Knowledge-based industry and regional growth

One of the most important but less understood phenomena in the beginning of the 21st century has been a shift toward knowledge-based economic activity in the comparative advantage of modern industrialized countries. Two broad trends has been observed in the global economy. That is, the output from the world's science and technology system has been growing rapidly and the nature of investment has been changed (MILLER, 1996). The relative proportions of physical and intangible investment have changed considerably with the relative increase of intangible investments since the 1980s. In addition, there has been increased complementarity between physical and intangible investments and more important role of high technology in both kinds of investment (MILLER, 1996). Even in the newly industrialized countries, the growth of technology intensive industries, the increase of R&D activities and the growth of the knowledge intensive producer services have been common feature in recent years. In this change of the structure of productive assets, the role of knowledge is well recognized as the most fundamental resources in recent years (OECD, 1996; WORLD BANK, 1998). The development of information and communication technology (ICT) and globalisation trend have promoted this shift toward knowledge-based economy

Structured learning of sum-of-submodular higher order energy functions

Submodular functions can be exactly minimized in polynomial time, and the special case that graph cuts solve with max flow \cite{KZ:PAMI04} has had significant impact in computer vision \cite{BVZ:PAMI01,Kwatra:SIGGRAPH03,Rother:GrabCut04}. In this paper we address the important class of sum-of-submodular (SoS) functions \cite{Arora:ECCV12,Kolmogorov:DAM12}, which can be efficiently minimized via a variant of max flow called submodular flow \cite{Edmonds:ADM77}. SoS functions can naturally express higher order priors involving, e.g., local image patches; however, it is difficult to fully exploit their expressive power because they have so many parameters. Rather than trying to formulate existing higher order priors as an SoS function, we take a discriminative learning approach, effectively searching the space of SoS functions for a higher order prior that performs well on our training set. We adopt a structural SVM approach \cite{Joachims/etal/09a,Tsochantaridis/etal/04} and formulate the training problem in terms of quadratic programming; as a result we can efficiently search the space of SoS priors via an extended cutting-plane algorithm. We also show how the state-of-the-art max flow method for vision problems \cite{Goldberg:ESA11} can be modified to efficiently solve the submodular flow problem. Experimental comparisons are made against the OpenCV implementation of the GrabCut interactive segmentation technique \cite{Rother:GrabCut04}, which uses hand-tuned parameters instead of machine learning. On a standard dataset \cite{Gulshan:CVPR10} our method learns higher order priors with hundreds of parameter values, and produces significantly better segmentations. While our focus is on binary labeling problems, we show that our techniques can be naturally generalized to handle more than two labels

Distribution of Caustic-Crossing Intervals for Galactic Binary-Lens Microlensing Events

Detection of caustic crossings of binary-lens gravitational microlensing events is important because by detecting them one can obtain useful information both about the lens and source star. In this paper, we compute the distribution of the intervals between two successive caustic crossings, $f(t_{\rm cc})$, for Galactic bulge binary-lens events to investigate the observational strategy for the optimal detection and resolution of caustic crossings. From this computation, we find that the distribution is highly skewed toward short $t_{\rm cc}$ and peaks at $t_{\rm cc}\sim 1.5$ days. For the maximal detection of caustic crossings, therefore, prompt initiation of followup observations for intensive monitoring of events will be important. We estimate that under the strategy of the current followup observations with a second caustic-crossing preparation time of $\sim 2$ days, the fraction of events with resolvable caustic crossing is $\sim 80$. We find that if the followup observations can be initiated within 1 day after the first caustic crossing by adopting more aggressive observational strategies, the detection rate can be improved into $\sim 90$.Comment: total 6 pages, including 5 Figures and no Table, submitted to MNRA

Korean Heritage as a Foundation for Composition

This dissertation provides the conceptual and aesthetic background of the compositions composed throughout the course of my doctoral studies. I will introduce Korean philosophies and aesthetics and then expand upon these elements to demonstrate how they have influenced my approach to music composition. Furthermore, I will demonstrate how I intertwine the use of colour and Korean philosophies. Chapter 1 delineates the elements of Korean philosophies and aesthetics that have influenced my musical language. The chapter focuses on how the Korean handcraft art Jogakbo and the Korean philosophies of Yin-Yang, Ohang and Meak are related to each other. Additionally, I examine the origin and structure of Jogakbo, with a particular focus upon the key variables of shape and colour. The examination of Jogakbo causes me to establish how form and structure are linked in Jogakbo, and then how I apply this form and structure to my composition. Furthermore, I will describe how the aesthetics of Yin-yang, Ohang and Jogakbo form the core of my musical language by examining the function and unplanned approach to the different coloured scraps of material in Jogakbo. Drawing upon this examination, I describe how I have taken the colours from these scraps to form the colours in my music. In relation to this, I investigate the musical techniques of spectral composers, with an emphasis on musical colour, looking at specific composers’ techniques and establishing how they have influenced my own compositional techniques. Finally, I will discuss the role of the philosophy of Maek generating linearity on the horizontal structure of music. Chapter 2 discusses individual portfolio pieces composed throughout the doctoral course chronologically. I will demonstrate how selected Korean philosophies, aesthetics, and the techniques of Jogakbo have gradually evolved to play a larger role in the composition of my pieces. In particular, the colours used in Jogakbo and the philosophy of Ohang play a more direct role in creating the structure and form of the pieces composed in late course. In the conclusion, the research throughout my doctoral course has been summarised, and limitations and other challenges reached while applying the research to my compositional process are examined. Finally, the conclusion ends with a discussion of potential directions to further this research

Opportunity for research partnership

Globally health is a critical agenda and an inherent component of any development initiative. Efforts made to ensure equitable and quality health services has always been challenged but noticeable progress has also been registered. Compared to 1978 when Primary Health Care was declared in Alma Ata, there are great progress made changes of life expectancy, risk of dying before the age of 5 years and the spectrum of disease is quite different due to demographic and epidemiologic transitions and consequent changes in lifestyle, climate change and steady urbanization and industrialization.(1) The question however is the change in quality of life and the level to which the problem as we see today threaten health of the public. Globally, advocacy for quality of health care, which is key component of the right to health, and the route to equity and dignity, has contributed to an improved wellbeing of the public at large. Due to such global advocacy, many countries have shown improvements in their health care provision at large and to targeted section of the population in particular. Yet, there remains disparities between countries in terms of how health provision is structured, who benefits from the provision and the role of citizens in such a process

A LONGITUDINAL STATISTICAL NETWORK ANALYSIS OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL ITIGATION AND ALLIANCES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1970-2001

This dissertation investigates the structural dynamics of the inter-organizational (litigation, alliance) relations in the environmental movement sector (EMS) in the United States, 1970-2001. Particularly, it focuses on the litigative and alliance ties between the environmental organizations (EORGs) including both environmental movement organizations (EMOs) and environmental government agencies (EGAs), and explaining the processes by which the contemporary inter-EORG structure has emerged over time. The methods used in analysis include (balance, structural) partitioning, p-star logit, and categorical data analysis in statistical network analysis. The data analyzed were collected from various sources including LexisNexis and Guide Star and include both organizational attributes and relations. To explicate the dynamic processes by which the contemporary inter-EORG structure has emerged, this dissertation investigates the formation of dyadic, triadic, and network structure with regard to litigative and alliance ties, respectively. Selected fundamental models of network dynamics (transitive dominance, strategic actor, and social balance) help explain the empirical inter-organizational (litigation, alliance) relations in later chapters. The theoretical and empirical findings help better understand the structural and dynamic issues in the study of the environment, social movement, complex organizations, and network evolution

A study of the mind-body theory in Spinoza

This thesis investigates Spinoza's mind-body theory starting with the discussion of the diverse interpretations of his mind-body theory such as hylomorphism, idealism, epiphenomenalism, and materialism. From the critical comments on inadequacies of these interpretations, it turns out that Spinoza's argument of the relationship between the mind and the body should be understood as holding that there is a non-causal relationship between the mind and the body and that they have equal weight. Although the parallelistic interpretation is compatible with the above understandings, we cannot ascribe traditional parallelism to Spinoza. His parallelism is derived from his argument of identity between the mind and the body, which is based on his substance monism and attribute dualism. We should therefore understand Spinoza's mind-body theory as an identity theory which leads to a parallel relationship between the mind and the body. Since the double aspect theory argues both identity and parallelism between the mind and the body, the doctrine we should ascribe to Spinoza is the double aspect theory. Furthermore, owing to the fact that Spinoza maintains substance monism and attribute dualism (assuming an objective view of the attributes of thought and extension, which are distinct), there is, in Spinoza's theory, an identity between mental and physical events while there is no identity between mental and physical properties: the mental and the physical events are one and the same event described under mental and physical properties, respectively. From the fact Spinoza finds identity in individuals or events, but not in properties, it follows that his theory should also be understood as a kind of token identity theory

A Comparison of Database Insider Attack Monitoring Approaches using Page Rank Algorithms

We compare two database insider attack monitoring approaches that use page rank algorithms: PageRank and Weighted PageRank. By calculating the weight of queries, we predict the users’ pattern in the database system