Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Education, Civic Engagement, and Political Participation: Evidence from School Construction in Malian Villages

We estimate whether opening of new schools increases educational attainment and affects civic engagement, political participation, and political selection in Malian villages. We compare the differences in educational attainment between individuals below and above the age of 9 as of school opening date by using a donut regression discontinuity design. Opening of schools drastically increases school enrollment. Using this exogenous variation in school enrollment as an instrument, we show that education increases participation in village associations, involvement in local political life, and the number of elected politicians from a village. Most of the effect of education is concentrated among individuals belonging to well-established families. This suggests a redistribution of roles to the dominant group of a village.
A Study of Cooperation Between Suppliers and E-Commerce Platforms Based on Biform Game

This article considers e-commerce platforms with and without promotion, builds biform game models consisting of one and two supplier platforms, and calculates the profit distribution of the three parties using the Shapley value method. The optimal strategies of the three parties are discussed, including which platform the supplier will choose to cooperate with and which logistics service strategy to choose. In addition, how platforms make their commission rates to attract suppliers and which promotion strategy to choose are also studied. The results show that regardless of whether the platform promotes sales or not, in the case of charging consumers for the shipping fee when the standard shipping fee of unit product is low, the supplier will choose to cooperate with the platform without self-built logistics and use the third-party logistics to deliver products. When the standard shipping fee is high, the supplier will choose to cooperate with the platform with self-built logistics. But in the case of free shipping for consumers, the conclusion is just the opposite.
A robust standard deviation control chart based on square A estimator

The estimates of a standard deviation deteriorate the detection ability of control charts by reason of its high biases when the contaminations are present. This study proposes two kinds of square A estimators based on different screenings and compares the values of their mean squared error with those of existing estimators in diffuse and localized disturbances. The effectiveness of Phase II control charts is evaluated when the estimators are contaminated in Phase I using two kinds of disturbances. The proposed estimators perform the best against disturbances, with their average run lengths and expected average run lengths being closer to those in normal cases compared to other estimators.
Measuring student satisfaction towards engineering postgraduate programme in UKM

This paper aims to report on the student satisfaction measurement done for Masters of Engineering by course programmes in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). A survey form was designed using the service-product concept. Result from 102 respondents obtained from both descriptive and quadrant analysis helps us determine the most important aspects of the university’s services and the degree to which they satisfied the students. It was found in our case that university reputation is the most important factor contributing towards student satisfaction with 0.98 correlation value while nonacademic aspects have the least influence with 0.874. It is evident that this aspect should be improvised by university management to increase student satisfaction and maintain the sustainability of programmes.
Growth and yield of tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) as influenced by different level of gibberellic acid application

An experiment was conducted in the Horticultural Farm of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka-1207, Bangladesh, during the period from October 2012 to March 2013 to find out the effect of GA3 on the growth and yield of tomato. The experiment consisted of four concentration of GA3 such as control G0= control (no GA3), G1= 75 ppm GA3, G2 = 100 ppm GA3 and G3= 125 ppm . The experiment was laid out in RCBD with three replications. All parameter varied significantly at different concentration of GA3. The highest yield (92.99 t/ha) was obtained from G3 treatment whereas the G0 gave lowest yield (60.46 t/ha).
Instability of opposite polarity charged dusty plasma with vortex-like distributed electrons

Electrons in space plasma may follow vortex-like distribution, that is why we have derived the three-dimentional (3D) nonlinear modified Zakharov–Kuznetsov (mZK), describing the propagation of dust acoustic solitary to the plasma system composed of four components, magnetized charged dust plasma with electrons modelled by vortex-like distribution. By using the reductive perturbation method, it has been found that both solitary wave amplitude and width are affected by the plasma parameters: graim charge ratio ρ, population parameter β, and temperature ratio σ. The small-k perturbation technique has also been applied to study the instability criterion and growth rate of this instability. Cyclotron frequency Ω, temperature ratio , direction cosine ( and ), and grain charge ratio ρ are found to modify the instability growth rate Γ.
Acute Ischemic Stroke and CT Cerebral Angiography: Management and Relationship

In general, stroke is the second leading cause of mortality and a leading cause of morbidity. The most common type is thrombotic which responsible for 65-85%. Treatments that are approved by guidelines include supportive care in an emergency unit, and reperfusion through use of intravenous recombinant-tissue plasminogen activator (r-tPA), intra-arterial fibrinolysis and mechanical thrombectomy. A prospective study carried out in two years enrolled patients with acute ischemic stroke who have done CT angiography of cerebral circulation to assessment of the collateral arterial state. A total number of 50 patients (25 males and 25 females). The main age was 53.7±11.56 years. Each patient was neurologically and clinically evaluated, underwent NCCT followed by CT cerebral angiography to assess large vessel occlusion, collateral circulation status according to Tan scale (0-3). Good state of the cerebral collaterals in patients with AIS was associated with good clinical outcome, good reperfusion, symptomatic ICH rate is low, mortality rate decline and stroke severity be less.
Characterizing Bacterial Resistance and Microstructure-Related Properties of Carbon-Infiltrated Carbon Nanotube Surface Coatings with Applications in Medical Devices

Characterizing Bacterial Resistance and Microstructure-Related Properties of Carbon-Infiltrated Carbon Nanotube Surface Coatings with Applications in Medical Devices Stephanie Renee Morco Department of Mechanical Engineering, BYU Doctor of Philosophy Carbon-infiltrated carbon nanotube (CICNT) forests are carbon nanotube (CNT) forests infiltrated with pyrolytic carbon to increase durability by becoming a solid material. This material can be tuned to maintain the nanotube geometry of a CNT forest and can also be fabricated on a variety of materials and geometries. Additionally, the present work has indicated that CICNT forests may resist bacterial proliferation and biofilm formation. This phenomenon is not due to the CICNT chemistry; it is presumably due to the CICNT nanostructure morphology. Thus, both silicon and stainless steel substrates were used to investigate CICNT’s structural resistance to Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) biofilm. From in vitro experimental testing, CICNT on both these substrates resisted MRSA cell attachment and biofilm proliferation. The discovery of this non-pharmaceutical biofilm resistance expands the potential applications of CICNT to include medical devices that are prone to infection and/or devices that contribute to infection. Two representative applications were investigated: external fixator pins and scalpel blades. CICNT-coated versions of these applications underwent additional MRSA biofilm resistance testing as well as mechanical testing. In particular, external fixator pins were identified as a high potential application of CICNT surface coating technology. Previous work on both CNT and CICNT forests has largely been performed on planar structures. However, any potential medical device applications involve curved substrates. In particular, concave curvatures are challenging due to the potential for stress-related CICNT forest defects. Thus, the present work also included a study of the incidence rates and determining factors of these defects. SEM images of the cross-sections revealed different types of microscale forest defects while the top surface showed morphologies that are largely consistent with flat substrates. CICNT forest height and substrate curvature were identified as contributing factors to CICNT forest defect incidence rates. Thus, the present work advances the understanding of bacterial resistance and microstructure-related properties of CICNT surface coatings, with applications in medical devices.
Misspeciﬁcation in Macroeconomics: Diﬃcult but Not Impossible to deal with

In this hopefully intuitive note, we explain why it is diﬃcult to deal with misspeciﬁcation and incompleteness of dynamic macroeconomic models in applied research. While standard econometric approaches are not suitable to do this, we sketch methods that can deal with misspeciﬁcation of macroeconomic models, including the approach proposed in Den Haan and Drechsel (2018) that consists of adding Agnostic Structural Disturbances (ASDs) to model equations. That paper also documents that minor misspeciﬁcation can have massive distortions for estimation outcomes making clear the damaging consequences of ignoring misspeciﬁcation. This note accompanies a non-technical column in which we summarize the contributions of Den Haan and Drechsel (2018).
The Perceived Effect of Pause Length and Location on Speaker Likability and Communicative Effectiveness

The Perceived Effect of Pause Length and Location on Speaker Likability and Communicative Effectiveness Julia M. Price Department of Communication Disorders, BYU Master of Science Previous studies have examined the effect of atypical speech pause on conversational fluency and how the conversational listener perceives the speaker. The present study investigated the effect of pause duration of increasing length and in differing sentential locations on listener perceptions of communicative effectiveness and speaker likability. One neurotypical male and one neurotypical female speaker recorded three sentences from the Quick Aphasia Battery, and artificial pauses of varying lengths (250 ms, 400 ms, 550 ms, 700 ms, 850 ms, and 1 sec) were inserted before the subject, verb, and object of each sentence. The six baseline (unmodified) sentences were also included among the stimuli. These samples were randomly interspersed among foil samples that consisted of 30-second recordings of six people with fluent and nonfluent aphasia of mild to moderate severity. Forty adult participants (24 females and 16 males) listened to and rated the modified and foil samples for communicative effectiveness and the perception of likability of the speaker. A review of the data revealed that pause location may negatively impact speaker likability depending on the gender of the speaker. However, due to the small sample size of speakers (one male and one female) and factors that were not controlled for in this study (e.g., speaker pitch, speech rate, resonance, articulation patterns), these results require validation through further research that utilizes a larger sample. As pause duration increased, both speaker likability and communicative effectiveness ratings decreased. These findings suggest that monitoring pause duration and location in preliminary fluency samples could be beneficial to assess fluency severity and determine appropriate treatment goals. Wordfinding treatment may want to focus on vocabulary words that serve the function of subjects and objects in sentences. Although there are limitations in the methodology and results of this preliminary study, it is hoped that this study combined with future research can help to inform assessment and treatment of people with aphasia and other neurophysiological disorders that lead to atypical pause.
DESIGN AN SYSTEM FOR HAND GESTURE RECOGNITION WITH EMG SIGNAL BY NEURAL NETWORK

The intellectual computing of an effective human-computer interaction (HCI) or human alternative and augmentative communication (HAAC) is vital in our lives in today's technological environment. One of the most essential approaches for developing a gesture-based interface system for HCI or HAAC applications is hand gesture recognition. As a result, in order to create an advanced hand gesture recognition system with successful applications, it is required to establish an appropriate gesture recognition technique. Human activity and gesture detection are crucial components of the rapidly expanding area of ambient intelligence, which includes applications such as robots, smart homes, assistive systems, virtual reality, and so on. We proposed a method for recognizing hand movements using surface electromyography based on an ANN . The CapgMyo dataset based on the Myo wristband (an eight-channel sEMG device) is utilized to assess participants' forearm sEMG signals in our technique. The original sEMG signal is preprocessed to remove noise and detect muscle activity areas, then signals are subjected to time and frequency based domain feature extraction. We used an ANN classification model to predict various gesture output classes for categorization. Finally, we put the suggested model to the test to see if it could recognize these movements, and it did so with an accuracy of 87.32 percent .
Ab-initio simulation of doped injection layers.

Optimization of doped injection layers in state-of-the-art OLEDs via experimental trial&error by tuning host-dopant combinations/concentrations is time-consuming and costly. We present a multiscale-simulation approach to investigate doping on microscopic level, i.e. the impact of microscopic properties on doping performance, and illustrate how to apply simulations towards materials design.
LSHSIM: A Locality Sensitive Hashing Based Method for Multiple-Point Geostatistics

Thesis presented to the Programa de P´os-Gradua¸c˜ao em Inform´atica of PUC-Rio in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements for the degree of Doutor em Ciˆencias – Inform´atica. Approved by the undersigned Examination Committee. Abstract Reservoir modeling is a very important task that permits the representation of a geological region of interest. Given the uncertainty involved in the process, one wants to generate a considerable number of possible scenarios so as to ﬁnd those which best represent this region. Then, there is a strong demand for quickly generating each simulation. Since its inception, many methodologies have been proposed for this purpose and, in the last two decades, multiple-point geostatistics (MPS) has been the dominant one. This methodology is strongly based on the concept of training image (TI) and the use of its characteristics, which are called patterns. In this work, we propose a new MPS method that combines the application of a technique called Locality Sensitive Hashing (LSH), which permits to accelerate the search for patterns similar to a target one, with a Run-Length Encoding (RLE) compression technique that speeds up the calculation of the Hamming similarity. We have performed experiments with both categorical and continuous images which showed that LSHSIM is computationally eﬃcient and produce good quality realizations, while achieving a reasonable space of uncertainty. In particular, for categorical data, the results suggest that LSHSIM is faster than MS-CCSIM, one of the state-of-the-art methods.
Individual exposure to armed conflict and entrepreneurship

This study is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (EXPOVIBE-ERC-STG-2015_677627). Abstract : We study the individual level impacts of exposure to armed conflict on entrepreneurial activity. We introduce new data from a large-N field survey we conducted in Turkey in 2019. Our study is built on a natural experiment setting that allows us to identify random exposure to armed conflict, to establish a clear timeline, to isolate the individual effects from any conflict induced deterioration in the economic environment, and to demonstrate the causal impact of armed conflict exposure. We show that while exposure to the conflict environment reduces the likelihood of private economic activity, those individuals who directly experience traumatizing violent events in that environment become significantly and substantially more likely to setup their own business. However, results also indicate that, while they are more likely to venture into private economic activity, these individuals are also more likely to fail in those ventures. Our analyses indicate exposure-induced changes in outlook on life as a potential mechanism behind these causal associations.
THE EFFECT OF ACCESS OPPORTUNITIES ON SPENDING VERSUS SAVING

With the help of digital technologies, access-based services such as subscription plans for accessing movies, music, cars, and many other goods gained widespread acceptance. We investigate the potential effect of the presence of these opportunities on consumers’ spending versus saving decisions. We hypothesize that access-based services shift people’s focus toward the present as opposed to the future, which in turn leads to relative subjective devaluation of future rewards, and hence a lower tendency to save for the future. Participants’ direct responses (Study 1), people’s spontaneous online search activity (Study 2), and a large scale survey (Study 3) provided evidence consistent with our hypothesis. A randomized experiment involving access versus possession prompts (Study 4) revealed the reverse effect for those who have a strong preference for ownership over renting, suggesting an additional process whereby access prompts trigger a goal to accumulate possessions for people who heavily value ownership.
ICCBot: Fragment-Aware and Context-Sensitive ICC Resolution for Android Applications

For GUI programs, like Android apps, the program functionalities are encapsulated in a set of basic components, each of which represents an independent function module. When interacting with an app, users are actually operating a set of components. The transitions among components, which are supported by the Android Inter-Component Communication (ICC) mechanism, can reflect the skeleton of an app. To effectively resolve the source and destination of an ICC message, both the correct entry-point identification and the precise data value tracking of ICC fields are required. However, with the wide usage of Android fragment components, the entry-point analysis usually terminates at an inner fragment but not its host component. Also, the simply tracked ICC field values may become inaccurate when data is transferred among multiple methods. In this paper, we design a practical ICC resolution tool ICCBot, which resolves the component transitions that are connected by fragments to help the entry-point identification. Besides, it performs context-sensitive inter-procedural analysis to precisely obtain the ICC-carried data values. Compared with the state-of-the-art tools, ICCBot achieves both a higher success rate and accuracy. ICCBot is open-sourced at https://github.com/hanada31/ICCBot. A video demonstration of it is at https://www.youtube. com/watch? v=7zcoMBtGiLY.
Reliability and Validity Practices in Randomized Controlled Trials: Current Trends and Recommendations

Reliability and Validity Practices in Randomized Controlled Trials: Current Trends and Recommendations Jennifer A. Z. Romano Department of Psychology, BYU Master of Science The verity of conclusions drawn from psychological research hinges on the reliability and validity of the measures used to collect the data. Any research conducted using measures with low reliability or validity is rendered essentially useless; thus, reporting reliability and validity evidence for measures employed in research is an essential component in creating rigorous, replicable research. Multiple reporting standards have been implemented and revised over the years with the intent to improve measurement and reporting practices within clinical psychology, though few guidelines have been suggested regarding adequate reporting practices for studies’ measures. We reviewed a representative sample of randomized clinical trials (RCTs) published in the Journal of Clinical and Counseling Psychology in 1994, 2002, 2010, and 2018 for reported reliability and validity evidence. We examined whether the implementation of reporting standards led to improvement in reporting measures’ reliability and validity evidence over time, along with how frequently articles recently published in one of the top clinical psychology journals reported reliability and validity evidence. We found that only 58.1% of measures used in articles published in 2018 reported reliability evidence, and only 12.4% reported validity evidence. Furthermore, although reporting of reliability and validity evidence has improved when comparing articles published in 2018 to those published in 1994 or 2002, such reporting practices were not significantly different from articles published in 2010. We provide a discussion of the importance of these findings and recommendations for improving reporting practices in future research.
Series of ERUDITE Working Papers Work accident effect on the risk of benzodiazepine use and overuse

Benzodiazepines (BZDs) are a class of drugs with anxiolytic and hypnotic properties that can lead to dependence. A work accident (WA) constitutes a health shock likely to induce BZD consumption, particularly because these events can alter mental health and therefore indirectly affect the use of psychotropic drugs. Our objective is to determine the extent to which WAs lead to BZD use or even overuse (defined according to medical guidelines). We use a two-step selection model (the Heckman method) based on data from the French National Health Data System ( Système National des Données de Santé , SNDS). Our study sample includes all general plan members who experienced a single WA in 2016 (and not since 2007). This sample includes 350,000 individuals and more than 1.1 million non-victims who are randomly drawn from the population of members who did not experience WAs from 2007 to 2017. The occurrence of WA leads to an increase in benzodiazepine use (+5 pp in the probability of having at least one benzodiazepine prescription in the year following a WA), but conducts to a disciplining effect on the risk of overuse (–3 pp in the probability of overuse in the following year). We interpret this effect as the influence of the prescriber. The probability of overusing increases with the severity of the accident. The impact of a WA is greater for women than for men (for both use and overuse). These results can be explained with respect to guidelines by prescribers and by a better medical follow-up for people who experienced a WA. More serious accidents (i.e., leading to longer sick leaves) are more likely to induce use and overuse in the following year than accidents leading to shorter sick leaves. The adverse consequences of WA could counteract the ‘protective’ effect induced by a better medical follow-up.