Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Accounting GAAPs and Accounting Treatments for Management of Property: Case Studies from Greek Real Estate Market

The present article reconciles the GAAP3 to each other, which apply to accounting recording of fixed assets. It separates the fixed assets, from the side of buyer, as Own Used, Investments, and Inventories and integrates these types of assets into four main portfolio categories. It examines, what are the features to incorporate an element of fixed assets in these portfolios. It analyzes the accounting treatments for each portfolio transaction and the impact of any accounting entry to equity and profit and loss account. It presents the key accounting profitability metrics for any kind of fixed asset. The subject of the article focuses on land and buildings as main part of the total fixed assets of a company. It discusses the influence of taxations and other expenditures at purchase time on the cost and tries to establish a purchase price allocation method for property acquisition. It describes the accounting entries for the revenues, expenses and valuations per portfolio. It makes a comparative analysis between Greek GAAP, IFRS4 and U.S GAAP for accounting treatments of fixed assets. Finally, it uses the framework of Greek Real Estate Market as experimental setting where the principles of Historic Cost and Fair Value Accounting can be compared. The contribution of this article is that it surveys from a critical perspective, principles, literature and the practice about all the above issues, and presents from accounting point of view a way to managing and monitoring real estate investments.
Improvement of location aided routing protocol in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks on highway

Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET) is an instance of MANETs that establishes wireless connections between vehicles. Recently, it was shown for the case of highway traffic that position-based routing protocols can very well deal with the high mobility of network vehicles. In VANETs, these routing protocols must be adapted to vehicular-specific capabilities and requirements. As many previous works have shown, routing performance is greatly dependent on the availability and stability of wireless links. This work proposes a small extension to the Location Aided Routing (LAR) protocol specific to highway scenarios. We seek to improve the stability of path between sources and destinations by removing from the paths the nodes that move in opposite direction of the source movement. The performance metrics such as average delay of stability path between source and destination, packet delivery ratio (PDR), throughput, and normalized routing load (NRL) are measured using ns2. The Intelligent Driver Model with Lane Changing (IDM_LC) based on VanetMobiSim tool is used to generate realistic mobility traces in highway.
Linear Optimal FIR Estimation of Discrete Time-Invariant State-Space Models

This paper addresses a general p-shift linear optimal finite impulse response (FIR) estimator intended for solving universally the problems of filtering (p = 0), smoothing (p < 0), and prediction (p > 0) of discrete time-invariant models in state space. An optimal solution is found in the batch form with the initial mean square state function self-determined by solving the discrete algebraic Riccati equation. An unbiased solution represented both in the batch and recursive forms does not involve any knowledge about noise and initial state. The mean square errors in both the optimal and unbiased estimates are found via the noise power gain (NPG) and a recursive algorithm for fast computation of the NPG is supplied. Applications are given for FIR filtering with fixed, receding, and full averaging horizons.
Assessment of usability metrics for object-oriented software system

The demand for efficient software is increasing day by day. For this reason software developers need appropriate metrics for the development of software applications. Usability is one of the most important fields in software engineering and a highly focused quality factor. It is a key factor in the development of successful software applications. Object-oriented design techniques have become one of the most powerful mechanisms to develop efficient software system. Object-oriented software can play important role in usability for software applications. It can not only help in reducing the cost but also in developing highly usable software systems. This paper focuses some important issues and analyzes the relationship between usability and object-oriented metrics
Impact of process variations on emerging memristor

The memristor, known as the fourth basic two-terminal circuit element, has attracted many research interests since the first real device was developed by HP labs in 2008. The nano-scale memristive device has the potential to construct some novel computing systems because of its distinctive characters, such as non-volatility, non-linearity, low-power, and good scalability. These electrical characteristics of memristors are mainly determined by the material characteristic and the fabrication process. For example, process variations may cause the deviation of the actual electrical behavior of memristors from the original design and result in the malfunction of the device. Therefore, it is very important to understand and characterize the impact of process variations on the electrical behaviors of the memristor and its implication to the circuit design. In this paper, we analyze the impact of the geometry variations on the electrical characteristics of the memristor. Two parameters — NARD (Normalized Accumulative Resistance Deviation) and NAARD (Normalized Accumulative Absolute Resistance Deviation), are introduced to measure the fluctuation of the overall internal state (or the resistance) of a memristor under the impact of process variations. Based on our analysis, Monte-Carlo simulations are conducted to evaluate the device mismatch effects in the memristor-based memory.
Effects of the Revised Food Packages for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) in Connecticut

©1999–2012 CHOICES. All rights reserved. Articles may be reproduced or electronically distributed as long as attribution to Choices and the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association is maintained. Choices subscriptions are free and can be obtained through http://www.choicesmagazine. org. AAEA Agricultural & Applied Economics Association A publication of the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association
Characterising a Microsatellite for DRB Typing in Aotus vociferans and Aotus nancymaae (Platyrrhini)

Non-human primates belonging to the Aotus genus have been shown to be excellent experimental models for evaluating drugs and vaccine candidates against malaria and other human diseases. The immune system of this animal model must be characterised to assess whether the results obtained here can be extrapolated to humans. Class I and II major histocompatibility complex (MHC) proteins are amongst the most important molecules involved in response to pathogens; in spite of this, the techniques available for genotyping these molecules are usually expensive and/or time-consuming. Previous studies have reported MHC-DRB class II gene typing by microsatellite in Old World primates and humans, showing that such technique provides a fast, reliable and effective alternative to the commonly used ones. Based on this information, a microsatellite present in MHC-DRB intron 2 and its evolutionary patterns were identified in two Aotus species (A. vociferans and A. nancymaae), as well as its potential for genotyping class II MHC-DRB in these primates.
Design and Evaluation of a Cochlear Implant Strategy Based on a “Phantom” Channel

Unbalanced bipolar stimulation, delivered using charge balanced pulses, was used to produce “Phantom stimulation”, stimulation beyond the most apical contact of a cochlear implant’s electrode array. The Phantom channel was allocated audio frequencies below 300Hz in a speech coding strategy, conveying energy some two octaves lower than the clinical strategy and hence delivering the fundamental frequency of speech and of many musical tones. A group of 12 Advanced Bionics cochlear implant recipients took part in a chronic study investigating the fitting of the Phantom strategy and speech and music perception when using Phantom. The evaluation of speech in noise was performed immediately after fitting Phantom for the first time (Session 1) and after one month of take-home experience (Session 2). A repeated measures of analysis of variance (ANOVA) within factors strategy (Clinical, Phantom) and interaction time (Session 1, Session 2) revealed a significant effect for the interaction time and strategy. Phantom obtained a significant improvement in speech intelligibility after one month of use. Furthermore, a trend towards a better performance with Phantom (48%) with respect to F120 (37%) after 1 month of use failed to reach significance after type 1 error correction. Questionnaire results show a preference for Phantom when listening to music, likely driven by an improved balance between high and low frequencies.
Implementation and Evaluation of Caching Method to Increase the Speed of UPnP Gateway

The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) works toward a vision of an interoperable network of PCs, home appliances and mobile devices in the home, enabling a seamless environment for sharing and growing new digital media and content services with UPnP technology. However, UPnP device interaction is currently only available in a single local area network (LAN). UPnP gateway technology has been proposed as an application level gateway in order to make devices connected to the different LAN interact. One problem with the UPnP gateway is that it takes several seconds to discover a device on another LAN. One of the reasons for this is the multicast message from the process, which needs to create a new connection between gateways when the UPnP gateway replies to the device search request from a device on the other LAN. In this paper, we propose as a solution to this problem a caching method designed to increase the speed of the UPnP gateway for the device search request. We implement and evaluate the prototype of the proposed system and verify that we improve the response time for the search procedure by using the caching method.
Yield and Cost Modeling for 3D Chip Stack Technologies

It has been shown that stacking a set of known good dice into a 3D chip array may be beneficial in terms of system performance and footprint area. This paper demonstrates that, in the general sense, it is also beneficial to arrange chips into a 3D stack from yield and cost perspectives. It is shown that an optimal point occurs where cost is minimized by stacking an appropriate amount of dice into a single system
Dynamic layer representation with applications to tracking

A dynamic layer representation is proposed for tracking moving objects. Previous work on layered representations has largely concentrated on two-/multi-frame batch formulations, and tracking research has not addressed the issue of joint estimation of object motion ownership and appearance. The paper extends the estimation of layers in a dynamic scene to incremental estimation formulation and demonstrates how this naturally solves the tracking problem. The three components of the dynamic layer representation, namely, layer motion, ownership, and appearance, are estimated simultaneously over time in a MAP framework. In order to enforce a global shape constraint and to maintain the layer segmentation over time, a parametric segmentation prior is proposed. The generalized EM algorithm is employed to compute the optimal solution. We show the results on real-time tracking of multiple moving or static objects in a cluttered scene imaged from a moving aerial video camera. The moving objects may do complex motions, and have complex interactions such as passing. By using both the appearance and the segmentation information, many difficult tracking tasks are reliably handled.
Experimental study on 1×4 real-time SIMO diversity reception scheme for a ultraviolet communication system

We firstly applied diversity reception technology to a real-time none-light-of-sight (NLOS) ultraviolet (UV) communication system based on a 9.3mW LED array. Field experiment with 4 receivers (Rxs) achieves bit error rate (BER) improvement, and related conclusions on single-input-multiple-output (SIMO) UV system design are given. Innovatively, the correlation characteristics in UV channel are studied according to measurements of two branches. Experiment result shows that once the transmission distance goes beyond 20m, the value of correlation coefficient remains to be less than 0.4, in which case the Rx branches can be considered to be fading independently, thus achieving diversity gain for the system.
Legislative Politics in Latin America: Tables and Figures

Tables and figures Contributors preface and acknowledgements Party names and other acronyms and abbreviations 1. Towards a model of Latin American legislatures Scott Morgenstern Part I. Executive-Legislative Relations: 2. Oscillating relations: president and congress in Argentina Anna Maria Mustapic 3. Presidential cabinets, electoral cycles and coalition discipline in Brazil Octavio Amorim Neto 4. Exaggerated presidentialism and moderate presidents: executive-legislative relations in Chile Peter M. Siavelis 5. Executive-legislative relations: the case of Mexico (1946-97) Ma. Amparo Casar Part II. Political Parties and Legislative Structure: 6. Explaining the high level of party discipline in the Argentine congress Mark P. Jones 7. Party discipline in the chamber of deputies Barry Ames 8. Parties, coalitions and the Chilean congress in the 1990s John M. Carey 9. Understanding party discipline in the Mexican chamber of deputies: the centralized party model Benito Nacif Part III. Legislatures and the Policy Process: 10. Fiscal policy making in the Argentine legislature Kent H. Eaton 11. Progressive ambition, federalism and pork-barreling in Brazil David Samuels 12. Appointment, re-election and autonomy in the senate of Chile John Londregan 13. The legal and partisan framework of the legislative delegation of the budget in Mexico Jeffrey A. Weldon Part IV. Conclusions: 14. Explaining legislative politics in Latin America Scott Morgenstern 15. Epilogue: Latin America's reactive assemblies and proactive presidents Gary W. Cox and Scott Morgenstern References Author index General index.
Assessing suitability of similarity coefficients in measuring human mental models

Understanding human mental models is important for designers to build their interactive systems or training programs. Human mental models can be realized and quantified through the card sorting technique and the employment of similarity coefficients. However, an apparent lack of justification for the choice of employed similarity coefficients in previous studies shows the necessity of research on this subject. In this study, we applied the card sorting technique, questionnaires and statistical analysis to assess eight different similarity coefficients. Results showed that five similarity coefficients, Anderberg, Dice, Jaccard, Ochiai, and Ochiai II, were relatively suitable in measuring human mental models compared to the other three coefficients, Rogers-Tanimoto, Russell-Rao, and Simple Matching. The results may be due to the major difference of these similarity coefficients in including or excluding the count of the number of categories in which a concerned pair of cards was not present. Potential gender effect on similarity judgment was found and discussed. The findings of this study can provide useful guidelines for the use of similarity coefficients in measuring human mental models.
Placebo-controlled, double-blind, prospective, randomized study on the effect of octreotide LAR in the control of tumor growth in patients with metastatic neuroendocrine midgut tumors: a report from the PROMID Study Group.

PURPOSE Somatostatin analogs are indicated for symptom control in patients with gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (NETs). The ability of somatostatin analogs to control the growth of well-differentiated metastatic NETs is a matter of debate. We performed a placebo-controlled, double-blind, phase IIIB study in patients with well-differentiated metastatic midgut NETs. The hypothesis was that octreotide LAR prolongs time to tumor progression and survival. PATIENTS AND METHODS Treatment-naive patients were randomly assigned to either placebo or octreotide LAR 30 mg intramuscularly in monthly intervals until tumor progression or death. The primary efficacy end point was time to tumor progression. Secondary end points were survival time and tumor response. This report is based on 67 tumor progressions and 16 observed deaths in 85 patients at the time of the planned interim analysis. RESULTS Median time to tumor progression in the octreotide LAR and placebo groups was 14.3 and 6 months, respectively (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.34; 95% CI, 0.20 to 0.59; P = .000072). After 6 months of treatment, stable disease was observed in 66.7% of patients in the octreotide LAR group and 37.2% of patients in the placebo group. Functionally active and inactive tumors responded similarly. The most favorable effect was observed in patients with low hepatic tumor load and resected primary tumor. Seven and nine deaths were observed in the octreotide LAR and placebo groups, respectively. The HR for overall survival was 0.81 (95% CI, 0.30 to 2.18). CONCLUSION Octreotide LAR significantly lengthens time to tumor progression compared with placebo in patients with functionally active and inactive metastatic midgut NETs. Because of the low number of observed deaths, survival analysis was not confirmatory.
A Genome-Wide Meta-Analysis of Six Type 1 Diabetes Cohorts Identifies Multiple Associated Loci

Diabetes impacts approximately 200 million people worldwide, of whom approximately 10% are affected by type 1 diabetes (T1D). The application of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) has robustly revealed dozens of genetic contributors to the pathogenesis of T1D, with the most recent meta-analysis identifying in excess of 40 loci. To identify additional genetic loci for T1D susceptibility, we examined associations in the largest meta-analysis to date between the disease and ∼2.54 million SNPs in a combined cohort of 9,934 cases and 16,956 controls. Targeted follow-up of 53 SNPs in 1,120 affected trios uncovered three new loci associated with T1D that reached genome-wide significance. The most significantly associated SNP (rs539514, P = 5.66×10−11) resides in an intronic region of the LMO7 (LIM domain only 7) gene on 13q22. The second most significantly associated SNP (rs478222, P = 3.50×10−9) resides in an intronic region of the EFR3B (protein EFR3 homolog B) gene on 2p23; however, the region of linkage disequilibrium is approximately 800 kb and harbors additional multiple genes, including NCOA1, C2orf79, CENPO, ADCY3, DNAJC27, POMC, and DNMT3A. The third most significantly associated SNP (rs924043, P = 8.06×10−9) lies in an intergenic region on 6q27, where the region of association is approximately 900 kb and harbors multiple genes including WDR27, C6orf120, PHF10, TCTE3, C6orf208, LOC154449, DLL1, FAM120B, PSMB1, TBP, and PCD2. These latest associated regions add to the growing repertoire of gene networks predisposing to T1D.
A Base Case Scenario for the Dynamic GTAP Model

Paper developed for the Short Course on the Dynamic Model, October, 2000. The increasing interest in dynamic models and in particular the development of the Dynamic GTAP model at the Center for Global Trade Analysis has highlighted the need to develop a base case scenario depicting how the world economy might be expected the change over the next 20 years. The purpose of this paper is to show how such a base case scenario has been created for use with the Dynamic GTAP model (Ianchovichina, 1998 and Ianchovichina, McDougall and Hertel, 1999) and GTAP data base. This document is intended to be used in conjunction with a base case aggregation program which was constructed at the Center for Global Trade Analysis. This program takes as its inputs macro and policy forecasts and allows the user to: 1) alter various assumptions about the implementation of policies; and 2) aggregate over time, regions and commodities; to obtain a base case scenario which is specific to their needs. Although the base case program is specifically designed with the Dynamic GTAP model in mind, it is general enough to be used with other models. It should be noted however, that the base case scenario developed here is very general, it looks only at the standard macro aggregates and does not provide alternative optimistic or pessimistic scenarios.
Assessing the Economic Returns to Investing in Youth in Developing Countries

This paper explores the economic case for investments in youth in developing countries. The current cohort of youth is the largest cohort ever. The economic, social, and demographic context of their lives has undergone enormous change, thus requiring a rethinking and re-evaluation of the range of investments in youth. This reappraisal must incorporate a number of critical features including recognition of the wide range of youth investments, the considerable lag in effects, and the likelihood that youth investments in one area affect investments and behavior in other areas. The paper examines forty-one investments in the following broad categories: formal schooling; civilian and military training, work; reproductive health; school-based health; other health; and community and other. The paper develops a life-cycle approach using cost-benefit analysis to calculate the economic returns to investments in youth. However, the information necessary to apply the methodology is sufficient for only a few investments in a few countries. Moreover, even for these cases, the estimated economic returns vary widely depending on the assumptions used. Despite these limitations, the available evidence suggests that some types of investments in youth, e.g., investments in formal schooling, adult basic education and literacy, some types of school-based health investments (e.g., micronutrient supplements and, under certain circumstances, reproductive health programs), and measures designed to reduce the consumption of tobacco (e.g., increases in the tobacco tax), yield economic returns that are at least as high as are those for many investments in other sectors. The lack of reliable information on the effects of many investments in youth is the most important information gap and the area meriting the highest priority for future research.
On the Scattering by Buried Objects

The scattering problem by a set of buried circular cross section cylinders is considered. A scenario with cylinders buried in a dielectric slab between two semi-infinite half-spaces is solved by means of Cylindrical Wave Approach (CWA). The same technique is also applied to the scattering by cylinders under a rough surface of separation between two semi-infinite media. In the latter case, the CWA is combined with a perturbative solution, since small surface roughnesses are supposed. Solutions can be found for both perfectly-conducting or dielectric objects, both in near and far-field region. A finite and arbitrary number of cylinders can be used. Moreover, cylindrical objects with arbitrary cross-section are simulated in the numerical results.