Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Role of the Informal Sector in the Development of Entrepreneurship in Senegal: Background and Justification

In general, informal activities have always been well accepted in Senegal, and the rest of Africa as well. From this point of view, they are all the time, well integrated into society. This means therefore that the economic and social importance of the informal sector does no longer need evidencing. Through an exploratory methodological approach, this article aims to analyze, from the entrepreneurial model of Ahmad and Hoffman (2007) (1), new conditions for the emergence of a modern entrepreneurship resulting from the eradication and the progressive inclusion of the informal sector into the modern economy in Senegal. Beyond the debate on eradication and / or inclusion of the informal sector in the modern economy, it is to see whether the emergence of the informal sector is a foreshadowing of microenterprises and modern SMEs. Five aspects to apprehend the changes in the business environment are addressed here: the new relationship to the company, the business models of reference, the incentive scheme for formalization, financing and business environment.
Semantic based Text Summarization using Universal Networking Language

Text Summarization is extracting the important information from the document by leaving out the irrelevant information, and to reduce the details and collects them in a compressed way. Normally text summarization is done in single or multi documents. The advantage on processing time can be achieved in the text summarization. Converting English sentences into expressions or Interlingua is called Universal Networking Language (UNL). The given source document is preprocessed by eliminating tables and images. The preprocessed document is fed into sentence splitter and then to word separator. The given word is sent to Morphological Analyzer to find the root word. This root word is fed into UNL dictionary for finding the corresponding concepts and attributes. By using the heuristic rules, we identify the relations between concepts. UNL represents knowledge in the form of graphical format, where nodes represent concepts and links represent relations between concepts. It represents the whole document not the sentences in particular. The graph algorithm is used to find the weight age of links connected to the Universal Word. According to the highest weight age the document is summarized.
SPECTRAL THREAT IN TCP OVER OPTICAL BURST SWITCHED NETWORKS

Exponential increase in the number of online users has increased over the years posed a demand for high speed core architecture for the internet. The Optical Burst Switching (OBS) is a new switching architecture that efficiently utilizes the bandwidth of the optical layer. It offers all-optical switching as there is no Optical-Electronic conversion at any intermediate switching node. It is one of the three optical switching architectures, while others being Optical Circuit Switching (OCS) and Optical Packet Switching (OPS). The basic switching entity of OBS is a burst which posses an intermediate granularity between a packet and the amount of optical data in a circuit. The OBS architecture merits the shortcomings of the other two optical architectures namely OCS and OPS. This efficient core networking architecture, suffers from various security vulnerabilities. This paper proposes a novel security threat namely the spectral threat. It is a threat that affects only multicast capable nodes. Multicast Capable nodes are those nodes that are capable of multicasting an optical data. The wavelength of the optical data burst is altered resulting in flooding of data to a particular outgoing channel and ultimately blocking the channel. The attack results in losses thereby reducing the burst throughput and increasing the burst latency. The paper further summarizes other potential threats affecting normal nodes and Multicast Capable nodes for TCP over OBS networks.
Design Guideline of Pictorial Symbols for Communication Support Based upon Subjective Evaluation of Comprehensibility

In this paper, we propose design guidelines of comprehensive pictorial symbols for communication support [1]. We conducted the questionnaire survey for evaluating understandability of pictorial symbols reproduced by JIS (Japanese Industrial Standard) committee. Then, we examined features of pictorial symbols whose percentage of questions answered correctly was high. According to these features, we established design guidelines of the pictorial symbols and the standardization of the design [2]. Then, we redesigned confusable pictorial symbols of JIS committee based on our proposed guidelines, and evaluated the improvement of these symbols’ understandability. 1. DESIGN GUIDELINES INDUCED BY SUBJECTIVE EVALUATION In order to establish design guidelines of comprehensive pictorial symbols for communication support, we conducted the questionnaire survey for evaluating understandability of pictorial symbols reproduced by JIS committee [3]. We cannot deny that these symbols depend on our culture. Total 350 pictorial symbols were tested in the questionnaire. We asked the meaning of individual pictorial symbol to 100 subjects of Japanese and Chinese (50 males and 50 females who were about 20 years old). Figure 1 shows the results of questionnaire survey. Then, we examined features of pictorial symbols whose percentage of questions answered correctly was high. Based on these features of comprehensive pictorial symbols, we established design guidelines as follows. To reduce the use of the combination of pictorial symbols as less as possible.
Database support for spatial generalisation for WWW and mobile applications

The need for using spatial vector data for Web-based and mobile applications has been increasing rapidly. Vector spatial data is difficult to generalise (that is, to derive a suitable level of detail, or LoD, of the data for a given application). In a client-server environment, excessive details of spatial data cannot always be appreciated on the client side, but could consume a significant amount of resources on both the server and the client side, not to mention the extra cost of data transfer. Spatial data generalisation has been investigated extensively in the area of cartography. Most cartographical generalisation algorithms, however, are post-query operations where all the data, including unneeded data, is retrieved from the database for simplification. We incorporate spatial data simplification algorithms into query processing within DBMS. This novel approach targets primarily Web-based and mobile spatial applications that stand to benefit from early data reduction. Experiments on real data reveal significant performance improvements for our approach.
Security and Data Accountability in Distributed Systems: A Provenance Survey

While provenance research is common in distributed systems, many proposed solutions do not address the security of systems and accountability of data stored in those systems. In this paper, we survey provenance solutions which were proposed to address the problems of system security and data accountability in distributed systems. From our survey, we derive a set of minimum requirements that are necessary for a provenance system to be effective in addressing the two problems. Finally, we identify several gaps in the surveyed solutions and present them as challenges that future provenance researchers should tackle. We argue that these gaps have to be addressed before a complete and fool-proof provenance solution can be arrived at in the future.
Direct evidence for continuous radar reflector originating from changes in crystal-orientation fabric

Abstract. The origin of a strong continuous radar reflector observed with airborne radio-echo sounding (RES) at the EPICA deep-drilling site in Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica, is identified as a transition in crystal fabric orientation from a vertical girdle to an increased single-pole orientation seen along the ice core. The reflector is observed with a 60 ns and 600 ns long pulse at a frequency of 150 MHz, spans one pulse length, is continuous over 5 km, and occurs at a depth of about 2025–2045 m at the drill site. Changes in conductivity as reflector origin are excluded by investigating the ice-core profile, synthetic RES data, and a RES profile with different electromagnetic polarisation azimuths. The reflector's magnitude shows maximum values for polarisation parallel to the nearby ice divide and disappears for polarisation perpendicular to it, identifying the orientation of the girdle to lie in the vertical plane parallel to the ice divide. Observations allow us to extrapolate the crystal orientation feature along the reflector in space, with implications for ice-sheet dynamics and modeling.
Validity and reliability of the International Consultation on Incontinence Questionnaire-Urinary Incontinence Short Form and its correlation with urodynamic findings.

PURPOSE To validate the Persian version of the International Consultation on Incontinence Questionnaire-Urinary Incontinence Short Form (ICIQ-UI SF) as a standard questionnaire for assessment of urinary incontinence (UI). MATERIALS AND METHODS After translation and back translation of the questionnaire, the harmonized translation was pre-tested in a pilot study on 28 patients. The final Persian version of the ICIQ-UI SF was administered to 123 consecutive patients aged ≥ 16 years complaining of UI. The psychometric aspects of the questionnaire, such as reliability and construct validity, were assessed and compared with full urodynamics study's findings as the gold standard diagnostic test. RESULTS Mean age of the participants was 46.30 ± 13.14 years (range, 16 to 72 years). Based on ICIQ-UI SF, the prevalence of mixed urinary incontinence, stress urinary incontinence and urgency urinary incontinence was 35%, 34.1%, and 30.9%, respectively. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was calculated 0.75, which indicates the high reliability of this questionnaire in determination of UI. The obtained Weighted Kappa Index in determining the value of the test-retest was 0.70, and Pearson Correlation Coefficient was calculated 0.93 and intra-class correlation coefficient was 0.84. CONCLUSION Persian version of ICIQ-UI SF is a simple, valid, and reliable method for evaluation of patients with UI. Significant correlation exists between ICIQ-UI SF score and urodynamics parameters.
Summary of Research Activities

The world has recently seen a tremendous proliferation in the use of XML for data exchange. In addition, XML is increasingly used as a replacement for HTML on the Web or in large intranets. As XML provides means to structure data and tag it with rich annotations, retrieving information in the XML-based Web is radically different from today's widely used keyword-based search engines. It is also radically different from querying XML databases with a fixed and known schema. Major challenges are (1) the heterogeneity of data on the Web, in intranets, and in federations of digital libraries and other loosely coupled XML sources, and (2) the distribution of information across several documents. Heterogeneity of data is inevitable as there is no universal standard for representing arbitrary data in XML (and it is unlikely that there will ever be such a standard), so schemas used to represent data widely vary across different data sources, and some sources do not provide a schema at all. Widely adopted query languages for XML like XPath and XQuery are no longer appropriate for searching in such an environment as they cannot cope with the diversity of data. This calls for a new query paradigm in between the powerful, but complex and schema-dependent XQuery and the limited, keyword-based search that today's Web search engines provide. As users don't know (and typically don't care about) how the schema looks like, queries should not explicitly specify the structure of the data, but express the " information need " of users, a kind of " find what I mean " approach. Queries should express the user's guess how the data may be structured, and it's the system's task to find documents that match this guess. This definitely calls for a ranked retrieval approach returning results in descending order of estimated relevance, in contrast to the Boolean approach of existing XML query languages. From a research point of view, this entails, among other things, the application of both structural and ontological similarity measures to match documents and queries. Additionally, as the system's notion of good results may not coincide with the user's, relevance feedback must be a core part of a system to establish user-aware instead of merely system-induced similarity measures. Finally, as the introduction of similarities highly increases the number of potentially relevant results, any efficient system must apply algorithms for query evaluation that are optimized to compute the …
Cross-layer design for traffic management in wireless networked control systems

Wireless networked control systems (WNCSs) have been increasingly deployed in industrial applications. As they require timely data packet transmissions, it is difficult to make efficient use of the limited channel resources, particularly in contention based wireless networks in the layered network architecture. Aiming to maintain the WNCSs under critical real-time traffic condition at which the WNCSs marginally meet the real-time requirements, a cross-layer design (CLD) approach is presented in this paper to adaptively adjust the control period to achieve improved channel utilization while still maintaining effective and timely packet transmissions. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated through simulation studies.
THE HARVARD HOUSING LOTTERY: RATIONALITY AND REFORM

This paper studies allocation schemes Harvard has used to assign undergraduates to residential houses. The main conclusions are as follows. First, students appear to behave remarkably rationally. Second, simulations suggest that, given rationality, Harvard's allocation scheme sometimes allocates fewer students to one of their top three choices than would occur under an alternative system that generates truthful revelation.
Reconstruction of the climate envelopes of salamanders and their evolution through time

Ecological niches evolve through time, but at different rates and to different degrees. An integrated approach using diverse databases, methods, and analytical tools is used to estimate climate envelopes for species of salamanders (family Salamandridae). These species, which range widely across the Holarctic and have a rich and long fossil record, are used to probe the evolutionary dynamics of niches studied in a phylogenetic context through time and across space. Climate data and statistical methods are used to estimate niche dimensions related to precipitation and temperature, in both a phylogenetic and ecogeographic context. Using phylogenetic methods, climate envelopes are estimated for segments of a time-calibrated phylogenetic tree of salamandrids, to explore how far back in time it is reasonable to make such estimates. Our research strategy illuminates some of the challenges and limitations of the available data and methods and identifies potential solutions, such as the need for physiological and behavioral data that may help to better define species' niches or the development of novel evolutionary models that account for paleoclimatic data. We explore and analyze limits to the application of currently available methodologies. Organisms known to have evolved slowly and conservatively, and which are ectotherms and likely to be profoundly affected by climatic variables, may be the most useful for studies of this kind.
Domain Adaptation for Pedestrian Detection Based on Prediction Consistency

Pedestrian detection is an active area of research in computer vision. It remains a quite challenging problem in many applications where many factors cause a mismatch between source dataset used to train the pedestrian detector and samples in the target scene. In this paper, we propose a novel domain adaptation model for merging plentiful source domain samples with scared target domain samples to create a scene-specific pedestrian detector that performs as well as rich target domain simples are present. Our approach combines the boosting-based learning algorithm with an entropy-based transferability, which is derived from the prediction consistency with the source classifications, to selectively choose the samples showing positive transferability in source domains to the target domain. Experimental results show that our approach can improve the detection rate, especially with the insufficient labeled data in target scene.
Habituation and dishabituation of a cleaning reflex in normal and mutant Drosophila

Upon tactile stimulation of its thoracic bristle(s), Drosophila cleans with a patterned set of leg movements the field covered by the stimulated bristles. We demonstrate that this cleaning reflex undergoes habituation and dishabituation. Repeated monotonous stimulation of the bristles by controlled air puffs leads to decrement, and finally to disappearance, of leg response. Spontaneous recovery of the response takes place in a time-dependent manner. Restoration of response can also be obtained by application of a high-frequency stimulus directed to other bristles. A mutant, rut, which is defective in learning and in adenylate cyclase activity, can habituate and dishabituate, but habituation is abnormally short-lived. As opposed to both nonassociative and associative learning paradigms used in Drosophila to date, the cleaning reflex lends itself to some aspects of cellular analysis, since single sensory neurons that mediate the input and motor neurons that mediate the behavioral output are identifiable. The modified reflex should therefore be useful in establishing the effects of single gene mutations that affect behavioral plasticity on the development and properties of identified neurons that contribute to discrete modifiable behaviors.
A qualitative study of the impact of surprises and challenges on the identity-building and socialization of new principals

The role of the school principal is an important one. Nettles and Herrington (2007) confirmed, “the school principal is regarded as critical to school success and student achievement” (p. 729). Every year, new leaders are needed to fill this vital role as a result of the high rates of principal turnover (Browne-Ferrigno, 2003; Stevenson, 2006). New principals, however, must quickly adapt to their new role; “. a newly appointed principal is expected to take on the full set of responsibilities (Galdames, Montecinos, Campos, Ahumada, & Leiva, 2008, p. 319). Research into the unique experiences of new principals is vital due to the importance of the principal’s role. This research study illuminates the challenges these individuals will face in pursuit of the goals set forth for their schools and has the potential to ultimately help better support and prepare new principals. This study was a qualitative study that involved five participants and data collected through a series of four interviews, three focus groups, and participant reflective journaling through the first 8 months new principals in Cross Keys County Schools were in their roles. All participants participated in each of four interviews and attended at least one of the three focus groups. Participation in reflective journaling was limited. The data collection and analysis were intended to address the following research questions: "What do new principals believe the principalship is like as they begin their work? "; "How do the surprises and challenges new principals encounter support their socialization into the principalship? "; and "How do the surprises and challenges new principals encounter influence their emergent and professional identity? " Understanding these challenges and being aware of the specific knowledge and skills principals need can help new principals to ease the transition into the role and can minimize the challenges and surprises they encounter, particularly given the high number of new principals in the local district and the potential impact on the students they serve. The following themes emerged from the analysis of data collected and existing research. The new principals in this study clarified and realized their core values in their new role. They also developed meaningful relationships with stakeholders and this partnership enabled them to build a positive school culture. Confidence in their abilities increased over time and this confidence enabled them to leverage their power and positionality. The new principals focused on cultural leadership and struggled to focus on instructional leadership. Finally, new principals largely socialized within the school setting with families, students, and staff members as opposed to others within the organization.
Parallel Levenberg-Marquardt-Based Neural Network Training on Linux Clusters - A Case Study

This paper addresses the problem of pattern classification using neural networks. Applying neural network classifiers for classifying a large volume of high dimensional data is a difficult task as the training process is computationally expensive. A parallel implementation of the known train- ing paradigms offers a feasible solution to the problem. By exploiting the massively parallel structure of the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm for non-linear optimization a training algorithm for neural networks has been implemented on a Linux cluster using LAM (Local Area Multi-computer) MPI (Message Passing Interface). The implementation, besides facilitating the main objective of maximising computational speedup, is also portable and scalable. A standard bench- mark for neural network training comprising a sufficiently large volume of satellite image data has been utilized to present and discuss the properties of the implementation
The relationship between employee involvement, partnership management and supply performance: Findings from a developing country

Purpose – This research aims to investigate the relationships among employee involvement, partnership management, and a firm's supply performance in the automotive industry in Thailand.Design/methodology/approach – The measurement instruments for employee involvement, partnership management and a firm's supply performance were developed based on an extensive literature review, and validated by experts. They were pilot‐tested, and analyzed using various statistical techniques to ensure reliability and validity in structural equation modeling constructs. A hypothesized model was tested through path analysis.Findings – The study found that the measurements of employee involvement, partnership management, and a firm's supply performance are reliable and valid for Thailand's automotive industry. Employee involvement has not only a significant direct positive impact on partnership management and firm's supply performance, but also a significant indirect positive impact on a firm's supply performance through par.