Proportional representation by means of a single transferable vote (PR-STV) is the electoral system employed in Irish elections. In this system, voters rank some or all of the candidates in order of preference. A latent space model is proposed for these election data where both candidates and voters are located in the same D-dimensional space. The locations are determined by the ranked preferen...

Rapid Reaction Linux has been created at the University of German Federal Armed Forces in order to enhance realtime capabilities of the standard Linux kernel. Rapid Reaction Linux combines two well known patches to achieve this goal on the Intel x86 architecture using processors like Intel Pentium or any newer descendant. Rapid Reaction Linux combines the LOW LATENCY Patch [Molnar00], provided ...

Researchers and scholars have been attracted by the idea of using integrated writing task along with independent writing task to best assess the EFL learners’ writing competence. This study was conducted to compare the writing performance of EFL students in integrated and independent writing tasks. It also aimed to find out if writing performance varies with task types. A number of thirty Irani...

A hybrid shuffled complex evolution approach with pattern search for unconstrained optimization Viviana Cocco Mariani a,∗, Leandro dos Santos Coelho b a Department of Mechanical Engineering, Pontifical Catholic University of Parana, Imaculada Conceição, 1155, Zip code 80215-910, Curitiba, PR, Brazil b Industrial and Systems Engineering Graduate Program, Pontifical Catholic University of Parana,...

This paper studies the role of US political factors in the allocation of World Bank concessional lending, where US political interests are proxied by voting similarity in the United Nations General Assembly on issues identified as important by the US Department of State. In contrast to previous studies we find that the US exerted a significant influence on IDA lending during the period 1993 200...

This paper proposes an automatic acquisition method for preparation roles (PRs) and utilization roles (URs), which are analogues of agentive and telic roles in Generative Lexicon Theory. URs roughly express the purpose and function of a given object, and are defined as paraphrases of expressions such as “using an object” or “enjoying an object.” A PR of an object is defined as an expression ref...

We test three central claims in the consociationalist literature: that in ethnically divided societies, conflict can be reduced by adopting (1) proportional representation over majoritarian electoral rules, (2) parliamentary over presidential or semipresidential arrangements, and (3) a federal over a unitary system. Previous research on these questions has suffered from two major flaws: a poorl...

Reliability of the current microprocessor technology is seriously challenged by radiation-induced soft errors. Accurate Vulnerability Factor (VF) modeling of system components is crucial in designing costeffective protection schemes in high-performance processors. Although Statistical Fault Injection (SFI) techniques can be used to provide relatively accurate VF estimations, they are often very...

The paper is a review of improved ca�culating and design techniques, performance rating of incinerators, and a description of the new open"pit incinerator. Of particular interest is a curve of nitrogen oxide formation with varying exe ess air and temperature developed from thermodynamic equilibrium data that has been verified by fie ld tes Is.

the purpose of the present study is to develop appropriate scoring scales for each of the defined stages of the writing process, and also to determine to what extent these scoring scales can reliably and validly assess the performances of efl learners in an academic writing task. two hundred and two students’ writing samples were collected after a step-by-step process oriented essay writing ins...