Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Towards a framework for incorporating data acquisition cost in predictive time series models

In many real world applications of machine learning, the cost of acquiring measurements varies significantly. As businesses operate in resource-constrained environments, a question that arises is which combination of signals results in the most accurate models given a fixed budget. Conversely, if more accurate models are needed, what signals increase accuracy at lowest cost? This paper introduces a three-stage framework for integrating data acquisition cost into time-series applications based on signal ablation. Stage 1 constructs a time-series predictive model utilizing all relevant signals to assess the maximum accuracy achievable with an unlimited budget. Stage 2 randomizes each signal independently, computing the degradation in accuracy incurred on the underlying model. This process is achieved either by shuffling of its measurements or random sampling from signal’s distribution. Utilizing the resulting estimated signals accuracy and their acquisition cost, Stage 3 solves the knapsack-like combinatorial optimization problem of picking the right combination of signals maximizing total accuracy given any fixed budget. The proposed framework is showcased on a synthetic time-series dataset which allows us to control the cost distribution in order to understand how the system works in different scenarios.
Nanocables Prepared from Polyamide 66 nanotubes Enveloping Pt nanowires by a Secondary-template Method

Polyamide 66 (PA66) nanotubes were prepared by filtrating a PA66 solution into pores of anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) template. The AAO/PA66 nanotubes composite membrane can be used as a secondary template. Pt nanowires were then fabricated in the polymer nanotubes of the secondary template by electrochemical deposition method. Nanocables from Polyamide 66 nanotubes embedded Pt nanowires were successfully obtained. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Transmission electron microscope (TEM) were employed to characterize the structure and morphology of one-dimension nanomaterials. We find that the polymer nanotubes enveloping Pt nanowires have a higher thermal-decomposition temperature than the bulk counterpart. The unique property will be beneficial to their application under a higher temperature.
Ageism and Media in Saskatchewan

Social isolation is a social and public health problem that affects people of all ages, especially older adults in industrialized countries (Miyawaki 2015). Older adults are vulnerable to stressful life changes such as loss of a spouse, serious health problems, and decreasing physical mobility, and impacts of social isolation are multiplied by these factors (Cornwell and Waite 2009). These impacts negatively affect well-being leading to depression, decreased access to nutritious food, physical illness, and early death (Wilson, Harris, Hollis, and Mohankuman 2010). As our population ages, the number of older adults living with the negative health effects of social isolation increases leading to strain on individuals, their families, and the health care system (Nicholson 2012). Older adults need access to services and programs that facilitate social interaction and sustain good health, especially as this population grows and remains vulnerable to isolation (Graham, Scharlach, and Price Wolf 2014).
Computational Fabrication of Macromolecules to Enhance Perception and Understanding of Biological Mechanisms

We propose a fabrication technique for the fast and cheap production of 3D replicas of proteins. We leverage silicone casting with rigid molds, to produce ﬂexible models which can be safely extracted from the mold, and easily manipulated to simulate the biological interaction mechanisms between proteins. We believe that tangible models can be useful in education as well as in laboratory settings, and that they will ease the understanding of fundamental principles of macromolecular organization
B2B E-COMMERCE TECHNOLOGY FACTORS WITH MEDIATING EFFECT PERCEIVED USEFULNESS IN JORDANIAN MANUFACTURING SMES

The adoption of electronic commerce (e-commerce) for the business to business model category in business operations is currently no longer a privilege merely to large organizations; the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) can also benefit from the adoption. Although the SMEs are considered to play a major role in the economic growth of most nations, they are generally moving slower towards adopting B2B e-commerce compared to larger organizations. It is important to determine the factors influencing intention to continue using B2B e-commerce by the SMEs so that they can effectively use it without wasting their limited resources. This study aims to examine the factors that affect the intention to continue using B2B e-commerce among the manufacturing SMEs in Jordan using the Technological, Organizational and Environmental Model (TOE) that has been developed by Tornatzky and Fleischer. The quantitative method has been applied in this study where data collection has been done using a self-administrated questionnaire distributed to the SMEs in the manufacturing sector in Jordan. The total number of valid questionnaires is 168. Data analysis using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) technique indicates that relative advantage, top management support and information intensity have a significant indirect effect on intention to continue using B2B e-commerce, through Perceived Usefulness (PU). Perceived usefulness, from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), mediates the relationship of each of the two factors: relative advantage and information intensity with the intention to continue using B2B e-commerce.
Managers’ Perceived Risk, Experiential Knowledge, Marketing Capability and International Performance: A Study of Chinese International Enterprises

concept. This calls for additional understanding and refinement of the construct and its associated scales. Second, this study only tests the dimensions of perceived risks and experiential knowledge. Other important factors may exist that contribute to the creation of marketing capabilities and gaining competitive advantage. Third, it is unclear whether the influence of marketing capabilities on enterprises’ international performances is direct or indirect. In other words, there might be some intermediate variables or other factors that influence the relationship between marketing capabilities and enterprises’ performances. All of these limitations create opportunities for further research to enhance the understanding of the influencing factors on international marketing performance.
Synthesis of Panoramic MRI Volumes by Registering Partially Overlapping Data Using Mutual Information

This paper presents a method for synthesizing panoramic MRI volume from partially overlapping MRI data. We estimated the optimal positional relationship between MRI data by maximizing mutual information of the overlapping area using a downhill simplex method. We registered MRI volumes of a hand and a forearm sharing wrist region, and merged them into panoramic MRI volume. Results of the registration and merging provided visually-consistent volumetric data of a superior limb.
Dynamics of the international environmental treaties - perspectives for future cooperation

International treaties and multilateral agreements are undoubtedly based on networks, which, considering the magnitude of the environmental issues or resources conflicts that we are facing, become complex networks. Implementing a strategy that easily integrates all these problems is particularly difficult to develop or apply, and the disengagement has no way to help. To achieve successful environmental governance is only possible with the involvement of all parties or stakeholders. This paper illustrates the evolution of the cooperation network established between the international parties that ratified the most important environmental treaties at international level discussing transboundary issues. By applying a network analysis perspective, we explore the dynamics of the cooperation considering 3-time intervals, namely: collaboration for the implementation of the treaties before 1990 (1), before 2000 (2), and before 2020 (i.e., the cooperation established so far within the most common environmental agreements). We further examine the network structure by investigating the core-periphery model, which shows the current situation in terms of level of involvement in the ratification and application of the principles of the international environmental treaties established. Our findings suggest that a complex and more functional system is needed to manage both common biodiversity resources and solve existing transboundary environmental conflicts.
Effect of Slow Diaphragmatic Breathing Technique on Heart Rate, Blood Pressure and Peripheral Oxygen Saturation in Hypertensive Elderly

A slower respiration usually involves the use of the diaphragm, probably without increase of respiratory workload. Slow breathing increases baroreflex sensitivity [1-32,14-22], which is lower in essential hypertensive than in normotensive subjects [28,29]. Because the baroreflex modulates cardiac vagal and sympathetic outflow to the sinus node in the heart [33-36], slowing breathing frequency results in a reduction of Heart Rate (HR) [37] and reduces muscle nerve sympathetic activity [2-16]. That’s why it has been suggested that reducing breathing frequency can be used ABSTRACT
INDIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH

Rice is a plant that has been intensively breed, especially in Asia, most of the population’s staple food is rice. There were Many types of rice varieties have been developed for high yeald production. Different rice diseases arise that many treat to reduce production. Such as curvularia spotting disease caused by the fungus Curvularia sp. Infection of Curvularia species causing leaf spots, leaf blights, kernel root, grain deformation and other diseases are well known globally. It was discovered that the small brown oval spots on the Ciherang rice variety cultivated in Bali, Indonesia was caused by Curvularia verruculosa. This disease could reduce the rice yield up to almost 50%. The application of commercial fungicide by the local farmers has not been satisfactorily successful in term of controlling the disease but instead bring damages to the environment and the soil as well. Farmer’s safety is also another serious issue. The current studi develop a natural and green fungicide to check the efficacy of Piper caninum extract against the fungi. Research in the laboratory uses a completely randomized design and research in the field uses a randomized group design.The method of making leaf extracts uses maceration method. Diffusion well technique showed a strong inhibition of the abstract against the C. verruculosa with 22mm inhibition. Zone with a total inhibition of 4% extract concentration. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) was low of 0.5%. Scanning electron images of the treated fungi showed hollow and wrinkled mycelia morphology indicating lysis of the cell has occurred. P. caninum leaf extract at a concentration of 3% provides the highest obstacle to the intensity of C. verruculosa disease, whereas in the treatment of leaf extract concentration p. caninum 4% intensity of C. verrucuosa disease has decreased because rice plants are toxic at a concentration of 4%. Further research is needed regarding the treatment of P. caninum leaf extract against C. verruculosa in rice fields.
A Hybrid Transfer Learning Approach to Migratable Disaster Assessment in Social Media Sensing

Social media sensing has emerged as a powerful sensing paradigm to collect the observations of the physical world by exploring the “wisdom of crowd”. In this paper, we focus on a migratable disaster damage assessment problem in social media sensing applications. Our goal is to accurately identify the damage severity of affected areas in an unfolding disaster event using unlabeled social media data feeds (e.g., image posts on social media). Two fundamental challenges exist in solving our problem: i) different disaster events often have distinct characteristics (e.g., damage types, affected areas) that cannot be easily migrated; ii) it is non-trivial to modify a damage assessment model from a previous event to adapt to a new event without using the labeled data from the new event. To address the above challenges, we develop SocialTrans, a hybrid deep transfer learning framework, to enable effective model migration for accurate damage assessment without using any training data from the studied disaster event. The evaluation results on four real-world disaster events show that SocialTrans consistently outperforms the state-of-the-art baselines in accurately assessing the damage level of disasters.
THE CAUSALITY BETWEEN NON-OIL EXPORTS AND GDP IN PETROLEUM EXPORTING COUNTRIES

This paper investigates the causal relationship between non-oil exports and the GDP in a panel of 11 selected oil exporting countries by using panel unit root tests and panel cointegration analysis. A three-variable model is formulated with oil exports as the third variable. The results show a strong causality from oil exports and economic growth to nonoil exports in the oil exporting countries. Yet, non-oil export does not have any significant effects on GDP in shortand long-run. It means that it is the oil and GDP that drives the nonoil exports in mentioned countries, not vice versa. So, the results in this paper support the GLE (Growth-led Export) hypothesis. JEL classifications: C33;F13; F43
COMPLETE SPECTRAL THEORY FOR MATRICES OVER A FIELD WHOSE GRAPH IS A STAR

For matrices over a field F, whose graph is a star, any characteristic polynomial may occur if |F| is large enough. Depending upon the diagonal entries, some linear factors will have to occur, but given this, the characteristic polynomial is still arbitrary. For smaller fields, a characterization of achievable polynomials is given. The geometrically multiple eigenvalues are easily identified, and, given this, the Jordan structure is completely determined. It turns out that no eigenvalue may enjoy more that one block of size greater than one, a restriction not present in all trees.
Room temperature photo-induced phase transitions of VO2 nanodevices

We have successfully fabricated VO2 nanodevices using a photo-induced phase transition mechanism under an ultraviolet-light (λ = 365 nm, I = 7 μW cm−2). On the obtained VO2 nanowires, the photo-induced insulator-to-metal (IM) phase transition occurred from monoclinic (insulator or semiconductor) to tetragonal (metal) structures at room temperature. The photocurrent-to-dark current ratio of the nanodevice was 285 with ultra-fast response and recovery times of 1.3 and 4.5 ms, respectively, at a UV light intensity of 7 μW cm−2 . As the UV light intensity increased to 2.33 mW cm−2, a maximum photocurrent-to-dark current ratio of 719 was observed. A high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) image indicates that the nanowires grew along the [100] axis as a single crystal. The VO2 nanowires were then fabricated into field-effect transistor (FET) devices. High electron mobilities of 29 and 7.93 cm2 V−1 S−1 were obtained with UV on (2.33 mW cm−2) and off, respectively. The electrical properties of the photo-induced IM phase transitions of the VO2 nanowires were investigated.
Efﬁcient Exploration in Reinforcement Learning Leveraging Automated Planning

While reinforcement learning (RL) and automated planning algorithms share the objective of accomplishing complex tasks, the research of RL and automated planning has been largely separated due to their different computational modalities. Focusing on improving RL agents’ learning efﬁciency for service robots, we develop Guided Dyna-Q (GDQ) to enable RL agents to reason with action knowledge to avoid exploring less-relevant states. GDQ has been evaluated in simulation and using a real mobile robot conducting navigation tasks in an ofﬁce environment. Compared with competitive baselines, GDQ reduces the effort in exploration while improving the quality of learned policies.
Commercial Multilateralism and South American Industrial Development: a panel data analysis Multilateralismo Comercial e Desenvolvimento Industrial Sulamericano: uma análise com dados em painel

This paper analyzes the impact of some variables in the aggregated value of the manufacturing industry in South American nations, with an emphasis on the degree of trade openness, using panel method under the fixed and random effect. In this regard, intense discussions occur regarding the purposes of trade multilateralism and its impacts in South American countries. Therefore, even if trade liberalization is a positive factor to developed nations, given their obvious economic advantages, the same is not true with the South American economies. Hence, it is necessary to have a convergence of interests to better serve the economic development of the countries of South America.
Impact of Retinopathy and Systemic Vascular Comorbidities on All-Cause Mortality

Purpose To assess the impact of retinopathy and systemic vascular comorbidities on the all-cause mortality in a representative U.S. sample. Methods A total of 5703 participants (≥40 years old) from the 2005-2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study grading scale was used to evaluate the retinopathy status. Systemic vascular comorbidities included diabetes mellitus (DM), high blood pressure (HBP), chronic kidney disease (CKD) and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Time to death was calculated as the time from baseline to either the date of death or censoring (December 31st, 2015), whichever came first. Risks of mortality were estimated using Cox proportional hazards models after adjusting for confounders and vascular comorbidities. Results After a median follow-up of 8.33 years (IQR: 7.50-9.67 years), there were 949 (11.8%) deaths from all causes. After adjusting for confounders, the presence of retinopathy predicted higher all-cause mortality (hazard ratio (HR), 1.41; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.08-1.83). The all-cause mortality among participants with both retinopathy and systemic vascular comorbidities including DM (HR, 1.72; 95% CI, 1.21-2.43), HBP (HR, 1.47; 95% CI, 1.03-2.10), CKD (HR, 1.73; 95% CI, 1.26-2.39) and CVD (HR, 1.92; 95% CI, 1.21-3.04) was significantly higher than that among those without either condition. When stratified by diabetic or hypertension status, the co-occurrence of retinopathy and CKD or CVD further increased the all-cause mortality compared to those without either condition. Conclusions The co-occurrence of retinopathy and systemic vascular conditions predicted a further increase in the risk of mortality. More extensive vascular risk factor assessment and management are needed to detect the burden of vascular pathologies and improve long-term survival in individuals with retinopathy.
Analysis of communities of countries with similar dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic evolution

This work addresses the spread of the coronavirus through a non-parametric approach, with the aim of identifying communities of countries based on how similar their evolution of the disease is. The analysis focuses on the number of daily new COVID-19 cases per ten thousand people during a period covering at least 250 days after the confirmation of the tenth case. Dynamic analysis is performed by constructing Minimal Spanning Trees (MST) and identifying groups of similarity in contagions evolution in 95 time windows of a 150-day amplitude that moves one day at a time. The number of times countries belonged to a similar performance group in constructed time windows was the intensity measure considered. Groups' composition is not stable, indicating that the COVID-19 evolution needs to be treated as a dynamic problem in the context of complex systems. Three communities were identified by applying the Louvain algorithm. Identified communities analysis according to each country's socioeconomic characteristics and variables related to the disease sheds light on whether there is any suggested course of action. Even when strong testing and tracing cases policies may be related with a more stable dynamic of the disease, results indicate that communities are conformed by countries with diverse characteristics. The best option to counteract the harmful effects of a pandemic may be having strong health systems in place,with contingent capacity to deal with unforeseen events and available resources capable of a rapid expansion of its capacity.
Using Formative and Summative Assessments in Data Mining to Predict Students‟ Final Grades

- The study intends to devise an earlier and more accurate analytical means of predicting the class of degree a student will graduate with. This will help in decision making and the design of academic programs and curriculum development; also it will help in student guidance and counseling. Because the earlier we can predict the class of degree a student is likely to graduate with, the better it will be for the student to keep it up or improve on his performance and this will consequently assist in mitigating and minimizing the student dropout, attrition, or dismissal from school after wasting reasonable amount of time without acquiring the certificate. Academic data of some Communication & Information Technology students; such as year of admission, year of completion, individual grades obtained from the courses he/she offered at a 1 year diploma program, 1 year advance diploma, and the class of degree he obtains from a 1year top-up degree program was introduced to a Classification Data Mining algorithms to extract a pattern and a model for students' final grade prediction. The study's result shows that timely completion of the first two programs, a high score in computer architecture course, programming, network, and discrete mathematics courses are determining factors that can be used to predict students' final grades at graduation.
Synthesis and Characterization of Novel 1, 3-Oxazole Derivatives and Study of Their In-Vitro Antidiabetic and Antioxidant Activity

A novel series of five derivatives of oxazole were synthesized namely N-4-phenyloxazole-2,4diamine, 2-Methyl-N-phenyloxazoleamine, N,2-diphenyloxazol-4-amine, N-phenyloxazol-4amine and 2-Ethyl-N-phenyloxazol-4by the condensation of acetanilide with different amides in presence of iodine as a catalyst. The synthesized oxazole derivatives were characterized by elemental analysis and H NMR. In this study, the in vitro anti-oxidant activity and anti-diabetic activity of five derivatives of oxazole were determined. Antioxidant activities of these compounds were evaluated through DPPH assay and hydrogen peroxide assay. The anti diabetic activities of these compounds were determined by amylase inhibition assay. A1 derivative shows highest antidiabetic and antioxidant activity. The results obtained showed that the derivatives have anti-oxidant and anti-diabetic activity.
Friend Recommendation System for Online Social Networks using Cohesion Based Approach

– Social Networks (SNs) are mostly used by people for communicating or sharing their emotions with each other. Recommending a friend to join new group or adding a new friend is a typical task. Every day various techniques are developed such as match maker or content based recommendation to recommend a friend. Each technique suffers from its pros and cons. This paper is divided into six sections. Section 1 and 2 discuss the friend recommendation and various existing techniques of the recommendation. Section 3 provides a brief overview of the work done so far in the field of friend recommendation and their shortcomings. Section 4 discusses the proposed mechanism and the results are described in the section5. Finally the section 6 discusses the conclusion drawn from the whole work. In this paper an attempt has been made to propose a novel cohesion based friend recommendation system to recommend new friends based on some existing parameters such as mutual friends, common workspace and age of person. This work has been implemented in Eclipse and analyzed using Weka.