Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
European Union energy security: The challenges of liberalisation in a risk-prone international environment

The liberalisation of European energy markets and their integration into a single market are under way. However, the energy environment of the European Union as well as its own internal situation have undergone profound changes. The energy security of member states is therefore an important issue that should be examined. The energy security of member states is therefore an important issue that should be examined. This security concerns gas markets with the problem of long-term contracts between suppliers and consumers and also electricity markets, because of the increasing use of natural gas to generate electricity. Lack of investment is also a problem. Energy market players have to manage security concerns in these two markets in order to supply socially and economically essential commodities. In this article, we examine two main topics. The first is related to the European Union's capacity to solve the problem of investment in transmission and peak power generation by finding internal solutions. The second concerns the upstream structure of the gas market, namely the problem of investing in transnational gas pipelines, and relations with gas suppliers outside the EU.
Resource monitoring to support mobile agents in pervasive computing

Mobile agents are a form of software agents that migrate from device to device, performing their job in an unobtrusive manner. Mobile agents are particularly useful for pervasive computing as they are lightweight processes that allow for the delegation of tasks, have migratory characteristics, and operate regardless of whether the device they are on is connected to the network. However, in order to facilitate the full potential of mobile agents in pervasive environments, it is evident that there is a need for mobile agents to be resource-aware. To this end, we propose a model for a Resource Aware Middleware for Mobile Agents (RAMMA). We present the conceptual architecture of RAMMA, its implementation and an evaluation of the resource utilisation patterns of the monitor itself.
Twol-amalgamated priority queues

Priority queues are essential function blocks in numerous applications such as discrete event simulations. This paper describes and exemplifies the ease of obtaining high performance priority queues using a two-tier list-based structure. This new implementation, called the Twol structure, is amalgamated with three priority queues, namely, the Henriksen's queue, splay tree and skew heap, to enhance the efficiency of these basal priority queue structures. Using a model that combines traditional average case and amortized complexity analysis, Twol-amalgamated priority queues that maintain N active events are theoretically proven to offer O(1) expected amortized complexity under reasonable assumptions. They are also demonstrated empirically to offer stable near O(1) performance for widely varying priority increment distributions and for queue sizes ranging from 10 to 10 million. Extensive empirical results show that the Twol-amalgamated priority queues consistently outperform those basal structures (i.e., without the Twol structure) with an average speedup of about three to five times on widely different hardware architectures. These results provide testimony that the Twol-amalgamated priority queues are suitable for implementation in sizeable application scenarios such as, but not limited to, large-scale discrete event simulation.
Title : Compliance Cost , Corporate Governance and Accounting Conservatism

Information asymmetry among stakeholders is the cause of accounting conservatism, since it leads to the asymmetric loss function which brings in the required mechanism to protect the interest of parties with information disadvantage; Agency theory suggests that stakeholders need conservative accounting reports since conservatism will be reciprocal beneficial for all parties and management incentives are more influential in accounting numbers. This paper investigates the determinants of accounting conservatism basing on the accrual measures using data from 2001 to 2006 in China. We find that more debt, more control right of controlling shareholders, and lower management ownership will lead to higher required conservatism. We also find that since the compliance cost for SOEs is higher than that for NSOEs, their accounting conservatism is higher thereafter. As the compliance cost reduces, accounting conservatism will be lower too. The independence of board has little influence on conservatism in China, but higher rate of insider director will lower the conservatism for NSOEs, showing the power of management on accounting information. We also find that among the determinants of conservatism in China, debt is the most important factor, ownership is the next, and board has little influence. Keyword : Information Asymmetry; Agency Problem; Regulation Hypothesis; Accounting Conservatism; Compliance Cost; Corporate Governance
MODEL ORDER REDUCTION FOR PEEC MODELING BASED ON MOMENT MATCHING

Accurate and efiective system-level modeling has become necessary to address electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) issues in modern circuit and system design. Model order reduction (MOR) techniques provide a feasibility to approximate complex circuit models with compact reduced-order models. In this paper, an efiective MOR technique entitled multi-point moment matching (MMM) is implemented for the partial element equivalent circuit (PEEC) modeling. Moment information at multiple frequency points is used in this method in order to accurately estimate a given system over an entire frequency range of interest, and for each frequency an enhanced asymptotic waveform evaluation (AWE) is applied to obtain a reduced-order model by constructing a pole-residue representation of the original transfer function. The improvements of conventional AWE in aspects of both moment computation and moment matching can avoid ill-conditioned moment matrices and unstable dominant poles. The complex frequency hopping (CFH) technique is employed to select the multiple expansion points by using a newly developed upward- search algorithm. Numerical simulations of coupled microstrip lines in both frequency and time domain indicate the efiectiveness of the proposed method.
A Social Network Based Reputation System for Cooperative P2P File Sharing

Current reputation systems for peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks suffer from high overhead on reputation querying. Also, purely relying on a threshold to detect malicious nodes may make a high-reputed node be reluctant to further increase its reputation in these reputation systems. On the other side, the social network concept of “friendship foster cooperation” can be utilized to alleviate the high overhead in reputation systems. However, the limited number of friends limits the availability of file resources in these approaches. To overcome the drawbacks, we propose a social network based reputation system, namely SocialTrust, that synergistically leverages the social network connections and traditional credit based reputation system to provide efficient reputation management for P2P file sharing. In SocialTrust, each node favors friends for service transactions, which are resulted from both real life acquaintances and online partnerships established between high-reputed and frequently-interacted nodes. When no friends are available for a request, a node chooses the server with the highest reputation. The benefits of friendship and partnership on file sharing and cost saving encourage nodes to be continuously cooperative. Further, SocialTrust considers the number of friends/partners and the reputation of a node in reputation rewarding/punishment in order to realize accurate reputation evaluation. SocialTrust can also prevent certain attacks such as deny of service and collusion. Extensive trace-driven simulation demonstrates the effectiveness of SocialTrust.
A Limit on the Metallicity of Compact High-Velocity Clouds

There is a fortuitous coincidence in the positions of the quasar Ton S210 and the compact H I high-velocity cloud CHVC 224.0-83.4-197 on the sky. Using Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer observations of the metal line absorption in this cloud and sensitive H I 21 cm emission observations obtained with the multibeam system at Parkes Observatory, we determine a metallicity of (O/H) < 0.46 solar at a confidence of 3 σ. The metallicity of the high-velocity gas is consistent with either an extragalactic or Magellanic Cloud origin but is not consistent with a location inside the Milky Way unless the chemical history of the gas is considerably different from that of the interstellar medium in the Galactic disk and halo. Combined with measurements of highly ionized species (C III and O VI) at high velocities, this metallicity limit indicates that the cloud has a substantial halo of ionized gas; there is as much ionized gas as neutral gas directly along the Ton S210 sight line. We suggest several observational tests that would improve the metallicity determination substantially and help to distinguish between possible origins for the high-velocity gas. Additional observations of this sight line would be valuable, since the number of compact HVCs positioned in front of background sources bright enough for high-resolution absorption-line studies is extremely limited.
The risks of investing in the real estate markets of the asian region

The Asian region has become a focus of attention for investors in recent years. Due to the strong economic performance of the region, the higher expected returns in the area compared with Europe and the USA and the additional diversification benefits investment in the region would offer. Nonetheless many investors have doubts about the prudence of investing in such areas. In particular it may be felt that the expected returns offered in the countries of the Asian region are not sufficient to compensate investors for the increased risks of investing in such markets. These risks can be categorised into under four headings: investment risk, currency risk, political risk, and institutional risk. This paper analyses each of these risks in turn to see if they are sufficiently large to deter real estate investment in the region in general or in a particular country.
Global Social Norms and Environmental Behavior

We adopt a recently introduced incentivized method to elicit widely shared beliefs concerning (a) social norms, (b) environmental effect, and (c) difficulty of a wide range of environmental behaviors. We establish that these characteristics, as reflected in elicited beliefs recorded in one sample, predict (out-of-sample) environmental behaviors in a second separate sample. Pro-environmental behaviors perceived to be more socially appropriate and easier to perform, in particular, are more likely to be chosen. We show that subjective social norms mediate the effect of “global” (widely shared) social norms on behavior, which improves our understanding of the normative processes underlying pro-environmental action. Our use of an incentivized elicitation method might moreover mitigate problems associated with conventional surveys, such as social desirability bias, consistency bias, and inattentive responding, as discussed in the article.
Purchase intentions for domestic food: a moderated TPB-explanation

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumers’ intention to buy domestic food applying the theory of planned behavior. Based on this framework, the authors investigate the moderating effects of consumer ethnocentrism and self-construal. Design/methodology/approach To test the conceptual model, a cross-sectional study from a random sample of Norwegian consumers was employed. A total of 501 consumers filled out the web-based survey. The data were analyzed by means of confirmatory factor analysis and multiple regression. Findings The results show that subjective norm and perceived behavioral control (PBC) both have positive significant effects on consumers’ intention to buy domestic food. Attitude also has a positive effect but is only significant on the ten percent level. The effect of subjective norm is reduced with increasing levels of ethnocentrism, and the effect of PBC is reduced when consumers are collectivistic rather than individualistic. Originality/value This study provides the food industry with useful information about which mechanisms underlie the consumers’ intention to buy domestic food. In addition the study provides useful insight into how different personality characteristics affect the consumers’ intentions.
Practical monitoring and analysis tool for WSN testing

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) comprise autonomous embedded nodes that combine sensing, actuation, and distributed computing with small size and low energy. Testing of WSNs is challenging due to distributed functionality, lack of test and debug interfaces, and limited communication, computation and memory resources. This paper presents the design and implementation of a practical network monitoring and analysis tool for identifying the causes of misbehavior. The tool consists of a sniffer node that passively captures WSN traffic, and multiple user interfaces that can run e.g. on a PC or mobile phone. Unlike the related proposals, our tool neither needs setting up an additional monitoring network alongside the actual WSN nor uses any node resources. Practical testing experiences with mul-tihop mesh WSN deployments show that the tool reveals design and implementation defects that are hard to discover with other testing methods such as in-network monitoring systems or debug prints.
Scenario graphs and attack graphs

We develop formal techniques that give users flexibility in examining design errors discovered by automated analysis. We build our results using the model checking approach to verification. The two inputs to a model checker are a finite system model and a formal correctness property specifying acceptable behaviors. The correctness property induces a bipartition on the set of behaviors of the model: correct behaviors, which satisfy the property, and faulty behaviors, which violate the property. Traditional model checkers give users a single counterexample, chosen from the set of faulty behaviors. Giving the user access to the entire set, however, lets him have more control over the design refinement process. The focus of our work is on ways of generating, presenting, and analyzing faulty behavior sets. We present our results in two parts. In Part I we introduce concepts that let us define faulty behavior sets as failure scenario graphs . We then describe algorithms for generating scenario graphs. The algorithms use model checking techniques to produce faulty behavior sets that are sound and complete. In Part II we apply our formal concepts to the security domain. Building on the foundation established in Part I, we define and analyze attack graphs, an application of scenario graphs to represent ways in which intruders attack computer networks. This application of formal analysis contributes to techniques and tools for strengthening network security.
Innovative filtering techniques and customized analytics tools

The VAST 2009 Challenge consisted of three heterogeneous synthetic data sets organized into separate mini-challenges with minimal correspondence information. The challenge task was the identification of a suspected data theft from cyber and real-world traces. The grand challenge required integrating the findings from the mini challenges into a plausible, consistent scenario. A mixture of linked, customized tools based on queryable models and rapid prototyping as well as generic analysis tools (developed in-house) helped us correctly solve all of the mini challenges. A collaborative analytic process was employed to reconstruct the scenario and to propose the correct steps for the reliable identification of the criminal organization based on activity traces of its members.
A Method to Derive Metric Thresholds for Software Product Lines

A software product line (SPL) is a set of software systems that share a common and variable set of components (features). Software metrics provide basic means to quantify several quality aspects of SPL components. However, the effectiveness of the SPL measurement process is directly dependent on the definition of reliable thresholds. If thresholds are not properly defined, it is difficult to actually know whether a given metric value indicates a potential problem in the component implementation. There are several methods to derive thresholds for software metrics. However, there is little understanding about their appropriateness for the context of SPLs. This paper aims to propose a method to derive thresholds in the SPL context. Our method is evaluated in terms of recall and precision using two code smells (God Class and Lazy Class) detection strategies. The evaluation of our method is performed based on a benchmark of 33 SPLs and the results were compared with a method (baseline) with the same purpose used in the context of SPLs (not proposed). The results show that our method has better recall when compared with baseline.
The Early Evolution of Spinal Cord Lesions on MR Imaging following Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: How early spinal cord injury (SCI) lesions evolve in patients after injury is unknown. The purpose of this study was to characterize the early evolution of spinal cord edema and hemorrhage on MR imaging after acute traumatic SCI. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We performed a retrospective analysis of 48 patients with clinically complete cervical spine injury. Inclusion criteria were the clear documentation of the time of injury and MR imaging before surgical intervention within 72 hours of injury. The length of intramedullary spinal cord edema and hemorrhage was assessed. The correlation between time to imaging and lesion size was determined by multiple regression analysis. Short-interval follow-up MR imaging was also available for a few patients (n = 5), which allowed the direct visualization of changes in spinal cord edema. RESULTS: MR imaging demonstrated cord edema in 100% of patients and cord hemorrhage in 67% of patients. The mean longitudinal length of cord edema was 10.3 ± 4.0 U, and the mean length of cord hemorrhage was 2.6 ± 2.0 U. Increased time to MR imaging correlated to increased spinal cord edema length (P = .002), even after accounting for the influence of other variables. A difference in time to MR imaging of 1.2 days corresponded to an average increase in cord edema by 1 full vertebral level. Hemorrhage length was not affected by time to imaging (P = .825). A temporal increase in the length of spinal cord edema was confirmed in patients with short-interval follow-up MR imaging (P = .003). CONCLUSION: Spinal cord edema increases significantly during the early time period after injury, whereas intramedullary hemorrhage is comparatively static.
Lysine and novel hydroxylysine lipids in soil bacteria: amino acid membrane lipid response to temperature and pH in Pseudopedobacter saltans

Microbial decomposition of organic matter is an essential process in the global carbon cycle. The soil bacteria Pseudopedobacter saltans and Flavobacterium johnsoniae are both able to degrade complex organic molecules, but it is not fully known how their membrane structures are adapted to their environmental niche. The membrane lipids of these species were extracted and analyzed using high performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization/ion trap/mass spectrometry (HPLC-ESI/IT/MS) and high resolution accurate mass/mass spectrometry (HRAM/MS). Abundant unknown intact polar lipids (IPLs) from P. saltans were isolated and further characterized using amino acid analysis and two dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Ornithine IPLs (OLs) with variable (hydroxy) fatty acid composition were observed in both bacterial species. Lysine-containing IPLs (LLs) were also detected in both species and were characterized here for the first time using HPLC-MS. Novel LLs containing hydroxy fatty acids and novel hydroxylysine lipids with variable (hydroxy) fatty acid composition were identified in P. saltans. The confirmation of OL and LL formation in F. johnsoniae and P. saltans and the presence of OlsF putative homologs in P. saltans suggest the OlsF gene coding protein is possibly involved in OL and LL biosynthesis in both species, however, potential pathways of OL and LL hydroxylation in P. saltans are still undetermined. Triplicate cultures of P. saltans were grown at three temperature/pH combinations: 30°C/pH 7, 15°C/pH 7, and 15°C/pH 9. The fractional abundance of total amino acid containing IPLs containing hydroxylated fatty acids was significantly higher at higher temperature, and the fractional abundance of lysine-containing IPLs was significantly higher at lower temperature and higher pH. These results suggest that these amino acid-containing IPLs, including the novel hydroxylysine lipids, could be involved in temperature and pH stress response of soil bacteria.
The Yeast Pif1 Helicase Prevents Genomic Instability Caused by G-Quadruplex-Forming CEB1 Sequences In Vivo

In budding yeast, the Pif1 DNA helicase is involved in the maintenance of both nuclear and mitochondrial genomes, but its role in these processes is still poorly understood. Here, we provide evidence for a new Pif1 function by demonstrating that its absence promotes genetic instability of alleles of the G-rich human minisatellite CEB1 inserted in the Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome, but not of other tandem repeats. Inactivation of other DNA helicases, including Sgs1, had no effect on CEB1 stability. In vitro, we show that CEB1 repeats formed stable G-quadruplex (G4) secondary structures and the Pif1 protein unwinds these structures more efficiently than regular B-DNA. Finally, synthetic CEB1 arrays in which we mutated the potential G4-forming sequences were no longer destabilized in pif1Δ cells. Hence, we conclude that CEB1 instability in pif1Δ cells depends on the potential to form G-quadruplex structures, suggesting that Pif1 could play a role in the metabolism of G4-forming sequences.
Effects of the Intracellular Ca Ion Concentration upon the Excitability of the Muscle Fiber Membrane of a Barnacle

The membrane excitability and contraction were examined in single barnacle muscle fibers with different internal Ca++ concentrations by using buffer solutions made up with EGTA and Ca-gluconate in various proportions. During the passage of dc currents the membrane shows all-or-none spike potentials for internal Ca++ concentrations below about 8 x 10-8 M, oscillatory potential changes in the range between 8 x 10-8 to 5 x 10-7 M, but neither oscillatory nor spike potentials were seen for concentrations above 5 x 10-7 M. All-or-none spike potentials were suppressed when the internal Mg++ concentration exceeded 5 mM. The suppression threshold of the internal Ca++ concentration for the Sr spike is much higher than that for the Ca spike. The threshold concentration of internal Ca++ for contraction was about 8 x 10-7 M.