Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Social and Economic Development and Change in four Guatemalan Villages: Demographics, Schooling, Occupation, and Assets

This article uses census data and village histories to examine changes over the last 35 years in the four villages where the Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama (INCAP) Longitudinal Study (1969–77) was conducted and offers a rare picture of development and change in rural localities over a long period of time. In addition, by characterizing the environment in which the subjects of this study were raised, we provide context for and inputs into quantitative analyses of data collected at various points in time on these subjects. The villages have undergone massive demographic, social, and economic change. Initial differences have conditioned many of these changes, especially differences associated with agricultural potential and location. Originally these villages were rather isolated, but road and transportation access has improved substantially. The populations in the villages have more than doubled and also have aged. While marriage patterns have held steady, religious practice has changed a great deal. After many years of steady out-migration, three of the four villages are more recently experiencing net in-migration, a pattern associated with ease of access. Schooling access and outcomes also have improved, with average grades of schooling nearly tripling and literacy doubling to levels currently above national averages. Although agriculture remains an important component of individual livelihood strategies, non-agricultural sources of employment have become more important. Much of this change is associated with declining agricultural markets and increased access to non-agricultural jobs near the villages and in the capital. Accompanying these changes has been an improvement in living standards as measured by a number of indicators of household living conditions and consumer durable goods.
The TOR data communication system: A survey

Since the day the Internet became a common and reliable mechanism for communication and data transfer, security officers and enthusiasts rallied to enforce security standards on data transported over the globe. Whenever a user tries communicating with another recipient on the Internet, vital information is sent over different networks until the information is dropped, intercepted, or normally reaches the recipient. Critical information traversing networks is usually encrypted. In order to conceal the sender's identity, different implementations have proven successful - one of which is the invention of anonymous networks. This paper thoroughly investigates one of the most common and existing techniques used during data communication for avoiding traffic analysis as well as assuring data integrity - TOR. The paper also scrupulously presents the benefits and drawbacks of TOR.
Identification and Differentiation of Clinically Relevant Mycobacterium Species Directly from Acid-Fast Bacillus-Positive Culture Broth

ABSTRACT Mycobacterium species cause a variety of clinical diseases, some of which may be species specific. Therefore, it is clinically desirable to rapidly identify and differentiate mycobacterial isolates to the species level. We developed a rapid and high-throughput system, MycoID, to identify Mycobacterium species directly from acid-fast bacillus (AFB)-positive mycobacterial culture broth. The MycoID system incorporated broad-range PCR followed by suspension array hybridization to identify 17 clinically relevant mycobacterial complexes, groups, and species in one single reaction. We evaluated a total of 271 AFB-positive culture broth specimens, which were identified by reference standard methods in combination with biochemical and molecular tests. The overall identification agreement between the standard and the MycoID system was 89.7% (perfect match) or 97.8% (one match in codetection). In comparison to the standard, the MycoID system possessed an overall sensitivity of 97.1% and specificity of 98.8%. The 159 Mycobacterium avium-M. intracellulare complex isolates were further identified to the species level by MycoID as being M. avium (n = 98; 61.1%), M. intracellulare (n = 57; 35.8%), and mixed M. avium and M. intracellulare (n = 2; 1.3%). M. avium was recovered more frequently from sterile sites than M. intracellulare (odds ratio, 4.6; P = 0.0092). The entire MycoID procedure, including specimen processing, can be completed within 5 h, providing rapid and reliable identification and differentiation of mycobacterium species that is amenable to automation. Additional differentiation of Mycobacterium avium-M. intracellulare complex strains into M. avium and M. intracellulare may provide a tool to better understand the role of Mycobacterium avium-M. intracellulare complex isolates in human disease.
Unrecognized psychiatric disorders among adult patients admitted into a general hospital in Maiduguri, Northeastern Nigeria

Introduction Patients with unrecognized psychiatric disorders in general hospitals, suffer economic and psycho-social difficulties. This study aimed to determine (i) prevalence and pattern of psychiatric disorders, and (ii) prevalence of unrecognized psychiatric disorders among adult in-patients of a general hospital. Methods In this two-stage, cross-sectional study, we used (i) General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) to assess the prevalence of psychiatric disorders, and (ii) Patient Encounter Form to determine unrecognized psychiatric disorders, among patients admitted into a general hospital. Results Of the 283 respondents, 174 (61.5%) had GHQ scores of ≤ 4. Eighty seven respondents (31%) had psychiatric disorders of which 85 (98%) were not recognized. The frequency of Depression and Anxiety disorders were 61.5% and 26.2% respectively. Unmarried (2.3, 1.2-4.3; p < 0.00), females (2.1, 1.1-4.05; p = 0.01) and patients with “unexplained symptoms” (≤ = 8.4, p< 0.00, df = 1) were more likely to have diagnosis of depression and anxiety disorder. Conclusion We conclude that one-third of the patients in the general hospital, had co-morbid psychiatric diagnoses, mostly unrecognized by their physicians. Unmarried, females and respondents with unexplained symptoms were associated with depression and anxiety disorders. We recommend the posting of psychiatric trainees to general hospitals, and training of general practitioners on the use of simple depression and anxiety screening instruments.
Real-time Egocentric Gesture Recognition on Mobile Head Mounted Displays

Mobile virtual reality (VR) head mounted displays (HMD) have become popular among consumers in recent years. In this work, we demonstrate real-time egocentric hand gesture detection and localization on mobile HMDs. Our main contributions are: 1) A novel mixed-reality data collection tool to automatic annotate bounding boxes and gesture labels; 2) The largest-to-date egocentric hand gesture and bounding box dataset with more than 400,000 annotated frames; 3) A neural network that runs real time on modern mobile CPUs, and achieves higher than 76% precision on gesture recognition across 8 classes.
BARRIERS TO THE UPTAKE OF E-PROCUREMENT IN THENIGERIAN BUILDING INDUSTRY

Although the uptake of e-Procurement technologies and processes by businesses and organizations has been very impressive in the developed countries, the same cannot be said in many developing countries where the uptake of e-Procurement is rather slow and low. This study investigated the barriers to the uptake of e-Procurement using data derived from a questionnaire survey of 213 consulting firms, contractors, client organizations and government establishments in the Nigerian building industry (NBI). The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, factor and multiple regression analyses. The result shows that the two factors with the most significant adverse effect on the uptake of e-Procurement were the high investment cost, and lack of technical expertise required in setting up e-procurement technologies and processes. Difference between how the researchers and practitioners understood the barriers to the uptake of e-Procurement was observed. Technical, infrastructure, political, social, and cultural issues; the lack of evidence of the benefits of e-Procurement in the building industry; and lack of top management support were the three strongest predictors of low uptake of e-Procurement by the organizations surveyed. The study suggests that to ensure a critical mass uptake of e-Procurement and maximization of its benefits in the procurement of building works, services and materials in Nigeria, there is a need for concerted effort by all stakeholders in the industry to eliminate the barriers identified in this research.
Lombard speech synthesis using long short-term memory recurrent neural networks

In statistical parametric speech synthesis (SPSS), a few studies have investigated the Lombard effect, specifically by using hidden Markov model (HMM)-based systems. Recently, artificial neural networks have demonstrated promising results in SPSS, specifically by using long short-term memory recurrent neural networks (LSTMs). The Lombard effect, however, has not been studied in the LSTM-based speech synthesis systems. In this study, we propose three methods for Lombard speech adaptation in LSTM-based speech synthesis. In particular, (1) we augment Lombard specific information with the linguistic features as input, (2) scale the hidden activations using the learning hidden unit contributions (LHUC) method, and (3) fine-tune the LSTMs trained on normal speech with a small Lombard speech data. To investigate the effectiveness of the proposed methods, we carry out experiments using small (10 utterances) and large (500 utterances) Lombard speech data. Experimental results confirm the adaptability of the LSTMs, and similarity tests show that the LSTMs can achieve significantly better adaptation performance than the HMMs in both small and large data conditions.
Effects of a Combined Resistance-Plyometric Training Program on Muscular Strength, Running Economy, and V[Combining Dot Above]O2peak in Division I Female Soccer Players

Abstract Grieco, CR, Cortes, N, Greska, EK, Lucci, S, and Onate, JA. Effects of a combined resistance-plyometric training program on muscular strength, running economy, and V[Combining Dot Above]O2peak in division I female soccer players. J Strength Cond Res 26(9): 2570–2576, 2012—Resistance and plyometric training programs have demonstrated consistent improvements in running economy (RE) in trained and untrained adults in the absence of improvements in maximal oxygen consumption. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a 10-week combined resistance-plyometric training program on the RE and V[Combining Dot Above]O2max in female soccer players. Fifteen Division 1A female soccer players (age 19.0 ± 0.7 years; height 1.67 ± 0.1 m; weight 61.7 ± 8.1 kg) performed a treadmill test for V[Combining Dot Above]O2max and RE at the end of a competitive season (PRE) and after a 10-week training program (POST). Isometric strength was measured in knee flexion and extension. Resistance training was conducted 2 d·wk−1 on nonconsecutive days; plyometric training was conducted separately on different nonconsecutive days. Eleven subjects were included in the PRE-POST analysis (age 19.0 ± 0.8 years; height 1.67 ± 0.5 m; weight 59.9 ± 6.7 kg). Descriptive statistics were compared using analysis of variance with repeated measures with a Bonferroni adjustment, and significance was set at p < 0.05. A significant increase occurred after training in the V[Combining Dot Above]O2peak (10.5%; p = 0.008), time to fatigue (6.9%; p = 0.017), and interpolated maximal speed (3.6%; p = 0.016), despite there being a decrease in the maximal respiratory exchange ratio (2.9%; p = 0.001). There was no significant change in the RE at 9 km·h−1; however, there was a significant decrease in the percentage of the V[Combining Dot Above]O2peak at 9 km·h−1 (−5.6%; p = 0.02). Maximal isometric strength of knee flexors and extensors did not change. The results suggest a plyometric-agility training program may increase the V[Combining Dot Above]O2peak in female soccer players; however, the effect on RE was equivocal.
Results of Sinusoidal Harmonic Acceleration Test in One Thousand Patients: Preliminary Report

One thousand patients with dizziness were tested by sinusoidal harmonic acceleration with frequencies of . 01, . 02, . 04, . 08, and . 16 Hz. Two hundred fifty (25% of data base) were randomly selected for this study. One hundred forty-eight diagnoses were confirmed: 66 (45%) patients had a clinical diagnosis of peripheral vestibular dysfunction, 28 (19%) had central vestibular dysfunction, and 53 (36%) had dizziness of undetermined cause. This preliminary study investigated the response patterns of phase (latency), asymmetry (slow phase preponderance), and gain (output/input) as they correlated with each of the above patient groups. The main response pattern was a varying degree of asymmetry with normal or abnormal latency. Persistent abnormal phase pattern indicated permanent vestibular damage and could not be used reliably to differentiate peripheral from central vestibular dysfunction. Asymmetry changed with time and correlated with patients' symptoms. The dynamic pattern of asymmetry could be used to differentiate peripheral from central vestibular dysfunction. Gain was a reliable and essential measure of the sensitivity of the vestibular system and the validity of the rotational response.
Sliding mode control to connected string with matched boundary input disturbance

We propose a boundary state feedback control law for a one-dimensional connected string equation with general external disturbance entering the control end. Sliding mode control is adopted for investigation. There are two steps: A sliding surface is first found so that the system on the sliding surface is exponentially stable; and then a variable structure feedback control is designed to satisfy the finite time reaching condition. The closed-loop system is shown to be convergent to zero. Finally, some numerical simulations are presented to illustrate the effect of the control.
Analysis of the performance of a MEMS micromirror

This paper describes the structure and analysis of a particular micro-electromechanical-systems (MEMS) micromirror device that can be used as an optical switch. The predicted performance is compared with measurements. Sufficient details are given to enable this device to be used as a benchmark problem for electric field analysis and coupled structural-electric systems.
Electronic structures of [110]-faceted self-assembled pyramidal InAs/GaAs quantum dots

We calculate the electronic structures of pyramidal quantum dots with supercells containing 250000 atoms, using spin-orbit-coupled, nonlocal, empirical pseudopotentials. We compare the results with previous theoretical calculations. Our calculation circumvents the approximations underlying the conventional effective-mass approach: we describe the potential, the strain and the wave functions using atomistic rather than continuum models. The potential is given by a superposition of screened atomic pseudopotentials, the strain is obtained from minimizing the atomistic strain energy, and the wave function is expanded using a plane-wave basis set. We find the following. (1) The conduction bands are formed essentially from single envelope functions, so they can be classified according to the nodal structure as s, p, and {ital d}. However, due to strong multiband coupling, most notably light hole with heavy hole, the valence states cannot be classified in the language of single-band envelope functions. In fact, the hole states have no nodal planes. (2) There is a strong anisotropy in the polarization of the lowest valence state to conduction state optical transition. This is in contrast to the eight band {bold k}{center_dot}{bold p} model, which finds essentially zero anisotropy. (3) There are at least four bound electron states for a 113-{Angstrom}-based quantummore » dot. This number of bound states is larger than that found in eight band {bold k}{center_dot}{bold p} calculations. (4) Since our atomistic description retains the correct C{sub 2v} symmetry of a square-based pyramid made of zinc-blende solids, we find that the otherwise degenerate {ital p} states are split by about 25 meV. This splitting is underestimated in the eight-band {bold k}{center_dot}{bold p} calculation. {copyright} {ital 1999} {ital The American Physical Society}« less
Prevalence of stress among medical students in Jizan University , Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

1Faculty of Medicine; 2Medical students, University of Jizan, Jizan, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Correspondence: Dr. Mubarack Sani, Faculty of Medicine, University of Jizan, Jizan, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. email: . drmubaracksani@gmail.com INTRODUCTION Stress and its psychological manifestations are inherent in human life and are a major source of concern in the modern day society. Stress in individuals is defined as anything that disrupts the normal person’s physical or mental wellbeing. It arises due to the inability of an individual to meet the demands made on him. A mild form of stress may manifest as a bad mood while an extreme one may lead to an act of violence, burnout or suicide. As per World Health Organization, a stressor is any stimulus which evokes a stress response. Stressors may be real or imagined, and internal or external. The overall impact of a stressor will depend on its features and the characteristics of those who have been affected. The perceived ABSTRACT
Recruitment of the Extracellular Signal-Regulated Kinase/Ribosomal S6 Kinase Signaling Pathway to the NFATc4 Transcription Activation Complex

ABSTRACT Integration of protein kinases into transcription activation complexes influences the magnitude of gene expression. The nuclear factor of activated T cells (NFAT) group of proteins are critical transcription factors that direct gene expression in immune and nonimmune cells. A balance of phosphotransferase activity is necessary for optimal NFAT activation. Activation of NFAT requires dephosphorylation by the calcium-mediated calcineurin phosphatase to promote NFAT nuclear accumulation, and the Ras-activated extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase, which targets NFAT partners, to potentiate transcription. Whether protein kinases operate on NFAT and contribute positively to transcription activation is not clear. Here, we coupled DNA affinity isolation with in-gel kinase assays to avidly pull down the activated NFAT and identify its associated protein kinases. We demonstrate that p90 ribosomal S6 kinase (RSK) is recruited to the NFAT-DNA transcription complex upon activation. The formation of RSK-NFATc4-DNA transcription complex is also apparent upon adipogenesis. Bound RSK phosphorylates Ser676 and potentiates NFATc4 DNA binding by escalating NFAT-DNA association. Ser676 is also targeted by the ERK MAP kinase, which interacts with NFAT at a distinct region than RSK. Thus, integration of the ERK/RSK signaling pathway provides a mechanism to modulate NFATc4 transcription activity.
Lipase‐catalysed transesterification of soya bean oil for biodiesel production during continuous batch operation

The effects of temperature, oil/alcohol molar ratio and by‐product glycerol were studied during Lipozyme TL IM‐catalysed continuous batch operation when short‐chain alcohols were used as the acyl acceptor. In non‐continuous batch operation, the optimal oil/alcohol ratio and temperature were 1:4 and 40–50 °C; however, during the continuous batch operation, the optimal oil/alcohol ratio and temperature were 1:1 and 30 °C; 95% of enzymic activity remained after 10 batches when isopropanol was adopted to remove by‐product glycerol during repeated use of the lipase.
Data association in temporal integration of stereo depth

We describe the construction and integration of 3D models using two calibrated stereo vision rigs mounted on a load-haul-dump vehicle (LHD) operating in an experimental mine. The system operates in unstructured environments, and does not assume it is operating on a smooth planar surface. We compare the 3D models with ground truth data obtained using a laser scanner over 50 meters of tunnel including an intersection and a muck bay. Our implementation is partially recursive, in that the 3D model is updated recursively, but image data is saved for later use in associating image features to map locations. This kind of implementation is a good compromise between fully batch and fully recursive, as the growth in both storage requirements and computational complexity with time is very low, while retaining the stability of a batch method
EFFECTIVENESS OF JASMINE OIL MASSAGE ON REDUCTION OF LABOR PAIN AMONG PRIMIGRAVIDA MOTHERS

The study was conducted to assess the effectiveness of jasmine oil massage on labour pain during first stage of labour among 40 primigravida women. The study design adopted was true experimental approach with pre-test - post-test control group design. The demographic Proforma were collected from the women by interview and Visual analogue scale was used to measure the level of labour pain in both the groups. Data obtained in these areas were analysed by descriptive and inferential statistics. A significant difference was found in the experimental group( t 9.869 , p<0.05) . A significant difference was found between experimental group and control group. cal The pre-test ('t ' 0.36, p>0.05) and the post-test (t 11.75, p<0.05). No significant association was found between the level of labour cal
Enumerating Neighborly Polytopes and Oriented Matroids

Neighborly polytopes are those that maximize the number of faces in each dimension among all polytopes with the same number of vertices. Despite their extremal properties, they form a surprisingly rich class of polytopes, which has been widely studied and is the subject of many open problems and conjectures. In this article, we study the enumeration of neighborly polytopes beyond the cases that have been computed so far. To this end, we enumerate neighborly oriented matroids—a combinatorial abstraction of neighborly polytopes—of small rank and corank. In particular, if we denote by OM(r, n) the set of all oriented matroids of rank r and n elements, we determine all uniform neighborly oriented matroids in OM(5, ≤12), OM(6, ≤9), OM(7, ≤11), and OM(9, ≤12) and all possible face lattices of neighborly oriented matroids in OM(6, 10) and OM(8, 11). Moreover, we classify all possible face lattices of uniform 2-neighborly oriented matroids in OM(7, 10) and OM(8, 11). Based on the enumeration, we construct many interesting examples and test open conjectures.
Towards Richer and Self-Supervised Perception in Robots

Robots need to be able to navigate through environments, perform manipulation tasks, and avoid obstacles, all while having a strong spatial and semantic understanding of its immediate environment. This thesis focuses on endowing robots with richer perceptual models for improved navigation and scene understanding. I focus on three fundamental elements that are imperative to robust perception in autonomous systems1. Through the concept of SLAM-supported object recognition, we develop the ability for robots to be able to leverage their inherent localization and mapping capabilities (spatial understanding) to better inform object recognition within scenes (semantic understanding). Inherent to the spatial and semantic understanding is the choice of map representation. Motivated by the need for a unified resource-aware map representation in vision-based mapping and navigation we develop a High-performance and Tunable Stereo Reconstruction algorithm that enable robots to quickly reconstruct their immediate surroundings and thereby maneuver at high-speeds.