Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The influences of individual sensitivity, sound frequency and sound pressure level on cognitive performances of students

Low-frequency noise is annoying even at lower levels and affects cognitive functions of individuals. Some individual differences, such as sensitivity, can reduce or increase the effects of noise on cognitive performance. This study investigated the effect of noise sensitivity on cognitive performance in the presence of low-frequency noise. In this experimental study, 120 fourth-year seniors in the field of health sciences year from Hamadan University of Medical Sciences, Iran were selected through purposive sampling (60 students with high sensitivity and 60 students with low sensitivity). All the participants were exposed for 40 min to the noise levels of 50, 60, and 70 dB at the frequencies of 125 and 250 Hz, during which, the cognitive performance of the subjects was examined using the Integrative Visual-Auditory Continuous Performance Test (IVA CPT). Data were analyzed by independent t-test, and ANOVA test in SPSS 20.0 software. The low-frequency noise negatively affected the components of cognitive performance so that with increasing the sound pressure level (SPL) from 50 to 70 dB and from 125 to 250 Hz (P<0.05), the components of cognitive performance decreased. The results also showed that in female subjects with high sensitivity, cognitive performance components were more affected than the male subjects with low sensitivity (P<0.05). The components of attention and work quality reduced with increasing SPL, and this negative effect of low-frequency noise was higher in women with high sensitivity.
Assessing the Buyer Trust and Satisfaction Factors in the E-Marketplace

Indonesian online sales have received remarkable growth with as high as 20% consistently every year. In 2016, there were estimated more than 180 million internet users and have reached 40% of 250 million total inhabitants. Based on the surveys, there are four most popular online vendors in Indonesia, such as: Lazada, Tokopedia, OnLine eXchange and Bukalapak, with strong customer bases. Due to its tremendous growth, however, there is still very few studies can be found to understand the characteristics of e-marketplace in Indonesia. For this reason, the article examines those most popular online vendors in Jakarta area, where the most buyers tend to have more experiences in conducting online purchases. The article utilizes the revised TAM as a valuable method to assess the important factors of online purchases such as: buyer and satisfaction factors, that comprised of: buyer perceived risk, seller’s expertise and reputation, and convenience of buying. The findings are aimed to address the important factors that can be used to increase buyer satisfaction. The outcomes of the study are expected to provide valuable guidance for all e-sellers and buyers to understand Indonesian e-marketplace.
A Framework for Implementation and Evaluation of Cooperative Diversity in Software-Defined Radio

by Glenn J. Bradford Increasing data rates in wireless devices is particularly challenging due to the presence of many impairments in the medium, including multipath fading. Diversity techniques are a means of increasing transmission reliability in multipath environments. This thesis focuses on cooperative diversity, a concept that obtains spatial diversity via relaying. Cooperative diversity encompasses a broad range of issues, from the physical layer through network layer, making the emerging reconfigurable technology of software-defined radio ideal for experimentation. The main contribution of this work is the development of an extendable experimental framework for implementation and analysis of cooperative protocols. A decode-and-forward (DF) relay network is constructed and analyzed by means of received symbol distributions and bit error rate (BER) versus signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) curves. The former shows a shift in the distribution of instantaneous SNR for both simple and selective DF, while the latter indicates that only the selective scheme actually achieves a diversity gain.
Strategi Promosi Objek Wisata Alam Situ Gede Kota Tasikmalaya

Situ Gede Tourist Site Tasikmalaya has a lot of potential as a tourist attraction, but natural it was neglected and had only a few visitors until the local Tourism Office has managed and promoted the tourist site. This study aimed to analyse the tourism promotion strategy of Situ Gede by the local Tourism Office using the concept of the promotion mix. This research is qualitative research in which data were collected through interviews with four key informants from the local Tourism Office. Informants were selected using purposive sampling technique. The results of the study show that the marketing strategy carried out by the Tourism Office including advertising, direct marketing, sales promotion, personal sales, interactive marketing, public relations, has succeeded in increasing the number of tourists.
Socio-demographic characteristics of maternal deaths in Basrah or the period (2013-2017)

Introduction and Background: In Iraq, and due to the decades of wars and sunctions that affected people’s accessibility to the health care services, maternal death was among the main health problems over the years. Thus, studying the factors influencing this important problem is a mandatory step for a better evidence based intervention in controlling the problem. Objective: To analyze the socio-demographic factors that influence maternal deaths in Basrah during the period 2013-2017. Methodology design: The study is an observational retrospective one included information collected from the medical records, death certificate and forensic medicine reports in addition to interviewing the family as needed. A total of 201 deaths were included in the study. Results: The study shows that maternal death rate in Basrah increased sharply during 2016 compared to that of 2013 with a highest rate in Shat Al-Arab and Al-Mudiana districts. Then, a sharp decrease was noticed in 2017 compared to 2016. Maternal mortality rates were found to be increasing with increasing women’s age with the highest rate among women above 40 years old. But no big difference between maternal death rates in urban and rural areas. (88.1%) of the study women died in hospital while 11.9% of them died outside the hospital Conclusions and recommendations: Maternal death is still a problem in Basrah in spite of the decline that occurred between (2016-2017) compared to the rates in 2013. Strengthening of maternal mortality monitoring system across all districts of Basrah governorate in addition to improving the quality of registering all pregnancy related information are the main recommendations of the study.
基于标记分水岭分割算法在矿石异物检测应用研究 Ore Impurities Detection Based on Marker-Watershed Segmentation Algorithm

提出一种改进的分水岭分割算法和目标几何特征提取相结合的目标检测方法，应用于传送带矿石中的异物检测。 矿石图像噪声及边缘连接严重，分水岭算法产生过分割及欠分割问题。 本文通过优化矿石种子区域，改善分割缺陷，并提取分割目标的几何特征，通过特征统计分析，实施矿石异物检测。 实验结果表明，该算法可准确获得矿石边界，并能有效的对图像中异物进行标记。 This article describes an improved target detection method which combines the watershed seg-mentation algorithm and targeting geometric feature extraction. It is used in the area of detecting impurities, ore image noise and edge connections in conveyor belts. The watershed algorithm causes over-segmentation and under-segmentation in the detection work as the noise area gravely connected to the edge of ore objects. This article concentrates on optimizing the ore seed area, improving segmentation defects to extract the geometric characteristics of the segmentation target and implementation of the ore impurities detection by feature statistical analysis. As shown in the experimental results, such algorithm can obtain the ore boundary accurately, as well as mark the impurities from images effectively.
The Relation between Objective and Perceived Physical Characteristics of a Neighborhood Environment for Older People

This paper aims to investigate the relation between objective and perceived neighbourhood walkability and its influence on the physical activity level of older adults. The relationships were used to measure older people's neighbourhood liveability, whereas physical activity relates to older people's quality of life in Johor Bahru neighbourhoods, Malaysia. The study outcomes show residents in a highly dense area with higher accessibility to facilities perceived higher walkability but showed a lower physical activity level. Residents in high intersection density areas who recognised high walkability demonstrated higher physical activity level, whereas residents in a highly dense area with higher accessibility show lower physical activity level.Keywords: Active ageing; physical neighbourhood environment; neighbourhood liveability; quality of lifeeISSN: 2398-4287 © 2019. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/e-bpj.v4i11. 1732
Bullying among school adolescents in Erbil city of Iraq

Background and objective: Bullying (being a bully or a victim of bullying) is a common problem for children all around the world. The prevalence of bullying varies depending on the age, gender, and race of the individuals involved. This study aimed to explore the prevalence of each form of bullying among school adolescents of both genders and to measure the association of different forms of bullying with the sociodemographic characteristics. Methods: A school-based cross-sectional study done in public schools across Erbil city of Kurdistan region of Iraq for the educational year 2016-2017. The sample was collected by multistage cluster sampling technique with a total number of 35 schools distributed through the six municipalities of Erbil. Data collection was done through a self-reported close-ended questionnaire. Results: A total of 1070 school adolescents participated in this study. The mean age was 15.56 ±1.41 years, and males were 51.8% of the sample making male to female ratio 1:0.9. Sixty percent of the students reported being involved in bullying at least once through the last semester of the school year, 3.0% were bullies, 26.2% were both bullies and being bullied, and 31.8% were victims of bullying. Bullying, victimization, and bully-victims were significantly higher among boys compared to girls for all forms of bullying. Significantly higher bullying prevalence was noticed among Arabs compared to Kurds and Turkmen. Conclusion: Bullying behavior seems to be a widespread problem in schools of Erbil city.
Striving for State of the Art with Paradigm Interplay and Meta-Synthesis: Purpose-oriented Network Research Challenges and Good Research Practices as a Way Forward

With the growing amount and increasing heterogeneity of research on purpose-oriented networks (PONs) in the public sector, it is imperative to find a way to synthesize this research. Drawing on the varied research perspectives on PONs, we advance the idea of paradigm interplay and meta-synthesis as aspirations for the field and argue this is especially key if we want the study of PONs to inform practice. However, we recognize several challenges in the current state of the PON research that prevent the field from making strides in paradigm interplay and meta-synthesis. We discuss six challenges which we consider the most critical: different labels, differences across research foci, variation in measurement, the nestedness of networks, the dynamism of networks, and variation in the network context. We suggest six good research practices that could contribute to overcoming the challenges now so as to make integration of the research field more of a possibility in the future.
Vector-Field Consistency para Desenvolvimento Colaborativo de Software Vector-Field Consistency for Collaborative Software Development

Software development is, mostly, a collaborative process where teams of developers work together in order to produce quality code. Collaboration is, generally, not an issue, as teams work together in the same office or building. However, larger projects may require more people, who might be spread through-out different floors, buildings and different companies. Several systems have been developed in order to provide better means of communication and awareness over the actions of others. Still, most of them rely on an all-or-nothing approach: where the user is either immediately notified of all modifications occurring in a shared project, or is completely oblivious to all external changes. We propose a new solution based on the adaptation of the Vector-Field Consistency algorithm which relies on two distinct concepts: locality-awareness and continuous consistency model. Where the former represents the ability of system to make choices based on the proximity of remote changes in relation to a particular user’s position. While the later corresponds to a consistency model between strong and weak consistency, which is able to control and impose a limit over how much two replicas can diverge. With the correct parametrization this model can establish a great balance between consistency and availability. The Vector-Field Consistency (VFC) was originally applied to the context of distributed ad-hoc gaming, and will now take its first steps into collaborative software development. This adaptation will allow a software developer to have a higher degree of awareness over remote changes which might directly affect his work, and as the impact of changes will gradually grow further away from the developer’s task, so will the level of awareness. In this dissertation we first study the current state of the art concerning consistency models and various already existing software management tools, along with multiple techniques used for distributed collaborative software development. Then we will explain how the VFC algorithm and multiple other mechanisms were adapted into our new context. We then describe in detail how our architecture was applied to the Eclipse IDE, under the form of a plug-in, to provide a new level of distributed collaboration to software developers, and how our solution was evaluated. Eclipse.org: http://www.eclipse. org/platform
Human and social factors affecting the decision of students to accept e-learning

ABSTRACT It is significant to highlight that educational technologies cannot improve academic performance if they are not widely accepted and used. Unfortunately, the decision not to accept e-learning continues to be a fundamental issue. The current research provided an alternative lens to view a decision to accept and use technology in a developing country landscape. Accordingly, the present study focused on the impact of human and social factors on the decision to accept e-learning. The undergraduate students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) formed the contextual setting. The theoretical framework employed was a modified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model. Accordingly, a survey questionnaire was used to employ a dataset of 204 and 15 students in April 2015 for quantitative and qualitative data. Overall, the principal findings show that social influence, attitude and perceived usefulness, stress, satisfaction and fatigue are critical to behavioural intention to accept e-learning. Meanwhile, strong correlations between perceived usefulness and social influence; previous e-learning experience and average time spent using e-learning; previous e-learning experience and behavioural intention demonstrate how the human and social factors influence the e-learning acceptance culture. Ultimately, the contribution provided valuable insights on how to speed up the process of adoption, the use and continuance of e-learning by an understanding of human and social factors. Moreover, recognising human, social and cultural components make it possible to improve e-learning experiences of users. The implications suggest that a better integration of human and social factors to e-learning may help reduce forms of e-learning challenges and shed new insights for theory.
Understanding The Implications Of Neural Population Activity On Behavior

Learning how neural activity in the brain leads to the behavior we exhibit is one of the fundamental questions in Neuroscience. In this dissertation, several lines of work are presented to that use principles of neural coding to understand behavior. In one line of work, we formulate the efficient coding hypothesis in a non-traditional manner in order to test human perceptual sensitivity to complex visual textures. We find a striking agreement between how variable a particular texture signal is and how sensitive humans are to its presence. This reveals that the efficient coding hypothesis is still a guiding principle for neural organization beyond the sensory periphery, and that the nature of cortical constraints differs from the peripheral counterpart. In another line of work, we relate frequency discrimination acuity to neural responses from auditory cortex in mice. It has been previously observed that optogenetic manipulation of auditory cortex, in addition to changing neural responses, evokes changes in behavioral frequency discrimination. We are able to account for changes in frequency discrimination acuity on an individual basis by examining the Fisher information from the neural population with and without optogenetic manipulation. In the third line of work, we address the question of what a neural population should encode given that its inputs are responses from another group of neurons. Drawing inspiration from techniques in machine learning, we train Deep Belief Networks on fake retinal data and show the emergence of Garbor-like filters, reminiscent of responses in primary visual cortex. In the last line of work, we model the state of a cortical excitatory-inhibitory network during complex adaptive stimuli. Using a rate model with Wilson-Cowan dynamics, we demonstrate that simple non-linearities in the signal transferred from inhibitory to excitatory neurons can account for real neural recordings taken from auditory cortex. This work establishes and tests a variety of hypotheses that will be useful in helping to understand the relationship between neural activity and behavior as recorded neural populations continue to grow. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Physics & Astronomy First Advisor Vijay Balasubramanian Second Advisor Maria N. Geffen
Face Spoofing and Counter-Spoofing: A Survey of State-of-the-art Algorithms

In the current scenario of biometric-based identity verification, a face is still being proved to be an essential physiological evidence for successful person identification without letting know the target. Nevertheless, repeated attacks of intruders can cause the face recognition system insecure because of easy availability of face images or pictures of a person in social networks or in other networked resources. Spoofing facial identity in a biometric system is not a difficult task for intruders. When an intruder presents a photograph or a video containing a face of a person in front of a networked camera which is integrated with a face biometric system, spoofing is referred to as presentation attack. Without anti-spoofing mechanisms, biometric systems are at high risk in case of susceptible attacks. Thus, detecting face spoof in a face biometric system is a challenging research field. The aim of this book is to summarize some of the most popular face spoof detection techniques which are proved to be beneficial for the researchers to make it an indispensable aspect.
The Effect of Form-Focussed Pre-Task Activities on Accuracy in L2 Production in an ESP Course in French Higher Education.

This chapter presents and discusses the results of a large-scale pilot study carried out in the context of a task-based, blendedlearning Business English programme in the Foreign Languages and International Trade department of a French University5. It seeks to explore the effects of pre-task planned Focus on Form (FonF) on accuracy in students’ written production. Using an action-research framework, the study consisted in introducing FonF pre-task activities in the programme and in analysing written productions of students with a B1 level. The researchers compared the results of the students who completed the form-focussed pre-tasks and those who did not complete these activities. The results show no significant differences in the productions of the control and experimental groups, leading the researchers to question the pertinence of pre-task FonF for B1 learners rather than post-task FonF, which can better cater for individual needs. 1. Université de Nantes, Nantes, France; rebecca.starkey1@univ-nantes.fr 2. Université de Nantes, Nantes, France; sophie.belan@univ-nantes.fr 3. Université de Nantes, Nantes, France; thi-phuong-le.ngo@etu.univ-nantes.fr 4. Université de Nantes, Nantes, France; guillaume.rialland1@univ-nantes.fr 5. In French higher education, Foreign Languages and International Trade departments and programmes are referred to as “Langues Étrangères Appliquées” or “LEA”. How to cite this chapter: Starkey-Perret, R. , Belan, S. , Lê Ngo, T. P., & Rialland, G. (2017). The effect of formfocussed pre-task activities on accuracy in L2 production in an ESP course in French higher education. In C. Sarré & S. Whyte (Eds), New developments in ESP teaching and learning research (pp. 171-195). Research-publishing.net. https://doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2017. cssw2017.751
Should You Invest in an Old Bottle of Whisky or in a Bottle of Old Whisky? A Hedonic Analysis of Vintage Single Malt Scotch Whisky Prices

Abstract This article examines the main determinants of differences in ask prices set by investors for single malt whiskies from Islay in Scotland using an original dataset collected from a web trading platform specializing in whisky investment. We find strong evidence that the vintage age (the number of years between the distillation date and the data collection date) positively affects investor asking prices. More precisely, given that the characteristics of whisky, unlike wine, do not change over time once bottled, we disentangle the vintage age effect by subdividing the vintage age into whisky age (the time spent in the cask) and bottle age (the time spent in the bottle). Our results show that whisky age has a more pronounced impact (8.9% per year on average) than bottle age (6.7%). Other findings include the significant influence of distillery reputation, with a moderating effect for independent bottling (i.e., not in-house by the distiller itself) and a positive impact for cask strength whiskies compared to diluted ones. (JEL Classifications: G11, L15, Q11)
An Eye-gaze Tracking System for Teleoperation of a Mobile Robot

Most telerobotic applications rely on a Human-Robot Interface that requires the operator to continuously monitor the state of the robot through visual feedback while uses manual input devices to send commands to control the navigation of the robot. Although this setup is present in many examples of telerobotic applications, it may not be suitable in situations when it is not possible or desirable to have manual input devices, or when the operator has a motor disability that does not allow the use of that type of input devices. Since the operator already uses his/her eyes in the monitoring task, an interface based on the inputs from their gaze could be used to teleoperate the robot. This paper presents a telerobotic platform that uses a user interface based on eye-gaze tracking that enables a user to control the navigation of a teleoperated mobile robot using only his/her eyes as inputs to the system. Details of the operation of the eye-gaze tracking system and the results of a task-oriented evaluation of the developed system are also included.