Open For Business? Institutions, Business Environment and Economic Development

Recent years have seen a significant focus in the literature on growth and development on the idea that legal and political institutions are the key determinant of economic development. The main finding of this paper is that the focus on the primacy of legal and political institutions may be misplaced and that business-friendly economic policies (proxied for here by the World Bank’s Doing Business indicator) are the key determinant of the level of income per capita. We find that a country’s Doing Business rank dominates a range of measures of legal and political institutional quality as an explanatory variable for income per capita. We also find the Doing Business rank to be a key explanatory variable for economic growth and that previous findings assigning a significant role to educational attainment are not robust to the inclusion of this new indicator in growth regressions.

Colon centreline calculation for CT colonography using optimised 3D opological thinning

CT colonography is an emerging technique for colorectal cancer screening. This technique facilitates noninvasive imaging of the colon interior by generating virtual reality models of the colon lumen. Manual navigation through these models is a slow and tedious process. It is possible to automate navigation by calculating the centreline of the colon lumen. There are numerous well documented approaches for centreline calculation. Many of these techniques have been developed as alternatives to 3D topological thinning which has been discounted by others due to its computationally intensive nature. This paper describes a fully automated, optimised version of 3D topological thinning that has been specifically developed for calculating the centreline of the human colon

Consequence Valuing as Operation and Process: A Parsimonious Analysis of Motivation

The concept of the motivating operation (MO) has been subject to 3 criticisms: (a) the terms and concepts employed do not always overlap with traditional behavior-analytic verbal practices; (b) the dual nature of the MO is unclear; and (c) there is a lack of adequate contact with empirical data. We offer a more parsimonious approach to motivation, extending Skinner’s (1938, 1953) early work on this topic, and introduce two new key terms: consequence-valuing operation (CVO) and consequence-valuing process (CVP). Our account focuses on the value of the reinforcer in terms of the level of responding that occurs relative to some previously measured baseline. We suggest that the concepts of the CVO and CVP will facilitate the identification, analysis, and manipulation of motivational factors in the treatment of behavior disorders

Consequence Valuing as Operation and Process: A Parsimonious Analysis of Motivation

The concept of the motivating operation (MO) has been subject to 3 criticisms: (a) the terms and concepts employed do not always overlap with traditional behavior-analytic verbal practices; (b) the dual nature of the MO is unclear; and (c) there is a lack of adequate contact with empirical data. We offer a more parsimonious approach to motivation, extending Skinner’s (1938, 1953) early work on this topic, and introduce two new key terms: consequence-valuing operation (CVO) and consequence-valuing process (CVP). Our account focuses on the value of the reinforcer in terms of the level of responding that occurs relative to some previously measured baseline. We suggest that the concepts of the CVO and CVP will facilitate the identification, analysis, and manipulation of motivational factors in the treatment of behavior disorders

A novel technique for reducing false positive detections in CAD-CTC

Computed tomography colonoscopy (CTC) is an emerging alternative to conventional colonoscopy for colorectal cancer screening. A series of computer assisted diagnosis (CAD) techniques have been developed for use in CTC. Although high levels of accuracy for polyp detection have been reported, the problem of excessive false positive detections still warrants attention. We present a CAD-CTC technique that has been developed specifically to reduce the number of false positive detections without compromising polyp detection accuracy. The technique incorporates a novel intermediate stage that restructures initial polyp candidates so that they conform more closely to the shape of actual polyps. The restructuring process causes false positives to expand to include more false positive characteristics, whereas, actual polyps retain their original polyp-like characteristics. An evaluation of the documented technique demonstrated that it can be successfully applied to the majority of polyp candidates, and that its use can reduce the number of false positive detections by up to 57.8%

A visual programming environment for machine vision engineers

This paper details a free image analysis and software development environment for machine vision application development. The environment provides high-level access to over 300 image manipulation, processing and analysis algorithms through a well-defined and easy to use graphical interface. Users can extend the core library using the developer's interface via a plug-in which features automatic source code generation, compilation with full error feedback and dynamic algorithm updates. Also discusses key issues associated with the environment and outline the advantages in adopting such a system for machine vision application development

Clonsast Social Survey. ESRI Memorandum Series No. 126 1977

Clonsast is Bord na Mona's (BnM) oldest established larger type bog. It consists of six smaller bogs, - Garryhinch, Derryounce, Derrylea, Clonsast main bog, North bog and the Bulge. The whole group of bogs is situated close to Portarlington and has a gross area of 10,700 acres. Over 200,000 tons of sod peat are produced in these bogs annually but supplies are becoming exhausted. Production will progressively reduce from now onwards and by 1994 it will be down to an estimated 34,000 tons annually. Most of the turf from the Clonsast works is supplied to the ESB for use in the Portarlington generating station which has a 37.5 Mg Watt capacity. At present this station forms part of the ESB's base load electricity supply and will continue as such up to 1985, using 130,000 tons per year, which will be reduced to 100,000 tons for the last four years

Identification of body fat tissues in MRI data

In recent years non-invasive medical diagnostic techniques have been used widely in medical investigations. Among the various imaging modalities available, Magnetic Resonance Imaging is very attractive as it produces multi-slice images where the contrast between various types of body tissues such as muscle, ligaments and fat is well defined. The aim of this paper is to describe the implementation of an unsupervised image analysis algorithm able to identify the body fat tissues from a sequence of MR images encoded in DICOM format. The developed algorithm consists of three main steps. The first step pre-processes the MR images in order to reduce the level of noise. The second step extracts the image areas representing fat tissues by using an unsupervised clustering algorithm. Finally, image refinements are applied to reclassify the pixels adjacent to the initial fat estimate and to eliminate outliers. The experimental data indicates that the proposed implementation returns accurate results and furthermore is robust to noise and to greyscale in-homogeneity