Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessment of the prototype of an educational game on climate change and its effects on marine and coastal ecosystems

Climate change education is fundamental in the present society, which is characterized as complex and full of uncertainties. The use of games can help in this task. The prototype of an educational game called “Apicum Game”, which addresses climate change and its effects on marine and coastal ecosystems, was assessed in the present study. Thirty-three students in the sixth grade of a private school played the game and answered questionnaires before and after it. The students who participated in the research generally play video games for fun. Also, they have already heard about climate change, mainly in television and school. It was possible to notice that the majority of students understood the concept of coastal ecosystems, which was addressed in the game. In addition, the game contributed to broadening the conceptual profile of students in relation to the complex concept of climate change. Finally, the game contributed to an increase in the number of actions cited by the students to mitigate climate change. The auto-assessment of the students indicated they learned from the game and that the educational content and challenges presented along the story were appreciated by them. Most of the students would play again or indicate the game to a friend. However, the graphics and some bugs must be improved/fixed so as to make the game more enjoyable.
Repeat procedures for recurrent colorectal liver metastases: analysis of long-term liver regeneration and outcome

Background and aim: Repeat hepatectomy is increasingly performed for the management of recurrent colorectal liver metastases (CRLM). The aim of this study was to evaluate long-term functional liver volume (FLV) after a second hepatic procedure and to measure survival outcome. Methods: In this retrospective cohort study, patients treated for recurrent CRLM in the years 2005 – 2015 at two liver centers were included. Total FLV was calculated before the ﬁ rst procedure and before and after the second procedure. Overall survival was calculated. Results: Eighty-two patients were identi ﬁ ed. The median follow-up was 53 (40 – 71) months from the ﬁ rst procedure. The median interval between ﬁ rst and second procedure was 13 (8 – 22) months. The initial FLV was 1584 (1313 – 1927) mL. The FLV was 1438 (1204 – 1896) mL after the ﬁ rst procedure and 1470 (1172 – 1699) mL after the second procedure ( P <0.001). After the second procedure, a total of ten patients (12%) had a residual liver volume of less than 75% of the initial liver volume. The 5-year overall survival was 37 (26 – 54)% after the second procedure. Conclusion: Small changes in FLV were found after two hepatic procedures but with considerable inter-individual variation. Patients selected for a repeated hepatic procedure for recurrent CRLM had an acceptable survival.
Single Secret Leader Election

In a Single Secret Leader Election (SSLE), a group of participants aim to randomly choose exactly one leader from the group with the restriction that the identity of the leader will be known to the chosen leader and nobody else. At a later time, the elected leader should be able to publicly reveal her identity and prove that she has won the election. The election process itself should work properly even if many registered users are passive and do not send any messages. Among the many applications of SSLEs, their potential for enabling more efficient proof-of-stake based cryptocurrencies have recently received increased attention. This paper formally defines SSLE schemes and presents three constructions that provide varying security and performance properties. First, as an existence argument, we show how to realize an ideal SSLE using indistinguishability obfuscation. Next, we show how to build SSLE from low-depth threshold fully homomorphic encryption (TFHE) via a construction which can be instantiated with a circuit of multiplicative depth as low as 10, for realistically-sized secret leader elections. Finally, we show a practical scheme relying on DDH that achieves a slightly relaxed notion of security but which boasts extremely lightweight computational requirements.
Cretaceous l-axispira and a discussion on the monophyly of vermetids and turritellids ( caenogastropoda , Mollusca )

The vermetoid mode of life has evolved at least twice in basic caenogastropod relation. The first is represented by the Upper Cretaceous gents Inxispiret and its potential relatives in the Vermetidae. It is characterized by a regularly coiled piotoconch with tuberculate sculpture. ktxispira has either lived attached to each other or with a loosely coiled adult shell. With settlement on hard surfaces coiling of the attached shell became irregular and individuals could support each other building reef-like aggregations. Eocene to recent relatives within the Vermetinae show a similar protoconch-morphology, but usually their early ontogeny is more lecithotrophic. After the larval phase they are always attached to hard substrates. Members of the genus Detidropoma within the newly introduced subfamily Dendropominae have a similar biology, but they are characterized by an independent cancellate protoconch-sculpture that is documented since the Eocene. The genus Vermicularia within the subfamily Vermiculariinae, family Turritellidae, is convergent to Inxispira in regard to its mode of life but has a typical spirally keeled turritellid protoconch. In the related family Siliquariidae different strategies of ontogeny have developed. The genera Tenagodus and Py1ipe7n6 within the subfamily Siliquariinae live embedded in sponges and are characterized by a slit in their shell. The genera Stephopoma and, Caporbis, subfamily Stephopominae nov., lack a slit, live attached to hard substrates and have a planispiral protoconch.
Visual Elicitation of Brand Perception

Understanding consumers’ associations with brands is at the core of brand management. However, measuring associations is challenging because consumers can associate a brand with many objects, emotions, activities, sceneries, and concepts. This article presents an elicitation platform, analysis methodology, and results on consumer associations of U.S. national brands. The elicitation is direct, unaided, scalable, and quantitative and uses the power of visuals to depict a detailed representation of respondents’ relationships with a brand. The proposed brand visual elicitation platform allows firms to collect online brand collages created by respondents and analyze them quantitatively to elicit brand associations. The authors use the platform to collect 4,743 collages from 1,851 respondents for 303 large U.S. brands. Using unsupervised machine-learning and image-processing approaches, they analyze the collages and obtain a detailed set of associations for each brand, including objects (e.g., animals, food, people), constructs (e.g., abstract art, horror, delicious, famous, fantasy), occupations (e.g., musician, bodybuilder, baker), nature (e.g., beach, misty, snowscape, wildlife), and institutions (e.g., corporate, army, school). The authors demonstrate the following applications for brand management: obtaining prototypical brand visuals, relating associations to brand personality and equity, identifying favorable associations per category, exploring brand uniqueness through differentiating associations, and identifying commonalities between brands across categories for potential collaborations.
Improved Dehyphenation of Line Breaks for PDF Text Extraction

Words in layout-based documents can contain hyphens that divide the word into two parts across two lines. PDF documents only store information about individual characters, which makes it difficult to extract text correctly. Words which are hyphenated at the end of a line are especially problematic because in English there are some words where the hyphen should be kept, while others need to be merged. For example, “high-quality” can be a compound word. If this word splits on the hyphen across two lines, then the hyphen should be retained in the extracted text. The correct dehyphenation of line breaks requires the recognition of either words or sequences of characters. In this thesis, vocabulary-based baseline algorithms, logistic regression on the word level and a bi-LSTM Language Model on the character level are used to solve this problem. On the ClueWeb12 Extract data set, the vocabulary-based algorithm achieved a balanced accuracy (bACC) of 66.87%, the logistic regression 92.38% and the bi-LSTM Language Model 90.14%. Our investigations showed a trade-off effect between recognising words which naturally contain hyphens and predicting words without hyphens correctly.
GENETIC TECHNIQUES FOR DESIGNATION OF MAIN FLYWAYS OF THE WOODPIGEON (COLUMBA PALUMBUS) IN EUROPE AS A TOOL FOR CONTROL AND PREVENTION OF PATHOGENIC DISEASES

The population genetic structure of the Woodpigeon (Columba palumbus) in Europe was studied analyzing the distribution of different D-loop haplotypes among bird samples, collected in various breeding and wintering sites of the species (in Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, Sweden, Hungary, France, Spain and Portugal). Totally 89 different haplotypes ascertained as belonging to 5 haplo-groups were identified after examination of partial D-loop sequences consisting of 359 bp mtDNR fragments derived from 360 samples. The results of this study indicate that the Eastern Atlantic Flyway is used by Woodpigeons breeding in NW Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, Sweden and wintering mainly in the Iberian Peninsula. A distinct population genetic structure is characteristic of Woodpigeons breeding in Hungary and using the Mediterranean Flyway. The designation of main flyways of Woodpigeons in Europe is necessary for the control and prevention of potential spread of pathogenic diseases and parasites, as this species is the most important game bird in Europe.
Equilibrium Real Exchange Rate, Currency Misalignment, and Trade Performance - The Case of Vietnam: 1992-2017

This paper is conducted to uncover the determinants of the equilibrium real exchange rate and evaluate the magnitude of exchange rate misalignment for the Vietnamese dong over the period 1992-2017 under the cointegration framework. The results of econometric analysis indicate that the Vietnamese dong was overvalued during the periods 1996-2002, 2007-2010, 2015-2017. This was due to the fact that the Vietnamese dong was rigidly kept stable while the economy experienced a persistent high inflation environment through many consecutive years in the past. The overvaluation of the Vietnamese dong apparently contributed to the deterioration of the trade account. The monetary authority allowed the currency to be largely devaluated only at the time when loss of competitiveness was clearly discerned and when there were pressures emerged from crisis periods. The findings suggest that the real exchange rate should be managed in line with its equilibrium level and any misalignment should be adjusted on time in order to maintain the country? s trade competitiveness and external equilibrium.
DeepRTP: A Deep Spatio-Temporal Residual Network for Regional Traffic Prediction

Accurate traffic prediction can benefit many smart city applications. Existing works mainly consider traffic prediction on each individual road segment, and heavily rely on some statistical or machine learning models, which suffer from either poor prediction accuracy or high computation overheads for predictions of the whole road network. In this paper, we instead consider the region-level traffic prediction that is still useful for many applications. To describe the regional traffic conditions and capture their spatio-temporal dependencies, we present a deep learning based model - DeepRTP. Specifically, we use a novel metric called Traffic State Index (TSI) to measure regional traffic conditions, and carefully classify traffic data into three categories that are used to capture hourly, daily, and weekly traffic patterns. Furthermore, we employ the convolutional and residual neural networks to model both spatial and temporal dependencies. Experimental results from real-world traffic data demonstrate that DeepRTP outperforms five baseline methods and can achieve higher prediction accuracy.
What determines firm growth? The role of demand and TFP shocks

We disentangle the contribution of unobserved heterogeneity in idiosyncratic demand and productivity to firm growth. We use a model of monopolistic competition with Cobb-Douglas production and a dataset of Italian manufacturing firms containing unique information on firm-level prices to reach three main results. First, demand is at least as important for firm growth as productivity. Second, firms’ responses to shocks are lower than those predicted by our frictionless model, suggesting the existence of adjustment frictions. Finally, the deviation is more substantial for TFP shocks. We provide direct evidence that sluggish price adjustment influences responses to shocks, magnifying the effect of market appeal and dampening that of TFP. Moreover, organizational rigidity within the firm also contributes to reducing the response to TFP shocks, while it has no effects on that to demand shocks. These findings emphasize the importance of considering both dimensions of unobserved heterogeneity. They also imply that it is more difficult to fully adjust to TFP shocks. JEL classification: D24, L11.
Speaking Skill Challenges Encountered by Indonesian EFL Learners’

Study about speaking skill in a country that puts English as foreign language in this study is Indonesia has a limitation. This phenomenological observation has a purpose to report Indonesian EFL learners’ experiences in speaking English at an Indonesian private university of undergraduate program of English Education Department in Yogyakarta. The data gained from questionnaires and semi-structured interviews discovered from five participants. The researcher prepared this research analysis based on dialogue around Indonesian EFL learners’ views and the answer from the questionnaire about speaking skill challenges. This research evaluation revealed topics and sub-topics (1) language boundaries (vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, fluency and the effect of mother tongue); (2) psychological elements (anxiety); (3) Proponent Factors (friends and low or uneven participation); (4) topics of conversation (ignorance and unattractive topics) and (5) speaking practice (practicing with media and practicing with friends). The findings display that every topics and sub-topics look like interconnected with each other. Keywords—english skill, english speaking challenges, EFL
Impact of ICTs-in-Agriculture on Rural Resilience in Developing Countries

Agriculture remains the dominant sector for rural areas in developing countries. However, short-term shocks (e.g. conflict, economic crisis) and long-term trends (e.g. climate change) hamper and can even reverse attempted gains in agricultural productivity and related rural development outcomes. Influenced by the current sustainable development paradigm, it is increasingly acknowledged that, to address this, rural households and communities must strengthen their resilience. Given their growing role in rural livelihoods, information and communication technologies (ICTs) will be a key part of resilience-building. Yet we currently know very little about this. To address this knowledge gap, a systematic literature review was undertaken to establish two things. First, the extent to which use of ICTs-in-agriculture (ICT4Ag) is weakening or strengthening the resilience of rural households and communities in developing countries. Second, an explanation of why the observed impacts are occurring. Measuring resilience using the RABIT (Resilience Assessment Benchmarking and Impact Toolkit) framework, current reported evidence suggests ICTs are strengthening rural resilience far more than weakening it. However, the impact is highly uneven. Household resilience is built far more than community resilience, and there is a strong differential impact across different resilience attributes: equality in particular is reported as being undermined almost as much as enhanced. A new conceptual model is inductively created to explain some of these outcomes. It highlights the importance of individual user motivations, complementary resources required to make ICT4Ag systems support resilience, and the role of wider systemic factors such as institutions and structural relations. The paper draws policy/practice conclusions: more equal focus on both household- and community-level resilience, more attention to the resilience-weakening potential of ICTs, ensuring perceived utility of digital applications among rural users, encouraging use of more complex ICT4Ag systems, and looking beyond the technology to make parallel, complementary changes in resource provision and development of rural institutions and social structures. Conclusions are also drawn about the conceptualisation of resilience: better incorporation of agency and power, and greater clarity on resilience system boundaries and indicators. Overall, we contribute new frameworks, new evidence, new practical guidance and a research agenda for those seeking to strengthen rural resilience through use of ICTs.
Image-Guided Locomotion of a Pneumatic-Driven Peristaltic Soft Robot

In this work, a pneumatic-driven peristaltic soft robot with pressure feedback control and image-guided tracking is developed. Locomotion is achieved in tube-like environments by mimicking the peristaltic motion of earthworms. The soft actuators are made of silicone rubber with 3D molding and fiber reinforcements. Pressure control is performed using custom-made syringe pumps and on/off controllers in Arduino. Real-time visual tracking is accomplished in OpenCV with a color-based approach. The soft robot has a stroke of 30-35mm for each cycle of actuation. This pneumatic soft robot shows great potential for application in minimally invasive surgery due to its compliance and biocompatibility.
Cervical Cancer: Epidemiological, Clinical and Therapeutic Aspects at Pointe Noire (Congo Brazzaville)

Objective: To determine epidemiological, clinical and therapeutic aspect of cervical cancer in Pointe Noire. Patients and Methods: This was a cross-sectional descriptive study that took place in the oncology department of loandjili General Hospital in Pointe Noire in the period from 1st January 2012 to 31st December 2018. All patients old more than 20 years, all patients having a complete file that is to say comprising a histological diagnosis. The variables studied were: age, level of education, parity; Clinical parameters revealing sign, stage of extension ;Histological type,The type of treatment. The multivariate analysis was done between age, parity and stage of extension. The statistical analysis and the data processing were carried out by the Excel 2016 software and the graphpad prism version 5 software. The statistical test used was the chi-square test. Results: Of the 200 files, 57 files had met the inclusion criteria of our study, so the frequency of cervical cancer in our study in women was 22.8 %. The average age was 58,12 ± 13,31 years old with extrems of 28 years and 82 years. The most represented age group was the group age from 58 to 67 years old in 37% of cases, followed by the group age from 48 to 57 years old in 26% of cases.The study level the most commonly represented was the primary study in 70% of cases, followed by the secondary level study in 18 % of cases and the superior level study in 12% of cases. Only two women had a oral contraception. The average of parity was 3.32 ± 2 children with the extrems of 1 and 10 children. The revealing sign most represented was genital bleeding in 100% of cases. Almost all patient presented with an cervix ulcerate bourgeonnat. The most represented histological type was squamous cell carcinoma in 95% of cases and adenocarcinoma was represented by two cases (3%). The stage of extension most represented was locoregional stage in 70% of cases. The most represented treatment was chemotherapy in 56% of cases followed by radiochemotherapy in 31 % of cases. The bivariate analysis allowed to note that there was no relationship between age and cervical There was a relationship between parity and stage of extension of cervical cancer. Conclusion: Cervical cancer is second cancer after breast cancer in women at Pointe Noire, patients arrived in late stage (locoregional and metastatic). The most represented treatment is chemetherapy alone. Late-stage diagnosed condition needs implementation of screening programme on the national level and to enhance the public health education to save the lives of Congolese women and make possible the access to radiotherapy in our countru in context of low incomes countries. ISSN 2639-8478 Research Article Citation: Ngatali Christian F.S, Boumba A.L. M, Mabiala A.Y, et al. Cervical Cancer: Epidemiological, Clinical and Therapeutic Aspects at Pointe Noire (Congo Brazzaville). Cancer Sci Res. 2020; 3(1); 1-5.
The Largest Complete Bipartite Subgraph in Point-Hyperplane Incidence Graphs

Given $m$ points and $n$ hyperplanes in $\mathbb{R}^d$ ($d\geqslant 3)$, if there are many incidences, we expect to find a big cluster $K_{r,s}$ in their incidence graph. Apfelbaum and Sharir found lower and upper bounds for the largest size of $rs$, which match (up to a constant) only in three dimensions. In this paper we close the gap in four and five dimensions, up to some polylogarithmic factors.
Dividend Policy and Share Price : Evidence from Some Selected Pharmaceutical and Chemical Companies in Bangladesh

The study examines the impact of dividend policy on share price of pharmaceutical and chemical companies enlisted in Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) in Bangladesh. The researchers select six pharmaceutical and chemical companies based on the availability of data to serve the purpose of the study. Secondary data are collected from the different annual reports of these companies, from the websites of DSE and Bangladesh Bank over the period from 2009 to 2018. Panel data is scrutinized and analyzed using E-views 10 software. Correlation matrix is developed to show the relationship between dividend policy and share price. Multiple regression model is developed to examine the impact of dividend policy on share price. To examine the stationarity, panel unit root test is run and to show the long-run relationship, co-integration test is operated. The study investigates that there is a positive and significant relationship between dividend per share, earnings per share and share price. The findings show that the dividend per share and earnings per share have the significant positive impacts on share price, return on equity has the significant negative impact of share price. However, dividend payout ratio and retention ratio have no significant impact on share price of pharmaceutical and chemical companies in Bangladesh. Future researchers can conduct studies regarding dividend policy on share price with extended sample size and timeframe of listed companies in DSE, Bangladesh.
Energy Efficiency and Electricity Reliability

Abstract Overloaded electrical systems are a major source of unreliable power. Using a randomized saturation design, we estimate the impact of compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) on electricity reliability and household electricity consumption in the Kyrgyz Republic. Greater saturation of CFLs within a transformer leads to fewer outages, a technological externality benefiting all households, regardless of individual adoption. Spillovers in CFL adoption further reduce electricity consumption, contributing to increased reliability within a transformer. CFLs' impacts on household electricity consumption vary according to the effects on reliability. Receiving CFLs significantly reduces electricity consumption, but increased reliability permits greater consumption of electricity services.