Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Novel Texture-based Probabilistic Object Recognition and Tracking Techniques for Food Intake Analysis and Traffic Monitoring

Abstract : More complex image understanding algorithms are increasingly practical in a host of emerging applications. Object tracking has value in surveillance and data farming; and object recognition has applications in surveillance, data management, and industrial automation. In this work we introduce an object recognition application in automated nutritional intake analysis and a tracking application intended for surveillance in low quality videos. Automated food recognition is useful for personal health applications as well as nutritional studies used to improve public health or inform lawmakers. We introduce a complete, end-to-end system for automated food intake measurement.
When bilinguals forget their manners: language dominance and motion event descriptions in French and German

The study of motion verbs has yielded evidence for typological differences among the languages of the world. Whereas in some languages, such as French or Spanish, the path of motion is mapped onto the verb, the typical motion verb in languages such as English or German expresses the manner of motion. However, these distinctions suggest not categories, but rather clines. Moreover, there is considerable intra-language variation. In this paper, an attempt is made to investigate the question whether bilingualism and more specifically the dominance relationship between the bilinguals’ languages explain variation in motion event descriptions. Motion event descriptions in German and French were elicited. The data from 172 participants describing self-propelled motion in space are analyzed. Inferential statistical analyses show that the number of manner verbs used in the German data rises with increasing German dominance of the speaker. No effects of dominance are found in French. Moreover, the combination of finite manner verbs with the predication of boundary-crossing in both languages co-varies with language dominance: the more German is dominant in the repertoire, the more this combination can be observed.
The development of an integrated experimental and computational teaching and learning tool for thermal fluid science

Teaching and learning of thermal fluid science is always challenging due to its complex nature and the mathematics involved. In order to understand the fundamental concepts, a range of relatively expensive hands-on laboratory equipment, as well as skilled staff, are required. Thanks to advanced computational power, many complex phenomena can now be simulated and easily visualised. However, not all can be visualised utilising laboratory experiments. Therefore, the primary objective of this article is to develop a teaching and learning process that can be greatly simplified, cost effectively used, as well as being user-friendly, digestible and attractive, by integrating hands-on practical experiments, video images of real-world laboratory experiments and computational simulations. The proposed integrated learning methodology cannot only be useful for on-campus students, but also for distance learning (off-campus) students.
Ownership, Risk and Efficiency in the Banking Sector of the ASEAN Countries

Research investigating the determinants of banking performance has been at the centre of policy and academic debate following the global financial crisis (2007-2009). Thus, the purpose of this paper is to contribute to the assessment of the factors impacting banking efficiency. Whilst there are many studies investigating this problem in developed and emerging countries, there is little research addressing this question in the countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). The ASEAN as a region is among one of the fastest growing in the world. Using system GMM this paper examines the effects of ownership and risk on efficiency for 71 banks of the ASEAN countries, considering the period 2011-2016. All financial and economic data are deflated by their corresponding Consumer Price Indices (CPIs) to the 2011 price level to control for inflation effects and are converted to constant US dollars by using the 2005 PPP conversion rates. We use stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) to estimate a measure of bank efficiency. This allows the measurement of inefficiency for each bank from the best-practice frontier incorporating bank-, industry- and country-specific variables. Moreover, this study explores the efficiency effects of six categories of bank ownership such as widely-held, bank, institutional, industry, family and state. The findings indicate that different categories of ownership have different effects on bank efficiency. Particularly, they show that the widely-held banks and the banks with the bank controlling ownership experience lower efficiency. The results additionally indicate that overall risk-taking improves efficiency; however, higher levels of risk-taking lower efficiency. The paper also provides some relevant policy-implications.
Scientific collaboration of Library & Information Science research in China (2012-2013)

The present study is the first of its kind as it attempts to ascertain the current status of library and information science (LIS) research from the Chinese perspective, by focusing on English research contributions by Chinese LIS scholars. Leading contributors; individual (author) contributors; institutional contributors, and research collaborations were examined. The review comprises 564 articles published in international journals indexed by Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) from 2012-2013. Co-authorship analysis and co-citation analysis were used to draw the results. The results revealed two major findings; first, the Chinese research community is engaged in focusing on cross-national collaboration to establish their existence in international literature and establish colleague relationship with foreigner researchers. USA, UK, and Belgium are the primary counterparts of international collaborative papers. Chinese institutions have eminent professors in the LIS field who incorporate international-oriented scholarly researches (48.04%) around the globe. Secondly, Chinese researchers have enough knowledge to conduct research, both as single authors (26.24%) and through internal academic collaboration between senior and junior researchers. The Chinese LIS research community has not paid much attention to conducting research on inter-institutional level (7.20%) and on inter-regional level (6.73%). Nevertheless, Wuhan University, City University Hong Kong, and Chinese Academy of Sciences have emerged as the leading institutions in producing LIS publications. Chinese immigrant scholars also have contributed to LIS China’s international scientific collaboration. It is a worthwhile and unique study as it examines the collaboration trends networks analysis of international publications by Chinese scholars
An Investigation of English-Mandarin-Malay Code Switching of A Singaporean Speaker

The use of code switching is enormously popular in the countries with more than one language speakers. However, it is commonly used only by bilingual speakers in two languages. The present study aimed to investigate the code switching of a multilingual speaker in Singapore. Singapore is highly popular for its multilingual language use, Mandarin, English, and Malay. The data source in this study was a secondary data taken from a video site. The participant was a Singaporean called Terry. He spoke English switched with Mandarin and Malay. The present study applied Hoffman’s (1991) and Muysken’s (2000) dimensions of code switching characteristics. The results showed that there were 20 expressions of code switching produced by the participant. The analysis identified that the participant produced code switching mostly in Malay language than in Mandarin. During his speech, he commonly used inter-sentential switching and insertion switching from his English-Mandarin-Malay language. Tags and exclamation is the major switched code he made in the speech. While phrase is the least codes he created during the speech.
Influence of Packaging Materials and Storage Methods on Some Cooking and Eating Quality Characteristics for Some Rice Varieties.

The present investigation was carried out to study the effect of storage practices (Warehouse, open shed, and silo) and storage packages (jute sacks, paper packs, and plastic sacks) on cooking and eating characteristics, Kernel elongation (%),Gel consistency (mm), Amylose content (%) and cooking time (min) for three rice Egyptian varieties Sakha 102, Giza 179 as short grain varieties and Egyptian Yasmine as a long grain variety for two seasons 2014, 2015. The result show that warehouse storage place was the best among the other storage places since it caused the lowest degradation in cooking and eating quality characters. Sakha 102 was the less affected variety by different storage bags and the lowest deterioration in the cooking and eating quality characters occurred when jute sacks were used.
A SYSTEMATIC READING IN STATISTICAL TRANSLATION : FROM THE STATISTICAL MACHINE TRANSLATION TO THE NEURAL TRANSLATION MODELS

Achieving high accuracy in automatic translation tasks has been one of the challenging goals for researchers in the area of machine translation since decades. Thus, the eagerness of exploring new possible ways to improve machine translation was always the matter for researchers in the field. Automatic translation as a key application in the natural language processing domain has developed many approaches, namely statistical machine translation and recently neural machine translation that improved largely the translation quality especially for Latin languages. They have even made it possible for the translation of some language pairs to approach human translation quality. In this paper, we present a survey of the state of the art of statistical translation, where we describe the different existing methodologies, and we overview the recent research studies while pointing out the main strengths and limitations of the different approaches.
Kadın Çalışanlarda Cam Tavan Algısı Kırıldı mı? Erkek Çalışanlar Halen Cinsiyet Ayrımcılığı Yapıyorlar mı?: Adıyaman Bankacılık Sektörü Örneği

Kadinlarin is hayatlarinda yukselmelerini onleyen ve ilk olarak 1970’lerde kullanilmaya baslanan “cam tavan sendromu”nun algisal olarak gunumuzdeki durumunu ortaya koymak uzere yapilan bu calisma, Adiyaman il ve ilcelerinde faaliyet gosteren bankalardaki calisanlar uzerinde yapilmistir. Basit tesadufi ornekleme yontemi ile Adiyaman il ve ilcelerinde calisan 131 banka calisani uzerinde uygulanan anket yoluyla veriler toplanmistir. Arastirmada kullanilan cam tavan algi olceginin guvenilirlik duzeyi 0,815’dir. Calismanin hipotezi Bagimsiz t-Testi ile analiz edilmistir. Analiz sonucunda, %95 guven araligi icinde (p=0,006<0,05) calismanin ana hipotezi olan, H 1 hipotezi kabul edilmistir. Calismanin sonuclarina gore, kadin calisanlarin cam tavan algisinin yok denecek kadar az oldugu, ancak, erkek calisanlarin onyargisal olarak cinsiyete dayali ayrimcilik yapmalari sebebiyle halen kadin calisanlara yonelik olumsuz algiya sahip olduklari gorulmustur. Dolayisiyla, kadin calisanlarin cam tavan algisinin kirildigi, ancak erkek calisanlarin cinsiyet ayrimi konusunda basmakalip algilarinin devam etmekle birlikte, eskiye nazaran azalma egiliminde oldugu sonucuna ulasilmistir. Calismada elde edilen sonuclar Adiyaman ili ve bankacilik sektorunde calisanlarla sinirli olmakla birlikte, soz konusu sonuclar 2004-2019 yillari arasinda ulkemizde yapilan diger benzer calisma sonuclari ile farkliliklar ve benzerlikler acisindan karsilastirilarak, cam tavan algisinin kadin ve erkek calisanlardaki egilimine yonelik bilgiler elde edilmis ve onerilerde bulunulmustur.
Floodwater detection on roadways from crowdsourced images

Abstract This work proposes an image processing pipeline for detecting floodwater extent on inundated roadways from image data captured and generated by mobile consumer devices, such as smartphones. A sample data-set collected from actual nuisance flooding events in Norfolk, VA and location-matched reference images are used to demonstrate the proposed approach. The highly variable nature of crowdsourced data manifests as discrepancies in location-matched dry/flooded condition image pairs, making extracting inundation information more challenging. These discrepancies may include differences in resolution, lighting and environmental conditions. Scenes may include dynamic objects, such as vehicles and pedestrians, on the roadway. In the proposed pipeline, images go through a set of pre-processing operations consisting of water edge detection, image inpainting and contrast correction. A Region-Based Convolutional Neural Network (R-CNN) is trained, tested and deployed for vehicle detection. An inpainting procedure removes vehicles detected by the R-CNN. The images are registered using the Scale Invariant Feature Transform flow algorithm. Boundaries of the flooded area are detected. Reflections of landmarks and sky/clouds also pose an important challenge to detection of inundated areas. Reflections from nearby landmarks are first identified, then used as a seed for identifying the remaining water body, including reflections of sky/clouds, through saturation channel processing. The result is further processed with the detected water edge lines. False positives are removed. The proposed method is applied to real-world images and its accuracy is evaluated. The results show that the method produces satisfactory results despite the complexities of the crowdsourced image data and dynamic environment.
Causality measures between neural signals from invasively and non-invasively obtained local field potentials in humans

Understanding the processes underlying neural communication is crucial to improve the treatment of neurological diseases, but has been a great challenge in the past. To tackle this issue, the question of causality between certain brain areas and between muscles and brain areas is of great interest. In the past decade several multivariate causality measures based on Granger causality have been suggested to assess causality in systems of neural signals. To date, however, a detailed evaluation of the reliability of these measures and their sensitivity to data preprocessing techniques is largely missing. The present work systematically evaluates the performance of five different causality measures and its dependence upon data length, noise level, coupling strength and model order. Moreover, the effect of two common numerical methods (bootstrapping and jackknife) to determine the significance threshold for the causality measures was analyzed. Two simulation models were used to generate a controlled environment: one based on artificial data and one based on four different neural data recording procedures (magnetoencephalography, electroencephalography, electromyography, intraoperative local field potentials). The analysis shows the squared Partial Directed Coherence with the leave one out method to be the most reliable and robust choice for assessing directionality in neural data. Moreover, the influence of data preprocessing on the working of the causality measures was investigated. In frequency domain analyses (power or coherence) of neural data it is common to preprocess the time series by filtering or decimating. However, in other fields it has been shown theoretically that filtering in combination with Granger causality may lead to spurious or missed causalities. A controlled simulation environment was used to investigate whether this result translates to the multivariate causality methods derived from Granger causality. The simulation results suggest that preprocessing without a strong prior about the artifact to be removed disturbs the information content and time ordering of the data and leads to spurious and missed causalities. Only if apparent artifacts like a current or movement artifact are present, filtering out the respective disturbance seems advisable. While oversampling the data poses no problem, decimation by a factor greater than the minimum time shift between the time series may lead to wrong inference. Finally, with the simulation results in mind an application of the causality measures to real data demonstrates the usefulness of the simulation results for practical applications.
The Effect of e-Wom And Brand Image on The Interest in Buying The Heavenly Blush Yoghurt Product

The objectives of this research are: 1) to analyze the effect of e-WOM on brand image of Heavenly Blush product, 2) to analyze the effect of e-WOM on the interest in buying Heavenly Blush product, and 3) to analyze the effect of brand image on the interest in buying Heavenly Blush product. This research used online and offline survey methods in the form of questionnaires. The research sampling was carried out using non-probability sampling technique. The scaling technique of the study applied Likert scale which produces measurements at intervals; scale 1 for strongly disagree statements and scale 5 for strongly agree statements. The data analysis used PLS (Partial Least Square). The 106 respondents of the research were customers who already knew about Heavenly Blush yogurt products but had never consumed them with the minimum age of 17 years. The findings showed that there is a positive effect of e-WOM variable on brand image variable with a value of 0.425. The e-WOM variable has a positive effect on the interest in buying Heavenly Blush product with a value of 0.430. Brand image is the last variable that has a positive effect on interest in buying with a value of 0.244. Keywords: brand image, e-WOM, interest in buying, product, yogurt
How union participation influences union commitment and job involvement

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to draw on triadic reciprocal determinism and social exchange theory to examine how “induced-type” and “compulsory-type” union participation influence union commitment and job involvement, and how union participation in the west differs from that in China. It also examines whether the role of both organizational justice and employee participation climate (EPC) functions in the Chinese context. Design/methodology/approach Cross-sectional data are collected from 694 employees in 46 non-publicly owned enterprises, both Chinese and foreign, in the Pearl River Delta region of China. A multi-level moderated mediation test is used to examine the model of this research. Findings Union participation is positively related to organizational justice, union commitment and job involvement. In addition, organizational justice acts as the mediator among union participation, union commitment and job involvement. Specifically, the mediating role of organizational justice between union participation and union commitment, and between union participation and job involvement, is stronger in high-EPC contexts than low-EPC contexts. Originality/value Instead of examining the impacts of attitudes on union participation, as per most studies in the western context, this research examines the impacts of union participation in the Chinese context on attitudes, including union commitment and job involvement. It also reveals the role of both organizational justice and EPC in the process through which union participation influences union commitment and job involvement.
USING TREASURE HUNT GAME TO IMPROVE THESEVENTH GRADE STUDENTS’ COMPREHENSION INREADING DESCRIPTIVE TEXT AT SMPN 2 GONDANGTULUNGAGUNG

ABSTRACT Sari, Rina Wulan. Registered student member 3213113136. 2016. Using Treasure Hunt Game to Improve the Seventh Grade Students’ Comprehension in Reading Descriptive Text at SMPN 2 Gondang. Thesis. English Education department Faculty of Tarbiyah and Teacher Training State Islamic Institute (IAIN) Of Tulungagung. Advisor: Emmi Naja, M.Pd Keyword: Reading, Descriptive Text, Treasure Hunt Game Reading is something crucial for the students because the success of their study depends on the greater part o their comprehension to read. Treasure Hunt Game is one of interesting game to make students having fun in reading process while the text by looking for the clue in different place. The basic of this game is finding the clues and if they do not understand the meaning of clues, they cannot look for another clues. Treasure Hunt Game has many variant depend on creativities the teacher to improve the students reading ability. The formulation of the research problems were: (1) How far does can Treasure Hunt Game to Improve the Seventh Grade students’ comprehension in Reading Descriptive Text at SMPN 2 Gondang? The purposes of this research were to find out: (1) To Improve the Seventh students’ Comperhension in Reading Descriptive Text by Using Treasure Hunt Game at SMPN 2 Gondang. Research method: (1) The research design in this study was classroom action research (CAR) with two cycles. Each cycle consisted of four stages namely planning, implementing, observing, and reflection, (2) The subjects of this study was all of the students of class VII-B at SMPN 2 Gondang, Tulungagung, so the setting of this study is at SMPN 2 Gondang, Tulungagung, (3) The instruments which used the collect the data were interview, lesson plan, observation sheet, and test, (4) Because the data of this research were not only in the form of numbers but also in the form of words or sentences, the data analysis was done by studying the whole data taken from interview, lesson plan, observation sheet, and test. The result of the study showed that the students’ mean score of the first test in the preliminary study was 67.32. In addition, there were 42% of students who passed the test and 58% of students who failed in the test. The students mean score in the cycle I was 75.53. Then there were 65% of students who passed the test and 35% of students who failed in the test. In the cycle 2, the students mean score was 77.32. In addition, the criteria of success which was 75% could be achieved by the students in cycle 2, as the result there was 83% students who passed the test in cycle 2, and there only 17% of students who failed. It means that was successful so that the researcher did not need to conduct the next cycle.
Evaluation of the age, extent and composition of the Cinder Lake alkaline intrusive complex,

A detailed reinvestigation of alkaline igneous rocks from the southwestern part of Cinder Lake (Gods Lake Domain) was initiated as a joint project between the Manitoba Geological Survey and Department of Geological Sciences, University of Manitoba. At least three discrete intrusive phases can be identified at present on the basis of field and petrographic evidence (listed in order of emplacement): fine-grained aegirine-nepheline syenite, fine-grained biotite-vishnevite syenite and syenitic pegmatite. There is also convincing mineralogical and geochemical evidence for the presence of unexposed ultramafic and carbonatitic units genetically associated with the alkaline syenitic rocks. Uranium-lead dating of zircon crystals recovered from a sample of biotitevishnevite syenite yielded an age of 2705 ±2 Ma, which is tentatively being interpreted as the timing of syenite formation and emplacement. The Cinder Lake rocks exhibit a trace-element signature indicative of arc settings, which fits into a subduction-collision tectonic regime for this part of the Gods Lake Domain at ca. 2.7 Ga.