Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Confirming the effect of Demographic characteristics on Information Privacy Concerns

Existing studies on information privacy have largely discussed behavioral determinants of information privacy concerns (IPC). There has been a lack of direct examination on the relationship between demographic characteristics of consumers and IPC. The few studies that did report the linkage produced inconsistent findings. In this study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between consumers’ demographic characteristics and IPC with data from a large sample of 9,840 respondents provided by the Korea Information Society Development Institute (KISDI). The results demonstrated that educational attainment and income level exerted effects on IPC in line with existing studies. But the effects of gender and age are different from those identified in existing studies. This study is significant in that by confirming the results of previous studies, it enables generalization of empirical findings. Meanwhile, the results that contrasted previous findings facilitate the discovery of new research topics and discussion
Digital Library Use: Social Practice in Design and Evaluation

The contributors to this volume view digital libraries (DLs) from a social as well as technological perspective. They see DLs as sociotechnical systems, networks of technology, information artifacts, and people and practices interacting with the larger world of work and society. As Bruce Schatz observes in his foreword, for a digital library to be useful, the users, the documents, and the information system must be in harmony.The contributors begin by asking how we evaluate DLs -- how we can understand them in order to build better DLs -- but they move beyond these basic concerns to explore how DLs make a difference in people's lives and their social worlds, and what studying DLs might tell us about information, knowledge, and social and cognitive processes. The chapters, using both empirical and analytical methods, examine the social impact of DLs and also the web of social and material relations in which DLs are embedded; these far-ranging social worlds include such disparate groups as community activists, environmental researchers, middle-school children, and computer system designers.Topics considered include documents and society; the real boundaries of a "library without walls"; the ecologies of digital libraries; usability and evaluation; information and institutional change; transparency as a product of the convergence of social practices and information artifacts; and collaborative knowledge construction in digital libraries.
Medical Decision Making

Recent advances in computing and developments in technology have facilitated the routine collection and storage of medical data that can be used to support medical decisions. In most cases however, there is a need for the collected data to be analysed in order for a medical decision to be drawn, whether this involves diagnosis, prediction, course of treatment, or signal and image analysis. Intelligent machine learning methods such as neural computing and support vector machines can be shown to be suitable approaches to such complex tasks. This thesis presents a study of the use of intelligent methods for medical decision making that aims to investigate and demonstrate their potential in such an application. The medical application presented in this work is the automated identification of tubercle bacilli (bacteria responsible for the tuberculosis disease) from photomicrographs of sputum smears. The development of such a system is of great importance since – according to the World Health Organization – tuberculosis kills more adults than any other infectious disease and its now on the increase. The diagnosis of tuberculosis is based on the screening of sputum smears under a microscope and therefore involves a medical image analysis task. Artificial neural networks and support vector machines have been employed for the detection and identification of tubercle bacilli and are supported by conventional image processing techniques. The basic concepts and algorithms underlying these methods are described and analysed in the first half of this documentation. The investigation of the main medical imaging and classification task that follows is carried out in two stages. First a preliminary study is described showing an overall generalization performance of up to 92.1% (achieving up to 93.5% sensitivity and 94.5% selectivity between different classification methods) on a small set of 1147 pattern examples from five different patients. This preliminary investigation has been used to support the fact that the development of a reliable and accurate classification system is feasible. A second study used larger data sets constructed from 65 Auraminestained smears. This investigation showed a slightly lower generalisation performance that reached an overall accuracy of 87.6% (achieving up to 93.9% sensitivity and 86.9% specificity between different classification methods). This second study involved several different data sets based on the medical preparation of the slides. Sputum smears used for identifying tubercle bacilli can be prepared using either Auramine/Rhodamine stain or a Ziehl-Neelsen stain yielding monochrome (fluorescent) or colour images. This presents an additional complexity to the image analysis and classification task, since both these modalities have to be taken into consideration. Although the set of smears and images used in the main investigation need to be much larger in order for a classification system to be considered statistically reliable, the results
The Effectiveness of a Training Program using Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) to Reduce Test Anxiety in Consideration of Biological Feedback

Tests have become an important and essential tool in the curriculum, and all students have experienced tests at least once in their academic lives [35]. Many studies examined and diagnosed test anxiety and its relationship with many variables, and these studies showed negative effects of test anxiety-this results in poor academic performance and low motivation [23, 5, 12]. Liebert and Morris believe that the fear of the evaluation is an essential reason for test anxiety [19].
Grain Boundary Sliding in High‐Temperature Deformation of Directionally Solidified hcp Zn Alloys and Implications for the Deformation Mechanism of Earth's Inner Core

Earth's inner core exhibits elastic anisotropy, but the cause of the texturing is uncertain: solidification, deformation, or some combination. In experiments presented here we deformed in torsion directionally solidified Zn‐3 wt pct Sn alloys at 0.97 of the melting temperature of pure Zn. We used a Zn‐rich alloy because Zn is hexagonal close‐packed at atmospheric pressure, as is likely Fe under inner core conditions. The directionally solidified alloys have the textured, columnar dendritic microstructure that has been proposed for the inner core. As a control we deformed in torsion the same alloy at the same temperature, but with a starting microstructure that is comparatively fine‐grained, equiaxed, and untextured. We find evidence that the directionally solidified alloys deform by means of grain boundary sliding, presumably accompanied by diffusion near the ends of the columnar crystals in order to preserve macroscopic shape. We also find that the directionally solidified alloys require approximately 3 times the torque to deform to the same strain than do the untextured alloys. Grain boundary sliding and greater hardness are due to insufficient slip systems to accommodate the strain, as a result of the texturing. This is supported by microcracking in the deformed directionally solidified alloys. Although the inner core is unlikely to exhibit semibrittle deformation, the experiments suggest that a directionally solidified inner core could have a higher viscosity than one with a finer‐grained, untextured microstructure and that grain boundary sliding may be a dominant deformation mechanism, in spite of the large grain size.
IDENTIFICATION OF COORDINATELY DYSREGULATED SUBNETWORKS IN COMPLEX PHENOTYPES by SALIM

by SALIM AKHTER CHOWDHURY In the study of complex phenotypes, single gene markers can only provide limited insights into the manifestation of phenotype. Recent studies show that, when considered together, many proteins that are connected via physical and functional interactions exhibit significant differential expression with respect to various complex phenotypes, including cancers. Compared to single gene markers, these “coordinately dysregulated subnetworks” offer novel insights into the network dynamics of phenotype. However, the problem of identifying coordinately dysregulated subnetworks presents significant algorithmic challenges. In this thesis, we propose two algorithms, NetCover and Crane, to capture the coordination among multiple genes at a sample-specific resolution. For NetCover, we formulate coordinate dysregulation in the context of the well-known set-cover problem. On the other hand, for Crane, we propose a combinatorial formulation of coordinate dysregulation. Comprehensive experimental results on human colorectal cancer show that, when compared to existing algorithms, our proposed algorithms improve diagnosis of cancer and prediction of metastasis significantly.
Solving Dense Linear Systems on Platforms with Multiple Hardware Accelerators FLAME Working Note # 32

In a previous paper we show how the FLAME methods and tools provide a solution to compute dense dense linear algebra operations on a multi-GPU platform with reasonable performance while requiring little programming effort. In this paper we generalize the approach for systems with multiple hardware accelerators, and incorporate software implementations of standard cache/memory coherence techniques from computer architecture to improve the performance. Our experimental evaluation on an NVIDIA Tesla S870 platform delivers a peak performance well over 400 GFLOPS.
Modelling a Multispecies Schooling Fishery in an Upwelling Environment, Mauritania, West Africa.

Off Mauritania, Northwest Africa, small pelagic fish have long been a valuable target of a large and diverse international fleet. In the early 1990's, average annual catch w as about 400,000 metric tons in which three to four families were frequently represented: carangidae (Trachurus trachurus, T. trecae and Decapterus rhonchus)', clupeidae (Sardina pilchardus, Sardinella aurita and S. maderensis); scombridae (Scomber japonicus)', and lately, trichiuridae (Trichiurus lepturus). Using empirical orthogonal function analysis, it w as shown that the study area is a transition zone between permanent upweiling in the north (20-25°N) and regions with seasonal upweiling in the south (10-16°N). Also, from 1985 to 1993, a warming in the southern EEZ was identified a s a part of a long-term successive cooling and warming trends of sea surface temperature (1946-1988). These trends were also reflected in coastal station data and suggest strong associations between physical processes a t local stations and the large-scale processes in the Northwest African coast. Univariate and multivariate time series analyses performed on catch per effort (CPUE), hydrographic seasons, north and south fishing zones, and fishing vessel types indicated considerable temporal and spatial patterns in species yields. These variations are shown to be closely associated with hydrological conditions. For instance, carangidae dominated catch composition particularly xv during transitional water seasons while, Sardina was most abundant during the cold water season and in the northern fishing zone. Further investigations of the CPUE computation suggested that proportional allocation of the fishing effort among the individual species groups was a better alternative to computing CPUE based upon the whole catch which is presently the case. This method used a nonequilibrium Schnute's version of the Schaefer model, for which a new formula w as derived that allows computing confidence intervals around the maximum sustainable yields. The results indicate that proportional allocation of the effort and the multivariate regression model considerably enhanced the fit of the model. Given the complexity of the fishery and species interdependence in species catch, the techniques and procedures presented are highly recommended tools to model the fishery.
JOURNAL OF THE EASTERN AND SOUTHERN AFRICA

Audio-visual records and archives constitute a fundamental heritage that satisfies multiple needs, including education, training, research and entertainment. As such, there is a need to appropriately preserve and conserve them so they can be accessed for as long as they are needed. In spite of their significant role in safeguarding cultural heritage, audio-visual records and archives, are often neglected and accorded less attention than paper-based records, especially in developing countries. Hence, there is a risk of losing information held in audio-visual form. That is why this study looked at how the National Archives of Zambia (NAZ) and the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) preserve audio-visual materials to ensure long-term accessibility of the information. The study investigated the types of audio-visual collections held, the storage equipment used, measures put in place to ensure long-term accessibility of audio-visual materials, the disaster preparedness plans in place to safeguard audiovisual archives and the major challenges encountered in the preservation of audiovisual materials. The findings of the study revealed that films (microfilm and microfiche), photographs and manuscripts, and video (video tapes) and sound recordings (compact cassette) constitute the biggest audio-visual collection preserved. The equipment used to store audio-visual materials included open shelves, specialised cabinets, electronic database for digitised materials, aisle mobiles and cupboards. The measures taken to ensure the long-term accessibility of audio-visual collection included digitisation and migration of endangered records and archives; fumigation of storage areas; conservation of damaged materials and regulation of temperatures and humidity in the storage areas. The disaster preparedness plans in place mostly covered structure insurance; protection against fire and water by way of installing fire extinguishers; smoke sensors; fire detectors and construction of purpose-built structures. The major challenges faced were financial constraints; technological obsolescence; lack of playback equipment; limited training; lack of strong back-up systems and inadequate storage facilities.
Computational Modeling of Flow and Scour around Two Cylinders in Staggered Array

This paper presents a numerical study on flow and local scour around two identical cylinders with diverse spacing ratios (s/D) and alignment angles (α). The spacing ratio of center-to-center distance between cylinders (s) to the cylinder diameter (D) varied from 1.25 to 5.0, including five alignment angles ranged from 0° to 90°. The detailed scour processes and information were obtained in a physics-based way by using large eddy simulation coupled with sediment transport in a Lagrangian framework and a morphodynamic model. Turbulent flow properties around two cylinders in staggered array are significantly concerned by the spacing ratio and the alignment angle which reflect complex features of evolution of scour and scour depth. The computed results exhibited the scour depth is associated with the spacing ratio and alignment angles especially at the rear cylinder. For small alignment angles, the growth rate at the rear cylinder increased as the spacing ratio increased, due to a decrease in shielding effect. As the alignment angle increased, the scour depth around the rear cylinder increased until the angle reached approximately 45°–60°. Subsequently, the scour depth decreased with the alignment angle. It also revealed that the spacing ratio was more sensitive to the maximum scour than that of the alignment angle. For (s-D)/D > 2.0, the maximum scour depth only depended on the spacing ratio.
Molecular Halogens Above the Arctic Snowpack: Emissions, Diurnal Variations, and Recycling Mechanisms

Elevated levels of reactive bromine and chlorine species in the springtime Arctic boundary layer contribute to ozone depletion and mercury oxidation, as well as reactions with volatile organic compounds. Recent laboratory and field studies have revealed that snowpack photochemistry leads to Br2 and Cl2 production, the mechanisms of which remain poorly understood. In this work, we use a photochemical box model, with a simplified snow module, to examine the halogen chemistry occurring during the March 2012 Bromine, Ozone, and Mercury Experiment (BROMEX) near Utqiaġvik (Barrow), Alaska. Elevated daytime Br2 levels (e.g., 6–30 parts per trillion (ppt) at around local noon) reported in previous studies and in this work may be explained by Br + BrNO2/BrONO2 reactions under conditions of depleted O3 (<~10 ppb) and background NO2 (10–100 ppt). Even at low background NOx levels at Utqiaġvik, ClONO2 is predicted to be important in the production of Cl2 via multiphase reaction with Cl−. In the late afternoon, photolysis alone cannot explain the rapid decrease of Cl2 observed in the Arctic boundary layer. Heterogeneous reactions of Cl2 on aerosol particles and surface snowpack are suggested to play a key role in atmospheric Cl2 removal and possible BrCl production. Given the importance of the snowpack in the multiphase chemistry of the Arctic boundary layer, future measurements should focus on vertically resolved measurements of NOx and reactive halogens, as well as simultaneous particulate and snow halide measurements, to further evaluate and isolate the halogen production and vertical propagation mechanisms through one‐dimensional modeling.
International Journal of Swarm Intelligence and Evolutionary Computation

This paper introduces a hybrid scheme for multi-objective optimization problems via utility of two established heuristic algorithms. The proposed hybrid scheme consists of two parts that include the Nelder-Mead simplex algorithm (SA) as well as the Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA II). In this respect, subsequent to NSGA II sorting for the optimum points, the SA searches the optimum set to find the local optimal points and thus localize a promising area that is likely to contain the global minimum. This is especially helpful since SA is an efficient algorithm that can accurately and quickly exploit the promising area for the optimum point. The proposed hybrid scheme is applied to multi-objective optimization of some bench mark functions and its performance is compared against those of the classical NSGA II as well as the Multi-Objective Particle Swarm Optimization (MOPSO). The numerical results show that the proposed hybrid scheme provides competitive results that outperform those of the existing algorithms
On the Economics of Energy Labels in the Housing Market

Energy efficiency in the residential housing market can play an important role in the reduction of global carbon emissions. This paper reports the first evidence on the market adoption and economic implications of energy performance certificates implemented by the European Union. The results show that adoption rates are low and declining over time, coinciding with a negative sentiment regarding the label in the popular media. Labels are clustered among smaller, post-war homes in neighborhoods with more difficult selling conditions. We also document that geographic variation in the adoption rate of energy labels is positively related to the fraction of "green" voters during the 2006 national elections. Within the sample of labeled homes, the energy label creates transparency in the energy efficiency of dwellings. Our analysis shows that consumers capitalize this information into the price of their prospective homes.
PROGRAM ON HOUSING AND URBAN POLICY

This paper investigates the ecological responsiveness of firms and their motivations by analyzing the choices these firms make in occupying office space. We analyze the decisions of more than 11,000 tenants to choose office space in green buildings or in otherwise comparable, conventional buildings nearby. We find that corporations in the oil and banking industries, as well as non-profit organizations, are among the most prominent green tenants. After controlling for building quality and location, we document that firms in mining and construction and organizations in public administration, as well as organizations employing higher levels of human capital, are more likely to lease green office space. These empirical findings confirm the theoretical framework on competitiveness, legitimation, and environmental responsibility as important determinants for the ecological responsiveness of firms.
Effect of Sheep Manure and Phosphorus Fertiliser on Productivity of Snap Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) in Northern Rwanda

Aims: Snap bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) productivity is low in Rwanda. Investigations were carried out to assess the productivity of Snap bean using pot experiments. Methodology: The experiment was laid out in a completely randomized design with seven (7) treatments: Compost (T0), Cow manure (T1), Sheep manure (T2), Compost with diammonium phosphate (DAP), DAP alone (T3), Cow manure with DAP (T4), Sheep manure with DAP (T5) and control (T6) on Andisol and Oxisol replicated three (3) times. Results: The results showed that the pod yield was the highest in Andisol (2.39 tha) and the application of sheep manure significantly (P<.001) increased the leaf area, the number of leaves (P = .01) and the plant height (P= .01). The number of pods, the pod weight and the total pod Original Research Article Bucagu et al.; JAERI, 12(1): 1-9, 2017; Article no.JAERI. 32943 2 yield were also significantly (P<.001) different between the fertilizer treatments and the soil types. Treatments with DAP (T3, T4 and T5) showed better development of the leaf area (231.50 cm, 221.30 cm and 231.80 cm respectively), increased the number of leaves (9.67, 9.83 and 10.17 per plant respectively), the plant height (270.80 cm, 266.70 cm and 271.70 cm respectively), the number of pods (11.17, 11.33 and 13.33 per plant), the pod weight (10.68, 10.98 and 12.11 g plant) and the total pod yield (2.44 tha, 2.51 tha and 3.31 tha respectively). Agronomic efficiency (AE) was the highest in Andisol (5.17 kg of snap bean pod yield per kg nitrogen applied) and in pots that received sheep manure combined with DAP (6.52 kg of snap bean pod yield per kg nitrogen applied). Conclusion: Use of sheep manure and DAP could be a potential option for fertilisation of snap bean in Northern Rwanda.
Energy-Efﬁcient Resource Allocation for Full-Duplex Relay-Assisted D2D Communications

—This paper investigates the resource allocation problem in full-duplex (FD) relay-assisted device-to-device (D2D) communications underlaying a multi-carrier cellular network. Under residual self-interference (SI), we aim to maximize the energy efﬁciency (EE) of D2D links via subcarrier assignment and power allocation while satisfying the quality of service (QoS) requirements of both D2D and cellular links. To solve the formulated EE maximization problem, we propose an iterative algorithm based on nonlinear fractional programming, where power allocation and subcarrier assignment are performed sequentially in each iteration, to handle the nonconvexity of the original problem. It is shown that the power allocation problem ﬁts in D.C. (difference of two concave functions) programming while the subcarrier assignment corresponds to a job assignment problem whose optimal solution can be found in polynomial time. Finally, simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm converges rapidly and achieves higher EE of D2D communications than existing schemes.