Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Digital Banking Technology on Loan Uptake in Hotels Industry in Kenya

Digital banking technology is having a profound impact on businesses and corporate borrowing behavior. Integrating digital banking technology and its impact on hotel borrowing is a critical challenge. Limited digital literacy, uneven technology adoption and inadequate regulatory support prevent hotels from reaping the benefits. This study is based on three theories: the technology acceptance model, Institutional theory and the resource-based verification theory. This study uses literature review methodology to draw analysis and conclusions. Studies suggest that these technologies have democratized access to credit, empowered previously underserved populations, and improved financial inclusion. However, alongside these benefits, criticism of the literature also reveals ongoing concerns. These include questions of digital literacy, data security and the possible exclusion of marginalized groups. Additionally, questions arise regarding the effectiveness of digital lending platforms in accurately assessing creditworthiness and managing associated risks that may impact credit quality and overall financial stability. Although digital banking technology offers opportunities to expand access to credit, it is important to address these challenges to ensure equitable and sustainable financial inclusion outcomes. The study concludes that by leveraging the potential of mobile banking, digital payment systems and online lending platforms, hotels can more effectively address financial challenges and seize opportunities for sustainable development and success in the dynamic business landscape.
Distributed Multichannel and Mobility-Aware Cluster-Based MAC Protocol for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Since vehicular safety applications require periodic dissemination of status and emergency messages, contention-based medium-access-control (MAC) protocols such as IEEE 802.11p have problems in predictability, fairness, low throughput, latency, and high collision rate, particularly in high-density networks. Therefore, a distributed multichannel and mobility-aware cluster-based MAC (DMMAC) protocol is proposed. Through channel scheduling and an adaptive learning mechanism integrated within the fuzzy-logic inference system (FIS), vehicles organize themselves into more stable and nonoverlapped clusters. Each cluster will use a different subchannel from its neighbors in a distributed manner to eliminate the hidden terminal problem. Increasing the system's reliability, reducing the time delay for vehicular safety applications, and efficiently clustering vehicles in highly dynamic and dense networks in a distributed manner are the main contributions of the proposed MAC protocol. The reliability and connectivity of DMMAC are analyzed in terms of the average cluster size, the communication range within the cluster and between cluster heads (CHs), and the lifetime of a path. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol can support traffic safety and increase vehicular ad hoc networks' (VANETs) efficiency, reliability, and stability of the cluster topology by increasing the CH's lifetime and the dwell time of its members.
Rule-based construction of matching processes

Semi-automatic schema matching systems have been developed to compute mapping suggestions that can be corrected by a user. However, constructing and tuning match strategies still requires a high manual effort. We therefore propose a self-configuring schema matching system that is able to automatically adapt to the given mapping problem at hand. Our approach is based on analyzing the input schemas as well as intermediate match results. A variety of matching rules use the analysis results to automatically construct and adapt an underlying matching process for a given match task. The evaluation shows that our system is able to robustly return good quality mappings across different mapping problems and domains.
MRMLREC: A Two-Stage Approach for Addressing Data Sparsity in MOOC Video Recommendation (Student Abstract)

With the abundance of learning resources available on massive open online courses (MOOCs) platforms, the issue of interactive data sparsity has emerged as a significant challenge.This paper introduces MRMLREC, an efficient MOOC video recommendation which consists of two main stages: multi-relational representation and multi-level recommendation, aiming to solve the problem of data sparsity. In the multi-relational representation stage, MRMLREC adopts a tripartite approach, constructing relational graphs based on temporal sequences, courses-videos relation, and knowledge concepts-video relation. These graphs are processed by a Graph Convolution Network (GCN) and two variant Graph Attention Networks (GAT) to derive representations. A variant of the Long Short-Term Memory Network (LSTM) then integrates these multi-dimensional data to enhance the overall representation. The multi-level recommendation stage introduces three prediction tasks at varying levels—courses, knowledge concepts, and videos—to mitigate data sparsity and improve the interpretability of video recommendations. Beam search (BS) is employed to identify top-β items at each level, refining the subsequent level's search space and enhancing recommendation efficiency. Additionally, an optional layer offers both personalization and diversification modes, ensuring variety in recommended videos and maintaining learner engagement. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of MRMLREC on two real-world instances from Xuetang X.
Bone Microdamage and Skeletal Fragility in Osteoporotic and Stress Fractures

The accumulation of bone microdamage has been proposed as one factor that contributes to increased skeletal fragility with age and that may increase the risk for fracture in older women. This paper reviews the current status and understanding of microdamage physiology and its importance to skeletal fragility. Several questions are addressed: Does microdamage exist in vivo in bone? If it does, does it impair bone quality? Does microdamage accumulate with age, and is the accumulation of damage with age sufficient to cause a fracture? The nature of the damage repair mechanism is reviewed, and it is proposed that osteoporotic fracture may be a consequence of a positive feedback between damage accumulation and the increased remodeling space associated with repair.
The Connection between the Number of Realizations for Degree Sequences and Majorization

The \emph{graph realization problem} is to find for given nonnegative integers $a_1,\dots,a_n$ a simple graph (no loops or multiple edges) such that each vertex $v_i$ has degree $a_i. $ Given pairs of nonnegative integers $(a_1,b_1),\dots,(a_n,b_n),$ (i) the \emph{bipartite realization problem} ask whether there is a bipartite graph (no loops or multiple edges) such that vectors $(a_1,.,a_n)$ and $(b_1,.,b_n)$ correspond to the lists of degrees in the two partite sets, (ii) the \emph{digraph realization problem} is to find a digraph (no loops or multiple arcs) such that each vertex $v_i$ has indegree $a_i$ and outdegree $b_i. $\\ The classic literature provides characterizations for the existence of such realizations that are strongly related to the concept of majorization. Aigner and Triesch (1994) extended this approach to a more general result for graphs, leading to an efficient realization algorithm and a short and simple proof for the Erd\H{o}s-Gallai Theorem. We extend this approach to the bipartite realization problem and the digraph realization problem. \\ Our main result is the connection between majorization and the number of realizations for a degree list in all three problems. We show: if degree list $S'$ majorizes $S$ in a certain sense, then $S$ possesses more realizations than $S'. $ We prove that constant lists possess the largest number of realizations for fixed $n$ and a fixed number of arcs $m$ when $n$ divides $m. $ So-called \emph{minconvex lists} for graphs and bipartite graphs or \emph{opposed minconvex lists} for digraphs maximize the number of realizations when $n$ does not divide $m$.
Transformative Copy

The ability to create an unlimited number of identical copies is a privilege of digital documents. What if that would not be the case, if each copy of a digital file would go along with some sort of transformation? This thesis examines the implications of such a scenario on information ecologies and map out the design space for a new type of decentralized authoring applications. The concept of the copy is inherently transformative, even if just as the transformation from "the One into the Many ". However, until the recent transition from analog to digital media, the perfectly identical copy was not possible, every reproduction resulted in transformation. While this transformation usually is associated with loss of information, it also creates new information, traces of an objects history. As a result of the ability to create of unlimited numbers of perfectly identical copies from digital files, this dimension of context information is lost digital files do not have a history. In the course of this thesis, five examples were implemented that illustrate important properties of the concept of transformative copying, in order to propose a general framework for a sociable, transformative file format. They investigate two cases of transformation: First, transformation as a deliberate process by humans. A second dimension is transformation as an autonomous process, either in form of an imperfect copy or as a result of an objects age and usage, such as wear. Both points seem like independent cases, but in our scenario they are closely interconnected and inform each other. Thesis Supervisor: Judith S. Donath Title: Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences
Robert Koch and the pressures of scientific research: tuberculosis and tuberculin.

Robert Koch's identification of the tuberculosis pathogen in 1882 is held to be his greatest scientific achievement. In the eyes of his friend and colleague, Friedrich Löffler, the discovery was a “world-shaking event” which resulted in both instant and everlasting fame, turning Koch “overnight into the most successful and outstanding researcher of all times”. Paul Ehrlich, remembering Koch's presentation in Emil du Bois Reymond's Institute for Physiology in Berlin on 24 March 1882, called it “my single greatest scientific experience”. The sensational character of Koch's achievement, which is noted in Löffler's and Ehrlich's retrospective statements, seems to have been obvious to contemporaries of the event. Albert Johne, writing a history of tuberculosis in 1883, found that history had, in a way, come to an end: “resulting from the latest of Koch's publications, the pathogenic aspects of the tubercle question are settled at large”. Koch himself profited from the overwhelming reception by being promoted to the rank of a senior executive officer, Geheimer Regierungsrath, in June 1882. March 24, 1882 thus came to stand for two things: Koch's breakthrough to world fame and a sort of doomsday for tuberculosis. Not surprisingly, the event was held in similar esteem by later biographers: Bernhard Möllers in 1950 called it the “greatest and most important success of his life”, and Thomas Brock, Koch's most recent biographer, assessed the discovery of the tubercle bacillus as the first of two steps on Koch's road to fame in the early 1880s. In conjunction with the 1883–84 cholera expedition, which made Koch a hero for the public, the tubercle bacillus indicated his breakthrough in the scientific world.
The EPA, NHTSA, and the Multiple Streams drive climate policy outcome

ABSTRACT Although United States environmental policy is frequently being decided in administrative agencies, it is unclear what factors influence policy outcomes. Some limited scholarship has explored whether the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) used for congressional policymaking can be used to explain rulemaking outcomes. This research explores the validity of the MSF via a case study of the controversial 2017 and Later Model Year Light-Duty Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards Rule (CAFE Standards Rule) jointly published by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). This research relies on original interviews with 30 agency staff and stakeholders to conclude that the model is helpful in understanding why these agencies produced the policy they did. However, the results here illustrate the importance of understanding the role and impact of the political stream on outcomes earlier in the process than outlined by previous scholars. Thus, when analyzing controversial regulatory outcomes, the policy and political stream may have to converge as early as the pre-proposal stage to ensure a rule is finalized.
A garbage collection design and bakeoff in JMTk: An efficient extensible Java memory management toolkit

In this paper, we describe the design, implementation, and evaluation of a new garbage collection framework called the Java Memory Management Toolkit (JMTk). The goals of JMTk are to provide an efficient, composable, extensible, and portable toolkit for quickly building and evaluating new and existing garbage collection algorithms. Our design clearly demarcates the external interface between the collector and the compiler for portability. For extensibility, JMTk provides a selection of allocators, garbage identification, collection, pointer tracking, and other mechanisms that are efficient and that a wide variety garbage collection algorithms can compose and share. For instance, our mark-sweep and reference counting collectors share the free list implementation. We perform a comprehensive and detailed study of collectors including copying, marksweep, reference counting, copying generational, and hybrid generational collectors using JMTk in the Jikes RVM on a uniprocessor. We find that the performance of collectors in JMTk is comparable to the highly tuned original Jikes collectors. In a study of full heap and generational collectors, we confirm the significant benefits of generational collectors on a wide variety of heap sizes, and reveal that on very small heaps, collection time is enormous. These experiments add other new insights, such as firmly establishing that for a variety of generational collectors, a variable-size nursery which is allowed to grow to fill all the space not in use by the older generation performs better than a fixed-size nursery. We thus show the utility of extensive collector comparisons and establish the benefits of our design.
Full-text search on multi-byte encoded documents

The Burrows Wheeler transform (BWT) has become popular in text compression, full-text search, XML representation, and DNA sequence matching. It is very efficient to perform a full-text search on BWT encoded text using backward search. This paper aims to study different approaches for applying BWT on multi-byte encoded (e.g. UTF-16) text documents. While previous work has studied BWT on word-based models, and BWT can be applied directly on multi-byte encodings (by treating the document as single-byte coded), there has been no extensive study on how to utilize BWT on multi-byte encoded documents for efficient full-text search. Therefore, in this paper, we propose several ways to efficiently backward search multi-byte text documents. We demonstrate our findings using Chinese text documents. Our experiment results show that our extensions to the standard BWT method offer faster search performance and use less runtime memory.
Clinical strategies for esthetic excellence in anterior tooth restorations: understanding color and composite resin selection

Direct composite resin restorations have become a viable alternative for patients that require anterior restorative procedures to be integrated to the other teeth that compose the smile, especially for presenting satisfactory esthetic results and minimum wear of the dental structure. Technological evolution along with a better understanding of the behavior of dental tissues to light incidence has allowed the development of new composite resins with better mechanical and optical properties, making possible a more artistic approach for anterior restorations. The combination of the increasing demand of patients for esthetics and the capacity to preserve the dental structure resulted in the development of different incremental techniques for restoring fractured anterior teeth in a natural way. In order to achieve esthetic excellence, dentists should understand and apply artistic and scientific principles when choosing color of restorative materials, as well as during the insertion of the composite resin. The discussion of these strategies will be divided into two papers. In this paper, the criteria for color and material selection to obtain a natural reproduction of the lost dental structures and an imperceptible restoration will be addressed.
A MicroRNA Signature Predicts Survival in Early Stage Small-Cell Lung Cancer Treated with Surgery and Adjuvant Chemotherapy

Small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) is one of the most aggressive cancers, yet the molecular mechanisms underlying its devastating clinical outcome remain elusive. In this study, we investigated whether microRNA (miRNA) expression profiles can predict the clinical outcomes of SCLC patients. A total of 82 patients with limited SCLC, who were treated with surgical resection and adjuvant chemotherapy, were enrolled in this study. First, we surveyed the expression of 924 miRNAs from 42 SCLC patients to discover survival-relevant miRNAs and develop prognostic models, which were then validated in an independent cohort of 40 cases using quantitative real-time PCR. We found that the miR-150/miR-886-3p signature was significantly correlated with the overall survival (OS) of SCLC patients (p = 0.02) in the training set, and both miRNA expression levels were much lower in the SCLC samples than normal lung samples. The miRNA signature also proved to be a significant predictor of survival in the validation set. Patients with high-risk miRNA signatures had poor overall survival (p = 0.005) and progression-free survival (p = 0.017) compared with those with low-risk scores. These findings retained statistical significance after adjusting for age, gender and smoking status (HR: 0.26, 95%: CI 0.10–0.69, p = 0.007), which suggested it may be an independent predictor of survival. In summary, we developed a prognostic miR-150/miR-886-3p signature and validated expression in an independent dataset of resectable SCLC. These preliminary results indicated that miRNAs may serve as promising molecular prognostic markers and new therapeutic targets for SCLC.
THE ROLE OF HEPATITIS C VIRUS IN HEPATOCELLULAR CARCINOMA PATHOGENESIS – A PROBLEM OF A MODERN MAN

People with hepatitis C virus (HCV) have a 2% annual risk, and 7% to 14% five-year risk for development of hepatocellular carcinoma, a tumor with an estimated median survival of 4.3 to 20 months after making the diagnosis. HCV is the cause of: acute hepatitis in 20% of cases, chronic hepatitis in 70%, liver cirrhosis in 40%, hepatocellular carcinomas (HCC) in 60%, and is indication for liver transplantation in 30% of cases. HCC is the fifth most common cancer worldwide, and is one of the most frequent causes of death, accounting for 6% of all carcinomas. There is a heterogeneous distribution of HCC worldwide. It develops after mutations in cell machinery, causing the cell to reproduce faster and/or to avoid apoptosis. Current researches include the search for the genes that are dysregulated in HCC, protein markers, and other predictive biomarkers. As similar research is yielding results in various other malignant diseases, it is hoped that identifying the aberrant genes and the resultant proteins could lead to the identification of pharmacological interventions in HCC. Acta Medica Medianae 2009;48(2):32-36.
A multi-proxy investigation of late-Holocene temperature change and climate-driven fluctuations in sediment sourcing: Simpson Lagoon, Alaska

The significant and ongoing environmental changes in Arctic regions demonstrate the need for quantitative, high-resolution records of pre-industrial climate change in this climatically sensitive region; such records are fundamental for understanding recent anthropogenic changes in the context of natural variability. Sediment contained within Arctic coastal environments proximal to large fluvial systems has the ability to record paleoclimate variability on subdecadal to decadal scale resolution, on par with many other terrestrial climate archives (i.e. lake sediments, ice cores). Here, we utilize one such sediment archive from Simpson Lagoon, Alaska, located adjacent to the Colville River Delta to reconstruct temperature variability and fluctuations in sediment sourcing over the past 1700 years. Quantitative reconstructions of summer air temperature are obtained using the branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraether (brGDGT)-derived methylation index of branched tetraethers (MBT’)/cyclization ratio of branched tetraether (CBT) paleothermometer and reveal temperature departures correlative with noted climate events (i.e. ‘Little Ice Age’, ‘Medieval Climate Anomaly’). In addition, temporal variability in sediment sourcing to the lagoon, determined using a multi-proxy approach (i.e. granulometry, elemental analysis, clay mineralogy), broadly corresponds with temperature fluctuations, indicating relative increases in fluvial sediment discharge during colder intervals and decreased river discharge/increased coastal erosion during warmer periods. The Simpson Lagoon record presented in this study is the first temperature reconstruction, to our knowledge, developed from coastal marine sediments in the Alaskan Beaufort Sea.
Maximum likelihood of evolutionary trees: hardness and approximation

MOTIVATION Maximum likelihood (ML) is an increasingly popular optimality criterion for selecting evolutionary trees. Yet the computational complexity of ML was open for over 20 years, and only recently resolved by the authors for the Jukes-Cantor model of substitution and its generalizations. It was proved that reconstructing the ML tree is computationally intractable (NP-hard). In this work we explore three directions, which extend that result. RESULTS (1) We show that ML under the assumption of molecular clock is still computationally intractable (NP-hard). (2) We show that not only is it computationally intractable to find the exact ML tree, even approximating the logarithm of the ML for any multiplicative factor smaller than 1.00175 is computationally intractable. (3) We develop an algorithm for approximating log-likelihood under the condition that the input sequences are sparse. It employs any approximation algorithm for parsimony, and asymptotically achieves the same approximation ratio. We note that ML reconstruction for sparse inputs is still hard under this condition, and furthermore many real datasets satisfy it.
Continued Influence of Preoperative Renal Function on Outcome of Orthotopic Liver Transplant (OLTX) in the US: Where Will MELD Lead Us?

Renal function is a component of the Model for End Stage Liver Disease (MELD), We queried the 1999–2004 OPTN/UNOS database to determine whether preoperative renal function remained an important determinant of survival in primary deceased donor liver transplant alone patients (DDLTA) or primary combined kidney liver transplant patients (KLTX). We examined preoperative creatinine, renal replacement therapy (RRT), incidence of KLTX, and patient survival in the 34 months before and after introduction of MELD and performed a multivariate Cox regression analysis of time to death.