Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
First and second order mur type ABCs for DNG media

─ Reflections from boundaries of the FDTD computational domain lead to inaccurate, even unstable codes when dealing with problems involving double negative (DNG) materials. Here, an efficient and simple algorithm is presented for terminating FDTD in DNG medium which is based on first and second order Mur’s absorbing boundary conditions (ABC). FDTD update equations for Mur’s ABC formulations are obtained from frequency domain one-way wave equations using piecewise linear recursive convolution (PLRC) method. Numerical examples are given both for 1D and 2D scenarios to demonstrate the validity and stability of the proposed Mur formulations, and its advantages over uniaxial perfectly matched layer (UPML) in reducing computational time and memory requirements. Index Terms ─ Absorbing Boundary Conditions (ABC), Double Negative Media (DNG), Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD), Lorentz model, MUR, one-way wave equation.
CIVIL SERVANTS’ CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS DEVELOPMENT IN UKRAINE

The article is dedicated to the development of critical thinking and thinking outside the box of public services in Ukraine. The main idea of the article is that without sufficient development of these soft skills, a civil servant is not able to effectively make modern decisions. Therefore, it is important for department heads to conduct special trainings, meetings, and to share tips for improving these skills, as in Ukraine the level of civil servants’ critical thinking and thinking outside the box of is very low, as these skills are provided during the vocational training at a very low level. Emphasis is also placed on the consideration of basic universal standards of critical thinking, which consistently describe its nature. Attention is paid to the comparison of critical thinking and ordinary thinking, which shows that critical thinking needs to be developed not only in employees, but also in each person. The advantages of the civil servants’ thinking outside the box are also considered, which confirm the need to improve it, as this thinking is used in various areas of public administration. Finding opposing points of view, rethinking problems, brainstorming without restrictions, performing exercises that stimulate creative thinking and other developed ways help to train the mind to think outside the box. It was found that even to write ordinary effective reports in a short time, civil servants must have the skills of critical thinking and thinking outside the box. Five steps have been developed for civil servants to help them make the right decisions through critical thinking: problem statement, information gathering, using information, considering consequences, and study of other viewpoints. Critical thinking skills play a role in selecting a candidate for a position, as the ability to analyze, communicate with colleagues, solve problems, openness and creativity provide significant advantages over candidates in which these skills are not developed. Thus, the development of critical and non-standard
QUADERNI DEL DIPARTIMENTO DI ECONOMIA POLITICA E STATISTICA

We ask whether the productivity advantage of internationalized firms documented by the international trade literature can be interpreted most accurately in terms of proximity to the “technological frontier”. We answer in the affermative using a methodology (based on mixture models) of unbundling technology and total factor productivity (TFP) by estimating “technology-specific” production function parameters. Exploiting detailed data provided by the EFIGE database (a sample of firms distributed across Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom), we find technology gaps (with respect to the frontier) more than three times larger than the TFP gaps on average. We also find sizable technology advantages for firms undertaking foreign direct investment and/or exporting to other European Union countries or to China, for importers of materials, and for firms with competitors in China and the United States. Medium and large firms feature a higher technology premium, which is even higher for firms operating in country-sectors that are more exposed to import competition from China. Younger firms use better technologies but less effectively.
QUADERNI DEL DIPARTIMENTO DI ECONOMIA POLITICA E STATISTICA

Psychologists among other behavioural scientists refer to the tendency of favouring, interpreting, and searching for information that supports one’s prior beliefs as confirmation bias. Using Twitter data, we illustrate how this might affect environmental attitudes by contrasting #ClimateChangeIsReal and #ClimateChangeHoax engagement. Given the relevance of the topic to the field, we develop an agent-based model to investigate how employment conditions affect attitudes towards climate policies under such a cognitive bias. It is shown that persistent endogenous fluctuations might emerge via a super-critical Neimark-Sacker bifurcation. Furthermore, depending on the individual’s response to the collective opinion, we might have coexistence of periodic attractors as a representation of path dependence. In terms of policy implications, we highlight that the adoption of a successful green-agenda depends on the ability of policy-makers to take advantage of favourable employment rates while appealing to different framing strategies.
The practical utility of hyperspectral remote sensing for early detection of emerald ash borer

Hyperspectral remote sensing technology has been used in forest ecology research for the last decade to examine landscape scale patterns of foliar chemistry (nitrogen, cellulose, and lignin) (Martin and Aber 1997), stand productivity (Smith et al. 2002), and soil nitrogen dynamics (Ollinger et al. 2002). More recently, techniques have been developed to map the location of eastern hemlock stands and tree stress along the hemlock wooly adelgid infestation front (Pontius et al. 2005). To date, all of these efforts have relied on a NASA-operated sensor that is dedicated to support research projects.
Looking Backward and Looking Forward

The contributions included in this issue celebrate the 22d-year anniversary of the fall 1982 issue of Social Science History (vol. 6, no. 4) devoted to “Trends in Nutrition, Labor Welfare, and Labor Productivity. ” The guest editors then were Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, and all but one of the eight contributions were dedicated to anthropometric history (Fogel and Engerman 1982; Fogel et al. 1982; Floud and Wachter 1982; Friedman 1982;Margo and Steckel 1982; Sokoloff and Villaflor 1982; Tanner 1982). The issue had a considerable impact on the fledgling field of anthropometric history, even if a few publications preceded it in other journals (Fogel et al. 1978; Steckel 1979; Trussell and Steckel 1978). The editor of Social Science History at the time, James Q. Graham, hoped to expand the exploration of human heights and their economic and social correlates. He was one of the few journal editors convinced early on that such an agenda fit well into an interdisciplinary historical perspective.
Crowdsourced Q&A-based Contextual Help for Web Applications: Challenges and Opportunities

INTRODUCTION Millions of users struggle every day in using and configuring software applications to meet their needs. Although many approaches for software help have been developed over the last three decades, most users do not find them helpful [5,11]. As the web becomes increasingly social, crowdsourced forms of software help (e.g., [7,10,12]) have also been emerging. For example, users can post questions and answers (Q&A) on technical forums, mailing lists, or within their online social networks. Although these crowdsourced forms of help potentially save organizations millions of dollars in one-onone support costs, users often have a difficult time in navigating through these Q&A discussions and finding the information that they actually need during the use of an application.
Mapping Species Distributions: Spatial Inference and Prediction

Part I. History and Ecological Basis of Species' Distribution Modeling: 1. Species distribution modeling 2. Why do we need species' distribution models? 3. Ecological understanding of species' distributions Part II. The Data Needed for Modeling Species' Distributions 4. Data for species' distribution models: the biological data 5. Data for species' distribution models: the environmental data Part III. An Overview of the Modeling Methods: 6. Statistical models - modern regression 7. Machine learning methods 8. Classification, similarity and other methods for presence-only data Part IV. Model Evaluation and Implementation: 9. Model evaluation 10. Implementation of species' distribution models.
Impact of Urbanization on Stormwater Runoff in Tidal Creek Headwaters

Urbanization alters the hydrologic cycle of watersheds: as land becomes covered with surfaces impervious to rain, water is redirected from groundwater recharge and evapotranspiration to stormwater runoff. This is a critical issue considering that nonpoint source (NPS) pollution is the leading cause of water quality degradation, and stormwater runoff accounts for most NPS pollution (USEPA 2002). The human population in South Carolina coastal counties has increased by 30% since 1990, and growth is expected to continue at this rate. The urban sprawl type of development that characterizes most of South Carolina consumes land 3 to 6 times faster than the rate of population growth (Allen and Lu 2003). Within this context, researchers at NOAA's Hollings Marine Laboratory have adapted well-established methods for calculating stormwater runoff in order to quantify and to predict changes in runoff as urbanization increases. The resulting method is non-field based and leverages existing federal and state data sources.
Thirlwall(cid:146)s law: Binding-constraint or centre-of-gravity? A possible Kaleckian solution (cid:3)

Thirlwall(cid:146)s law is one of the most powerful empirical regularities among demand-led growth theories. In recent years, the challenges imposed by globalisation have led to a new wave of studies incorporating into this framework topics such as ecological sustainability, the complexity of innovation processes, the role of institutions, the composition of external imbalances, and gender issues. We notice some overlapping between two alternative interpretations: one that sees the law as a binding-constraint and another that adopts a centre-of-gravity perspective. It is argued that they are rather complementary. By means of a simple Keynesian multiplier model compatible with Harrodian instability, we show that assuming a balance-of-payments ceiling to growth gives rise to persistent and bounded (cid:135)uctuations such that the external constraint works as an asymmetric centre-of-gravity. There is no need to impose a (cid:135)oor to output. The model is compatible with di⁄erent sources of autonomous demand. Numerical simulations show the robustness of our results with respect to alternative scenarios .
Studies on Antixenosis on Bhendi accassions

: The influence of organic and inorganic sources of nutrients on the bhendi accessions against shoot and fruit borer Earias vittella (Fab.) in an already identified insect tolerant bhendi accession Salem Local in comparison with a susceptible check, Arka Anamika was studied under glasshouse conditions at Department of Entomology, Annamalai University, Tamil Nadu. On studying the feeding preference of E. vittella larvae, the damage was maximum in the accession Arka Anamika than Salem Local. Among the treatments, plants supplied with vermicompost were less preferred by E. vittella larvae, followed by plants supplied with K. In confining the larva on the accessions, among the treatments, plants supplied with vermicompost recorded lowest length of fruit damage by the larvae. On estimating the antibiosis, among the accessions, Salem Local was found to possess higher antibiosis against E.vittella . Among the treatments, vermicompost applied plants exerted higher antibiosis effect on E. vittella, followed by plants supplied with poultry manure. Larval feeding on vermicompost applied plants caused maximum larval mortality and minimum pupation rate and higher malformed adults. Minimum larval, pupal and adult duration were recorded on vermicompost applied plants.
Mitigating Multicollinearity: Using Regulation Techniques to Minimize the Effect of Collinearity

Multicollinearity can be briefly described as the phenomenon in which two or more identified predictor variables are linearly related, or codependent. The presence of this phenomenon can have a negative impact on an analysis as a whole and can severely limit the conclusions of a research study. In this training, we will explore how to detect multicollinearity, and once detected, which regularization techniques would be the most appropriate to combat it. The nuances and assumptions of R1 (Lasso), R2 (Ridge Regression), and Elastic Nets will be covered in order to provide adequate background for appropriate analytic implementation. This training is intended for any level of SAS® user. This training is designed for an audience with a background in theoretical and applied statistics, though the information within will be presented in such a way that any level of statistics/mathematical knowledge will be able to understand the content.
Manipulating Credit: Government Popularity as Driver of Credit Cycles

: This paper analyses the interaction between credit and political cycles, arguing that short-termist governments will seek to ride and amplify credit cycles for political gains. Specifically, it tests for the existence of political credit cycles not only before elections but throughout the term when executives seek to bolster support in periods of popularity drops. Compiling a unique database on government approval from opinion polls in 57 countries starting in 1980, it provides evidence that drops in popularity are systematically associated with larger future credit cycles, robust to a number of checks for confounding factors. Such credit manipulation appears to target credit to households specifically, is more prevalent in advanced, financialized, and indebted economies, and increases the likelihood of bad credit booms. Overall, this research points to the crucial importance of political cycles as drivers and sources of financial cycles and vulnerabilities .
Fire scars reveal variability and dynamics of eastern fire regimes

Fire scar evidence in eastern North America is sparse and complex but shows promise in defining the dynamics of these fire regimes and their influence on ecosystems. We review fire scar data, methods, and limitations, and use this information to identify and examine the factors influencing fire regimes. Fire scar data from studies at more than 40 sites in Eastern North America document fire regimes in forests with oak. Fire frequency was highly variable in both time and space even at regional scales (less than 500,000 ha). Many sites burned frequently (2- to 3-year mean fire intervals) while nearby sites (less than 40 km distant) burned infrequently (mean fire intervals more than 20 years). The fire scar record shows that major factors controlling temporal differences in fire regimes are changes in human population density, culture, and annual drought. Spatial differences in fire regimes are influenced by regional temperature, human population density, and topographic resistance to the spread of fire. Severe fire years (more than 10 percent of trees scarred at the sites) were associated with strong regional droughts that covered most of the Eastern United States and southern Ontario, Canada. Major fire years in Eastern North America occurred about 3.6 times per century before suppression efforts in forests with an oak component. Fire regimes with numerous human ignitions were more influenced by droughts. We synthesize mean fire intervals during the pre-European settlement period using an empirically derived regression model. The model was developed using two variables to predict broad scale spatial differences in fire frequency based on fire interval data derived from dendrochronologically dated fire scarred trees. Sixty-three percent of the variance in mean fire intervals was explained by mean maximum temperature and 12 percent by mapped human population density and historical documentation. The model is used to map coarse scale fire intervals in forested regions of the Eastern United States.
Az Internet ott Tárgyak témakörének áttekintése A Survey of Internet of Things

This article is a survey of Internet of Things. It aims that one can access the short history of this new scientific field and its basic notions in Hungarian. The IoT has many definitions, which are usually list the properties of IoT, like the things can communicate with each other over IoT, or the things can sense their surroundings by sensor networks and they can make decisions. We would like to go through over these definitions and give a general overview of this field. The IoT has 3 views: thing, network, and semantic oriented views. We overview one of the thing oriented views, which is based on Electronic Product Code (ECP). In this solution each product or entity, which we want to track, has an ECP code, which is hold by an RFID tag. The EPCglobal organization introduced an architecture, which can collect data collected by RFID readers deployed at different companies, processes these data locally, and shares them to other end users. We survey this architecture also.
Using EarthqUakE risk Data to assign CitiEs to DisastEr-rEsponsE FaCilitiEs in tUrkEy

Turkey is located at one of the most active earthquake regions of the world. It is the third in the world in terms of human loss and eighth in terms of the number of people affected by an earthquake (AFAD 2012). The only unchanging reality of Turkey besides the political events and the changes of economic conditions that took place during the years is the earthquake. Most of Turkey’s population can be considered as risky because of the North Anatolian Fault (NAF) line. Several earthquakes have been reported in this geographical region. In August 17, 1999, Marmara earthquake took place on the western part of NAF line
Supplementary Material for NPC: Neural Point Characters from Video

In this document, we provide additional qualitative comparisons on MonoPerfCap [23] (Section 1) and Human3.6M [4, 5] test splits (Section 2), and show extra examples on the motion retargeting task (Section 3). We further present the initial canonical point clouds from DANBO for all subjects (Section 4). We then describe implementation details, including network architectures and auxiliary features used in NPC (Section 5), followed by a comprehensive ablation study to quantify the impact of each network feature and our tabulated K-NN search. We also include an experiment demonstrating that using SMPL surface points works just as well as DANBO initialization (Section 6). Finally, we provide a visual example for failure cases (Section 7). Our supplemental video shows animated results of our NPC characters1.
Enhancement of critical current density by borohydride pinning in H-doped MgB2 bulks

The present study discovers the significant enhancement of critical current density by borohydride pinning in H-doped MgB2 bulks. Second-phase borohydrides are formed by synthesizing MgB2 bulks ex situ in an H2 atmosphere and in situ with H-trapped boron based on the concept of gas doping. Second phase Mg(BH4)2 appears in the samples ex situ sintered in an H2 atmosphere, leading to an enhancement of critical current density at magnetic fields over 3 T. Moreover, the in situ synthesized samples from H-trapped boron also exhibit a significantly enhanced critical current density of 1.8 × 104 A cm−2 at 20 K and 3 T, due to Mg(BH4)2 pinning centers that are embedded in the MgB2 grains. In contrast, the critical current density is only 9.6 × 103 A cm−2 at 20 K and 3 T in an un-doped MgB2 sample.The present study discovers the significant enhancement of critical current density by borohydride pinning in H-doped MgB2 bulks. Second-phase borohydrides are formed by synthesizing MgB2 bulks ex situ in an H2 atmosphere and in situ with H-trapped boron based on the concept of gas doping. Second phase Mg(BH4)2 appears in the samples ex situ sintered in an H2 atmosphere, leading to an enhancement of critical current density at magnetic fields over 3 T. Moreover, the in situ synthesized samples from H-trapped boron also exhibit a significantly enhanced critical current density of 1.8 × 104 A cm−2 at 20 K and 3 T, due to Mg(BH4)2 pinning centers that are embedded in the MgB2 grains. In contrast, the critical current density is only 9.6 × 103 A cm−2 at 20 K and 3 T in an un-doped MgB2 sample.
Reinforcement learning-based composite suboptimal control for Markov jump singularly perturbed systems with unknown dynamics

In this article, a model-free parallel reinforcement learning method is proposed to solve the suboptimal control problem for the Markov jump singularly perturbed systems. First, since fast and slow dynamics coexist in Markov jump singularly perturbed systems, it may lead to ill-conditioned numerical problems during the controller design process. Therefore, the original system can be decomposed into independent subsystems at diﬀerent time-scales by employing the reduced order method. Besides, a model-based parallel algorithm is designed to obtain the optimal controllers of the fast and slow subsystems respectively. Moreover, within the framework of reinforcement learning, the composite controller of the Markov jump singularly perturbed systems can be obtained without system dynamics. Finally, a numerical example is introduced to prove the eﬀectiveness of proposed algorithms.
Common Usability Issues on University’s Websites

— Usability is an important quality factor for the success or failure of any website. Users of university websites encounter various usability problems during the navigation and information searching activities. Studying these problems is a critical issue for the success of the growing higher education market. The main goal of this paper is to identify usability challenges encountered by the users of university websites. We conducted an extensive literature review in this regard. We identified numerous aspects of usability and relevant challenges to those aspects. We also presented proposed solutions from the existing literature. This study will help to have a deeper insight into user requirements to develop usable university websites.
Performance Assessment of MB-MF-SIC Detector Using Space Time Block Codes

The requirement for remote correspondence frameworks with high information rate and enhanced connection quality for an assortment of uses has significantly expanded. Multiple Input Multiple Output frameworks are a proficient means for expanding the execution. Space Time Block Code (STBC) is planned to be a basic part in future remote framework to diminish the multifaceted nature of different radio wire procedures and fulfill the need of higher information rates. It is the cutting edge innovation in remote interchanges. In this paper, we present Space-Time Block Codes at the transmitter side. The execution of the framework is done under Nakagami Fading channel. The Bit Error Rate examination of the framework is performed for 2x2 different radio wire choices in MIMO-OSTBC framework. The Performance of MB-MF-SIC framework is analyzed in the transmission of STBC and LDPC.