Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adding It Up: The Costs and Benefits of Investing In Family Planning and Maternal and Newborn Health

Caring for the health of women and their babies is essential yet family planning and maternal and newborn services fall well short of needs in developing countries. Using new estimates for 2008 this report shows that: an estimated 215 million women who want to avoid a pregnancy are not using an effective method of contraception despite increases in use in recent years; only about one-half of the 123 million women who give birth each year receive antenatal delivery and newborn care (including routine care and care for complications) and many who get care do not receive all the components of care they need; and about 20 million women have unsafe abortions each year and three million of the estimated 8.5 million who need care for subsequent health complications do not receive it. New analyses also show that the direct health benefits of meeting the need for both family planning and maternal and newborn health services would be dramatic. Unintended pregnancies would drop by more than two-thirds from 75 million in 2008 to 22 million per year. Seventy percent of maternal deaths would be averted -- a decline from 550000 to 160000. Forty-four percent of newborn deaths would be averted -- a decline from 3.5 million to 1.9 million. Unsafe abortions would decline by 73% from 20 million to 5.5 million (assuming no change in abortion laws) and the number of women needing medical care for complications of unsafe procedures would decline from 8.5 million to two million. The healthy years of life lost due to disability and premature death among women and their newborns would be reduced by more than 60%. (This is measured in disability-adjusted life years or DALYs an internationally used standard for comparing the cost-effectiveness of health services.) More women would survive hemorrhage and infection and fewer would endure needless suffering from fistula infertility and other health problems related to pregnancy or childbirth. Newborns would have improved chances of surviving asphyxia low birth weight and infection. (Excerpts)
Improved mathematical model of simplified Constrained Priority Countdown Freezing protocol

In this paper an accurate model of simplified Constrained Priority Countdown Freezing (CPCF) protocol is introduced. In the new model presented, we abandon the often used assumption that the probability of an idle timeslot is constant. By introducing a model that differentiates this probability based on the channel status, i.e. the transmission status of the previous timeslot, we avoid the inaccuracies of the previous model. The throughput calculated using the mathematical model proposed is compared to the simulation results, showing improved accuracy of the new model.
Retailer ’ s choice of product variety and exclusive dealing under asymmetric information by

This paper considers vertical relations between an upstream manufacturer and a downstream retailer that can independently obtain a low-quality, discount substitute. The analysis reveals that under full information the retailer offers both varieties only if it is optimal to do so under vertical integration. However, when the retailer is privately informed about demand, then the retailer will offer both varieties even if under vertical integration it is profitable to offer only the manufacturer’s product. If the manufacturer can impose exclusive dealing, then it will do so and foreclose the low quality substitute even if under vertical integration it is profitable to offer both varieties.
A Study about Algorithmic Stability and Its Relation to Generalization

This technical report presents some results about how to control the generalization error for stable algorithms. We deene a new notion of stable algorithm and derive conndence bounds. It is shown that regularization algorithms are stable when the regularization coeecient is large or when thè 1 norm of the kernel expansion of the outcome of the algorithm is small. These results try to show what kind of algorithmic properties are interesting for good generalization.
Improving the Data Association in Monocular Loop-Closing Detection

Loop-closing detection is one of the most challenging issues in the monocular Simultaneous Location and Mapping (SLAM). Reliable data association is crucial to this issue as spurious matches could prove to be fatal. In this paper, a new approach is proposed to provide a robust data association for the monocular loop-closing detection. The proposed approach is characterized by a combination of the active search algorithm and the Joint Compatibility Branch and Bound (JCBB) algorithm. Experiments are carried out on indoor loop-closing image sequences and results show that the new approach could improve the data association in monocular loop-closing detection. Keywords-loop-closing detection; data association; JCBB; monocular SLAM;
Silicon trends and limits for advanced microprocessors

Beyond the physical, chemical, and intellectual limits designers have overcome for the past 25 years may lie the ultimate limit to microprocessor design—money. one of the founders of Intel, first observed in the early 1970s that integrated circuit complexity, as measured by the number of transistors per chip, was increasing at an exponential rate and that this rate had been consistent over many years. He went further to predict that transistor count on leading edge circuits would double every 18 months until fundamental physical limits were reached. His prediction was remarkably accurate over the past 25 years, and we have
What Does the Market Crash Mean for the Ability of 401(k) Plans to Provide Retirement Income?

Deteriorating financial market conditions in 2008 intensified the debate over the ability of 401(k) plans to provide retirement income. This paper simulates the effects of the market crash of 2008 for 401(k) plan participants of various ages, earnings levels, and portfolios. Because Social Security is such an important component of retirement income, focusing solely on 401(k) balances can overstate the effect of the market crash. Most workers with low to moderate earnings are projected to have only moderate reductions in retirement income. In many cases the change in retirement income would be more than offset by working an additional year.
Twelfth Grade Students’ Perceptions Of Linked Learning Pathways

During the era of standardized testing in California, Central High School District (CHSDpseudonym) had created a single course of study that all students were expected to follow to maximize results on state exams. This single course of study was not relevant to a large majority of the students who graduated from the district and they were not prepared for life after graduation. The new accountability system has allowed CHSD to expand the course of study that is being offered. The district has several programs that follow the Linked Learning model which uses project based learning to pair core academic courses with career technical education standards. This mixed methods action research study was conducted during the spring semester of 2018 with the purpose of determining senior students’ perceptions of the Linked Learning programs and identifying the components they found most important and relevant. Forty senior students who were enrolled in a Linked Learning program completed an online questionnaire and six students participated in a semi-structured interview. The information from these two sources was triangulated and the findings of the study showed that students had a positive perception of the program and that project based learning resulted in a relevant and engaging course of study that taught them valuable soft skills. Upon completion of the data analysis, a committee reviewed the findings and developed an action plan to support the expansion of the Linked Learning program model across the district.
Examination of Bilateral and Unilateral Isokinetic Leg Strengths of Taekwondo Athletes and Boxers

The purpose of this research is to examine the maximal isokinetic leg strengths of male athletes who work in different branches of taekwondo and boxing, both bilateral and unilateral, as right and left legs. Totally 32 athletes, including taekwondo athletes (n = 16) and boxer (n = 16), participated in the study. In the 2016-2017 season, the average age of these athletes is x̄ = 21.5. Biodex isokinetic system 4-Pro analyzing device was used in the study and 180 ° / s flexion and extension right and left leg maximal strength measurements were made from this measurement. Before the measurements, the athletes performed the exercise program including 15 minutes of warm-up movements and the maximal strength measurement was applied to each athlete 2 times. Their best performances were recorded and evaluated. When the findings of the study were examined, the right extension, right flexion, left extension, and left extension isokinetic strengths of the taekwondo athletes were found to be higher than the boxers. There was a very high and meaningful correlation found between right flexion and left flexion isokinetic strengths in the boxers between right extension and left extension isokinetic strengths. In Taekwondo athletes, there was a weak and meaningless correlation between right flexion and left flexion kinetic strengths and a positive correlation was found between right extension and left extension isokinetic strengths. Consequently, it was seen that isokinetic maximal leg strength of taekwondo athletes was higher than boxers. It is believed that this is due to the more intensive use of lower extremity muscles in taekwondo. Besides, in this research, there was a very high correlation between the right and left extension of the boxers and isokinetic leg strengths at the flexion while there was a weak meaningless correlation between the right flexion and left flexion isokinetic strengths of the taekwondo athletes, and a positive correlation was found between the right extension and the left extension isokinetic strengths. Thus, in the right and left isokinetic leg strength values of the boxers there was closeness, and in the right and left isokinetic strength values of them it can be said there was not so much closeness exists.
Perceptual Navigation for Semi-autonomous Wheelchair Operations Much Thanks to Encouragement from My Current Co-worker

The objective of this research is to develop a semi-autonomous architecture for an intelligent wheelchair, “a wheelchair-navigation agent,” that comprises perceptual and navigational capabilities by means of computer science, robotics, and sensor technology. The perceptual navigation system consists of a computer, a collection of sensors (e.g., ultrasonic sensors and a CCD camera), and a novel man-machine tactile interface (Vibrotactile Glove). We employed a customized behavior-based control architecture to implement the perceptual and navigational assistance (perceptual/navigational behaviors). The wheelchair-navigation agent aims at improving independent mobility of multi-disabled individuals, and this thesis presents emergence of integrating sensory information and human-machine interaction. INDEX WORDS: Artificial Intelligence, Assistive Technology, Computer Vision, Robotics PERCEPTUAL NAVIGATION FOR SEMI-AUTONOMOUS WHEELCHAIR OPERATIONS
The Floating-Point Unit of the Jaguar x86 Core

The AMD Jaguar x86 core uses a fully-synthesized, 128-bit native floating-point unit (FPU) built as a co-processor model. The Jaguar FPU supports several x86 ISA extensions, including x87, MMX, SSE1 through SSE4.2, AES, CLMUL, AVX, and F16C instruction sets. The front end of the unit decodes two complex operations per cycle and uses a dedicated renamer (RN), free list (FL), and retire queue (RQ) for in-order dispatch and retire. The FPU issues to the execution units with a dedicated out-of-order, dual-issue scheduler. Execution units source operands from a synthesized physical register file (PRF) and bypass network. The back end of the unit has two execution pipes: the first pipe contains a vector integer ALU, a vector integer MUL unit, and a floating-point adder (FPA), the second pipe contains a vector integer ALU, a store-convert unit, and a floating-point iterative multiplier (FPM). The implementation of the unit focused on low-power design and on vectorized single-precision (SP) performance optimizations. The verification of the unit required complex pseudo-random and formal verification techniques. The Jaguar FPU is built in a 28nm CMOS process.
Identity-based threshold cryptography for electronic voting

Electronic voting protocols are a reasonable alternative to conventional elections. Nevertheless, they are facing an evolution due to its requirements, especially the ones needed to provide full security considered to represent a democratic electronic vote. Different algorithms, based on public key schemes, have been proposed in the literature to meet these security requirements. We propose the use of threshold cryptography and bilinear pairings in order to provide the security requirements that an electronic voting protocol must meet, without requiring the entire infrastructure needed in a public key scheme. We make a comparative analysis of our proposal with other electronic voting protocols. It is based in their performance and the cryptographic primitives they use.
Multiple view image rectification

This paper presents an extension of image rectification methods for an arbitrary number of views with aligned camera center. This technique can be used for stereoscopic rendering to enhance the perception comfort or for depth from stereo. In this paper, we first expose that epipolar geometry is not suited to solve this problem. Then we propose a non linear method that includes all the images in the rectification process. Our method only requires point correspondences between the views and can handle images with different resolutions. The tests show that the method is robust to noise and and to sparse point correspondences among the views.
Supercontinuum Generation and Optimisation in Nonlinear Photonic Crystal Fibres

Supercontinuum is said to have generated when several nonlinear effects like self – phase modulation, cross –phase modulation, four – wave mixing, stimulated Raman scattering etc. lead to extreme spectral broadening of ultrashort optical pulses. In this paper, we have numerically demonstrated the effect of variation in the wavelength of optical pulses on the supercontinuum generation in SC – 5.0 – 1040TM, a highly nonlinear PCF.
An effective approach for relevant paragraph retrieval in Question Answering systems

Paragraph retrieval is a substantial task in Question Answering (QA) systems. It represents the extraction of data from a huge data collection, which have the probability to contain an answer to a question and is a significantly important intermediary step between a user of a QA system and the answers. It is barely impossible to analyse a large collection of data extensively in quick time and because of the vast nature of the background data, it is very important to narrow down the search space from where an answer can be looked for. In this paper, we address the information extraction step and present an effectively designed model for the relevant paragraph retrieval, which is efficient in terms of execution time as well. The model deals with the structure and the organization of information, performs an in-depth analysis of user's question, and presents a priority based searching capability for retrieving paragraphs according to the necessity which will be both effective and time efficient. Experiments were carried out and compared against similar systems based on the data of the document retrieval task of Text REtrieval Conference (TREC) 2005. We also tested our methodology against the data set from TREC 2007. The system performance was measured in terms of various parameters such as R-precision, Recall, and Mean Average Precision. A satisfactory result achieved by our approach establishes its competency for getting integrated into any realtime QA systems.
Monetary transmission mechanisms and the macroeconomy in China : VAR/VECM approach and Bayesian DSGE model simulation

In this thesis, by employing VAR/VECM approach and Bayesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) Model we have studied and tested the transmission mechanisms of China’s monetary policy and measured the effects of the monetary policy shocks and other exogenous macro shocks on the real macro economy to uncover the attributes of China’s business cycle. On the basis of the specified VAR/VEC Models, a bank lending channel, an interest rate channel and an asset price channel have been identified by using the time series (monthly) data of banks balance sheet variables (deposits, loans, securitises) across bank categories (aggregate banks, state banks, non-state banks) and the macroeconomic variables (output, CPI inflation, exports, imports, foreign exchange reserves) from 1996 to 2006. We’ve estimated a benchmark Bayesian DSGE Model with Taylor’s Rule and a modified Smets-Wouters Model with money growth rule by using China’s quarterly data from 1996 to 2006 to simulate the business cycle. The estimated values of the parameters demonstrate many unique features of China’s economy and policies operations. We find that investment and preference shocks drive the forecasted GDP variance in the long run in Taylor’s rule model, but in the money growth rule model, the main contributions to the variations of the output are government expenditure, preference and productive shocks.
Effects of vocal effort and speaking style on text-independent speaker verification

We study the question of how intrinsic variations (associated with the speaker rather than the recording environment) affect text-independent speaker verification performance. Experiments using the SRI-FRTIV corpus, which systematically varies both vocal effort and speaking style, reveal that (1) “furtive” speech poses a significant challenge; (2) conversations and interviews, despite stylistic differences, are well matched; (3) high-effort oration, in contrast to high-effort read speech, shares characteristics with conversational and interview styles; and (4) train/test pairings are generally symmetrical. Implications for further work in the area are discussed.
Towards a recommender system for bush taxis

To improve the transport efficiency and to reduce the traveller stress, we introduce a recommender system for bush taxis in Ivory Coast whose main objective is to propose to pedestrians potential means of transportation in their neighborhood whose destination match their own destination. The prediction of the next location relies on a mobility model called Mobility Markov Chain. One of the strength of the proposed recommender system is that it is fully automatic as a user does not need to explicitly express his next destination but rather the system tries to infer it based on his past mobility behavior. Moreover, the recommendation algorithm is biased towards suggesting the means of transportation that are the cheapest (if one is available). The preliminary evaluation of the recommender system conducted on one of the D4D dataset shows that approximately 99% of the time in less than 30 minutes, the system is able to suggest a mean of transportation that is at most 1 kilometer away from the current position of the user for an accuracy of the prediction of the next location that is between 30% and 50% depending on the complexity of the mobility behavior of the user considered. Keywords-Location-based service, Recommender system, Next place prediction, Mobility Markov chain.
Etomidate Depresses Lumbar Dorsal Horn Neuronal Responses to Noxious Thermal Stimulation in Rats

Etomidate is a widely used IV anesthetic, but little is known about its analgesic properties, in particular, its effects on spinal cord neuronal responses to noxious stimuli. We hypothesized that etomidate would depress lumbar neuronal responses to noxious heat. Rats (n = 15) were anesthetized with isoflurane (1.2%) and laminectomy was performed to record single unit activity. Lumbar neuronal responses to noxious thermal (52°C, 12 s) stimulation of the hindpaw were recorded before and every 2 min (up to 13 min postinjection) after administration of etomidate. The responses at peak effect of etomidate (as a percentage of the control response) were 63% ± 16%, 63% ± 16%, 38% ± 25%, 36% ± 30%, and 41% ± 26% for the 0.125, 0.25, 0.5, 1 and 2 mg/kg doses, respectively. The responses quickly recovered, usually by the 10-min period postinjection. Similar responses were obtained in decerebrate, isoflurane-free rats administered etomidate and in isoflurane-anesthetized rats administered propofol. These data demonstrate that etomidate depresses spinal cord neuronal responses to noxious stimulation and is a possible mechanism by which this drug might produce analgesia.
Outgrown asthma does not mean no airways inflammation

Although some asthmatic children seem to recover from their asthma, 30–80% develop asthma again in later life. The underlying risk factors are unknown. The hypothesis for this study was that children with apparently outgrown asthma would have underlying airway inflammation. Nonbronchoscopic bronchoalveolar lavage was performed on normal children (n=35) and children who had wheezed previously (n=35). Eosinophils were raised in the lavage fluid of atopic children who had apparently outgrown asthma (median (interquartile range) 0.36 (0.05–0.74) compared to controls 0.10 (0–0.18), p=0.002). There was no relationship between length of remission and degree of airways eosinophilia. Thus, there is persistent airways inflammation in some children with outgrown asthma and this may be a risk factor for future relapse.
ENROLLMENT SYSTEM WITH DESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICS

: Technology has been a great help with various organizations including academic institutions in making transactions easier and faster. Schools have been incorporating information systems that could ease the difficulties on handling large amounts of data and tedious processes. This study focuses on one of the major information systems being used by these academic institutions, the Enrollment System which also includes the assigning of schedule, sectioning of classes, and monitoring of enrollment requirements. The system also utilizes descriptive analytics to provide an accurate enrollment report.
Eugene Fink Changes of Problem Representation : Theory and Experiments

ing preconditions and effects of operators. Third, we present auxiliary algorithms that enhance the power of abstraction by identifying relevant features of a problem and generating partial instantiations of operators. Top-level control. We define a space of possible representations of a given problem and view the task of changing representation as a search in this space. The top-level control mechanism guides the search, using statistical analysis of previous results, control rules, and general heuristics. First, we formalize the statistical problem involved in finding an effective representation and derive a solution to this problem. Then, we describe control rules for selecting representations and present a mechanism for the synergetic use of statistical techniques, control rules, and heuristics.