Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) In Nigeria through Effective Tax Policy Incentives

Amidst the conflicting divides of diverse research findings on the effect of tax policy incentives on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Nigeria, the focus of this study was to confirm the fact. Thus an empirical investigation covering a period of 19 years (1999-2017) was conducted to ascertain the effect of cost-based and profit based tax policy incentives on FDI in Nigeria. In line with the ex post facto research design adopted for the study, secondary data were sourced from CBN bulletins and World Bank Database. Multiple regression techniques was used in analysing the three models that were formulated. The findings revealed that although the cost based tax policy incentives had some relatively stronger effect on FDI (with R2 of .230) compared to profit based tax policy incentives (with R2 of .045), yet there was no significant relationship found between cost based tax policy incentives, profit based tax policy incentives and FDI in Nigeria. It was therefore recommended that non-tax incentive initiatives should be considered as a necessary complement to the tax policy incentives in order to attract and stabilize FDI in Nigeria.
From Talking Animal to Talking Machine. Lexical semantic relations in WordNet

A long time passed from the first word said by Homo sapiens to the first word said by a machine. The possibility of machines talking like men confronts us with the richness and complexity of human linguistic competence and its cognitive underpinnings. The contemporary study of linguistics attempts to explain this complexity explicitly. Part of this is lexical semantics, which studies the meanings of words and the relations between them. This essay addresses the attempt to represent one aspect of lexical semantic linguistic competence (lexical semantic relations) in a major computational resource: WordNet. There are various kinds of relations in lexical semantics: homonymy, synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, meronymy, and troponymy. They were used in WordNet to represent the organisation of the human lexicon. WordNet has a synset as a main building block. Synsets are sets of word forms that are close in meaning in context. In WordNet, nouns and verbs have taxonomic structures. The word forms are divided into domains related to a specific subject and shared features. Adjectives have a structure based on the antonymy relation where bipolar adjectives divided into clusters referring to a certain meaning. Adverbs are gathered in a single file. Psycholinguists have often attacked the WordNet structure as a representation of human linguistic competence. However, computational linguists have found the lexical semantic database useful for machine applications and natural language processing. WordNet have been translated into many languages and combined into multilingual databases such as EuroWordNet. Each language has developed its own wordnet but they are interconnected with interlingual links. Expand and merge approaches are used for data acquisition. The expand approach assumes bilingual translation with automatic, manual and hybrid methods to fill up gaps in data. Linguistic bias between languages can be reduced by data from sources such as Wikipedia or dictionary translation by professional interpreters. The merge approach assumes use of monolingual corpora for data acquisition. WordNet moved from cognitive science to natural language processing. It is one of the remarkable discoveries that helped scientists to come closer to the desire to teach machines to speak.
Great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) and red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) prefer different cone features of European larch (Larix decidua)

Specialized conifers-seed-eating animals, such as crossbills (Loxia spp.), woodpeckers (Picidae), squirrels (Sciuridae), nutcrackers (Nucifraga spp.) and many of insects (e.g., Pyralidae and Tortricidae) exert phenotypic selection on different features of the coniferous cones. In response to such selection, many conifers invest resources in various physical and chemical seed defenses. The study was conducted in mixed mountain forests in West Sudetes (50°55’N 15°46′E), southwest Poland. We selected 10 anvils for great spotted woodpecker and 12 foraging places for the red squirrel. We collected 350 foraged larch cones from each anvil and feeding place for both species and also 50–100 unforaged larch cones within a 15 m radius at each site. In this study, we documented different selection pressures on European larch (Larix decidua) cones exerted by great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) and red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris). The great spotted woodpecker preferred foraging on cones with thinner peduncles resulting in selection for thicker peduncles. However, red squirrels preferred feeding on small and medium larch cones, favoring trees producing large cones. Different foraging behaviors influence the form of selection exerted by these two seed-eating species.
A New Multi‐site Test for System‐on‐Chip Using Multi‐site Star Test Architecture

As the system‐on‐chip (SoC) design becomes more complex, the test costs are increasing. One of the main obstacles of a test cost reduction is the limited number of test channels of the ATE while the number of pins in the design increases. To overcome this problem, a new test architecture using a channel sharing compliant with IEEE Standard 1149.1 and 1500 is proposed. It can significantly reduce the pin count for testing a SoC design. The test input data is transmitted using a test access mechanism composed of only input pins. A single test data output pin is used to measure the sink values. The experimental results show that the proposed architecture not only increases the number of sites to be tested simultaneously, but also reduces the test time. In addition, the yield loss owing to the proven contact problems can be reduced. Using the new architecture, it is possible to achieve a large test time and cost reduction for complex SoC designs with negligible design and test overheads.
Cryogenic Fabrication of Dry Powders to Enhance the Solubility of a Promising Anticancer Drug, SHetA2, for Oral Administration

SHetA2 is a novel anticancer drug with poor aqueous solubility. In formal toxicological studies, Kolliphor HS 15 was used as a solubilizing agent to increase the oral bioavailability of SHetA2. The purpose of this study was to formulate SHetA2 and Kolliphor HS 15 as solid powders to facilitate their filling in hard gelatin capsules for clinical trials. Two manufacturing processes, ultra-rapid freeze-drying (URFD) and spray freeze drying (SFD), were employed to fabricate solid powders of SHetA2-Kolliphor HS 15 and trehalose. The morphology, size, flowability, and compressibility of URFD-SHetA2 and SFD-SHetA2 powders were characterized. The crystallinity and apparent maximum solubility of SHetA2 in both powders were also determined. SFD-SHetA2 powders were spherical in shape, small, and with a wide size distribution while the URFD-SHetA2 powders were irregularly shaped and big but with a narrower distribution. DSC and XRD analyses indicated that SHetA2 was mostly amorphous in both powders. The flow of both powders was categorized as “good” (angle of repose < 35°). The uniformity of drug content in URFD-SHetA2 powders was more variable than that in SFD-SHetA2 powders. The solubility profile of SHetA2 in both powders SGF exhibited a transient supersaturation “spring effect” due to the drug’s amorphousness followed by extended supersaturation “parachute effect” at approximately 6 μg/ml for both powders compared to 0.02 ± 0.01 μg/ml for unprocessed drug. In conclusion, both URFD and SFD formed solid SHetA2 Kolliphor powders that are possible formulation candidates to be filled in hard gelatin capsules for clinical trials.
The Effect of Revaluation on the Foreign Travel Balance of Germany

En este trabajo se presenta un intento de medicion de la sensibilidad, con respecto al precio, de los gastos e ingresos de Alemania por concepto de viajes, formulando y calculando las funciones de importacion y de exportacion por los servicios de viajes al exterior. En una segunda etapa, se utilizan esas funciones para predecir el valor de los gastos e ingresos de Alemania pro concepto de viajes en 1970, y para evaluar el efecto de la revaluacion sobre la balanza alemana de viajes para 1970 y 1971. La sensibilidad, con respecto al precio, de los gastos e ingresos alemanes por concepto de viajes resulto ser elevada. No se encontro ningun desfase en cuanto al efecto del precio sobre el gasto; sin embargo, parece que el principal efecto sobre los ingresos se deja sentir tras un desfase de un ano. Los gastos e ingresos previstos para 1970 son de US$2.806 millones (±US$155 millones) y US$1.203 millones (±US$58 millones), respectivamente. Se calcula que la revaluacion del marco aleman ha de elevar el deficit de Alemania por concepto de viajes en unos US$500-600 millones en 1970 y US$700-850 millones en 1971, segun el supuesto que se haga con respecto al efecto de la revaluacion sobre el nivel de precios en Alemania.
A Novel Dr.KSM Approach for Information Security and Risk Management in Health Care Systems

At Present times, A common person focus on their health issues not only for themselves but also for their family because health is a wealth. In the modern days most of the people are working and they spending 40% to 50% of the income on their health issues not only for themselves but also for their family. By this the rate of population arrival to the Hospitals are increasing day-by-day. So the hospitals have to be reliable towards the patients. The records of the patients and the medication details are to be maintained correctly. There may be many risks in the software that they use. So any health organizations are struggles to display the patient electronically measured health records and what they use medication outside. So every time common people are lose their health information. If the common people know the about their previous health records they reduce their money and take the first aid immediately. In this paper we suggest a new approach to risk assessment for health care systems. As risk assessment is a Qualitative approach, there are no exact techniques to solve such risks. Lack of risk assessment techniques leads to failure in the system and organization as the people don’t find interest to come if once the organization fails in any of the issues. Our new method mainly focuses on the risk management for health care organizations. Today’s health care industry faces a number of emerging risk issues related to health care reform, the shift from fee-forservices to outcomes-based compensation, the use of electronic medical records and the management of human capital. Therefore our method has put forth a Risk management technique for the Risk assessment.
Optimal Node Deployment and Energy Provision for Wirelessly Powered Sensor Networks

In a typical wirelessly powered sensor network (WPSN), wireless chargers provide energy to sensor nodes by using wireless energy transfer (WET). The chargers can greatly improve the lifetime of a WPSN using energy beamforming by a proper charging scheduling of energy beams. However, the supplied energy still may not meet the demand of the energy of the sensor nodes. This issue can be alleviated by deploying redundant sensor nodes, which not only increase the total harvested energy but also decrease the energy consumption per node provided that an efficient scheduling of the sleep/awake of the nodes is performed. Such a problem of joint optimal sensor deployment, WET scheduling, and node activation is posed and investigated in this paper. The problem is an integer optimization that is challenging due to the binary decision variables and non-linear constraints. Based on the analysis of the necessary condition such that the WPSN be immortal, we decouple the original problem into a node deployment problem and a charging and activation scheduling problem. Then, we propose an algorithm and prove that it achieves the optimal solution under a mild condition. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm reduces the needed nodes to deploy by approximately 16%, compared with a random-based approach. The simulation also shows that if the battery buffers are large enough, the optimality condition will be easy to meet.
The Effects of Group-Administered Canine Therapy on University Students’ Wellbeing: A Randomized Controlled Trial

ABSTRACT University students with elevated stress levels are at risk for experiencing compromised mental health and for underperforming academically. In an effort to support student wellbeing, post-secondary campuses are increasingly offering canine therapy programs. These programs provide students opportunities to interact with dogs known for their calm public behavior, docile temperaments, and eagerness to interact with strangers. Despite the interest in canine therapy, there remains a paucity of research attesting to the benefits of this approach to support university student wellbeing. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of a group-administered, single-session canine therapy intervention on university students’ perceptions of stress, homesickness, and affinity to campus. Participants (n = 163) were randomly assigned to a treatment (n = 84, 20-minute exposure to therapy dog, handler, and fellow students) condition or a business-as-usual control (n = 79, 20 minutes of individual studying) condition. No baseline differences were identified between the two groups. Findings revealed a significant main effect for group, and when compared with the control group, participants in the treatment group showed significant decreases from pre-test to post-test in perceived stress, homesickness (dislike), and homesickness (attachment), and significant improvements in sense of school belonging. Interestingly, control group scores on homesickness (dislike) also differed significantly from pre-test to post-test, with the means increasing from pre-test to post-test. After controlling for pre- and post-test scores, there were no significant differences on any of the self-report measures between participants in the treatment and control groups at follow-up. Findings are discussed within the contexts of animal-assisted therapy and on-campus stress reduction initiatives.
EAPC Task Force on Family Carers White Paper on improving support for family carers in palliative care:part 2

This is the second part of a two-part paper. In part 1, we considered the definitions and roles of family carers in Europe. In particular, we explored the context of providing care at home, the places of care and death, and the impact of caring on family carers. In part 2, we will consider some of the types of interventions or services that seek to address carers’ support needs, and we will make recommendations for future service provision, research and policy development.
Towards accurate localization: long- and short-term correlation filters for tracking

Visual tracking is a challenging problem, especially using a single model. In this paper, we propose a discriminative correlation filter (DCF) based tracking approach that exploits both the long-term and short-term information of the target, named LSTDCF, to improve the tracking performance. In addition to a long-term filter learned through the whole sequence, a short-term filter is trained using only features extracted from most recent frames. The long-term filter tends to capture more semantics of the target as more frames are used for training. However, since the target may undergo large appearance changes, features extracted around the target in non-recent frames prevent the long-term filter from locating the target in the current frame accurately. In contrast, the short-term filter learns more spatial details of the target from recent frames but gets over-fitting easily. Thus the short-term filter is less robust to handle cluttered background and prone to drift. We take the advantage of both filters and fuse their response maps to make the final estimation. We evaluate our approach on a widely-used benchmark with 100 image sequences and achieve state-of-the-art results.
iCreate: 3D Augmented Reality Painting Book for Vocabulary Learning

Mobile technologies are rapidly attracting new users, providing increasing usability, and creating more multimedia communication capacity. Moreover, most primary students have own mobile devices for daily usage. This paper proposed an iCreate project or a digital edutainment application with a digital content which was integrated as 3D augmented reality (AR) painting book for English vocabulary learning and art activities. iCreate is a mobile application using java and vuforia library, develops on Eclipse Integrated Development Enironment ( IDE) and trials with the primary students. The experimental results show that our proposed application and AR painting book can display 3D animated model real-time and effectively. The usage of the mobile device in this AR project offer two benefits, namely mobility beneficial and ease of use. Besides that, the AR colorful painting book in this project able to attract children’s attentions and increase the excitement of this new learning environment.
Nutech Functional Score (NFS), a New Scoring System to Assess the Level of Impairment in Patients with Cerebral Palsy

Background: A non-progressive disorder cerebral palsy (CP) occurs as a result of the damage to the brain of a fetus and newborns. It is estimated to affect every one in 323 children in the U.S. The Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) has been a validated and reliable tool used for assessing the gross motor function in patients with CP. However the use of tool has been found to be limited in assessing certain symptoms of CP that are essential to be evaluated. Our study aimed at developing a scoring system that can assess the symptoms which remained untouched in GMFCS. Methods and Findings: We initiated compiling the lists of symptoms from the diagnostic records of the cases who visited our facility. CP patient who were previously assessed with GMFCS, were then assessed using Nutech Function Score (NFS), the new scoring system. NFS is a 32 point positional and directional scoring system that can assess the CP symptoms that remain far from assessment in GMFCS; these symptoms are feeding, indication, epilepsy, toilet training, drooling, mathematical skills, hearing, vision, commands, smiling, constipation, recognition/awareness, eye contact, aggression, speech, breathing difficulty, defense mechanism and swallowing. As opposed to GMFCS, NFS scoring system can be used to assess patients aged above 18 years. We have also converted the scores into numeric grades.Conclusion: NFS appears to be a unique tool that can be used globally to assess the improvement in patients with CP.
Real time Omni-directional Object Detection Using Background Subtraction of Fisheye Image

This paper proposes an object detection method based on motion estimation using background subtraction in the fisheye images obtained through omni-directional camera mounted on the vehicle. Recently, most of the vehicles installed with rear camera as a standard option, as well as various camera systems for safety. However, differently from the conventional object detection using the image obtained from the camera, the embedded system installed in the vehicle is difficult to apply a complicated algorithm because of its inherent low processing performance. In general, the embedded system needs system-dependent algorithm because it has lower processing performance than the computer. In this paper, the location of object is estimated from the information of object's motion obtained by applying a background subtraction method which compares the previous frames with the current ones. The real-time detection performance of the proposed method for object detection is verified experimentally on embedded board by comparing the proposed algorithm with the object detection based on LKOF (Lucas-Kanade optical flow).
Possible Influence of Oxidative Stress on Development of Raynaud Phenomenon in Patients With CREST Scleroderma Syndrome

Abstract CREST syndrome represents a form of scleroderma where the progressive autoimmune reaction is mainly manifested by the main symptoms, which make this acronym: calcinosis cutis, Raynaud phenomenon, esophageal dysmotility, sclerodactyly and teleangiectasia. Among the first affected organs is the skin followed by the excessive fibrosis manifested by the deposition of collagen in dermis. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) theory has been underlined as one of the main pathogenetic mechanisms and triggering factor in development of scleroderma. The present study was aimed at estimating the marker of lipid peroxidation products (MDA) in plasma of patients with CREST syndrome having manifested symptoms of both Raynaud syndrome and positive ANA antibodies. The lipid peroxidation (MDA) level was significantly higher in the patients who had CREST syndrome and Raynaud syndrome for less than 10 years compared to the patients suffering from Raynoud syndrome for more than 10 years (p<0.05). Both groups were found to have a significant MDA level increase (p<0.001) compared to the control healthy subjects. In conclusion, the relationship between lipid peroxidation (MDA level) and Raynaud syndrome appearance may emphasize the role of ROS produced by the ischemia-reperfusion injury as an early pathogenetic mechanism in CREST scleroderma syndrome.
The Medicaid Eligibility Maze: Coverage Expands, but Enrollment Problems Persist

This report looks at five states to highlight common problems that all states are facing as they struggle to maintain Medicaid enrollment for low-income children and their parents. These problems include challenges in severing Medicaid and welfare, complex eligibility rules and procedures, and systems and communications inadequacy. The five states are CA, CO, FL, MN, and WI.
The Soluble Guanylate Cyclase Stimulator Riociguat Ameliorates Pulmonary Hypertension Induced by Hypoxia and SU5416 in Rats

Background The nitric oxide (NO)–soluble guanylate cyclase (sGC)–cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) signal-transduction pathway is impaired in many cardiovascular diseases, including pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Riociguat (BAY 63–2521) is a stimulator of sGC that works both in synergy with and independently of NO to increase levels of cGMP. The aims of this study were to investigate the role of NO–sGC–cGMP signaling in a model of severe PAH and to evaluate the effects of sGC stimulation by riociguat and PDE5 inhibition by sildenafil on pulmonary hemodynamics and vascular remodeling in severe experimental PAH. Methods and Results Severe angioproliferative PAH was induced in rats by combined exposure to the vascular endothelial growth factor receptor antagonist SU5416 and hypoxia (SUHx). Twenty-one days thereafter rats were randomized to receive either riociguat (10 mg/kg/day), sildenafil (50 mg/kg/day) or vehicle by oral gavage, for 14 days until the day of the terminal hemodynamic measurements. Administration of riociguat or sildenafil significantly decreased right ventricular systolic pressure (RVSP). Riociguat significantly decreased RV hypertrophy (RVH) (0.55±0.02, p<0.05), increased cardiac output (60.8±.8 mL/minute, p<0.05) and decreased total pulmonary resistance (4.03±0.3 mmHg min−1 ml−1 100 g BW, p<0.05), compared with sildenafil and vehicle. Both compounds significantly decreased the RV collagen content and improved RV function, but the effects of riociguat on tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion and RV myocardial performance were significantly better than those of sildenafil (p<0.05). The proportion of occluded arteries was significantly lower in animals receiving riociguat than in those receiving vehicle (p<0.05); furthermore, the neointima/media ratio was significantly lower in those receiving riociguat than in those receiving sildenafil or vehicle (p<0.05). Conclusion Riociguat and sildenafil significantly reduced RVSP and RVH, and improved RV function compared with vehicle. Riociguat had a greater effect on hemodynamics and RVH than sildenafil.