Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Handling Uncertainty of Strategic Ambitions—The Use of Organizational Identity as a Risk-Reducing Device

Organizational identity can be designed to reduce the risks of uncertainty about future states of public organizations and the inherent potential issues related to evaluation and assessment. As such, organizational identity may shape a congruent and credible self-representation of the university, where a consistent narrative articulates compliance to diverse institutional frameworks, commitment to organizational distinctiveness, and a sensible rationale for strategic change. By examining the strategic plans of four European universities over a 10-year period of major organizational change, the paper discusses the subtleties of the specific combinations of the three different functions and the implications for institutional leadership.
The role and function of chairs of university boards and councils

This qualitative research explores the role and function of chairs of university boards of governors and councils - their governing and ultimate decision-making bodies. It utilises in-depth studies of a small number of English universities, using as primary sources the chairs and other corporate leadership figures. Through interviews, supported by secondary source material from the universities, it reveals the interior workings of decision-making in higher education corporate governance, and the key role of these chairs. The research shows chairs as significant leadership figures in their universities, independent of management, and with distinctive domains of their own, the boundaries of which are contestable, particularly at the interface with the management domain. Their authority is considerable, yet contingent, derived from multiple sources, and reified though leadership of the lay majority of the governing body. The chair's role is shown not to be determined by the university's mission, though chairs demonstrate a level of `super-commitment' to their university, its values and academic work. Chairs determine how much time they will spend in their university, and it is considerable, engaging with extended, often informal, networks of contacts as well as in formal duties. Drawn from senior figures in employment, they look to their working experience to guide their conduct as chairs. The chairs are proactive in undertaking their work, appointing vice-chancellors, engaging in the determination of institutional strategy and monitoring its implementation. The chair/vice-chancellor dyad is confirmed as a significant, mutually beneficial working relationship: chairs in this study provide support, mentorship and advice, but also require accountability, as the de facto `managers' of their vicechancellors. The research shows that chairs may draw considerable authority from this association, in terms of engagement in, and information about, the university and its core academic business. Governance/management domain boundaries in the case study institutions were not as clearly differentiated as is often assumed in the governance literature, but are shown to be blurred, ambiguous, shifting and evolving.
OpenFlow Rules Interactions: Definition and Detection

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a promising architecture for computer networks that allows the development of complex and revolutionary applications, without breaking the backward compatibility with legacy networks. Programmability of the control-plane is one of the most interesting features of SDN, since it provides a higher degree of flexibility in network management: network operations are driven by ad-hoc written programs that substitute the classical combination of firewalls, routers and switches configurations performed in traditional networks. A successful SDN implementation is provided by the OpenFlow standard, that defines a rule-based programming model for the network. The development process of OpenFlow applications is currently a low-level, error prone programming exercise, mainly performed manually in both the implementation and verification phases. In this paper we provide a first formal classification of OpenFlow rules interactions into a single OpenFlow switch, and an algorithm to detect such interactions in order to aid the OpenFlow applications development. Moreover, we briefly present a performance evaluation of our prototype and how it has been used in a real-word application.
Investor Expectations and Fundamentals: Disappointment Ahead?

The average annual return of the S&P 500 since 1994 has exceeded 25 percent. Confidence is high and investors are looking forward to continued above-average returns. The authors of this Economic Commentary attempt to reconcile investors' expectations with a decline in the equity premium, using a standard approach to stock-price valuation.
PoPissue5 2 colour 18 oct 02 - A4 layout.pub

The PMA 2002 conference Performance Measurement and Management: Research and Action, was held in July and was a great success. It was the third international multidisciplinary conference on performance measurement and management but was the first to be held outside the UK, taking place at the World Trade Centre in Boston. The conference was co-chaired by Andy Neely, of Cranfield School of Management and Robert Austin of Harvard Business School.
Can Scholarships Alone Help Students Succeed? Lessons from Two New York City Community Colleges.

http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/quickreview.aspx? sid=20002[2/25/2013 11:53:44 AM] What is the study about? The study examined the effects of performance-based scholarships for low-income community college students (ages 22–35) who were required to enroll in remedial courses. The study evaluated the impact of the scholarships on continued community college enrollment, credits attempted and earned, and cumulative grade-point average (GPA). All study subjects were eligible for Pell Grants.
Subaru Deep Spectroscopy of the Very Extended Emission-Line Region of NGC 4388: Ram Pressure Stripped Gas Ionized by Nuclear Radiation

We report here the results of deep optical spectroscopy of the very extended emission-line region (VEELR) found serendipitously around the Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 4388 in the Virgo Cluster using the Subaru Telescope. The Hα recession velocities of most of the filaments of the region observed are highly blueshifted with respect to the systemic velocity of the galaxy. The velocity field is complicated, and from the kinematic and morphological points of view, there seem to be several streams of filaments: low-velocity filaments, with radial velocities v with respect to the systemic velocity of NGC 4388 of roughly -100 km s-1; high-velocity (v ∼ -300 km s-1) filaments; and a very high velocity (v ∼ -500 km s-1) cloud complex. The emission-line ratios of the VEELR filaments are well explained by power-law photoionization models with solar abundances, suggesting that the Seyfert nucleus of NGC 4388 is the dominant ionization source of the VEELR and that the VEELR gas has moderate metallicity. In addition to photoionization, shock heating probably contributes to the ionization of the gas. In particular, the filaments outside the ionization cone of the Seyfert nucleus are mainly excited by shocks. The predicted shock velocity is ∼200–300 km s-1, which is comparable to the velocities of the filaments. We conclude that the VEELR was formerly the disk gas of NGC 4388, which has been stripped by ram pressure due to the interaction between the hot intracluster medium and the galaxy. The velocity field and the morphology of the VEELR closely resemble snapshots from some numerical simulations of this process. In the case of NGC 4388, the ram pressure stripped gas, which is normally seen as extended H I filaments, happens to be exposed and ionized by the radiation from the active galactic nucleus, and so can be seen as optical emission-line gas.
Evaluation of Customised Lineage-Specific Sets of MIRU-VNTR Loci for Genotyping Mycobacterium tuberculosis Complex Isolates in Ghana

Background Different combinations of variable number of tandem repeat (VNTR) loci have been proposed for genotyping Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC). Existing VNTR schemes show different discriminatory capacity among the six human MTBC lineages. Here, we evaluated the discriminatory power of a “customized MIRU12” loci format proposed previously by Comas et al. based on the standard 24 loci defined by Supply et al. for VNTR-typing of MTBC in Ghana. Method One hundred and fifty-eight MTBC isolates classified into Lineage 4 and Lineage 5 were used to compare a customized lineage-specific panel of 12 MIRU-VNTR loci (“customized MIRU-12″) to the standard MIRU-15 genotyping scheme. The resolution power of each typing method was determined based on the Hunter-Gaston- Discriminatory Index (HGDI). A minimal set of customized MIRU-VNTR loci for typing Lineages 4 (Euro-American) and 5 (M. africanum West African 1) strains from Ghana was defined based on the cumulative HGDI. Results and Conclusion Among the 106 Lineage 4 strains, the customized MIRU-12 identified a total of 104 distinct genotypes consisting of 2 clusters of 2 isolates each (clustering rate 1.8%), and 102 unique strains while standard MIRU-15 yielded a total of 105 different genotypes, including 1 cluster of 2 isolates (clustering rate: 0.9%) and 104 singletons. Among, 52 Lineage 5 isolates, customized MIRU-12 genotyping defined 51 patterns with 1 cluster of 2 isolates (clustering rate: 0.9%) and 50 unique strains whereas MIRU-15 classified all 52 strains as unique. Cumulative HGDI values for customized MIRU-12 for Lineages 4 and 5 were 0.98 respectively whilst that of standard MIRU-15 was 0.99. A union of loci from the customised MIRU-12 and standard MIRU-15 revealed a set of customized eight highly discriminatory loci: 4052, 2163B, 40, 4165, 2165, 10,16 and 26 with a cumulative HGDI of 0.99 for genotyping Lineage 4 and 5 strains from Ghana.
Perception of Bump and Making a Response in an Autonomous Wheeled Mobile Robot

Although mobile robots are installed sensors to detect the environment, it is still hard to avoid bump. On the other hand, a bump with the robot can be taken as a way to communicate with it, so it is necessary for the robot to perceive bumps and make a reasonable responds to it. The paper introduces a method to sense a bump by detecting the vibration caused by it with a 2-D (two-dimensional) accelerometer fixed in a differential drive wheeled mobile robot. The vibration signals are converted to force signal, and a rule is set up to determine the bump direction angle according to the feature of vibration force. Since it is not easy to obtain the exact bump angle for all kinds of interferences, a responding policy is designed to make the robot react according to the region where the bump occurs. The experiments show that the robot can effectively detect the bump in a reasonable error range, and it can successfully find out the object that hit the robot in most cases
A query image based scene/image retrieval system

A query image based scene/image retrieval system is a system that analyzes the properties of a query image and identifies the class in which the image belongs and retrieves a number of images which are most alike and relevant to the query image. A scene/image classifier provides the first stage for this system. Scene classification is the process that analyzes the properties of various image features of a scene and organizes the scenes into categories. Programmed techniques for correlating scenes with labels have a high potential for improving the performance of computer vision applications such as searching, retrieval and object recognition. The scene category system uses the feature vectors extracted from image data to classify test images. We have implemented a k-nearest neighbour (kNN) classifier which uses gray scale and Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) features as input and used support vector machine (SVM) classifier that uses GIST features as input. kNN classifier is used, as it has an advantage of working with a large amount of data and SVM is robust even when the training sample has some bias. The performance measure of the classifier was evaluated using confusion matrix and classification accuracy. We considered MIT-8 scene category, leaves, Caltech-20 and deer data sets for our experiments. The classification accuracy was found to be good. Results show that classification accuracy is increased significantly for classification using GIST features in SVM classifiers. We are exploring methods to obtain optimal performance of classifiers.
Economic Growth, Structural Change and Quality Upgrading in New Member States

The purpose of this research is to present the recent developments concerning structural change and productivity growth in New Member States and the role played in such process by country specific factors. We focus on ten countries (NMS-10) which joined the EU in 2004 and analyze productivity dynamics of their labor structures between the years 1995 and 2005 in a comparative setting versus EU-15 economies. NMS-10 have gone through a rapid process of economic restructuring and its speed has been positively related to the economic development. However, shift-share analysis of productivity growth indicates that changes in value added per hour worked were due mainly to positive developments (rising productivity) within single sectors and only to a lower extent to the shift towards higher productivity sectors. The process of a structural change and productivity growth has been characterized by beta convergence type mechanism, with public spending (especially on education, social protection, public order and safety) and trade (in particular with more advanced EU-15 countries) promoting overall and intra-industry productivity upgrading.
Robust l 2 – l ∞ Filter for Uncertain Discrete-Time Switched Time-Delay Systems

This paper is concerned with the problem of robust l2–l∞ filter design for a class of uncertain switched time-delay systems based on a switched Lyapunov functional. The parametric uncertainties are assumed to be time varying but norm bounded. The purpose is to design a switched filter such that, for all admissible uncertainties, the resulting filtering error system is robustly stable and satisfies a prescribed l2–l∞ performance level. By introducing some extra matrices, a desired filter can be constructed by solving certain linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). A numerical example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
DNA-BASED SEMANTIC MEMORY WITH LINEAR STRANDS

In this work, a new DNA-based semantic model is proposed and described theoretically for implementing DNA-based semantic memories. This model, referred to as 'semantic model based on molecular computing' (SMC) has the structure of a graph formed by the set of all (attribute, attribute values) pairs contained in the set of repre- sented objects, plus a tag node for each object. Each path in the network, from an initial object-representing tag node to a terminal node represents the object named on the tag. Input of a set of input strands will result in the formation of object-representing dsDNAs via parallel self-assembly, from encoded ssDNAs representing both attributes and attribute values (nodes), as directed by ssDNA splinting strands representing relations (edges) in the network. We believe that the DNA-based semantic memory is very suitable for knowl- edge representation memorized with DNA molecules.
Complex spatial distribution and dynamics of an abundant Escherichia coli outer membrane protein, LamB

Advanced techniques for observing protein localization in live bacteria show that the distributions are dynamic. For technical reasons, most such techniques have not been applied to outer membrane proteins in Gram‐negative bacteria. We have developed two novel live‐cell imaging techniques to observe the surface distribution of LamB, an abundant integral outer membrane protein in Escherichia coli responsible for maltose uptake and for attachment of bacteriophage lambda. Using fluorescently labelled bacteriophage lambda tails, we quantitatively des‐cribed the spatial distribution and dynamic movement of LamB in the outer membrane. LamB accumulated in spiral patterns. The distribution depended on cell length and changed rapidly. The majority of the protein diffused along spirals extending across the cell body. Tracking single particles, we found that there are two populations of LamB – one shows very restricted diffusion and the other shows greater mobility. The presence of two populations recalls the partitioning of eukaryotic membrane proteins between ‘mobile’ and ‘immobile’ populations. In this study, we have demonstrated that LamB moves along the bacterial surface and that these movements are restricted by an underlying dynamic spiral pattern.
A Survey on Testing and Monitoring Methods for Stator Insulation Systems of Low-Voltage Induction Machines Focusing on Turn Insulation Problems

A breakdown of the electrical insulation system causes catastrophic failure of the electrical machine and brings large process downtime losses. To determine the conditions of the stator insulation system of motor drive systems, various testing and monitoring methods have been developed. This paper presents an in-depth literature review of testing and monitoring methods, categorizing them into online and offline methods, each of which is further grouped into specific areas according to their physical nature. The main focus of this paper is on testing and monitoring techniques that diagnose the condition of the turn-to-turn insulation of low-voltage machines, which is a rapidly expanding area for both research and product development efforts. In order to give a compact overview, the results are summarized in two tables. In addition to monitoring methods on turn-to-turn insulation, some of the most common methods to assess the stator's phase-to-ground and phase-to-phase insulation conditions are included in the tables as well.
More open but not more trusted? the effect of freedom of information on the UK central government

This article examines the impact of Britain's Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 2000 on British central government. The article identifies six objectives for FOI in the United Kingdom and then examines to what extent FOI has met them, briefly comparing the United Kingdom with similar legislation in Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada. It concludes that FOI has achieved the core objectives of increasing transparency and accountability, though the latter only in particular circumstances, but not the four secondary objectives: improved decision-making by government, improved public understanding, increased participation, and trust in government. This is not because the Act has “failed” but because the objectives were overly ambitious and FOI is shaped by the political environment in which it is placed.
Incentive effects of social security on labor force participation : evidence in Germany and across Europe * ̈

All across Europe, old age labor force participation has declined dramatically during the last decades. This secular trend coincides with population aging. The European social security systems therefore face a double threat: Retirees receive pensions for a longer time while there are less workers per retiree to shoulder the financial burden of the pension systems. This paper shows that a significant part of this problem is homemade: most European pension systems provide strong incentives to retire early. The correlation between the force of these incentives with old age labor force participation is strongly negative. The paper provides qualitative and econometric evidence for the strength of the incentive effects on old age labor supply across Europe and for the German public pension program.  2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.
Generic Attributes of IS Graduates: An Australian Academic View

This paper reports on a follow-up study that validates a group of generic attributes of graduates of Australian undergraduate degree programs with majors in Information Systems (IS). A three round Delphi questionnaire was used. Major findings include the high ratings of generic interpersonal attributes involving teamwork, problem definition, analysis of various solution, oral and written communication, listening are rated as essential team participation and the commitment to further learning and intellectual development. Oral and written communications are significantly rated as more important than a comprehensive knowledge of IS. There has been a shift in the top ranking attributes with information retrieval and defining problems in a systematic way being ranked above the previous studies top ranking attributes of teamwork and the commitment to further learning and intellectual development. This study has a very strong overall correlation with previous Australian and Queensland studies.
Blood vessels segmentation in nonmydriatic images using wavelets and statistical classifiers

This work describes a new framework for automatic analysis of optic fundus nonmydriatic images, focusing on the segmentation of the blood vessels by using pixel classification based on pattern recognition techniques. Each pixel is represented by a feature vector composed of color information and measurements at different scales taken from the continuous wavelet (Morlet) transform as well as from mean and order filtering applied to the green channel. The major benefit resulting from the wavelet application to the optic fundus images is its multiscale analysing capability in tuning to specific frequencies, thus allowing noise filtering and blood vessel enhancement in a single step. Supervised classifiers are then applied to label each pixel as either a vessel or a nonvessel. Two different strategies to select the training set have been devised: (1) the blood vessels of a sample image are completely drawn by hand, leading to a labeled image (i.e. vessels /spl times/ nonvessel pixels) which is used to train the classifier, to be applied to other images; (2) the vessels located in a given small portion of the target image are drawn by hand and the remaining fundus image is segmented by a classifier trained using the hand-drawn portion to define the training set. The latter strategy is particularly suitable for the implementation of a semiautomated software to be used by health workers in order to avoid the need of setting imaging parameters such as thresholds. Both strategies have been extensively assessed and several successful experimental results using real-case images have been obtained.
Regional Systems of Innovation: An Evolutionary Perspective

The authors develop the concept of regional systems of innovation and relate it to preexisting research on national systems of innovation. They argue that work conducted in the ‘new regional science’ field is complementary to systems of innovation approaches. They seek to link new regional work to evolutionary economics, and argue for the development of evolutionary regional science. Common elements of interest to evolutionary innovation research and new regional science are important in understanding processes of agglomeration, trust building, innovation, institutions, and learning in regional systems. The authors develop analytical frameworks for designating regional systems of innovation in terms of distinction between institutions and organisations, hard and soft infrastructures, and the cultural superstructure. They conclude that an evolutionary approach assists understanding of regional potential for developing systemic innovation.