Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ambiguous Persuasion in Contests (cid:3)

We study optimal information disclosure via an ambiguous persuasion approach in a two-player contest. The designer can precommit to an ambiguous device to in(cid:135)u-ence the uninformed contestant(cid:146)s belief about his opponent(cid:146)s private type. We fully characterize the optimal ambiguous information structures when players are maxmin expected utility (MMEU) maximizers. Depending on the prior, it is optimal to either induce ambiguity or fully conceal information. We provide a necessary and su¢ cient condition under which an e⁄ort-maximizing organizer can bene(cid:133)t strictly more from using ambiguous persuasion than from using the optimal Bayesian device.
Performance Enhancement of Channel Estimation in MIMO OFMD in Presences of ICI

– Wireless media depends on three parameters which defines its quality. These parameters are its transmission range, transmission rate and reliability. In OFDM, quality of one paramter can be increased on the cost of decreasing the other two parameters. The three parameters can be improved together by combining MIMO with OFDM. Channel estimation is an essential tasks of MIMO-OFDM system. This task can be excellently achieved by genetic algorithm. In this paper along with OFDM different systems are being used along with diiferent modulation techniques. In this, we are applying a new Modulation scheme called as the Magnitude Keyed Modulation combined with OFDM system, it provides immunity from ICI and thus improves the overall system performance, maintaining a low PAPR ,high SNR and improvement in Bit Error Rate performance.
É FUNDAMENTAL

Objective: to associate adherence and barriers to medication therapy with social support in the elderly. Method: cross-sectional and analytical study, carried out in an outpatient clinic in the city of São Paulo – SP, with 117 elderly people, from March to November 2019. The Morisky Green test (TMG) and the Brief scale were used to collect data Medical Questionnaire, and the Medical Outcomes Study. The correlation between variables was performed using the Kruskal-Wallis test and the Mann-Whitney test. In all comparative analyzes a significance level of 5% and a confidence interval of 95% were used. Results: elderly people who have social support in the emotional and informational dimensions presented lower barriers to medication adherence (p=0.0216). Conclusions: these results have important implications for clinical practice, as the most vulnerable elderly people with low social support have greater barriers to using medication
Pushing nano-aerosol measurements totowards a new decade – Technical note on Airmodus Particle Size Magnifier 2.0

Accurate measurement of the size distribution of sub-10 nm aerosol particles is still a challenge. Here we introduce a novel version of the Airmodus particle size magnifier (PSM), which is a condensation particle counter-based instrument with 15 a sizing range of 1 – 12 nm. The extended size range compared to the earlier PSM version enables direct detection of forming clusters and particles as well as studying their growth processes without the challenges related to particle charging. It also gives an overlap between the activation size distribution measurements with the PSM and mobility size distribution measurements with conventional mobility particle sizers. We compared the performance of PSM 2.0 to a mobility particle size spectrometer, the original A10 particle size magnifier and a Neutral Cluster and Air Ion Spectrometer (NAIS) during field 20 measurements. Also, calibration results were compered against the A10 instrument. The results show that PSM 2.0 is able to activate sub-2 nm clusters and the concentration and size distribution between 2-12 nm compare well especially with the NAIS.
Exploring Deep Learning Architectures for Chinese Ancient Poetry Emotion Classification

Emotion classification is a crucial research area in natural language processing. However, the complexity of emotions expressed in Chinese classical poetry, combined with the unique grammar and syntax of the language, poses a significant challenge for current models used in modern Chinese emotion classification tasks. In this paper, we propose a novel method for automatically annotating emotions in classical Chinese poetry using a human-annotated dataset and fine-tuning the BERT-CCPoem pre-training model. To achieve accurate emotion annotation, we develop a hierarchical term classification system comprising seven primary categories and 23 subcategories, which is used in a coarse-to-fine approach to fine-tune the BERT-CCPoem model on each dataset. A fully connected layer is added to the output of BERT-CCPoem for classification. Our experimental results demonstrate that our method outperforms other deep learning methods in terms of emotion classification accuracy, robustness, and scalability. Our proposed method can be applied not only to ancient Chinese texts but also to other types of texts.
Desalination and Water

Environmental pollution with plastics and plastic debris is one of the major issues in the world. In addition to the problem of microplastics formed from these wastes, additives leached from plastics are also an important aspect. This review paper pays particular attention to three phenolic compounds - bisphenol A (BPA), 4-n-nonylphenol, and 4-tert-octylphenol (4tOP) – used, among oth - ers, in the plastics industry. Numerous studies have shown that bisphenol A, 4-nonylphenol, and 4-tert-octylphenol are leached from plastic products, which is also an important source of their release into aquatic environments. The leaching process is influenced by external factors, including temperature, mixing, exposure to ultraviolet light, chemical or mechanical abrasion, and aging and brittleness of plastics. A significant amount of leaching tests are concerned on the migration of BPA from polycarbonate bottles into water. There is less comprehensive information on three phenolic compounds leached from different types of polymers. Moreover, despite the availability of several economic and ecological techniques for their removal from water and wastewater (including coagulation
Desalination and Water Treatment

The objective of this study was to investigate the performance and applicability of two adsorbents for the removal of two dyes, namely Neutral red (NR) and Malachite green (MG), from aqueous solutions. The adsorbents were okara adsorbent (OA) and modified okara adsorbent (SOA) prepared from biological waste okara through sodium lauryl sulfate treatment. The changes in surface morphology and functional groups of okara before and after modification were studied by scanning electron microscope and infrared spectroscopy. The results indicate that the adsorption process was more in line with the pseudo-second-order kinetic equation, and also in line with the Langmuir isotherm. The maximum adsorption capacity of OA and SOA for NR were 208.33 and 227.27 mg/g; 40.98 and 125.00 mg/g for MG, respectively. The regeneration efficiency of both adsorbents decreased after 5 cycles. The adsorption process is primarily governed by electrostatic attraction and hydrogen bonding between the adsorbent and the dye molecules (NR and MG). It is a multi-layer adsorption process and a spontaneous endothermic process.
Manufacturing upholstered furniture in the southeastern U.S.: A Manufacturing upholstered furniture in the southeastern U.S.: A comparative cost assessment comparative cost assessment

: The upholstered household furniture in<lu6tty (SIC 25 12) is extremely important in the economies of Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee. This study uses a comparative cost approach tO 8&'! eSS the differences that exist in the manufacturing and disttibution of upholstered wood household furniture anwng southeast U.S. states. Secondary data for raw material, labor, and transportation costs were obtained from the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, for 1982, 1987, and 1992. Total costs were estimated for raw material, labor, and transportation of the finished products. A simple cost index was constructed for each cost component. Analysis of variance and multiple regression were applied to examine the significance and sensitivity of the cost componems as they related to the value of shipments. An additional five states were added to add robustness to the data set during sensitivity analysis. A comparison of the simple cost index among states indicated that Alabanla has a small, nonprofitable industry. To be competitive the State of A! ,abama needs to improve the business climate for the manufacturing of upholstered furniture. Manufacturers of upholstered furniture in Mississippi depend upon North Carolina for the supply of non-wood materials. Policy makers in Mississippi should develop specific incentives to create an excellent business location for suppliers of non-wood materials in northeast Mississippi. When several parameters of the initial model were altered by 10, 25, and 50 percent, the results revealed that overall the upholstered household furniture industry in the southeastern U.S. is not sensitive to change.
Assistance for the Visually Impaired: a system to identify product information and read curved labels when grocery shopping

Grocery store navigation can pose a number of unique challenges to visually impaired shoppers. In order to purchase a desired product, store patrons may need to use systems optimized for sighted customers when locating the appropriate section of the store, choosing an item out of many options displayed, or obtaining product and nutritional information from the item’s packaging. While automated text-to-speech applications have become widely available in recent years, these solutions are often general-purpose and not tailored to specific needs a user might encounter in a grocery store setting. Our work aims to address this use-case through two tool components, comprising (1) an object recognition interface that is able to distinguish between common classes of grocery items and obtain product details through barcode scanning, and (2) a system capable of extracting text from a curved bottle label, in the case that a barcode is not available.
An Empirical Assessment of the Monetary Policy Credibility and Economic Growth Relationship: A GMM Approach on COMESA and ECOWAS Regions

The study aims to highlight the effect of the credibility of monetary policy on economic growth concerning the COMESA compared with the ECOWAS economies. Those groups of countries are reached throughout the monetary policy credibility measurement to get an insight into whether the monetary policy is at the origin of the economic growth level of the country. The dynamic panel data consists of 5 years, from 2015 to 2020, for 11 countries of COMESA and ECOWAS. The findings from the two-system-GMM approach show a significant positive effect of the monetary policy credibility on economic growth in the COMESA region. On the other hand, the monetary policy credibility has an insignificant impact on the economic growth in the ECOWAS region. The findings lead us to recommend to the policymakers of central banks to ensure that they choose the appropriate monetary policy to return to growth, full employment and price stability
VALIDATION AND PLAUSIBILIZATION OF X-IN-THE-LOOP TESTS FOR DRIVING AUTOMATION

Virtual X-in-the-Loop (XiL) environments are gaining significant importance in the test of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Automated Driving Systems (ADS). In order to derive reliable test results, credibility of XiL environments must be evaluated using suitable methods for XiL validation. This typically involves a back-to-back comparison to reference proving ground (PG) tests. Due to uncertainties inherent to PG and XiL, this validation requires the analysis of multiple test executions. Since this may not always be feasible with limited data availability, we define plausibilization as a preliminary step towards validation, comparing two single test executions in PG and XiL. A plausibilization method is presented, combining the evaluation of pass/fail criteria (PFC) and scenario distance measures. Finally, the application of the method in an ADAS series development project by evaluating three example Software-in-the-Loop (SiL) scenarios confirms that this is a reasonable plausibilization approach. Furthermore, it is shown that the method can be adjusted in a flexible way to meet requirements from different automation levels, systems or scenarios.
in canine infections-a pilot study

: Homocysteine (Hcy) was investigated as the biomarker of cardiac, renal, and gastrointestinal disorders in dogs. Data about low Hcy concentrations in the systemic inflammatory response syndrome raised a hypothesis that Hcy in dogs could be a negative acute-phase reactant. This survey compared Hcy concentrations, serum amyloid A (SAA), and the routine laboratory parameters between healthy (HD, N=6) and dogs with inflammation of different extent: mild (dirofilariosis (DIR), N=31), moderate (babesiosis (BAB), N=12), and severe (pyometra (PYO), N=8). The BAB and PYO groups had lower Hcy er than HD. Also, the levels in the PYO group were below those in the DIRO group. SAA had the inverse pattern. Across the groups, Hcy and SAA levels correlated negatively (ρ = -0.502, P<0.001). Hcy and SAA correlated with the erythrocyte count, hematocrit, hemoglobin and mean cellular hemoglobin concentrations, and neutrophil count, with correlations being positive for Hcy and negative for SAA. Among all dogs, hemoglobin was the only independent predictor of Hcy concentration. Hcy levels in canine infections, decreased as acute-phase reaction (APR) intensified. Also, they were related with the hematology changes accompanying the APR. Further studies will establish the clinical potential of these alterations.
KIER DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES KYOTO INSTITUTE OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

This study examines the eﬀect of the Covid pandemic containment measures on Japan’s consumption, using high-frequency credit card data. Based on the assumption that neighboring municipalities on prefectural borders with diﬀerent containment policies have an equivalent fear of contagion, this study distinguishes the negative eﬀect of containment measures on consumption from the eﬀect of fear, by employing a synthetic control method. Speciﬁcally, it constructs a synthetic control municipality that faces fear equal to that faced by untreated municipalities in the donor pool, and whose post-treatment consumption corresponds to the counterfactual consumption of the treated municipality without containment intervention. Comparing the synthetic control and treated municipalities’ consumption with prefectural borders, allows the identiﬁcation of the true impact of the containment policies on consumption. These results indicate that, the negative eﬀects of the state of emergency on consumption is much lower than the extreme decline in consumers’ spending.
THE IMPACT ON DRIVING PERFORMANCE FROM GRADED COGNITIVE LOAD WITH VISUO-SPATIAL AND PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSING OF VISUAL AND AUDITORY INPUT.

The majority of human factors in traffic accidents are the result of cognitive error. Errors of cognition are produced by the relationship of the cognitive load of the traffic environment and vehicle interior environment with the driver’s information processing. The cognitive load while driving is made up of the loads from the sense organs of sight and of hearing. The resources used for processing of visuo-spatial information and phonological information are independent, and it has been proposed that each processing resource has its capacity. It has been reported in previous research that when the cognitive load increases, driving becomes unstable. On the other hand, it has been reported in other research that when the cognitive load becomes high, driving becomes stable. Considering that cognitive load has been reported as an influence that both increases and decreases performance, it is conceivable that performance varies with the type and magnitude of the cognitive load from each category of information, and that a moderate degree of load exists under which performance reaches its highest level. For this paper, a driving simulator was used to study the influence on driving performance caused by graded cognitive load from the visuo-spatial process and phonological process of input from the sense of sight and sense of hearing. In testing, drivers drove on a course with a series of gentle curves while responding to n-back tasks that use visual/visuo-spatial process and auditory/phonological process. The result was that in the case of n-back tasks using visual/visuo-spatial processing, driving performance was diminished as the difficulty of the n-back task increased. However, in the case of n-back tasks using auditory/phonological processing, driving performance did not change when the difficulty of the n-back task increased. Also, although the load under which performance reaches its highest level was not determined, it was confirmed that auditory n-back tasks do have loads under which performance tends not to change. This is thought to be because the visual/visuo-spatial process used in driving and other information processes tend not to influence each other, while the same
LiDAR-camera Calibration using Intensity Variance Cost

—We propose an extrinsic calibration method for LiDAR-camera fusion systems using variations in intensities projected from camera images to the LiDAR point cloud. As the input, the proposed method uses a sequence of LiDAR data and camera images captured while moving the system. Once the camera motion is calculated, camera images are projected onto the point cloud. The variations in the projected intensities at each point are large in the presence of errors in the estimated motion or calibration parameters. Consequently, the extrinsic parameters are optimized for cost minimization based on the intensity variance. In addition, a suitable geometry is proposed for the calibration and veriﬁed using simulations. Our experimental results showed that the proposed method accurately performed calibrations using a camera and a sparse multi-beam LiDAR or one-dimensional LiDAR.
A Comparison of Land Use and Land Cover in Public Lands of the Northwestern Great Plains and High Plains Ecoregions and the Implications For Grassland Birds

A COMPARISON OF LAND USE AND LAND COVER IN PUBLIC LANDS OF THE NORTHWESTERN GREAT PLAINS AND HIGH PLAINS ECOREGIONS AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR GRASSLAND BIRDS DAWN L. SIEMONSMA 2017 Loss and degradation of grassland habitat are driving forces that contribute to widespread declines of grassland birds in the United States. Many studies have evaluated habitat needs for the conservation of grassland birds, but the relative contribution of public lands in representing and maintaining avian biodiversity remains poorly understood. Having a better understanding of the role that publicly managed grasslands play in the conservation of grassland bird habitat is important for assessing the value of the investment the American public makes in these lands. Therefore, I investigated spatial relations among variations in amounts and distributions of publicly owned and managed grassland habitat and avian species richness. My study focused on two ecoregions, the Northwestern Great Plains and the High Plains, which comprise a substantial portion of the U.S. Great Plains, the continental Central Flyway for migratory bird species. The Great Plains provide critical nesting habitat for grassland birds. However, federally owned and managed grasslands are unequally distributed between the two ecoregions, with the Northwestern Great Plains having a greater proportion of federally owned grasslands. I found that, overall, the quantity, size, and connectivity of grasslands were greater in the Northwestern Great Plains, and the region hosted slightly more of the 13
Leo : Online ML-based Traffic Classification at Multi-Terabit Line Rate

Online traffic classification enables critical applications such as network intrusion detection and prevention, providing Quality-of-Service, and real-time IoT analytics. However, with increasing network speeds, it has become extremely challenging to analyze and classify traffic online. In this paper, we present Leo , a system for online traffic classification at multi-terabit line rates. At its core, Leo implements an on-line machine learning (ML) model for traffic classification, namely the decision tree, in the network switch’s data plane. Leo ’s design is fast (can classify packets at switch’s line rate), scalable (can automatically select a resource-efficient design for the class of decision tree models a user wants to support), and runtime programmable (the model can be updated on-the-fly without switch downtime), while achieving high model accuracy. We implement Leo on top of Intel Tofino switches. Our evaluations show that Leo is able to classify traffic at line rate with nominal latency overhead, can scale to model sizes more than twice as large as state-of-the-art data plane ML classification systems, while achieving classification accuracy on-par with an offline traffic classifier.
SPATIAL SOUND ASSISTANCE SYSTEM FOR 360 DEGREE HAZARD AWARENESS AND SAFE DRIVING

In everyday driving situations, potential sources of collisions can appear from any direction around the driver. Driver assistance systems have been highly desired to assist driver’s hazard awareness from all directions in order to eliminate any kinds of traffic accident fatalities. The current study addressed whether simulated spatial sounds providing directional and hazard attribute cues for potential collisions can facilitate drivers’ identification of traffic hazards and reduce collision incidence in the front and rear spaces. Forty-eight participants took part in our simulator experiment. We used a driving simulator (Honda Driving Simulator Type-DB Model S) to present them various traffic scenes with respect to the hazardous direction and recorded their driving operations. Participants’ gaze directions were also recorded with an eye tracker implemented on the simulator. To provide a directional cue of hazardous traffic participants, we presented spatial sounds on the directions of hazard participants, using two speakers implemented in a driver’s seat. To provide an attribute cue for hazardous objects, we classified the traffic participants into four categories (vehicles, motorcycles, bicycles, pedestrians) and presented a corresponding imitative sound for each hazard object. Presentations of monaural sound without directional cue and signal sound without attribute cue were also used as a comparison basis. The current study observed a decrease in collision frequency and a significant reduction of onset time for pushing down the brake pedal for frontal hazard when spatialized signal sounds were presented compared with no HMI condition. A decrease in collision frequency with gazed hazards in the rear space was also observed when spatialized imitative and signal sound were presented relative to no HMI condition. The results lend to support our hypothesis that the directional cue can be effective for safer driving behaviors. On the other hand, improvements were not obtained when attribute cues were presented for both behavioral responses or the collision frequency. Significant facilitations were found in gaze responses and decelerate operations especially for rear hazards, but they did not result in a reduction of collision frequency. Although the well-known front-rear ambiguity was confirmed in stationary sound localization, the current study observed the effectiveness of directional cue in reducing the collision frequency. It is possible that movements of spatial sound sources with hazard traffic participants could improve the resolution of front-rear sound localization.