Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Développement financier, croissance de long terme et effets de seuil

In this paper, we test the existence of financial development threshold effects, firstly, between financial development and long-term growth, and, secondly, between financial development and long-term GDP. We also ask whether such effects may explain the link financial development - convergence/divergence to the advanced countriesâ€™ growth. Our work builds on that of Aghion, Howitt, and Mayer-Foulkes (2004). It differs from previous work about assumptions and methodology. Estimates are performed with GMM dynamic panel data techniques for 112 emerging and developing countries from 1975 to 2007. The results show a positive but vanishing effect of financial development on steady-state GDP, from a critical (an average) level of financial development. They do not validate, however, the assumption that the marginal impact of financial development on the steady-state growth rate is more favorable than the degree of financial development is low. We support only partially the role that the financial development could play in the acceleration of the convergence of emerging and developing economies towards the world frontier growth.
Framework for Inferring Leadership Dynamics of Complex Movement from Time Series

Leadership plays a key role in social animals, including humans, decision-making and coalescence in coordinated activities such as hunting, migration, sport, diplomatic negotiation etc. In these coordinated activities, leadership is a process that organizes interactions among members to make a group achieve collective goals. Understanding initiation of coordinated activities allows scientists to gain more insight into social species behaviors. However, by using only time series of activities data, inferring leadership as manifested by the initiation of coordinated activities faces many challenging issues. First, coordinated activities are dynamic and are changing over time. Second, several different coordinated activities might occur simultaneously among subgroups. Third, there is no fundamental concept to describe these activities computationally. In this paper, we formalize Faction Initiator Inference Problem and propose a leadership inference framework as a solution of this problem. The framework makes no assumption about the characteristics of a leader or the parameters of the coordination process. The framework performs better than our non-trivial baseline in both simulated and biological datasets (schools of fish). Moreover, we demonstrate the application of our framework as a tool to study group merging and splitting dynamics on another biological dataset of trajectories of wild baboons. In addition, our problem formalization and framework enable opportunities for scientists to analyze coordinated activities and generate scientific hypotheses about collective behaviors that can be tested statistically and in the field.
Party Competence and the Macro Polity

This paper reveals a national mood in aggregate evaluations of party competence which translates from government party to opposition, which has meaningful consequences for party ratings for competence, and which significantly shapes congressional voting intentions. Analysis of this ‘macro-competence’ measure, which is constructed using a dataset of 2,512 poll measures of issue handling for parties over six decades, and then based on closer quarterly analyses between 1980 and 2009, reveals that voters judge party competence on the basis of mood in evaluations of policy handling as well as on the basis of a president, the state of the economy and on partisan leanings. The paper offers an aggregate level theory of public opinion about government and party competence, about the way in which parties gain and lose reputations for competence – irrespective of presidential approval – and introduces a measure of policy competence which can contribute in new ways to our aggregate level explanations of congressional party support, and of the Macro Polity in general
Bison body size and climate change

The relationship between body size and temperature of mammals is poorly resolved, especially for large keystone species such as bison (Bison bison). Bison are well represented in the fossil record across North America, which provides an opportunity to relate body size to climate within a species. We measured the length of a leg bone (calcaneal tuber, DstL) in 849 specimens from 60 localities that were dated by stratigraphy and 14C decay. We estimated body mass (M) as M = (DstL/11.49)3. Average annual temperature was estimated from δ18O values in the ice cores from Greenland. Calcaneal tuber length of Bison declined over the last 40,000 years, that is, average body mass was 37% larger (910 ± 50 kg) than today (665 ± 21 kg). Average annual temperature has warmed by 6°C since the Last Glacial Maximum (~24–18 kya) and is predicted to further increase by 4°C by the end of the 21st century. If body size continues to linearly respond to global temperature, Bison body mass will likely decline by an additional 46%, to 357 ± 54 kg, with an increase of 4°C globally. The rate of mass loss is 41 ± 10 kg per°C increase in global temperature. Changes in body size of Bison may be a result of migration, disease, or human harvest but those effects are likely to be local and short‐term and not likely to persist over the long time scale of the fossil record. The strong correspondence between body size of bison and air temperature is more likely the result of persistent effects on the ability to grow and the consequences of sustaining a large body mass in a warming environment. Continuing rises in global temperature will likely depress body sizes of bison, and perhaps other large grazers, without human intervention.
A study on local feature descriptors for point clouds

Point clouds are a way of representing 3D data which became very popular due to the rise of low-cost 3D sensors on the market whose output data is represented as a point cloud. Given it low-cost, these sensors have been used used in many different fields, such as games or robotics. In many of these applications, recognizing patterns inside big, unorganized clouds is a fundamental task which is often solved using local feature descriptors, which are a way of encoding information local to a region inside a bigger cloud. Nevertheless, pattern recognition using local feature descriptors is a hard task, whose results nowadays are far from satisfactory (in terms of quality and speed) for most of the non-synthetic scenarios, which motivates the development of new descriptors. As a first series of experiments towards both fast descriptors and descriptors robust to high clutter and occlusion, we develop five descriptors, two of them being simplified (thus faster) versions of existing state-of-the-art techniques, one a totally novel approach to discrete descriptors and two being extensions and adaptations of existing descriptors. Our tests show that although our proposals perform poorly when compared to the state-of-the-art, their simplistic design is enough to achieve reasonable results and perform close to some existing techniques, motivating us to keep improving these results. As a byproduct of our work, we produced a benchmark platform which is open for public usage and improvement, aiming to encourage the standardization of tests with feature descriptors.
The Transient Infiltration Process for Seepage Flow from Cracks

This study explores the transient seepage flow from cracks into different porous media, including both coarse material and fine material. The Crack Apparatus of Hele-Shaw Model was chosen to analyze the configuration of wetting bulb in the coarse material, while a sand box is chosen to examine the wetting bulb in the fine material. Due to the effect of gravity on the flow condition, the wetting bulb in the coarse material is more elongated than that of the fine material. The limited width of wetting bulb is approaching a constant value in the coarse material. On the other hand, the effect of capillary causes the wetting bulbs expand continuously as time increases. In this paper, a Green-Ampt type of conceptual model is proposed to describe the propagating process of the wetting bulbs in different materials. The time-dependent wetting front and the associated wetted area are obtained in this study, which are beneficial for examining the leaky contaminant transport from cracks into different porous media.
Optimizing Refining Conditions of Pinus massoniana Cellulose Fibers for Improving the Mechanical Properties of Ultra-Low Density Plant Fiber Composite (ULD_PFC)

Response surface methodology was used to optimize the refining conditions of Pinus massoniana cellulose fiber and to improve the mechanical properties of ultra-low density plant fiber composite (ULD_PFC). The effects and interactions of the pulp consistency (X1), the number of passes (X2), and the beating gap (X3) on the internal bond strength of ULD_PFC were investigated. The results showed that the optimum internal bond strength (91.72 ± 2.28 kPa) was obtained under the conditions of 8.0% pulp consistency, two passes through the refiner, and a 30.0 μm beating gap. Analysis of the physical properties of the fibers and handsheets showed that the fibrillation of fibers with optimum refining conditions was improved. Also, the tear index of the optimal specimen was 13.9% and 24.5% higher than specimen-1 with a lowest beating degree of 24 oSR and specimen-6 with a highest beating degree of 73 oSR, respectively. Consequently, the optimal refining conditions of the fibers are valid for preparing ULD_PFCs.
PCBs and PCDD/Fs in Bluefin Tuna: Occurrence and Dietary Intake

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polychlorinated dibenzo-furans (PCDD/Fs) were measured in Mediterranean bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) to verify the compliance with the EU regulations for food commercialization. The estimated intakes were also evaluated. The analyses were performed by gas chromatography-ion trap tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS-MS). The PCBs were dominant (1132.0 ng g−1 l.w.), followed by PCDFs (23.2 pg g−1 l.w.) and PCDDs (8.5 pg g−1 l.w.). The pollutant levels (dl-PCBs: 0.7 pg TEQ/g w.w.; PCDD/Fs: 1.9 pg TEQ/g w.w.) and their sum expressed as TEQ values (2.6 pg TEQ/g w.w.) remained below the limits for human consumption proposed by the European Union. On the contrary, the sum of the six indicator non-dioxin-like PCBs (84.2 ng g−1 w.w.) was slightly above the maximum level fixed by the in-force legislation. The estimated dietary intakes for PCDD/Fs plus dl-PCBs were below the toxicological reference values (TRVs) set by various international bodies, while non-cancer and cancer risk assessment revealed a safety concern. Additionally, the estimated intake of ndl-PCBs exceeded the maximum levels set by different European countries. These findings suggest caution in tuna consumption together with an active and frequent surveillance of the chemical quality of its flesh.
Understanding Transportation Systems Through the Lenses of Experimental Economics: A Review

Planning, operation and analysis of transportation systems hinge on theories and assumptions regarding individual choices, traffic flows, and traffic equilibria. Transportation field data collection, however, often lacks sufficient control, and therefore is often not suitable to test theories in transport modelling and their underlying behavioural axioms. With increased pressure on transport planners to deliver efficient, safe and publicly acceptable plans, it is imperative for transport scientists to find alternatives when testing the behavioural axioms that underpin current theories. Transportation scientists have, in response, increasingly used methods from experimental economics to gain insights into behaviour as well as to test theories and policies. Here we review and critically analyse the use of the experimental method in transportation science. Specifically, we synthesize the findings of experimental studies with regard to safety, freight, route choice, departure time choice, and location choice. We also reflect on well-known traffic paradoxes. We find that some of the evidence for traffic paradoxes can be attributed to experimental artefacts and that experimental studies when conducted by engineers tend to lack dominance and when conducted by economists tend to lack salience. Dominance and salience are key precepts of the external validity of studies drawing on methods from experimental economics. This review work also highlights methods that strengthen dominance and salience when using experimental economics in transportation studies.
Supplementary: Document Modeling with External Attention for Sentence Extraction

It is a challenging task to rely only on the main body of the document for extraction cues, as it requires document understanding. Documents in practice often have additional information, such as the title, image captions, videos, images and twitter handles, along with the main body of the document. These types of information are often available for newswire articles. Figure 1 shows an example of a newswire article taken from CNN (CNN.com). It shows the additional information such as the title (first block) and the images with their captions (third block) along with the main body of the document (second block). The last block shows a manually written summary of the document in terms of “highlights” to allow readers to quickly gather information on stories. As one can see in this example, gold highlights focus on sentences from the fourth paragraph, i.e., on key events such as the “PM’s resignation”, “bribery scandal and its investigation”, “suicide” and “leaving an important note”. Interestingly, the essence of the article is explicitly or implicitly mentioned in the title and the image captions of the document.
Artificial Noise Aided Secure Precoding for MIMO Untrusted Two-Way Relay Systems With Perfect and Imperfect Channel State Information

Physical-layer secure is an important issue for untrusted relay systems. In this paper, we investigate secure precoding design for non-regenerative multiple-input multiple-output untrusted two-way relay systems, where artificial noise (AN) is applied at the source and the relay is untrusted. We aim to maximize the secrecy sum rate by jointly designing the source’s signal and AN precoders and the relay’s precoder, under the sources and relay transmit power constraints. We consider two scenarios that perfect and imperfect channel state information of all the channels is available. For the former, we convert the secure precoding problem to a difference of convex programming and develop a constrained concave convex procedure based iterative algorithm which can obtain a local optimal solution. We also provide asymptotic analysis on the maximum secrecy sum rate when the relay transmit power approaches infinity, and propose alternating optimization method to compute asymptotic optimal precoders. For the latter, we model the channel uncertainties by using worst-case criterion and propose the weighted minimum mean square error based method to solve the robust secure precoding problem. Numerical simulations are presented to show the effectiveness of our proposed schemes.
Demagoguery and Mental Independence in James Fenimore Cooper’s Political Writings

This essay examines James Fenimore Cooper’s two key nonfiction texts, Notions of the Americans (1828) and The American Democrat (1838), for their appraisal of the process of opinion formation in democracies. Cooper is concerned with the mental dependence and conformism that characterizes American democracy. In particular, he worries that public-spirited individuals will avoid participating in the public sphere for fear of defamation by irresponsible newspaper editors and that public discourse may be captured by partisans, levelers, and economic speculators. His response is to appropriate for the burgeoning democracy the concept of “gentleman,” a term that he now applies to the public-spirited democrat whose persuasive, nondemagogic rhetoric defends equal rights to life, liberty, and property. The true American democrat is the moderate individual, neither sheepish nor presumptuous, who speaks and acts in defense of equal freedom.
Sharing Global Supply Chain Knowledge

In global supply chains, managers have consistently struggled with sharing valuable knowledge with buyers and suppliers across borders. Increasingly, talk of the "dark side" of collaborative relationships has left managers wondering who benefits most from knowledge-sharing activities: their companies or their partners. In order to find the answers to these questions, the authors conducted an in-depth study of more than 100 cross-national supply chain partnerships in the industrial chemicals, consumer durables, industrial packaging, toy and apparel industries in multiple locations in 19 countries. Knowledge sharing encompasses the sharing of information, but it doesn't stop there. Much of the information that companies share � data on inventory levels, sales, production schedules and prices � is easy to codify and transmit. But other types of knowledge are more difficult to codify: know-how, managerial and communication skills, and organizational memory. Intercompany knowledge sharing is a joint activity between supply-chain partners; the parties share knowledge and then jointly interpret and integrate it into a relationship-domain-specific memory that influences relationship-specific behavior. The authors found three types of knowledge sharing within the supply chain, each offering distinct benefits to buyers and suppliers: information sharing, joint sense making and knowledge integration. They also found that no matter how "diverse" the home cultures of the buyer and supplier companies, these differences had no impact on the propensity to share knowledge. Drawing on examples from the auto (Toyota), aerospace (Boeing, Lockheed Martin and United Technologies) and toy industries, they examine how different types of knowledge sharing can benefit buyers or sellers individually, but more importantly, how it can enhance the performance of the partnership as a whole. They conclude that, while suppliers generally benefit more from knowledge-sharing activities, both buyers and suppliers profit; understanding the benefits of absolute versus relative gains is critical when building world-class global supply chains. Sharing knowledge effectively means understanding that a disparity in benefits is part of what it takes to build partnerships that last.
Ginger Extract and [6]-Gingerol Inhibit Contraction of Rat Entire Small Intestine

This study aims to investigate the effect of oral administration and the direct action of ginger extract or [6]-gingerol on small intestinal contractility. The direct effect of 10 minutes preincubation of ginger ethanolic extract (10, 100 and 300 μg/mL) or [6]-gingerol (1, 30, and 100 μM) on 0.01 to 30 μM ACh-induced contractions of all parts of the small intestine isolated from normal rats was investigated using the organ bath technique. For in vivo study, the rats were orally administered with extract (10, 20, and 100 mg/kg/d) or [6]-gingerol (2 mg/kg/d) for 7 days, followed by determining the contractile responses to ACh of rat isolated duodenum, jejunum, and ileum and their histology were assessed. Direct application of the extract or [6]-gingerol attenuated ACh-induced contractions in each small intestinal segment, E max was reduced by 40% to 80%, while EC50 increased 3- to 8-fold from control. Similarly, in the in vivo study ACh-induced contractions were reduced in all parts of the small intestine isolated from rats orally treated with ginger extract (20 and 100 mg/kg/d) or [6]-gingerol (2 mg/kg/d). E max decreased 15% to 30%, while EC50 increased 1- to 3-fold compared to control. No discernable changes in the histology of intestinal segments were detectable. Thus, the results support the clinical application of ginger for disorders of gastrointestinal motility.
Adaptive Recovery of Incomplete Datasets for Edge Analytics

The Internet of Things (IoT) has attracted significant attention from both academia and industry, thanks to applications such as smart cities, smart buildings and intelligent traffic management. These systems rely on data, collected from IoT devices, that are sent to the cloud for analytics. Data are either used for near real-time decisions or stored for long-term analysis. However, in highly distributed IoT systems, missing or invalid data may appear because of different reasons including sensor failures, monitoring system failures and network failures. Analyzing incomplete datasets can lead to inaccurate results and imprecise decisions, with negative effects on the target systems. Also, due to the increasing size of such systems and the consequently increasing amount of data generated from sensors, recovery of incomplete datasets for analytics on the cloud is often infeasible, due to the limited bandwidth available and the strict latency constraints of IoT applications. We propose a novel semi-automatic recursive mechanism for recovery of incomplete datasets on the edge that is closer to the source of data. This mechanism enables efficient recovery of incomplete datasets employing different forecasting techniques for multiple gaps, based on user specifications. We evaluate our approach on datasets coming from the context of smart buildings and smart homes. The experimental results show that our approach is able to identify multiple gaps, then recover incomplete datasets, decreasing forecasting error by up to 82.68%, and reducing running time by up to 52.38%.
High pressure Raman study of layered Mo 0 . 5 W 0 . 5 S 2 ternary compound

Ternary two-dimensional (2D) transitionmetal dichalcogenide compounds exhibit a tunable electronic structure allowing for control of the interlayer and the intralayer atomic displacement to efficiently tune their physical and electronic properties. Using a diamond anvil cell, hydrostatic pressurewas applied toMo0.5W0. 5S2 up to 40 GPa in order to study the optical phonon vibrational modes. Analysis of the high-pressure Raman spectra shows that the two in-plane E2gmodes resembling that of pristineMoS2 andWS2, as well as disorder-activated longitudinal acoustic phonon mode, are hardened and suppressed as pressure increases. The twoA1gmodes of the ternary compound that resemble theA1gmodes of pristineMoS2 andWS2, displayed similar Raman shifts to the pristine compounds as pressure increases. ARaman peak at 470 cm that is close to A1g peaks emerges at∼8 GPa, which represents a disorder-activated pressure-induced out-of-plane Raman mode observed only in the ternary compound under high pressure. At pressures above∼30 GPa, a Ramanpeak at approximately 340 cm is observed, signifying additional disorder-activated vibration mode.Our results reveal the enhanced interactions in the structural and vibrational behavior of the MoS2 andWS2 domains in theMo0.5W0. 5S2 compound under hydrostatic pressure. These results could have implications in understanding the electronic, optical, and structural properties of the new 2D ternary compoundmaterials under extrememechanical conditions.