Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Predator-Prey Models Applied to Ecology Data

Predator-Prey data is very common in many applications, especially considering ecology data (Achcar, J. et al., 2010). Usually, we have the presence of one or more covariates associated to each observation. Let Y (t) be the population abundance at time t. Many differential equations are introduced in the literature to describe the population growth at time t (Malthus, 1798; Verhulst, 1838). In the presence of another population that consumes the first population, the predator-prey interaction is described by many authors. Lotka (1924) and Volterra (1926) describe the interaction predator-prey by the differential equations:
Technological Knowledge Index and Macroeconomic Effects of Industrial Technology in Malaysia

This paper is intended to develop an index to measure the changes of technology in the manufacturing sector of Malaysia for the period 1980-2000. The index, namely the Technological Knowledge Index (TKI), had exhibited an upward trend and this suggests that the technology level of Malaysia had been improving gradually over the years. Nonetheless, it showed signs of weakening towards the end 1990s. Making use of the TKI, a research is conducted on the effects of industrial technology on the following eight Malaysian macroeconomic variables: consumer price index, total exports, gross national product, total imports, total investments, ratio of stock market capitalisation to gross domestic product, unemployment rate and average wage changes. The results show that industrial technology helps improving all these eight macroeconomic variables. Based on Johansen cointegration test, the variables of the equation models for total exports, gross national product, total imports and average wage changes are cointegrated. However, based on the small sample method of Pesaran et al.’s (2001), only the variables of the equation model for average wage changes are cointegrated.
A Robust TEO-Based Speech Segmentation Method For Automatic Speech Recognition

Based on the Teager Energy Operator (TEO), the “TEO-based method for Spoken Word Segmentation” (TSWS) is presented and compared with two widely used speech segmentation methods: “Classical”, that uses energy and zero-crossing rate computations, and “Bottom-up”, based on the concepts of adaptive level equalization, energy pulse detection and endpoint ordering. The implemented Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) system uses Mel-frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) as the parametric representation of the speech signal, and a standard multilayer feed-forward network (MLP) as the recognizer. A database of 17 different words was used, with a total of 3,519 utterances from 69 different speakers. Two in three of those utterances constituted the training set for the MLP, and one in three, the testing set. The tests were conducted for each of the TSWS, Classical or Bottom-up methods, used in the ASR speech segmentation stage. TSWS has enabled the ASR to achieve 99.0% of success on generalization tests, against 98.6% for Classical and Bottom-up methods. After, a white Gaussian noise was artificially added to the ASR inputs to reach a signal-to-noise ratio of 15dB. The noise presence alters the ASR performances to 96.5%, 93.6%, and 91.4% on generalization tests when using TSWS, Classical and Bottom-up methods, respectively.
Relationship between Financial Development and Economic Growth in Nigeria: A Triangulation Approach

This paper aims at evaluating relation between financial development and economic growth in Nigeria, taking exception from existing literatures by integrating broad distinctive indicators of financial development into our model and using different econometric techniques to assess the finance- growth link between 1987 and 2014. The findings indicate that financial development and economic growth move along together in the long run. It was revealed that credit to the private sector, stock market capitalization and inflation have negative and impact on the economy, while broad money supply, trade openness and foreign direct investment exert positive influence on the economy. The error correction term in the model availed us the correctional influence in the speed of adjustment which indicated that errors of divergence from equilibrium was corrected at the speed of 86% each year. The Granger causality tests show that gross domestic product was granger causal for foreign direct investment, without a feedback system.
Drones in Libraries: The Development of an Interdisciplinary Research Service Using Drones and 3D Modeling Technologies at Ryerson University Library

At Ryerson University Library, we collaborate with researchers across a variety of disciplines that require capturing and modeling the real world in 3 dimensions (3D). To do so, several 3D reconstruction technologies have been applied, varying in cost and ease of use. Some applications require capturing large areas for which a Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) or “drone” presents a cost effective option for data acquisition.
Does Supply Management Performance Impact Cash Flows? An Empirical Study of SMSs Operating in Greece

Enterprises that focus on supply chain excellence are expected to have stronger financial position and reflect their supply chain performance in their accrual statements. So far, researchers have been focused on the effect that supply chain management has on profitability. Measures such as ROI, ROA and market share have long been used for estimating financial performance. However, profitability doesn’t necessarily secure increased liquidity, especially in cases of small medium enterprises. This study explores the impact of supply management performance on cash ratios and cash conversion cycles by using data from the accrual statements of small- medium enterprises.
Open-Window: A Sound Event Dataset for Window State Detection and Recognition

Situated in the domain of urban sound scene classiﬁcation by humans and machines, this research is the ﬁrst step towards mapping urban noise pollution experienced indoors and ﬁnding ways to reduce its negative impact in peoples’ homes. We have recorded a sound dataset, called Open-Window, which contains recordings from three different locations and four different window states; two stationary states (open and close) and two transitional states (open to close and close to open). We have then built our machine recognition base lines for different scenarios (open set versus closed set) using a deep learning framework. The human listening test is also performed to be able to compare the human and machine performance for detecting the window state just using the acoustic cues. Our experimental results reveal that when using a simple machine baseline system, humans and machines are achieving similar average performance for closed set experiments.
CADM 1 is a strong neuroblastoma candidate gene that maps within a 3 . 72 Mb critical region of loss on 11 q 23 .

BACKGROUND: Recurrent loss of part of the long arm of chromosome 11 is a well established hallmark of a subtype of aggressive neuroblastomas. Despite intensive mapping efforts to localize the culprit 11q tumour suppressor gene, this search has been unsuccessful thus far as no sufficiently small critical region could be delineated for selection of candidate genes. METHODS: To refine the critical region of 11q loss, the chromosome 11 status of 100 primary neuroblastoma tumours and 29 cell lines was analyzed using a BAC array containing a chromosome 11 tiling path. For the genes mapping within our refined region of loss, meta-analysis on published neuroblastoma mRNA gene expression datasets was performed for candidate gene selection. The DNA methylation status of the resulting candidate gene was determined using re-expression experiments by treatment of neuroblastoma cells with the demethylating agent 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine and bisulphite sequencing. RESULTS: Two small critical regions . Document type : Article de périodique (Journal article) Référence bibliographique Michels, Evi ; Hoebeeck, Jasmien ; De Preter, Katleen ; Schramm, Alexander ; Brichard, Bénédicte ; et. al. CADM1 is a strong neuroblastoma candidate gene that maps within a 3.72 Mb critical region of loss on 11q23. In: BMC cancer, Vol. 8, p. 173 (2008) DOI : 10.1186/1471-2407-8-173
PostMessage Vulnerability in Chrome Extensions

Browser extensions are a popular way for a user to customize their online experience. These extensions allow for various types of functionality including but not limited to dynamically changing page content and keeping track of their browsing history. If these functions were compromised, it would be a violation of user privacy. The postMessage mechanism is a potential avenue to exploit extensions if the origin checks guarding the postMessage are unsound. Origin checks are designed to ensure that postMessages are sourced from expected locations. A flawed origin check allows for an attacker to send messages from a URL that matches the check but is not actually from the intended sender. This type of attack has been previously studied on HTML5 websites and this paper extends the postMessage attack vector to extensions.
Testing Long-Run Neutrality of Money in Malaysia

Monetary aggregates movements and their influence on domestic economy are important and essential to policy makers and researchers. To the policy makers, the influence and the existence of special relationship between monetary aggregates and other macroeconomic variables are important in designing policies such as to curb inflation pressure, stimulating economic growth and reduce unemployment problem. On the other hand, the researchers may use these aggregates and their relations with macroeconomic variables to estimate a complex macro model of an economy. In Malaysia, traditionally, monetary aggregate has been the major monetary policy strategy. Targeting M1, M2 and M3 has been the main policy targets until the mid- I 990s. However, by the mid-1990s, the Central Bank of Malaysia (BNM) has shifted their policy strategy from monetary targeting to interest rate targeting. As a matter of fact, the de-emphasizing of monetary aggregates as intermediate target begins with the de-emphasizing of MI in 1987. One of the major reasons for de-emphasizing monetary aggregates as policy variables is the availability of alternative interest-bearing financial assets in the markets as a result of active financial liberalization in recent years. As a result of the shifting of money into interest- bearing financial assets, the relationship between money and income becomes unstable, consequently, monetary policy actions using monetary aggregates as targets become ineffective. Our question is: Does the move made by BNM to de-emphasis monetary aggregates point to the fact that money does not affect output in Malaysia? In other words, one can ask: Does changes in money bring about in the changes on real economic variables? If none of the real economic variables would change in response to the change in money, we say that money is neutral. The neutrality of money has important implications for the role of monetary policy. In monetary-business-cycle (MBC) models.
Bring Your Own Authenticator / Authentication Security in Physical Access Control Systems

This work focuses on providing an efficient methodology for threat modelling of complex systems in their architectural design phase. The methodology, architectural threat analysis, along with new concepts for Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), specific to access control systems are provided. Scenarios based on the definitions of these new concepts, Bring Your Own Authenticator (BYOAuthenticator) and Bring Your Own Authentication (BYOAuthentication), have been incorporated as the basis of an architectural threat analysis for the usage of mobile devices in Physical Access Control Systems (PACS). Throughout the conduct of such an analysis, a combination of different threat modelling tools, namely attack trees and STRIDE threat lists, have been considered in an iterative fashion. The resulting detailed, step-by-step analysis, reveals high-level threats and relevant mitigation considerations. The study contributes to secure-by-design concept by providing an efficient and repeatable high-level architectural threat analysis methodology, as well as reusable BYOD terminologies, BYOAuthenticator and BYOAuthentication, including scenarios based on them. Architectural constructs based on these scenarios for a PACS, involving BYOD and biometrics, followed by their threat analysis, is a first and can be considered as a foundation for future studies.
Investigating impact of volatility persistence, market asymmetry and information inflow on volatility of stock indices using bivariate GJR-GARCH

Joint dynamics of market index returns, volume traded and volatility of stock market returns can unveil different dimensions of market microstructure. It can be useful for precise volatility estimation and understanding liquidity of the financial market. In this study, the joint dynamics is investigated with the help of bivariate GJR-GARCH methodology given by Bollerslev (1990), as this method helps in jointly estimating volatility equation of return and volume in one step estimation procedure and it also eliminates the regressor problem (Pagan ,1984). Three indices of different market capitalization have been considered where, S&P BSE Sensex represent large capitalization firms, BSE mid-cap represents mid-capitalization firms and BSE small-cap index represents small capitalization firms. The study finds that there exist negative conditional correlation between volume traded and return of large cap index. There is unidirectional relation between index returns and volume traded since change in volume can be explained by lags of index returns. The relation between volume traded and volatility is found to be positive in case of large-cap index but it is negative in the case of mid-cap and small-cap indices. It is observed that there exist bidirectional causality between volatility and volume traded in all the three indices considered. Volatility is affected by pronounced persistence in volatility, mean-reversion of returns and asymmetry in market. The rate of information arrival measured by IDV(Intra-day volatility) is found to be a significant source of the conditional heteroskedasticity in Indian markets since the presence of volume (proxy for information flow) in volatility equation, as an independent variable, marginally reduces the volatility persistence, whereas presence of IDV, as a proxy for information flow, completely vanishes the GARCH effect. Finally, it is observed that volume traded spills over from large cap to mid-cap index, from large-cap to small-cap index and from mid-cap to small-cap index, in response to new information arrival.
Whitepaper New Developments in DNA Extraction For Microbiome Analysis

The Human Microbiome Project and other approaches are dedicated to the exploration of the vast complexity of microbial communities living in association with the human body, including the skin, oral cavity, upper respiratory tract, stomach, intestine, and genitourinary tract. The aim of these projects is to understand hostmicrobe interactions with regard to human health and disease. Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) is a powerful analytical tool capable of resolving the microbiota in respect to community structure, dynamics, and activity. This overview discusses new solutions for enrichment and extraction of microbial DNA, removal of irrelevant non-target host DNA and ways to discriminate for DNA from live microbes.
Temperature Tuning the Catalytic Reactivity of Cu-Doped Porous Metal Oxides with Lignin Models

Reported are the temperature dependencies of the temporal product evolution for lignin model compounds over copper-doped porous metal oxide (CuPMO) in supercritical-methanol (sc-MeOH). These studies investigated 1-phenylethanol (PPE), benzyl phenyl ether (BPE), dihydrobenzofuran (DHBF), and phenol over operating temperature ranges from 280 to 330 °C. The first three model compounds represent the β-O-4 and α-O-4 linkages in lignin as well as the furan group commonly found in the β-5 linkage. Phenol was investigated due to its key role in product proliferation as noted in earlier studies with this Earth-abundant catalyst. In general, the apparent activation energies for ether hydrogenolysis proved to be significantly lower than that for phenol hydrogenation, a major side reaction leading to product proliferation. Thus, temperature tuning is a promising strategy to preserve product aromaticity as demonstrated by the more selective conversion of BPE and PPE at lower temperatures. Rates of methanol reforming o.
Metabolites of 2 , 3-diketogulonate delay peroxidase action and induce non-enzymic H 2 O 2 generation

A proportion of the plant's L-ascorbate (vitamin C) occurs in the apoplast, where it and its metabolites may act as pro-oxidants and anti-oxidants. One ascorbate metabolite is 2,3-diketogulonate (DKG), preparations of which can non-enzymically generate H2O2 and delay peroxidase action on aromatic substrates. As DKG itself generates several by-products, we characterised these and their ability to generate H2O2 and delay peroxidase action. DKG preparations rapidly produced a by-product, compound (1), with lmax 271 and 251 nm at neutral and acidic pH respectively. On HPLC, (1) co-eluted with the major H2O2-generating and peroxidasedelaying principle. Compound (1) was slowly destroyed by ascorbate oxidase, and was less stable at pH 6 than at pH 1. Electrophoresis of an HPLC-enriched preparation of (1) suggested a strongly acidic (pKa z 2.3) compound. Mass spectrometry suggested that un-ionised (1) has the formula C6H6O5, i.e. it is a reduction product of DKG (C6H8O7). In conclusion, compound (1) is the major H2O2-generating, peroxidase-delaying principle formed nonenzymically from DKG in the pathway ascorbate / dehydroascorbic acid / DKG / (1). We hypothesise that (1) generates apoplastic H2O2 (and consequently hydroxyl radicals) and delays cell-wall crosslinking d both these effects favouring wall loosening, and possibly playing a role in pathogen defence. © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
THE BENEFITS OF PROTOTYPING EARLY IN DESIGN WORKSHOPS

This paper chronicles and reflects upon the experiences gathered from a design workshop conducted at Chiba University, with students from Chiba University, Köln International School of Design and with the support of Fujitsu. During the workshop, participants were invited to continuously build and prototype their ideas, rather than following the conventional design process of idea generation, visualization and, only at a later stage, prototyping. Such a hands-on approach proved beneficial in the communication among participants as well as in simplifying the design process. In fact, by working on quick and approximate prototypes, participants could more easily express their ideas overcoming language barriers and visual representation skills. Furthermore, physical prototypes helped participants to identify the key aspects of their proposals and focus on those. Finally, those prototypes also served as useful props to enact the experience of using the proposed artefacts and services.
Relationship between Credit risk management and financial performance: empirical evidence from microfinance banks in Kenya

Effective Credit risk management enhances financial performance of Microfinance banks. A sound Microfinance banking subsector is vital for economic development as the sector supports low end entrepreneurs operating SMEs that form the bulk of Kenyan economy. In Kenya the microfinance banking subsector has been faced with risk management challenges. This necessitated the adoption of the Risk Based Supervision approach of supervising Microfinance banks in 2010. Additionally CIS feature was extended to MFBs to check on credit default. Despite these efforts, most MFBs are recording negative growth even with increased number of Microfinance bank licences being granted. The level of profitability and sustainability of the sector dropped significantly with ROE and ROA reported at 8% and 1% respectively. Non-performing loans increased by 6.9 percent and Risk coverage ratio shows a worrying negative trend. Hence the major objective for this study was to establish the relationship between Credit risk management and financial performance of Microfinance banks in Kenya. Specific objectives were: to establish the relationship between Portfolio at risk (PAR) and performance of MFBs and to determine the relationship between loan loss Provision coverage ratio (LLPCR) and performance of MFBs. Longitudinal research design utilizing panel data covering the period from 2011 to 2015 was used. Target population comprised 12 licensed MFBs. Purposive sampling was used to obtain a sample of 6 MFBs. Document analysis guide was used to gather secondary quantitative data from the MFBs financial reports. Descriptive statistics were used to show the trend of MFB risk exposure and performance. Pearson correlation was used to determine strength and association among variables. Panel data analysis based on system GMM technique was used to estimate a multiple regression model and test for significance of relationship between Risk management and financial performance. The findings were that Credit risk management with PAR and LLPCR parameters had a strong negative correlation (r=-0.68), giving a significant negative relationship with both ROAA and ROAE performance measures as depicted by regression coefficient of -0.2 estimated by GMM. Thus, the study concluded the existence of a significant relationship Credit risk management and performance and that credit risk management impacts performance of MFBs. The study recommended that Credit managers should operate under a sound credit granting process with well-defined credit-granting criteria detailing the MFB’s target market, a thorough understanding of the borrower, purpose & structure of the credit, and its source of repayment. Keywords: Credit risk, Microfinance banks and Performance
Designing the model of customer agility and competitive activity

Firms in today’s world face great environmental turbulence due to ever-evolving competition, changing technology, fluctuating demand, disruption in the supply chain caused by man made or natural disasters, etc. High levels of environmental turbulence can paralyze a firm’s operations. Actually competitive activity of the firmin this environments depends on the firm’s ability to change management and its flexibility. For this reason agility is an important determinant of firm success in hypercompetitive environments. Regarding high importance of agility and its different aspects, just a few researches are conducted concerning the formation of agility in organization. Based on dynamic view in competitive environments, the tools for achieving agility in organization are dynamic capabilities, so in this study we try to present and test the model of agility aspect formation in organization’s agility structure based on dynamic capabilities of IT competency, entrepreneurial alertness and market agility in order to optimize competitive activities in IT industry of Iran. Key words: Customer agility, competitive activity, market acuity, entrepreneurial alertness.