Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Regional Separatism in Russia: Ethnic Mobilisation or Power Grab?

WHAT ROLE DID ETHNIC REVIVAL PLAY in the push for sovereignty among Russia's ethnic republics during the transition from a communist Soviet Union to a postcommunist Russian Federation? Many scholars and politicians believe that the sovereignty drive among former autonomous republics in Russia was orchestrated primarily to preserve the communist-era local elite's control over their regions and to increase their power vis-d-vis the central government. ' To the extent that issues are said to figure in the parade of sovereignty, they concern economic independence, not ethno-cultural revival. In fact, ethnic self-determination is viewed almost as a front for 'what is really going on', rhetoric designed to make the local accretion of power conform to international norms.2 Roeder and Treisman have been the strongest proponents of this point of view. Roeder argues that 'while the concern with identity politics focuses on the attributes of ethnic groups and their grievances, . the explanation for these phenomena lies . in the pursuit of political survival by politicians'. 3 Arguing from a rational choice perspective, Roeder believes that minority ethnic politicians in the Russian Federation were concerned almost exclusively with retaining political control over their regions. For this reason, they focused primarily on instrumental concerns such as increasing the wealth and fiscal autonomy of the region. The leaders' success was determined by their ability to provide selective material incentives to their followers in their republics. The provision of expressive incentives was necessary only in order 'to give regional leaders an advantage over competitors offering non-ethnic agendas'. 4 Because ethnic and cultural benefits were public goods which could not be denied to the followers of political opponents, their actual provision did not benefit the regional leaders. In this situation, ethnic rhetoric was sufficient to convince members of the ethnic community that the regional leader was part of the group and predispose them toward supporting the leader. Material incentives would ensure that a sufficient number of these potential supporters would actually rally to the cause. Treisman believes that separatism in Russia was often simply a tool to increase regional wealth at the expense of the central government. He writes: 'Separatist threats may, at times, be bids to increase a region's financial dependence on the centre. Rather than expressions of primordial cultural aspirations, they may constitute weapons in a competitive struggle to extract a larger share of centrally bestowed benefits'. 5 Solnick, in an article focused primarily on federal bargaining, notes that the leaders of the ethnic republics attempted to justify their privileged status in the
Estimation of localized dynamic loads by means of sparse optimization

The identification of system parameters using forward approaches is not always practical due to the rising complexity of modern structures, leaving no chance for direct parameter measurements. In contrast to forward methods, inverse techniques have been gaining popularity, since the advent of high performing computers. This approach consists of the computation of input parameters of a system, with known output data and the system model. When the number of equations (sensors) becomes lower than the amount of unknowns (input parameters), or when the condition number of the system is high, the problem does not have a unique solution. The system becomes under-determined and highly sensitive to input perturbations. The discrete force identification problem in mechanics consists of estimating the applied force locations and their corresponding time history based on measured structural responses. In this article, the applicability of a recently proposed force identification technique (G-FISTA) will be tested using a real-life measurement on a footbridge. This iterative algorithm promotes structured sparsity in the force vector. This algorithm creates a new mathematical setting for the inverse problem, and then solves it using a mixed cost function of group-penalized least squares. This study shows that the location and time history of discrete forces applied on a footbridge can be correctly estimated using the proposed technique.
The Device for Diagnosis and Treatment of the Cervical Spine

This paper presents an innovative method of automating a medical study, which is commonly used to assess the dysfunction of the cervical spine and for its rehabilitation. The diagnosis is based on determining the scope and dynamics of the motion that the patient is able to perform with his head. The measuring device is attached to the patient's head. After the start of the study, it tracks its own position with the use of integrated sensors of the linear and angular acceleration. The system is also equipped with the magnetometer, which may help find the device's absolute orientation in space. Using information from the sensors, the computer determines the angle of elevation of the head and angle of its rotation around the vertical axis. The test was earlier performed by attaching a laser pointer to the patient's head, and observing how he follows the defined shapes with the laser spot. In the proposed method the cursor is displayed along with the shapes, required for the study, using a multimedia projector. Because both, the spot position and the geometry of the displayed paths are stored in computer memory, it is possible to quickly and accurately determine how far from the defined shape is the pointer located. 1. The Idea
Probabilistic Detection and Estimation of Conic Sections From Noisy Data

Abstract Inferring unknown conic sections on the basis of noisy data is a challenging problem with applications in computer vision. A major limitation of the currently available methods for conic sections is that estimation methods rely on the underlying shape of the conics (being known to be ellipse, parabola, or hyperbola). A general purpose Bayesian hierarchical model is proposed for conic sections and corresponding estimation method based on noisy data is shown to work even when the specific nature of the conic section is unknown. The model, thus, provides probabilistic detection of the underlying conic section and inference about the associated parameters of the conic section. Through extensive simulation studies where the true conics may not be known, the methodology is demonstrated to have practical and methodological advantages relative to many existing techniques. In addition, the proposed method provides probabilistic measures of uncertainty of the estimated parameters. Furthermore, we observe high fidelity to the true conics even in challenging situations, such as data arising from partial conics in arbitrarily rotated and nonstandard form, and where a visual inspection is unable to correctly identify the type of conic section underlying the data. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.
Antibacterial Activity of Aegopodium podagraria L. Extracts and Interaction Between Extracts and Antibiotics

Antibacterial activities of aqueous, ethanol, and ethyl acetate extracts of Aegopodium podagraria L. (Apiaceae) were tested in vitro against 6 bacteria species. Antibacterial properties were determined by disk diffusion and tube dilution method. Based on the minimal inhibitory concentrations (MIC), the ethanol extract showed the highest activity (1.25-5 mg/ml). Among the tested bacteria, the most sensitive species were Enterobacter cloacae, Klebsiella pneumonia, and Pseudomonas fluorescens, while the most resistant was Staphylococcus aureus. Ethanol extract was chosen to investigate the effects of its combinations with commercial antibiotics by the checkerboard method. Results showed that the interactions between ethanol extract/streptomycin and ethanol extract/chloramphenicol were synergistic, additive, and indifferent against the tested human-pathogenic bacteria. Synergism was observed in relation to Bacillus subtilis. Synergy was confirmed at an ethanol extract concentration corresponding to 1/4 MIC and antibiotic concentrations corresponding to 1/4 MIC and lower.
Mixture Models for Image Analysis

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Mixture Models for Image Analysis Florence Forbes
Binary mixture of Bose-Einstein condensates in a double-well potential: Berry phase and two-mode entanglement

A binary mixtures of Bose-Einstein condensate structures exhibit an incredible richness in terms of holding different kinds of phases. Depending on the ratio of the inter- and intra-atomic interactions, the transition from mixed to separated phase, which is also known as the miscibility-immiscibility transition, has been reported in different setups and by different groups. Here, we describe such type of quantum phase transition in an effective Hamiltonian approach, by applying Holstein-Primakoff transformation in the limit of large number of particles. We demonstrate that non-trivial geometric phase near the critical coupling is present, which confirms the connection between Berry phase and quantum phase transition. We also show that, by using the spin form of Hillery & Zubairy criterion, a two mode entanglement accompanies this transition in the limit of large, but not infinite number of particles.
Symplectic Keys and Demazure Atoms in Type C

We compute, mimicking the Lascoux-Schützenberger type A combinatorial procedure, left and right keys for a Kashiwara-Nakashima tableau in type C. These symplectic keys have a similar role as the keys for semistandard Young tableaux. More precisely, our symplectic keys give a tableau criterion for the Bruhat order on the hyperoctahedral group and cosets, and describe Demazure atoms and characters in type C. The right and the left symplectic keys are related through the Lusztig involution. A type C Schützenberger evacuation is defined to realize that involution.
Job Matching and the Returns to Educational Signals

This paper develops a multi-period model, in which workers are matched with jobs according to imperfect educational signals and in which their subsequent productivities depend on both their inherent ability and on the quality of the job match. It outlines a sequential process, in which underpaid employees reveal their true productivities and overpaid employees are detected by the firm until every match is perfect. The model produces a time path of the returns to educational signals that is concave, a feature that earlier studies used to dismiss educational signaling. Using a synthetic panel data set from the Current Population Survey the theoretical result is then substantiated empirically. The paper contributes to the literature by establishing the possibility of increasing returns to education over part of a workers life within the signaling framework theoretically and empirically.
Assessing the capability of a corporate technology intelligence unit in identifying technology trends

Companies need to constantly adapt to their environment to ensure long term survival and economic success. In such an environment, technology trends can have a significant impact on the business for a technology intensive firm such as SKF. Therefore, these companies should be proactive in identifying and anticipating technology trends early on. This thesis deals with the use of technology intelligence by a business unit to identify technology trends. More specifically, in the context of SKF, this thesis was commissioned by the Renewable Application Development Centre (ReADC) operating within the Renewable Energy Business Unit (ReBU) to investigate the potential contribution of Group Technology Intelligence (GTI) in identifying and anticipating technological trends in the wind industry. The initial assumption of the business unit was that defining a search query to search in patent and publication databases together with GTI will provide valuable insights regarding early signals of technology trends. This search should then be carried out periodically, providing the business unit with regular updates.
Weibo Information Propagation Dissemination Based on User Behavior Using ELM

Information dissemination prediction based on Weibo has been a hot topic in recent years. In order to study this, people always extract features and use machine learning algorithms to do the prediction. But there are some disadvantages. Aiming at these deficiencies, we proposed a new feature, the dependency between the Weibos involved in geographical locations and location of the user. We use ELM to predict behaviors of users. An information dissemination prediction model has also been proposed in this paper. Experimental results show that our proposed new feature is real and effective, and the model we proposed can accurately predict the scale of information dissemination. It also can be seen in the experimental results that the use of ELM significantly reduces the time, and it has a better performance than the traditional method based on SVM.
Cytological Studies of Protein Bodies of Developing Wheat Endosperm

Fluorescence microscopy of thin sections of developing wheat endosperm previously fixed with osmium tetroxide and stained with acridine orange was used to study cellular development. Starch fonnation is predominant in the early period after flowering. The fine structure of developing endosperm cells was studied by electron microscopy of thin sections fixed and stained with osmium tetroxide or with potassium permanganate, or with formaldehyde followed by potassiumpermanganate. In addition to starch granules, numerous dense spheroidal bodies were observed. The staining reactions and the increase in numbers during growth indicated that the bodies probably consisted of storage protein. Observations on the occurrence of these protein bodies were made with three wheat varieties during two growing seasons (1959 and 1960). Based on the cytological evidence, the origin and intracellular localization of protein bodies is discussed.
Enhanced photodegradation of di(2-ethyl)hexyl phthalate by Molecularly Imprinted titanium dioxide

To enhance the photocatalytic degradation efficiency and selectivity of di(2-ethyl)hexyl phthalate (DEHP), molecularly imprinted TiO 2 (MIP-TiO 2 ) was synthesized with di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate as template molecule. The as-prepared MIP-TiO 2 was characterized by Field emission scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier infrared spectroscopy (FI-IR), UV-Visible diffuse reflection spectroscopy (UV-Vis) and photoluminescence spectroscopy (PL). The selective adsorption and photocatalytic activity of MIP-TiO 2 for DEHP were studied. The results show that DEHP molecularly imprinted polymer was coated on the surface of TiO 2 . The light-response of MIP-TiO 2 was broadened. The photo-generated electron/hole recombination on the surface of TiO 2 decreased. The selective recognition to DEHP was improved. Compared with TiO 2 , MIP-TiO 2 exhibited higher photocatalytic activity and selectivity to DEHP. The photocatalytic degradation efficiency of DEHP (5mg/L) by MIP-TiO 2 was 89%. The photocatalytic degradation rate of DEHP by MIP-TiO 2 is 1.5 times that by TiO 2 . MIP-TiO 2 could be reused.
Firm Entry and Exit with Unbounded Productivity Growth

In Hopenhayn's (1992) entry-exit model productivity is bounded, implying that the predicted firm size distribution cannot match the power law tail observable in the data. In this paper we remove the boundedness assumption and, in this more general setting, provide an exact characterization of existence of stationary equilibria, as well as a novel sufficient condition for existence based on treating production as a Lyapunov function. We also provide new representations of the rate of entry and aggregate supply. Finally, we prove that the firm size distribution has a power law tail under a very broad set of productivity growth specifications.
Software Deployment Based on Peer-to-Peer

In the past few years, along with cluster systems being broadly deployed in many application fields, large-scale clusters have become the mainstream of the high-end computing, while the bandwidth of interconnection networks is relatively low. The bottleneck of the deployment server, brought about by the low bandwidth of the interconnection networks in Cluster Systems, is making it more and more difficult to deploy software in a large-scale cluster. This paper proposes a cluster software deployment system ---PDeploy ---which achieves the goal of rapidly deploying software in very large-scale cluster systems with only one initial deployment server by combining DHT and the improved P2P swarming mechanism. Based on the result of our experiment, PDeploy is presenting a better performance than other well-known resource distribution systems both when deploying largely requested software and little requested software with highly loaded servers. Keywords-peer; deployment server; cluster; fast deployment; software resources
“Effort-As-Information”: the Impact of Decision-Related Effort on Subsequent Evaluation and Price Judgment

Background Decision-related effort is an important factor in understanding consumers’ decision-making and consumption behavior. For example, it is assumed that consumers attempt to reduce decision-related effort in their decision-making (Bettman, Luce, and Payne 1998; Payne, Bettman, and Johnson 1993). In fact, several research streams suggest a direct relationship between effort and decision-making. Particularly speaking, they suggest that effort influences: (i) the selection of decision heuristics (e.g., compensatory vs. noncompensatory rules, Payne, Bettman, and Johnson 1993); (ii) the justification for choosing luxury over necessity goods or choosing a more-risky over a less-risky option (Kivetz 2003; Kivetz and Simonson 2002); and (iii) the evaluation of objects (Kruger, Wirtz, Boven, and Altermatt 2004). Specifically, Kruger et al. (2004) introduce the concept of “effort heuristics. ” They propose that people have a tendency to use effort as a basis for their evaluations. They provide empirical evidence by showing that the participants in their study evaluated a poem more favorably when they thought that the poet took more time (i.e., 18 hours) to write the poem than when they thought that the poet took less time (i.e., 4 hours). In this study, the effort that the poet spent, however, is not related to the decision per se, and the decision-maker did not generate any decision–related effort. Thus, the effort investigated in Kruger et al. (2004)’s research involves other- rather than selfgenerated effort. In this study, we are more interested in investigating the impact of decision-related effort on product evaluation and price judgment toward a chosen option. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of self-generated or/and decision-related effort on the evaluation of a decision outcome (i.e., a chosen alternative).
Gauging the Effect of Internet Banking on Consumer Satisfaction in Ghana: An Empirical Study on Internet Banking in Ghana

The study examined whether or not consumers gain satisfaction from internet banking services in Ghana. It brings the perspectives of both bankers (internal consumers) and customers (external consumers) into the discussion and considers both parties as consumers. The study employed the SERVQUAL service quality dimensions and gap score methodology to evaluate consumer response on service quality and thus gauge their satisfaction levels. Findings from the study indicated that the general consensus of consumers was geared towards dissatisfaction. Consumers however were least dissatisfied with how online banking dealt with the promptness of services promised to be delivered. On the other hand, consumers were most dissatisfied with the unavailability of online customer service. One major implication of this study is that it is realistic and not unusual for consumers to express dissatisfaction. This means that better service quality is therefore indicated by less dissatisfaction.
Nanotwinned fcc metals: Strengthening versus softening mechanisms

The strengthening effect of twins in nanocrystalline metals has been reported both in experiment and simulation. While twins are mostly considered as effective barriers to dislocation slip transfer, they can also provide nucleation sites for dislocations or migrate during the deformation process, thereby contributing to plasticity. By comparing twinned and nontwinned samples, we study the effect of twins on the deformation behavior of nanocrystalline Cu and Pd using atomistic simulations. While Cu shows hardening due to the presence of twins, Pd shows the opposite effect. A quantitative dislocation analysis method is applied, which allows to analyze dislocation interactions with twin planes and grain boundaries and to measure dislocation, stacking fault, and twin-boundary densities as functions of strain. A statistical analysis of the occurring dislocation types provides direct evidence for the role of twin boundaries as effective sources for twinning dislocations, which are the reason for the observed softening in some fcc materials. In addition, we discuss how the orientation of the loading direction with respect to the twin planes affects the response of nanotwinned Cu and Pd.
Effects of saline and mannitol induced stress on some biochemical and physiological parameters of Carthamus tinctorius L. varieties callus cultures

Worldwide agricultural productivity is subjected to increase in environmental constraints, particularly drought and salinity. The aim of this study was to evaluate the physiological responses of safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) calli exposed to water stress and salinity in order to elucidate some acclimatory mechanisms. Therefore, different calli of safflower genotypes, G1 (LRV-51-51), G2 (Lesaf), G3 (Gila), G4 (Kino-76) and G5 (Isfahan), were exposed to different concentrations of mannitol and NaCl for one month. The ongoing research was conducted in order to evaluate relative growth rate, relative water content, tolerances index, ion (Na+ and K+) and proline content and cell viability of genotypes. The results indicated that a significant decrease in callus growth, water content and cell viability occurred under both stresses with the highest reduction under mannitol-induced osmotic stress. Although the leached and retained Na+ ion contents increased, the retained K+ content decreased with increasing levels of saline. While under mannitol-induced osmotic stress, Na+ remained unchanged but K+ concentration decreased significantly. So, overall results indicated that the accumulation of Na+ ions and osmolytes could play an important role in osmotic adjustment in safflower cells under saline stress. Also, among the studied genotypes, Gila genotype (G3) and Kino-76 (G4) showed higher cell viability, higher K+, Na+ and proline concentration. Furtheremore, both genotypes appeared to have a good efficiency in water retainment which can be considered as resistant cultivars to saline and mannitol iso-osmotic stresses respectively.