Foreign aid and business bottlenecks : a study of aid effectiveness

This paper proposes a new framework to analyze aid effectiveness. Using World Bank firm survey data and OECD aid flow data, the authors analyze whether aid targets areas that firms in developing countries have identified as obstacles for their growth and whether aid actually improves firms'perceptions of those areas. The analysis finds that aid does target the areas that firms have identified as obstacles; aid funding trade related projects is particularly effective in targeting the correct countries. For the most part, aid has a positive impact on improving firms'perceptions, particularly in the business environment. And for each target area, smaller aid disbursements tend to be more effective at improving firm perceptions than larger disbursements.Environmental Economics&Policies,Development Economics&Aid Effectiveness,Disability,Gender and Health,School Health

VERTO: a visual notation for declarative process models

Declarative approaches to business process modeling allow to represent loosely-structured (declarative) processes in flexible scenarios as a set of constraints on the allowed flow of activities. However, current graphical notations for declarative processes are difficult to interpret. As a consequence, this has affected widespread usage of such notations, by increasing the dependency on experts to understand their semantics. In this paper, we tackle this issue by introducing a novel visual declarative notation targeted to a more understandable modeling of declarative processes

Quality interoperability within digital libraries: the DL.org perspective

Quality is the most dynamic aspect of DLs, and becomes even more complex with respect to interoperability. This paper formalizes the research motivations and hypotheses on quality interoperability conducted by the Quality Working Group within the EU-funded project DL.org (<a href="http://www.dlorg.eu">http://www.dlorg.eu/</a>). After providing a multi-level interoperability framework – adopted by DL.org - the authors illustrate key-research points and approaches on the way to the interoperability of DLs quality, grounding them in the DELOS Reference Model. By applying the DELOS Reference Model Quality Concept Map to their interoperability motivating scenario, the authors subsequently present the two main research outcomes of their investigation - the Quality Core Model and the Quality Interoperability Survey

Quality interoperability within digital libraries: the DL.org perspective

Quality is the most dynamic aspect of DLs, and becomes even more complex with respect to interoperability. This paper formalizes the research motivations and hypotheses on quality interoperability conducted by the Quality Working Group within the EU-funded project DL.org (<a href="http://www.dlorg.eu">http://www.dlorg.eu/</a>). After providing a multi-level interoperability framework – adopted by DL.org - the authors illustrate key-research points and approaches on the way to the interoperability of DLs quality, grounding them in the DELOS Reference Model. By applying the DELOS Reference Model Quality Concept Map to their interoperability motivating scenario, the authors subsequently present the two main research outcomes of their investigation - the Quality Core Model and the Quality Interoperability Survey

Amplituhedron meets Jeffrey-Kirwan Residue

The tree amplituhedra A^(m)_n,k are mathematical objects generalising the notion of polytopes into the Grassmannian. Proposed for m=4 as a geometric construction encoding tree-level scattering amplitudes in planar N=4 super Yang-Mills theory, they are mathematically interesting for any m. In this paper we strengthen the relation between scattering amplitudes and geometry by linking the amplituhedron to the Jeffrey-Kirwan residue, a powerful concept in symplectic and algebraic geometry. We focus on a particular class of amplituhedra in any dimension, namely cyclic polytopes, and their even-dimensional conjugates. We show how the Jeffrey-Kirwan residue prescription allows to extract the correct amplituhedron volume functions in all these cases. Notably, this also naturally exposes the rich combinatorial and geometric structures of amplituhedra, such as their regular triangulations.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio