Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Crowdsourced Speech Intelligibility Test that Agrees with, Has Higher Repeatability than, Lab Tests

Crowdsourcing of subjective speech, audio, and video quality of experience (QoE) tests has received much interest and study, but crowdsourcing of speech intelligibility testing has not. We hypothesize that speech intelligibility tests offer a unique crowdsourcing opportunity because, unlike QoE testing, each trial has a correct answer. That allows us to motivate and evaluate listeners. We describe the design, implementation, and analysis of a Crowdsourced Modified Rhyme Test (CMRT) that replicates our recent Laboratory MRT (LMRT) work. Our results show that CMRT results are more repeatable than LMRT results, CMRT repeats LMRT better than LMRT repeats itself, and application of a simple listener selection rule produces per-condition CMRT results that almost exactly agree with reference LMRT results.
Meta-analysis of scientific studies related to pesticide application techniques - air assistance and adjuvant addition

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of air-assisted boom sprayers and addition of adjuvants in the spray solution on control levels of pesticide sprays against weeds and pathogenic fungi by meta-analysis of scientific literature. To perform the meta-analysis, data were collected from the results presented in scientific papers. By these data, a variable was created, denominated as relative control that was used to quantify and test whether the use of air assistance or adjuvants affects the effectiveness of pesticide sprays. This variable was calculated as a difference between percentage of pesticide control in treatments with air assistance or adjuvants and treatments without these spray techniques. Data were analyzed statistically using the Comprehensive Meta-Analysis software. Results showed that the use of air assistance did not have any effect on the control levels of weeds and pathogenic fungi; whereas, the addition of adjuvants increased these levels by 6.45%.
On General Notions of Depth for Regression

Depth notions in location have fascinated tremendous attention in the literature. In fact data depth and its applications remain one of the most active research topics in statistics in the last two decades. Most favored notions of depth in location include Tukey (1975) halfspace depth (HD), Liu (1990) simplicial depth, and projection depth (Stahel (1981) and Donoho (1982), Liu (1992), Zuo and Serfling (2000) (ZS00) and Zuo (2003)), among others. Depth notions in regression have also been proposed, sporadically nevertheless. Regression depth (RD) of Rousseeuw and Hubert (1999) (RH99) is the most famous one which is a direct extension of Tukey HD to regression. Others include Carrizosa (1996) and the ones induced from Marrona and Yohai (1993) (MY93) proposed in this article. Is there any relationship between Carrizosa depth and RD of RH99? Do these depth notions possess desirable properties? What are the desirable properties? Can existing notions really serve as depth functions in regression? These questions remain open. Revealing the equivalence between Carrizosa depth and RD of RH99; expanding location depth evaluating criteria in ZS00 for regression depth notions; examining the existing regression notions with respect to the gauges; and proposing the regression counterpart of the eminent projection depth in location are the four major objectives of the article.
Feeding Habits of Hippopotamus amphibius and Carrying Capacity in the Biosphere Reserve of "Mare aux Hippopotames" in the South- Sudanian Zone of Burkina Faso

Herbivore foraging behavior has been studied for a wide range of mega-herbivore species including wildlife and livestock. However, the existing scientific knowledge of hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius) feeding behavior and ecology is far from comprehensive. This study aims to establish the carrying capacity of the "Mare aux Hippopotames", a protected area and Biosphere Reserve in Burkina Faso which hosts one of the major hippo populations of the country. We first investigated the availability of forage and the feeding habits of hippos in four pastures situated at different elevation with respect to the water and different distance from the lake; three of these pastures are used by hippos in the dry season while the fourth pasture located at higher elevation is used during the rainy season. We also estimated biomass and used this to assess the carrying capacity of the area for hippopotamus. Of the 44 plant species with significant biomass (e.g. a cover > 1%), 34 were eaten by hippos. Species consumed are Andropogon africanus, Andropogon ascinodis, Cyperus distans, Cyperus haspan, Aspilia bussei, Daniellia oliveri, Setaria barbata. The vegetation biomass in the pastures frequented by hippopotamus was 3.12 t/ha, resulting in a total average fresh biomass of 4617.6 t. The available biomass would allow to sustain a hippo population of 128 individuals, and factors other than food limitation are likely to explain why the current hippo population remains at lower levels.
The energetic implications of precocial development for three shorebird species breeding in a warm environment

We investigated the effect of body size, parental behaviour and timing of breeding on the chick growth and energetics of three precocial shorebird (Charadrii) species in a warm sub-tropical environment: the Kittlitz's Plover Charadrius pecuarius, Blacksmith Lapwing Vanellus armatus, and Crowned Lapwing V. coronatus. The three species exhibited slower growth, longer pre-fledging periods and lower energy expenditure during the pre-fledging period than Arctic and temperate zone relatives of similar size. It was found that relative growth rates of charadriid and scolopacid species increased by 1.77% per degree latitude. Blacksmith and Crowned Lapwings are of similar size (i.e. about 160 g), about four times the mass of Kittlitz's Plovers. Taking body mass into account, the resting metabolic rate and daily energy expenditure of the three study species were similar. The relative amounts of energy needed for chicks to grow from a hatchling to a fledgling were low for the three species studied. The relative amount of energy needed to complete growth in charadriid and scolopacid species increased by 2.54% per degree latitude. Because Crowned Lapwings exhibited faster growth than Blacksmith Lapwings but similar daily energy expenditure we suggest that Blacksmith Lapwings compensate for greater energy expenditure in colder weather by growing more slowly. We suggest that small growth rate coefficient, low resting metabolic rate and low daily energy expenditure are adaptations to lower food availability and milder ambient temperatures in sub-tropical breeding habitats compared to temperate or Arctic regions.
An Fast Refined Algorithm for Image Mosaic

In order to improve accuracy and speed of image mosaic, an optimized algorithm of image mosaic based on corners is presented. Frequency phase correlation is used to estimate the overlapping area, in which improved Harris operator is used to extract corners. Then, rough and RANSAC accurate matching will be completed. Finally, image variance combined linear weight function is used to implemented image fusion and mosaic, and it presents quantitative analysis method about registration accuracy. Experimental results show that this algorithm exceeds existing ones at matching speed about 40%, and has a desired visual effect. The MAD and RMSE of corresponding points is within 1 pixel precision.
The Potential of Using Mobile Money Systems for Enhancing Financial Inclusion in Sri Lanka

In common with many developing countries, financial exclusion among the poor is a major constraint to poverty reduction in Sri Lanka. Mobile phones have been increasingly used as a means to overcome this constraint in several developing countries, the most prominent among them being Kenya and the Philippines. The objective of this study is to explore the potential of using mobile money systems in Sri Lanka to extend financial facilities to the poor so as to smoothen their economic activities. The findings of the study reveal that although mobile phones have become common in Sri Lanka over the last decade covering rural areas where there is acute poverty and lack of access to formal banking institutions, they are hardly used for financial transfers and payments. As a result, the country has been losing opportunities to use mobile phones to extend financial facilities to the poor who do not have access to formal finance. The study also reveals that lack of awareness about mobile banking acts as a major impediment to the expansion of mobile money systems. The application of mobile banking is largely limited to commercial bank customers in Sri Lanka making it an additive model. Our focus group discussions reveal that most of the bank customers are unaware of such facilities. A major reason for this could be that mobile banking is not widely publicized. In Sri Lanka, the mobile phone operators have not yet launched mobile money systems. The mobile transactions platform needs to be harnessed in the country without further delay to overcome the problem of financial exclusion. Sri Lanka Journal of Advanced Social Studies Vol. 1 - No. 2 - Page 3-24 DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.4038/sljass.v1i2. 4854
Upregulation of photosynthesis genes, and downregulation of stress defense genes, is the response of Arabidopsis thaliana shoots to intraspecific competition.

Plants compete with each other for light, water, and soil nutrients. The extent to which gene expression is affected by the suite of biotic and abiotic stresses involved in competitive response is unknown but has relevance for our basic understanding of plant-plant interactions as well as experimental protocols when using model organisms. Arabidopsis was planted in isolated pots, or at low densities typically used in phenotypic and physiological characterization, at medium densities typical of bulk tissue and seed generation, and at high density typical of mutant screens. Biometric measures for growth and yield showed progressive reduction in inflorescence height, rosette diameter, biomass gain, and seed yield at medium and high densities, and had approached the carrying capacity of our pots at high density. Shoot and leaf RNA was harvested for transcriptomic analysis. Genes involved in photosynthesis were upregulated in response to density stress, while those involved in abiotic stress response, secondary metabolism, and pathogen defense were strongly suppressed. There was significant overlap and correlation between gene expression in low and high densities. Arabidopsis survival strategy for intraspecific competition appears to be completely different to that for deprivation of resources, biotic and abiotic stresses. Plants in these typical growth chamber conditions responded to competition by strongly up-regulating photosynthesis genes while shutting down stress response and pathogen defense pathways.
Dependence Uncertainty Bounds and Optimization of Aggregate Risk

An essential tool in financial risk management are risk measures, which allow quantifying and comparing the risk inherent in the uncertain future values of financial positions or insurance claims. Risk measures are used by risk managers to control risk exposures within a company, as well as by financial authorities to determine capital requirements under the Basel and Solvency regulatory frameworks for banks and insurance companies, respectively. This Thesis considers the optimization of risk measures under two mathematical setups. The first one is in the context of model uncertainty, in particular, dependence uncertainty (DU) between several risks. While the losses within individual business lines or risk types can perhaps be modeled and estimated to a satisfactory degree, their interdependence may by difficult or impossible to model adequately. The framework of DU is an idealization of these circumstances, where the individual risks are modeled perfectly, but their dependence is completely unknown. This impedes evaluating the total (aggregate) risk that the company is exposed to. Paper A provides the theoretical basis as well as numerical means for constructing the “safest” distribution of the aggregate risk, represented mathematically as being minimal with respect to the so-called convex order between random variables. This allows determining the lowest possible value (lower bound) of the Expected Shortfall (ES, a risk measure that is coherent and, in particular, respects the convex order), over all aggregate risks that are consistent with the known distributions of individual risks. Also the upper and lower bound of the most commonly used risk measure, Value-at-Risk (VaR), can be obtained, notwithstanding that VaR does not obey the convex order. Paper B provides numerical examples that complement recent methodological development and theoretical results. In this paper, DU bounds that are calculated using various methods, including simple approximations, are compared. Paper C studies the DU bounds for the expectile, a risk measure that has recently gained attention due to its favorable theoretical properties. Since the expectile is a convex risk measure, the earlier results on convex order apply. DU bounds are often characterized by extreme negative dependence, and recently a related concept called Σ-countermonotonicity has been introduced. Paper D shows that this concept is relevant for optimizing a subclass of so-called arrangement increasing functions, and illustrates with examples from scheduling and systems assembly. Negative dependence structures can be
Genomic predictions for production - and Functional Traits in Norwegian Red from BLUP analyses of imputed 54K and 777K SNP data

Three different SNP chips have been used for genotyping of Norwegian Red bulls, Affymetrix 25K, Illumina 54K, and Illumina HD 777K. To facilitate imputation, 384 key animals were genotyped with all three SNP chips. The aim of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of prediction for 20 traits in Norwegian Red, based on imputed 25K/54K data and imputed 25K/54K/777K data. A total of 2,937 progeny tested Norwegian Red bulls had SNP data and the total number of markers in the analysis after editing was 46,512 for the imputed 25K/54K data and 598,036 for the imputed 25K/54K/777K data. The correlation between DYD and predicted breeding value ranged from 0.10 to 0.70, highest for milk production traits, and lowest for health- and fertility traits. The correlations increased only marginally when using the imputed 25K/54K/777K data compared to using 25K/54K data.
Dynamics of twisted nematic liquid crystal pi-cells

A twisted nematic liquid crystal pi-cell with fast optical response time of 2.2 ms was prepared. We investigated the dynamics of this cell and observed the back-flow-induced optical overshoot phenomena both in homeotropic-to-planar state transition and planar-to-homeotropic state transition. We analyzed the behavior of the director and found that there is a tip-over phenomenon when the field is removed from relatively high voltage (>6 V). More important, the fluid flow effect results in the reverse twist both in the rising process and the decay process. Consequently, the reverse twist increases and decreases the effective phase retardation on the optical rising and decay process, respectively, and thus speeds up the optical response in both stages.
The Asymmetric Long-Run Relationship between Crude Oil and Gold Futures

This study employs the momentum threshold error-correction model with generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity to investigate asymmetric cointegration and causal relationships between West Texas Intermediate Crude Oil and gold prices in the futures market. The paper examines data from May 1, 1994 to November 20, 2008. The empirical results show that an asymmetric long-run adjustment exists between gold and oil. Furthermore, the causality relationship shows that West Texas Intermediate Crude Oil plays a dominant role. The findings should prove valuable to individual investors and financial institutions who can use the findings here to gold prices based on oil prices.
Anti-HSV type-1 activity of olive leaves extract crude form acting as a microemulsion dosage form

Olea europeae (L.) has been reported to have antibacterial, antifungal and antiviral activities. The aim of the present study is to evaluate antiviral activity of olive leaves extract (OLE) against herpes simplex viruses (HSV) type-1 virus. Screening of antiviral activity was assessed by measuring inhibition of viral-induced cytopathic effect of in vero cells of different OLE fractions that have been successively extracted using solvents of increasing polarities, against HSV type-1 virus. Negligible antiviral activity has been shown of different fractions, except for ethyl acetate and n-butanol fractions, showing strong and moderate anti-HSV type -1 activity, respectively. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) chromatographic analysis of both fractions revealed high oleuropein content in ethyl acetate fraction in addition to other phenolic and flavonoid contents, whereas n-butanol fraction showed only high content of other phenolic and flavonoid compounds. Cytotoxicity of ethyl acetate fraction was assessed in vero cell line, the mean cytotoxic concentration CC50, was reported to be 610 µg/ml. On the other hand, the 50% inhibitory concentration (IC50), against HSV-1, was of value as low as 40 µg/ml (SI = 15.2). This concentration could be more reduced to 33 µg/ml (SI = 16.9); that is, 17% reduction in dose, by formulating a microemulsion dosage form, with particle size of 13 to 19 nm, being assessed by Malvern Zetasizer Ver. 6.2 and electron microscopy. Acyclovir, a recommended anti-HSV agent, was used as a positive control. Oleuropein pure standard and the main phenolic component of OLE, was also assessed for its anti-HSV type-1 virus. As conclusion, microemulsion formulation enhanced antiviral activity of crude OLE. Key words: Olive leaves extract, OLE, acyclovir, anti-HSV activity, microemulsion, oleuropein.
Ameliorative Effects of Ethanolic Neem Extract on Dietary Aflatoxin Induced Hematological Damage and Hepatotoxicity in Mice

The aqueous ethanolic extract of Azadirachta indicia bark was evaluated for its ability to ameliorate aflatoxin induced damage to blood cells and hepatotoxicity in albino mice. Six groups (I-VI) of mice were used in this study. Mice in group I were exposed to aflatoxin-free feed only while those in group II were fed with aflatoxin contaminated feed only for 3 weeks. Groups III-V were exposed to aflatoxin contaminated feed for three weeks each and then treated interperitonially with 0.25 mL of 50, 100 and 150 mg/kgbwt aqueous ethanolic extract of A. indica, respectively, at one dose daily for 7 days. Group VI was fed aflatoxin-free feed for three weeks and then administered with 150 mg/kgbwt A. indica extract to ascertain the effect of this concentration of the extract on the mice. Aflatoxin was immunosuppressive, leading to a reduction in PCV, WBC, neutrophile and lymphocyte counts in group II mice as compared to other groups. Mice in group II had the highest significantly different (p<0.05) mean lesion score as compared to the control group. However with an increase in extract concentration a strong capacity to boost hematological parameters was recorded for the extract at the expense of compromising hepatocytes integrity. This study showed that low concentration of aqueous ethanolic extract of A. indica bark is safe and therapeutic for ameliorating hematological damage and hepatotoxicity induced by dietary aflatoxin.
Attribute Reduction in Intuitionistic Fuzzy Concept Lattices

As an effective tool for knowledge discovery, concept lattice has been successfully applied to various fields. And one of the key problems of knowledge discovery is attribute reduction. In order to understand the problems better, the attribute reduction is necessary to perfect the theory as well as expand application of concept lattice. This paper introduces the intuitionistic fuzzy theory into the concept lattice theory and proposes a kind of intuitionistic fuzzy concept lattice. Then, an approach to attribute reduction based on the discernibility matrix is proposed and investigated, which makes the discovery of implicit knowledge easier and the representation simpler in data; furthermore, the theory of concept lattice is perfected. The theory of intuitionistic fuzzy concept lattice is useful and meaningful in view of the complexity and fuzziness of information in real world, and the potential value of dealing with information is expected in the future.
Mitochondrial phylogeographic structure of the white‐browed piculet (Sasia ochracea): cryptic genetic differentiation and endemism in Indochina

Aim Our understanding of the geographic patterns of gene flow between populations of birds in the Indo‐Malayan faunal region is surprisingly poor compared with that in other parts of the world. A thorough knowledge of general patterns of phylogeographic structure is, however, of utmost importance for conservation purposes. Species with poor dispersal capabilities could serve as indicators of endemism and genetic isolation in the Indochinese subregion. From their morphology (tiny size, short tail, short and rounded wings), piculets of the genus Sasia are inferred to have poor dispersal capabilities, and thus form a suitable focal species. This study analysed the pattern of genetic variation within the White‐browed Piculet (Sasia ochracea).
A lean production control system for high-variety/low-volume environments: a case study implementation

Due to the success of lean manufacturing, many companies are interested in implementing a lean production control system. Lean production control principles include the levelling of production, the use of pull mechanisms and takt time control. These principles have mainly been applied in high volume flow shop environments where orders move through the production system in one direction in a limited number of identifiable routing sequences. This article investigates how lean production control principles can be used in a make-to-order job shop, where volume is typically low and there is high variety. We show how production levelling, constant work in process, first in first out and takt time can be integrated in a lean production control system. A case study is presented to illustrate the design and phased implementation of the system in a typical dual resource constrained production environment. The case study demonstrates that lean production control principles can be successfully implemented in a high-variety/low-volume context. Implementation led to a reduction in flow times and an increase in the service level achieved, with on-time delivery performance improving from 55 to 80%.
Concentration of $1$-Lipschitz functions on manifolds with boundary with Dirichlet boundary condition

In this paper, we consider a concentration of measure problem on Riemannian manifolds with boundary. We study concentration phenomena of non-negative $1$-Lipschitz functions vanishing on the boundary. In order to capture such phenomena, we introduce a new invariant called the observable inscribed radius that measures the difference between such $1$-Lipschitz functions and zero. We examine its basic properties, and formulate a comparison theorem under a lower Ricci curvature bound, and a lower mean curvature bound for the boundary.