Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Traditional Akan Ethics: Relevant or Trash to Ghanaians Today?

Many works exist on the Akan people of Ghana. Whereas some present their history, socio-political structures, and their languages others examine their ethical systems. Nevertheless, from the past through to the present, it seems Ghanaians have drifted from applying and using the content of Akan ethics in their world of life. This drift raises the question of what went wrong or right within the timelines. In view of this, there calls the need to investigate and examine Akan ethics and to establish whether it serves any relevance or not, to Ghanaians today. In this study, the paper uses the historical and descriptive research methods. The paper’s findings are that to a very large degree, majority of Ghanaians have let go of Akan ethics for Western culture, have refused to value Akan ethics and then perceives Akan ethics to be archaic. In view of these major reasons and others, the paper maintains that Akan ethics is of no relevance to Ghanaians today. In this perspective, the paper concludes on the note that Ghanaians should revisit, revive, reinstate and apply Akan ethical systems to problem solving situation in Ghana today. This will preserve and maintain the wisdom enshrined in Akan ethics for the present and future generations.
The effects of a mindfulness-based lifestyle programme for adults with Parkinson’s disease: protocol for a mixed methods, randomised two-group control study

Introduction Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder in developed countries. There is an increasing interest in the use of mindfulness-related interventions in the management of patients with a chronic disease. In addition, interventions that promote personal control, stress-management and other lifestyle factors, such as diet and exercise, assist in reducing disability and improving quality of life in people with chronic illnesses. There has been little research in this area for people with PD. Methods A prospective mixed-method randomised clinical trial involving community living adults with PD aged <76 years and with moderate disease severity (Hoehn and Yahr stage 2) PD. Participants will be randomised into the ESSENCE 6-week programme or a matched wait list control group. ESSENCE is a multifaceted, healthy lifestyle and mindfulness programme designed to improve quality of life. We aim to determine whether participation in a mindfulness and lifestyle programme could improve PD-related function and explore self-management related experiences and changing attitudes towards self-management. The outcome measures will include 5 self-administered questionnaires: PD function and well-being questionnaire (PDQ39), Health Behaviours, Mental health, Multidimensional locus of control, and Freiburg mindfulness inventory. An embedded qualitative protocol will include in-depth interviews with 12 participants before and after participation in the 6-week programme and a researcher will observe the programme and take notes. Analysis Repeated measures of Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) will examine the outcome measures for any significant effects from the group allocation, age, sex, adherence score and attendance. Qualitative data will be analysed thematically. We will outline the benefits of, and barriers to, the uptake of the intervention. Ethics This protocol has received ethics approval from the Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee project number CF11/2662–2011001553. Dissemination This is the first research of its kind in Australia involving a comprehensive, lifestyle-based programme for people with PD and has the potential to involve a broader range of providers than standard care. The findings will be disseminated through peer reviewed journals, primary care conferences in Australia as well as abroad and through the Parkinson's community. Registration details Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR) ACTRN12612000440820.
Improving cascade of classifiers by sliding window alignment in between

We improve an object detector based on cascade of classifiers by a local alignment of the sliding window. The detector needs to operate on a relatively sparse grid in order to achieve a real time performance on high-resolution images. The proposed local alignment in the middle of the cascade improves its recognition performance whilst retaining the necessary speed. We show that the moment of the alignment matters and discuss the performance in terms of false negatives and false positives. The proposed method is tested on a car detection problem.
Vaporous Decontamination Methods: Potential Uses and Research Priorities for Chemical and Biological Contamination Control

Abstract : Vaporous decontamination methods were used in the remediation of anthrax contaminated buildings following the 2001 attacks in the U.S.A. Since then the development of vaporous decontamination methods has received considerable interest with significant advancements in the area of CB decontamination of buildings and sensitive equipment. This document reviews the current state of vaporous decontamination methods, with reference to potential uses in CB contamination control. Common decontaminants considered are; formaldehyde, chlorine dioxide and hydrogen peroxide. The benefit of vaporous hydrogen peroxide is discussed in detail, and areas of research in which DSTO can contribute significantly to an international collaborative research program into the VHP decontamination process are outlined.
Accuracy of spectral analysis methods for precision indoor positioning system

At the University of Pardubice there is currently developed a modern positioning system for localization of fire brigade and members of rescue corps. The TDOA based system use an OFDM wideband signal to separate direct propagated signal from mixture of its replicas created in a multipath channel. In the paper, the model of a received signal is presented and this signal is processed by spectrum analysis methods to estimate the direct propagated signal delay. The accuracy of nonparametric, parametric and subspace methods is compared and new insights into application of spectral analysis methods are presented.
Long-term efficacy of vacuum-assisted therapy (Endo-SPONGE®) in large anastomotic leakages following anterior rectal resection

Background: The aim of our study was to test the long-term efficacy of Endo-SPONGE® therapy in a group of patients treated in our center with vacuum-assisted therapy because of anastomotic leakages after colorectal surgery. Methods: Eleven patients [male: 6; mean age: 71 (range: 44-82) years] who had anastomotic leakage treated with Endo-SPONGE® placement were included in the study. Patient records were examined retrospectively. All patients with documented anastomotic leakage on abdominal computed tomography following an anterior resection of the rectum for rectal cancer underwent sigmoidoscopy to determine the extent of the anastomotic defect and the size of the presacral abscess. Results: Ten of the 11 patients (90.9%) showed closure of the anastomotic leakage after a mean of 16 sponge changes. During follow up [mean: 29 (range: 6-64) months], we observed two cases of anastomotic stricture. Treatment failure was observed in one patient who presented an increased size of dehiscence after 23 sessions of endoscopic treatment, despite an initial good response. Conclusions: Our study substantially confirms previous conclusions and reaffirms that Endo-SPONGE® treatment for colorectal anastomotic leakages, performed in suitable patients, represents a successful and safe approach. The reduction in wound closure time, mild-to-moderate discomfort and possibly shorter hospitalization suggest that Endo-SPONGE® treatment can be a prominent therapeutic regimen with adequate patient acceptance.
Shared resource aware scheduling on power-constrained tiled many-core processors

Power management through dynamic core, cache and frequency adaptation is becoming a necessity in today's power-constrained many-core environments. Unfortunately, as core count grows, the complexity of both the adaptation hardware and the power management algorithms increases. In this paper, we propose a two-tier hierarchical power management methodology to exploit per-tile voltage regulators and clustered last-level caches. In addition, we include a novel thread migration layer that (i) analyzes threads running on the tiled many-core processor for shared resource sensitivity in tandem with core, cache and frequency adaptation, and (ii) co-schedules threads per tile with compatible behavior.
Effects of education of the head of the household on the prevalence of malnutrition in children.

OBJECTIVES To explore the effect of the educational level of the head of household on the prevalence of malnutrition in Saudi children. METHODS The study was conducted over 2 years in 2004 and 2005 in all regions of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The design consisted of a stratified multistage probability random sampling of the population of the KSA. The educational level of the heads of the household, and measurements of weight and height of the children were obtained during house visits. Nutritional indicators in the form of weight for age, height for age, and weight for height for children below 5 years of age were determined, and the prevalence of each indicator below -2 standard deviations (SD) was calculated for each level of education. RESULTS The sample size was 7390 in the weight for age, 7275 height for age, and 7335 for weight for height. The prevalence of underweight (weight for age below -2 SD) increased from 7.4% for the university level to 15.2% in the children of illiterate heads of household. Similar patterns were found for the prevalence of stunting (height for age below -2 SD) and wasting (weight for height below -2 SD). CONCLUSIONS This study demonstrates that the higher the education level of the heads of the household, the lower the prevalence of malnutrition in their children, suggesting that completing at least 9-12 years of education (intermediate and secondary school) is needed for better improvement in the nutritional status of the children.
Ranking the annotators: An agreement study on argumentation structure

We investigate methods for evaluating agreement among a relatively large group of annotators who have not received extensive training and differ in terms of ability and motivation. We show that it is possible to isolate a reliable subgroup of annotators, so that aspects of the difficulty of the underlying task can be studied. Our task is to annotate the argumentative structure of short texts.
Simulation of Power System Dynamics using Dynamic Phasor Models

SUMMARY Dynamic phasor modeling technique is mostly applied on power electronics devices. In this paper, application of the dynamic phasor modeling technique is extended to other major power system components. Starting from the detailed time-domain models, the dynamic phasor models for these components are derived and implemented. Further, an efficiency and accuracy comparison of the dynamic phasor modeling technique with other conventional modeling techniques - like the standard models in three-phase ABC reference frame (e.g. in EMTP) and models in DQ0 reference frame (e.g. in SIMPOW) - is given. A systematic comparison is warranted by simulating these differently modeled components in a Matlab based common simulation framework. Furthermore reduced order dynamic phasor models of the components are derived and results are compared with other production-grade transient stability programs. Simulation results for two test cases are shown.
Enhancing Active Learning for Semantic Role Labeling via Compressed Dependency Trees

This paper explores new approaches to active learning (AL) for semantic role labeling (SRL), focusing in particular on combining typical informativity-based sampling strategies with a novel measure of representativeness based on compressed dependency trees (CDTs). In essence, the compressed representation encodes the target predicate and the key dependents of the verb complex in the sentence. We first present our method for producing CDTs from the output of an existing dependency parser. The compressed trees are used as features for training a supervised SRL system. Second, we present a study of AL for SRL. We investigate a number of different sample selection strategies, and the best results are achieved by incorporating CDTs for example selection based on both informativity and representativeness. We show that our approach can reduce by up to 50% the amount of training data needed to attain a given level of performance.
Improvement of working pattern for thermal underwater glider

Thermal underwater glider (TUG) is a new trend for the development of autonomous underwater vehicles, it is composed of traditional underwater glider (UG) with thermal engine which is used for harvesting and transforming ocean thermal energy. The main problem of TUG is the mismatch between gliding motion pattern and phase change process. The reason is that low heat conductivity of PCM leads to taking a long time for complete phase change. In this paper, new working pattern for TUG is proposed according to the temperature profile of seawater. Full working depth for TUG is divided into warm water layer and cold water layer by phase transition point of PCM (18.15°C for Hexadecane). For a typical seawater temperature profile, warm water layer, in which temperature is higher than the phase transition temperature of PCM, is the water column above the depth with the phase transition temperature. While the cold water layer, in which temperature is lower than the phase transition temperature of PCM, is the water column below the depth with the phase transition temperature. When the TUG is gliding in warm water layer, it is called melting process of PCM. While in cold water layer, it is solidification process. Working parameter for melting process includes vertical velocity and drifting time on sea surface, while for solidification process, it includes vertical velocity and working depth. These working parameters can be reconfigured for the two working processes respectively. Practical ways to change vertical velocity can be adjusting the net buoyancy or pitch angle. The magnitude of vertical velocity can be varied when TUG glides in different water layers.
TEST-RETEST RELIABILITY OF TETRAX® STATIC POSTUROGRAPHY SYSTEM IN YOUNG ADULTS WITH LOW PHYSICAL ACTIVITY LEVEL.

PURPOSE/BACKGROUND Assessment of postural sway with force plates can be affected by type of measurement and various clinical parameters such as age and activity level of the individual person. For this reason, variability is detected in postural reactions of healthy subjects without balance impairment. Test-retest reliability of postural sway in adolescent athletes has been measured using a force plate and additional test-retest studies have been suggested for subjects of different age groups with different activity levels. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to assess test-retest reliability of Tetrax® Static Posturography in young adults with low physical activity level, and examine the relationship between posturography results and low activity level. METHODS Young adults older than 18 years of age were included in the study. Demographic characteristics of the cases were recorded including age, weight, height, body mass index (BMI, kg/m2) and dominant extremity. Number of falls in the previous six months, lower body endurance (sit to stand test) and single-leg eyes closed stance test were recorded. Activity level of participants was determined according to the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ). Posturographic evaluation of all volunteers was completed using the Tetrax® Interactive Postural Balance System (Sunlight Medical Ltd, Israel). Fall risk and general stability index (SI) calculated by the Tetrax® were recorded. Following the first test, measurements were repeated 24 to 48 hours later for reliability purposes. RESULTS Sixty-five subjects (28 male, 37 female; mean age 22.2 ± 1.1 years, mean BMI 22.6 ± 3.3 kg/m(2)) were evaluated. All participants were classified as minimally active according to mean IPAQ score (1042.1 ± 517.7 [231 - 2826] MET- minutes per week). ICC scores between the first and second tests for fall index and total stability index were excellent (ICC2,1=0.858, 0.850, respectively). Fall risk determined by using the Tetrax® device was negatively correlated with lower body endurance (p=0.001, r=-0.446), vigorous activity score (p=0.011, -0.312) and total activity score (p=0.029, r=-0.271), and positively correlated with single leg stance score (p=0.001, r=0.606). There was a weak correlation between fall risk history and the fall risk determined by using Tetrax® device (p=0.04, r=0.255). There were no correlations between fall risk and height, weight, and BMI (p>0.05). CONCLUSIONS The results demonstrated the high test-retest reliability of Tetrax® interactive balance system in young healthy adults with low physical activity level. Future studies are needed to determine the effectiveness of increasing physical activity level on postural control. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE III.
Microsoft Research Asia TRECVID 2006 High-Level Feature Extraction and Rushes Exploitation

In this paper, we describe the MSRA experiments for TRECVID 2006, including details of the approaches and performance analyses for high-level feature extraction task and rushes exploitation task. For high-level feature extraction, we mainly investigated the benefit of unlabeled data by semi-supervised learning methods, including adaptive semi-supervised learning with kernel density estimation, manifold ranking, and transductive graph. Moreover, we performed fusion in two different levels: modality level and model level. We were ranked in the top 10 list in terms of mean average precision performance among all participants. For rushes exploitation, we detected the duplicate content based on ordinal video signature. We also performed video structuring (i.e. decomposing rushes into shots and sub-shots) and camera motion classification (i.e. classifying each sub-shot into static, pan, tilt, zoom, rotation, or object motion in terms of camera motion). Furthermore, we validated the approaches to concept modeling and detected 39 concepts on rushes data without re-training the visual models obtained in high-level feature extraction task.
Positividad, Estilo de Afrontamiento y Consumo de Tabaco y Alcohol en la Adolescencia

Introducción. La adolescencia es una etapa crítica para actuar a nivel preventivo, teniendo en cuenta que en ella suelen iniciarse conductas de riesgo para la salud, como el consumo de tabaco y alcohol. Método. En este contexto, 106 adolescentes (54 chicas y 52 chicos; edad media de 14,10 años, tanto en chicos, como en chicas) participaron en esta investigación, cuyos objetivos fue-ron analizar las relaciones que mantienen el estilo de afrontamiento y la positividad con el consumo de tabaco y alcohol, así como las posibles diferencias debidas al sexo y la edad.Resultados. Los resultados mostraron, primero, la presencia de relaciones significativas entre estilo de afrontamiento, positividad y consumo de tabaco y alcohol; segundo, el papel modulador de la edad y el sexo; finalmente, la positividad fue uno de los factores predictivos más significativos del consumo de alcohol y tabaco, destacando su papel protector. Conclusión. Los resultados relativos a la significación del estilo de afrontamiento, la edad y el género en la explicación del consumo de tabaco y alcohol en la adolescencia, tienden a ser consistentes con la investigación existente sobre el tema. Suponen, al mismo tiempo, una aportación novedosa a la investigación en este ámbito los resultados relativos a la dimensión de positividad, que sugieren su significativo papel protector ante el desarrollo de conductas de riesgo como las consideradas en nuestro estudio.
Flow-based anomaly detection using semisupervised learning

In recent years, flow-based anomaly detection has been used as a scalable method for high-speed networks. The application of supervised learning in flow-based anomaly detection has been considered in a number of studies. However, supervised methods are not very useful as they are only trained with labelled data. Therefore, in this study, we use a semi-supervised method to address the problem of the limitation of labelled data. S4VM is a semi-supervised method which can work with both labelled and unlabelled data. This method is used in this study to detect anomalies in flow traffic. The results show that S4VM has high accuracy when a large proportion of data is unlabelled. Although the accuracy of S4VM is slightly less than supervised learning, this method reduces the cost of labeling data, as only a small number of labelled flows are required. To evaluate the proposed anomaly detection method, a number of flow-based datasets are generated.
Landslide Susceptibility Mapping Based on Particle Swarm Optimization of Multiple Kernel Relevance Vector Machines: Case of a Low Hill Area in Sichuan Province, China

In this paper, we propose a multiple kernel relevance vector machine (RVM) method based on the adaptive cloud particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to map landslide susceptibility in the low hill area of Sichuan Province, China. In the multi-kernel structure, the kernel selection problem can be solved by adjusting the kernel weight, which determines the single kernel contribution of the final kernel mapping. The weights and parameters of the multi-kernel function were optimized using the PSO algorithm. In addition, the convergence speed of the PSO algorithm was increased using cloud theory. To ensure the stability of the prediction model, the result of a five-fold cross-validation method was used as the fitness of the PSO algorithm. To verify the results, receiver operating characteristic curves (ROC) and landslide dot density (LDD) were used. The results show that the model that used a heterogeneous kernel (a combination of two different kernel functions) had a larger area under the ROC curve (0.7616) and a lower prediction error ratio (0.28%) than did the other types of kernel models employed in this study. In addition, both the sum of two high susceptibility zone LDDs (6.71/100 km2) and the sum of two low susceptibility zone LDDs (0.82/100 km2) demonstrated that the landslide susceptibility map based on the heterogeneous kernel model was closest to the historical landslide distribution. In conclusion, the results obtained in this study can provide very useful information for disaster prevention and land-use planning in the study area.
Human papillomavirus infection in women attended at a cervical cancer screening service in Natal, Brazil

We analyzed cervical specimens of 202 women, aged 15 to 64 years, attended at Luis Antonio Hospital, Natal, Brazil, to determine the prevalence of HPV and identify the more frequent genotypes and risk factors for HPV infection in women attended at a cervical cancer screening service. Two specimens were collected from each patient: one for cytological examination and the other to detect HPV DNA by PCR, and typing by dot blot hybridization. A total of 54.5% of the sample had normal cytology and 45.5% had cytological alterations. HPV was detected in 24.5% of the cytologically normal women and in 59.8% of those with altered cytology. Both single and double HPV infection increased the likelihood of cytological alterations. Thirteen types of HPV were identified, most of which were high risk. HPV 16 was the most prevalent single-type infection, followed by HPV 58. The most frequent double infection was the association between HPV 56 and 57. The prevalence of HPV in cytologically normal women was greater than that reported for countries on all the continents except Africa. The inverse was observed in women with cytological alterations. The distribution of HPV types was similar to that described for the Americas, with some differences. Multiple sexual partners was the only risk factor showing an association with the presence of HPV infection.