Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Conversion equations revisited: Single and multiple-trait conversion equations and comparison with simple-MACE

Results of national genetic evaluation from the USA for 29 traits were used for estimation of converted breeding values for 61 Swedish traits, including the Swedish Total Merit Index (TMI). The Swedish TMI had high correlations with the USA composite traits Cheese Merit $ and Net Merit $ (0.73 and 0.72, respectively). After adjustment for reliabilities these correlations increased to 0.78 and 0.77 respectively. Multiple regression conversion equations had higher predictive ability and lower variance of error of prediction. Different alternatives of Simple-MACE methodology performed better than conversion equations when correlation between the two traits was low. However, Simple-MACE methods performed poorer than conversion equations when used for traits with high correlation or in multiple trait situations.
Language Proficiency and the Speech Act of Complaint of Chinese EFL Learners

Complaint is an under-researched speech act in the field of interlanguage pragmatics. Making a complaint runs the risk of impairing the relationship between speaker and hearer as it requires the speaker to express displeasure and frustration to what is believed to be the responsibility of the hearer. The speaker, therefore, has to use appropriate linguistic forms bearing in mind social conventions to make the hearer take some action of repair or to avoid interactional conflicts. For L2 learners, making complaints in a second/foreign language is more difficult as they may lack both sociocultural and L2 knowledge. This study investigated the ability of Chinese EFL learners to produce complaints and its relationship with their L2 proficiency. Thirty-two Chinese university students and five native speakers of American English completed a Free Discourse Completion Test (FDCT); English proficiency was measured by learners’ performance in TEM-4. Data elicited from the FDCT were analysed using a holistic rating scale for the overall appropriateness of complaints and a coding framework for complaint strategies and modifications. Results showed that learners were unable to produce appropriate complaints and L2 proficiency significantly influenced the overall appropriateness of complaints. Differences were also identified in strategies and external and internal modifications used by learners of different proficiency levels. The study suggested that the production of complaints by Chinese learners is greatly influenced by their native culture. In addition to improving L2 proficiency, lessons on cultural differences should be introduced for them to improve the ability to complain in English.
Electrical and Thermal Characteristics of Household Appliances: Voltage Dependency, Harmonics and Thermal RC Parameters

Detailed bottom-up load modelling of the residential sector has become increasingly important to examine the network impacts of both changing load composition due to the introduction of sustainable technologies, and changing load behaviour with increased levels of demand response. An important aspect of these models is the electrical and thermal behaviour of household loads. This paper examines the fundamental electrical and thermal characteristics of common household appliances. Methods to obtain the voltage dependency and equivalent resistive-capacitive (RC) circuit parameters for modelling thermostatically controlled appliances (TCAs) are presented. The paper also presents the results of laboratory experimental determination of voltage dependency coe cients, subjecting common appliances to a range of voltages within +/10% of the standard supply voltage. The thermal behaviour of TCAs are examined by use of thermocouples and plug-load monitoring devices. Appliances are grouped into into ve distinct categories; lighting, motor, power electronic, resistive and wet appliance loads, and both their characteristics and operational behaviour is presented.
Optimization of Optical Inspections Using Spectral Analysis

Machine vision is proving its potential to be an efficient tool for increasing product quality and for decreasing manufacturing costs. Many applications use automated optical inspection systems for measuring mechanical dimensions and for monitoring quality features of manifold products. Optical inspection systems consist mainly of a handling system, a vision system and a user interface. The vision system can be divided into an acquisition and processing part. While there exists much literature about image processing there is less attention spent for designing an image acquisition system. The system accuracy and processing speed correlates directly to image quality defined as the contrast between the different features (e.g. objects) in the image. Caused by the increasing complexity and difficulty of the inspection tasks and the demand for increasing throughputs, image quality gets more important for reliable vision systems. This chapter deals with spectral methods for the selection of hardware components within the acquisition system to optimize image quality. We show that our analytical methods will increase image quality and decrease classification error rates of a vision system.
EC budget support: thumbs up or down?

Budget support is a form of macro-economic financial assistance that is designed to prioritise the fight against poverty and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The European Commission (EC) is providing more and more budget support under the Cotonou Partnership Agreement (CPA), which structures the provision of assistance by the European Union (EU) to the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. The EC also provides macro-economic support through its cooperation agreements with a number of non-ACP countries, for which it is now also introducing budget support. During the course of its work in the ACP regions, the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM) was approached by parliamentarians, representatives of non-governmental organisations and partner government officials, all of whom had certain questions to ask about the background to and operation of budget support. These actors regard budget support as an increasingly important mechanism for development cooperation, and one that has potentially far-reaching implications for their work. At the same time, it is a relatively new mechanism, is poorly understood and is driven by a relatively small group of experts in aid agencies and partner country finance or planning ministries. We have prepared this Discussion Paper in response to these queries. Our aim is to give policy-makers and practitioners in-depth information on the nature and potential of, and the constraints associated with, budget support as a development cooperation modality. The paper explains the complex nature of budget support and its implications for the actors involved, as well as highlighting issues that have a bearing on its success. Budget support creates opportunities that are not always fully appreciated by its critics. At the same time, it creates risks which tend to be downplayed by its supporters. Against this background, this paper also aims to contribute to this intensely debated issue by providing a balanced view for those seeking to understand its complexities. As this is intended to be a relatively brief paper, it is limited to key policy issues and the challenges arising from recent experiences with budget support. For this reason, we have not devoted much space to discussing the issue of sector budget support. We advise the reader to consult the bibliography for more detailed information on the practice and technicalities of this rapidly evolving mechanism. Finally, it is important to recognise that the move towards budget support has aroused many questions among partner government officials, donor agencies, consultants and academic institutes, which tend to feed into the production of specialist documents assessing approaches and experiences. For this reason, this paper can do no more than to describe the current state of a rapidly evolving debate and practice. We hope to be able to follow up this initial study and produce further publications on specific issues, tailored to the needs of individual ACP audiences, as part of our future work.
Why Do Firms Opt for Alternative-Format Financial Statements? Some Evidence from France

Historically, the format of financial statements has varied from one country to another. Recently, due to the attractiveness of their capital markets, the strength of their accounting professions and the influence of their institutional investors, Anglo-American countries have seen the impact of their accounting practices on other nations increase steadily, even influencing the actual format of financial statements. Given that French accounting regulations allow a certain degree of choice in consolidated balance sheet format (‘by nature’ or ‘by term’) and income statement format (‘by nature’ or ‘by function’), this study examines a sample of 199 large French listed firms in an attempt to understand why some of these firms do not use the traditional French formats (‘by nature’ for the balance sheet and ‘by nature” for the income statement), instead preferring Anglo-American practices (‘by term’ format for the balance sheet and ‘by function’ format for the income statement). We first analyze the balance sheet and income statement formats separately using a logit model, then combine the two and enrich the research design with a generalized ordered logit model and a multinomial logit regression. Our results confirm that the major driving factor behind the adoption of one or two alternative formats is the firm’s degree of internationalization, not only financial (auditor type, foreign listing and the decision to apply alternative accounting standards) but also commercial (company size and the internationalization of sales).
Aligning Text and Document Illustrations: Towards Visually Explainable Digital Humanities

While several approaches to bring vision and language together are emerging, none of them has yet addressed the digital humanities domain, which, nevertheless, is a rich source of visual and textual data. To foster research in this direction, we investigate the learning of visual-semantic embeddings for historical document illustrations, devising both supervised and semi-supervised approaches. We exploit the joint visual-semantic embeddings to automatically align illustrations and textual elements, thus providing an automatic annotation of the visual content of a manuscript. Experiments are performed on the Borso d'Este Holy Bible, one of the most sophisticated illuminated manuscript from the Renaissance, which we manually annotate aligning every illustration with textual commentaries written by experts. Experimental results quantify the domain shift between ordinary visual-semantic datasets and the proposed one, validate the proposed strategies, and devise future works on the same line.
Better Neighborhoods, Better Outcomes? Explaining Relocation Outcomes in Hope VI

The HOPE VI Program for redeveloping public housing has been in operation since 1993. Previous studies have shown weak and inconsistent benefits for families forcibly displaced by the program, despite the fact that families are uniformly moved into better neighborhoods (as measured on a range of indicators at the census-tract level). This article reviews studies of HOPE VI and presents the findings of an additional case study, in Duluth, Minnesota. Improving on the design of most previous studies, this study connected changes in outcomes at the individual level with changes in neighborhood conditions. The results confirm the conclusion of previous studies: the degree of neighborhood change is not statistically related to changes in individual-level outcomes. These findings suggest that the HOPE VI model of dispersal reflects an oversimplified view of urban poverty and, in particular, may neglect the importance of informal networks of support and attributes at the individual level in determining the outcomes of forced relocation.
Species diversity in grassland communities under different habitat conditions

Two hundred species of vascular plants were identified in grasslands on the Popielno Peninsula, in the part used for agricultural purposes. Species diversity in plant communities, measured by the Shannon-Wiener index, was found to depend on soil type, land use type and phytosociological affiliation. Greater species diversity was observed in communities that developed on mineral soils, are used as pastures, and belong to the class Molinio-Arrhenetheretea. The biodiversity of grassland communities on the Popielno Peninsula is affected by habitat conditions. The relationship between vegetation biodiversity and habitat quality is difficult to grasp due to its multidimensional character. The methods of multivariate statistics may prove useful in this respect.
Performance Analysis and Comparison of Self-Calibrating Dynamic Comparator and Advanced Double-Tail CMOS Dynamic Comparators

This advanced double-tail dynamic comparator has two extra inverters which are inserted in the conventional double-tail dynamic comparator by which gain of the overall circuit is improved. The additional regenerative part of this helps in increasing the driving current at the output stage of the comparator. These circuits are designed using 180nm Technology and CMOS at a power supply of 1.8V and it performs better in the sensitivity to delay and also the offset voltage is reduced in this circuit as compare to the preamplifier stage based comparator, the area and power consumption used by this circuit is almost comparable.
Working Paper No.6. Making Danger a Calling: Anthropology, violence and the dilemmas of participant observation.

This paper contains reflections on the experience of fieldwork carried out in Nicaragua into urban gangs in Managua. It examines the dilemmas encountered by an anthropologist employing participant observation, in which he became accepted as a member of a gang. In the process, it provides an original insight into the inner workings of such urban gangs.
S I ] 2 8 O ct 2 01 5 Dressing by regularization for the Gerdjikov-Ivanov equation and higher-order solitons

Higher-order solitons, as well as simple N -soliton solutions, of the Gerdjikov-Ivanov equation are derived by the dressing method based on the technique of regularization. By the dressing transformation for the eigenfunction associated with a seed solution, the regularity conditions of the dressed eigenfunctions are found to establish the relationship between the potential and the scattering data.
Snow leopard Panthera uncia predation on livestock and wild prey in a mountain valley in northern Nepal: implications for conservation management

The globally endangered snow leopard Panthera uncia is sparsely distributed throughout the rugged mountains in Asia. Its habit of preying on livestock poses a main challenge to management. In the remote Phu valley in northern Nepal, we obtained reliable information on livestock losses and estimated predator abundance and diet composition from DNA analysis and prey remains in scats. The annual diet consisted of 42% livestock. Among the wild prey, bharal (blue sheep/naur) Pseudois nayaur was by far the most common species (92%). Two independent abundance estimates suggested that there were six snow leopards in the valley during the course of our study. On average, each snow leopard killed about one livestock individual and two bharal per month. Predation loss of livestock estimated from prey remains in scats was 3.9%, which was in concordance with village records (4.0%). From a total count of bharal, the only large natural prey in the area and occurring at a density of 8.4 animals/km2 or about half the density of livestock, snow leopards were estimated to harvest 15.1% of the population annually. This predation rate approaches the natural, inherent recruitment rate of this species; in Phu the proportion of kids was estimated at 18.4%. High livestock losses have created a hostile attitude against the snow leopard and mitigation measures are needed. Among innovative management schemes now being implemented throughout the species' range, compensation and insurance programmes coupled with other incentive measures are encouraged, rather than measures to reduce the snow leopard's access to livestock. In areas like the Phu valley, where the natural prey base consists mainly of one ungulate species that is already heavily preyed upon, the latter approach, if implemented, will lead to increased predation on this prey, which over time may suppress numbers of both prey and predator.
The Distributional Impact of Social Transfers in the European Union: Evidence from the Echp

Social transfers vary enormously across the European Union, as has been demonstrated in earlier research. This paper analyses the comparative effects of these transfers on inequality and poverty, using consistent household data. The analysis shows that the distributional impact of these transfers is greater in countries that spend a higher proportion of their GDP on them, but that there are other important determinants, including the extent of means testing, the distribution of funds between different types of transfer and the degree of targeting for each transfer. It also shows that effective targeting can be achieved without high levels of means testing.
How engaging start-ups in research activities can lead to more effective technology and knowledge transfer from public research organisations

The role of public research organisations (PROs) has changed over the decades. They have engaged more in bringing new knowledge towards companies as a way to foster economic progress through technological renewal. The traditional response of PROs has been the creation of technology transfer offices, who have adopted a technology-push approach to bring new technologies to the market and foster (academic) entrepreneurship. This paper, by means of a case study in iMinds (a PRO on digital media and ICT in Belgium), presents a new approach, the so-called ‘flipped knowledge transfer approach’. By adopting this more market-driven approach to knowledge transfer, start-ups and SMEs in a region are reinforced and a fertile breeding ground for the creation of a regional cluster of innovation is fostered. This paper analyses the effects of such approach, and discusses the hurdles to implement it in other PRO settings.
On the excitation of magnetic signals by Love waves

The polarization method for recognition of seismomagnetic waves against a noise background is presented. The method is applied to detection of magnetic oscillations accompanying the propagation of surface Love wave after a strong earthquake. A specific property of the Love waves is that theoretically the Tolman-Stewart effect is alone responsible for the magnetic field that penetrates into the Earth's surface. Data from the Mondy Magnetic Observatory and the Talaya Seismic Station suggest that the arrival time, duration, period,and polarization of magnetic signals conform with the idea of generation of alternating electric currents due to fluid vibrations in pores and fractures of rocks under the action of the inertial force associated with the Love wave propagation.
Why Is Math Cheaper than English? Understanding Cost Differences in Higher Education

This paper establishes five new facts about instructional costs in higher education using department-level data from a broad range of institutions. Costs vary widely across fields, ranging from electrical engineering (90% higher than English) to math (25% lower). This pattern is largely explained by differences in class size and faculty pay. Some STEM fields experienced steep declines in expenditures over the past 17 years, while others saw increases. Changes in class size and teaching loads alongside a shift toward contingent faculty explain these trends. Finally, the association between online instruction and instructional costs is statistically indistinguishable from zero.
The 2005 Reform of the Stability and Growth Pact: Too Little, Too Late? Bruges European Economic Research (BEER) Papers 6/November 2006

This paper analyses the main critiques addressed by the literature and the policymakers to the 1997 Stability and Growth Pact. It further indicates to what extent the 2005 reform of the Pact meets those critics. It finally argues that the 2005 reform may be too little and arrive too late to restore the Pact credibility, ensure its enforceability and correctly set the derogations to the excessive deficit procedure on the nature of the shocks which cause the output gap rather than its size: a 3% of GDP limit on deficit spending may be a too binding constraint in front of a strongly negative demand shock, while it is irrationally large in front of a supply shock. Some empirical evidence is provided to identify in the last years strongly negative demand shocks from other shocks in the 25 EU Member States. Had this identifying method been adopted in November 2003, the European Commission and the Council would have both agreed to stop the excessive deficit procedure against Germany, but they would have both proceeded against France which apparently was not at the time hit by a strongly negative demand shock.
Estimation of Pharmacokinetics of Propofol in Indian Pateints by HPLC Method

A quick and sensitive reversed phase high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method has been developed in Indian surgical patients to determine the concentration of Propofol In human plasma. Propofol can be isolated from human plasma by adding 1ml precipitating solution which consists of acetonitrile and perchloric acid (67:33) mixture, which also contains dibutylpthalate (1mg/ml) as an internal standard. The sample is mixed for two minute on a vortexer. The plasma substance precipitated by acetonitrile and perchloric acid are further separated by centrifugation. The supernatant is directly injected into the HPLC system with the help of autosampler. The analysis was carried out using column 250 × 4.6 mm column packed with10-μm Spherisorb reversed phase octadecyl silane particles (C 18 ). The 500ml of mobile phase (67:33:0.04) consisted of 335ml of acetonitrile and 165ml of distilled water and 200μl of acetic acid maintaining the pH 4.0. The flow rate of the mobile phase was 1.5ml/ min. propofol was monitored by a UV detector at a 270nm wavelength. The limit of detection of propofol (in human plasma) was found to be 0. 0001μg/ml while limit of quantification was found to be 0. 001μg/ml for a 20ul injection volume.