Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Farming Systems and Poverty IMPROVING FARMERS' LIVELIHOODS IN A CHANGING WORLD

Small farmers produce much of the developing world's food. Yet they are generally much poorer than the rest of the population in these countries, and are less food secure than even the urban poor. Furthermore, although the majority of the world's population will live in urban areas by 2030, farming populations will not be much smaller than they are today. For the foreseeable future, therefore, dealing with poverty and hunger in much of the world means confronting the problems that small farmers and their families face in their daily struggle for survival. The material for this book is derived from a study originally undertaken at the request of the World Bank in order to provide a specifically agricultural perspective to the revision of the Bank's rural development strategy. It has drawn on many years of specialized work within FAO and the World Bank, as well as in a number of other national and international institutions. Findings were supported by more than 20 case studies from around the world which analyzed innovative approaches to small farm or pastoral development. This book is intended for a wider audience than the original study, and it is hoped that policy makers, researchers, Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) and the agribusiness sector will all find its conclusions and recommendations interesting and thought provoking; and that they will carry the analysis further by applying the approach at national level to assist in the formulation of rural development strategies.
Estimating the Responsiveness of an Instrument Using More Than Two Repeated Measures

Summary. The responsiveness of a measuring instrument is its ability to detect change over time. A commonly used index of responsiveness is the effect size for paired differences. This paper generalizes the effect size for paired differences to more than two repeated observations per subject. The sampling distribution of the generalized responsiveness statistic, Rt, is simulated for a range of plausible parameter values and for a range of sample sizes varying both the number of subjects (n) and the number of observations per subject (t). The coverage properties of confidence intervals constructed by four methods are compared. Confidence intervals based on jackknife estimates of the standard error and bias of Rt have good coverage properties even when n and t are small. The methods are used to determine which of two standard quality‐of‐life measures is more responsive to improvements in quality of life following surgery for early‐stage breast cancer.
Electromagnetic wave control by metasurfaces: From design to manufacturing

Recently, there have been a new interest in controlling and manipulating electromagnetic waves in different frequency ranges. The development of new two-dimensional materials, called meta-surfaces, have been used to control and tailor the electromagnetic waves propagation properties. Several studies focused their attention on phase modulation, very few on amplitude. However, there have been no general design procedure able to control both of them at the same time. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to develop a robust design tool to manipulate the electromagnetic wave behavior over flat and 3D objects. The proposed approach will be used to design, manufacture and experimentally measure metasurface-based devices for lenses, cloaking, manipulation and bending applications. Good agreement between analytical, numerical, and experimental results has been achieved, proving that the realized devices are wideband, polarization independent, easy to fabricate and can be scaled in different frequency ranges from microwave to optics.
Evaluating Team Collaboration Quality: The Development and Field Application of a Collaboration Maturity Model

Abstract The quality of collaboration directly affects the quality of an organization’s outcomes and performance. Trends like globalization and increased product and service complexity have pushed organizations to become more and more reliant on collaboration in distributed, cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural, virtual teams. The present research is based on an applied science/engineering (AS/E) research paradigm to address an important class of unsolved problems—measuring the quality of collaboration within and across organizational boundaries. This paper presents a collaboration maturity model (Col-MM) to assess an organization’s team collaboration maturity as a first step toward a generalizable solution to that class of problems. The Col-MM is intended to be sufficiently generic to be applied to different organizational and team settings and usable by practitioners for conducting self-assessments. The Col-MM was developed during a series of focus group meetings with professionals (business unit managers). The model was then piloted and subsequently applied in a field study in an automotive company. This paper reports on the development and field application of the Col-MM. It contributes to the collaboration science literature, theory, and practice through a detailed AS/E study that develops a maturity model and a system for administering it that provides proof of value and effective use in the field.
Independent Component Analysis for Ensemble Predictors with Small Number of Models

Independent Component Analysis for Ensemble Predictors with Small Number of Models R. Szupiluk, T. Ząbkowskib,∗ and K. Gajowniczek Warsaw School of Economics, Niepodleglosci 162, 02-554 Warsaw, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Faculty of Applied Informatics and Mathematics, Nowoursynowska 159, 02-776 Warsaw, Poland Systems Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, Newelska 6, 01-447 Warsaw, Poland
OPTIMAL FEEDBACK LINEARIZATION CONTROL OF A FLEXIBLE CABLE ROBOT

 In this paper the flexible cable robot tracking is controlled using optimal feedback linearization method. Feedback linearization is used to control the robot within a predefined trajectory while its controlling gains are optimized using LQR method to achieve the maximum payload of the endeffector in presence of flexibilities. Required motors’ torque and tracking error caused by flexibility uncertainties are calculated for a predefined trajectory of an under constrained cable robot with six Degrees of Freedom (DOF) and six actuating cables while its cables are considered elastic. Robust controller is also designed and added to the controller to ensure the accuracy and stability of the system and cancel any disturbing effects of the uncertainties. A series of analytic simulation study is done for the mentioned spatial cable robot to show the flexibility effect on dynamic performance of the robot and also prove the superiority of the proposed optimal control strategy to compensate these flexibilities. Finally the results are compared and verified with experimental results of the cable robot of ICaSbot to verify the proposed controlling strategy for controlling the mentioned flexible robot and also prove the correctness of the simulations. Keywords Cable Robot, Flexible Cables, Optimal Feedback Linearization Control
High-sensitivity cardiac troponin T and copeptin assays to improve diagnostic accuracy of exercise stress test in patients with suspected coronary artery disease

Background: The average diagnostic sensitivity of exercise stress tests (ESTs) is lower than that of other non-invasive cardiac stress tests. The aim of the study was to examine whether high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hs-cTnT) or copeptin concentrations rise in response to inducible myocardial ischaemia and may improve the diagnostic accuracy of ESTs. Methods and results: An EST was performed stepwise on a bicycle ergometer by 383 consecutive patients with suspected or progression of coronary artery disease (CAD). In addition venous blood samples for measurement of hs-cTnT and copeptin were collected prior to EST, at peak exercise, and 4 h after EST. Coronary angiography was assessed for all patients. Patients with significant CAD (n = 224) were more likely to be male and older compared to patients with non-significant CAD (n = 169). Positive EST was documented in 125 (55.8%) patients with significant CAD and in 69 (43.4%) patients with non-significant CAD. Copeptin and hs-cTnT concentrations at baseline were higher in patients with significant CAD (copeptin: 10.8 pmol/l (interquartile range (IQR) 8.1–15.6) vs 9.4 pmol/l (IQR 7.1–13.9); p = 0.04; hs-cTnT: 3.0 ng/l (IQR <3.0–5.4) vs <3.0 ng/l (IQR <3.0); p = 0.006). Hs-cTnT improved sensitivity (61.6% vs 55.8%), specificity (67.7% vs 56.6%) and the positive predictive value (PPV) (72.3% vs 64.4%) and negative (55.2% vs 47.6%) predictive value (NPV) of EST. Copeptin could not improve sensitivity (55.4% vs 55.8%) and reduced specificity, PPV and NPV. Conclusions: The measurement of hs-cTnT during EST improves sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values. In contrast, measurement of copeptin does not improve diagnostic sensitivity and reduces specificity.
Impaired PRC2 activity promotes transcriptional instability and favors breast tumorigenesis

In this study, Wassef et al. used mouse and human models to show that the high expression of Polycomb protein EZH2 in solid tumors is a consequence, not a cause, of tumorigenesis and that low abundance or deletion of EZH2 relative to proliferation is linked to poor prognosis and transcriptional instability.
Agent-based model for the origins of scaling in human language

Background/Introduction: The Zipf's law establishes that if the words of a (large) text are ordered by decreasing frequency, the frequency versus the rank decreases as a power law with exponent close to -1. Previous work has stressed that this pattern arises from a conflict of interests of the participants of communication: speakers and hearers. Methods: The challenge here is to define a computational language game on a population of agents, playing games mainly based on a parameter that measures the relative participant's interests. Results: Numerical simulations suggest that at critical values of the parameter a human-like vocabulary, exhibiting scaling properties, seems to appear. Conclusions: The appearance of an intermediate distribution of frequencies at some critical values of the parameter suggests that on a population of artificial agents the emergence of scaling partly arises as a self-organized process only from local interactions between agents.
The DMT Classification of Real and Quaternionic Lattice Codes

In this paper we consider space-time codes where the code-words are restricted to either real or quaternion matrices. We prove two separate diversity-multiplexing gain trade-off (DMT) upper bounds for such codes and provide a criterion for a lattice code to achieve these upper bounds. We also point out that lattice codes based on $\mathbb{Q}$-central division algebras satisfy this optimality criterion. As a corollary this result provides a DMT classification for all $\mathbb{Q}$-central division algebra codes that are based on standard embeddings.
Two-eye model-based gaze estimation from a Kinect sensor

In this paper, we present an effective and accurate gaze estimation method based on two-eye model of a subject with the tolerance of free head movement from a Kinect sensor. To accurately and efficiently determine the point of gaze, i) we employ two-eye model to improve the estimation accuracy; ii) we propose an improved convolution-based means of gradients method to localize the iris center in 3D space; iii) we present a new personal calibration method that only needs one calibration point. The method approximates the visual axis as a line from the iris center to the gaze point to determine the eyeball centers and the Kappa angles. The final point of gaze can be calculated by using the calibrated personal eye parameters. We experimentally evaluate the proposed gaze estimation method on eleven subjects. Experimental results demonstrate that our gaze estimation method has an average estimation accuracy around 1.99°, which outperforms many leading methods in the state-of-the-art.
Test-retest reliability and validity of isometric knee-flexion and -extension measurement using 3 methods of assessing muscle strength.

CONTEXT Physicians and clinicians need portable, efficient, and cost-effective assessment tools to determine the effectiveness of rehabilitation programs after knee injury. Progress in rehabilitation should be evaluated using valid and reliable measurement methods. OBJECTIVE To examine the test-retest reliability of portable fixed dynamometry (PFD), handheld dynamometry (HHD), and isokinetic dynamometry (IKD). In addition, the authors sought to examine the validity of PFD and HHD by comparing differences in peak torque of the knee flexors and extensors to that of the "gold standard" IKD. DESIGN Repeated measures. PARTICIPANTS 16 healthy subjects (age 29.3 ± 7.2 y, height 167.4 ± 8.04 cm, mass 73.7 ± 20.0 kg). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The dependent variables were peak torque (normalized to body weight) of the knee flexors and extensors; the independent variables were trial (trial 1, trial 2) and instrument (IKD, PFD, and HHD). RESULTS Test-retest reliability was high for both PFD and IKD. However, fair to poor reliability was found for HHD. There were no differences in peak torque (Nm) between IKD and PFD. However, significant differences in peak torque were observed between IKD and HHD and between PFD and HHD. CONCLUSIONS PFD provides reliable measures of strength and also demonstrates similar output measures as IKD. Its portability, ease of use, and cost provide clinicians an effective means of measuring strength.
An Energy-Aware Middleware for Integrating Wireless Sensor Networks and the Internet

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have great potential for many distributed applications in different scenarios. As they grow in popularity and importance, it becomes increasingly desirable and necessary to share their data over the Internet. This paper presents an energy-aware middleware that focuses on integrating the Internet and WSNs at service level by providing transparency of access, location, and technology. In particular, it describes and evaluates the implemented strategies to reduce the energy consumption, which are essential for prolonging the WSN lifetime.
Prediction for Irregular Ocean Wave and Floating Body Motion by Regularization: Part 2. Motion Prediction

In the analysis of the motion of a floating body, the domains can broadly be divided into the frequency domain and the time domain. The essence of the frequency domain analysis lies in calculating the hydrodynamic coefficient from the equation of motion, which has six degrees of freedom, by applying several methods. In this research, Bureau Veritas’s “HydroStar” software was used, and the comparison and the verification were carried out by experiments. For the time domain analysis, we used an existing method proposed by Cummins and made motion predictions by using deterministic random phases calculated in the time domain calculations of the excitation force. Lastly, the potential of wave and motion predictions was verified through the data obtained from a motion analysis experiment using a tension leg platform in the context of irregular waves.
Performance analysis of trellis coded biorthogonal sequences in a variable rate system

For digital communication systems with a given binary modulation scheme and variable information rate, a coding technique is described which employs a particular structure of trellis code. It consists of a convolutional encoder followed by a mapper which selects biorthogonal codewords. Based upon the state diagram of the system, performance is evaluated and then compared to that of more conventional solutions. Beside having good performance, this approach is very modular, i.e. its structure easily adapts to different information rates. Furthermore, it allows the time synchronization system to work at lower signal-to-noise ratios.
La diffusion du contrôle à la source des eaux pluviales urbaines : confrontation des pratiques à la rationalité hydrologique

La gestion des eaux pluviales urbaines connait une evolution majeure depuis les annees 1960 : d'une strategie basee sur l'evacuation rapide et totale des eaux pluviales de la ville, on passe progressivement a une strategie de controle a la source (CS). Ces 10 dernieres annees ont vu une generalisation du CS, ainsi qu'en temoigne l'augmentation du nombre de reglementations de rejet. Ces dernieres imposent, dans les nouvelles parcelles urbanisees, la realisation d'ouvrages ayant pour fonction de reguler et/ou de retenir les eaux pluviales : les techniques alternatives (TA). Une systematisation de ces reglementations ne va pas manquer de generer dans l'avenir de nombreux bassins versants urbains fortement equipes en TA, et dont le comportement hydrologique sera determine par les reglementations appliquees. Il apparait que le choix d'une reglementation par une collectivite est un choix complexe et, d'une collectivite a l'autre, des logiques differentes sont appliquees, dont la coherence globale peut etre discutee. Cette these questionne et analyse les politiques de CS, et en particulier les reglementations de rejet, dans une perspective de comprehension de leurs effets hydrologiques dans le long terme. Elle comprend deux analyses complementaires : nous etudions d'abord l'evolution des politiques de CS dans six collectivites en France, afin de determiner les logiques appliquees dans le choix des reglementations. Nous presentons ensuite une analyse hydrologique des consequences de ces reglementations sur le comportement de bassins versant urbains "modeles". Cette analyse, centree sur la modelisation hydrologique des bassins, permet de questionner les politiques de CS actuelles, mais aussi de discuter des outils que l'hydrologie urbaine peut fournir pour permettre la mise en place de politiques de CS coherentes, en phase avec le fonctionnement hydrologique des bassins versants
Comparing and combining Content‐ and Citation‐based approaches for plagiarism detection

The vast amount of scientific publications available online makes it easier for students and researchers to reuse text from other authors and makes it harder for checking the originality of a given text. Reusing text without crediting the original authors is considered plagiarism. A number of studies have reported the prevalence of plagiarism in academia. As a consequence, numerous institutions and researchers are dedicated to devising systems to automate the process of checking for plagiarism. This work focuses on the problem of detecting text reuse in scientific papers. The contributions of this paper are twofold: (a) we survey the existing approaches for plagiarism detection based on content, based on content and structure, and based on citations and references; and (b) we compare content and citation‐based approaches with the goal of evaluating whether they are complementary and if their combination can improve the quality of the detection. We carry out experiments with real data sets of scientific papers and concluded that a combination of the methods can be beneficial.
The 12-Item Buschke Memory Test: Appropriate for Use Across Levels of Impairment

Monitoring cognitive functions as older adults move from independent to assisted living is of utmost importance with respect to care planning. To this end, we examined the utility of a 12-item, free and cued recall, selective reminding, memory task for assessing persons across levels of functioning. Using cross-sectional data from the Canadian Study of Health and Aging, it was observed that the 12-item Buschke memory test was well tolerated by participants regardless of their level of impairment. Further, various measures from the memory task differentiated among participants with different levels of impairment: Individuals living in the community performed better than those in institutions; individuals with no or mild functional impairment performed better than individuals with moderate or severe functional impairments; individuals with mild dementia performed better than those with moderate to severe dementia. Normative data are provided for this easily administered and well-tolerated memory measure.
Prevalence and risk factors of new onset diabetes after liver transplantation (NODAT): A single Egyptian center experience

Aim: To estimate the prevalence of New Onset Diabetes after Liver Transplantation (NODAT) and to investigate the possible risk factors. Methods: This retrospective study comprises 213 patients subjected to living donor liver transplantation (LDLT). Patients’ data were collected from medical registry files for a period of two years after transplant. Results: Of the total 213 recipients, complete data for the whole study period were available for 164 recipients who were enrolled in this study. Fifty one 51 (31.1%) patients were already diabetic prior to transplantation. The prevalence of NODAT was 27.43% (31/113). Eight of NODAT cases (25.8%) were transient with recovery within 6-months period in 5/8 cases while the other 3 cases recovered in more than 6 months to a year. The only drug that showed statistically significant difference was tacrolimus (p=0.02). Interestingly, three pre-transplant diabetics (3/51, 5.9%) recovered after liver transplant with elimination of their anti-diabetic therapy. Conclusion: NODAT is a common medical complication that occurs in 27.4% of liver transplant recipients. The study suggests using one year cutoff rather than 6 months for defining transient NODAT. Post-transplant tacrolimus-based immunosuppression is a significant independent predictor of NODAT development
Parameters influence on the performance of an Ant algorithm for safe ship trajectory planning

The paper presents the results of parameters influence evaluation on the performance of the safe ship trajectory planning algorithm utilizing Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). A brief description of the developed ACO based safe ship control algorithm is presented and results of simulation tests in three different environments are shown and summarized with regard to the influence of parameters settings on the algorithm convergence and computational time.