Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SCHOOL - BASED MANAGEMENT PROSPECTS AND CHALLENGES: A CASE OF PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN MURANG'A SOUTH DISTRICT, KENYA

The main purpose of this study was to find out what the principals and teachers perceived were the prospects of school-based management (SBM), the accrued benefits of SBM and challenges schools would experience if SBM was introduced in Murang’a South district. The study adopted descriptive survey design. Stratified sampling was used to select 16 schools which participated in this study. A sample of 80 respondents was selected to participate in the study. The sample for the study included 64 teachers and 16 principals. Data for this study was collected using structured questionnaires which were administered by the researcher to a sample of principals and teachers in each of the sampled schools. A pre-testing of the research tools was carried out in four institutions which were not included in the study to ascertain validity and reliability of the instrument. The data was analysed manually and was presented in descriptive statistical tables using frequencies and percentages. The result of findings indicated that the introduction of SBM would be a way of addressing the current crisis in management of secondary schools, bringing about accountability, commitment by teachers in discharging their duties, efficient use of resources, timely syllabus coverage, delivery of quality education, improve efficiency and reduce need for supervision among other prospects if it was introduced in secondary schools in the district. The study made the following recommendations: Firstly, principals and teachers should be actively involved in making decisions about secondary schools management because they are the people on the ground and understands the school environment better. Secondly, the Ministry of Education should consider involving all the education stakeholders in formulating policies, this way they will own the policies and it will be easy to implement them without being seen like they are forcing them on schools.
Distribution of different forms of potassium in some coastal soils of West Bengal

The research work with a view to evaluate the status, availability, fixation, releasing and supplying behaviour of potassium for a meaningful K-fertilizer management strategy for sustainable crop production in the coastal soils of West Bengal. Forty surface (0-15 cm) soil samples representing the coastal soils of West Bengal were used for assessing the important physical and physicochemical properties and distribution of different forms of potassium. Total K and lattice K content of the soils were high ranging between 1.0 to 2.74 and 0.93 to 2.60%, respectively. Non-exchangeable, available, exchangeable and water soluble K contents of the soils varied from 534 to 1050, 68.81 to 284.77, 58.65 to 232.50 and 10.16 to 52.27 mg/kg contributing 3.84 to 6.32, 0.53 to 1.23, 0.45 to 1.02 and 0.08 to 0.22% towards total K, respectively. The overall soils were high in available, non-exchangeable and mineral K status. Based on the district wise average values of the different forms of K, the soils were in the order: Medinipur East > North 24 Parganas> South 24 Parganas. Different forms of soil K had highly significant positive correlation with pH and EC. Non-exchangeable K was significantly and positively correlated with organic carbon and CEC. Available K, exchangeable K and water soluble K had significant negative correlation with sand. All the forms of soil potassium were interrelated, indicating the existence of a dynamic equilibrium among them.
Early Life Risk Factors for Incident Atrial Fibrillation in the Helsinki Birth Cohort Study

Background Early life risk factors are associated with cardiometabolic disease, but have not been fully studied in atrial fibrillation (AF). There are discordant results from existing studies of birth weight and AF, and the impact of maternal body size, gestational age, placental size, and birth length is unknown. Methods and Results The Helsinki Birth Cohort Study includes 13 345 people born as singletons in Helsinki in the years 1934–1944. Follow‐up was through national registries, and ended on December 31, 2013, with 907 incident cases. Cox regression analyses stratified on year of birth were constructed for perinatal variables and incident AF, adjusting for offspring sex, gestational age, and socioeconomic status at birth. There was a significant U‐shaped association between birth weight and AF (P for quadratic term=0.01). The lowest risk of AF was found among those with a birth weight of 3.4 kg (3.8 kg for women [85th percentile] and 3.0 kg for men [17th percentile]). High maternal body mass index (≥30 kg/m2) predicted offspring AF; hazard ratio 1.36 (95% CI 1.07–1.74, P=0.01) compared with normal body mass index (<25 kg/m2). Maternal height was associated with early‐onset AF (<65.3 years), hazard ratio 1.47 (95% CI 1.24–1.74, P<0.0001), but not with later onset AF. Results were independent of incident coronary artery disease, hypertension, or diabetes mellitus. Conclusions High maternal body mass index during pregnancy and maternal height are previously undescribed predictors of offspring AF. Efforts to prevent maternal obesity might reduce later AF in offspring. Birth weight has a U‐shaped relation to incident AF independent of other perinatal variables.
Monocular 3D Reconstruction of Locally Textured Surfaces

Most recent approaches to monocular nonrigid 3D shape recovery rely on exploiting point correspondences and work best when the whole surface is well textured. The alternative is to rely on either contours or shading information, which has only been demonstrated in very restrictive settings. Here, we propose a novel approach to monocular deformable shape recovery that can operate under complex lighting and handle partially textured surfaces. At the heart of our algorithm are a learned mapping from intensity patterns to the shape of local surface patches and a principled approach to piecing together the resulting local shape estimates. We validate our approach quantitatively and qualitatively using both synthetic and real data.
Vital Signs: Demographic and Substance Use Trends Among Heroin Users — United States, 2002–2013

Background Heroin use and overdose deaths have increased significantly in the United States. Assessing trends in heroin use among demographic and particular substance-using groups can inform prevention efforts. Methods FDA and CDC analyzed data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health and National Vital Statistics System reported during 2002–2013. Trends in heroin use among demographic and substance using groups were compared for 2002–2004, 2005–2007, 2008–2010, and 2011–2013. A multivariable logistic regression model was used to identify characteristics associated with heroin abuse or dependence. Results Annual average rates of past-year heroin use increased from 1.6 per 1,000 persons aged ≥12 years in 2002–2004 to 2.6 per 1,000 in 2011–2013. Rates of heroin abuse or dependence were strongly positively correlated with rates of heroin-related overdose deaths over time. For the combined data years 2011–2013, the odds of past-year heroin abuse or dependence were highest among those with past-year cocaine or opioid pain reliever abuse or dependence. Conclusions Heroin use has increased significantly across most demographic groups. The increase in heroin abuse or dependence parallels the increase in heroin-related overdose deaths. Heroin use is occurring in the context of broader poly-substance use. Implications for Public Health Practice Further implementation of a comprehensive response that targets the wider range of demographic groups using heroin and addresses the key risk factors for heroin abuse and dependence is needed. Specific response needs include reducing inappropriate prescribing and use of opioids through early identification of persons demonstrating problematic use, stronger prescription drug monitoring programs, and other clinical measures; improving access to, and insurance coverage for, evidence-based substance abuse treatment, including medication-assisted treatment for opioid use disorders; and expanding overdose recognition and response training and access to naloxone to treat opioid pain reliever and heroin overdoses.
A Maximum Likelihood Fine Timing Estimation for Wireless OFDM Systems

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems are more sensitive to timing synchronization than single carrier systems. This paper presents a fine timing synchronization scheme which utilizes the channel impulse response (CIR) estimated from frequency-domain samples at OFDM receivers. A maximum likelihood estimate (MLE) of timing offset is derived based on the probability distribution of the estimated CIR under time-varying multipath fading. The ML timing scheme is further developed for both integer precision and real-valued precision implementations. In the real-valued timing precision case, a delay locked loop (DLL) structure is devised as an effective way to implement the MLE. Both analysis and simulations of the proposed MLE showed significant improvement over existing schemes under time-varying multipath fading channels.
Randomized clinical trial of the effect of gum chewing on postoperative ileus and inflammation in colorectal surgery

Postoperative ileus (POI) is a common complication following colorectal surgery that delays recovery and increases length of hospital stay. Gum chewing may reduce POI and therefore enhance recovery after surgery. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of gum chewing on POI, length of hospital stay and inflammatory parameters.
Bimodal palm biometric feature extraction using a single RGB image

This paper proposes a method for palm bimodal biometric feature (vein and crease pattern) acquisition from a single RGB image. Typical bimodal biometric systems require combining infrared and visible images for this task. We use a single CMOS color sensor and a specific illumination comprising of two wavelengths to acquire the image. As a result each biometric modality is more pronounced in its own color channel. The image is processed by applying adapted matched filters with non-linear modifications. Performance of the proposed method is evaluated against feature separation with optical band-pass and band-stop approach on a database of 64 people. The results show the average true positive rate is 70.6 % for vein detection and 64.7 % for crease detection, whereas in 14.8 % and 9.29 % of the cases feature of wrong modality is detected.
Knee X-Ray Image Analysis Method for Automated Detection of Osteoarthritis

We describe a method for automated detection of radiographic osteoarthritis (OA) in knee X-ray images. The detection is based on the Kellgren-Lawrence (KL) classification grades, which correspond to the different stages of OA severity. The classifier was built using manually classified X-rays, representing the first four KL grades ( normal, doubtful, minimal, and moderate). Image analysis is performed by first identifying a set of image content descriptors and image transforms that are informative for the detection of OA in the X-rays and assigning weights to these image features using Fisher scores. Then, a simple weighted nearest neighbor rule is used in order to predict the KL grade to which a given test X-ray sample belongs. The dataset used in the experiment contained 350 X-ray images classified manually by their KL grades. Experimental results show that moderate OA (KL grade 3) and minimal OA (KL grade 2) can be differentiated from normal cases with accuracy of 91.5% and 80.4%, respectively. Doubtful OA (KL grade 1) was detected automatically with a much lower accuracy of 57%. The source code developed and used in this study is available for free download at www.openmicroscopy. org.
Structure-Constrained Microcode Compression

Microcode enables programmability of (micro) architectural structures to enhance functionality and to apply patches to an existing design. As more features get added to a CPU core, the area and power costs associated with microcode increase. One solution to address the microcode size issue is to store the microcode in a compressed form and decompress it during execution. Furthermore, the reuse of a single hardware building block layout to implement different dictionaries in the two-level microcode compression reduces the cost and the design time of the decompression engine. However, the reuse of the hardware building block imposes structural constraints to the compression algorithm, and existing algorithms may yield poor compression. In this paper, we develop the SC2 algorithm that considers the structural constraint in its objective function and reduces the area expansion when reusing hardware building blocks to implement different dictionaries. Our experimental results show that the SC2 algorithm is able to produce similar sized dictionaries and achieves the similar compression ratio to the non-constrained algorithm.
Two-dimensional black holes and planar general relativity

The Einstein--Hilbert action with a cosmological term is used to derive an action in 1+1 spacetime dimensions. It is shown that the two-dimensional theory is equivalent to planar symmetry in general relativity. The two-dimensional theory admits black holes and free dilatons, and has a structure similar to two-dimensional string theories. Since by construction these solutions also solve Einstein's equations, such a theory can bring two-dimensional results into the four-dimensional world. In particular the two-dimensional black hole is a black membrane in general relativity.
Newborn human brain identifies repeated auditory feature conjunctions of low sequential probability

Natural environments are usually composed of multiple sources for sounds. The sounds might physically differ from one another only as feature conjunctions, and several of them might occur repeatedly in the short term. Nevertheless, the detection of rare sounds requires the identification of the repeated ones. Adults have some limited ability to effortlessly identify repeated sounds in such acoustically complex environments, but the developmental onset of this finite ability is unknown. Sleeping newborn infants were presented with a repeated tone carrying six frequent (P = 0.15 each) and six rare (P ∼0.017 each) conjunctions of its frequency, intensity and duration. Event‐related potentials recorded from the infants' scalp were found to shift in amplitude towards positive polarity selectively in response to rare conjunctions. This finding suggests that humans are relatively hard‐wired to preattentively identify repeated auditory feature conjunctions even when such conjunctions occur rarely among other similar ones.
Psychosocial factors in recurrent miscarriages

Our group previously reported that the preconceptional natural-killer-cell (NK) activity may be a predictor of miscarriage (1). As a new concept, it has been suggested that the NK activity is stimulated by an abortogenic arrangement in the psycho-neuro-immuno-endocrine network (2). Risk factors such as cytogenic, uterine, endocrine, metabolic, and autoimmune abnormalities each make only small contribution to the cause of recurrent miscarriages (3, 4). While stress was recently shown to result in abortions in mice by inducing abortogenic cytokines via neurotransmitters (5), its possible role in the human has remained unclear. The questions of ‘Which psychosocial factors are correlated with emotional impact following miscarriage? ’ and ‘Does the impact have any effect on the subsequent pregnancy? ’ might be of major importance. We have studied 29 couples with a history of two consecutive first-trimester miscarriages and no live births. None of the women had any clearly identifiable causes for the recurrent miscarriages, such as uterine anomalies, genetic abnormalities in either partner, or evidence of antiphospholipid antibodies. Semi-structured interviews with taperecording were conducted for each couple in separate rooms of the hospital, at least three months after their second miscarriage. The analysis was performed to evaluate the relative emotional impact of the first and second miscarriages and to demonstrate any psychosocial correlates to the impact, using a stepwise multiple regression method.
Geometric approach to error-correcting codes and reconstruction of signals

The results of this paper can be stated in three equivalent ways—in terms of the sparse recovery problem, the error-correction problem, and the problem of existence of certain extremal (neighborly) polytopes. Error-correcting codes are used in modern technology to protect information from errors. Information is formed by finite words over some alphabet F. The encoder transforms an n-letter word x into an m-letter word y with m>n . The decoder must be able to recover x correctly when up to r letters of y are corrupted in any way. Such an encoder-decoder pair is called an (n, m, r)-error-correcting code. Development of algorithmically efficient error correcting codes has attracted attention of engineers, computer scientists, and applied mathematicians for the past five decades. Known constructions involve deep algebraic and combinatorial methods, see [34, 35, 36]. This paper develops an approach to error-correcting codes from the viewpoint of geometric functional analysis (asymptotic convex geometry). It thus belongs to a common ground of coding theory, signal processing, combinatorial geometry, and geometric functional analysis. Our argument, outlined in Section 3, may be of independent interest in geometric functional analysis. Our main focus will be on words over the alphabet F = R or C. In applications, these words may be formed of the coefficients of some signal (such as image or audio)
A generalized processor sharing approach to flow control in integrated services networks-the single node case

The problem of allocating network resources to the users of an integrated services network is investigated in the context of rate based flow control. The authors propose the use of a packet service discipline at the nodes of the network that is based on a multiplex scheme called generalized processor sharing (GPS). This service discipline is combined with leaky bucket rate admission control to provide flexible, efficient and fair use of the links. A single server GPS system is analyzed exactly, and tight bounds on worst case packet delay, output burstiness and backlog are derived for each session, when the sources are constrained by leaky buckets. The analysis yields a simple resource assignment scheme that allows the server to make worst case delay and rate guarantees to every session in the system. Extensions of this work to arbitrary topology networks are also discussed. <<ETX>>
A max-flow algorithm for positivity of Littlewood-Richardson coefficients

Littlewood-Richardson coefficients are the multiplicities in the tensor product decomposition of two irreducible representations of the general linear group $\mathrm{GL}(n,\mathbb{C})$. They have a wide variety of interpretations in combinatorics, representation theory and geometry. Mulmuley and Sohoni pointed out that it is possible to decide the positivity of Littlewood-Richardson coefficients in polynomial time. This follows by combining the saturation property of Littlewood-Richardson coefficients (shown by Knutson and Tao 1999) with the well-known fact that linear optimization is solvable in polynomial time. We design an explicit $\textit{combinatorial}$ polynomial time algorithm for deciding the positivity of Littlewood-Richardson coefficients. This algorithm is highly adapted to the problem and it is based on ideas from the theory of optimizing flows in networks.
Next generation sequencing and rare genetic variants: From human population studies to medical genetics

The allelic frequency spectrum emerging from several Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) projects is revealing important details about evolutionary and demographic forces that shaped the human genome. Herein, we discuss some of the achievements of the use of low‐frequency and rare variants from NGS studies. The majority of variants that affect protein‐coding regions are recent and rare. Often, the novel rare variants are enriched for deleterious alleles and are population‐specific, making them suitable for the study of disease susceptibility. To investigate this kind of variation and its effects in association studies, very large sample sizes will be necessary to achieve sufficient statistical power. Moreover, as these variants are typically population‐specific, the replication of disease associations across populations could be very difficult due to population stratification. Therefore, the design of experiments focusing on the identification of rare variants and their effects should be carefully planned. Although several successes have already been achieved through NGS for genetic epidemiology, pharmacogenetic and clinical purposes, with improvements of the sequencing technology and decreased costs, further advances are expected in the near future. Environ. Mol. Mutagen. 54:518‐532, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Understanding the effects of Consumers' Valuetechnology Fit on a Mobile Shopping Website：the Case of Rakuten Ichiba

Mobile shopping is very popular nowadays. Many mobile shopping websites were founded in recent years, such as Yahoo! and Rakuten Ichiba. Most previous articles focused on theory of planned behavior, trust, flow, perceived usefulness, consumer usability preference, consumer shopping experience and decision-making, integrating technology acceptance model and perceived value. There are few studies to discuss benefits of matching discounts/bargains with a mobile shopping website, as well as how much affective reaction and flow affect continuance intention of using a mobile shopping website. The aim of this study investigates the factors (value-technology fit, affective reaction, flow) influencing continuance intention of the mobile shopping website, and mediation effects of affective reaction and flow. The results of this study show that users’ value-technology fit significantly affects their affective reaction, flow, and continuance intention to use the mobile shopping website. Affective reaction and flow significantly affect users’ continuance intention to use the mobile shopping website. Moreover, affective reaction and flow partially mediate relationship between value-technology fit and users’ continuance intention to use the mobile shopping website, Rakuten Ichiba. The research findings have suggestions for the mobile shopping managers and future research studies.