Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mobile Information Visualisation Recommendations for creating better information visualisation interfaces on mobile devices

An increasing use of smartphones and other mobile devices puts pressure on user interfaces to work as well on small touch-screens as on desktop computers, and information visualisation interfaces are no exception. Even though there has been a demand for research on mobile information visualisation for many years, relatively little has been accomplished in this area, and the research that has been conducted is often narrow and oriented toward to a certain design. Therefore, this paper aims to give more general recommendations regarding the design of information visualisation interfaces for mobile devices. A qualitative user study was conducted to find weaknesses and strengths in existing information visualisation interfaces when interacted with on a smartphone. For this study, five prototypes were made by which different visualisations and interaction methods were tested by the participants of the study. The participants were given tasks based on the Visual Information Seeking Mantra, which focuses on four types of interaction with information visualisations (overview, zoom, filter and details-on-demand). The results indicate that the interaction with a visualisation is more important than visualisation itself to achieve a useful and efficient information visualisation interface. Other aspects to consider is to have an adequate zoom function, to not have interactive objects that are too small and to avoid over-cluttering. The latter aspect can be solved by either taking advantage of gestures or using more layers in the interface. However, what visualisations and interaction methods that work best is heavily dependent on the data and purpose of the visualisation.
Wind turbine control design and implementation based on experimental models

First results of controller design and implementation applied to the UNIWEX wind turbine system are presented. Identification experiments have been designed such that all relevant dynamics are excited. Experiments on a real life wind turbine have been carried out. Using prediction error methods experimental models with a Box-Jenkins structure have been calculated. Experimental models have been compared to theoretical models of the test turbine. Based on normalized coprime factorization of one experimental model a controller has been designed such that it robustly stabilizes all models. The implemented controller has been evaluated by means of measurements on the UNIWEX wind turbine and has proven to satisfy the design objective. <<ETX>>
Problem Solving Strategies of High School Students on Non-Routine Problems

The main purpose of this study was to investigate how well certain students in a university high school solve non-routine problems. These problem situations required the use of their conceptual understanding of mathematics and their procedural knowledge of the algorithm involved in the solution. Results of analysis of students’ solutions showed that each student employed at least four problem-solving strategies. Seven out of the eight possible problem solving strategies were used at least once to solve the twelve non-routine problems. When given the opportunity to use any problem solving strategy, the students solved non-routine problems even without prior instruction. The most frequently used strategy was “Making a Model or Diagram. ” After evaluating the students’ problem solving skills using the Oregon Mathematics Problem Solving Rubric, results showed that of the five students, three had proficient level of conceptual understanding and procedural knowledge, one was a transitional problem solver from apprentice to proficient level of performance, and one was an apprentice problem solver. Those who performed well were also proficient in the use of solution strategies whereas the transitional problem solvers were either novice to apprentice or apprentice to proficient in their use of solution strategies.
Iterative trellis search detection for asynchronous MIMO systems

The paper presents a reduced-complexity soft-input soft-output detection scheme for asynchronous space-time bit-interleaved coded modulation (ST-BICM) MIMO systems. This scheme is referred to as asynchronous iterative trellis search (A-ITS) detection. The A-ITS detector is based in part on a reduced-state approximation of the BCJR algorithm, and also uses a special type of bit mapping called multilevel mapping to reduce complexity for high-order QAM modulation schemes. The complexity per bit of the detector is linear in the number of transmit antennas and roughly independent of the signal constellation size. The paper presents error performance results generated from computer simulations of an asynchronous iterative ("turbo") MIMO receiver employing the A-ITS detector. It is demonstrated that allowing transmissions from different antennas to be asynchronous can result in considerable performance improvement compared to synchronous MIMO systems.
Evaluation of Leptin in Sera and Follicular Fluids of Infertile Women Undergoing IntraCytoplasmic Sperm Injection and Their Effects on Pregnancy Outcome

Background Leptin may serve as the critical link between the body’s adipose tissue and the hypothalamopituitary axis, thus it is considered a possible link between nutrition and reproduction. Objective To evaluate leptin in the serum and follicular fluid and its effect on fertilization rate and pregnancy outcome in infertile female patients undergo intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection cycle. Methods Seventy four infertile women who agreed to participate in the study were selected randomly from those attending the Fertility Centre in Al-Sader Teaching Hospital, Holly Najaf. Hormonal analysis was done for serum and follicular fluid leptin hormone at the day of ovum pickup. Result Serum and follicular fluid leptin hormone levels were increased above its normal cutoff level according to the kit used. There was a relationship between the fertilization rate and leptin in serum and follicular fluid. Fertilization rate was significantly (p = 0.049) different depending on the serum leptin level while it has nothing to do with follicular fluid leptin hormone. On the other hand, follicular fluid leptin significantly (p = 0.04) affect pregnancy outcome. Conclusion Leptin provides possible impact on oocyte and/or embryo quality leading to impaired endometrial bed preparation that may be involved in pregnancy failure.
The Conceptual Integration Modelling Framework: Semantics and Query Answering

In the context of business intelligence (BI) the accuracy and accessibility of information consolidation play an important role. Integrating data from different sources involves its transformation according to constraints expressed in an appropriate language. The conceptual integration modelling framework (CIM) acts as such a language. The CIM is aimed to allow business users to specify what information is needed in a simplified and comprehensive language. Achieving this requires raising the level of abstraction to the conceptual level, so that users are able to pose queries expressed in a conceptual query language (CQL). The CIM is comprised of three facets: an Extended Entity Relationship (EER) model (a high level conceptual model that is used to design databases), a conceptual schema against which users pose their queries, a relational multidimensional model that represents data sources, and mappings between the conceptual schema and sources. Such mappings can be specified in two ways: in the first scenario, the so-called global-as-view (GAV), the global schema is mapped to views over the relational sources by specifying how to obtain tuples of the global relation from tuples in the sources. In the second scenario, sources may contain less detailed information (a more aggregated data) so the local relations are defined as views over global relations that is called as local-as-view (LAV). In this thesis, we address the problem of expressibility and decidability of queries written in CQL. We first define the semantics of the CIM by translating the conceptual model so we could translate it into a set of first order sentences containing a class
Working Paper 2014-296 Carbon emissions-income relationships with structural breaks : the case of the Middle East and North African countries

This article revisits the CO2 emissions-GDP causal relationships in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries by employing Rossi (2005) instability-robust causality test. We show evidence of significant causality relationships for all considered countries within the instability context, whereas the standard Granger causality test fails to detect causal links in any direction, except for Egypt, Iran and Morocco. An important policy implication resulting from this robust analysis is that the income is not affected by the cuts in the CO2 emissions for only two MENA countries, the UAE and Syria. Keyword: income, CO2 emissions, robust causality. ∗Corresponding author Email addresses: ajmi.ahdi. noomen@gmail.com (Ahdi Noomen Ajmi), ghassen.el-montasser@laposte.net (Ghassen El Montasser), duc.nguyen@ipag.fr (Duc Khuong Nguyen)
EFFICACY OF HERBAL EXTRACTS ON GROWTH PERFORMANCE , SERUM BIOCHEMISTRY AND INTESTINAL SELECTED BACTERIAL POPULATION IN BROILERS

This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of two herbal extracts (Emerald and Gundelia tournefortii L. Seed) on growth performance, serum biochemistry and intestinal bacterial population in broilers. A total of 280 Ross 308 1-dayold male broiler chicks were distributed into 5 groups of 7 in each consisting 8 replicates per treatment for 42 days. Five treatments were used; control group received basal diet (without any herbal extract supplementation), the Emerald at 100 mg/kg diet and G. tournefortii L. seed extracts (GTE) at 2, 4 and 8 g/kg diet were added to basal diet. The addition of 4 and 8 g GTE to the diet resulted in significantly higher body weight compared with control group (P<0.05). Moreover, supplementing the highest level of GTE (8 g/kg diet) significantly increased intestinal lactic acid bacteria counts (P<0.05). However, no differences were observed among treatments for feed intake and feed conversion rate at the end of the study (P>0.05). In addition, serum uric acid (UA) and glucose (Glu) concentrations and aspartate amino transferase (AST) and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activities were not affected by any treatment (P>0.05). In conclusion, our results showed that different dietary levels of GTE may improve the growth performance by increasing intestinal lactic acid bacteria counts.
Performance Analysis of Empirical Radio Propagation Models in Wireless Cellular Networks

This paper presents the performance analysis of different empirical radio propagation models used in wireless cellular networks. It particular, the parameters such as path loss and cell coverage area are studied for different cellular networks from second generation (2G) to fifth generation (5G). Accurate prediction of path loss and coverage area is highly desirable for planning of any wireless communication systems. Considering the urban terrain, the comparison is made between Hata model, Stanford University Interim (SUI) model, and modified SUI models. As a motivation for new millimeter wave (mm-wave) cellular systems, i.e., for 5G communication, the analysis is performed at 28 GHz. Considering -75 dBm as the desired minimum received power, it is observed that 2G communication (at 900 MHz using Hata model) experiences the lowest path loss and thus results into largest coverage area. The path loss is observed to be maximum for the future mm-wave systems (at 28 GHz using modified SUI model) that directly imply the smallest coverage area.
Scalable Multi-Tenant Authorization in Highly-Collaborative Cloud Applications

Collaborative applications have lately gained extramomentum due to two recent phenomena: data explosion andcloud computing. With more and more data and applicationsbeing hosted in the “cloud”, it becomes easier for organizationswith varying levels of mutual trust to share and collaborate overresources. However, a pressing challenge remains with the need ofeach organization to control access to its resources. Authorization,usually implemented as role-based access control (RBAC), hasbeen recently proposed as a consolidated, multi-tenant cloudservice, whereby RBAC rules of the collaborating organizationsare stored centrally with a trusted authorization provider to maskheterogeneity and to simplify management. A critical factor tothe success of such aggregating approach to access control isthe scalability of the rule store to the number of collaboratingorganizations and to the degree of collaboration.In this paper, we focus on the scalability of the online rulestore, that is, the set of rules that are checked with everyauthorization request, and thus, needs to reside in fast storage(e.g., main memory). We show that the size of the online rule storeincreases quadratically with the number of collaborating organizations in highly-collaborative cloud applications, applicationsin which resources are shared massively across organizations.We propose an authorization system that scales well to thedegree of collaboration and call our system highly-collaborativeauthorization service (HCAS). HCAS is based on role mapping, awell-known RBAC technique that maps roles across collaboratingorganizations. HCAS replaces the inter-domain RBAC rules witha more scalable set of role-mapping tuples. Using simulation,we show that HCAS achieves super-linear savings in the sizeof online rule store. HCAS exhibits a favorable behavior of aslightly decreasing rule set with increasing degree of collaborationin highly-collaborative settings. Scalability of online memoryin RBAC multi-tenant authorization systems enables efﬁcientsoftware and hardware implementations.
Boosting Accuracy of Classical Machine Learning Antispam Classifiers in Real Scenarios by Applying Rough Set Theory

Nowadays, spam deliveries represent a major problem to benefit from the wide range of Internet-based communication forms. Despite the existence of different well-known intelligent techniques for fighting spam, only some specific implementations of Na&#-17;ve Bayes algorithm are finally used in real environments for performance reasons. As long as some of these algorithms suffer from a large number of false positive errors, in this work we propose a rough set postprocessing approach able to significantly improve their accuracy. In order to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed method, we carried out a straightforward study based on a publicly available standard corpus (SpamAssassin), which compares the performance of previously successful well-known antispam classifiers (i.e., Support Vector Machines, AdaBoost, Flexible Bayes, and Na&#-17;ve Bayes) with and without the application of our developed technique. Results clearly evidence the suitability of our rough set postprocessing approach for increasing the accuracy of previous successful antispam classifiers when working in real scenarios.
Microcredit in Bangladesh and Haiti : Helping Poor Families to Overcome Poverty

Despite many critical assessments about the impact of microcredit on economic growth and poverty reduction, the overwhelming literature of Bangladeshi’s microcredit literature comes to the conclusion that if correctly applied, microcredit stimulates economic growth and reduces poverty by empowering women creating self-sustaining businesses. This article compares the microcredit sectors of Bangladesh and Haiti. It compares some key characteristics of the two countries’ microcredit sectors as well as the impact of disasters, government regulations, and corruption on each country’s microcredit sector. Despite serious governance issues, Bangladesh continues to be a model of microfinance and overall economic and social development, from which other countries, specifically Haiti, can learn from.
A Gm-C low-pass filter for zero-IF mobile applications with a very wide tuning range

A third-order G m -C Butterworth low-pass filter implementing G m -tuning and G m -switching to maximize the tuning range is described. This filter is intended to be used as a channel-selection/anti-aliasing filter in the analog baseband part of a zero-IF radio receiver architecture for multimode mobile communications. Its G m -switching feature allows extending the tuning range and adapting the power consumption. The filter's cutoff frequency ranges from 50 kHz to 2.2 MHz. An Input IP3 of up to +18 dBVp is achieved, for a total worst-case power consumption of 7.3 mW for both I and Q paths, and an effective area of less than 0.5 mm 2 in a 0.25-μm SiGe BiCMOS process. A new figure of merit is introduced for comparison of published low-pass tunable filters including noise, linearity, and tuning range.
A Novel MIMO-OFDM Adaptive Receiver in Time-Varying Channels

This paper proposes an advanced receiver with joint inter-carrier interference (ICI) self cancellation and channel equalization for multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) systems over rapidly time-varying channel environment. The existing schemes that deal with the ICI cancellation and channel equalization can’t provide satisfactory performance over time-varying channels. In term of error rate performance and low computational complexity, ICI self cancellation is the best choice. So, this paper proposes an adaptive receiver to deal with the problem of joint ICI self cancellation and channel equalization. We employ the adaptive phase rotations in the receiver to effectively track the CFO variations without feeding back the CFO estimate to the transmitter as required in traditional existing scheme. We also give some simulations to verify the proposed scheme.
Usability evaluation of a library website with different end user groups

To ensure a certain degree of usability, a library website should be carefully designed, especially since end users constitute a multitude of people with different needs and demands. The focal objective of this research was to investigate how different types of end users (i.e. pupils, students, the working population, seniors and researchers) respond to a library website in terms of its effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction, which together represent its usability. The answers were obtained by performing formal usability testing, including think-aloud protocol, log analysis and questionnaires. The results of the statistical analysis show that different groups of end users achieve different levels of effectiveness and efficiency, while there is no significant difference between groups in satisfaction level. The results also indicate that participants did not achieve the threshold for a usable website. Based on the identified weaknesses, researchers present recommendations for improving a website’s usefulness, especially for non-experienced users. This research has two main contributions: (1) the connection between the theoretical definition and practical use of ISO 9241-11 attributes and (2) a usability testing procedure with a measurement framework applicable for different types of users in a specific domain, which could be applied to other domains.
A Characterization of Teachers' Implementations of a Mathematical Decision-Making Curriculum

The purpose of this study was to examine teachers’ implementation of a specific mathematics curriculum and how their conceptions influenced this implementation. An innovative, powerful tool, known as “teacher logs,” was used to examine teachers’ implementations of the curriculum; a survey was used to study teachers’ conceptions related to their implementations. Results suggest that teachers tend to implement the materials closely to the written text, but there was variety shown both within and among teachers. A relationship was shown between teachers’ implementation levels and their beliefs about mathematics and their beliefs about students. The results of this study reveal that teachers may or may not stray from the authors’ intended curriculum, and whether or not they stray often relates to their conceptions.
Model-Aided Navigation with Sea Current Estimation for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

This paper presents a strategy to improve the navigation solution of the HRC-AUV by deploying a model-aided inertial navigation system (MA-INS). Based on a simpler three-DOF linear dynamic model (DM) of the vehicle, and implemented through a Kalman filter (KF), the performance of the proposed MA-INS is compared to state-of-the-art solutions based on non-linear models. The model allows the online estimation of the sea current parameters before and during the navigation mission. Qualitative and quantitative evaluations as well as a statistical significance test are performed using both simulated and real data, demonstrating the usefulness of the proposed model-aided navigation.
Mitigating design error root-causes in product development

Conventional product development is challenged with quickly changing globalised markets which demand faster market introductions and effective innovation processes. With current practices known as point-based concurrent engineering, tight schedules and budgets tend to result in poor product quality and design errors which in turn lead to rework and budget overruns. These problems also occurred at Philips BG Coffee which initiated the research for mapping the root-causes of design errors and finding applicable countermeasures for advancing the currently established development process. The design process root-cause analysis – built upon a design task execution model – identified improvement areas for BG Coffee in the fields of “organisation”, “communication”, “analysis” and “knowledge” regarding lack of standard practices and poor knowledge flow. These go in line with the observations of other research findings in various industries and has led the trend of implementing lean tools as validated effective countermeasures. Lean product and process development framework focuses on creating a sustainable knowledge value stream which emphasises learning cycles to produce optimised and proven product systems. The principles and tools build an aligned approach for “decisions based on facts” mentality and strives for gathering real data to address system interactions and performance trade-offs. The core lies in the set-based concurrent engineering development model which was also determined as the desired state for the BG Coffee development process. The proposed implementation plan for mitigating identified root-cause errors in BG Coffee involves a step-by-step process of establishing “lean enablers” and advancements of the current organisational practices. It provides the transition guidance from point-based to set-based concurrent engineering.
A quantitative analysis of university student reasoning lines in the field of thermally activated phenomena

In this contribution we present a research aimed at studying the effectiveness of two workshops in improving reasoning skills in undergraduate students. Both the workshops are based on the Feynman Unifying Approach. A questionnaire containing six open-ended questions on the temperature dependence of evaporation of a liquid and of a chemical reaction was administered to the students of both groups before instruction. A second one, similar to the first but focused on a physical content different from both the pre-instruction test one and the content dealt with during the workshops, was administered after instruction. The responses to the pre- and post-instruction questionnaires are analyzed by using Not-Hierarchical Cluster Analysis methods and students’ lines of reasoning about the proposed phenomena/situations are in-ferred in both the experimental and the control group. The implications on the efficacy of the two workshops in improving student explicative skills are discussed.