Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Does diversity matter? A fresh inquiry into the energy, economy and environment nexus

ABSTRACT The article extends the literature on the nexus among economy, environment and energy by incorporating an index of electricity generation diversity in production and emission functions. The index is mathematically equivalent to Herfindahl–Hirschman index. The index captures substantial information regarding the ongoing energy transition at the global level. The results obtained through pooled mean group estimation, on a dataset of fairly diversified group of countries, indicate that if diversity index increases by a percentage point, per capita income increases by 2.4% and per capita emissions are reduced by 0.71%. This is against the conventional wisdom in favour of specialization. The study has found some interesting long-run causal pathways. Firstly, the causality runs from diversification to income. Secondly, there is a causality running from electricity consumption to specialization. Thirdly, bi-directional causality runs between emissions and specialization. The results have interesting policy implications. The study supports the growth hypothesis that the electricity consumption drives the economy. As this inevitably increases emissions, a better pathway is through diversification. The fossil fuel intensive pathway may have been the preferred choice in the past for countries with low electricity consumption; the diversified portfolio appears to be prudent in the future.
TAPESTRY: Visualizing Interwoven Identities for Trust Provenance

In this paper we report our study involving an early prototype of TAPESTRY, a service to support people and businesses to connect safely online through the use of a Machine Learning generated visualization. Establishing the veracity of the person or business behind a pseudonomized identity, online, is a challenge for many people. In the burgeoning digital economy, finding ways to support good decision-making in potentially risky online exchanges is of vital importance. In this paper, we propose a Machine Learning method to extract temporal patterns from data on individuals’ behavioral norms in their online activity. This monitors and communicates the coherence of these activities to others, especially those who are about to disclose personal information to the individual, in a visualization. We report findings from a user trial that examined how people accessed and interpreted the TAPESTRY visualization to inform their decisions on who to back in a mock crowdfunding campaign to evaluate its efficacy. The study proved the protocol of the Machine Learning method and qualitative insights are informing iterations of the visualization design to enhance user experience and support understanding.
Effectiveness of assistive torque patterns supplied by a pelvis exoskeleton after slippages

— Falls are acknowledged as one of the most serious causes of health problems in the elderly population. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop novel technological solutions to counteract the balance loss and prevent falls. we enrolled two healthy older volunteers to investigate effectiveness of different assistive torque patterns pelvis exoskeleton in promoting balance recovery after slippages. Our results revealed that the best strategy to counteract the balance loss after a slippage consists in slowing the slipping foot and minimizing the downward movement of the center of mass by providing opposite between hips.
Search based software testing for the generation of synchronization sequences for mutation testing of concurrent programs

SILVA, R. R. Search based software testing for the generation of synchronization sequences for mutation testing of concurrent programs. 2018. 131 p. Tese (Doutorado em Ciências – Ciências de Computação e Matemática Computacional) – Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação, Universidade de São Paulo, São Carlos – SP, 2018. Concurrent programming has become an essential paradigm for reductions in the computational time in many application domains. However, the validation and testing activity is more complex than the testing for sequential programs due to the non-determinism, synchronization and inter-process communication. Mutation testing is based on mistakes produced by software developers and presents a high effectiveness to reveal faults. However, high computational costs limit its applicability even for sequential code, becoming higher for concurrent programs in which each test has to be executed with different (ideally all) thread schedules. To date, only selective mutation have been applied to reduce the number of mutants in concurrent programs, however, the problem of state explosion of thread schedules still remains. This Ph.D. thesis presents the SBBMuT approach that applies deterministic execution and genetic algorithm for the generation and execution of a set of synchronization sequences during the mutation testing of Java multithreaded programs. An experimental study was conducted, and the results showed that the set of synchronization sequences generated by SBBMuT achieved a higher mutation score in comparison with the use of the Java PathFinder model checking tool.
Mode choice in access and egress stages of high-speed railway travelers in China

High-speed railway (HSR) has become a sustainable transport mode for inter-city travel, especially in China. As public transport (PT), the use of HSR involves access and egress to and from HSR stations. However, the literature focusing on the intra-city mode choice of HSR travelers is limited, especially regarding their differential socio-demographic and trip characteristics. This paper aims to fill that gap with an analysis of access/egress mode choice for business and leisure journeys in the Yangzi River Delta region. Using the HSR survey from Fudan University, we found that in China older and wealthier travelers have a strong preference for car use. For leisure travel, the explanatory power of the socio-demographic variables is much more influential in the egress than the access stage. With increasing access time, business travelers may be enticed to shift to a faster form of PT (e.g., subway rather than bus) in the access stage. With increasing line-haul time, only business travelers have a stronger preference for car use as their intra-city mode choice for business activities. A higher number of subway lines and diversity of land use around HSR stations is associated with less car use for business travelers in the egress stage.
Optimization Analysis of Improved Association Rules Based on Decision Tree and Data Clustering

In this paper, we first analyze the optimization strategies and classical algorithms of association rules and clustering mining algorithms, from which we can see the basic ideas of these algorithms to solve the problem, and find the shortcomings of the traditional algorithms. Then, this article describes analysis of hierarchical clustering and association rule mining based on dynamic models. The paper presents optimization analysis of improved association rules based on decision tree and data clustering.The experimental results show that the proposed method is very effective.
Research Africa Network (RAN) RAN Working Paper WP/19/043 Information Technology, Governance and Insurance in Sub-Saharan Africa

Purpose – This study investigates the role of ICT in modulating the effect of governance on insurance penetration in 42 sub-Saharan African countries using data for the period 2004-2014. Design/methodology/approach – Two insurance indicators are used in the analysis, namely: life insurance and non-life insurance. The three ICT modulating dynamics employed include: mobile phone penetration, internet penetration and fixed broadband subscriptions. Six governance channels are also considered, namely: political stability , “voice & accountability”, regulation quality, government effectiveness, the rule of law and corruption-control. The empirical evidence is based on generalized method of moments. Findings – The following main findings are established. First, mobile phone penetration does not significantly modulate governance channels to positively affect life insurance while it effectively complements “voice & accountability” to induce a positive net effect on non -life insurance. Second, internet penetration complements: (i) governance dynamics of political stability, government effectiveness and rule of law to induce positive net effects on life insurance: and (ii) corruption-control for an overall positive effect on non-life insurance.
GPU computing of Heat Equations

There is an increasing amount of evidence in scientific research and industrial engineering indicating that the graphic processing unit (GPU) has a higher efficiency and a stronger ability over CPUs to process certain computations. The heat equation is one of the most well-known partial differential equations with well-developed theories, and application in engineering. Thus, we chose in this report to use the heat equation to numerically solve for the heat distributions at different time points using both GPU and CPU programs. The heat equation with three different boundary conditions (Dirichlet, Neumann and Periodic) were calculated on the given domain and discretized by finite difference approximations. The programs solving the linear system from the heat equation with different boundary conditions were implemented on GPU and CPU. A convergence analysis and stability analysis for the finite difference method was performed to guarantee the success of the program. Iterative methods and direct methods to solve the linear system are also discussed for the GPU. The results show that the GPU has a huge advantage in terms of time spent compared with CPU in large size problems.
Higher education and economic growth: the importance of innovation

espanolLa educacion superior esta considerada como un motor de desarrollo y crecimiento en la sociedad del conocimiento, debido a sus beneficios para impulsar la investigacion, el conocimiento y la innovacion tecnologica. Este documento examina la relacion entre la innovacion, la educacion superior y el crecimiento economico durante el periodo 1996-2014 en el caso de los paises desarrollados y en desarrollo. La relacion de cointegracion entre series se examino mediante el uso de la prueba de cointegracion de panel desarrollada por Pedroni (1999, 2004) y Kao (1999). Como resultado del analisis empirico, se determino la relacion de cointegracion entre las series. Los resultados tambien proporcionan evidencia de un efecto positivo de la innovacion en la educacion terciaria sobre el crecimiento economico. EnglishHigher education is considered as an engine for development and growth in the knowledge society, because of its benefits to boost research, knowledge and technological innovation. This paper examines the relation between innovation, higher education and economic growth during the 1996-2014 period in the case of developed and developing countries. The cointegration relationship between series was examined by using panel cointegration test developed by Pedroni (1999, 2004) and Kao (1999). As a result of the empirical analysis, cointegration relationship between the series was determined. The results provide also evidence of a positive effect of innovation in tertiary education on economic growth.
Financial distress and real economic activity in Lithuania: a Granger causality test based on MF-VAR

In this study we, first, extend the monthly Financial Stress Index (FSI) for Lithuania computed by ECB (see [8]) to a high-frequency (daily) horizon and we also include the banking sector among its constituents (beyond bond, equity, foreign exchange markets). The empirical results suggest no evidence of Granger causality between the monthly FSI index (developed by [8]) and monthly industrial production growth. On the contrary, a Granger causality test applied to a VAR using mixed frequency data characterised by a large mismatch in sampling frequencies of the series involved (i.e. daily vs monthly), suggests that the daily Lithuanian FSI has a predictive power for monthly Lithuanian IP growth for the full sample period (October 2001 – December 2016), but not vice versa. Full sample results are confirmed by rolling-window analysis.
An extension of BING to high IOU threshold

BING is an objectness measure to extract proposal windows in an image that may contain objects, avoiding cumbersome sliding window search for object detection. BING has a high recall rate when the Intersection-over-Union (IOU) threshold is 0.5, and runs as fast as 300 fps. However, the recall rate drops rapidly when the IOU threshold is greater than 0.5. So in this paper, we focus on investigating the cause of this phenomenon, and propose how to improve the recall rates, in which average recall rate is used in the performance evaluation of objectness measure for object detection. The problem of less positive samples in the secondary training stage is solved by selecting parameters with respect to training and testing.
VREG: A Virtual Reality Educational Game with Arabic Content Using Android Smart Phone

In the last few decades, technology found its way from being a wild sci-fi dream, only seen in movies, to being an important element of all aspects of life. The technological industry bloomed quite rapidly where the technological solutions have made any process you can think of easier, faster and more efficient. Educational methodologies started off simple, having a teacher using simply his/her words and some writing along with it. With technology entering the field of education, teaching methods were enhanced and the quality of its outcomes was improved. However, sadly in Arab countries that was not the story. In other words, the use of new education technologies is still limited to basic and simple tasks. In fact, to add to the agony, most of the programs used are poorly implemented and rarely applied. Interestingly, as many studies confirm and from the simple observation of kids playing, it is found that most children are very attracted to new technologies and their applications. Those interests not only changed what a normal childhood would look like, but also introduced a multi-billion industry of electronic games. Virtual Reality (VR) games were introduced a few years back starting a gaming revolution, allowing gamers to enter the world of their dreams. Similar to most technologies, VR started to become more affordable with time. Multiple companies have competed to give us amazing VR products such as Samsung Gear. In this manuscript, we present a Virtual Reality Educational Game (VREG), which is an interactive 3D game with Arabic content that targets the students between age 4 and 8 and can be played on a smart phone. VREG includes multiple games that cover the different concepts of Arabic and English languages alongside math, aiming to help the student to learn through playing. In order to make sure that our game reaches wanted education standards, we put it to the test in two private schools; the feedback was very positive from both teachers and students where the majority of users enjoyed their experiments in VR games.
Binary Classification for Teacher Donor’s Project

Classification always plays an important role in statistical machine learning, which contains both binary classification problems and multi-label classification problems. This article focuses on binary classification models including natural language processing for text objects to help teachers to improve their chances of being funded based on real data sets collected by DonorsChoose.org. Comparing about two natural language processing methods for projects proposals proposed by teachers, we also implement various statistical algorithms on our data sets, aiming to enhance the classification accuracy which can be measured by model accuracy and the area under the curve(AUC). In conclusion, the text objects are important for computer to conduct supervised learning and the length of the proposal and the price column are the crucial features. In addition, the best model will be the LightBGM with AUC 0.77 and accuracy 86%. Keywords—binary classification; natural language processing; statistical machine learning models; Python
Le Retour des villes européennes

Ce livre montre comment les territoires robustes de longue duree de l'Europe, a savoir les villes, sont des acteurs collectifs en devenir. Les villes sont en effet soumises a des pressions contradictoires : mobilite, tensions sociales, pauvrete, immigration, mondialisation des entreprises, enchevetrement des pouvoirs et des politiques publiques qui conduisent a la fragmentation. Pourtant, au sein des villes europeennes, des acteurs, des groupes, des organisations se mobilisent pour reinventer des processus d'integration, renforcer les societes urbaines et organiser des modes de gouvernance au sein desquelles les elus et les gouvernements urbains jouent un role important. Le livre analyse le jeu de ces groupes et organisations qui bricolent des interets collectifs, organisent des compromis entre-groupes, orientent ces societes soumises aux grands vents de l'Europe et de la mondialisation. [Resume editeur]
Musti: Dynamic Prevention of Invalid Object Initialization Attacks

Invalid object initialization vulnerabilities have been identified since the 1990s by a research group at Princeton University. These vulnerabilities are critical since they can be used to totally compromise the security of a Java virtual machine (JVM). Recently, such a vulnerability identified as CVE-2017-3289 has been found again in the bytecode verifier of the JVM and affects more than 40 versions of the JVM. In this paper, we present a runtime solution called MUSTI to detect and prevent attacks leveraging this kind of critical vulnerabilities. We optimize MUSTI to have a runtime overhead below 0.5% and a memory overhead below 0.42%. Compared with state of the art, MUSTI is completely automated and does not require to manually annotate the code.
What Makes a Key Player in Interorganizational Social Policy Networks? The Case of Uruguay

ABSTRACT Networks of organizations involved in public policy implementation require strong interaction, concerted action and high degrees of collaboration to be effective. However, little is known about how different types of organizations involved in implementation of multi-sectoral social policies interact in these networks. In this article the relationship between organizational characteristics and network position is explored, as well as how the intensity of collaborations can also determine organizations’ involvement in networks. The nature of funding (public/private) and the remit of activity of organizations are found to determine their influence and importance in social policy networks. Furthermore, the network position of the organizations also depends on the level of intensity of their interactions. These results can guide public administrators when developing and promoting networks to involve a particular type of actor and also policymakers as to which types of ties are more aligned with the implementation of a particular policy.
How does food get to the table? Sustainable development leaders' framing of food processing in British Columbia

People need to eat. Because food is essential to well-being, food systems have become a vital component of sustainable development. With the role of converting farm and seafood harvests into the food that graces our tables, food processors are key food systems actors. In addition, food processors are major economic contributors and their operations have huge environmental impact. Despite being a major contributor to social, economic, and environmental well-being; the three main pillars of sustainable development, food processing has largely been excluded from the discourse. In order to understand how leaders in sustainable development think food gets to the table, this study sought to identify how they framed food processing. Frame analysis of the rhetoric and reasoning of sustainable development leaders revealed nine dominant frames that guide leaders thinking about food processing: The Modernization Frame; the Undermining of Foundations frame; the Frankenstein frame; the Cook and the Store frame; the Consumer Stance frame; the Personal Health as Good Individual Food Choices frame; the Fantasy Food System frame; the Silo, Not System Thinking frame; and the Invisible Link frame. These frames revealed negative perceptions and the invisibility of the BC food processing industry explaining its omission from discourse surrounding sustainable development. In addition to facilitating the identification of frames, an invitational rhetoric approach offered the opportunity to test reframes that provided new information about the food processing industry. The results of this unique study provide valuable insights as to how food processing should be reframed in future public relations strategies.
Factor-Based Tactical Bond Allocation and Interest Rate Risk Management

This paper offers two composite bond market factor investment strategies each for the Swiss bond market and for the global sovereign bond market. These composite factor strategies can be useful tools when making tactical asset allocation decisions between bonds and cash, and they can act as a base for the duration debate. As such, the output of our bond market factors can guide tactical interest rate views and therefore interest rate risk management. To construct these composite factors, we use four economically meaningful individual factors. Following an investment strategy based on a composite bond market factor, constructed as the equally weighted average of individual components, we are able to outperform cash as well as the staticbuy-and-hold strategy with regard to the Sharpe ratio, annualized standard deviation and maximum drawdown. Testing the composite and individual factors on their performance during periods of historical rising interest rates, we observe improved drawdown results compared with holding the underlying asset passively.
Knockin’ on heaven’s door? Reframing the debate on temporary employment and wages: evidence from Europe

This article reframes the debate on the consequences of flexibilization in European labour markets focusing on the unexplored impact of temporary employment on occupational wages for permanent workers. Exploiting the variation in the temps’ density within occupation and age groups across European countries between 2003 and 2010, we find that temporary contracts negatively affect occupational average wages for insiders’ workers. These results are still robust using a dynamic system based on generalized method of moments (GMM-SYS) to account for potential endogeneity issues. We also explore the existence of heterogeneity across different occupational clusters and institutional settings. Our estimates indicate that the knock-on effect is large in countries with low employment protection legislation and it is driven by occupations characterized by untechnical work logics.