Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
FORECASTING OF PROCESSES IN COMPLEX SYSTEMS FOR REAL-WORLD PROBLEMS : TUTORIAL

This tutorial is based on modification of the professor nomination lecture presented two years ago in front of the Scientific Council of the Czech Technical University in Prague [16]. It is devoted to the techniques for the models developing suitable for processes forecasting in complex systems. Because of the high sensitivity of the processes to the initial conditions and, consequently, due to our limited possibilities to forecast the processes for the long-term horizon, the attention is focused on the techniques leading to practical applications of the short term prediction models. The aim of this tutorial paper is to bring attention to possible difficulties which designers of the predicting models and their users meet and which have to be solved during the prediction model developing, validation, testing, and applications. The presented overview is not complete, it only reflects the author’s experience with developing of the prediction models for practical tasks solving in banking, meteorology, air pollution and energy sector. The paper is completed by an example of the global solar radiation prediction which forms an important input for the electrical energy production forecast from renewable sources. The global solar radiation forecasting is based on numerical weather prediction models. The time-lagged ensemble technique for uncertainty quantification is demonstrated on a simple example.
A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EFFICIENCY AND ITS DETERMINANTS IN ISLAMIC, CONVENTIONAL, AND SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE BANKS

This study empirically estimates efficiency and its determinants in 190 Islamic (IBs), conventional (CBs), and socially responsible banks (SRBs) in 22 countries during the period 20052012. The study first uses non-parametric approaches to estimate the efficiency measures (scale efficiency (SE), technical efficiency-constant returns to scale (CRS), and technical efficiencyvariable returns to scale (VRS)) and second employs ordinary least squares, fixed effects, random effects, and TOBIT models to get the efficiency determinants. The findings indicate that the average efficiency is 0.966, 0.952, and 0.983 for the SE, CRS, and VRS, respectively. However, efficiency measures show that the SRBs are most efficient banks whereas, the least efficiency scores archived by Islamic banks. Islamic bank efficiency is positively correlated with size, loan intensity, ROA, inflation rates, market capitalization and financial crisis. However, conventional banks’ TE and CRS efficiency are positively and significantly correlated with size, ROA, and market capitalization, while their VRS efficiency is negatively and significantly related to capital ratio, age and GDP. In addition, SRBs’ efficiency is increased by size, capital ratio, loan intensity, ROA, foreign ownership, domestic ownership, inflation and financial crisis. Furthermore, the financial crisis affects the SE and CRS efficiency measures in Islamic banks while socially responsible banks SE efficiency measure is positively affected by the financial crisis, which means that socially responsible banks were stabled and resisted during the crisis period. Finally, there is no significant correlation between financial crisis and efficiency indictors in conventional banks during the period.
Prospective Evaluation of a Rapid Functional Assay for Heparin-Induced Thrombocytopenia Diagnosis in Critically Ill Patients*

Objectives: Overdiagnosis of heparin-induced thrombocytopenia remains an unresolved issue in the ICU leading to the unjustified switch from heparin to alternative anticoagulants or delays in anticoagulation. Platelet function assays significantly improve the specificity of heparin-induced thrombocytopenia diagnosis, but they are not readily available, involve technical difficulties and have a long turnaround time. We evaluated the performance of a rapid and easy to perform functional assay for heparin-induced thrombocytopenia diagnosis in ICU patients, known as “heparin-induced multiple electrode aggregometry. ” Design: In this observational prospective study patients were tested with the immunoglobulin G enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, the serotonin release assay and heparin-induced multiple electrode aggregometry. Heparin-induced multiple electrode aggregometry was assessed against heparin-induced thrombocytopenia diagnosis (clinical picture in favor, serotonin release assay, and immunoglobulin G enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay positive) and serotonin release assay. Setting: Medical or surgical ICU of 35 medical centers. Patients: Patients suspected for heparin-induced thrombocytopenia hospitalized in medical or surgical ICU from January 2013 to May 2013. Interventions: None. Measurements and Main results: Heparin-induced thrombocytopenia diagnosis was retained in 12 patients (14%). Using heparin-induced thrombocytopenia diagnosis as reference, heparin-induced multiple electrode aggregometry showed an excellent negative predictive value and sensitivity, at 98% and 92% respectively. Its positive predictive value and specificity were 100%. Receiver operating characteristic analysis with the serotonin release assay as reference showed an optimal heparin-induced multiple electrode aggregometry cut-off at 1,300 AU × minutes (specificity, 100%; sensitivity, 90%; area under the curve, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.95–1.0). The Kappa coefficient between heparin-induced multiple electrode aggregometry and the serotonin release assay was at 0.90%. Conclusions: Heparin-induced multiple electrode aggregometry performed very well in heparin-induced thrombocytopenia diagnosis in ICU patients and agreed with the gold standard test for heparin-induced thrombocytopenia diagnosis, the serotonin release assay. Heparin-induced multiple electrode aggregometry is a reliable and rapid platelet functional assay that could decrease heparin-induced thrombocytopenia overdiagnosis in the ICU setting.
Getting It Right

Analytical or coding errors in posterior simulators can produce reasonable but incorrect approximations of posterior moments. This article develops simple tests of posterior simulators that detect both kinds of errors, and uses them to detect and correct errors in two previously published articles. The tests exploit the fact that a Bayesian model specifies the joint distribution of observables (data) and unobservables (parameters). There are two joint distribution simulators. The marginal-conditional simulator draws unobservables from the prior and then observables conditional on unobservables. The successive-conditional simulator alternates between the posterior simulator and an observables simulator. Formal comparison of moment approximations of the two simulators reveals existing analytical or coding errors in the posterior simulator.
A New Model of the Question Answering Process

The central phenomenon of the whole examination process is what happens when a candidate meets a question. This is the focus of all our activity: no amount of good administration, good teaching or wise judgement can compensate if there is something wrong with the questions. Educational examining is a form of mental measurement or of measuring some property of each candidate's mind, using as evidence the product they generate when they meet each question. Understanding assessment therefore depends fundamentally on understanding what happens during this process as a candidate tries to answer a question.
Genome-wide analysis of the WRKY family genes and their responses to cold stress in watermelon

The WRKY transcription factors play important roles in various physiological processes, especially in regulating plant resistance to environmental stresses. Watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) plants suffer from various stressful climate conditions during their growth, especially cold stress. However, little information about the exact role of WRKYs in watermelon responses to cold was available. In this study, a total of 57 candidate ClWRKY genes from watermelon genome were identified and they were distributed unevenly on 11 chromosomes. After excluding five ClWRKY genes with incomplete WRKY domains, phylogenetic analysis showed that the remaining 52 ClWRKY genes could be divided into three groups with 11 members in Group 1, 34 in Group 2, and seven in Group 3. The ClWRKY genes in group 2 could be further classified into five subgroups with three members in 2a, five in 2b, 13 in 2c, six in 2d, and seven in 2e, respectively. The expression profiles of ClWRKY genes in response to cold stress could be classiﬁed into four types: four ClWRKY genes had little or no change in transcript levels, seven ClWRKY genes had irregular expression patters, 17 ClWRKY genes were upregulated, and 25 ClWRKY genes were downregulated. The different regulation patterns of ClWRKY genes in response to low-temperature treatment revealed that the WRKY gene family was crucial for cold stress tolerance and there were multiple regulatory pathways involved in cold resistance.
Conceptual Semantics of Domain Knowledge in Learning by Correcting Mistakes

Meta-reasoning is an integral part of high-level cognition. Among other tasks, an intelligent agent may use meta-reasoning for learning by correcting mistakes in its domain knowledge. For example, given examples where its classification knowledge fails, a classification agent may use metareasoning to self-diagnose and self-repair the erroneous domain knowledge. We know from prior work that this kind of self-diagnosis and self-repair is facilitated if a hierarchical structure can be imposed on the agent’s classification knowledge, based upon available background knowledge. In this paper, we examine the effect of imposing fixed semantics on the intermediate nodes of the hierarchy on classification learning, as distinct from the advantage offered by the structuring of knowledge. We present empirical results from ablation experiments that demonstrate the generalization power provided by verification procedures at the intermediate concepts in the hierarchy, which are demonstrated to go well beyond those provided by the structure of the hierarchy.
Synthesis and Electrochemical Properties of Transparent Nanostructured BaTiO 3 Film Electrodes

Transparent nanostructured BaTiO3 film electrodes were synthesized on conductive substrates from BaTiO3 nanocrystals forming at low temperature. Electrochemical and spectroelectrochemical methods were employed to investigate its properties of band energetics and the trap state at different pH values. The flat band edges greatly depended on the pH value of electrolyte, and the flat band edges were -0.70, -0.92 and -1.20 V vs saturated Ag/AgCl at the pH value of 3.0, 6.8 and 13.0, respectively. The results showed that trap state densities also highly depended on pH. The total trap state densities were 3.73 × 1015, 4.02 × 1015 and 6.48 × 1016 cm-2 at pH value of 3.0, 6.8 and 13.0 respectively with maximum located at -0.36 V, -0.50 V and -0.80 V. The results obtained from CVs were in good agreement with that obtained from the measurements of time resolved currents. The size of the peak potentials in the cyclic voltammograms experiments was increased dramatically with the pH value increasing, indicating that traps were surface-related.
MICROMETEOROLOGY OF FOREST SURFACE FLUXES

Atmospheric turbulence generated by friction between mean flow and underlying surface and by buoyancy is the most effective process carrying matter and kinetic energy between surfaces and the atmosphere. Transport by both turbulence and radiation inside a vegetation canopy is governed by properties of the vegetation, such as canopy architecture and optical properties of plant elements. Balance of the most important greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) between different land ecosystems and the atmosphere is still an open question. One approach to the problem is measuring the CO2 flux in the atmospheric surface layer (ASL) above the canopy. At the timescales typical for measurements of net ecosystem carbon exchange (NEE) over a canopy, photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) is the main driving variable accounting for the variation of photosynthetic rate at plant surfaces. Under daytime atmospheric conditions, turbulence is usually efficient enough to carry the signal from the surfaces to the measurement height. Thus, the flux measured above the canopy is an integral in vertical of the exchange rates occurring inside the canopy and on the ground. Equally, the flux is an integral of fluxes in horizontal, although in horizontal the integration domain is not restricted by the forest floor and canopy top and not all the areas contribute equally to the result. The area having strongest influence on the measured flux depends on characteristics of the prevailing turbulence. Determining the area by modelling is called footprint analysis. In this thesis, the influence of PAR on the CO2 exchange of a Scots pine canopy was studied by using PAR distribution measurements to estimate canopy NEE. The estimates were compared with NEE values measured with the eddy covariance (EC) method. Furthermore, the EC measurements and a model for turbulence statistics were used to investigate the characteristics of turbulent flow inside and above a forest canopy and the results were further used in the flux footprint analysis. A stochastic Lagrangian flux footprint analysis was also used in an attempt to separate the influences of different forest types on the fluxes measured over a complex forest site. Finally, flux measurements were analysed to find out the annual CO2 balance of a Scots pine forest.
Role of brassinolide in alleviating the adverse effect of drought stress on physiology, growth and yield of green gram (Vigna radiata L.) genotypes

A pot experiment was conducted to study the modulation effect of brassinolide under water stress and drought condition on physiology, growth and yield of green gram under normal condition till anthesis stage, the plants were sprayed with Brassinolide (0.0, 0.1, 0.5 and 1.0 ppm) concentration at 25 and 35 DAS prior to imposed stress. Water stress was found to decrease significantly in the respect of photosynthetic and transpiration rate, stomatal conductance, relative water content, chlorophyll stability index, leaf area, plant height, number of pods per plant, number of grains per pod, test weight and grain yield with a significant increase in leaf temperature and appreciable significant difference between both the varieties. The effect of Brassinolide was found to increase in the value of these parameters significantly with a decrease in leaf temperature because the effect of brassinolide was recorded to increase in the rate of transpiration at all the stages in both the cultivars of green gram up to 1.0 ppm concentration of it.
Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Aurora-a Battery on Children

The aim of this research is confirmatory factor analysis of Aurora-a Battery on Iranian children. Aurora-a Battery is a cognitive assessment according to Robert J. Sternberg’s theory of Successful Intelligence. 400 children 9-12 years old were selected through multi-steps sampling method and were tested with Aurora-a test. These children were from geographically diverse schools in Isfahan city, Iran. The factor analysis of data was performed through Amos software. Fit indices show that data fit with model. Moreover, the correlation between test total score and the analytical, creative and practical intelligences were 0.91, 0.94 and 0.84, respectively. Alpha for Aurora’s total score was equal to 0.92 as well. Aurora-a test can be an appropriate and valid instrument for identification gifted children aged 9-12 according to Sternberg’s theory of successful intelligence. This test allows many children to be identified as gifted which in turn provides the opportunity of further development of their potential.
Drama: Threat or Opportunity? Managing the 'Dual Affect' in Process Drama

In this paper we discuss the construct of ‘dual affect’ and its relevance to drama pedagogy in a foreign language teaching context. We draw on a research project involving a group of advanced learners of Italian using drama-based strategies. We begin with a theoretical discussion of dual affect, aesthetic distance, and protection mechanisms in the drama/language classroom. Next, we contextualise the research study and analyse student-participants’ responses in selected moments of the drama. The analysis suggests that, while some student-participants experienced the dual affect of drama as a threat, others found it a stimulus for reflection and a challenge. We argue that this may have had an impact on their perceived learning outcomes and on their willingness to communicate in the target language. We take this opportunity to reflect on the importance of managing dual affect in the process drama classroom, especially when working with advanced language students who have no prior experience in drama-based pedagogy.
Control over the utilization of the loan and the pattern of the gendered division of labor in the loan-funded activity: A case of Duterimbere MFI in Rwanda

Abstract Microcredit is believed to promote the low status of women in decision-making when they can control their loan-funded activities. However, the gendered division of labor of the patriarchal societies is known to create gender inequality in the ways women and men participate in their businesses as women are puzzled by sharing their time between productive and reproductive responsibilities. Based on a cross-sectional research carried with the borrowers in Duterimbere MFI in Rwanda, this paper examines the effect of microcredit on the ability of women and men to control over loan use and allocation of income gained from loans. The study findings revealed that in overall there was gender equality in participating in income generating activities and power over economic decision-making. The only indicator of control over loan that showed inequality between women and men was their level of freedom from domination. This gender inequality comes from cultural norms that prohibit the participation of men in household chores. Intervention to promote gender equality in control over loan use must target to promote men’s willingness to lessen women’s reproductive responsibilities.
Avaliação da atividade leishmanicida in vitro de plantas medicinais

Searching for new leishmanicidal agents, promastigotes forms of L. amazonensis were cultured with the hydroalcoholic extracts obtained from the Tephrosia cinerea (L.) Pers. (Fabaceae), Dichorisandra sp (Commelinaceae), Syzygium jambolanum DC. (Myrtaceae), Julocroton triqueter (Lam.) Didr. var. triqueter (Euphorbiaceae), Passiflora edulis Sims(Passifloraceae), Cecropia sp (Cecropiaceae), Chenopodium ambrosioides L. (Chenopodiaceae), Pedilanhus tithymaloides (L.) Poit (Euphorbiaceae), Peristrophe angustifolia Nees(Acanthaceae) leaves and the aqueous extract obtained from the Orbignya phalerata Mart. (Arecaceae) mesocarp flour. The in vitro assay was performed with promastigotes incubated during 24 hours with 31.3, 62.5, 125.0, 250.0 and 500.0 µg/mL of each extract. Then the inhibitory concentration of the parasite growth (IC50) was determined. The effectiveness of J. triqueter, Dichorisandra sp and T. cinerea hydroalcoholic extracts to induce promastigotes death was intense since the IC50 were 29.5; 32.9 and 43.6 µg/mL, respectively. P. edulis, C. ambrosioides and S. jambolanum extracts had moderated effectiveness since the IC50 were 150.1; 151.9 and 166.6 µg/mL, respectively. P. tithymaloides and O. phalerata extracts showed a low efficacy in comparison with IC50 >500 µg/mL. Peristrophe angustifolia and Cecropia sp extracts had no leishmanicidal effect. Thus, three of the ten extracts that were tested showed a significant in vitro leishmanicidal activity.
Effects of Combined Application of Inorganic Fertilizer and Organic Manures on Nitrogen Use and Recovery Efficiencies of Hybrid Rice (Palethwe-1)

We conducted two field experiments to investigate combined effects of organic and inorganic fertilizers on nitrogen use and recovery efficiencies of hybrid rice (Palethwe-1) during dry and wet seasons, 2015. Four levels of inorganic fertilizer (0%, 50%, 75%, and 100% NPK), based on recommended rates of 150 kg N ha-1, 70 kg P2O5 ha-1, and 120 kg K2O ha-1, were used with cow manure, poultry manure, and vermicompost (5 t·ha-1each) in a split-plot design with three replicates. In both seasons, with 50% NPK, the N uptake level achieved with poultry manure was similar to that obtained with 75% and 100% NPK. The greatest N use, internal, agronomic N use, and recovery efficiencies were obtained with 50% NPK + poultry manure, but were similar to those obtained from cow manure and vermicompost subplots. As the amount of applied N from organic and inorganic fertilizer increased, the N use efficiency and related parameters decreased, due to similar yields among plots with different NPK application levels. Poultry manure resulted in the highest significant correlations between applied N and N accumulation, followed by cow manure and vermicompost, in both seasons. Neither chemical fertilizer nor organic manure alone led to optimum N use and N recovery efficiencies. The combination of 50% inorganic fertilizer (75 kg N ha-1) and poultry manure (5 t·ha-1) enhanced the N uptake, the N use and recovery efficiencies of hybrid rice. Cow manure (5 t·ha-1) in combination with 75% inorganic fertilizer (112.5 kg N ha-1) was an adequate substitute for reduced chemical fertilizer usage. Therefore, this study highlighted combined application of inorganic fertilizers and organic manures had the benefits not only in reducing the need for chemical fertilizers but also in improving N uptake by hybrid rice (Palethwe-1) leading to the better environment.
ANTIMICROBIAL, ANTIOXIDANT ACTIVITY AND PHYTOCHEMICAL SCREENING OF TECOMA STANS (L.) JUSS. EX KUNTH

The ethanol, methanol and water extracts of Tecoma stans effective against tested bacteria ( Pseudomonas fluorescens , Clavibacter michiganensis sub sp. michiganensis , Xanthomonas axanopodis pv. malvacearum , Staphylococcus aureus, E. coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Klebsiella pneumonia ) and fungi (all species of Aspergillus and Alternaria ). Phytochemical analysis revealed the presence of alkaloids, flavonoids, saponins, phenols, steroids, anthraquinones and tannins. The three extract fractions have showed highest total Phenolic content (177-216 mg gallic acid equivalent/g). These three solvent fractions possessed strong radical scavenging activity from FRAP and DPPH. It was ranged from 1433.75 to 3841.17 g/ml. The results indicate that this plant is a potential candidate to be used as an antimicrobial and antioxidant. Key words: Tecoma stans , Antimicrobial, antioxidant, phytochemicals Govindappa M et al. Antimicrobial, Antioxidant Activity and Phytochemical Screening of Tecoma stans (L.) Juss. ex Kunth. J Phytol 3/3 (2011) 68-76.