Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characteristics and Behaviour of African Factor Markets and Market Institutions and Their Consequences for Economic Growth

This paper provides a detailed characterisation of the structure and behaviour of African factor markets and the institutions that impact on their operations. It shows that the African factor markets are imperfect and inefficient, thus constraining economic growth. The paper posits that for the current reform programmes to succeed, policy that enhances the efficiency and competitiveness of the African factor markets must be put in place.
Evaluation methodology for a telephone-based conversational system

This paper describes a suite of metrics that we use to evaluate our JUPITER system which provides worldwide weather information over the telephone. Since May, 1997, we have made the system available to the general public via a toll-free number and have collected approximately 35,000 utterances to date. These data have proven invaluable for system development and evaluation. Because JUPITER makes use of many component spoken language technologies, we evaluate each as a stand-alone system. However, JUPITER must also be evaluated as to how it accomplishes its main goal, that of understanding user queries and providing an informative response. This requires an evaluation that takes into account how these various technologies t together in an end-to-end fashion. We will describe an automated end-to-end evaluation system we have implemented and compare it to a subjective evaluation conducted by hand.
Articulatory strengthening at edges of prosodic domains.

In this paper it is shown that at the edges of prosodic domains, initial consonant and final vowels have more extreme (less reduced) lingual articulations, which are called articulatory strengthening. Linguopalatal contact for consonants and vowels in different prosodic positions was compared, using reiterant-speech versions of sentences with a variety of phrasings read by three speakers of American English. Four prosodic domains were considered: the phonological word, the phonological (or intermediate) phrase, the intonational phrase, and the utterance. Domain-initial consonants show more linguopalatal contact than domain-medial or domain-final consonants, at three prosodic levels. Most vowels, on the other hand, show less linguopalatal contact in domain-final syllables compared to domain-initial and domain-medial. As a result, the articulatory difference between segments is greater around a prosodic boundary, increasing the articulatory contrast between consonant and vowels, and prosodic domains are marked at both edges. Furthermore, the consonant initial strengthening is generally cumulative, i.e., the higher the prosodic domain, the more linguopalatal contact the consonant has. However, speakers differed in how many and which levels were distinguished in this way. It is suggested that this initial strengthening could provide an alternative account for previously observed supralaryngeal declination of consonants. Acoustic duration of the consonants is also affected by prosodic position, and this lengthening is cumulative like linguopalatal contact, but the two measures are only weakly correlated.
Pivoting Methods and Data for Czech-Vietnamese Translation via English

The statistical approach to machine translation (MT) relies heavily on large parallel corpora. For many language pairs, this can be a signiﬁcant obstacle. A promising alternative is pivoting, i.e. making use of a third language to support the translation. There are a number of pivoting methods, but unfortunately, they were not evaluated in comparable settings. We focus on one particular language pair, Czech ↔ Vietnamese translation, with English as the pivoting language, and provide a comparison of several pivoting methods and the baseline (direct translation). Besides the experiments and analysis, another contribution is the datasets that we have collected and prepared for the three languages.
Efficacy and Safety of Antifibrinolytic Agents in Reducing Perioperative Blood Loss and Transfusion Requirements in Scoliosis Surgery: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background Routine use of antifibrinolytic agents in spine surgery is still an issue of debate. Objective To gather scientific evidence for the efficacy and safety of antifibrinolytic agents including aprotinin, tranexamic acid (TXA) and epsilon aminocaproic acid (EACA, traditionally known as Amicar) in reducing perioperative blood loss and transfusion requirements in scoliosis surgery. Methods We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis for randomized controlled trials (RCTs), retrospective case-control studies, and retrospective cohort studies on the use of antifibrinolytic agents in scoliosis surgery by searching in the MEDLINE and EMBASE databases and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and Controlled Trials of papers published from January 1980 through July 2014. Safety of the antifibrinolytic agents was evaluated in all included studies, while efficacy was evaluated in RCTs. Results Eighteen papers with a total of 1,158 patients were eligible for inclusion in this study. Among them, 8 RCTs with 450 patients were included for evaluation of pharmacologic efficacy (1 RCT was excluded because of a lack of standard deviation data). Mean blood loss was reduced in patients with perioperative use of antifibrinolytic agents by 409.25 ml intraoperatively (95% confidence interval [CI], 196.57–621.94 ml), 250.30 ml postoperatively (95% CI, 35.31–465.30), and 601.40 ml overall (95% CI, 306.64–896.16 ml). The mean volume of blood transfusion was reduced by 474.98 ml (95% CI, 195.30–754.67 ml). The transfusion rate was 44.6% (108/242) in the patients with antifibrinolytic agents and 68.3% (142/208) in the patients with placebo. (OR 0.38; 95% CI; 0.25–0.58; P<0.00001, I2 = 9%). All studies were included for evaluation of safety, with a total of 8 adverse events reported overall (4 in the experimental group and 4 in the control group). Conclusion The systematic review and meta-analysis indicated that aprotinin, TXA, and EACA all significantly reduced perioperative blood loss and transfusion requirements in scoliosis surgery. There was no evidence that the use of antifibrinolytic agents was a risk factor for adverse events, especially thromboembolism, in scoliosis surgery.
The realization of robot theater: Humanoid robots and theatric performance

This paper aims to report on the technical development and the realization of the world first robot theatre performance with a cast comprising two biped androids and two twin-wheeled two-armed humanoid robots. Each of the biped androids has a head with human-face, capable of showing multiple facial expressions, and a pair of 7 DOF arms with a multi-jointed hand capable of grabbing objects of various shapes and performing a number of trained talent shows. With a torso and two jointed legs, the android is capable of static walking. Each of two dual wheeled humanoid robots has a pair of 7 DOF arms and multi-jointed hands. These intelligent robots have advanced artificial intelligence including computer vision, voice recognition, and voice synthesis, and are capable of performing a number of entertaining programs on the stage.
Therapeutic approaches to target inflammation in type 2 diabetes.

BACKGROUND Chronic inflammation may participate in the pathogenesis of insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease and may be a common denominator that links obesity to these disease states. CONTENT Epidemiologic studies have linked inflammatory biomarkers to incident diabetes and cardiovascular disease risk. Cellular and animal studies have provided support to the idea that inflammation mediates these disease processes, providing impetus to pharmacologically target these pathways for disease treatment and prevention. We review clinical strategies to target inflammation, with a focus on the antiinflammatory and antihyperglycemic effects of salicylates. SUMMARY The evolving concept of diet-induced obesity driving insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease through immunologic processes provides new opportunities for the use of antiinflammatory strategies to correct the metabolic consequences of excess adiposity.
A comparison of multilevel methods for total variation regularization.

We consider numerical methods for solving problems involving total variation (TV) regularization for semidefinite quadratic minimization problems minu ‖Ku−z‖2 arising from illposed inverse problems. HereK is a compact linear operator, and z is data containing inexact or partial information about the “true” u. TV regularization entails adding to the objective function a penalty term which is a scalar multiple of the total variation of u; this term formally appears as (a scalar times) the L1 norm of the gradient of u. The advantage of this regularization is that it improves the conditioning of the optimization problem while not penalizing discontinuities in the reconstructed image. This approach has enjoyed significant success in image denoising and deblurring, laser interferometry, electrical tomography, and estimation of permeabilities in porus media flow models. The Euler equation for the regularized objective functional is a quasilinear elliptic equation of the form [ K∗K+ A(u) ] u = −K∗z. Here, A(u) is a standard self-adjoint second order elliptic operator in which the coefficient κ depends on u, by [κ(u)](x) = 1/|∇u(x)|. Following the literature, we approach the Euler equation by means of fixed point iterations, resulting in a sequence of linear subproblems. In this paper we present results from numerical experiments in which we use the preconditioned conjugate gradient method on the linear subproblems, with various multilevel iterative methods used as preconditioners.
HIDE: Hybrid symmetric key algorithm for integrity check, dynamic key generation and encryption

This paper proposes a hybrid encryption technique that generates a key dynamically, along with integrity check parameters. Our approach generates the key stream using a chained approach, beginning with an initial preshared key. Subsequent keys are derived using logical operations on intermediate cipher texts and intermediate keys generated in each stage. This is an improvement over chaining techniques, which use a cipher text to derive successive keys. We validate our algorithm by proof-of-concept implementation and security analysis.
Digital multicarrier spread spectrum for resistance against jamming and multipath

All-digital single-user Multi-Carrier Spread Spectrum (MC-SS) transceivers are studied in this paper and compared with Direct-Sequence Spread-Spectrum (DS-SS) systems under different scenarios. Closed-form bit error rate (BER) expressions are derived for sub-optimum matched filter and optimum minimum mean-square error reception in the presence of additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and Narrow-Band Interference (NBI). Although digital MC-SS turns out to outperform DS-SS, the difference is not as pronounced as in their analog counterparts. Closed-form BER expressions are also obtained for MC-SS and DS-SS transmissions propagating through frequency-selective multipath fading channels, and optimality is established for MC-SS when the channel taps are independent identically distributed (i.i.d.). But when the channel taps are non-i.i. d. , MC-SS is shown to exhibit near-optimal behavior at high SNR and to outperform DS-SS even though their difference diminishes as the spreading factor increases and proper spreading codes are chosen for DS-SS. Finally, BER performance is carried out for MC-SS and DS-SS in the joint presence of multipath fading and NBI. Simulated BER evaluation illustrates the advantages of MC-SS over DS-SS in the presence of multipath and corroborates its robustness against AWGN and NBI.
Does Body Image Affect Quality of Life?: A Population Based Study

Body image (BI) can be described as the assessment of both positive and negative emotion for one’s own body parts and their characteristics by himself or herself. Current research has concentrated mostly on the status of negative BI as a risk factor for mental health problems rather than as a public health problem, thereby little is known about the effects of BI on quality of life. Thus, the purpose of this study was to assess the BI and Quality of Life (QoL) of individuals and to investigate the relationship between the two. Individuals over 15 living in Isparta city center constitute the universe of this cross-sectional analytical study, carried out in 2014. The BI of individuals was measured by the Body Image Scale and The QoL of individuals was measured using the World Health Organization (WHO) Quality of Life Scale Short Form. The mean age of the participants was 31.9 ± 13.0 and 56.0% were female, 36.8% were married and 81.7% had education above high school. 25.7% had at least one chronic disease and 17.7% received medication regularly. Having good-very good health perception, having higher income than expenses, making regular exercises were predictors in enhancing the quality of life in certain aspects, however having a good body image came out as a predictor enhancing the quality of life in all sub-domains. BI was found closely related with QoL in all sub-domains. Our findings suggest that greater attention should be to be given to BI as a strong predictor of QoL.
Load balanced, efficient scheduling with parallel job submission in computational grids using parallel particle swarm optimization

Management of resource and application scheduling in a highly distributed heterogeneous Grid environment is a complex and challenging task. Processing jobs at the grid resources in a fine grained form results in a low computation - communication ratio. This necessitates the dynamic assembly of fine grained jobs into groups of jobs before dispatching them to the resources. Recent advances in computer and network technologies have led to parallel optimization algorithms. Here a novel job grouping method using Parallel Particle Swarm Optimization (PPSO) is proposed to reduce the communication overhead, enhance the speed of completion of processes, improve resource utilization, and parallel efficiency. The proposed approach uses PPSO to group the jobs and to submit them in parallel to the grid resources. Trust based parallel job submission is also proposed to ensure security and improve on job submission time. The proposed approach has been implemented and tested by extending the features of GridSim, a simulation toolkit for grid environment.
Supervised graph summarization for structuring academic search results

In this paper we address the problem of visualizing the query results of the academic search services. We suggest representing the search results as concise topic hierarchies, and propose a method of building such hierarchies through summarization of the intermediate large topic graphs. We describe a supervised learning technique for summarizing the topic graphs in the most informative way using sequential structured prediction, and discuss our ongoing work on the interactive acquisition of the training examples.
Fault tolerant and dynamic file sharing ability in mobile ad hoc networks

This paper proposes a new method for replication of files within a mobile adhoc network based on the prediction of the drift of the mobile nodes. The main feature of mobile ad hoc network is the dynamic topology. That is the nodes in the network are in mobile. To facilitate file sharing in mobile networks the only technique is file replication. Shared files are available at all times even if the owner of the file drifts away. The goal is to ensure that files autonomously maintain replica levels over time in a potentially dynamic and hostile environment. Also the proposed algorithm ensures that only those files are to be replicated which are about to exit from the network ensuring better efficiency and fewer overheads. Existing algorithms are simulated in Netlogo simulation environment and observations are compared with the proposed technique to check the efficiency of all algorithms.
Sustained virological response to interferon plus ribavirin reduces non-liver-related mortality in patients coinfected with HIV and Hepatitis C virus.

BACKGROUND Sustained virological response (SVR) after therapy with interferon plus ribavirin reduces liver-related complications and mortality in patients coinfected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV). We assessed the effect of SVR on HIV progression and mortality not related to liver disease. METHODS An observational cohort study including consecutive HIV/HCV-coinfected patients treated with interferon plus ribavirin between 2000 and 2008 in 19 centers in Spain. RESULTS Of 1599 patients, 626 (39%) had an SVR. After a median follow-up of approximately 5 years, we confirmed that failure to achieve an SVR was associated with an increased risk of liver-related events and liver-related death. We also observed higher rates of the following events in nonresponders than in responders: AIDS-defining conditions (rate per 100 person years, 0.84 [95% confidence interval (CI), . 59-1.10] vs 0.29 [. 10-. 48]; P= . 003), non-liver-related deaths (0.65 [.42-.87] vs 0.16 [.02-.30]; P = .002), and non-liver-related, non-AIDS-related deaths (0.55 [.34-.75] vs 0.16 [.02-.30]; P = .002). Cox regression analysis showed that the adjusted hazard ratios of new AIDS-defining conditions, non-liver-related deaths, and non-liver-related, non-AIDS-related deaths for nonresponders compared with responders were 1.90 (95% CI, .89-4.10; P = .095), 3.19 (1.21-8.40; P = .019), and 2.85 (1.07-7.60; P = .036), respectively. CONCLUSIONS Our findings suggest that eradication of HCV after therapy with interferon plus ribavirin in HIV/HCV-coinfected patients is associated not only with a reduction in liver-related events but also with a reduction in HIV progression and mortality not related to liver disease.
Single Image Super Resolution Using Sparse Representation with Image Fusion Principle

A suggested single image super resolution algorithm is proposed based on image fusion principle. Magnetic resonance and computed tomography images are interpolated using two algorithms that use sparse-representation modeling with dictionary learning. The MR and CT images are fused either by discrete wavelet or curvelet transforms, then the fused result are interpolated by the same algorithms. Simulation results show that the fused super resolution image provides higher PSNR values than the original CT and MR images by using these interpolation algorithms. Also experimentally we deduce that using the curvelet fusion technique provides better results than using the wavelet, and scaling-up by one of the sparse representation algorithm gives more better results than bicubic and the other sparse representation algorithms in almost all images.
Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation in Time Division Multiple-Access over Fading Channels

We investigate energy-efficiency issues and resource allocation policies for time division multi-access (TDMA) over fading channels in the power-limited regime. Supposing that the channels are frequency-flat block-fading and transmitters have full or quantized channel state information (CSI), we first minimize power under a weighted sum-rate constraint and show that the optimal rate and time allocation policies can be obtained by water-filling over realizations of convex envelopes of the minima for cost-reward functions. We then address a related minimization under individual rate constraints and derive the optimal allocation policies via greedy water-filling. Using water-filling across frequencies and fading states, we also extend our results to frequency-selective channels. Our approaches not only provide fundamental power limits when each user can support an infinite number of capacity-achieving codebooks, but also yield guidelines for practical designs where users can only support a finite number of adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) modes with prescribed symbol error probabilities, and also for systems where only discrete-time allocations are allowed.
Improving Data Locality of MapReduce by Scheduling in Homogeneous Computing Environments

Data Locality is one of the critical factors to affect performance. This paper proposes a next-k-node scheduling (NKS) method to improve the data locality of map tasks. The method first calculates the probabilities of each map task, and then preferentially schedules the one with the highest probability. It generates low probabilities for the tasks which satisfy node locality with the nodes to issue requests, so it can reserve these tasks to these nodes. We have implemented the NKS method in hadoop-0.20. 2. The experiment results have shown that the NKS method reduced 78% of the map tasks processed without node locality, reduced 77%of the network load caused by the tasks, and improved the performance of Hadoop MapReduce when comparing with the default task scheduling method in Hadoop. Obviously, the NKS method is very suitable for the homogeneous environment with network overload.
Charter Schools: Creating Hope and Opportunity for American Education. The Jossey-Bass Education Series.

Introduction: A New Choice INTRODUCING CHARTER SCHOOLS A Tour of Charter Schools The Birth of a Movement HOW CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE CHANGING THE SYSTEM Breaking the District Monopoly A New Role for Unions CREATING CHARTER SCHOOLS Getting Started Building Support Staying in Business WHERE TO, WHAT NEXT Key Early Lessons Charting the Future.
On the effect of program exploration on maintenance tasks

When developers perform a maintenance task, they follow an exploration strategy (ES) that is characterised by how they navigate through the program entities. Studying ES can help to assess how developers understand a program and perform a change task. Various factors could influence how developers explore a program and the way in which they explore a program may affect their performance for a certain task. In this paper, we investigate the ES followed by developers during maintenance tasks and assess the impact of these ES on the duration and effort spent by developers on the tasks. We want to know if developers frequently revisit one (or a set) of program entities (referenced exploration), or if they visit program entities with almost the same frequency (unreferenced exploration) when performing a maintenance task. We mine 1,705 Mylyn interaction histories (IH) from four open-source projects (ECF, Mylyn, PDE, and Eclipse Platform) and perform a user study to verify if both referenced exploration (RE) and unreferenced exploration (UE) were followed by some developers. Using the Gini inequality index on the number of revisits of program entities, we automatically classify interaction histories as RE and UE and perform an empirical study to measure the effect of program exploration on the task duration and effort. We report that, although a UE may require more exploration effort than a RE, a UE is on average 12.30% less time consuming than a RE.
Inline Emulation for Paravirtualization Environment on Embedded Systems

Virtualization has been widely adopted on servers for various purposes such as server consolidation, cloud computing, and so on. Recent years, the trend spreads on embedded systems, although it once seemed to be an impractical idea because of the limited capability of embedded processors. To further lower the overhead of adopting virtualization on embedded systems, we design an optimization technique, called inline emulation, to reduce the cost spending on paravirtualizing operating systems. Inline emulation can also be used in various virtualization environments to increase the performance of emulating privileged instructions. We implement inline emulation for ARMv5 architecture and evaluate in Android Emulator. The result shows it runs much faster, up to 7.4 times, than the common Para virtualization technique for cache-related operations and suggests that it not only lowers the development cost but also increases system responsiveness.