Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cost and cost-effectiveness of treating smear-positive tuberculosis by health extension workers in Ethiopia: an ancillary cost-effectiveness analysis of community randomized trial

Background Evidence for policy- and decision-making related to the cost of delivering tuberculosis (TB) control is lacking in Ethiopia. We aimed to determine the cost and cost-effectiveness of involving health extension workers (HEWs) in TB treatment under a community-based initiative in Ethiopia. This paper presents an ancillary cost-effectiveness analysis of data from a RCT, from which the main outcomes have already been published. Methodology/Principal Findings Options of treating TB patients in the community by HEWs in the health posts and general health workers at health facility were compared in a community-randomized trial. Costs were analysed from a societal perspective in 2007 in US dollars using standard methods. We prospectively enrolled smear-positive patients, and calculated the cost-effectiveness in terms of the cost per patient successfully treated. The total cost for each successfully treated smear-positive patient was higher in health facilities (US$161.9) compared with the community-based approach (US$60.7). The total, patient and care giver costs of community-based treatment were lower than health facility DOT by 62.6%, 63.9% and 88.2%, respectively. Involving HEWs added a total cost of US$8.80 to the health service per patient treated in the health posts in the community. Conclusions/Significance Community-based treatment by HEWs costs only 37% of what treatment by general health workers costs for similar outcomes. Involving HEWs in TB treatment is a cost-effective treatment alternative to the health service and to the patients and their caregivers. Therefore, there is both an economic and public health reason to consider involving HEWs in TB treatment in Ethiopia. However, community-based treatment would require initial investment for implementation, training and supervision. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00913172
Characteristics of coplanar waveguide on lithium niobate crystals as a microwave substrate

A finite ground coplanar waveguide (FG-CPW) on lithium niobate (LiNbO3) substrates, without a thin SiO2 buffer layer, was experimentally characterized by using on-wafer measurements. The dielectric constant and the characteristic impedance were extracted from calibrated measurements made at up to 20GHz using the FG-CPW method. The loss tangent was then obtained by the conformal mapping approach after the dielectric constant and characteristic impedance had been accurately extracted. The dielectric losses of LiNbO3 substrates are not negligible even in the X band.
A Framework for Research Supervision

One of the main challenges that are encountered in research development is the management of research activities. Supervisors often have difficulties in managing schedules, issues and supervision of different research activities. This is compounded by students’ poor research skills. Consequently, in this paper, we propose a knowledge management framework to point out, track, and monitor various research supervision activities. The proposed framework consists of two layers, abstract and detail. The abstract layer consists of six stages which are; basement stage, review stage, data collection stage, data analysis stage, development stage, and testing and validation stage. These stages, according to our framework, are mandatory; in other words, any research must go through the stages. To complete the task of each stage, a number of steps are defined, which constitute the detail layer. A supervisor is able to pick up appropriate steps (and not all suggested steps) from the detail layer since the complexity varies from one research to another. We discuss the results of our findings in conceiving the framework. Keywords: research development, development stage, research activities, supervision management
The Role of Biota in Shaping the Phosphorus Cycle in Lakes

Abstract Although phosphorus is an abundant element on Earth, its low availability often constrains the growth and/or biomass of aquatic biota. Introducing large quantities of available P into the biosphere, humans have opened up the relatively closed biogeochemical cycle of P, resulting in the eutrophication of many types of aquatic ecosystems worldwide. A thorough understanding of the P cycle is needed, therefore, to both understand the structure and functioning of aquatic ecosystems and to preserve the quality of our aquatic resources. In this review, we deal first with the often misused concept of ‘nutrient limitation’. The rather general use of P uptake kinetics as an indicator of nutrient deficiency requires a discussion on methodology. Since metabolic rates and nutrient demands scale with the size of organisms, coexistence of aquatic osmotrophs relies on unique adaptations and is controlled by the whole network of ecological interactions. Some of these adaptations and interactions are reviewed, with a focus on P cycling. Finally, a case study demonstrates that the complicated P cycle must be simplified to extremes to predict eutrophication-related changes in a shallow lake.
Development and demonstration of 12.4 GHz SiGe HBT mixer for radio over fiber applications

This work involves in conveying of an optically modulated intermediate frequency (IF) over fiber by employing the frequency up-conversion technique at the base station (BS), while the local oscillator (LO) signal was assumed to be remote and was located at the central station (CS). The main focus of this work is the development of optical front-end receiver for radio over fiber (RoF), whereby the LO signal was sent from CS to BS using the system. At the BS, the optically generated LO signal was used to up-convert the IF signal by using a microwave mixer. The mixer was developed utilizing heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) as its main active component due to the high internal gain offered and to allow the frequency conversion to take place. HBT mixer configuration was successfully modeled and simulated by employing harmonic-balance technique in Microwave Office (MWO) software. It has been verified through fabrication and device demonstration. In which, with the driven LO power of 0 dBm, the simulated conversion gain of -2.8 dB to 5.2 dB was obtained at -30 dBm to -10 dBm of IF input power level. The design was practically demonstrated and up-converted RF signal of up to 12.4 GHz was achieved.
Low‐temperature beam‐induced deposition of thin tin films

Ion and electron beam‐induced deposition (BID) of thin (1–4 μm), conductive films is accomplished by dissociating and removing the nonmetallic components of an adsorbed, metal‐based, molecular gas [SnCl4 and (CH3)4Sn]. Previous research has focused primarily on room‐temperature (monolayer adsorption) BID using electrons and slow, heavy ions. This study investigates low‐temperature (120 K) BID in which the condensation rate of the precursor gas is well controlled. The residual metallic films are produced by using as incident beams either 2‐keV electrons, 25‐keV H2+, or 50‐keV H2+, all of which provide predominantly electronic energy deposition, or 30‐keV Ar+, which provides predominantly nuclear energy deposition. Residual films are analyzed ex situ by scanning electron microscopy, mechanical thickness measurements, resistivity measurements, Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy, and infrared spectrometry. A model is developed that considers bulk and surface dissociation mechanisms and sputtering to descr.
Influence of hot water blanching process on nutritional content, microstructure, antioxidant activity and phenolic profile of Cinnamomum porrectum herbal tea

Background: Cinnamomum porrectum leaves, one kind of Cinnamomum family, has recently been used to produce a locally herbal tea. Although C. porrectum essential oil and aqueous extract have been reported to have some biological activities, including antioxidant, antimicrobial, and anti-inflammatory activities, there is no scientific data using the blanching process for the production of herbal tea. Therefore, this experiment aimed to study the effect of hot water blanching before drying process on microstructure, nutrition content of the tea powder, TPC, TFC, antioxidant activities of infusion, as well as the phenolic profile of the extract. Objective: To determine effect of hot water blanching process on nutritional value, microstructure, phenolic profile, and antioxidant activity of the C. porrectum herbal tea. Methods: The C. porrectum leaves were divided into 2 groups; control (un-treated) and blanched before dried for herbal tea processing. The fresh leaves and the powders of control and blanched leaves were checked for proximate composition and chlorophyll contents, in addition to color value. The powders were determined microstructure by SEM. The infusions were determined to have color value and total extractable phenolic and flavonoid contents, as well as antioxidant activities. The hydrolyzed extracts of freeze dried infusion were subjected to identify phenolic
System for Automatic Transcription of Sessions of the Polish Senate

This paper describes research behind a Large-Vocabulary Continuous Speech Recognition (LVCSR) system for the transcription of Senate speeches for the Polish language. The system utilizes several components: a phonetic transcription system, language and acoustic model training systems, a Voice Activity Detector (VAD), a LVCSR decoder, and a subtitle generator and presentation system. Some of the modules relied on already available tools and some had to be made from the beginning but the authors ensured that they used the most advanced techniques they had available at the time. Finally, several experiments where performed to compare the performance of both more modern and more conventional technologies.
The moderating role of organization size on the relationship between individual characteristics and system conditions on successful implementation of Human Resource Information System (HRIS)

Past studies on HRIS have not established the moderating role of organization size to the successful implementation of HRIS. Therefore, this study will examine the relationship between individual characteristics and system condition to the successful implementation of HRIS with organization size as a moderator.Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) will be used to explain user satisfaction and system usage to measure the success of HRIS implementation.
IS EUROPE OPEN TO A STUDENT-ORIENTED FRAMEWORK FOR LITERATURE? A comparative analysis of the formal literature curriculum in six European countries

This study is a comparative analysis of literary curricula in six European countries and is part of the LiFT-2 project, funded by the Comenius Life Long Learning Programme of the European Commission. The result of this project was a European literary framework for secondary education which can be de-scribed as a developmental competence-based taxonomy for teachers (www.literaryframework.eu). In this article we chart the paradigmatic tendencies of the literature teaching curricula between grades 7 and 12 of five countries (Czech Republic, Finland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Romania) and three German states (Bavaria, Lower Saxony, Thuringia). The aim of this study was to discover the degree to which these tendencies corresponded to the developmental European Literary Framework we have conceived on the basis of the shared pedagogical content knowledge of teachers and experts in six countries. The conclusion is that most of the analysed literary curricula are open to a developmental competence-based framework, but additional research is needed to determine whether Europe as a whole is ready for such a framework.
On the dynamics of kefir volatome

Probiotic drinks constitute an important component of the daily diet in the modern society. They contain active microbial strains, which contribute to the chemical composition of these dairy products. The metabolic activity of microbes can affect the flavor and smell of probiotic drinks at room temperature. “Kefir” is an example of fermented milk, which contains various species of bacteria as well as fungi (yeast). In order to gain a better understanding of the metabolic processes shaping the chemical composition of kefir drinks, in the present study, we perform a comparative analysis of volatomes of kefir and single-species cultures of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry enabled the monitoring of volatile metabolites collected onto solid phase microextraction fibres (divenylbenzene/carboxen/polydimethylsiloxane). The temporal profiles of secondary metabolites (isopentyl acetate, ethyl hexanoate, ethyl octanoate, phenethyl acetate, and ethyl decanoate), present in S. cerevisiae cultures and commercial kefir, exhibit similarity. This points to a significant contribution of Saccharomyces strains on the dynamics of the chemical composition of kefir during storage at ambient conditions. On the other hand, commercial yogurt, which contains various species of bacteria but not yeast is much more chemically stable and does not exhibit rapid changes in the ester-type metabolites, which are typical of kefir.
Measuring Financial Access

Financial access is gradually being recognised as an important input to economic development. Using World Bank (2007) database, this study examines the extent of financial access in developed and developing countries. Further, it develops a new socio-economic development index which incorporates financial access. It then compares socio-economic development of various countries as shown by HDI alone, and by the new index incorporating financial access. The results of the study show that Belgium ranks highest in terms of financial access among all the countries considered, followed by Spain and Germany. In addition, the ranking of countries in terms of HDI changes if financial access is taken into account.
Cytotoxicity Effect and Morphological Study of Different Duku(Lansium domesticum corr.) Extract towards Human Colorectal Adenocarcinoma Cells Line (HT-29)

Context: Lansium domesticum corr. is a member of the family Meliaceae, and known locally as duku and has been used traditionally in the prevention and treatment of various illness. Aim: To study the cytotoxic effect and morphological changes of human colorectal adenocarcinoma cells (HT-29) treated with different duku (Lansium domesticum corr.) extracts. Methods: The L.domesticum corr. fruit extracts were processed involving three different solvents; methanol, ethanol and ethyl acetate. HT-29 cell lines were treated with different concentrations of L. domesticum corr. (0-100 μg/ml) extracts for a total of 24, 48 and 72 hours. Cytotoxicity of cells line was determined by using MTT assay as per IC50 values. Results: Methanol extract of L. domesticum corr. showed IC50 value at 6.79 ± 0.00 μg/ml and 50.0 ± 0.00 μg/ml respective, while ethyl acetate extract of L. domesticum corr. reached IC50 value at 86.00 ± 0.08 μg/ml, and 96.0 ± 0.12 μg/ml. There was no IC50 value of ethanol extract from L.domesticum corr. Only methanol extract showed toxicity towards HT-29 cells line. Conclusion: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first repeat the exploring the effect of duku (L. domesticum corr.) extract on HT-29 cells line.
A closed-form approach to Bayesian inference in tree-structured graphical models

We consider the inference of the structure of an undirected graphical model in an exact Bayesian framework. More specifically we aim at achieving the inference with close-form posteriors, avoiding any sampling step. This task would be intractable without any restriction on the considered graphs, so we limit our exploration to mixtures of spanning trees. We consider the inference of the structure of an undirected graphical model in a Bayesian framework. To avoid convergence issues and highly demanding Monte Carlo sampling, we focus on exact inference. More specifically we aim at achieving the inference with close-form posteriors, avoiding any sampling step. To this aim, we restrict the set of considered graphs to mixtures of spanning trees. We investigate under which conditions on the priors - on both tree structures and parameters - exact Bayesian inference can be achieved. Under these conditions, we derive a fast an exact algorithm to compute the posterior probability for an edge to belong to {the tree model} using an algebraic result called the Matrix-Tree theorem. We show that the assumption we have made does not prevent our approach to perform well on synthetic and flow cytometry data.
The User Paradox in Technology Testing

Per Hetland Director, InterMedia, University of Oslo, Norway. per.hetland@intermedia.uio. no English abstract Technology testing provides arenas for interaction between users and producers. In the experiments potential user needs and user-values regarding new technology are communicated to facilitate invention and diffuse innovation. This article provides a framework for discussing how users contribute to both the knowledge and policy construction processes when participating in technology testing.
Automated Worker Activity Analysis in Indoor Environments for Direct-Work Rate Improvement from long sequences of RGB-D Images

This paper presents a new method for activity analysis of construction workers using inexpensive RGB+depth sensors. This is an important task as no current workface assessment method can provide detailed and continuous information to help project managers identify bottlenecks affecting labors’ productivity. Previous work using RGB-D images focuses on action recognition form short video sequences wherein only one action is represented within each video. Automating this analysis for long sequences of RGB-D images is challenging since the start and the end of each action is unknown, recognizing single actions is still challenging, and there are no datasets and validation metrics to evaluate algorithms. Given an input sequence of RGB-D images, our algorithm divides it into temporal segments and automatically classifies the observed actions. To do so, the algorithm first detects body postures in real-time. Then a Kernel Density Estimation Model (KDE) is trained to model classification scores from discriminatively-trained bag-of-poses action classifiers. Furthermore, a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) labels sequences of actions that are most discriminative. The performance of our model is tested on unprecedented datasets of actual drywall construction operations. Experimental results, in addition to the perceived benefits and limitations of the proposed method are discussed in detail.
Mobile AR in the outdoors: watch the clouds

Even the most modern wearable devices do not provide sufficient resources for the complexity of outdoor AR algorithms, induced by the uncontrolled environment. In this paper, we present a framework whereby nearby infrastructure, called cloudlets, is leveraged with an execution environment to provide additional computational power and storage capacity. The execution environment is dynamically composed with service components and data, dependent on the actual user context. We discuss the architecture and provide first experimental results on a distributed mobile AR application that has been adapted to the cloudlet paradigm.
P wave amplitudes in a 3-D earth

SUMMARY Evidence is presented here that P wave amplitudes contain additional information on the Earth’s heterogeneity and must be considered in future tomographic interpretations. We analyse the reliability and the variance of teleseismic P wave amplitudes recorded at well calibrated broadband Global Seismic Network (GSN) stations from intermediate to deep earthquakes (depth >46 km). The dataset contains 217 earthquakes with mb between 5.6 and 7.6, from 1993 January to 2000 May. Using pairs of closely located events with similar focal mechanisms as well as data recorded at the closely spaced MOMA seismic array we demonstrate the consistency of observations. We deduce that the magnification of the GSN instruments generally drifts by at most 2 per cent per year, and likely much less. P wave amplitudes have variations due to focusing/defocusing with a standard deviation of at least 38 per cent. This reduces to 19 per cent if only periods in excess of 10 s are considered. Tomographic P wave models with mantle velocity anomalies of the order of 1 per cent are unable to reproduce such large variations.
Person Re-identification Based on Kernel Local Fisher Discriminant Analysis and Mahalanobis Distance Learning

Faculty of Engineering School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Master of Applied Science Person Re-identification Based on Kernel Local Fisher Discriminant Analysis and Mahalanobis Distance Learning by Qiangsen He Person re-identification (Re-ID) has become an intense research area in recent years. The main goal of this topic is to recognize and match individuals over time at the same or different locations. This task is challenging due to the variation of illumination, viewpoints, pedestrians’ appearance and partial occlusion. Previous works mainly focus on finding robust features and metric learning. Many metric learning methods convert the Re-ID problem to a matrix decomposition problem by Fisher discriminant analysis (FDA). Mahalanobis distance metric learning is a popular method to measure similarity; however, since directly extracted descriptors usually have high dimensionality, it’s intractable to learn a high-dimensional semi-positive definite (SPD) matrix. Dimensionality reduction is used to project high-dimensional descriptors to a lower-dimensional space while preserving those discriminative information. In this paper, the kernel Fisher discriminant analysis (KLFDA) [38] is used to reduce dimensionality given that kernelization method can greatly improve Re-ID performance for nonlinearity. Inspired by [47], an SPD matrix is then learned on lower-dimensional descriptors based on the limitation that the maximum intraclass distance is at least one unit smaller than the minimum interclass distance. This method is proved to have excellent performance compared with other advanced metric learning.
Dynamic Malware Analysis and Detection in Virtual Environment

The amount and the complexity of malicious activity increasing and evolving day by day. Typical static code analysis is futile when challenged by diverse variants. The prolog of new malware samples every day is not uncommon and the malware designed by the attackers have the ability to change as they propagate. Thus, automated dynamic malware analysis becomes a widely preferred technique for the identification of unknown malware. In this paper, an automated malware detection system is presented based on dynamic malware analysis approach. The behavior of malware is observed in the controlled environment of the popular malware analysis system. It uses the clustering and classification of embedded malware behavior reports to identify the presence of malicious behavior. Based on the experimentation and evaluation it is evident that the proposed system is able to achieve better F-measures, FPR, FNR, TPR and TNR values resulting in accurate classification leading to more efficient detection of unknown malware compared to the traditional hierarchical classification approach.