Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dynamic Reconstruction Progress Report

: A major goal in WP5 is an accurate scene ﬂow estimation software that can run at interactive framerates. In this report, we present the current state of our research and demonstrate that it is on a good way to achieve this goal. The chosen approach formulates disparity estimation and optical ﬂow estimation as end-to-end learning tasks that are solved via deep learning. The learning approach will allow us to adapt to the speciﬁc garden scenario and the speciﬁc camera type used in the project by training on data that has been speciﬁcally created for this purpose. Challenges in the scope of plants, such as heavy self-occlusion and ﬁne details, can be treated elegantly within such formulation. We present results that aim for the ﬁrst project demonstrator, which is supposed to trim a boxwood bush. However, the approach we have been chosen is very generic and will be applicable also to other plants in the later project stages. Moreover, it can support 3D reconstruction in WP3.
The Self-deprecating Humor of George W. Bush : Its Functions and Effects

This paper attempts to study the functions and effects of humor by clarifying the processes through which we attain the effects. Since the time of the Greek philosophers, various functions of humor have been presented. The functions presented so far are diverse and some seem to have contrary or contradicting effects. In this paper we will study examples of humor expressed by George W. Bush, with special focus on self-deprecating humor, in an attempt to find clear evidence of the functions and effects of this type. We will attempt to analyze the processes of a humor act in the same way as Austin (1962) analyzed a speech act, or an action performed by an utterance. The analysis reveals that the function of humor is to raise laughter and the effect of humor is to moderate negative aspects of life, such as anger, aggressiveness, fear, tension, weariness and depression, while providing positive effects such as cheering up the spirits and achieving appreciation, sympathy and even love. These effects of humor make unsociable actions, such as aggressive verbal attacks or sexual talk, socially acceptable by modifying the malignant, harmful or unpleasant elements of these actions.
Correlational Teamwork in Secondary Schools: A Case of Musoma Municipality, Tanzania

This study investigated correlational teamwork among Secondary Schools in Musoma Municipality using case study approach. A sample of 10 Secondary schools was randomly selected and 164 teachers, non-teaching staff and school leaders participated in the study by filling the questionnaire. Validity was established through expert judgment and reliability test yielded Cronbach’s alpha of . 863 for teamwork, . 885 for morale of work, . 866 for leadership and . 875 for communication. Descriptive Statistics, ANOVA and Pearson product moment correlational coefficient were employed to analyse research questions. General mean score of school stakeholders in all aspects of teamwork was between 2.50 and 3.49, meaning they agreed that there is tem work in their schools. Statistics yielded a significant difference in perception of school leaders, teachers and non-teaching staff on teamwork, school leaders having significantly higher mean scores than teachers. Results also revealed a positive and strong relationship between teamwork and morale of work and leadership. Moderate and positive relationship was also found between teamwork and communication. Following these findings, it is recommended that schools under investigation need to enhance good leadership and strive to increase morale of work among school stakeholders in order to increase teamwork spirit.
Accelerated Wound Healing by a Topical Wound Healing Lipogel in Patients Undergoing Catheter De-placement - Evidence from a Randomized, Controlled Clinical Study

Objective: The purpose of this clinical study was to assess a novel wound model and to compare the wound healing properties of a topical wound healing hydroactive lipogel (MediGel®) promoting moist wound environment versus standard treatment by a standard plaster und dry environmental conditions in patients undergoing catheter de-placement as a model for non-acute wounds affecting all skin layers in real life conditions (moist environment does improve granulation & epithelialization supported by Lipogel – the MEDIGEL trial). Methods: Patients (n=69) admitted to the dialysis ward of a tertiary care institution with acute or chronic renal insufficiency and in need for dialysis were enrolled into a prospective, observer-blind, randomized, controlled, inter-individual experimental comparison study. Patients enrolled were undergoing placement of Sheldon multi-lumen catheter (11 French diameter) in the external jugular vein at the neck by Seldinger technique to enable access for hemodialysis. One group of patients which had catheter displaced after one session of hemodialysis was regarded as acute wound group. A different group of patients had catheter withdrawn after 14 (+/- 2 days) and was classified as non-acute wound group. Topical treatments were randomly allocated, i.e. traditional care with standard plaster (control group) or investigational product (promoting moist environment) beneath a standard plaster (investigational product). Wound healing was assessed (digital photography, visual scoring) and analyzed via comparison of area under curve at day 0, 3 and 7 after displacement of catheter. Results: Evaluation showed significantly faster wound healing results for the investigational product in comparison to standard (all time points) and with significant AUC difference in both patient groups, acute and non-acute. Visible re-epithelialization was recorded from day 3 to day 7 in acute wounds, delayed in non-acute wounds. Standard plaster-treated wounds remained open and had markedly larger wound area. Formation of fibrous scar tissue was minimal but less prominent in patients treated with the hydroactive lipogel in the non-acute group due to faster epithelialization promoted by moist environment. Conclusion: Clinically relevant accelerated epithelialization and faster wound healing were observed for the investigational product compared to traditional treatment indicating superiority of moist wound environmental conditions both in acute and non-acute wounds after displacement of catheter placed into the jugular vein for 5 hours or 2 weeks in patients undergoing hemodialysis. The model is an innovative approach to study acute and non-acute wounds affecting all three skin layers and should be further investigated.
Assessing the reliability of developers’ classification of change tasks: A field experiment

Many software projects routinely record information about change type as part of their change management process. Such information can be used to make priorities, to clarify responsibilities, and to monitor and act on trends during software evolution. The objective of this field experiment was to empirically assess the reliability of developers’ classifications according to two alternative classification schemes, in the context of a commercial software project. The project members perform classifications of already completed changes according to the dimensions of maintenance by Swanson and according to quality factors included in the ISO9126 standard. The results show that in this project, the inter-rater agreement was low by normal standards, for both the investigated schemes. The conclusion is that projects should take explicit actions to improve and evaluate the reliability of such classification before they are used as input to management decisions.
Environmental Risk Factors of TB Infection in Northwest Nigeria

DOI: 10.21276/sjhss.2017. 2.10. 19 Abstract: Within the last two decades, tuberculosis (TB) has shown an unprecedented and rather unexpected re-emergence despite achievements in immunization, provision of heath care facilities, discovery of drugs and better understanding of the disease. The Northwest Region of Nigeria is one of those corridors through which the transmission of the disease could be enhanced due to seasonal migration of pastoralists serving as carriers of the disease, going by their mobile lifestyle. This paper tried to examine the prevalence of the disease in this area, with the aim of identifying the environmental risk factors associated with it, among others. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire on 461 patients receiving treatment as sample across the DOTS centres along Fulani route of seasonal migration. Analyses were carried out using descriptive statistics and the logistic regression while significance test was done using ANOVA. Results indicated that ‘ever been diagnosed of lung and heart-related diseases’ had the highest contribution in the model (B=4.943), followed by ‘ever stayed with a TB patient’ (B=2.213) and then ‘family member ever been infected with TB’ (B=1.411). However, the ANOVA test on number of persons sleeping in a room indicated no statistically significant difference in the means of the groups, F (15, 89) = 1.117; p = 0.354. It was concluded that contact with the index and overcrowding play a role in the prevalence of TB in the study area and therefore recommend further studies on individual risk factors so as to guide disease surveillance and control.
AFM-Based Manufacturing for Nano-fabrication Processes: Molecular Dynamics Simulation and AFM Experimental Verification

Recent developments in science and engineering have advanced the fabrication techniques for nanodevices, including the use of atomic force microscope (AFM) for nanomachining and nano-fabrication of nano-structures. AFM-based manufacturing generally involves nanoindentation and nanoscratching processes. This paper describes the development and validation of computational models for the AFMbased manufacturing for nano-fabrication processes. The Molecular Dynamics (MD) technique is used to model and simulate mechanical indentation at the nanoscale. MD simulation represents itself as a viable alternative to the expensive traditional experimental approach, which can be used to study the effects of various indentation variables including tool shape, indentation conditions, and material properties in a much more cost effective way. The simulation allows for prediction of the indentation forces at the interface between an indenter and a substrate. Also, the MD simulation is used to study the effects of speed on the indentation force. The material deformation and indentation geometry are extracted based on the final locations of atoms, which are displaced by the rigid indenter. In addition to modeling, an AFM was used to conduct actual indentation at the nanoscale, and provide measurements to validate the predictions from the MD simulation. It can be observed from the MD simulation results that the indentation force increases as the depth of indentation and tip radius increase, but decreases as the tip speed increases.
Effects for efficiency: asymptotic speedup with first-class control

We study the fundamental efficiency of delimited control. Specifically, we show that effect handlers enable an asymptotic improvement in runtime complexity for a certain class of functions. We consider the generic count problem using a pure PCF-like base language λb and its extension with effect handlers λh. We show that λh admits an asymptotically more efficient implementation of generic count than any λb implementation. We also show that this efficiency gap remains when λb is extended with mutable state. To our knowledge this result is the first of its kind for control operators.
ISAS Working Paper

In this paper, we evaluate India’s flagship rural employment guarantee programme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), by answering questions such as whether the MGNREGS wages have been above their reservation wages. Furthermore, we estimate the reservation wages as a function of 1 Dr Kala Seetharam Sridhar is Professor, Centre for Research in Urban Affairs at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru (India). She can be contacted at kala@isec.ac. in; kala_sridhar2002@yahoo.com; kalaseetharam@gmail.com. 2 Dr A Venugopala Reddy of the Centre for Symbiosis of Technology, Environment and Management at Bengaluru (India). He can be contacted at avgreddy@gmail.com. The authors, not ISAS, are responsible for the facts cited and opinions expressed in this paper.
Automatic Thyroid Cancer Signs Detection Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks

Thyroid cancer is one of the common types of cancer in the female population worldwide. Thyroid Imaging Reporting and Data System (TI-RADS) is a tool commonly used by doctors to identify and classify signs of malignancy of thyroid nodules. In this paper, we present a new method for detecting TI-RADS signs using trainable ﬁlters of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNN). Our method employs relevant feature maps from the ﬁrst convolution layer of our CNN model to extract features from ultrasound image to detect two important signs: Echogenicity and Calciﬁcation. We have evaluated our method using a dataset of 100 ultrasound images of thyroid nodules acquired from ultrasound machines of diﬀerent makes commonly used in clinics. The experimental results show better performance of our method than the existing solutions, and hence demonstrate the method eﬀectiveness for detecting the cancer signs. Correctly detected signs provide needed explanations for assist medical specialists in making diagnostic decision.
Genetic Diversity and Phylogenetic Relationship Among Eight Species of Order: Rodentia in Egypt Based on Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) Marker

Of all mammals the rodents have an importance and great diversity. The phylogenetic relationships between the different species of the order Rodentia has an interest and investigations for many researchers. The current study suggests the ability of Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD)-PCR to estimate the genetic distance and reflect the genetic relations and variability among eight rodent species of order Rodentia in Egypt. After the use of five arbitrary short primers (OPA-4, OPT-7, OPG-2, OPN-4 and OPM-1) to generate polymorphic, reproducible and score able bands. The results explained that, the highest genetic distance 1 was pronounced between Rattus norvegicus and Mus musculus praetextus similarly between Mus musculus domesticus and Rattus norvegicus. This is followed by the genetic distance between Mesocricetus auratus and Mus musculus domesticus as well as between Cavia porcellus and Rattus norvegicus. Nonetheless, the lowest genetic distance 0.31 was noticeable between Mus musculus praetextus and Mus musculus musculus.
Word prediction using language models

The thesis utilizes ngram language models to improve text entry with QWERTY keyboard by the means of word prediction. Related solutions are briedly introduced. Then follows theoretical background for the work. The analysis in the next part divides problems into four tasks: language model training, incorporating model for word prediction, GUI component and evaluation framework. The realization combines Python and C++. The used corpora come from Czech (19 M words) and (84 M words) English Wikipedia articles. A small corpus of Czech educative texts was used to test domain adaptation. The quality metrics are defined and various configuration are measured. The best solutions reduced keystrokes per character to 0.44, resp. 0.55 for English, resp. Czech on testing data.
The Valuation of Local Government Spending: Gravity Approach and Aggregate Implications∗

How much do people value local government spending? What are the effects of fiscal transfers that finance this spending? I develop a spatial equilibrium framework where people’s simultaneous (internal) migration and commuting choices reveal preferences. I combine this framework with administrative data from South Korea and leverage plausibly exogenous variation in local government spending across districts induced by national tax reforms in 2008 and 2012. The estimated mobility responses imply that workers value each additional dollar of per-capita local government spending by 75 cents of their after-tax income. The general-equilibrium counterfactuals imply that a fiscal arrangement with lower redistribution would result in aggregate gains. A key aspect of my analysis is that bilateral migration and commuting decisions are made jointly. Ignoring any of these margins biases the estimates of preferences for public goods, and of distance elasticities of migration or commuting which play a central role in quantitative spatial models.
Towards Multi-Robot Coordination under Temporal Uncertainty

When robots act in an environment, there will be temporal uncertainty over the execution of their actions, i.e. the duration of an action and the time it takes place will be stochastic . The presence of multiple robots in the environment contributes towards this uncertainty. Temporal uncertainty is often disregarded in multi-robot coordination, and so we aim to develop planning solutions that explicitly model this uncertainty to generate effective plans.
Enhancing Water Use Efficiency and Effective Use of Water as A Potential Strategy to Develop Rice Cultivars Suitable for Semi-Irrigated Aerobic Cultivation

Semi-irrigated aerobic rice is a potential rice cultivation strategy to substantially save irrigation water even up to 40-60%. However, under these conditions rice crop experiences high vapor pressure deficit (VPD) and between irrigations moderate moisture stress leading to decline in plant water status thus affecting plant growth and spikelet fertility. This necessitates need to improve plant traits associated with water relations like water mining, water use efficiency (WUE) and water retention besides cellular level tolerance. An effective use of water is considered as a preferred target for crop yield improvement than water use efficiency under water limited conditions. We provide evidence from our study that indicates WUE as a still relevant trait across genotypes with adequate canopy cover and total transpiration (total T). The importance of identifying genotypes with higher WUE achieved by improving mesophyll efficiency is discussed. The importance of waxes to maintain lower canopy temperature and superior water relations implicate the relevance of this trait as well. In rice accessions, we have found an inverse relationship between roots (and hence total T) and WUE signifying the need to breed for both the traits. Our study provides proof of concept that introgressing root traits with higher WUE will increase crop growth rate (CGR) and productivity in semi-aerobic ecosystem. One of the trait introgression lines when grown under aerobic conditions showed superior performance.
Network of Excellence Deliverable D2.4 Second Release of the Method and Tool Evaluation

This report describes the approach of the NESSoS project related to the evaluation and comparison of security features, vulnerabilities, methods, notations and tools in the area of software engineering for secure software and systems. The approach has been further developed since it was introduced in deliverable D2.1. It is based on the CBK of WP5, which focuses on a knowledge base of existing methods, notations and tools. Additionally, our approach, named SECEVAL, addresses the collection, analysis and finer-grained representation of security-specific knowledge. Getting an overview and collecting data of existing security engineering methods, notations and tools is of major importance for security and software engineers, as it helps them to take decisions about solutions for upcoming tasks. Security engineers usually rely on their experience and sometimes are limited in their decisions to the development context and architecture. Nevertheless, more often than not they would like to have access to compact information about security mechanisms in order to find a more effective method, an appropriate notation, useful CASE tools for developing prototypes and systems, and further tools needed in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Thus, the objective is to further develop our strategy sketched in D2.1 for evaluating and comparing methods, notations and tools; this time mainly focusing on evaluation. Our approach SECEVAL provides an ontology, which comprises: (1) a security context model describing security features, methods, notations and tools; (2) a data collection model, which records how data is collected when researchers or practitioners search for an answer to a question they have; (3) a data analysis model specifying how analysis, using previously collected data, is done. SECEVAL was influenced by our prior works, an evaluation of approaches for secure software design and an empirical validation of risk-based methods. Thereby, we provide an evaluation approach targeting security engineers who may also have research questions in mind which cannot be answered directly by the CBK and who want to use a sound, extensible model to specify their research actions as well as research results. Consequently, our approach is designed to ease the process of doing research in the area of security, no matter if the research question aims at scientific or engineering issues.
Spatial Narrative Construction using Thematic KDE

The production of large volumes of social media Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) provide researchers with a large-scale data source for understanding social activities and behaviours. Previous investigations focus on extracting singular words to describe activities and locations, removing vital contextual and narrative information. This work is a narrative-centric approach, using subtext analyses to discover the inherent location-based themes present within social media discourse on Twitter. This work presents a paradigm shift away from singular to rich, narrative-centric descriptors by proposing a new methodological framework and applying it to a database of over two million tweets. These narratives can subsequently be used to bring greater understanding to how people interact with their environment.
Multilocation Evaluation for yield and Yield Related Traits in Three- Way Cross Maize Hybrids in Kenya

Maize (Zea mays L.) is the third most important crop after wheat and rice worldwide. It is the main staple food in Kenya. The objective of this study was to evaluate genotype by environment interactions and yield stability of twenty three-way cross hybrids at four locations in Kenya evaluated in two seasons. The experiment was conducted in an alpha lattice design (Incomplete Randomized Block Design) with three replications. There was significant variation for grain yield among the genotypes, locations and their interaction. Stability analysis was evaluated using the joint regression, additive main effects and multiplicative interactions (AMMI) and GGE biplot methods. The environmental and genotypic means ranged from 2.72 to 7.67 and 2.39 to 5.56 respectively. The regression coefficient (βi) and deviation from regression (s 2 di) values of these genotypes ranged from 0.55 to 1.64 and 0.02 to 0.59 respectively. There were also significant differences for genotypes, environments and genotype by environment interaction for the AMMI analysis of variance. The total proportion of variation contributed by genotypes, environments and genotype by environment interaction was 8.82%, 76.03% and 9.17% respectively. When considering the Pi, βi, S 2 di and the AMMI biplot analysis, the most stable genotype in the high yielding category in this study considering all stability parameters was WE-CMT-TWC-1001 (G1) followed by WE-CMT-TWC-1003 (G3) and WE-CMT-TWC-1020 (G20). The best genotype with both high mean yield and high stability was WE-CMT-TWC-1003 (G3). The genotypes identified could be utilized as reference for genotype evaluation and tested further for selection. Keywords— Multilocation trial, grain yield, three way cross maize hybrids