Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Asian Financial Linkages: The Case of Japan

This work reviews the topic of international financial linkages, including theoretical definitions and the main methodological approaches of the empirical measurement based on vector autoregressive models. One of the approaches, the Spillover Index methodology based on Diebold & Yilmaz (2009), is then used to analyze the developments of financial linkages of the Japanese stock market in the period from 1995 to 2012. The attention is paid both to the relations with western developed economies and within the region of East Asia. The main contribution of this paper is the fact that it comprises a complete review of international relations of Japanese stock market during the era of unprecedented financial liberalization. The results of the empirical study confirm the opening of Japanese stock markets towards foreign influence. Even though USA have been the major driving force behind the movements in East Asian stock markets, Japan has become a significant regional player, whose influence on East Asian countries has been growing. The developments in the Japanese stock market are on the other hand driven solely by the western developed countries, which further supports the view of Japan as the regional financial leader. JEL Classification: G15, C440, O160
New Prediction Method for Correct Decision Using Authorized Group Members Results

: Trust Relationship between users play a vital role in making decisions for social network users. Existing trust relations are often extremely sparse, therefore unknown trust relationship attacks increase attention in recent years. We propose a new technique from machine learning to predict Trust relationships in social network by using K-nearest neighbour Algorithm (KNN) and also we extend our work to classify the messages posted by these identified trusted users on Social Network sites as Interesting or not Interesting posts. The classification of messages to identify the usefulness is done by using two attributes Length of message in number of words and Posting frequency in terms of time difference between consecutive messages from the same sender. We use real-world dataset Epinions to evaluate their performance in trust Prediction.
MR sensors arrays for eddy current testing

Eddy Current (EC) technique is a powerful method for detection of surface notches or buried flaws during inspection of metallic parts in particular for aerospace components. Classical winding coils are the most commonly used EC sensors. Nevertheless, when the size of flaws decreases or when the defect is buried deep inside the material, traditional winding coil probes turn out to reach their limits. For this reason, other technologies are investigated to improve this technique. Spin electronics MagnetoResistive (MR) sensors present the advantages of flat frequency response and dimensions down to the micron size. These sensors are hence very attractive for the detection of buried defects that requires low frequencies because of skin depth effect. Also, MR sensors are suitable for very small surface defects due to their high spatial resolution without losing their field sensitivity. In addition, several magnetic field components can be simultaneously detected for a better analysis of defects. We will present recent advances of MR based probes containing arrays of Giant Magneto Resistance (GMR) or Tunnel Magneto Resistance (TMR) elements for EC testing. The experimental data will be compared with simulations on Aluminium and Titanium mock-ups.
The Synergetic Efficacy of the Combination of Amphotericin B and Certain Essential Oils against Selected Fungal Clinical Isolates

Article history: Received on: 13/02/2013 Revised on: 28/02/2013 Accepted on: 15/03/2013 Available online: 27/04/2013 The synergistic effect of five potential essential oils from each of the following plant species: Thymus vulgaris, Lamiaceae, Cinnamomum zeylanicum, Lauraceae, Eugenia aromatica, Myrtaceae, Eucalyptus globulus, Myrtaceae and Zingiber officinalis, Zingiberaceae was assessed in combination with the antifungal agent amphotericin B. The oils were analysed and their main components identified using GC/FID and GC/MS. The antifungal activities of the oils were investigated against two clinical isolates of the fungal species; Aspergillus niger and Candida albicans. The minimum inhibitory concentrations of the individual oils were evaluated using the agar disc diffusion assay while the synergetic effects between each of the oils and amphotericin B were evaluated using the agar dilution checkerboard micro titer test. The results indicated significant synergetic effects between thyme oil and amphotericin B against C. albicans and A. niger with FIC indices of 0.25 and 0.13 respectively. Moreover, cinnamon oil acted synergistically with amphotericin B against C. albicans with an FICI value of 0.28, however when tested against A. niger, an additive effect was observed (FICI = 1). The combination of thyme oil and to a less extent, cinnamon oil with amphotericin B is suggested for the treatment of infections caused by C. albicans and A. niger.
Feature recognition for CAD/CAM integration using the STEP file: A review

Feature recognition is the technique used to extract the various features of CAD part model. This technique is efficiently converting the low level information of part model into the high level of information. The high level information contains the topological information which is required for feature recognition. There are several approached ate currently in use for feature recognition. STEP file in some approaches the topological information contained by the STEP file is used as input for feature recognition technology. STEP file is Standard for the Exchange of Product Data, an ISO standard exchange format. This format can used as standard exchange format among the various CAD part modeling tools. In this paper the techniques are elaborated which used the STEP file as input forfor feature recognition.
Evaluation of no-till sowing performance under various residue management methods in wheat cropping in south of Fars province, Iran

Heavy crop residue on the soil surface impedes no-till sowing performance and subsequent crop production in conservation tillage systems and therefore limit its adoption by farmers. Therefore, a field study was conducted to determine the effects of various residue management methods on no-till sowing performance. The experimental design was a randomized complete block in five replications. The residue management systems were in four levels of leaving (R.M1), removing (R.M2), shredding (R.M3) and disking (R.M4). No-till sowing performance index was developed based on principal component analysis (PCA) to group and identify the most effective indicators of sowing performance. The results showed that various residue management methods had a significant effect on sowing depth, speed of emergence, effective field capacity, and depth uniformity. The minimum and maximum sowing depth were observed for the R.M1 and R.M4 treatments, respectively. The findings revealed that the speed of emergence and depth uniformity were higher under R.M2 and R.M3 as compared to R.M1 and R.M4 treatments. PCA results indicated that depth uniformity, the speed of emergence and planting depth were the key variables for evaluating no-till sowing performance.
Creative Course Design: A Study in Student-Centered Course Development for a Sustainable Building/BIM Class

Course development for construction management (CM) programs, and arguably all of higher education, is difficult to keep up with, let alone to create. This study describes the use of creative strategies for course design testing the utilization of student involvement as an effective approach in the design process. CM students were directly involved in the creation and development of a new and potentially required course at Brigham Young University in Sustainable Building and Building Information Modeling (BIM). This paper discusses how students involved in the course development effectively worked through the process to develop the new class. Techniques in qualitative research and course design along with the current and crucial topics of Sustainable Building and BIM are emphasized.
Effective control of tumor growth through spatial and temporal control of theranostic sodium iodide symporter (NIS) gene expression using a heat-inducible gene promoter in engineered mesenchymal stem cells

Purpose: The tumor homing characteristics of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) make them attractive vehicles for the tumor-specific delivery of therapeutic agents, such as the sodium iodide symporter (NIS). NIS is a theranostic protein that allows non-invasive monitoring of the in vivo biodistribution of functional NIS expression by radioiodine imaging as well as the therapeutic application of 131I. To gain local and temporal control of transgene expression, and thereby improve tumor selectivity, we engineered MSCs to express the NIS gene under control of a heat-inducible HSP70B promoter (HSP70B-NIS-MSCs). Experimental Design: NIS induction in heat-treated HSP70B-NIS-MSCs was verified by 125I uptake assay, RT-PCR, Western blot and immunofluorescence staining. HSP70B-NIS-MSCs were then injected i.v. into mice carrying subcutaneous hepatocellular carcinoma HuH7 xenografts, and hyperthermia (1 h at 41°C) was locally applied to the tumor. 0 - 72 h later radioiodine uptake was assessed by 123I-scintigraphy. The most effective uptake regime was then selected for 131I therapy. Results: The HSP70B promoter showed low basal activity in vitro and was significantly induced in response to heat. In vivo, the highest tumoral iodine accumulation was seen 12 h after application of hyperthermia. HSP70B-NIS-MSC-mediated 131I therapy combined with hyperthermia resulted in a significantly reduced tumor growth with prolonged survival as compared to control groups. Conclusions: The heat-inducible HSP70B promoter allows hyperthermia-induced spatial and temporal control of MSC-mediated theranostic NIS gene radiotherapy with efficient tumor-selective and temperature-dependent accumulation of radioiodine in heat-treated tumors.
The relationship between multidimensional psychological well-being and poverty

Evidence from various academic fields indicates that mental health and income are correlated. Additionally, evidence exists that an increase in income improves psychological well-being and evidence that poor psychological well-being negatively impacts income. The difficulty is that there is no definitive work pinpointing the direction of the causal relationship between income and psychological well-being, but studies are attempting to find out. Hence, this paper attempts to contribute to ongoing work with an IV estimation approach to determine the causal effects of psychological well-being on poverty. Using data provided by Haushofer and Shapiro, this paper finds evidence that an increase in income causes a reduction in depression and stress levels, along with increases in happiness and life satisfaction of the study participants. Additionally, it is found that these improvements in psychological well-being lead to increases in monthly household expenditure, especially health care. Furthermore, these findings indicate that when women receive a cash transfer, a significant proportion of that transfer is devoted to health care. All the estimates presented in the paper indicate that an improvement in economic well-being leads to an improvement in the mental health of the poor, which causes them to spend more and focus more on their health care.
Exploring Higher Order Dependency Parsers

v Title: Exploring Higher Order Dependency Parsers Author: Pranava Swaroop Madhyastha Department: Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics Department of Human Language Science and Technology Supervisor: Professor Michael Rosner& RNDr. Daniel Zeman Supervisor’s e-mail address:mike.rosner@um.edu. mt & zeman@ufal.mff. cuni.cz Abstract: Most of the recent efficient algorithms for dependency parsing work by factoring the dependency trees. In most of these approaches, the parser loses much of the contextual information during the process of factorization. There have been approaches to build higher order dependency parsers second order, [Carreras2007] and third order [Koo and Collins2010]. In the thesis, the approach by Koo and Collins should be further exploited in one or more ways. Possible directions of further exploitation include but are not limited to: investigating possibilities of extension of the approach to non-projective parsing; integrating labeled parsing; joining word-senses during the parsing phase [Eisner2000] Most of the recent efficient algorithms for dependency parsing work by factoring the dependency trees. In most of these approaches, the parser loses much of the contextual information during the process of factorization. There have been approaches to build higher order dependency parsers second order, [Carreras2007] and third order [Koo and Collins2010]. In the thesis, the approach by Koo and Collins should be further exploited in one or more ways. Possible directions of further exploitation include but are not limited to: investigating possibilities of extension of the approach to non-projective parsing; integrating labeled parsing; joining word-senses during the parsing phase [Eisner2000]
Usability Factors Affecting the Adoption of ICT –Based Innovations among Female Genders in Nigeria.

:- Information and Communication Technology (ICT) innovations have made tremendous innovational impacts in empowering and enhancing women's capabilities globally. Despite these global impacts of ICT innovations on women empowerment, numerous investigations have shown that low literacy rate among women in Nigeria representing about 48.6%, and written language level used by ICT software developers, among others, pose significant gender digital divide reflected in women’s poor adoption of ICT as compared to men. As ICTs become more complex, access and usage are increasingly constrained by literacy, income, and education levels. This study highlights the strategy to leverage ICT usage among female genders irrespective of one’s literacy levels, gender or culture.The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) were adopted as the conceptual framework. In this study, the authors explored a narrative review of prior research that focused on the theoretical underpinnings of vast works of literature that revealed significant information on strategies ICT innovation developers use to create easy-to-use interfaces for the predominantly illiterates or semi-literates female genders. The authors also extracted peer-reviewed articles within the last five years from electronic databases, using some keywords such as “ICT usability”, “ICT and illiterate users”, “female gender and trends for ICT”, etc. Results show that women ICT usability may increase if: (a) ICT interfaces designs that are easy-to-use. (b) ICT Interfaces incorporate the cultural backgrounds and literacy levels of users. (c) ICT Interfaces are user-centered, while pictorial images and voice prompts are engaged to cater for the literate, semi-literate and illiterate female users. The findings from this study may encourage ICT adoption, acceptance and sustainability among female genders that may positively close the gap in gender discrepancy in ICT usage, result in positive social change and national economic development in Nigerian.
A Modiﬁed ν -SV Method For Simpliﬁed Regression

In the present paper we describe a new algorithm for Support Vector regression (SVR). Like standard ν -SVR algorithms, this algorithm automatically adjusts the radius of insensitivity (tube width ε ) to ﬁt the data. However, this is achieved without additional complexity in the optimisation problem. Moreover, by careful modiﬁ-cation of the kernel function, we are able to signiﬁcantly simplify the form of the dual SVR optimisation problem.
Political environment and attraction of foreign direct investment: an institutionalist approach

The study examines the relationship between the quality of the institutional arrangements of political environment and the attraction of foreign direct investment (FDI). Panel models were estimated for 123 countries from 2011 to 2016, where the dependent variable was the FDI net inflows, explained by two institutional variables related to the political dimension. Due to the strong correlation between the institutional variables, they were evaluated in separate models, in addition to versions with and without the use of instruments. The results suggest that the quality of the institutional arrangements of the political environment is essential to attract FDI.
Rating and Ranking Criteria for Selected Islands using Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process ( FAHP )

Destination choice is one of decision making problems which should carefully be investigated in order to choose the best alternative among popular alternatives. The structure in modeling decision making may influencing the decision made and different decision making models impose different objectives with the result may not be variant. Therefore island evaluation has become one of important components in the selections. Multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) is a possible evaluation scale for many characters or quantities of decision makers’ evaluation. It could be determined by advantage or ranking. This study presents fuzzy AHP as a proposed method for dealing with decision making in ten (10) social attributes. Fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) is employed to calculate the weights of these criteria and sub-criteria, so as to build the fuzzy multi-criteria model of island evaluation. FAHP performed better than domain experts in tourism when the size of criteria and sub-criteria set increase. A detailed numerical example, illustrating the application of our approach to criteria evaluation is given. Keywords—Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP), Island Tourism, Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM), Social Attributes.
In defence of metric learning for speaker recognition

The objective of this paper is 'open-set' speaker recognition of unseen speakers, where ideal embeddings should be able to condense information into a compact utterance-level representation that has small intra-speaker and large inter-speaker distance. A popular belief in speaker recognition is that networks trained with classification objectives outperform metric learning methods. In this paper, we present an extensive evaluation of most popular loss functions for speaker recognition on the VoxCeleb dataset. We demonstrate that the vanilla triplet loss shows competitive performance compared to classification-based losses, and those trained with our proposed metric learning objective outperform state-of-the-art methods.
Functionally Divided Manipulation Synergy for Controlling Multi-fingered Hands

Synergy provides a practical approach for expressing various postures of a multi-fingered hand. However, a conventional synergy defined for reproducing grasping postures cannot perform in-hand manipulation, e.g., tasks that involve simultaneously grasping and manipulating an object. Locking the position of particular fingers of a multi-fingered hand is essential for in-hand manipulation tasks either to hold an object or to fix unnecessary fingers. When using conventional synergy based control to manipulate an object, which requires locking some fingers, the coordination of joints is heavily restricted, decreasing the dexterity of the hand. We propose a functionally divided manipulation synergy (FDMS) method, which provides a synergy-based control to achieves both dimensionality reduction and in-hand manipulation. In FDMS, first, we define the function of each finger of the hand as either "manipulation" or "fixed. " Then, we apply synergy control only to the fingers having the manipulation function, so that dexterous manipulations can be realized with a few control inputs. Furthermore, we propose the Synergy Switching Framework as a method for applying a finely defined FDMS to sequential task changes. The effectiveness of our method is experimentally verified.
Chip-based self-referencing using integrated lithium niobate waveguides

The measurement and stabilization of the carrier-envelope offset frequency $f_{\textrm{CEO}}$ via self-referencing is paramount for optical frequency comb generation which has revolutionized precision frequency metrology, spectroscopy, and optical clocks. Over the past decade, the development of chip-scale platforms has enabled compact integrated waveguides for supercontinuum generation. However, there is a critical need for an on-chip self-referencing system that is adaptive to different pump wavelengths, requires low pulse energy, and does not require complicated processing. Here, we demonstrate efficient carrier-envelope offset frequency $f_{\textrm{CEO}}$ stabilization of a modelocked laser with only 107 pJ of pulse energy via self-referencing in an integrated lithium niobate waveguide. We realize an $f$-$2f$ interferometer through second-harmonic generation and subsequent supercontinuum generation in a single dispersion-engineered waveguide with a stabilization performance equivalent to a conventional off-chip module. The $f_{\textrm{CEO}}$ beatnote is measured over a pump wavelength range of 70 nm. We theoretically investigate our system using a single nonlinear envelope equation with contributions from both second- and third-order nonlinearities. Our modeling reveals rich ultrabroadband nonlinear dynamics and confirms that the initial second harmonic generation followed by supercontinuum generation with the remaining pump is responsible for the generation of a strong $f_{\textrm{CEO}}$ signal as compared to a traditional $f$-$2f$ interferometer. Our technology provides a highly-simplified system that is robust, low cost, and adaptable for precision metrology for use outside a research laboratory.
Is telephone counseling an effective weight loss strategy in obese adolescents

Evidence-Based Answer Probably not by itself, but it may help. Additional telephone counseling with text message support after a 2-month intensive weight loss program does not decrease body mass index (BMI), BMI z-score, or waistto-height ratio compared with no additional contact (SOR: B, single RCT). One-time computer-based weight loss education followed by 3 months of additional telephone counseling, does result in more patients decreasing their BMI z-score compared with a single physician visit focused on weight management (SOR: B, single RCT). An 8-week weight loss program followed by 12 months of telephone and text message support is associated with better dietary choices and decreased sedentary time over baseline but not with weight loss (SOR: B, cohort study).