Romanian Banks – Romanian SMEs: A Mutual Business Relationship

This paper analyzes the bank-SMEs partnership in terms of ICT collaboration. The data about ICT projects developed in the Romanian banks having SMEs as a technology provider is collected by web content mining. Then, the paper addresses two main perspectives. At first, we identify the features that characterize the successful SMEs that managed to develop business relationships with the Romanian Banks and we build an econometric model to express this dependency. On the other hand, the paper analyzes the problem from the Romanian banks’ perspective, identifying patterns in their IT investment decisions.SMEs; banking industry; IT investments; clustering; decision patterns.

Towards a new ITU-T recommendation for subjective methods evaluating gaming QoE

This paper reports on activities in Study Group 12 of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T SG12) to define a new Recommendation on subjective evaluation methods for gaming Quality of Experience (QoE). It first resumes the structure and content of the current draft which has been proposed to ITU-T SG12 in September 2014 and then critically discusses potential gaming content and evaluation methods for inclusion into the upcoming Recommendation. The aim is to start a discussion amongst experts on potential evaluation methods and their limitations, before finalizing a Recommendation. Such a recommendation might in the end be applied by non -expert users, hence wrong decisions in the evaluation design could negatively affect gaming QoE throughout the evaluation

Recovery of the Austrian economy following the COVID-19 crisis can take up to three years, IIASA Policy Brief #26

Collaboration between researchers from IIASA, WU, WIFO, and the IHS provides scenarios of the medium-run economic effects of the lockdown in Austria using the IIASA macroeconomic simulation model. The analysis suggests that the return to the business-as-usual trend may take up to three years after a steep initial economic downturn due to the lockdown, and a gradual recovery thereafter

Duality, Fundamentality, and Emergence

Dualities offer new possibilities for relating fundamentality and emergence. In particular, as is the aim of this chapter to show, it may happen that the relations of fundamentality and emergence between dual theories are inverted. In other words, the direction of emergence typically found in these cases is opposite to the direction of emergence followed in the standard accounts: that is, while the standard emergence direction is that of decreasing fundamentality – in that there is emergence of less fundamental, high-level entities, out of more fundamental, low-level entities – in these cases of duality, on the contrary, a more fundamental entity can emerge out of a less fundamental one. In fact, this possibility can be traced back to the existence of different classical limits in quantum field theories and string theories

Duality, Fundamentality, and Emergence

We argue that dualities offer new possibilities for relating fundamentality, levels, and emergence. Namely, dualities often relate two theories whose hierarchies of levels are inverted relative to each other, and so allow for new fundamentality relations, as well as for epistemic emergence. We find that the direction of emergence typically found in these cases is opposite to the direction of emergence followed in the standard accounts. Namely, the standard emergence direction is that of decreasing fundamentality: there is emergence of less fundamental, high-level entities, out of more fundamental, low-level entities. But in cases of duality, a more fundamental entity can emerge out of a less fundamental one. This possibility can be traced back to the existence of different classical limits in quantum field theories and string theories

Towards improved 1-D settler modelling : calibration of the Bürger model and case study

Recently, Burger et al. (2011) developed a new 1-D SST model which allows for more realistic predictions of the sludge settling behaviour than traditional 1-D models used to date. However, the addition of a compression function in this new 1-D model complicates the model calibration. This study aims to report advances in the calibration of this novel 1-D model. Data of the evolution of the sludge blanket height during batch settling experiments were collected at different initial solids concentrations. Based on the linear slopes of the batch settling curves the hindered settling velocity functions by Vesilind (1968) and Takacs et al. (1991) were calibrated. Although both settling velocity functions gave a good fit to the experimental data, very large confidence intervals were found for the parameters of the settling velocity by Takacs. Global sensitivity analysis showed that it is not possible to find a unique set of parameter values for the settling function by Takacs based on experimental data of the hindered settling velocity. Subsequently, the calibrated Vesilind settling velocity was implemented in the 1-D model by Burger et al. (2011) and the parameters of the additional compression function were calibrated by fitting the model by Burger et al. (2011) to the batch settling curves. Simulation results showed that while the 1-D model by Takacs et al. (1991) underpredicted the experimental data of sludge blanket heights, the model by Burger et al. (2011) was able to predict the experimental data far more accurately. However, a global sensitivity analysis showed that no unique optimum for the combined set of hindered and compression parameters could be found

Small Open Reading Frames, Non-Coding RNAs and Repetitive Elements in Bradyrhizobium japonicum USDA 110

Small open reading frames (sORFs) and genes for non-coding RNAs are poorly investigated components of most genomes. Our analysis of 1391 ORFs recently annotated in the soybean symbiont Bradyrhizobium japonicum USDA 110 revealed that 78% of them contain less than 80 codons. Twenty-one of these sORFs are conserved in or outside Alphaproteobacteria and most of them are similar to genes found in transposable elements, in line with their broad distribution. Stabilizing selection was demonstrated for sORFs with proteomic evidence and bll1319_ISGA which is conserved at the nucleotide level in 16 alphaproteobacterial species, 79 species from other taxa and 49 other Proteobacteria. Further we used Northern blot hybridization to validate ten small RNAs (BjsR1 to BjsR10) belonging to new RNA families. We found that BjsR1 and BjsR3 have homologs outside the genus Bradyrhizobium, and BjsR5, BjsR6, BjsR7, and BjsR10 have up to four imperfect copies in Bradyrhizobium genomes. BjsR8, BjsR9, and BjsR10 are present exclusively in nodules, while the other sRNAs are also expressed in liquid cultures. We also found that the level of BjsR4 decreases after exposure to tellurite and iron, and this down-regulation contributes to survival under high iron conditions. Analysis of additional small RNAs overlapping with 3’-UTRs revealed two new repetitive elements named Br-REP1 and Br-REP2. These REP elements may play roles in the genomic plasticity and gene regulation and could be useful for strain identification by PCR-fingerprinting. Furthermore, we studied two potential toxin genes in the symbiotic island and confirmed toxicity of the yhaV homolog bll1687 but not of the newly annotated higB homolog blr0229_ISGA in E. coli. Finally, we revealed transcription interference resulting in an antisense RNA complementary to blr1853, a gene induced in symbiosis. The presented results expand our knowledge on sORFs, non-coding RNAs and repetitive elements in B. japonicum and related bacteria

Effects of Disorder on the Pressure-Induced Mott Transition in κ\kappa-BEDT-TTF)2_2Cu[N(CN)2_2]Cl

We present a study of the influence of disorder on the Mott metal-insulator transition for the organic charge-transfer salt $\kappa$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2$Cu[N(CN)$_2$]Cl. To this end, disorder was introduced into the system in a controlled way by exposing the single crystals to x-ray irradiation. The crystals were then fine-tuned across the Mott transition by the application of continuously controllable He-gas pressure at low temperatures. Measurements of the thermal expansion and resistance show that the first-order character of the Mott transition prevails for low irradiation doses achieved by irradiation times up to 100 h. For these crystals with a moderate degree of disorder, we find a first-order transition line which ends in a second-order critical endpoint, akin to the pristine crystals. Compared to the latter, however, we observe a significant reduction of both, the critical pressure $p_c$ and the critical temperature $T_c$. This result is consistent with the theoretically-predicted formation of a soft Coulomb gap in the presence of strong correlations and small disorder. Furthermore, we demonstrate, similar to the observation for the pristine sample, that the Mott transition after 50 h of irradiation is accompanied by sizable lattice effects, the critical behavior of which can be well described by mean-field theory. Our results demonstrate that the character of the Mott transition remains essentially unchanged at a low disorder level. However, after an irradiation time of 150 h, no clear signatures of a discontinuous metal-insulator transition could be revealed anymore. These results suggest that, above a certain disorder level, the metal-insulator transition becomes a smeared first-order transition with some residual hysteresis.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures, appeared in the Special Issue "Advances in Organic Conductors and Superconductors" of Crystal

Uncovering human transcription factor interactions associated with genetic variants, novel DNA motifs, and repetitive elements using enhanced yeast one-hybrid assays

Identifying transcription factor (TF) binding to noncoding variants, uncharacterized DNA motifs, and repetitive genomic elements has been difficult due to technical and computational challenges. Indeed, current experimental methods such as chromatin immunoprecipitation are capable of only testing one TF at a time and motif prediction algorithms often lead to false positive and false negative predictions. Here, we address these limitations by developing two approaches based on enhanced yeast one-hybrid assays. The first approach allows to interrogate the binding of >1,000 human TFs to single nucleotide variant alleles, short insertions and deletions (indels), and novel DNA motifs; while the second approach allows for the identification of TFs that bind to repetitive DNA elements. Using the former approach, we identified gain of TF interactions to a GG→AA mutation in the TERT promoter and an 18 bp indel in the TAL1 super-enhancer, both of which are associated with cancer, and identified the TFs that bind to three uncharacterized DNA motifs identified by the ENCODE Project in footprinting assays. Using the latter approach, we detected the binding of 75 TFs to the highly repetitive Alu elements. We anticipate that these approaches will expand our capabilities to study genetic variation and under-characterized genomic regions.https://doi.org/10.1101/459305First author draf