Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
VIRTUAL ORGANIZATION: A STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OPTION FOR BUSINESS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

This paper presents telecommuting as a strategic option for the raising problems of office space and traffic jams in developing countries. US and many developed countries have leveraged technology and cultivated a culture of telecommuting which has become one of the corner stones of competitive advantage and employee’s job satisfaction. While some scholars and practitioners are skeptical implementing this as a global business practice for obvious reasons such as poor infrastructure, culture of corruption among others, this research empirically sustains the positives of telecommuting and postulate a model for its successful implementation in developing countries as a global business sustainability strategy.
Lost in Translation? An assessment of the SDGs as a basis for private sector action: A case study of palm oil

This desk study forms part of the preparatory work for a PhD on investor engagement with companies on corporate responsibility issues, taken as those framed by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs outline ambitions widely accepted as improving the prosperity of populations in both developed and developing countries. Looking at these goals in greater detail however highlights the difficulty in matching the government-designed indicators of success to points of articulation with responsible corporate behaviour. This study looks at one example of an agricultural supply chain – palm oil - to illustrate the challenges involved in engaging a commercial industry with the SDGs using recent academic sources. It concludes that while at the icon level the goals do indicate targets and considerations for new or amended business models, they are too often short on detail with indicators that are descriptive rather than prescriptive. As a consequence private sector engagement will have to be flanked by the development (or reinforcement) of other standard-setting institutions to endorse that these changes are both desirable and credible. This will involve the co-operation of a wide array of stakeholders, a topic which will be the subject of further IGP research.
1 3 D Face Modeling

Acquiring, modeling, and synthesizing realistic 3D human faces and their dynamics have emerged as an active research topic in the border area between the computer vision and computer graphics fields of research. This has resulted in a plethora of different acquisition systems and processing pipelines that share many fundamental concepts as well as specific implementation details. The research community has investigated the possibility of targeting either end-to-end consumer-level or professional-level applications, such as facial geometry acquisition for 3D-based biometrics and its dynamics capturing for expression cloning or performance capture and, more recently, for 4D expression analysis and recognition. Despite the rich literature, reproducing realistic human faces remains a distant goal because the challenges that face 3D face modeling are still open. These challenges include the motion speed of the face when conveying expressions, the variabilities in lighting conditions, and pose. In addition, human beings are very sensitive to facial appearance and quickly sense any anomalies in 3D geometry or dynamics of faces. The techniques developed in this field attempt to recover facial 3D shapes from camera(s) and reproduce their actions. Consequently, they seek to answer the following questions:
Understanding Mathematical Expressions from Camera Image 2

Recognizing mathematical expressions from document or camera images helps us to understand and process mathematical expressions in scientific and technical documents, while it has been studied for over a decade. Based on previous works, we develop an automatic recognition tool, named EqnEye, which leverages the OpenCV library to perform image processing and the Tesseract tool to recognize mathematical symbols. We also apply correction methods before the recognition stage to improve the recognition accuracy. Experimental results exhibit the success of our recognition method with the correction design. In addition, porting the recognition tool to handy devices can produce more value-added applications.
Information , Regulatory Commitment and the Investment Dilemma

Does more information lead to less investment? In the context of defacto non-independence of regulation, civil society actors produce information and try to change voter strategy. Their aim is to bring about a regime change and hence a new regulatory set-up which will generate more favorable regulation. However, we show using a linked action situation approach through stylized games that in the short run, biased information produced by public interest groups and amplified by media actually tends to reduce regulatory commitment, irrespective of a regime change. This leads to a „low investment trap‟. We give some indicative support to this claim through one instance of public monitoring of electricity in India. Finally, we argue that in the long-run this dilemma will be solved under a repeated game situation where state regulators make only public interest moves „knowing‟ that a perennial investment trap would otherwise be created. However, this will be possible only under the condition that an institutional mechanism for information production exists.
Characterizing Minimally Disturbed Soils in a Highly Disturbed Urban Environment

Urban soils are often highly disturbed by anthropogenic activity, and consequent impacts on soil function are not well understood. Minimizing the disturbance of highly modified soils, including those at The Ohio State University, will decrease local C footprints. The main objective of this study was to locate and characterize relatively undisturbed soils in the urban study area to use as a baseline for comparison with a wider range of sampled profiles. Historical campus maps were used to locate and sample three areas where building footprints indicated that minimally disturbed soils might be found. Pedon 1 was classified as a Celina silt loam (fine, mixed, active, mesic Aquic Hapludalfs) and Pedon 2 as an Eldean silt loam (fine, mixed, superactive, mesic Typic Hapludalfs). Pedon 3 exhibited evidence of significant disturbance due to the presence of foreign materials and disrupted horizonation. Pedon 3 had the highest percentage of total C of all three sites at 0to 70-cm depth due to the presence of asphalt. In Pedon 2, most of the total C from the BC horizon and below was inorganic C derived from calcareous glacial outwash parent material. Pedon 1 showed a mostly homogeneous parent material due to the consistent geochemical ratios throughout the soil profile. There were abrupt horizon discontinuities in Pedon’s 2 and 3 ratios indicating heterogeneity of materials. Establishing baseline soil characteristics shows how urban soils have been modified over time and provides information for policymakers to understand the urbanization of soil environments and to enhance ecosystem services.
Managing Online Courses : Problems and Worked-Out Solutions The Case of the Pre-Service Teachers

This article attempts to present and categorize problems that encounter pre-service and new teachers who teach distance learning courses for intermediate school pupils. It also describes worked-out solutions used successfully by the pre-service teachers. The problems found were characterized as: computer literacy problems, infrastructure problems, communication problems, management problems, learning problems and emotional problems. The worked-out solutions categories included: communication means, management means, documentation means and training. This research shows that pre-service and new teachers can succeed in managing and teaching internet-based distance courses, synchronously or asynchronously, if they invest enough time and effort in applying mainly communicational means to overcome problems encountered, with being aware of the other solution means too.
Sparse Coding and Dictionary Learning

Speech enhancement aims to increase the intelligibility of speech, thus reducing word error rates in a speech recognition context, and also aims to increase perceived signal quality, making it more comfortable to listen to enhanced speech for longer periods of time. Speech enhancement is both a relevant as well as a difficult task. Its importance arises from the many practical applications, for instance in mobile communications and hearing aids. Its difficulty arises from the fact that real-world interferers are often non-stationary and speechlike, inducing a varying and possibly significant spectral overlap.
Title Functional-structural root system model validation using soil MRI and tracer experiment Authors and affiliations

Functional-structural root system models simulate the relations between root system architectural and hydraulic properties, and the spatio-temporal distributions of water and solute in the root zone. Such models might help identify optimal plant properties for breeding and contribute to increased water use D ow naded rom http/academ ic.p.com /jxb/advance-articleoi/10.1093/jxb/erz060/5336523 by he U niersity of Bitish C lum ia Lrary user on 19 Feruary 2019 Ac ce pt ed M an us cr ipt 3 efficiency. However, it must be first demonstrated that they accurately reproduce the processes they intend to describe. This is challenging because the flow and transport processes towards individual roots are hard to observe. We demonstrate how this deadlock could be broken by combining co-registered root and tracer distributions obtained from magnetic resonance imaging with a root system model in an inverse modeling scheme. The main features in the tracer distributions were well reproduced by the model using realistic root hydraulic parameters. By combining functional-structural root system model with 4D tracer observations, we were able to quantify the water uptake distribution of a growing root system. We showed that 76% of the transpiration was extracted through 3rd order roots. The simulations also demonstrated that accurate water uptake distribution cannot be directly derived neither from observations of tracer accumulation nor from water depletion. However, detailed tracer experiments combined with process-based models help decipher mechanisms underlying root water uptake.
Partial rupture of the thigh adductor muscle in a dog : case report

Muscle injuries are often reported in humans, but uncommon in dogs. The etiology is degenerative or traumatic, and traumatic is more common in athletes. The diagnosis is obtained by a combination of orthopedic physical examination and imaging diagnosis, such as ultrasonography. Therapy aims to optimize healing and avoid complications. The present study reports a case of partial rupture of thigh adductor muscle in a dog presenting acute lameness of the right pelvic limb. Swelling and pain in the medial region of the thigh was noticed. Ultrasound examination confirmed partial rupture of the thigh adductor muscle. The treatment included non-steroid anti-inflammatory, warm compresses, and rest. Ultrasound examinations were useful in this case to evaluate the progression of the lesion, which was rapid and satisfactory.
Financial asset bubble with heterogeneous agents and endogenous borrowing constraints

This paper studies the root of financial asset bubble in an infinite horizon general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents and borrowing constraints. We say that there is a bubble at equilibrium if the price of the financial asset is greater than its fundamental value. First, we found that bubble can occur only if there exists an agent and an infinite sequence of dates such that borrowing constraints of this agent are binding at each such date. Second, we prove that there is a bubble if and only if interest rates are low, which means that the sum (over time) of interest rates (in term of financial asset) is finite. Last, we give a condition on exogenous variables, under which a financial asset bubble occurs at equilibrium.
Performance evaluation for the optimal design of chiller plants concerning uncertainty and reliability

Conventional design of chiller plant is typically based on the peak cooling loads of buildings, while the cooling load reaches its peak level for only a small proportion of time in a year. This results in the oversizing of chiller plant and thus causes significant energy wastes. In this paper, a robust optimal design based on performance evaluation is proposed to optimize the design of chiller plant concerning impacts of uncertainty in the design input data and the system reliability in operation. Monte Carlo simulation is used to generate the cooling load distribution and Markov method is used to obtain the probability distribution of system state. A case study of a building in Hong Kong is conducted to demonstrate the design process and validate the robust optimal design method. Comparisons are made among conventional design, uncertainty-based optimal design and robust optimal design. The results show that the system could operate at a relatively high efficiency and the minimum annual total cost (including annual operational cost, annual capital cost and annual availability risk cost) could be achieved under various possible cooling load conditions considering the uncertainties and system reliability.
Framewise Supervised Training Towards End-to-End Speech Recognition Models: First Results

Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) trained with connectionist temporal classification (CTC) technique have delivered promising results in many speech recognition tasks. However, the forward-backward algorithm that CTC takes for model optimization requires a huge amount of computation. This paper introduces a new training method towards RNN-based end-to-end models, which significantly saves computing power without losing accuracy. Unlike CTC, the label sequence is aligned to the labelling hypothesis and then to the input sequence by the Weighted Minimum Edit-Distance Aligning (WMEDA) algorithm. Based on the alignment, the framewise supervised training is conducted. Moreover, Pronunciation Embedding (PE), the acoustic representation towards a linguistic target, is proposed in order to calculate the weights in WMEDA algo-rithm. The model is evaluated on TIMIT and AIShell-1 datasets for English phoneme and Chinese character recogni-tions. For TIMIT, the model achieves a comparable 18.57% PER to the 18.4% PER of the CTC baseline. As for AIShell-1, a joint Pinyin-character model is trained, giving a 19.38% CER, which is slightly better than the 19.43% CER obtained by the CTC character model, and the training time of this model is only 54.3% of the CTC model’s.
SPEECH SOUND PERCEPTION IN MONOLINGUALS, BILINGUALS AND LEARNERS – LANGUAGE BACKGROUND AFFECTS IDENTIFICATION AND DISCRIMINATION DIFFERENTLY

The categorical nature of speech perception may result in learning difficulties when L2 speech sounds overlap with L1 sound areas. In addition to possible learning difficulties, it may create interesting overlapping phoneme category areas between the bilinguals’ two native languages. Here, we tested how language learners, simultaneous bilinguals and monolinguals perceive the same rounded closed /y//ʉ/-/u/ vowel area. In learners and bilinguals this area is divided either into two or three categories in their two languages (Finnish and Swedish, respectively), whereas only the three category division is in use in the monolinguals (Swedish). It seems that second language learners’ learning process is still ongoing since their /ʉ/–/u/ boundary was less sharp in vowel identification than the other two groups’. On the other hand, both learners and bilinguals seem to benefit from being language oriented and from using two languages in their daily lives as they were more sensitive discriminators than the monolinguals.
The inter-examiner reliability of a classification method for non-specific chronic low back pain patients with motor control impairment

The importance of classifying chronic low back pain (LBP) patients into homogeneous sub-groups has recently been emphasized. This paper reports on two studies examining clinicians ability to agree independently on patients’ chronic LBP classification, using a novel classification system (CS) proposed by O’Sullivan. In the first study, a sub-group of 35 patients with non-specific chronic LBP were independently classified by two ‘expert’ clinicians. Almost perfect agreement (kappa-coefficient 0.96; %-of-agreement 97%) was demonstrated. In the second study, 13 clinicians from Australia and Norway were given 25 cases (patients’ subjective information and videotaped functional tests) to classify. Kappa-coefficients (mean 0.61, range 0.47–0.80) and %-of-agreement (mean 70%, range 60–84%) indicated substantial reliability. Increased familiarity with the CS improved reliability. These studies demonstrate the reliability of this multi-dimensional mechanism-based CS and provide essential evidence in a multi-step validation process. A fully validated CS will have significant research and clinical application. r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
DOWEL ACTION BETWEEN TWO CONCRETES

This paper reports eight tests in which in-plane shear forces are applied across the joint between two different concretes forming a composite action. Shear can be transmitted across the joint either by interlocking of the aggregate particles protruding from each face or by shearing of the reinforcement crossing the joint. Tests are conducted on initially cracked specimens by depending only on dowel action. The results of the tests are compared with theoretical results of the exponential equation presented by Millard and Johnson. The computer program of Al-Shaarbaf using the nonlinear behavior of concreteis used to perform the analysis with inclusion of the exponential equation for dowel action in the interface layer. The program uses 20-node brick elements with embedded bar elements. This program is also applied to Hofbeck et al. tests. The comparison shows that the experimental and the analytical results give good agreement where the difference between the two is between (2.5-5)% . The use of the exponential equation gives good results when the concrete is assumed to be initially cracked as in construction joints.
CHILDREN’S PERCEPTION OF THE ALBANIAN DARK-CLEAR LATERAL CONTRAST

Purpose. The aim is to assess the development of phonemic categorization in the typologically rare dark /ɫ/–clear /l/ contrast in Albanian, a largely understudied language. Specifically, this study investigates the use of two cues (formant values, vowellateral transition durations) in perceptual categorization by young children. Method. By varying formant values and vowel-lateral transition durations, continua between minimal pairs were created and presented to child (3 and 5 years) and adult listeners in an alternative-forced-choice identification task. Results. (a) All groups used the primary cue (formant values) in phoneme categorization; children’s categorization slopes were shallower and showed greater variability than those of adults, especially in the youngest group; (b) only adults used the secondary cue. Discussion. The study provides evidence that phoneme boundary sharpening in this lateral contrast is not yet fully established at age 5, and that use of secondary cues develops only after this age.
The Hubs and Authorities Transaction Network Analysis using the SANSA framework

With the recent trend on blockchain, many users want to know more about the important players of the chain. In this study, we investigate and analyze the Ethereum blockchain network in order to identify the major entities across the transaction network. By leveraging the rich data available through Alethio’s platform in the form of RDF triples we learn about the Hubs and Authorities of the Ethereum transaction network. Alethio uses SANSA for efficient reading and processing of such large-scale RDF data (transactions on Ethereum blockchain) in order to perform analytics e.g. finding top accounts, or typical behavior patterns of exchanges’ deposit wallets and more.
On Habit and Utility-Enhancing Government Consumption ∗

Bayesian estimation is used to investigate whether (i) deep (DH) as opposed to superficial habit (SH) and (ii) utility-enhancing as opposed to wasteful government consumption improve the fit of a DSGE model. If the stock of SH features the additional persistence typical of DH, the two specifications are virtually as good. Introducing either type of habit in public consumption or including the latter in the utility function do not improve the fit. However, when government consumption is utility-enhancing, private-public consumption complementarity is found. Robustly across specifications, the confidence band of the impact government consumption multiplier of output includes one. JEL classification: E30, E62.
Construction of an Academic Resource Repository

I define tools, libraries, and data which were created through various research as “academic resources. ” In this paper, I propose a system that constructs an academic resource repository. I extracted 67,834 URLs from 31,812 research papers in the ACL Anthology corpus. Then, my system annotated keywords to each URL. Finally, these URLs were classified into categories.
Micro-and macroscopic ion diffusion controlled by clay microstructure

Very dense smectite clay surrounding canisters with high-level radioactive waste effectively stops migration of radionuclides due to flowing porewater, however, does not stop their movement by diffusion. The paper explains how the diffusion rate of released waste ions depends on the microstructural constitution referring to the mechanisms in diffusive transport and the sorption by the clay matrix of varying density. In general, diffusion refers to the transport of elements by action of random motions and works to eliminate distinct discontinuities in concentration. For smectite clay this process is complex since interlamellar diffusion is a 2dimensional process on the microscale and takes place in diffuse electrical doublelayers on the basal planes of the clay crystallites. This is in contrast with pore diffusion which is a 3-dimensional process. By making use of microstructural parameters one can distinguish the different contributions to bulk diffusion migration and create a basis for theoretical modelling of diffusive ion migration.
Tearing instead of rectangular clipping / framing viewports in user interfaces

We apply break lines from technical drawing as an alternative to the ubiquitous rectangular frames in user interfaces. When showing a piece of a larger canvas, the nonphotorealistically torn edges naturally indicate where the content extends. We show how the shape of the jagged edge can be tied to its location on the paper; this creates a natural rippling motion when the edge moves in relation to the paper. The jagged edge is also visually less ambiguous than the straight horizontal and vertical lines and can be used to provide a sense of scale to the user. We show how suitably rippling break lines can be implemented on the NV10 and NV25 architectures, and show screenshots of example user interfaces.