Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
UNIFIED THEORY OF ACCEPTANCE USE OF TECHNOLOGY (UTAUT) AND ITS APPLICABILITY TO MORTGAGE BANKING DIGITIZATION: THE CASE OF THE PHILIPPINES

The advent of technology has influenced the way banks should conduct their business. People are becoming more conscious, more discerning and more critical with the way how businesses should provide efficient, fast, and convenient access to their products and services. And banks are not exempted from these expectations. There has been a steady surge of innovative technology that will help banks deliver more efficient services through digitization. This study was conducted to investigate the determinants of the behavioral intentions on the acceptability of the bank’s digital mortgage service from the perspective of 250 mortgage clients who are current or prospective users of digital mortgage service. The study was anchored from the Unified Theory of Acceptance Use of Technology (UTAUT). The research has found that the determinants of behavioral intention to accept digital mortgage device among mortgage clients were facilitating conditions, performance expectancy and effort expectancy. It was also revealed that based on the standardized beta coefficients, facilitating conditions (0.405), performance expectancy (0.383) and effort expectancy (0.134) had a significant influence on bank mortgage clients’ behavioral intentions to accept digital mortgage service. Additionally, it was also proven that the age, education, computer knowledge and internet knowledge of the mortgage clients moderate the impact of the three determinants: performance expectancy, effort expectancy and social influence on clients’ digital mortgage service acceptance. Lastly, it can be concluded that performance expectancy is directly related to internet time, frequency of product purchase using a mobile device and use of mobile banking.
Prediction of Who Will Be Next Speaker and When Using Mouth-Opening Pattern in Multi-Party Conversation

We investigated the mouth-opening transition pattern (MOTP), which represents the change of mouth-opening degree during the end of an utterance, and used it to predict the next speaker and utterance interval between the start time of the next speaker’s utterance and the end time of the current speaker’s utterance in a multi-party conversation. We first collected verbal and nonverbal data that include speech and the degree of mouth opening (closed, narrow-open, wide-open) of participants that were manually annotated in four-person conversation. A key finding of the MOTP analysis is that the current speaker often keeps her mouth narrow-open during turn-keeping and starts to close it after opening it narrowly or continues to open it widely during turn-changing. The next speaker often starts to open her mouth narrowly after closing it during turn-changing. Moreover, when the current speaker starts to close her mouth after opening it narrowly in turn-keeping, the utterance interval tends to be short. In contrast, when the current speaker and the listeners open their mouths narrowly after opening them narrowly and then widely, the utterance interval tends to be long. On the basis of these results, we implemented prediction models of the next-speaker and utterance interval using MOTPs. As a multimodal-feature fusion, we also implemented models using eye-gaze behavior, which is one of the most useful items of information for prediction of next-speaker and utterance interval according to our previous study, in addition to MOTPs. The evaluation result of the models suggests that the MOTPs of the current speaker and listeners are effective for predicting the next speaker and utterance interval in multi-party conversation. Our multimodal-feature fusion model using MOTPs and eye-gaze behavior is more useful for predicting the next speaker and utterance interval than using only one or the other.
Reactive Hepatitis in Dogs

Reactive hepatitis is defined as the response of the liver to different extrahepatic processes. The aim of this investigation was to study cases of histological confirmed reactive hepatitis and to identify the associated diseases. Extrahepatic diseases associated with reactive hepatitis in 55 dogs were identified. Liver parameters were measured in these dogs. Histological changes, like degree and distribution of inflammatory infiltrates were assessed. The degree of inflammation was mild in 48% (n=26) and moderate in 52% (n=29) of the 55 cases. The distribution of the inflammatory cells was diffuse or multifocal in 51% (n=28), 47% (n=26) had infiltration concentrated in the portal area and one dog (2%) had the infiltration in the sinusoid region. The serum liver parameters showed mild or moderate increases. In this study, reactive hepatitis was associated with inflammatory and non-inflammatory diseases of the urinary tract, the reproductive system, the gastrointestinal tract, the cardio-respiratory and the endocrine systems. In addition, systemic inflammation or hematological disorders of different etiologies were associated with reactive hepatitis. The results of this study confirm that reactive hepatitis can occur in association with a variety of extrahepatic inflammatory and non-inflammatory diseases.
Drug utilization pattern in an intensive care unit setting in Eastern India

Background: The intensive care unit (ICU) is a setting where a large number of drugs are administered to patients, most of them critically ill and suffering from multiple complications, making the costs of hospitalization and drug treatment high. There is a dearth of information on drug utilization in ICUs in Eastern India. The present study was undertaken to evaluate the drug utilization pattern in an ICU setting in Eastern India. The objective was to monitor, evaluate, and suggest modifications in the prescribing pattern of ICU drugs. Methods: A retrospective analysis of the case records of patients admitted to the ICU of a multispecialty hospital in Eastern India during the time period from January 2015 to June 2015 was carried out. The demographic profile of the patients, drug utilization pattern and defined daily dose (DDD)/100 bed-days of the commonly used drugs in the ICU were studied. Results: A total of 275 patients were evaluated consisting 61% male patients. Most common causes for admission to the ICU were a cerebrovascular accident, chronic kidney disease, and road traffic accident. An average number of drugs per patient was 10.5. Commonly prescribed drug classes were the antimicrobial agents (AMAs) in 96% patients followed by gastrointestinal drugs. Ceftriaxone was the most commonly used AMA (41.5% patients), having a drug consumption of 35.1 DDD/100 bed-days during the study period. Conclusions: An antibiotic use policy should be framed and followed to curb the excessive use of AMAs. Formation of a multidisciplinary team to oversee drug use will be helpful to make the drug utilization in the ICU rational.
Performance evaluation of electric vehicle brushless direct current motor with a novel high-performance control strategy with experimental implementation

In this article, a new control strategy for electric vehicle battery autonomy and performance improvements is proposed. This method is based on the use of a DC-DC converter combined with a brushless DC motor as an electric vehicle propulsion engine. First, an analysis of the three-phase brushless DC motor performance based on analytical modeling is addressed. This model stands on the derivative of the commutated and non-commutated phase currents from which the speed response is induced. The proposed model presents different brushless DC motor pulse width modulation control modes and allows highlighting the most appropriate mode with lower current ripple and power loss, higher efficiency and faster response. Furthermore, a DC-DC boost converter is integrated in the motor control scheme, to describe after, how the electric vehicle performance is increased when implementing this control mode. Evaluation of the analytic results has been validated through simulations on MATLAB/Simulink. The evaluation focuses on speed response for different pulse width modulation control modes, current ripple rate in addition to the electric vehicle performance with and without DC-DC converter. In addition, an experimental validation using a laboratory designed platform is performed. The proposed method demonstrates a better electric vehicle performance in terms of increasing the battery autonomy and speed range.
Bacteriological and Clinical Study of Patients with Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia and Urinary Tract Infection

The study included (150) patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia and or chronic prostatitis who referred Al-Hilla Teaching Hospital-Department of Urology, from (October) 2004 to (May) 2005. Patients age ranged from (30-99) years with mean age of (63.9) years. It was found that (78%) of them had benign prostatic hyperplasia 13.3% had chronic prostatitis and 8.7% had benign prostatic hyperplasia and chronic prostatitis. The clinical features were frequency (98%), nocturia (90%), urgency (82%), hesitancy (53%), dysuria (51.3%), poor stream (46.7%), dribbling of urine (22%). Other clinical features were pain (22%) such as supra pubic pain, lower backache, groin and perineal pain. About (20.7%) of patients had post voiding residual urine, while (10%) had history of catheterization and cystoscopy was done to (4%). Results of general urine examination were pyuria (54%), red blood cells (20.7%), bacteruria (8%) and (12%) had sterile pyuria with urine culture and sensitivity negative. Regarding the results of urine cultures in patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia and or chronic prostatitis, (43.3%) had positive culture for bacteria. E.coli was the most common type of bacterial isolates (14.7%), Staphylococcus epidermidis (6%), Klebsiella pneumoniae and Staphylococcus aureus ,each of which represented (4%), Acinetobacter spp. (3.3%), Enterobacter spp. and Pseudomonas aeruginosa represented (2.7%)for each, Proteus mirabilis (2%).
Proinsulin, C-peptide, and insulin as independent predictors of all-cause and cause-specific mortality in older adults : the Rancho Bernardo study

OF THE THESIS Proinsulin, C-Peptide, and Insulin as Independent Predictors of All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality in Older Adults: The Rancho Bernardo Study by Kelley Lynn Hagerich Master of Public Health with a Concentration in Epidemiology San Diego State University, 2012 Aim: To identify if proinsulin and C-peptide, as compared to non-fasting and fasting insulin, are better predictors of both all-cause and cause-specific mortality from cardiovascular disease and cancer. Background: Over the next quarter-century, the diabetes mellitus epidemic is anticipated to worsen considerably and further burden the public health system. Thus, much research in the field of chronic disease epidemiology is turning to earlier identification of pre-diabetes and diabetic conditions in order to prevent and risk stratify individuals at risk for poor outcomes from morbidity and mortality from this insidious disease. Serum insulin levels rise even prior to the development of full-blown diabetes and have been proposed as potential biomarkers for all-cause and cardiovascular mortality. However, the results have been mixed due to the instability of the insulin molecule. Thus the precursor molecule, proinsulin and the cleavage product, C-peptide, have been proposed to be more favorable biomarkers to predict all-cause and cause-specific mortality. Methods: Community-dwelling older adults participated in this prospective cohort study and gave laboratory measurements of non-fasting insulin, fasting insulin, proinsulin, and C-peptide at Visit 7, between 1992-1996. Participants with these laboratory measurements were followed prospectively for mortality outcomes through 2009. Bivariate Cox models were used to assess the relationship between the predictor molecules and the mortality outcomes to assess significance for inclusion in the multivariable models. Separate Cox proportional hazard models were used to estimate hazard ratios and 95% C.I. for the association between the insulin molecules and the three mortality outcomes of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality, and cancer mortality. Results: Of the 1,183 subjects, 378 or 32% of the population had died by the end of the study period in 2009. On bivariate analysis none of the predictor molecules were significantly associated with any cancer mortality outcome so cancer mortality was not further analyzed. The hazard ratio for death from all causes for subjects categorized as having an elevated proinsulin level, prior to adjustment was 1.39 (95% C.I. 1.14-1.71). The hazard ratio for death from all causes for subjects categorized as having an elevated C-peptide level as compared to those with a normal C-peptide level, prior to any adjustment was 1.35 (95% C.I. 1.10-1.67). The hazard ratio for death from a cardiovascular cause for subjects categorized as having an elevated C-peptide level, prior to adjustment was 1.50 (95% C.I. 1.08-2.08).
SAMPLE SIZE AND CONFIDENCE WHEN APPLYING THE NSSDA

In this work a simulation process is used in order to study the variation and stability of National Standard Spatial Data Accuracy (NSSDA) results, depending on the sample size. Empirical results show that the NSSDA underestimated the error level presented in the population, and that positional accuracy estimation also has a variability of 11%when using the recommended sample size of 20 points. Simulation results indicate out the use of samples of a hundred points in order to reach an effective confidence level of 95%. The NSSDA is a methodology of shared risk between users and producers when accuracy is as expected, but for other cases the relation is altered, as simulation results demonstrated.
PREVALENCE AND SENSITIVITY PATTERN OF STAPHYLOCCUS AUREUS IN SURGICAL WOUND INFECTIONS

The problem of infection has been persistent in the surgical world even after the introduction of antibiotics. Pathogens that infect surgical wounds can be part of normal flora or acquired from the hospital environment or other infected patients. Staphylococcus aureus , being the normal microbial flora of the skin is one of the commonest causes of wound infection. A total of 1088 pus samples from surgical wounds were received in the Department of Microbiology, Pt.B. D.S,UHS, Rohtak over a period of one year. The isolates were identified using standard laboratory procedures. All the isolates were tested for susceptibility to various commonly used antibiotics and screened for oxacillin susceptibility according to CLSI guidelines.Out of 1088 pus samples received, 833(76.5%) were culture positive. S.aureus accounted for 10.6% of surgical wound infections. Methicillin resistance was documented in 54 (60.6%) of the S.aureus isolates. Highest efficacy was observed with linezolid (100%). The hospital acquired surgical site infection is alarming. Hospital disinfection and treatment protocols should be practiced.
Enhancing Green Star Certification by Improving Bim Uptake Through System Dynamics Modelling

i List of Figures . vii List of Tables . ix List of Appendices . xi Attestation of Authorship . xii List of Publications . xiii Journal Articles . xiii Conference Proceedings . xiii Co-Authored Works and Declaration of Collaboration . xv Acknowledgements . xviii Chapter
SaliencyGAN: Deep Learning Semisupervised Salient Object Detection in the Fog of IoT

In modern Internet of Things (IoT), visual analysis and predictions are often performed by deep learning models. Salient object detection (SOD) is a fundamental preprocessing for these applications. Executing SOD on the fog devices is a challenging task due to the diversity of data and fog devices. To adopt convolutional neural networks (CNN) on fog–cloud infrastructures for SOD-based applications, we introduce a semisupervised adversarial learning method in this article. The proposed model, named as SaliencyGAN, is empowered by a novel concatenated generative adversarial network (GAN) framework with partially shared parameters. The backbone CNN can be chosen flexibly based on the specific devices and applications. In the meanwhile, our method uses both the labeled and unlabeled data from different problem domains for training. Using multiple popular benchmark datasets, we compared state-of-the-art baseline methods to our SaliencyGAN obtained with 10–100% labeled training data. SaliencyGAN gained performance comparable to the supervised baselines when the percentage of labeled data reached 30%, and outperformed the weakly supervised and unsupervised baselines. Furthermore, our ablation study shows that SaliencyGAN were more robust to the common “mode missing” (or “mode collapse”) issue compared to the selected popular GAN models. The visualized ablation results have proved that SaliencyGAN learned a better estimation of data distributions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first IoT-oriented semisupervised SOD method.
Analysis of the association Hind III Polymorphism of Lipoprotein Lipase gene on the risk of coronary artery disease

Background and Aim: Coronary artery disease (CAD) is one of the leadin g causes of death and disability around the world. In teraction between genetic and environmental factors determines susceptibility of an individual to develop coronary artery disease. Lipoprotein lipase (LPL) play an important role in the metabolism of HDL-C (High Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol), LDL-C (Low Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol) and triglycerides (TG). Dysfunction of LPL as a result of genetic variants of lipoprotein lipase ge ne is associated with increased risk of CAD. The aim of the present study was to in vestigate the relationship between the risk of coronary artery disease and LDL -C, HDL-C and TG (triglycerides) levels by lipoprotein lipase gene Hind III polymorphism. Methods: A total of 202 subjects including 114 patients with coronary artery disease and 88 control participated in this study. The Hind III polymorphism of the lipoprotein lipase gene was determined by PCR- RFLP (Polymerase Chain Reaction-Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism). In the presence and absence of restriction site, the genotypes are desc ribed H+/+, H-/- respectively. Results: In this survey, a significant association between the frequent H+/+ genotype and unfavorable TG levels was observed in our population. For the Hind III genotypes, within the healthy subjects (n=88), the H+/+ genotype was found in 67 individuals (58.8%), H-/+ genotype in 38 individuals (33.3%), and 9 individuals (7.8%) carried the H-/- genotype. Within the CAD group (n=114), 47 individuals (53.4%) with H+/+ genotype, 36 (41%) with H-/+ genotype, and 5 (5.6%) carried the H-/- genotype. Conclusion: There was no significant difference between the di stribution of LPL- Hind III genotypes and the healthy subjects and the patient s with CAD (P<0.05, 0. 645). The study of LPL genotypes confirms the exist ence of interrelations between TG levels (P<0.05), but this polymorphisms were not detected as independent risk factors for CAD (P<0.05).
Relationship between Maternal Perceptions and Preventive Behaviors Regarding Acute Diarrhea of Children in Bangladesh

Diarrhea is the second leading cause of death among children younger than 5 years old worldwide. In Bangladesh it is responsible for sixty-nine thousands diarrheal deaths. It is imperative to understand maternal perceptions of acute diarrhea and their preventive behaviors. This descriptive correlation study aimed at determining the level of maternal perception and maternal preventive behaviors about acute diarrhea and to examine the relationship between them. This study framework was guided by the Health Belief Model (Rosenstock, 1974). One hundred and seven mothers were recruited who had children aged less than 5 years old admitted with diarrhea at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research Bangladesh (ICDDRB). The questionnaire consists of three parts. These were a demographic characteristic questionnaire, maternal perceptions, and a maternal preventive behaviors questionnaire. This was used for data collection. Three experts ensured the content validity of the questionnaire. The internal consistency and reliability of the maternal perceptions of acute diarrhea questionnaire and the preventive behaviors of acute diarrhea questionnaire scales yielded . 94, . 84 respectively. Descriptive statistics and Pearson’s correlation were employed for data analysis. The results showed that overall maternal perceptions and maternal preventive behaviors were at high and moderate levels respectively. There was a significantly positive moderate correlation between maternal perceptions and maternal preventive behaviors. The results supported the health belief model. Health care personnel should provide a theory based health education program in order to improve maternal preventive behaviors with respect to children.
Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics Reusing Natural Experiments

After a natural experiment is first used, other researchers often reuse the setting, examining different outcome variables. We use simulations based on real data to illustrate the multiple hypothesis testing problem that arises when researchers reuse natural experiments. We then provide guidance for future inference based on popular empirical settings including difference-in-differences regressions, instrumental variables regressions, and regression discontinuity designs. When we apply our guidance to two extensively studied natural experiments, business combination laws and the Regulation SHO pilot, we find that many results that were statistically significant using single hypothesis testing do not survive corrections for multiple hypothesis testing. JEL classification: G1, G10
Lightweight Key Encapsulation Using LDPC Codes on FPGAs

In this paper, we present a lightweight hardware design for a recently proposed quantum-safe key encapsulation mechanism based on QC-LDPC codes called LEDAkem, which has been admitted as a round-2 candidate to the NIST post-quantum standardization project. Existing implementations focus on high speed while few of them take into account area or power efficiency, which are particularly decisive for low-cost or power constrained IoT applications. The solution we propose aims at maximizing the metric of area efficiency by rotating the QC-LDPC code representations amongst the block RAMs in digit level. Moreover, optimized parallelized computing techniques, lazy accumulation and block partition are exploited to improve key decapsulation in terms of area and timing efficiency. We show for instance that our area-optimized implementation for 128-bit security requires <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$6.82\times 10^5$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mrow><mml:mn>6</mml:mn><mml:mo>. </mml:mo><mml:mn>82</mml:mn><mml:mo>×</mml:mo><mml:msup><mml:mn>10</mml:mn><mml:mn>5</mml:mn></mml:msup></mml:mrow></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="hu-ieq1-2948323.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> cycles and <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2.26\times 10^6$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mrow><mml:mn>2</mml:mn><mml:mo>. </mml:mo><mml:mn>26</mml:mn><mml:mo>×</mml:mo><mml:msup><mml:mn>10</mml:mn><mml:mn>6</mml:mn></mml:msup></mml:mrow></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="hu-ieq2-2948323.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> cycles to encapsulate and decapsulate a shared secret, respectively. The area-optimized design uses only 39 slices (3 percent of the available logic) and 809 slices (39 percent of the available logic) for key encapsulation and key decapsulation respectively, on a small-size low-end Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA.
Estimation of stripping by static immersion test using image processing and machine learning

iii Acknowledgments . v List of Figures.ix List of Tables.xii Namenclature.xiii Chapter 1: Introduction . 1 1.1. Background and Research Motivation . 1 1.2. Research Objectives . 4 1.3. Research Methodology . 4 1.4. Thesis Organization . 5 Chapter 2: Literature Review. 7 2.