Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analytically Tractable Inference in Neural Networks – An Alternative to Backpropagation

Until now, neural networks have been predominantly relying on backpropagation and gradient descent as the inference engine in order to learn a neural network’s parameters. This is primarily because closed-form Bayesian inference for neural networks has been considered to be intractable. This short paper outlines a new analytical method for performing tractable approximate Gaussian inference (TAGI) in Bayesian neural networks. The method enables the analytical inference of the posterior mean vector and diagonal covariance matrix for weights and biases. One key aspect is that the method matches or exceeds the state-of-the-art performance while having the same computational complexity as current methods relying on the gradient backpropagation, i.e., linear complexity with respect to the number of parameters in the network. In addition to reducing in the number of hyperparameters due to the absence of gradient-based optimization, it enables unprecedented features such as the propagation of uncertainty from the input of a network up to its output, and it allows inferring the value of hidden states, inputs, as well as latent variables. In this paper, we present benchmark results demonstrating the performance of TAGI on deep architectures and showcases some of the new avenues it enables
Performance of a novel aeration microbubble generator in aquaculture

In aquaculture, aeration through microbubble generators often experiences blockages due to the cross-section area and a small air hole diameter. Therefore, this study modifed the induction of pumps equipped with piping systems that function like nozzles. A novel method of experimental design was used to convert the submersible pumps into aeration microbubble generators, by enlarging the nozzle and air hole diameter. The tests were performed for nozzle and air hole diameters were 32.5 mm and 22.4 mm, respectively, at different airflow rates speeds, namely 0.5, 1.5 and 2.5 L min. Based on the results, the maximum SOTE of 11% was produced at 2.5 L min.
Sand-geotextile interface characterisation through monotonic and cyclic direct shear tests

ABSTRACT: For the design and performance analyses of geosynthetic-reinforced soil structures under repeated loading, such as those induced by compaction, traffic and earthquakes, the understanding of cyclic soil–geosynthetic interface behaviour is of great interest. Nevertheless, experimental data concerning this type of behaviour are very scarce. A laboratory study was carried out and is described in this paper. This paper presents the behaviour of an interface between a silica sand and a high-strength geotextile under monotonic and cyclic loading conditions. A large-scale direct shear test device able to perform load- or displacement-controlled cyclic tests was used. The results obtained are presented and discussed, especially in terms of interface shear stiffness and damping ratio. Monotonic direct shear tests indicated that the coefficients of interaction for the sand–geotextile interface depend on the confining pressure. Cyclic direct shear tests indicated that the interface stiffness tends to increa.
Profiles and age-related differences in the expression of the three parental burnout dimensions

ABSTRACT Parental burnout is a syndrome that can be defined along three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, emotional distancing from children, and lack of parental accomplishment. The aim of the present study was to highlight the contribution of children’s mean age to profiles of parental burnout. To this end, the Parental Burnout Inventory was administered via an online questionnaire to 2160 French-speaking parents. Results revealed five profiles corresponding to different levels of intensity of each parental burnout dimensions: not in parental burnout, low risk of parental burnout, inefficient, exhausted, and burned out. Parents with young children were more likely to be exhausted. A network model highlighted the central role of emotional distancing in the emergence of parental burnout in exhausted parents. These results underscore the importance of conducting campaigns to prevent parental burnout by highlighting the different profiles and especially targeting young parents of young children.
TOWARDS A GENERIC GUIDANCE FOR MODELLING MOTORWAY MERGE

Merging of traffic on motorways has been regarded as a major source of conflict and congestion. As the merging traffic accelerates on the slip road, they are constantly looking for safe gaps to merge onto the motorway. Sometimes, they may merge into smaller gaps to avoid running to the end of the slip road and force the motorway traffic to decelerate, which in turn may cause traffic congestion and possibly flow breakdown. Aware of the approaching merging traffic, many drivers on the mainline carriageway may moveto the right (UK driving conditions) and/or create a larger gap for the merging traffic. Concerns have been raised in recent years about the adequacy of conventional traffic modelling techniques to represent the complex interactions that occur at motorway merges. The current traffic models represent the traffic operations at a merge using the gap-acceptance approach,with the merging traffic giving way to traffic on the mainline carriageway and imposing little or no delay to the mainline traffic. The results tend to underestimate the capacity of the merge, overestimate delays to the merging traffic, and underestimate delays and interruptions to the motorwaytraffic. Recent research effort to improve this situation has tended to focus on the development of microscopic simulation models to explicitly represent the behavioural interactions at merges, notably the effort by US FHWA through its NGSIM (Next Generation Simulation) programme to develop microsimulation algorithms to model the interactive behaviour between the twostreams of traffic at merge. In the UK, there are similar efforts in developing explicit microsimulation models of motorway merge. Findings from a recent study funded by the UK Department for Transport to improve the current modelling of merges are presented. The general principals in modellingtraffic interaction at merges and the methodologies to represent merge performance in simple terms and readily measureable variables are considered. It highlights some major conceptual and methodological differences in the government advice in the UK, US and Germany on the treatment of merges. It further investigates the use of the behaviour-based microsimulation model to improve understanding of the factors involved in the performance at merges and to inform the development of more appropriate treatment of merges in traffic models. For the covering abstract see ITRD E145999
Electronically reconfigurable uni-planar antenna for cognitive radio applications

A single port, electronically reconfigurable, uni-planar antenna for cognitive-radio (CR) systems is presented. This design effectively merges the time-domain properties of tapered slot antennas with uni-planar nature of coplanar waveguide (CPW). Two tapered slot antennas were excited through a CPW, which is embedded with a PIN diode controlled band-pass filter. The prototype fabricated on Rogers ® RO3006 high-frequency laminate with dielectric constant 6.5, loss tangent 0.002 and thickness 1.28 mm facilitates S 11 <; -10 dB bandwidth from 1.6 to 6.0 GHz in the wide-band mode and 3.39 to 3.80 GHz in the narrow-band mode. The measured radiation characteristics show that the design is suitable for CR applications, in which a wide-band antenna is used for spectrum sensing and a narrow-band antenna for transmission. In addition, the measured time-domain characteristics of the antenna including group delay, impulse response and fidelity factor are presented. These indicate that the proposed antenna can also be used for microwave imaging devices that are connected to the host through high-speed worldwide interoperability for microwave access terminals. Finally, to assist antenna engineers working on industrial design, the housing effect on the prototype was also studied experimentally in frequency and time domains.
A Two Years Retrospective Study on Epidemiology Characteristics of Sexually Transmitted Infections From Malaysian Private Healthcare Perspective

Introduction: Sexually transmitted Infections (STIs) are major public health concerns reaching an all-time high, globally. In Malaysia data on the prevalence of STIs remains scarce which limits the understanding of STI transmission dynamics and the role of interventions in the control of STIs. The aim of this study is to determine the epidemiology characteristics of STIs mainly from Malaysian private healthcare institutions. Method: A two years (2016 and 2017) retrospective review was conducted on 160 multiplex RT-PCR STI reports from KPJ hospitals, Malaysia. Results: There were 65 (40.6 %) patients positive STIs [male: 21/65 (32.3 %); female: 44/65 (67.7 %)]. The STIs was prevalent among young adults (56/65; 86.2 %) from the central region (46/65; 70.8 %). Females had 1.7 times greater risk to develop STI (20 per 100) and two times higher chance to have multiple STIs (10 per 100) in comparison to male. The single STIs was caused mainly by U. parvum (N=17). In males, U. urealyticum (N=3) and C. trachomatis (N=3) were prevalent, while U. parvum (N=15) was prevalent in females. There were 19 dual infections of STIs which were commonly caused by U. parvum and M. hominis (N=5). There were seven STIs cases caused by three pathogens concurrently including U. urealyticum, U. parvum and C. trachomatis (N=2) and U. urealyticum, M. genitalium and C. trachomatis (N=2). Females from urban communities have higher risk in comparison to males for developing multiple STIs. Conclusion: This study provides an imperative platform for temporal trends of STIs in Malaysia which reflects the health status of certain populations that warrant immediate public health interventions.
Precise computations of resonant frequencies and quality factors for dielectric resonators in MICs with tuning elements

In this paper, the highly accurate results of resonant frequencies, field distributions, and quality factors of the TE/sub 01/spl delta// mode for the cylindrical shielded dielectric resonator (DR) in microwave integrated circuits (MIC's) with a practical tuning element, such as the metallic tuning screw and the dielectric tuning device, are presented. By using the newly developed FD-SIC method, numerical results can be calculated accurately and efficiently. The DR structures with tuning elements can be more easily modeled by the present approach than the other methods using approximate solutions or the mode-matching (MM) methods. Numerical results in the literature are compared to the present FD-SIC results for the DR without tuning elements and detailed discussions on these results are given. In addition, design curves are also presented for the DR with the metallic tuning screw and with the dielectric tuning device. These design curves are helpful for designing DR systems with tuning elements in MIC applications.
Liquidity Regulation and Bank Risk Taking on the Horizon

We examine how banks’ liquidity requirements may affect their incentives to take risk with their remaining illiquid assets. Our simple model predicts that banks with a greater share of stable liabilities are more likely to engage in risk taking in response to tighter liquidity requirements. This prediction is borne out in syndicated-loan data for U.S. banks subject to the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR). For identifcation, we exploit variation in long-term bank bonds held by insurance companies that are not affected by the LCR. Our results point to a trade-off between bank risk taking and ensuring funding resilience over different horizons.
Predicting Change in Management Accounting and Control Systems: Additional Evidence from Australia

This paper reports the results of a questionnaire survey investigating organizational and environmental determinants of the rate of changes in management accounting and control systems (MACS) within Australian manufacturing firms. The Australian findings are also compared with the findings of two related prior studies [Libby, T. , and Waterhouse, J. H. 1996. Predicting change in management accounting system. Journal of Management Accounting Research, 8, 137-150; and Williams, J. J., and Seaman, A. E. 2001. Predicting change in management accounting systems: national culture and industry effects. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 26, 443-460]. The change rate for a list of 23 components of MACS and the extent to which this rate is associated with intensity of market competition, decentralization, organizational capacity to learn, and firm size are reported. The study uses survey responses of 34 managers, drawn from a cross-section of Australian manufacturing companies. In the current study, the average number of changes in MACS in the sample organizations was 5.29 times in the period 2003-2005; this was 15.7 percent more than the average of 4.46 changes reported by Libby and Waterhouse and 44.8 percent more than the average of 2.92 changes reported by Williams and Seaman in their sample manufacturing firms. Consistent with Libby and Waterhouse, the results provide strong support for a positive association between the rate for changes in MACS and intensely competitive environments. Also, consistent with Libby and Waterhouse and Williams and Seaman, organizational capacity to learn was found to be an important predictor of the rate for changes in MACS. However, contrary to expectation, the rate for changes in MACS is not significantly associated with decentralization. On the other hand, contrary to Libby and Waterhouse and Williams and Seaman, firm size appeared to be an important predictor of the rate for changes in MACS.
PONTIFICIA UNIVERSIDAD CATÓLICA DEL PERÚ ESCUELA DE POSGRADO Adoption of Big Data Analytics and its Impact on Organizational Performance in Higher Education Mediated by Knowledge Management TESIS PARA OBTENER EL GRADO DE DOCTOR EN ADMINISTRACIÓN ESTRATÉGICA DE EMPRESAS PRESENTADA POR

Due to SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, higher education institutions are challenged to continue providing quality teaching, consulting, and research production through virtual education environments. In this context, a large volume of data is being generated, and technologies such as big data analytics are needed to create opportunities for open innovation by obtaining valuable knowledge. The purpose of this paper was to investigate the factors that influence the adoption of big data analytics, as well as to evaluate the relationship it has with performance and knowledge management, taking into consideration that this technology is in its initial stages and that previous research has provided varied results depending on the sector in focus. To address these challenges, a theoretical framework was developed to empirically test the relationship of these variables. A total of 265 members of universities in Latin America were surveyed and structural equation modeling was used for hypothesis testing. The findings identified compatibility, an adequate organizational data environment, and external support as factors required to adopt big data analytics and their positive relationship is tested with knowledge management processes and organizational performance. This study provides practical guidance for decision-makers involved in or in charge of defining the implementation strategy of big data analytics in higher education institutions.
Deep Model Predictive Control for Visual Servoing

: The simplicity of the visual servoing approach makes it an attractive 1 option for tasks dealing with vision-based control of robots in many real-world 2 applications. However, attaining precise alignment for unseen environments pose 3 a challenge to existing visual servoing approaches. While classical approaches 4 assume a perfect world, the recent data-driven approaches face issues when gen-5 eralizing to novel environments. In this paper, we aim to combine the best of both 6 worlds. We present a deep model predictive visual servoing framework that can 7 achieve precise alignment with optimal trajectories and can generalize to novel 8 environments. Our framework consists of a deep network for optical ﬂow pre-9 dictions, which are used along with a predictive model to forecast future optical 10 ﬂow. For generating an optimal set of velocities we present a control network that 11 can be trained on-the-ﬂy without any supervision. Through extensive simulations 12 on photo-realistic indoor settings of the popular Habitat framework, we show sig-13 niﬁcant performance gain due to the proposed formulation vis-a-vis recent state 14 of the art methods. Speciﬁcally, we show a faster convergence and an improved 15 performance in trajectory length over recent approaches. 16
THERE IS A RELATION BETWEEN BLOOD SUBGROUPS AND INSULIN RESISTANCE

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is currently a disease with rapidly increasing incidence and prevalence, with many accompanying comorbidities, and increasing mortality. It is estimated that the total number of patients with DM will reach 366 million in 2030. Combined with improvements in treatment, the day-to-day increasing understanding of its pathogenesis strengthens the hopes in prevention of comorbidities. Insulin resistance (IR) is generally observed before DM, and it may be accompanied by many clinical conditions such as hyperlipidemia, hepatosteatosis, and obesity. Determining individuals with risk factors such as family history, sedentary life style, and unbalanced nutrition at early stages, and correction of their lifestyles and/or medical management, will have favorable effects on incidence and intensity of its complications. Blood types have been examined frequently for many diseases. Many studies have been designed to examine correlations with ABO blood types. Pancreatic cancer and chronic B hepatitis were correlated with blood type A. Ovarian cancer Acta Medica Mediterranea, 2017, 33: 987
Earnings Quality and the Effect of Internal Monitoring Corporate Governance: Evidence from Indonesia

The Indonesian regulators have made internal monitoring corporate governance more optimal in controlling earnings quality in the companies that are listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) with regulation BAPEPAM, 2012. Therefore, the objective of this paper has been to use earnings quality with discretionary accruals by Yoon et al. (2006) to establish the relationship between the internal monitoring mechanism and earnings quality. The result of the paper revealed that a board’s independence has significant influence in detecting discretionary accruals in a board that is comprised of more members. The study has also established the relationship of audit committee tenure and duality role. A shorter audit committee tenure and more duality role members in the structure of corporate governance was found to be more effective in controlling earnings management to improve earnings quality.
Relationship between Teachers' Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Workplace Spirituality at Secondary Level

This research examined the relationship between teachers' organizational citizenship behavior and workplace spirituality at the secondary school level. Moreover, the impact of workplace spirituality on organizational citizenship behavior was also the purpose of this study. The correlational research design was used. The population included 8911 secondary school teachers of the Lahore division. The sample consisted of 350 teachers through a multi-stage random sampling technique. Two questionnaires used a five-point Likert scale for data collection. Both the questionnaires were adopted. The first questionnaire consisted of 37 items that were aligned with workplace spirituality connection, compassion, mindfulness, meaningful work, and transcendence and the second questionnaire included 20 items aligned with the subscales of organizational citizenship behavior; altruism, courtesy, sportsmanship, conscientiousness, and civic virtue. Inferential statistical analysis techniques such as Pearson r, ANOVA, independent sample t-test, and linear regression were used for data analysis. The data's finding concluded that workplace spirituality is positively associated with organizational citizenship behavior. Moreover, workplace spirituality affects organizational citizenship behavior. Furthermore, two subscales of workplace spirituality, i.e., compassion and mindfulness, have gender-wise significant results. Additionally, the experience-wise comparison revealed that two factors of workplace spirituality (mindfulness and transcendence) had significant results. So, it is recommended that top management should share workplace spirituality with employees to enhance organizational citizenship behavior.
The Evaluation of Auditor Expertise on the Relationship between the Accounting Information Quality and Investment Efficiency

M. A, Department of Accounting, Faculty of Human Sciences and Economy, University of Shahid Ashrafi Esfahani, Esfahan, Iran. Abstract: The firms need to make punctual and appropriate investments in order to survive and develop their activities. The financial statements of firms should provide information that is beneficial to actual and potential investors, debtholders, other users of logical investments, credit, and similar decisions. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of auditor expertise on the relationship between accounting information quality and investment efficiency. In the current research, the systematic elimination has been used to select the sample, which 128 listed firms of Tehran stock exchange in 2011 to 2016 were selected as the statistical sample. In the present study, the econometric method was the multiple linear regression model by using panel data. The results of the research show that the independent variable of financial reporting quality positively and significantly impact on investment efficiency, indicating that the increase in the financial reporting quality leads to high investment efficiency. Moreover, the results demonstrate that the use of auditor industry expertise will intensify the positive effect of financial reporting quality on investment efficiency.
BUBBLING OVER ALONG THE OIL FUTURES YIELD CURVE

We employ novel tests to investigate WTI crude oil spot and futures prices along the yield curve for the presence of rational bubbles. The empirical methodology adopted is consistent with periods of multiple bubbles and permits the origination and end dates of each bubble to be identified. The results indicate that all but the spot and nearby series exhibit significant bubble periods ending in late 2008. Moreover, the dating algorithms establish that the bubbles in longer-dated contracts start much earlier and are longer lasting than the bubble in the 3to 12-month contracts. This information from the oil futures yield curve suggests a period of disconnect between the spot and longer dated futures contracts from 2004 to late 2008 which coincides with a spell of increased institutional investment in oil futures. JEL code: G10, C15, C22