling. The results presented in Chapter 4 on different representations of resource constraints are one example of this productive collaboration. I am also very grateful to my colleagues Andreas Schulz and Matthias Müller-Hannemann. I gained a lot from Andreas' expertise and his co-authorship in papers on deterministic project scheduling (which are not part of this thesis). My former roommate Matthias was always willing to interrupt his work in order to discuss the questions I raised. I would also like to mention the fruitful collaboration with the other members of the DFG research initiative on resource-constrained project scheduling. In particular , I thank Peter Brucker for the willingness to serve as a member of my thesis committee. Some parts of this thesis rely on software implementations that would not have reached the current quality without the support of Ewgenij Gawrilow. I thank him for introducing me to the concept of generic programming; he had a great share in establishing the basis of our programming environment, a collection of fundamental scheduling algorithms and data structures. for their careful proofreading of different parts of the manuscript. …