Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
TRANSITIONAL EXPERIENCES OF AFRICAN STUDENTS STUDYING IN BEIJING, CHINA

The purpose of this study was to explore the transitional experiences of African international students studying in Beijing, China. It was expected that an exploration of what students go through in their transitional process would help university student affairs personnel in the provision of effective services to the students. The study was qualitative in nature and employed a phenomenological study design which involved interviewing African students and also personnel from the student support department at one of the universities in Beijing. It was found that African international students are mainly grappling with issues of language, food, culture and the education system in their new environment. It was also established that technology, Chinese lessons, and local friends are particularly useful in helping them with transition. However, the study has shown that African students do not make effective use of the support services that are available at the university. Therefore the study recommends strong integration and interaction between Chinese students and African international students as a way of helping them to ease their transition difficulties. It is also recommended that the student services department should put in place measures to ensure that students are fully making use of the services.
Empowering Students For Learning and Ministry

One of the central goals of global Christian education is the empowerment of students for the sake of serving in ministry. Christian religious educators take into consideration preparation, cultural differences, economic challenges, learning styles, outcomes, and the ministry that students face. This article seeks more than what teachers do for students and addresses what educators must do with and through students. The challenge of empowering students to become life long learners for the sake of serving is discussed. Three areas of empowerment are based on the teacher's calling, student's calling and sound educational theory. Developing empowering education involves providing community, facilitating educational discernment, and transforming the world through a vision of the kingdom of God.
Pedestrian detection based on Visconti2 7502

Pedestrians are the important participants in traffic. pedestrian detection system is used to monitor the road condition of pedestrians in real time and provide warning information to prevent potential accidents, and is the significant component of the Advanced Driver Assistance Systems. How to detect pedestrians in real time and accurately is a hot topic. Aiming at the that the traditional research mainly stays in the research of algorithm and the poor real-time performance, or high cost. In this paper, a driver assistance system based on Toshiba Visconti2 series vehicle image recognition processor is proposed, which uses monocular camera to capture image, CoHOG to extract pedestrian features and SVM classification for real-time pedestrian detection, TBD for pedestrian tracking. The experimental results show that the system can effectively detect the pedestrian and meet the real-time requirement, the whole system is low cost and portable to use in vehicle environment absolutely.
Binding energies and electronic structures of adsorbed titanium chains on carbon nanotubes

We have studied the binding energies and electronic structures of metal (Ti, Al, Au) chains adsorbed on single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWNT) using first-principles methods. Our calculations have shown that titanium is much more favored energetically over gold and aluminum to form a continuous chain on a variety of SWNT's. The interaction between titanium and carbon nanotube significantly modifies the electronic structures around Fermi energy for both zigzag and armchair tubes. The delocalized $3d$ electrons from the titanium chain generate additional states in the band-gap regions of the semiconducting tubes, transforming them into metals.
Speech Rate Calculations with Short Utterances: A Study from a Speech-to-Speech, Machine Translation Mediated Map Task

The motivation for this paper is to present a way to verify if an utterance within a corpus is pronounced at a fast or slow pace. An alternative method to the well-known Word-Per-Minute (wpm) method for cases where this approach is not applicable. For long segmentations, such as the full introduction section of a speech or presentation, the measurement of wpm is a viable option. For short comparisons of the same single word or multiple syllables, Syllables-Per-Second (sps) is also a viable option. However, when there are multiple short utterances that are frequent in task oriented dialogues or natural free ﬂowing conversation, such as those of the direct Human-to-Human dialogues of the HCRC Map Task corpus or the computer mediated inter-lingual dialogues of the ILMT-s2s corpus, it becomes difﬁcult to obtain a meaningful value for the utterance speech rate. In this paper we explain the method used to provide a alternative speech rate value to the utterance of the ILMT-s2s corpus and the HCRC Map Task corpus.
Dynamic Issues in Commercial Policy Analysis

First published in 1999, Dynamic Issues in Commercial Policy Analysis focuses on the explicit specification of dynamic mechanisms in the formal analytics of trade models. A wide range of modelling approaches is employed to investigate an even wider range of policy issues, with an overall objective of further extension of the basic conceptual framework of applied commercial policy analysis in the direction of dynamic issues and applications. Professors Baldwin and Francois and their contributors emphasise methods for the analysis of interactions between commercial policy and leading policy issues, including investment performance, economic growth and innovation, the location of industry, migration, and the environment.
Continuous blood pressure prediction using pulse features and Elman neural networks

The present study designs an algorithm to improve the accuracy of continuous blood pressure (BP) prediction. Pulse wave transmission time has been widely used for continuous BP prediction. However, because of the limitation of the linear model and the complexity of signal acquisition traditional method is often troubled with low BP prediction accuracy. In this paper, Elman neural networks (Elmans) are used to construct the continuous blood pressure measurement model. Continuous measurement of blood pressure is achieved by a single channel pulse signal (PPG). Based on the time-related features of Elman, we apply a method using the feature input matrix by the pulse wave feature points at time t-1 and time t. We select the SBP and DBP at time t as the output matrix of the model; finally establish the Elman continuous blood pressure measurement model. Twenty physiological data segments of two hours selected from the MIMIC II database are used to evaluate the performance. Compared with straightforward use of the PWTT-based linear regression model and the back propagation neural network model, the proposed model achieves higher measurement accuracy.
LVIS Jr Device for Y-Stent-Assisted Coil Embolization of Wide-Neck Intracranial Aneurysms: A Multicenter Experience

Background and Purpose: Complex wide-neck intracranial aneurysms are challenging to treat. We report a multicenter experience using the LVIS Jr stent for “Y-stent”-assisted coiling embolization of wide-neck bifurcation aneurysms. Methods: Seven centers provided retrospective data on patients who underwent Y-stenting. Technical complications, immediate posttreatment angiographic results, clinical outcomes, and imaging follow-up were assessed. Results: Thirty patients/aneurysms were treated: 15 basilar tip, 8 middle cerebral artery, 4 anterior communicating artery, 1 pericallosal, and 2 posterior inferior cerebellar artery aneurysms. The mean aneurysm size was 11 mm and the mean dome-to-neck ratio was 1.3 mm. Twenty-four aneurysms were unruptured and treated electively, and 6 were acutely ruptured. Fifty-eight LVIS Jr stents were successfully deployed without any technical issue. One procedural and transient in-stent thrombosis resolved with the intravenous infusion of a glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitor. Five periprocedural complications (within 30 days) occurred: 2 periprocedural neurological complications (1 small temporal stroke that presented with transient aphasia and 1 posterior cerebral artery infarct) and 3 nonneurological periprocedural complications (2 retroperitoneal hematomas, and 1 patient developed a disseminated intravascular coagulopathy). One permanent complication (3.3%) directly related to Y-stenting was reported in the patient who suffered the posterior cerebral artery infarct. Immediate complete obliteration (Raymond-Roy Occlusion Classification [RROC] I–II) was achieved in 26 cases (89.6%). Twenty-four patients had clinical and imaging follow-up (mean 5.2 months). Complete angiographic occlusion (RROC I–II) was observed in 23 patients (96%). A good functional outcome with a modified Rankin Scale score ≤2 was achieved in 26 cases. Conclusions: In this multicenter case series, Y-stent-assisted coiling of wide-neck aneurysms with the LVIS Jr device was feasible and relatively safe. Follow-up imaging demonstrated very low recanalization rates.
Finances of the Nation: Taxing Consumption in Canada: Rates, Revenues, and Redistribution

This article examines the role of sales and excise taxes in government revenues and in the Canadian economy. In particular, it explores the distributional effects of consumption taxes among Canadian households, to determine whether and to what extent the tax burden is borne disproportionately by low-income households rather than high-income households. The authors present data on statutory sales tax rates and track the share of sales and excise taxes in Canada's gross domestic product and government revenues over the past 34 years (1981-2014). They then analyze cross-sectional data on consumption patterns and tax payments of Canadian households, and conclude that the presumed regressivity of sales taxes -- particularly general sales taxes like the goods and services tax -- is far from clear.
Explaining Municipal Audit Costs in Sweden: Reconsidering the Political Environment, the Municipal Organisation and the Audit Market

With the purpose of explaining professional audit costs in Swedish municipalities, we hypothesised that audit costs are partly driven by various signalling and monitoring incentives in order to manage stakeholder relationships. Our model of the determinants of audit costs was tested on data from Swedish municipalities, thus extending the study of audit costs to political organizations in a Scandinavian institutional context. The test supported to some extent the traditional propositions of organizational complexity, risk and market determinants, as well as the proposition of the political environment. Our results indicate that audit costs are used to signal accountability, thereby suggesting that audit as a signal could be managed without managing professional auditors.
From Proof of Concept to Scalable Policies: Challenges and Solutions, with an Application

The promise of randomized controlled trials is that evidence gathered through the evaluation of a specific program helps us—possibly after several rounds of fine-tuning and multiple replications in different contexts—to inform policy. However, critics have pointed out that a potential constraint in this agenda is that results from small “proof-of-concept” studies run by nongovernment organizations may not apply to policies that can be implemented by governments on a large scale. After discussing the potential issues, this paper describes the journey from the original concept to the design and evaluation of scalable policy. We do so by evaluating a series of strategies that aim to integrate the nongovernment organization Pratham’s “Teaching at the Right Level” methodology into elementary schools in India. The methodology consists of re-organizing instruction based on children’s actual learning levels, rather than on a prescribed syllabus, and has previously been shown to be very effective when properly implemented. We present evidence from randomized controlled trials on the designs that failed to produce impacts within the regular schooling system but helped shape subsequent versions of the program. As a result of this process, two versions of the programs were developed that successfully raised children’s learning levels using scalable models in government schools. We use this example to draw general lessons about using randomized control trials to design scalable policies.
Supramolecular medicine of calixarenes

Supramolecular medicine is the application of the concept of supramolecular chemistry to serve modern medicine. Calixarene, as one of important artificial macrocyclic receptors, plays an important role in the development of supramolecular chemistry and supramolecular medicine. This review introduced the basic concepts of supramolecular medicine and calixarene, their corresponding development, and summarized our progress in calixarene-based supramolecular medicine including disease diagnosis, bio-imaging, drug discovery and drug delivery, as well as the representative results of other research groups. Finally, the healthy and orderly development of calixarenes in modern medicine was considered, and the future development and application of supramolecular medicine of calixarenes were prospected.
The UK future jobs fund: The Labour party's adoption of the job guarantee principle

This paper examines the development of employment policy in the United Kingdom. Past public-sector direct employment schemes, including those associated with the workfare model, had been discredited as ineffective across the OECD. In numerous countries, however, newer job creation schemes were implemented from the 1990s, aimed at addressing some of the shortcomings of earlier projects, and utilizing the growth of smaller community-based projects – the Intermediate Labour Markets, or ILMs. With the onset of the current economic downturn, and the substantial rise in cyclical unemployment, policy-makers more closely examined options for a demand-led strategy. Although ILMs had not been created with a view to forming part of a comprehensive job guarantee, the potential of these schemes to form part of a wider national strategy was clearly seen. In 2009 the government announced a job guarantee for young people, the Future Jobs Fund. This initiative was inspired at least in part by the work of Hyman Minsky. Although the Future Jobs Fund was scrapped in May 2010, it represents a bold step in active labour market policy. Subsequent analysis of the data related to the Future Jobs Fund indicate that it was a success, achieving its goals even under conservative assumptions.
Out-of-step Prediction for Power System Using Improved Prony Algorithm

The development of the phasor measurement units (PMUs) and the wide-area measurement systems (WAMS) in power system provide abundant synchronous data for the new application. This paper proposes an online out-of-step monitoring and predicting scheme for the interconnected power systems based on the rotor angle measurement. The Prony algorithm is improved to predict whether and when a power swing will lead to out-of-step of the generator or the power systems. An energy-like weight coefficient approximation of the decomposed signals is introduced to maintain the accuracy and reliability of the model free dynamic prediction method. The effectiveness and applicability of the proposed scheme is illustrated using a 2-area-4-machine power system.
A formal verification approach to process modelling and composition

Process modelling is a design approach where a system or procedure is decomposed in a number of abstract, independent, but connected processes, and then recomposed into a well-defined workflow specification. Research in formal verification, for its part, and theorem proving in particular, is focused on the rigorous verification of system properties using logical proof. This thesis introduces a systematic methodology for process modelling and composition based on formal verification. Our aim is to augment the numerous benefits of a workflow based specification, such as modularity, separation of concerns, interoperability between heterogeneous (including human-based) components, and optimisation, with the high level of trust provided by formally verified properties, such as type correctness, systematic resource accounting (including exception handling), and deadlock-freedom. More specifically, we focus on bridging the gap between the deeply theoretical proofsas-processes paradigm and the highly pragmatic tasks of process specification and composition. To accomplish this, we embed the proofs-as-processes paradigm within the modern proof assistant HOL Light. This allows the formal, mechanical translation of Classical Linear Logic (CLL) proofs to π-calculus processes. Our methodology then relies on the specification of abstract processes in CLL terms and their composition using CLL inference. A fully diagrammatic interface is used to guide our developed set of high level, semi-automated reasoning tools, and to perform intuitive composition actions including sequential, parallel, and conditional composition. The end result is a π-calculus specification of the constructed workflow, with guarantees of correctness for the aforementioned properties. We can then apply a visual, step-by-step simulation of this workflow or perform an automated workflow deployment as executable code in the programming language Scala. We apply our methodology to a use-case of a holiday booking web agent and to the modelling of real-world collaboration patterns in healthcare, thus demonstrating the capabilities of our framework and its potential use in a variety of scenarios.
Ensemble Romanian Dependency Parsing with Neural Networks

SSPR (Semantics-driven Syntactic Parser for Romanian) is a neural network ensemble parser developed for Romanian (a Python 3.5 application based on the Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit 2.0 Python API) that combines the parsing decisions of a varying number (in our experiments, 3) of other parsers (MALT, RGB and MATE), using information from additional lexical, morpho-syntactic and semantic features. SSPR outperforms the best individual parser (MATE in our case) with 1.6% LAS points and it is in the same class with the top 5 Romanian performers at the CONLL 2017 dependency parsing shared task. The train and test sets were extracted from a Romanian dependency treebank we developed and validated in the Universal Dependencies format. The treebank, used in the CONLL 2017 Romanian track as well, is open licenced; the parser is available on request.
The Cramer-Rao lower bound for towed array shape estimation with a single source

This correspondence derives the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) for towed array shape estimation when using the receiver outputs in the presence of a single planewave narrowband source and additive white noise. Both known and unknown source directions are considered. The CRLB shows that accurate array shape estimation is possible only if the array shape is relatively linear and the source direction away from endfire.
'Managerialism' and Risk-Return Performance

The appearance of 'managerial' models of firm behavior such as those of Baumol [1], Williamson [8], and Monsen and Downs [6], has caused, within the past few years, a great deal of discussion and some (lesser) amount of empirical testing, notably by Kamerschen [3], Monsen, Chiu and Cooley [5], and Radice [7]. The empirical tests to date have concentrated on rate-of-return statements of managerial theories and their implication for profit-seeking behavior. This is, of course, that owner-controlled firms are, according to the managerialists, expected to earn higher rates of return than manager controlled firms. These tests, however, have not addressed the more complete predictions of performance made by the managerialists, that the manifest behavior of these two types of firms should differ in both return and risk dimensions. Baumol [1, 90-91] and Monsen and Downs [6, 226] imply that because of assymetrical opportunities for return-risk income combinations on the part of the managers in the two types of firms, the owner-controlled firm will produce higher and more variable income streams than will the manager-controlled firm. In addition to addressing the managerial question, a test of risk-return performance is related to utility-based models of the firm, specifically those implying risk aversion. These propositions can be tested with variations of a basic equation of the form:
Analyzing Privacy Policies of Zero Knowledge Cloud Storage Applications on Mobile Devices

With the rapid growth of mobile applications and the increase number of mobile users, many cloud storage services started to design stand-alone mobile applications that can be used to access files remotely from mobile and share them. In this paper, an in-depth analysis has been performed on the privacy policies of zero knowledge cloud storage applications on mobile. The analysis includes the type of information collected, collection mechanisms, purpose for collection, sharing of information, user controls and information retention period. The results showed that most privacy policies addressed important areas of information collection, purposes of collection, information sharing and users' controls. On the other hand, many policies lacked detailed information of the data retention period.
Multidimensional study on quality of life in children with type 1 diabetes.

AIM To study the Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) and metabolic assessment in 33 children affected with type 1 diabetes (18 males, 15 females; mean age 10.3 years). METHODS AND RESULTS We used the Child Health Questionnaire-Parental Form 50 items (CHQ-PF50), measurements of metabolic control and we related them to patient management and family status. Quality of life (QoL) in diabetic children was worse than in the healthy sample. Interestingly, mean and last glycosylated hemoglobin (mean HbAlc r: -.4410 p < .01 and last HbAlc r: -.4012 p < .01), age of patients (r: -.4428; p < .009) and number of glycaemia controls (r: -.37, p < .03) were the most important parameters related to HRQoL parameters. CONCLUSION This multidimensional study stressed that HRQoL is influenced by the metabolic assessment. Moreover, the report examined the parental perception of QoL in children with chronic diseases. Higher number of glycaemia controls/day, better metabolic control, lower age of children and earlier onset of diabetes produced better physical and psychological aspects of QoL. In comparison with adolescent patients, in children with diabetes, factors as number of insulin injections and daily snacks, and the level of education of the mother were not so important to influence QoL. Unexpectedly, in this sample, life habits, family features, and anthropometric parameters did not correlate with specific domains of QoL.