Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Timor-Leste - Social assistance public expenditure and program performance report

The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste is a young, post-conflict nation endowed with significant oil revenues. Timor-Leste has one of the highest birth rates in the world (2.41 percent population growth) with over 44 percent of the population below 15 years of age (Timor-Leste Census, 2010). Since the 2006 crisis, the Government of Timor-Leste has shown a clear commitment to social assistance. Globally, poverty persistence is closely related to major life-cycle disadvantages resulting in low human capital outcomes, and yet large-scale poverty remains unaddressed by current social protection efforts. This expenditure review and performance evaluation report is part of the technical assistance provided to Timor-Leste's Ministry of Social Solidarity (MSS) in response to the lack of any national level evaluation of the safety nets system since its inception. To that end, this study seeks to assess the social assistance policy, as well as the performance of the main MSS social assistance programs. More specifically, the aims are to: (1) determine whether existing programs are efficient, effective and sufficient in addressing main vulnerabilities; (2) assess the adequacy and composition of the allocation of financial resources for delivery of government social assistance; (3) review operational and administrative issues; and (4) make recommendations for improving the delivery of social safety nets. Some of the questions that this report seeks to answer include: what are the main risks facing the vulnerable groups in Timor-Leste? ; what types of programs are in place to address those risks? ; is the range of programs and their financial allocations appropriate for the country's needs? ; is the institutional arrangement adequate? ; are these programs effective and reaching the intended beneficiaries? ; and are they implemented cost-effectively? The report is organized as follows: chapter one gives context, purpose and conceptual framework. Chapter two describes the attributes of the poorest 40 percent and the main vulnerabilities and risks that low-income families in Timor-Leste face. Chapter three provides a historical overview of the social assistance policy and programs that emerged after the 2006-2007 conflict. A summary of levels and trends in aggregate public expenditure on safety nets, composition of spending as well as program-specific budget analysis is presented in chapter four. Chapter five assesses performance of the safety nets by analyzing coverage, targeting effectiveness, and generosity. Chapter six examines impact and targeting efficiency using simulation techniques. Chapter seven assesses implementation capacity, and business processes, and in particular, the following: ID systems, enrollment, payments arrangements and monitoring and evaluation. Chapter eight concludes with implications for social response and policy considerations.
A Novel Gaussian Error Diffusion based Colour Extended Visual Cryptography

Visual Cryptography is a technique used to protect image based secrets. This paper presents a colour extended visual cryptographic system based on Gaussian error diffusion, which results in good quality of shares and improved security. Gaussian error diffusion is applied by choosing an enumeration of pixels and the quantization error is computed. Other computations are made on the basis of threshold. Finally, XOR operation is applied for extracting the secret image. The performance of our proposed system is measured in terms of Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), Normalized Correlation Coefficient (NCC) and Mean Square Error (MSE) and is shown in experimental results. Keywords— Visual Cryptography, Gaussian error diffusion.
Thermal Infrared Emissivity Dependence on Soil Moisture in Field Conditions

An accurate estimate of land surface temperature, which is a key parameter in surface energy balance models, requires knowledge of surface emissivity. Emissivity dependence on soil water content has been already reported and modeled under controlled conditions at the laboratory. This paper completes and extends that previous work by providing emissivity measurements under field conditions without elimination of impurities, local heterogeneities, or soil cracks appearing in the drying process. The multispectral radiometer CE312-2, with five narrow bands and a broad band in the 8-13-μm range, was used, and surface emissivity values were determined through a temperature-emissivity separation algorithm. A bare soil plot of 10 ×17 m2 was selected for this study in the framework of a camelina 2010 experiment. This experiment was carried out during March and April 2010 at The University of Arizona Maricopa Agricultural Center in central Arizona, USA. The soil plot was flood irrigated every two to three days and left to dry. Field emissivity measurements were collected under cloud-free skies, around noon, for different values of soil water content. Soil samples were collected to estimate the soil moisture (SM) using the gravimetric method. An overall increase of emissivity with SM was obtained in all channels. However, when wetted soils subsequently dried, the final minimum emissivity was greater than the initial minimum emissivity. This hysteresis could be due to cavity effects produced by soil cracks not originally present. Thus, the deterioration of soil surface tends to reduce the emissivity spectral contrast. Soil-specific and general relationships obtained by Mira et al. were tested and compared with the field measurements. Field emissivities agree within 2% with the modeled values for all bands under noncracked surface conditions, whereas differences reach 5% in the 8-9- μm range when cracks are present.
Synthesis of application-specific memories for power optimization in embedded systems

This paper presents a novel approach to memory power optimization for embedded systems based on the exploitation of data locality. Locations with highest access frequency are mapped onto a small, low-power application-specific memory which is placed close the processor. Although, in principle, a cache may be used to implement such a memory, more efficient solutions may be adopted. We propose an architecture that outperforms (power-wise) different types of cache memories at no penalty in performance. Power savings (averaged over a number of embedded applications running on ARM processors) range from 12% to 68%.
Limits of stable pairs

Let (X_0,B_0) be the canonical limit of a one-parameter family of stable pairs, provided by the log Minimal Model Program. We prove that X_0 is S2 and that [B_0] is S_1, as an application of a general local statement: if (X,B+\epsilon D) is log canonical and D is Q-Cartier then D is S2 and [B] \cap D is S1, i.e. has no embedded components. When B has coefficients smaller than 1, examples due to Hacking and Hassett show that B_0 may indeed have embedded primes. We resolve this problem by introducing a category of stable branchpairs. We prove that the corresponding moduli functor is proper for families with normal generic fiber.
Transfection of neonatal rat Schwann cells with SV-40 large T antigen gene under control of the metallothionein promoter

Secondary cultures of Schwann cells were transfected with a plasmid containing the SV-40 T antigen gene expressed under the control of the mouse metallothionein-I promoter. We used the calcium phosphate method for transfection and obtained a transfection efficiency of 0.01%. The colonies were cloned by limited dilution, and these cloned cell lines were carried in medium containing zinc chloride (100 microM). One cloned cell line, which has now been carried for 180 doublings, appears to have a transformed phenotype with a doubling time of 20 h. These cells express SV-40 T antigen while maintaining established Schwann cell properties (positive staining for 217c, Ran-2, A5E3, glial fibrillary acidic protein, presence of 2',3'-cyclic nucleotide phosphohydrolase [CNPase] activity, and the ability to synthesize sulfogalactosylceramide and mRNA for the myelin protein, P0). Removal of zinc chloride from the medium resulted in reduced expression of T antigen and a change in the appearance of the cells to a more bipolar shape, although they still did not exhibit contact inhibition and maintained a doubling time of 20 h. These cells now became Ran-2- negative and showed increases in CNPase activity and in their ability to synthesize sulfogalactosylceramide. The amount of P0 mRNA remained unchanged. Transfected Schwann cells, however, stopped dividing when they contacted either basal lamina or neurites and became bipolar in appearance. The Schwann cells in contact with the neurites then extended processes to wrap around bundles of neurites. Transfection with the SV-40 T antigen gene therefore provides a method for obtaining Schwann cell lines that continue to express properties associated with untransfected cells in culture and may be used to study axon-Schwann cell interaction.
An Analysis of the Relationships among Stock Prices (and Returns), Dividends and Earnings in the UK Stock Market

The objectives of this paper are threefold: First; testing the relationship between dividends and earnings, second; examining the correlation among share prices, dividends and profits, third; investigating the behavior of the stock returns. Two aggregate sets of nominal and real data from the UK stock market covering the period from 1963 to 1995 are used. These data were firstly plotted in graphs to generate a comprehensive picture of their behavior and then pre-estimation analysis (stationarity and cointegration) was discussed. Three models (stock price model, dividend model, return model) were estimated using these data to obtain the model hypothesis inferences and then post-estimation (classical linear model assumption (CLMA)) examinations were performed in addition to the invistigation of the models structural stability. Pre-estimation tests suggested that, in general term, the data can be safely used to estimate the regression models since data stationarity-cointegration problems found to be limited. The findings of this research revealed that the relationship among share prices, dividends and profits, is strong (R 2 = 0.97) and support the idea that dividends is the greatest variable in predicting the share price. The most important predicting factor of the changes in share prices was found to be the changes in profits and previous changes (3 ed Lag) in dividends. The study results also show that changes in dividends are affected by earnings, changes in earnings and dividends. They suggest that changes in dividends is the strongest variable in explaining the variation in the stock returns followed by changes in earnings. In general, all models satisfy the CLMA. The oil crises in the early 1970s had a major impact on the models structural stability.
Doping-Less Tunnel Field Effect Transistor: Design and Investigation

Using calibrated simulations, we report a detailed study of the doping-less tunnel field effect transistor (TFET) on a thin intrinsic silicon film using charge plasma concept. Without the need for any doping, the source and drain regions are formed using the charge plasma concept by choosing appropriate work functions for the source and drain metal electrodes. Our results show that the performance of the doping-less TFET is similar to that of a corresponding doped TFET. The doping-less TFET is expected to be free from problems associated with random dopant fluctuations. Furthermore, fabrication of doping-less TFET does not require a high-temperature doping/annealing processes and therefore cuts down the thermal budget, opening up possibilities for fabricating TFETs on single crystal silicon-on-glass substrates formed by wafer scale epitaxial transfer.
Is Trust Important for Economic Development and Growth ?

The aim of this paper is to empirically analyse the role of trust in the process of growth and economic development. To be precise, the effect of trust on income growth, physical and human capital accumulation, the invention and diffusion of technologies, formal institutions, governance and financial development is examined. Cross-country regressions are used to evaluate whether trust has an economic payoff addressing the issues of sensitivity and causality. Theoretical foundations underpin the empirical evidence. The general finding of this paper is that trust promotes growth and economic development by encouraging the accumulation and, to a larger extent, the efficiency of physical and human capital accumulation, accelerating the diffusion of technologies and increasing the well-functioning of legal, political and social institutions. Rather than being independent, the evidence points towards a strong interaction between trust and economic development; trust causes economic development that, especially in the long run, increases trust. This mutually reinforcing process makes it difficult to derive results on the basis of cross-country regressions. The theoretical foundation emphasises the role of trust in reducing transaction costs, dealing with uncertainty and encouraging interpersonal interaction. The importance of trust provides a guideline for how to achieve growth and economic development.
Text: now in 2D! A framework for lexical expansion with contextual similarity

A new metaphor of two-dimensional text for data-driven semantic modeling of natural language is proposed, which provides an entirely new angle on the representation of text: not only syntagmatic relations are annotated in the text, but also paradigmatic relations are made explicit by generating lexical expansions. We operationalize distributional similarity in a general framework for large corpora, and describe a new method to generate similar terms in context. Our evaluation shows that distributional similarity is able to produce highquality lexical resources in an unsupervised and knowledge-free way, and that our highly scalable similarity measure yields better scores in a WordNet-based evaluation than previous measures for very large corpora. Evaluating on a lexical substitution task, we find that our contextualization method improves over a non-contextualized baseline across all parts of speech, and we show how the metaphor can be applied successfully to part-of-speech tagging. A number of ways to extend and improve the contextualization method within our framework are discussed. As opposed to comparable approaches, our framework defines a model of lexical expansions in context that can generate the expansions as opposed to ranking a given list, and thus does not require existing lexical-semantic resources.
The Power Of Law

A multiple bimetallic snap disc thermostat is disclosed in which two series connected switch mechanisms are respectively operated by two concentric bimetal snap discs having the same diameter. One snap disc is thermally automatic in operation to open and close its associated switch upon reaching its calibration temperatures. The outer disc is a one-shot disc which does not automatically reset and cannot be manually reset after operation. The two discs are mounted in a single, disc retaining cup, and are spaced by a ring positioned between their peripheries. This allows said discs to be formed of the same size and provides easy mounting. A single fixed contact member provides the fixed contact for both switches. The contacts of the switch associated with the automatic disc are capable of repeated operation whereas the contacts of the switch associated with the one-shot disc are not structured for repeated cycling.
Explore the Functional Connectivity between Brain Regions during a Chemistry Working Memory Task

Previous studies have rarely examined how temporal dynamic patterns, event-related coherence, and phase-locking are related to each other. This study assessed reaction-time-sorted spectral perturbation and event-related spectral perturbation in order to examine the temporal dynamic patterns in the frontal midline (F), central parietal (CP), and occipital (O) regions during a chemistry working memory task at theta, alpha, and beta frequencies. Furthermore, the functional connectivity between F-CP, CP-O, and F-O were assessed by component event-related coherence (ERCoh) and component phase-locking (PL) at different frequency bands. In addition, this study examined whether the temporal dynamic patterns are consistent with the functional connectivity patterns across different frequencies and time courses. Component ERCoh/PL measured the interactions between different independent components decomposed from the scalp EEG, mixtures of time courses of activities arising from different brain, and artifactual sources. The results indicate that the O and CP regions’ temporal dynamic patterns are similar to each other. Furthermore, pronounced component ERCoh/PL patterns were found to exist between the O and CP regions across each stimulus and probe presentation, in both theta and alpha frequencies. The consistent theta component ERCoh/PL between the F and O regions was found at the first stimulus and after probe presentation. These findings demonstrate that temporal dynamic patterns at different regions are in accordance with the functional connectivity patterns. Such coordinated and robust EEG temporal dynamics and component ERCoh/PL patterns suggest that these brain regions’ neurons work together both to induce similar event-related spectral perturbation and to synchronize or desynchronize simultaneously in order to swiftly accomplish a particular goal. The possible mechanisms for such distinct component phase-locking and coherence patterns were also further discussed.
z ≳ 7 GALAXIES WITH RED SPITZER/IRAC [3.6]–[4.5] COLORS IN THE FULL CANDELS DATA SET: THE BRIGHTEST-KNOWN GALAXIES AT z ∼ 7–9 AND A PROBABLE SPECTROSCOPIC CONFIRMATION AT z = 7.48

We identify four unusually bright (H < 25.5) galaxies from Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and Spitzer CANDELS data with probable redshifts z ∼ 7–9. These identifications include the brightest-known galaxies to date at z ≳ 7.5. As Y-band observations are not available over the full CANDELS program to perform a standard Lyman-break selection of z > 7 galaxies, we employ an alternate strategy using deep Spitzer/IRAC data. We identify z ∼ 7.1–9.1 galaxies by selecting z ≳ 6 galaxies from the HST CANDELS data that show quite red IRAC [3.6]−[4.5] colors, indicating strong [O iii]+Hβ lines in the 4.5 μm band. This selection strategy was validated using a modest sample for which we have deep Y-band coverage, and subsequently used to select the brightest z ≥ 7 sources. Applying the IRAC criteria to all HST-selected optical dropout galaxies over the full ∼900 arcmin2 of the CANDELS survey revealed four unusually bright z ∼ 7.1, 7.6, 7.9, and 8.6 candidates. The median [3.6]−[4.5] color of our selected z ∼ 7.1–9.1 sample is consistent with rest-frame [O iii]+Hβ EWs of ∼1500 Å in the [4.5] band. Keck/MOSFIRE spectroscopy has been independently reported for two of our selected sources, showing Lyα at redshifts of 7.7302 ± 0.0006 and , respectively. We present similar Keck/MOSFIRE spectroscopy for a third selected galaxy with a probable 4. 7σ Lyα line at zspec = 7.4770 ± 0.0008. All three have H160-band magnitudes of ∼25 mag and are ∼0.5 mag more luminous (M1600 ∼ −22.0) than any previously discovered z ∼ 8 galaxy, with important implications for the UV luminosity function (LF). Our three brightest and highest redshift z > 7 galaxies all lie within the CANDELS-EGS field, providing a dramatic illustration of the potential impact of field-to-field variance.
Extending extended logistic regression to effectively utilize the ensemble spread

To achieve well calibrated probabilistic forecasts, ensemble forecasts often need to be statistically post-processed. One recent ensemble-calibration method is extended logistic regression which extends the popular logistic regression to yield full probability distribution forecasts. Although the purpose of this method is to post-process ensemble forecasts, mostly only the ensemble mean is used as predictor variable, whereas the ensemble spread is neglected because it does not improve the forecasts. In this study we show that when simply used as ordinary predictor variable in extended logistic regression, the ensemble spread only affects the location but not the variance of the predictive distribution. Uncertainty information contained in the ensemble spread is therefore not utilized appropriately. To solve this drawback we propose a simple new approach where the ensemble spread is directly used to predict the dispersion of the predictive distribution. With wind speed data and ensemble forecasts from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) we show that using this approach, the ensemble spread can be used effectively to improve forecasts from extended logistic regression.
Historical Analyses of Fitness Testing of College Students in China.

This study examined changes in China's college student fitness test batteries since its inception in 1954. Using the constant content comparison method, the testing components, testing items and related cut-off values, testing methods, testing results utility, and testing material distribution were examined to identify the salient trends. The results presented a notable shift of testing components from skill-related fitness to health-related fitness. The total number of testing items has been reduced, resulting in fewer optional testing items. New test methods were implemented since 2014 and the cut-off values for aerobic fitness decreased, while others remained the same or slightly increased over time. The test results were included in student grade point average for partially assessing students' academic achievement. There is a need to improve the quality of the test website, and more attention should be given to the possible use of new technology in college student health-related fitness testing.
Manifest calculation and the finiteness of the superstring Feynman diagrams

The multi-loop amplitudes for the closed, oriented superstring are represented by finite dimensional integrals of explicit functions calculated through the super-Schottky group parameters and interaction vertex coordinates on the supermanifold. The integration region is proposed to be consistent with the group of the local symmetries of the amplitude and with the unitarity equations. It is shown that, besides the SL(2) group, super-Schottky group and modular one, the total group of the local symmetries includes an isomorphism between sets of the forming group transformations, the period matrix to be the same. The singular integration configurations are studied. The calculation of the integrals over the above configurations is developed preserving all the local symmetries of the amplitude, the amplitudes being free from divergences. The nullification of the 0-, 1-, 2- and 3-point amplitudes of massless states is verified. Vanishing the amplitudes for a longitudinal gauge boson is argued.