Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Persistent Productivity Decline Due to Corporate Default

Low economic growth tends to be seen a decade after financial crises. To explain this fact, we construct general equilibrium models based on a simplified version of Jermann and Quadrini (2012), in which exogenous shocks cause a substantial number of firms to default on their debts. Lenders cannot pre-commit to debt forgiveness, forcing them to allow "debt-ridden" firms, which are defined as firms whose lenders have a unilateral right to liquidate them, to continue. Although debt-ridden firms are under the control of their lenders, their borrowing constraints are tighter than those of normal firms. This implies that the emergence of debt-ridden borrowers may be a cause of the "financial shocks" seen in the recent macroeconomic literature. Tightened borrowing constraints due to the emergence of debt-ridden firms lower aggregate productivity and may worsen the labor wedge.
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Mechanical loading of the low back and shoulders during pushing and pulling activities Marco JM Hoozemansa; P Paul FM Kuijerab; Idsart Kingmab; Jaap H. van Dieënb; Wiebe HK de Vriesab; Luc HV van der Woudeb; Jan Veeger H. E. J. Dirkbc; Allard J. van der Beeka; Monique HW FringsDresena a Coronel Institute for Occupational and Environmental Health, AmCOGG Amsterdam Centre for Research into Health and Health Care, Academic Medical Centre/University of Amsterdam, 1100 DE Amsterdam, The Netherlands b Institute for Fundamental and Clinical Human Movement Sciences, Faculty of Human Movement Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 1081 BT Amsterdam, The Netherlands c Man-Machine Systems & Control Group, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands
A Survey on Services Composition Languages and Models

Composition of services has received much interest to support business-to-business (B2B) or enterprise applications integration. On one side, the business world has developed a number of XML-based standards to formalize the speciflcation of Web services, their composition and execution. On the other side, the Semantic Web community focuses on reasoning about web resources by explicitly declaring their preconditions and efiects with terms precisely deflned in ontologies. So far, both approaches have been developed rather independently from each other. In this paper the major languages, namely BPEL4WS, BPML, WSCI, WS-CDL and DAML-S, are compared with reference to the requirements identifled and flnally the trend of Services composition is discussed.
Optimizing Polychlorinated Biphenyl Degradation by Flavonoid-Induced Cells of the Rhizobacterium Rhodococcus erythropolis U23A

There is evidence that many plant secondary metabolites may act as signal molecules to trigger the bacterial ability to metabolize polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) during the rhizoremediation process. However, the bases for the PCB rhizoremediation process are still largely unknown. The rhizobacterium Rhodococcus erythropolis U23A is unable to use flavanone as a growth substrate. However, on the basis of an assay that monitors the amount of 4-chlorobenzoate produced from 4-chlorobiphenyl by cells grown co-metabolically on flavanone plus sodium acetate, this flavonoid was previously found to be a potential inducer of the U23A biphenyl catabolic pathway. In this work, and using the same assay, we identified ten other flavonoids that did not support growth, but that acted as inducers of the U23A biphenyl pathway, and we confirmed flavonoid induction of the biphenyl catabolic pathway using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) on the bphA gene. We also examined the effect of the growth co-substrate on flavonoid induction. Sodium acetate was replaced by glucose, mannose, sucrose, or mannitol, which are sugars found in plant root exudates. The data showed that the level of induction of strain U23A biphenyl-degrading enzymes was significantly influenced by the nature and concentration of the flavonoid in the growth medium, as well as by the substrate used for growth. Sucrose allowed for an optimal induction response for most flavonoids. Some flavonoids, such as flavone and isoflavone, were better inducers of the biphenyl catabolic enzymes than biphenyl itself. We also found that all flavonoids tested in this work were metabolized by strain U23A during co-metabolic growth, but that the metabolite profiles, as well as the level of efficiency of degradation, differed for each flavonoid. To obtain insight into how flavonoids interact with strain U23A to promote polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) degradation, we determined the concentration of flavanone at which optimal PCB-degrading performance of strain U23A was achieved. We showed that it corresponded to the concentration required to fully induce the biphenyl catabolic pathway of the strain. Together, our data demonstrate that optimal PCB degradation during the rhizoremediation process will require the adjustment of several parameters, including the presence of the appropriate flavonoids at the proper concentrations and the presence of proper growth substrates that positively influence the ability of flavonoids to induce the pathway.
Capacity allocation under noncooperative routing

The capacity allocation problem in a network that is to be shared by noncooperative users is considered. Each user decides independently upon its routing strategy so as to optimize its individual performance objective. The operating points of the network are the Nash equilibria of the underlying routing game,. The network designer aims to allocate link capacities, so that the resulting Nash equilibria are efficient, according to some systemwide performance criterion. In general, the solution of such design problems is complex and at times counterintuitive, since adding link capacity might lead to degradation of user performance. For systems of parallel links, we show that such paradoxes do not occur and that the capacity allocation problem has a simple and intuitive optimal solution that coincides with the solution in the single-user case.
A Comparison of the Vnode and Sprite File System Architectures

This paper compares the vnode architecture found in SunOS with the internal file system interfaces used in the Sprite distributed file system implementation. The emphasis of the comparison is on generalized support for remote access to file system resources, which include peripheral devices and IPC communication channels as well as regular files. A strong separation of the internal naming and I/O interfaces is exploited in Sprite to easily provide remote access to all of these resources. In contrast, the vnode interface mixes naming and I/O operations in a single interface, making generalized remote access more awk-
Off-grid DOA estimation based on noise subspace fitting

Dictionary mismatch caused by finite spatial discretization and off-grid situation leads to performance degradation in sparse-representation-based direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation. In this paper, a procedure implementing DOA estimation and rectification of dictionary in an alternating way is designed. A strategy using noise subspace fitting (NSF) is proposed to estimate the direction bias and therewith treat the dictionary mismatch. Based on NSF, the dictionary rectification model is extended from first-order to second-order Taylor approximation to achieve higher modeling accuracy. Simulation results show that improved DOA estimation performance can be achieved for off-grid targets.
Study of Cross Layer Design for AODV and Spatial-TDMA Protocol in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

In this paper, we focus on the cross layer design of the situation that AODV (Ad hoc on demand distance vector) routing protocol is implemented in Spatial-TDMA wireless networks. The routing discovery and routing maintenance strategy of AODV is simplified by utilizing the neighbor information kept by the Spatial-TDMA protocol called USAP(Unified Slot Assignment Protocol). The new protocols reduce the communication overheads and consequently have a higher network throughput. We have verified this idea in the QualNet simulator. The simulation result shows that the routing overheads and the amount of route request messages sent by the nodes are reduced heavily. Meanwhile, it improves the network throughput performance.
Wastewater treatment and reuse: Past, present, and future

This paper provides an overview of the Special Issue on Wastewater Treatment and Reuse: Past, Present, and Future. The papers selected for publication include advanced wastewater treatment and monitoring technologies, such as membrane bioreactors, electrochemical systems; denitrifying biofilters, and disinfection technologies. The Issue also contains articles related to best management practices of biosolids, the influence of organic matter on pathogen inactivation and nutrient removal. Collectively, the Special Issue presents an evolution of technologies, from conventional through advanced, for reliable and sustainable wastewater treatment and reuse.
Magnetically collimated jets with high mass flux

ABSTRA C T Recent numerical simulations and analytical models of magnetically collimated plasma outflows from a uniformly rotating central gravitating object and/or a Keplerian accretion disc have shown that relatively low mass and magnetic fluxes reside in the produced jet. Observations, however, indicate that in some cases, as in jets of young stellar objects, the collimated outflow carries higher fluxes than these simulations predict. A solution to this problem is proposed here by assuming that jets with high mass flux originate in a central source which produces a non-collimated outflow provided that this source is surrounded by a rapidly rotating accretion disc. The relatively faster rotating disc produces a collimated wind, which then forces all the enclosed outflow from the central source to be collimated too. This conclusion is confirmed by self-consistent numerical solutions of the full set of the magnetohydrodynamic equations.
Robust and low complexity obstacle detection and tracking

Obstacle detection and tracking is essential module for autonomous driving. Vision based obstacle detection and tracking faces huge challenges due to factors like cluttered background, partial occlusion, inconsistent illumination, etc. In this paper, we propose a robust and low complexity stereo-vision based obstacle detection and tracking framework. Low complexity techniques are employed to detect obstacles in the u-v-disparity image space. In addition, effective strategies are proposed to construct a distinctive object appearance model for data association efficiently. Finally, an online multi-object tracking framework is proposed by integrating the obstacle detection and data association modules in a robust way. Extensive experimental results on the well-known KITTI tracking dataset demonstrate that the proposed method is able to detect and track various obstacles robustly and efficiently in diverse challenging scenarios.
Physical Predictors of Cognitive Performance in Healthy Older Adults: A Cross-Sectional Analysis

There is ample evidence that physical and cognitive performance are related, but the results of studies investigating this relationship show great variability. Both physical performance and cognitive performance are constructs consisting of several subdomains, but it is presently unknown if the relationship between physical and cognitive performance depends on subdomain of either construct and whether gender and age moderate this relationship. The aim of this study is to identify the strongest physical predictors of cognitive performance, to determine the specificity of these predictors for various cognitive subdomains, and to examine gender and age as potential moderators of the relationship between physical and cognitive performance in a sample of community-dwelling older adults. In total, 98 men and 122 women (average age 74.0±5.6 years) were subjected to a series of performance-based physical fitness and neuropsychological tests. Muscle strength, balance, functional reach, and walking ability (combined score of walking speed and endurance) were considered to predict cognitive performance across several domains (i.e. memory, verbal attention, visual attention, set-shifting, visuo-motor attention, inhibition and intelligence). Results showed that muscle strength was a significant predictor of cognitive performance for men and women. Walking ability and balance were significant predictors of cognitive performance for men, whereas only walking ability was significant for women. We did not find a moderating effect of age, nor did we find support for a differential effect of the physical predictors across different cognitive subdomains. In summary, our results showed a significant relationship between cognitive and physical performance, with a moderating effect of gender.
A Novel Call Admission Control Routing Mechanism for 802.11e Based Multi-Hop MANET

Call Admission Control (CAC) mechanism can protect the existing flows from being disturbed by the newly added flows, which can ensure the quality of service (QoS) of Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANET). We proposed a routing mechanism with distributed CAC algorithms for MANET based on IEEE802.11e EDCA MAC protocol. A new flow can be admitted by the network only if it can find a path to sustain its traffic. The nodes calculate the available bandwidth according to the local channel state and the information of their neighbor nodes by receiving their messages passively. The distributed admission control routing mechanism is proposed based on the link available bandwidth and the influences on the neighbor nodes by assuming admitting the new flow. Simulations show that our distributed link available bandwidth estimation performs well under different node densities, and with our distributed CAC algorithm, the existing flows can be well protected in multi-hop MANET; the newly added flows can make good use of the bandwidth resources without affecting the neighbor flows.
PeerEnergyCloud { Trading Renewable Energies

An increasing number of private households are becoming producers of renewable energy. From an economic perspective it is bene- cial to utilize this energy both locally and promptly. This does require the ability to be able to deal with local excess production at short no- tice using, for example, an electronic trading platform. In this paper we describe a future energy scenario demonstrating techniques which are necessary for implementing a civil marketplace for trading renewable en- ergies. We will especially focus on the learning of individual activity and load proles and the prediction of energy consumption and production.
Efficient ( t , n ) Secret Sharing Scheme against Cheating

A (t, n) secret sharing (SS) scheme can be divided into two protocols: share generation protocol and secret reconstruction protocol. In share generation protocol, a mutually trusted dealer selects a secret and distributes shares to shareholders secretly; in secret reconstruction protocol, a group of t qualified shareholders pool their shares together to reconstruct the secret. However, in secret reconstruction protocol, dishonest shareholders (i.e., cheaters) can pool forged shares to fool honest shareholders. By this way, the cheaters can recover the legitimate secret exclusively, and the honest shareholders get nothing but a fake secret. In this paper, we propose a (t, n)SS that is capable of detecting such cheating fact efficiently. Our scheme is an extension of Shamir’s (t, n)SS that uses a symmetric bivariate polynomial. In addition, our scheme adopts no security assumption, it is unconditional secure.
AI Based Qos Scheduler for WIMAX

Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) is one of the most familiar broadband wireless access technologies that support multimedia transmission. IEEE802.16 Medium Access Control (MAC) covers a large area for bandwidth allocation and Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms for various types of applications. Nevertheless, the standard lacks a MAC scheduling algorithm that has a multi-dimensional objective of satisfying QoS requirements of the users, maximizing channel utilization while ensuring fairness among users. So a novel Priority based Scheduling Algorithm using Artificial Intelligence that addresses these aspects are proposed. The initial results show that maximum channel utilization is achieved with a negligible increment in processing time while keeping the priority intact.
Addition of miller and inverted manchester encoding technique to dedicated short range communication with full hardware utilization

The dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) plays important role in modern intelligent transportation system. The DSRC standards generally adopt FM0 and Manchester encoding technique to reach dc balance and enhance the signal reliability. Same properties are possessed by Miller and inverted Manchester encoding. Therefore, this two techniques can be added in existing FM0/Manchester encoding module. By using conventional technique of modelling results in huge coding diversity with hardware utilization rate of 57.14%. Similarity oriented logic simplification (SOLS) technique is used to overcome this limitation and achieve 100% hardware utilization rate. Hardware utilization and optimization capability of this paper is evaluated on Xilinx ISE Design Suit 13.1 simulation software and design implemented on Xilinx sparten-3E FPGA kit. The encoder architecture in this paper is based on DSRC standards of America, Europe and Japan. This paper develops fully utilized VLSI architecture with two additional and compatible encoding techniques. It also provides efficient performance compared with the existing work.
Autonomy Perceptions from Teachers of English as a Foreign Language in Diverse Colombian Public Teaching Settings

This qualitative descriptive case study reports the features in autonomy dynamics of three Colombian English language teachers in public schools in the District in Bogota Colombia. Three semi-structured interviews and reflective journals were used for data collection. The research question that guided this study was: What perceptions about autonomy do the three Colombian English language teachers have? The general purpose of this investigation was to identify the main features in teachers’ perceptions related to Autonomy. The specific objective was to identify the strategies that promoted autonomy in Teachers of English as a Foreign Language -TEFL- in different public schools in Bogota, Colombia. The study is, therefore, particularly significant as it can play a role in encouraging Colombian English as a Foreign Language -EFL- teachers to relate the factors needed to get a high quality in Education dynamics. Data indicated that the process heightened the teachers’ awareness of ‘self’ and practice. Autonomy also activated both the teachers’ ability to critically reflect on their context as well as focus on positive aspects of their practice through the willingness to improve their academic abilities and research production. Taken together, the findings serve as baseline data to further professional development in language assessment.
Short-term crisis - long-term problem? Addressing the youth employment challenge

This report is the first from our Missing Million research programme. It finds that young people are having an increasingly difficult time getting an initial foothold in the labour market and need to be better supported in school-to-work transitions. We analyse the characteristics of the young long-term unemployed and conduct a series of interviews with this group in order to set forth recommendations for policy-makers on targeting the issues faced by this demographic.
The Impact of Energy Consumption and Total Factor Productivity on Economic Growth Oil Producing African Countries

This study examines the factors which influence Economic Growth, measure the growth rate of total factor productivity (TFP) and examine the relationship between TFP, nonrenewable energy consumption and renewable energy consumption to economic growth in oil producing African countries. An augmented production function is employed to estimate the TFP. In addition, a panel cointegration and a fixed effect model in a Pooled least squares are used to examine the relationship among the variables. The findings suggest that the growth rate of total factor productivity is negative. The panel estimations indicate a significant relationship between economic growth, non-renewable energy consumption, renewable energy consumption, capital and human capital development. The Granger causality test indicates that there is a unidirectional causality from non-renewable energy to growth but bidirectional causality between renewable energy and growth in the long run. The study recommends investment in commercial sources of renewable energy to boost energy supply and investment in factors that will enhance TFP growth.
Smell Detection in Context

Good design is essential for long-term evolvability of software systems. To reduce the required additional short-term effort appropriate tools are highly desirable. The most promising approach [3] combines basic metrics to build complex heuristics to detect refactoring opportunities (design smells). We still saw backed by a questionnaire survey in [5] the need to systematically improve this approach. The problems we want to address are:
0 00 90 19 v 2 1 7 Ju n 20 01 The Limits of Information

Black holes have their own thermodynamics including notions of entropy and temperature and versions of the three laws. After a light introduction to black hole physics, I recollect how black hole thermodynamics evolved in the 1970’s, while at the same time stressing conceptual points which were given little thought at that time, such as why the entropy should be linear in the black hole’s surface area. I also review a variety of attempts made over the years to provide a statistical mechanics for black hole thermodynamics. Finally, I discuss the origin of the information bounds for ordinary systems that have arisen as applications of black hole thermodynamics.
Implementation cost of the Huffman-Shannon-Fano code

An efficient implementation of a Huffman code can be based on the Shannon-Fano construction. An important question is exactly how complex is such an implementation. In the past authors have considered this question assuming an ordered source symbol alphabet. In the case of the compression of blocks of binary symbols this ordering must be performed explicitly and it turns out to be the complexity bottleneck.