Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How Effective are Food for Education Programs?: A Critical Assessment of the Evidence from Developing Countries

Food for education (FFE) programs, including meals served in school and take-home rations conditional on school attendance, have received renewed attention recently as a policy instrument for achieving the Millennium Development Goals of universal primary education and the reduction of hunger in developing countries. This review study presents a rationale for FFE programs and undertakes a critical assessment of the causal evidence on the impact of FFE programs on education participation and attainment, learning, cognitive development, and nutrition. Despite a large literature on the impact of FFE programs, many studies suffer from methodological shortcomings that limit the quality of their contribution. Results from the most careful studies show that in-school meals programs improve primary school attendance of enrolled students where initial attendance was low. Potential impacts on school participation by children not previously enrolled in school are not well known. There is mixed evidence that school meals can improve performance on math and literacy tests and they may improve cognitive development, depending on the type of food provided, the size of the food rations, and program duration. Several well-designed controlled trials have shown that school meals have a positive impact on nutrition outcomes, though these results have received less support from field trials in more typical settings. There are few studies of scaled-up take-home ration programs, but one study from Bangladesh shows a significant impact on school participation. In general, FFE programs have larger impacts in areas with low school participation and on children with greater initial malnutrition. The impacts of the programs may also be higher when combined with complementary programs to improve schools or child health.
Using recursive Bayesian estimation for matching GPS measurements to imperfect road network data

Map-matching refers to the process of projecting positioning measurements to a location on a digital road network map. It is an important element of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) focusing on driver assistance applications, on emergency and incident management, arterial and freeway management, and other applications. This paper addresses the problem of map-matching in the applications characterized by imperfect map quality and restricted computational resources - e.g. in the context of community-based ITS applications. Whereas a number of map-matching methods are available, often these methods rely on topological analysis, thereby making them sensitive to the map inaccuracies. In the paper, a new map-matching method based on the probabilistic approach is introduced. In the method, the probabilities of alternative road links are estimated with recursive Bayesian estimation, and the road link is identified using maximum a posteriori probability principle. The topological analysis is not used; instead, the distance between projections on road links is used to assign road link switching probability. The accuracy of the method is empirically evaluated, and the link identification accuracy is found to be similar to that of alternative approaches relying on topological analysis.
The Impact of Government- Sponsored Training Programs on the Labor Market Transitions of Disadvantaged Men

Dans ce travail, nous cherchons a determiner l'impact des mesures actives d'insertion sur les transitions des jeunes prestataires masculins de l'aide de dernier recours sur le marche du travail. La richesse des donnees a notre disposition nous permet de recreer de facon tres detaillee l'historique de chaque prestataire sur une periode relativement longue. Nous avons recours a un modele de duree en temps continue pour estimer la densite des durees observees dans plus de sept etats differents. L'endogeneite de la presence dans une mesure active est explicitement prise en compte. Nous analysons la sensibilite des parametres estimes en comparant les resultats d'un modele non-parametrique standard avec ceux de plusieurs modeles parametriques a deux ou trois facteurs de charge. Nos resultats montrent que les jeunes hommes peu scolarises qui participent a des mesures actives destinees aux prestataires d'aide de dernier recours ont davantage de difficultes a s'integrer au marche du travail que ceux qui ne participent pas a des telles mesures. En revanche, les mesures d'insertion offertes dans le cadre du programme d'assurance-emploi semblent donner de meilleurs resultats. De facon generale, la duree dans chacun des sept etats consideres est sensible aux variables considerees dans l'analyse, soient les prestations d'aide de dernier recours, le salaire minimum, et le taux de chomage. The analysis focuses on the impact of government-sponsored training programs aimed at disadvantaged male youths on their labour market transitions. The richness of the data at our disposal allows us to recreate very detailed individual histories over a relatively long period. We use a continuous time duration model to estimate the density of duration times in as many as seven states, controlling for the endogeneity of an individual's training status. We investigate the sensitivity of the parameter estimates by comparing a typical non-parametric specification with a series of parametric two-factor loading models, as well as a parametric three-factor loading model. Our results show that young, poorly educated males who participate in welfare training programs do worse on the labour market than those who do not participate. On the other hand, participation in unemployment training programs provides them some benefits. In general, we find that duration times in any of the seven states considered are sensitive to variations in program parameters such as welfare benefits, policy variables such as the minimum wage rate, and in the economic environment as proxied by the unemployment rate.
CONTEXT AWARENESS IN COLLABORATIVE PLATFORMS AND LIVING LABS

In this paper, we present a collaborative context-aware framework for rural living labs or rural innovation ecosystems as Social Spaces for Research and Innovation SSRI. The proposed framework exploits seamless integration of standard ubiquitous computing technologies to support smart collaboration and knowledge sharing between rural communities. We underline an open collaborative platform based on context-aware components useful in any rural living lab area. We highlight the use of context-aware components in such platform. Furthermore,we experiment the use of such platform in rural community of fishery sector. We illustrate the added value of the composition of context-aware services in the collaborative platform. Building such framework requires, indeed, resolving two main issues: context semantics awareness model and seamless integration architecture. Context awareness is carried out using a semantic web model, which facilitates knowledge sharing and representation. The work presented in this paper is one of the main results of the Collaboration@Rural (C@R) European research project: “a collaboration platform for working and living in rural areas” (FP62005-IST-5-03492) that aims to build a platform of networked living labs for context-aware collaborative working in rural areas.
Spatial and Temporal Expression of the period andtimeless Genes in the Developing Nervous System ofDrosophila: Newly Identified Pacemaker Candidates and Novel Features of Clock Gene Product Cycling

The circadian timekeeping system of Drosophilafunctions from the first larval instar (L1) onward but is not known to require the expression of clock genes in larvae. We show that period (per) andtimeless (tim) are rhythmically expressed in several groups of neurons in the larval CNS both in light/dark cycles and in constant dark conditions. Among the clock gene-expressing cells there is a subset of the putative pacemaker neurons, the “lateral neurons” (LNs), that have been analyzed mainly in adult flies. Like the adult LNs, the larval ones are also immunoreactive to a peptide called pigment-dispersing hormone. Their putative dendritic trees were found to be in close proximity to the terminals of the larval optic nerve Bolwig’s nerve, possibly receiving photic input from the larval eyes. The LNs are the only larval cells that maintain a strong cycling in PER from L1 onward, throughout metamorphosis and into adulthood. Therefore, they are the best candidates for being pacemaker neurons responsible for the larval “time memory” (inferred from previous experiments). In addition to the LNs, a subset of the larval dorsal neurons (DNLs) expresses per andtim. Intriguingly, two neurons of this DNL group cycle in PER and TIM immunoreactivity almost in antiphase to the other DNLs and to the LNs. Thus, the temporal expression of per andtim are regulated differentially in different cells. Furthermore, the light sensitivity associated with levels of the TIM protein is different from that in the heads of adultDrosophila.
Patient-Centric Healthcare Service Systems: Evidence-Based Medicine as Architecturally Significant Requirement

Healthcare Service Systems may use and support evidence-based medicine, and to accomplish that, their design has to be patient-centered focusing on quality of evidence and strength of recommendation. Hence, this paper intends to promote the debate on the design of Healthcare Service Systems. We propose a framework that attempts to systematize the design and development of Healthcare Service Systems, especially in terms of software engineering. The framework is intended to support the design of Healthcare Service Systems by understanding a complex health treatment as a project, which would provide naturally patient-centeredness, and by considering Evidence-Based Medicine guidelines and recommendations as architecturally significant requirements in the design of Healthcare Service Systems, which would provide focus on quality of evidence and strength of recommendation. Therefore, we would have a SOA user-centric approach and a systematic service design.
Uplink Spatial Scheduling with Adaptive Transmit Beamforming in Multiuser MIMO Systems

This paper presents uplink spatial scheduling with adaptive transmit beamforming, where terminals perform system-based transmit beamforming in multiuser multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems. In the presented spatial scheduling, the base station (BS) selects appropriate combination of terminals and their transmit beamforming among possible terminals. In the selection process, a terminal and its transmit beamforming for a signal are successively selected, considering the effect of the other predetermined signals. In performance evaluation, we show that the spatial scheduling achieves much larger system throughput than the system without spatial scheduling. We also present a basic system configuration in which the BS reports the target transmit beamforming to the selected terminal efficiently in time-division duplex (TDD) system downlink
European Surveillance of Antimicrobial Consumption (ESAC): outpatient antibiotic use in Europe.

BACKGROUND The ESAC project, granted by DG SANCO of the European Commission, is an international network of surveillance systems, aiming to collect comparable and reliable data on antibiotic use in Europe. Data on outpatient antibiotic use were collected from 34 countries using the ATC/DDD methodology. METHODS For the period 1997-2003, data on outpatient use of systemic antibiotics aggregated at the level of the active substance were collected and expressed in DDD (WHO, version 2004) per 1000 inhabitants per day (DID). Outpatient antibiotic (ATC J01) use in 25 European countries, able to deliver valid data, was analysed. RESULTS Total outpatient antibiotic use in 2003 varied by a factor of 3 between the country with the highest (31.4 DID in Greece) and the country with the lowest (9.8 DID in the Netherlands) use. General use patterns in individual countries as well as trends during the period 1997-2003 are described in this paper, while major antibiotic classes (penicillins, cephalosporins, macrolides/lincosamides/streptogramins and quinolones) will be analysed in detail in separate papers. CONCLUSION The ESAC project established for the first time a credible alternative to industry sources for the collection of internationally comparable data on antibiotic use in Europe, based on cooperation between regulatory authorities, scientific societies, health insurers and professional organizations. These data provide a tool for assessing public health strategies aiming to optimize antibiotic prescribing.
Fault-Tolerant Control of Wind Turbines: A Benchmark Model

This paper presents a test benchmark model for the evaluation of fault detection and accommodation schemes. This benchmark model deals with the wind turbine on a system level, and it includes sensor, actuator, and system faults, namely faults in the pitch system, the drive train, the generator, and the converter system. Since it is a system-level model, converter and pitch system models are simplified because these are controlled by internal controllers working at higher frequencies than the system model. The model represents a three-bladed pitch-controlled variable-speed wind turbine with a nominal power of 4.8 MW. The fault detection and isolation (FDI) problem was addressed by several teams, and five of the solutions are compared in the second part of this paper. This comparison relies on additional test data in which the faults occur in different operating conditions than in the test data used for the FDI design.
OPTIMISING A MEASUREMENT SETUP FOR DECISION MAKING

Measurements are the key to rational decision making. Measurement information generates value, when it is applied in the decision making. An investment cost and maintenance costs are associated with each component of the measurement system. Clearly, there is – under a given set of scenarios – a measurement setup that is optimal in expected (discounted) utility. Contrary to process design, design of measurement and information systems has not been formulated as such an optimization problem, but rather been tackled intuitively. In this presentation we propose a framework for analyzing such an optimization problem. Our framework is based on that the basic mechanism of measurement is reduction of uncertainty about reality. Statistical decision theory serves as the basis for analyzing decision making. In this paper we apply the framework to a problem that is rather simple but of practical importance: how to arrange laboratory quality measurements optimally. In particular, we discuss a case in the paper making industry, in which the product quality is measured with automated quality analyzers and by laboratory measurements.
Coarse Graining of Nonbonded Inter-Particle Potentials Using Automatic Simplex Optimization to Fit Structural Properties

We implemented a coarse-graining procedure to construct mesoscopic models of complex molecules. The final aim is to obtain better results on properties depending on slow modes of the molecules. Therefore the number of particles considered in molecular dynamics simulations is reduced while conserving as many properties of the original substance as possible. We address the problem of finding nonbonded interaction parameters which reproduce structural properties from experiment or atomistic simulations. The approach consists of optimizing automatically nonbonded parameters using the simplex algorithm to fit structural properties like the radial distribution function as target functions. Moreover, any mix of structural and thermodynamic properties can be included in the target function. Different spherically symmetric inter-particle potentials are discussed. Besides demonstrating the method for Lennard-Jones liquids, it is applied to several more complex molecular liquids such as diphenyl carbonate, tetrahydrofurane, and monomers of poly(isoprene).
Future directions in the study of induced plant responses to herbivory

This paper reviews current progress and makes recommendations for future studies of induced plant responses to herbivory in three research areas: the role of induction in structuring herbivore communities, costs associated with the expression of induced responses, and theory and data on the macro‐evolution of induced responses. It is argued that although mechanistic approaches will be important for progress, it is also critical to maintain a holistic approach, including a consideration of field environments, multi‐species interactions, and patterns over ecological and evolutionary time.
Diagonalization methods in PARSEC

The Pseudopotential Algorithm for Real‐Space Electronic Calculations (PARSEC) is a software package written by a team consisting of materials physicists and computer scientists over approximately one decade. During this period, the algorithms used in PARSEC have undergone a series of improvements. This paper reviews the nature of the eigenvalue problems encountered in solving the Kohn–Sham equations and discusses the evolution of the diagonalization methods used in PARSEC. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
Facial Age Aftereffects Provide Some Evidence for Local Repulsion (But None for Re-Normalisation)

Face aftereffects can help adjudicate between theories of how facial attributes are encoded. O'Neil and colleagues (2014) compared age estimates for faces before and after adapting to young, middle-aged or old faces. They concluded that age aftereffects are best described as a simple re-normalisation—e.g. after adapting to old faces, all faces look younger than they did initially. Here I argue that this conclusion is not substantiated by the reported data. The authors fit only a linear regression model, which captures the predictions of re-normalisation, but not alternative hypotheses such as local repulsion away from the adapted age. A second concern is that the authors analysed absolute age estimates after adaptation, as a function of baseline estimates, so goodness-of-fit measures primarily reflect the physical ages of test faces, rather than the impact of adaptation. When data are re-expressed as aftereffects and fit with a nonlinear “locally repulsive” model, this model performs equal to or better than a linear model in all adaptation conditions. Data in O'Neil et al. do not provide strong evidence for either re-normalisation or local repulsion in facial age aftereffects, but are more consistent with local repulsion (and exemplar-based encoding of facial age), contrary to the original report.
Ju l 2 00 7 Dirac and Yang Monopoles Revisited

The Dirac monopoles in 3-space and their generalization by C. N. Yang to 5-space are observed to be just the Levi-Civita spin connections of the cylindrical Riemannian metric on the 3and 5dimensional punctured spaces respectively. Their straightforward generalization to higher dimensions is also investigated. PACS: 04.62. +v
SOCIAL AND NONMARKET BENEFITS FROM EDUCATION IN AN ADVANCED ECONOMY

The objective of the paper by Barbara Wolfe and Robert Haveman is to assign a monetary value to the welfare gains associated with schooling that are not captured in the traditional measure of market-wage returns. Extending our perspective beyond the wage differentials of workers with different amounts of education promises to provide a more comprehensive basis on which to evaluate private and social investment priorities within the education sector, as well as the relative returns between education and alternative social investment sectors. This requires that we improve resource-accounting procedures and develop better methods to describe—without bias—the technologies that permit more-educated people to be more productive and thereby enjoy a higher standard of living. Wolfe and Haveman note that if you can estimate without bias the parameters of the production function for nonmarket goods, which includes at least one market-priced input and one household worker’s time input (distinguished by her or his education), then the trade-off between the marginal products of the worker’s education and the marginal product of the market-priced input can be inferred. Thus they estimate a monetary value for the educational input, assuming that the ratio of the value of marginal products of all inputs divided by the inputs’ market (or nonmarket) prices is equal when the allocation of inputs has been efficiently optimized. To make this procedure more concrete, consider an example where an extra year of education of a mother increases her child’s cognitive achievement by exactly the same amount as sending the child to a more
Geographic and seasonal variation of dissolved methane and aerobic methane oxidation in Alaskan lakes

Abstract. Methanotrophic bacteria play an important role oxidizing a significant fraction of methane (CH4) produced in lakes. Aerobic CH4 oxidation depends mainly on lake CH4 and oxygen (O2) concentrations, in such a manner that higher MO rates are usually found at the oxic/anoxic interface, where both molecules are present. MO also depends on temperature, and via methanogenesis, on organic carbon input to lakes, including from thawing permafrost in thermokarst (thaw)-affected lakes. Given the large variability in these environmental factors, CH4 oxidation is expected to be subject to large seasonal and geographic variations, which have been scarcely reported in the literature. In the present study, we measured CH4 oxidation rates in 30 Alaskan lakes along a north-south latitudinal transect during winter and summer with a new field laser spectroscopy method. Additionally, we measured dissolved CH4 and O2 concentrations. We found that in the winter, aerobic CH4 oxidation was mainly controlled by the dissolved O2 concentration, while in the summer it was controlled primarily by the CH4 concentration, which was scarce compared to dissolved O2. The permafrost environment of the lakes was identified as another key factor. Thermokarst (thaw) lakes formed in yedoma-type permafrost had significantly higher CH4 oxidation rates compared to other thermokarst and non-thermokarst lakes formed in non-yedoma permafrost environments. As thermokarst lakes formed in yedoma-type permafrost have been identified to receive large quantities of terrestrial organic carbon from thaw and subsidence of the surrounding landscape into the lake, confirming the strong coupling between terrestrial and aquatic habitats and its influence on CH4 cycling.