Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of sun- drying on nutrient content of orange fleshed sweet potato tubers in Tanzania

The aim of this study was to assess the impact of traditional processes practiced in Maswa district Tanzania, on nutrient content of orange fleshed sweet potato tubers. The nutrients content was studied in four dried sweet potato varieties (Jewel, Karoti dar, Kabode and Ejumula), subjected to blanching and cooking. Chemical analyses were carried out on orange fleshed sweet potato tubers to establish levels of nutrients in its fresh and processed forms, using official methods of analysis. β-carotene content was also determined by spectrophotometric method, to see how these nutrients were affected by processing and storage. Results were analysed using R-statistical package version 3.1. 2 (2014-10-31) software and means were separated using turkey test. The composition of fresh sweet potato tubers were protein 1.9-2.7%, fat 1.1-1.67%, crude fibre 3 3.6%, ash 2.774. 2%, carbohydrate content 18 26.8% and beta carotene 24.2 73.9mg/100g on dry matter basis and moisture content 65 70.4%. For dried samples, the nutrient composition on dry matter basis were protein 4.89-9.29%, fat 0.56-1.93%, crude fibre 3.19-6.07%, ash 1.95-3.54%, carbohydrate content 72.36-80.33% and beta carotene 8.259. 8mg/100g. Retention of beta carotene content of dried chips during storage showed that Matobolwa and blanched solar dried chips had highest retention compared to Michembe after six months of storage. Blanched solar dried should be adopted in the place of Michembe because blanched solar dried chips retain more beta carotene, have longer shelf life and the technology is simple to be implemented by famers.
HIGH STRAIN RATE RELOADING COMPRESSION TESTING OF A CLOSED-CELL ALUMINUM

Al-closed-cell foam with densities varying between 0.35 and 0.50 g/cm was reloaded in SHPB compression testing in order to determine the flow stresses at large strains at almost a constant strain rate. The sample reloaded six times between the bars of the SHPB and the subsequent stress-strain and strain rate behaviors of the sample were calculated. The results were compared with quasi-static testing. The stress-equilibrium during SHPB testing was determined through the numerical modeling of the testing. The foam showed almost no strain rate dependency of flow stresses, while a marked effect of foam density was found on the flow stress values. It was shown numerically that in high strain rate testing the variation of the stress equilibrium decreases in the subsequent loading cycles as the foam density increases.
Towards Language-Universal Mandarin-English Speech Recognition

Multilingual and code-switching speech recognition are two challenging tasks that are studied separately in many previous works. In this work, we jointly study multilingual and codeswitching problems, and present a language-universal bilingual system for Mandarin-English speech recognition. Specifically, we propose a novel bilingual acoustic model, which consists of two monolingual system initialized subnets and a shared output layer corresponding to the Character-Subword acoustic modeling units. The bilingual acoustic model is trained using a large Mandarin-English corpus with CTC and sMBR criteria. We find that this model, which is not given any information about language identity, can achieve comparable performance in monolingual Mandarin and English test sets compared to the well-trained language-specific Mandarin and English ASR systems, respectively. More importantly, the proposed bilingual model can automatically learn the language switching. Experimental results on a Mandarin-English code-switching test set show that it can achieve 11.8% and 17.9% relative error reduction on Mandarin and English parts, respectively.
A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON THE EVOLUTION OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND HONEY POLLUTION WITH HEAVY METALS

In this paper, the content of four heavy metals (Cu, Zn, Cd and Pb) in honey was determined by atomic absorption spectrometry. The main goal of this study was to relate the heavy metals contents in honey samples to the pollution of the environment as a result of the industrial activities running in this area. The honey samples were harvested between 2005 and 2012 from the neighbour area of Baia Mare city that used to be known as one of the most polluted cities in Romania. The metals concentrations in honey were compared with the metals concentrations in air, in falling dust and soil, during the investigated period of time. Our results reveal a very good correlation between the metals content in honey and air and falling dust and a less relevant correlation with the metal content in soil.
Turbulence-Flame Interactions in Premixed Lean Hydrogen

Conventional wisdom suggests that premixed flames are unable to survive at sufficiently high turbulence levels, e.g. Peters [1] or Poinsot and Veynante [2]. This conclusion is based on experimental studies of highly-stretched methane Bunsen flames (e.g. [3] and the references therein) and of vortex-flame interactions examined experimentally [4] and numerically in two dimensions [5]. However, Aspden et al. [6] studied highly turbulent supernova flames numerically. At a Karlovitz number of approximately 230, the flame was sufficiently disrupted by the turbulence that a clear flame sheet was no longer identifiable. Instead, a greatly broadened flame brush was observed, which resembled a homogeneous turbulent mixing zone. The local flame speed was greatly reduced, but the broadening of the flame brush meant that the overall speed was approximately five times faster than the laminar flame speed. Global extinction was not observed. In this paper, we take a similar approach to [6] to investigate turbulence-flame interactions in premixed lean hydrogen flames at a variety of Karlovitz numbers using high-resolution three-dimensional numerical simulations with detailed chemistry.
Optimizing Mechanical Ventilation by Bedside Lung Monitoring Systems in Critically ill Patients

markdownabstract__Abstract__ Since the original description of the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) in the Lancet by Ashbaugh et al. in 1967, numerous studies have aimed to improve mechanical ventilation in order to prevent the associated ventilatorinduced lung injury (VILI). In 2000, the landmark study of the ARDSnet group demonstrated that the application of tidal volumes of 6 ml/kg body weight resulted in a reduced mortality rate. This is now widely implemented as ‘protective ventilation’, not only in ARDS patients, but also in mechanically ventilated patients on both the operation room and the intensive care unit (ICU). Descriptions of ‘assisted’ ventilation can be found over the centuries. The first reports of negative and positive pressure mechanical ventilation appeared in the early 1800s. In those days, the negative pressure ventilator was the modality most frequently used. This was first described in 1838 by John Dalziel, a Scottish physician. The patient was placed in sitting position in an airtight box, with only the head left outside. Subsequently, air was manually pumped in and out of the box to change the pressure within the box and in the patient’s thoracic cage, thereby expanding the lungs while the patient was able to breathe room air. In 1928, the first iron lung was introduced by Drinker and was further improved in the following decades, and then widely used during the polio epidemics from the 1930s to 1960s. During this period, entire wards of patients were ventilated with these devices. Even prototypes of entire negative pressure operation rooms were designed. However, the equipment was very large, patients were difficult to reach, and effective ventilation with high airway pressure and application of positive endexpiratory airway pressure (PEEP) was not possible.
PHONETIC STRENGTHENING OR PHONOLOGICAL SUBSTITUTION ? AN X-RAY MICROBEAM INVESTIGATION OF ACOUSTIC AND ARTICULATORY VARIABILITY IN THE PRODUCTION OF AMERICAN ENGLISH DENTAL FRICATIVES

Research has shown that many phenomena traditionally treated as categorical (e.g., t/d-deletion) may actually be the outcome of gradient phonetic processes. The current study extends this approach to th-stopping, the realization of dental fricatives /θ ð/ as stops, to test whether it is better explained as the outcome of gradient phonetic strengthening, rather than a categorical phonological process, as generally assumed. Analysis of the acoustic and articulatory characteristics of /ð/ in a corpus of Standard American English speech shows that, as predicted, stopped /ð/ retains a dental place of articulation and is more likely to occur in ”strong” (prominent) prosodic contexts while being disfavored in ”weak” (articulatorily open) segmental contexts. However, comparison with non-categorical measures of consonant strength (duration and tongue-tip constriction) shows that the latter do not systematically align with predictors of stopping likelihood. These findings suggest that th-stopping is not the endpoint of gradient gestural strengthening.
Enhancing spatial and textual analysis with EUPEG: An extensible and unified platform for evaluating geoparsers

A rich amount of geographic information exists in unstructured texts, such as web pages, social media posts, housing advertisements, and historical archives. Geoparsers are useful tools that extract structured geographic information from unstructured texts, thereby enabling spatial analysis on textual data. While a number of geoparsers have been developed, they have been tested on different data sets using different metrics. Consequently, it is difficult to compare existing geoparsers or to compare a new geoparser with existing ones. In recent years, researchers have created open and annotated corpora for testing geoparsers. While these corpora are extremely valuable, much effort is still needed for a researcher to prepare these data sets and deploy geoparsers for comparative experiments. This article presents EUPEG: an Extensible and Unified Platform for Evaluating Geoparsers. EUPEG is an open source and web‐based benchmarking platform which hosts the majority of open corpora, geoparsers, and performance metrics reported in the literature. It enables direct comparison of the geoparsers hosted, and a new geoparser can be connected to EUPEG and compared with other geoparsers. The main objective of EUPEG is to reduce the time and effort that researchers have to spend in preparing data sets and baselines, thereby increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of comparative experiments.
Assessment of Tubal Patency by Sonohystrography in Infertile Women

ABSTRACT:BACKGROUND:Tubal problem is one of the causes of infertility in infertile couples. For that, evaluation of fallopiantubes forms an important part of evaluation in infertile woman.OBJECTIVE:To assess the diagnostic accuracy of Sonohysterography (SHG) in comparison withhysterosalpingography (HSG) in infertile women.PATIENTS AND METHODS:this cross sectional study included 50 women, 37women with primary infertility and 13women withsecondary infertility. The study was conducted in Al-Imamian Al-Kadhimian medicalcity/Baghdad/Iraq from 1st of October 2017 to 30th of July 2018. All underwent clinical andphysical examination. This was followed by Sonohysterography on day 7th or 8th of menstrual cycleand Hysterosalpingography on the same day.RESULTS:Fifty infertile women were included in this study with mean age of 27.9±5.9 years. Mean infertilityduration of studied women was 3.6±2.4 years; 68% (N=34) of infertile women had duration of lessthan 5 years and 32% (N=16) of them had duration of 5 years and more. The history of previoussurgical operation was detected in 28% (N=14) of infertile women. The final diagnosis ofhysterosalpingography (SHG) revealed that 89% (N=89) patent fallopian tubes and 11% (N=11)obstructed tubes. The final hysterosalpingography (HSG) revealed that 85% (N=85) patent fallopiantubes and 15% (N=15) obstructed tubes. No significant difference between women with patent andobstructed fallopian tube by SHG regarding history of parity (p=0.6), abortion (p=0.7), type ofinfertility (p=0.1), infertility duration (p=0.6), history of previous operation (p=0.5) and history ofprevious diagnostic intervention (p=0.6). Sonohysterography (SSG) has 100 % sensitivity and 60 %specificity in comparison to hysterosalpingography (HSG). Analysis of the raw data gave positivepredictive value of 95.7% and negative predictive value of 100 %. From the results of this study itclear that there is no statistically significant difference (p = 0.001) between the results of the twomethods (SSG and HSG) with an accuracy of 96%. CONCLUSION:Sonohysterography has higher sensitivity and good specificity and is lesser invasive. It can be usedprimarily to assess tubal condition in infertile women.
The Level Of Student Engagement Based On Gender And Grade On History Subject Of Senior High School Students In Jember Regency

The study aims to analyze the student engagement level based on gender and class on history subjects of high school students in Jember. Student engagement theory refers to Frederick, Blumenfeld, and Paris that consists of three main components, namely behavioral engagement, emotional engagement, and cognitive engagement. Moreover, 354 students of class X, class XI, and class XII in Social Sciences majors from five State Senior High Schools in Jember involved as the reasearch sample. Data were analyzed by usng two-way Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) using the SPSS 23 for Windows program. The findings indicated that there was a significant difference in student engagement level based on gender (0.05> 0,000) and grade (0.05> 0,000). The score of student engagement of female students (mean = 3.66) was higher than that of male students (mean = 3.46). Student engagement score in grade X (mean = 3.71) was higher than in grade XI (mean = 3.53) and grade XII (mean = 3.43). Researchers suggested the educators to do the right learning planning by paying attention to differences of student characteristics to achieve historical learning goal. For further researcher, it recommends to examine the factors causing female students and other students who are in the lower classes to have a higher level of student engagement.
THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN DISPOSITIONAL COPING AND PERSONALITY VARIABLES

Previous research claimed that coping resources reflect stable personality characteristics (Bouchard, Guillemette, & Landry-Léger, 2004). The aim of the present study was to explore the relations between active coping, positive reinterpretation, denial and personality variables. Active coping is the process of taking active steps to try to remove or circumvent the stressor or to ameliorate its effects (Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub, 1989). Positive reinterpretation implies the fact that a person views a stressor in more positive terms. Denial is a strategy used when a person denies the reality of a stressful event (Carver et al., 1989). To assess personality traits, we used Big-Five personality dimensions: neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness. To measure participants' coping strategies when faced with stressful events, the 53-item COPE scale (Carver et al., 1989) was used. Participants in this study (N=112) also completed the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Pearson’s correlations revealed that neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness significantly relate with the use of a particular coping strategy. Multiple regression analysis demonstrated that conscientiousness and extraversion are the best predictors for the use of active coping strategies and positive reinterpretation. The research contributes to existing knowledge of how personality traits are related to coping strategies when confronted with adversity.
NoC-based DNN accelerator: a future design paradigm

Deep Neural Networks (DNN) have shown significant advantages in many domains such as pattern recognition, prediction, and control optimization. The edge computing demand in the Internet-of-Things era has motivated many kinds of computing platforms to accelerate the DNN operations. The most common platforms are CPU, GPU, ASIC, and FPGA. However, these platforms suffer from low performance (i.e., CPU and GPU), large power consumption (i.e., CPU, GPU, ASIC, and FPGA), or low computational flexibility at runtime (i.e., FPGA and ASIC). In this paper, we suggest the NoC-based DNN platform as a new accelerator design paradigm. The NoC-based designs can reduce the off-chip memory accesses through a flexible interconnect that facilitates data exchange between processing elements on the chip. We first comprehensively investigate conventional platforms and methodologies used in DNN computing. Then we study and analyze different design parameters to implement the NoC-based DNN accelerator. The presented accelerator is based on mesh topology, neuron clustering, random mapping, and XY-routing. The experimental results on LeNet, MobileNet, and VGG-16 models show the benefits of the NoC-based DNN accelerator in reducing off-chip memory accesses and improving runtime computational flexibility.
A Survey of Certified Accountants Opinion on SMEs Financial Reporting : Evidence from Romania

The paper analyze previous studies about the attitude and perception of professional accountants regarding IFRS for SMEs adoption in different European jurisdiction. Also this paper aims to determine to what extent Romanian professional accountants agree national accounting regulations for SMEs and if adoption of an international accounting standard special suited for SMEs (e.g. IFRS for SMEs) is considered an alternative to the financial reporting of Romanian SMEs. To reach our objective we sent a survey questionnaire to 4,000 Romanian professional accountants and we collected 90 valid responses. Based on our results we found that more than half of the respondents are satisfied with the current accounting regulations although professional accountants favor simplification of the legislation by reducing the number of policies, options and the volume of the information disclosed for SMEs. Despite this, about 40 percent of the respondents describe the possible adoption of the IFRS for SMEs as being opportune and advantageous.
Ichthyophonus prevalence and load in Pacific halibut ( Hippoglossus stenolepis ) in Cook Inlet , Alaska By

Quantifying Ichthyophonus prevalence and load in Pacific halibut (Hippoglossus stenolepis) in Cook Inlet, Alaska By Caitlin Grenier Ichthyophonus, a non-specific fungus-like protozoan fish parasite, has caused epizootic events among economically important fish stocks including herring and salmon and can result in reduced growth, stamina, and overall fish health. Recently Ichthyophonus was detected in Pacific Halibut (Hippoglossus stenolepis) in Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound, Gulf of Alaska, and the Bering Sea. During the summers of 2012 and 2013 I sampled sex, length, age, diet composition, heart, spleen, liver, and kidney tissues from 563 halibut (364 females, 199 males) landed by the Homer sport-charter fishery using the “pre-dumpster, post-mortem” method. Ichthyophonus prevalence was determined by MEM culture and parasite load (schizonts/ gram) was determined using pepsin digestion. In 2012, 23% of the fish sampled had Ichthyophonus; 29% in 2013. We found no evidence of the parasite in liver, spleen or kidney tissues and there was no difference in prevalence between males and females. Pepsin digestion analysis indicates a wide range of parasite load among infected fish with 6 to 1,245 Ichthyophonus schizonts per gram of heart tissue. Analyses to determine the diet composition of sick fish using gut contents and stable isotopes are ongoing.
Phoenix Rising : Economic Depression , Corporate Governance Reforms and Changes in Valuations in Finland ∗

Finland experienced an extremely severe economic depression in the early 1990s, when the GDP per capita decreased by 14% over three years. In the midst of this crisis significant new legislation was passed that increased shareholder protection while decreasing the protection of creditors. We show that the introduction of these new laws resulted in positive abnormal stock returns. The new laws also lead to increases in firms’ Tobin’s q, especially for more levered firms. The results suggest that i) changes in investor protection lead to higher corporate valuations and not vice versa, ii) dilution of creditor rights increases rather than decreases corporate valuation, and iii) public supervision of financial markets fosters rather than hampers financial market development. JEL Classification: G34, K22
Social Entrepreneurship Development in Collective-Based Initiatives : A Qualitative study of African Burial Societies

The purpose of this paper is to find out what studies of the African context can offer to enhance theories of social entrepreneurship. Current theorization lacks clarity on initiatives that use for-profit ventures to create value to members only and those that create value to the general society. Although both of these initiatives are commonly portrayed as characterizing social entrepreneurship, the venture matrix developed in this paper demonstrates otherwise. The matrix is then applied to a homogenous case of 145 African burial societies in which data was gathered from Ethiopia and Zimbabwe in 2009 and 2007/11 respectively. The data provides support for the matrix. Using extant literature on social capital in collective-based initiatives and findings from a qualitative study of 13 burial societies that have for-profit ventures, the paper then presents a model of social entrepreneurship development in CBIs and discusses implications for practice.
Statistical descriptors in the characterization of some Brazilian Portuguese fricatives : analysis of spectral moments

In this paper, we investigated the spectral characteristics of labiodental, alveolar and postalveolar fricatives of the Brazilian Portuguese in terms of place of articulation and vowel context. We measured the spectral characteristic of fricative noise using the analysis of four spectral moments (center of gravity, standard deviation, skewness and kurtosis). Our results indicated a significant effect of place of articulation and vowel context on values of spectral moments for fricatives of Brazilian Portuguese. The results show that the fricatives were well differentiated by the center of gravity and standard deviation more than the other spectral moments, skewness and kurtosis.
Prosodic Factors Influencing Vowel Reduction in Russian

Unstressed vowels in Russian are reduced in both duration and quality, but these two manifestations of vowel reduction do not have to be observed simultaneously. In order to investigate this question, we analysed the reduction pattern of words in such contexts where lengthening is induced by prosodic factors: prominence and pre-boundary lengthening. The study is based on a large corpus of read speech. The following results were obtained: (1) as expected, both contexts increase vowel duration; (2) under prosodic prominence vowels undergo less qualitative reduction, while pre-boundary lengthening has no effect on qualitative reduction; (3) additionally, it was shown that prominence mainly affects the pretonic part of the word, while pre-boundary lengthening—the post-tonic part. Thus, an increase in vowel duration does not always cause a decrease in qualitative reduction, which may serve as evidence against the idea that qualitative reduction is caused by quantitative reduction. Additionally, these results may serve as an argument for the idea that the two processes—vowel reduction and temporal organization of utterance—are autonomous.