REAL ESTATE PROFESSIONALS AND THE IMMOVABLE PROPERTY MARKET IN ALBANIA

The experience of other Eastern and Central European countries would suggest that in Albania, as the market for real property develops, there should also be developments in services that support real property transactions. A competitive and transparent market is usually facilitated by the presence of real estate professionals who bring buyers and sellers together to maximize the opportunities of both. These specialists work primarily through the collection and management of market information relating to real estate and profit through the administration of the process of submitting offers, acceptances, and contracts of sale. The appearance of such real estate professionals began in Albania in 1991, immediately following legal reforms allowing individuals and groups of individuals in society to own real property. This report examines the development of the real estate profession in Albania from 1991 to 1996 and is based on interviews and meetings with representatives of the key actors in any real property market: realtors, builders, urban planners, architects, lawyers and notaries, appraisers, and construction companies. The study was sponsored by the Land Market Development Project for the combined purpose of (a) providing insight on the evolution of Albania's urban real property market prior to full implementation of the Immovable Property Registration System and (b) assisting with the establishment of an Association of Real Estate Professionals, which could improve the professional expertise of realtors and encourage nongovernmental legal and policy research relating to real estate market development.Real estate business--Albania, Real estate development--Albania, Land markets--Albania, Land Economics/Use,

PRODUCTION, PRICE AND RISK FACTORS IN CHANNEL CATFISH FARMING

The effects of several production/management, price and risk factors upon channel catfish profitability are analyzed with a multiperiod mixed-integer linear programming model. Factors analyzed include pond size and optimal stocking rates, alternate levels and trends in catfish prices, pond production losses and level of family consumption withdrawals. Model results indicate that channel catfish offer the potential to significantly increase farm rates of return while providing an avenue of intensive farm growth, without expanding the land base of the farm. However, the long range financial success of the firm was very sensitive to several of the management and risk factors examined.Production Economics, Risk and Uncertainty,

Assessing the Effectiveness of Automated Emotion Recognition in Adults and Children for Clinical Investigation

Recent success stories in automated object or face recognition, partly fuelled by deep learning artificial neural network (ANN) architectures, has led to the advancement of biometric research platforms and, to some extent, the resurrection of Artificial Intelligence (AI). In line with this general trend, inter-disciplinary approaches have taken place to automate the recognition of emotions in adults or children for the benefit of various applications such as identification of children emotions prior to a clinical investigation. Within this context, it turns out that automating emotion recognition is far from being straight forward with several challenges arising for both science(e.g., methodology underpinned by psychology) and technology (e.g., iMotions biometric research platform). In this paper, we present a methodology, experiment and interesting findings, which raise the following research questions for the recognition of emotions and attention in humans: a) adequacy of well-established techniques such as the International Affective Picture System (IAPS), b) adequacy of state-of-the-art biometric research platforms, c) the extent to which emotional responses may be different among children or adults. Our findings and first attempts to answer some of these research questions, are all based on a mixed sample of adults and children, who took part in the experiment resulting into a statistical analysis of numerous variables. These are related with, both automatically and interactively, captured responses of participants to a sample of IAPS pictures

Effective renormalized multi-body interactions of harmonically confined ultracold neutral bosons

We calculate the renormalized effective 2-, 3-, and 4-body interactions for N neutral ultracold bosons in the ground state of an isotropic harmonic trap, assuming 2-body interactions modeled with the combination of a zero-range and energy-dependent pseudopotential. We work to third-order in the scattering length a defined at zero collision energy, which is necessary to obtain both the leading-order effective 4-body interaction and consistently include finite-range corrections for realistic 2-body interactions. The leading-order, effective 3- and 4-body interaction energies are U3 = -(0.85576...)(a/l)^2 + 2.7921(1)(a/l)^3 + O[(a/l)^4] and U4 = +(2.43317...)(a/l)^3 + O[(a\l)^4], where w and l are the harmonic oscillator frequency and length, respectively, and energies are in units of hbar*w. The one-standard deviation error 0.0001 for the third-order coefficient in U3 is due to numerical uncertainty in estimating a slowly converging sum; the other two coefficients are either analytically or numerically exact. The effective 3- and 4-body interactions can play an important role in the dynamics of tightly confined and strongly correlated systems. We also performed numerical simulations for a finite-range boson-boson potential, and it was comparison to the zero-range predictions which revealed that finite-range effects must be taken into account for a realistic third-order treatment. In particular, we show that the energy-dependent pseudopotential accurately captures, through third order, the finite-range physics, and in combination with the multi-body effective interactions gives excellent agreement with the numerical simulations, validating our theoretical analysis and predictions.Comment: Updated introduction, correction of a few typos and sign error

Movement demands and perceived wellness associated with preseason training camp in NCAA Division I college football players

The aims of this study were to examine the movement demands of preseason practice in National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I college football players using portable global positioning system (GPS) technology and to assess perceived wellness associated with preseason practice to determine whether GPS-derived variables from the preceding day influence perceived wellness the following day. Twenty-nine players were monitored using GPS receivers (Catapult Innovations, Melbourne, Australia) during 20 preseason practices. Individual observations (n = 550) were divided into offensive and defensive position groups. Movement variables including low-, medium-, high-intensity, and sprint distance, player load, and acceleration and deceleration distance were assessed. Perceived wellness ratings (n = 469) were examined using a questionnaire which assessed fatigue, soreness, sleep quality, sleep quantity, stress, and mood. A 1-way analysis of variance for positional movement demands and multilevel regressions for wellness measures were used, followed by post hoc testing to evaluate the relational significance between categorical outcomes of perceived wellness scores and movement variables. Results demonstrated significantly (p ≤ 0.05) greater total, high-intensity, and sprint distance, along with greater acceleration and deceleration distances for the defensive back and wide receiver position groups compared with their respective offensive and defensive counterparts. Significant (p ≤ 0.05) differences in movement variables were demonstrated for individuals who responded more or less favorably on each of the 6 factors of perceived wellness. Data from this study provide novel quantification of the position-specific physical demands and perceived wellness associated with college football preseason practice. Results support the use of position-specific training and individual monitoring of college football players

Charm meson resonances in D→PℓνD \to P \ell \nu decays

Motivated by recent experimental results we reconsider semileptonic $D \to P \ell \nu_{\ell}$ decays within a model which combines heavy quark symmetry and properties of the chiral Lagrangian. We include excited charm meson states, some of them recently observed, in our Lagrangian and determine their impact on the charm meson semileptonic form factors. We find that the inclusion of excited charm meson states in the model leads to a rather good agreement with the experimental results on the $q^2$ shape of the $F_+(q^2)$ form factor. We also calculate branching ratios for all $D \to P \ell \nu_{\ell}$ decays.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures; minor corrections, added some discussion, version as publishe