Is the Norwegian welfare state model under pressure? In this article we argue that this model will persist to the extent that there is a relatively strong consensus among the majority of the national elites to support it. The empirical results presented indicate that the majority of the Norwegian elites at the time of the study (2000) supported the basic institutions and policies in the model a...

LUCIA, a new Italian talking head based on a modified version of the Cohen-Massaro’s labial coarticulation model is described. A semi-automatic minimization technique, working on real cinematic data, acquired by the ELITE optoelectronic system, was used to train the dynamic characteristics of the model. LUCIA is an MPEG-4 standard facial animation system working on standard FAP visual parameter...

Yelp is one of the largest online searching and reviewing systems for kinds of businesses, including restaurants, shopping, home services et al. Analyzing the real world data from Yelp is valuable in acquiring the interests of users, which helps to improve the design of the next generation system. This paper targets the evaluation of Yelp dataset, which is provided in the Yelp data challenge. A...

During this period, four successive regimes in Bangladesh have felt reluctantly compelled to set up structures for local participation in government. Each found it had to reach out beyond the support of urban and rural elites and the military if it was to move beyond mere stability to real development of the country. Despite many problems. most notably local elite takeover at local level and mi...

Research Highlights and Abstract Building on recent efforts to bridge the elites/events dichotomy in the wartime opinion literature, we test the explanatory power of, and offer a theoretical extension to, the elasticity of reality hypothesis using the case of British support for the war in Afghanistan from 2001 through 2010. Marshaling an array of aggregate, individual-level and experimental su...

Using direct democracy, voters in a majority of states have considered, in recent years, whether the definition of marriage should include or exclude same-sex couples. This Article explores how individuals assessed three ballot measures that defined marriage in three states: two constitutional referendums that proposed to outlaw same-sex marriage in North Carolina and Minnesota, and a veto refe...

Prosodic variations in unit-based speech synthesis: the example of interrogative sentences This paper proposes an automatic method to increase the number of possible prosodic variations in non-uniform unit-based speech synthesis. More specifically, we are interested in the production of interrogative sentences through the eLite text-to-speech synthesis system, which relies on the selection of n...

We investigated differences of the spatiotemporal parameters in a 100-m sprint among elite, sub-elite, and non-elite sprinters with a unilateral transtibial amputation. Using publicly available Internet broadcasts, we analyzed 125, 19, and 33 records from 30 elite, 12 sub-elite, and 22 non-elite sprinters, respectively. Average speed, step frequency, and step length were calculated Average spee...

Molisa (2011) offers a presentation of the work of Eckhart Tolle (1997, 2005) and a critique of critical and social accounting research, particularly the notion of emancipation. While taking issue with some of both Molisa (2011) and Tolle’s (1997, 2005) arguments, I contend that their conclusions have some interesting implications. The religious traditions referenced by Tolle (1997, 2005) recog...

This paper analyses the dynamics of inequality, democratization and economic development in a political economy model of growth where education is both the engine of growth and a determinant of political participation. In a context with imperfect capital markets, we investigate the incentives for an educated oligarchy to subsidize the poor’s education and to initiate a democratic transition. We...