Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Microfinance and entrepreneurship: the enabling role of social capital amongst female entrepreneurs

Purpose This paper examines mechanisms through which social capital strengthens microfinance impact on fostering female entrepreneurial success. Specifically, the study focuses on how, and to what extent, resources embedded in social networks determine MF impact on entrepreneurial success.Design/methodology/approach Survey data were collected from 276 female micro-institutions entrepreneurs using multi-stage stratified random sampling across 80 MF institutions in three South-Western Nigerian states. Hypotheses were tested using ordinal regression analysis.Findings The study found that relational and network social capital had a positive and significant influence on female entrepreneurial success. Specifically, intra-group trust and productive network ties amongst female entrepreneurs in poor communities predicated the positive impact of MF on entrepreneurial success. Also, resources embedded in networks are more positively correlated to education level and marital status. Furthermore, MF could have more positive impact for borrowers with sustainable relationships with loan officers who organise MF provisions and understand the entrepreneurs’ context.Originality/value The research provides empirical evidence for the relationship dynamics between female entrepreneurs and MF institutions, by emphasising the importance of deploying different forms of social capital in sustaining MF impact on female entrepreneurial success.
Achieving Conservation Biology Objectives with Fire in the Pacific Northwest

Fire has been a part of natural ecosystems for many millennia. The species of those ecosystems have evolved through a series of “coarse filters,” one of which is resistance or resilience to disturbance by fire. Plant adaptations to fire include the ability to sprout, seed bank adaptations in the soil or canopy, high dispersal ability for seeds, and thick bark. These adaptations are often to a particular fire regime, or combination of fire frequency, intensity, extent, and season. Fire can be used by managers to achieve species to ecosystem-level conservation biology objectives. Examples using prescribed fire include the grasslands of the Puget Trough of Washington State, maintenance of oak woodlands, and perpetuation of ponderosa pine/mixed-conifer forests.
Capital Controls: Gates versus Walls

This paper examines the pattern of controls on cross-border capital inflows and their association with measures of financial vulnerability, GDP, and exchange rates. A key distinction is made between long-standing controls that cover a broad range of assets (walls) and episodic controls that tend to be imposed on a narrower set of assets (gates). The paper presents a new data set that differentiates between controls on inflows and on outflows as well as among asset categories for 44 developed and emerging market economies over 1995-2010. The imposition of episodic controls is found not to have followed the prescriptions of theories that suggest first imposing controls on those inflows most likely to contribute to financial vulnerability. Estimates show significant differences in the partial correlations of long-standing and episodic controls with the growth of certain financial variables and with GDP growth, but these differences seem to arise because countries with long-standing controls are poorer on average than the other countries in the sample. With a few exceptions, estimates that control for GDP per capita find little evidence that capital controls affect the growth of these financial variables, the real exchange rate, or GDP growth at an annual frequency. These preliminary results raise doubts about assumptions behind recent calls for a greater use of episodic controls.
Expanded abstract: An adaptive support system for phonological treatment of phonetic disorders using visual feedbacks and Speech Recognition

Phonetic deviations (dyslalia) are frequent speech disorders that lead most patients to speech therapy clinics. Nowadays one can find software able to support the treatment of phonetic deviations with several different approaches. However, none of the most used alternatives are easily accessible, are low cost and/or are directed towards individualization for an individual patient care. In this research we propose a Computer Aided Pronunciation Training (CAPT) system, which is low cost, easy to use, displays information directed to the patient's problem and, most importantly, uses computational intelligence techniques to make the therapy of phonetic deviations less expensive, less dependent on an audiologist and more efficient. The built prototype was evaluated by a group of audiologists from Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), who answered a questionnaire for reporting impressions on the general aspects of the proposal and also provided their opinions for possible improvements.
Distribution and Abundance of the Dugong in Gulf of Carpentaria Waters: a basis for cross-jurisdictional conservation planning and management

[Extract] This survey provides the first synopsis of the distribution and abundance of the dugong in the Gulf of Carpentaria. The results of previous surveys of parts of this region in both Queensland and the Northern Territory have been difficult to interpret because of the potentially confounding influences of unpredictable dugong movements between areas within the region.
Fabrication and electrical characteristics of �ash-sintered SiO 2 -doped ZnO-Bi 2 O 3 -MnO 2 varistors

The dense ZnO-Bi 2 O 3 -MnO 2 -xSiO 2 (ZBMS) varistors for x= 0, 1, 2, 3 wt. % were fabricated by �ash sintering method under the low temperature of 850 ℃ within 2 minutes. The sample temperature was estimated by a black body radiation model in the �ash sintering process. The crystalline phase assemblage, density, microstructure, and electrical characteristics of the �ash-sintered ZBMS varistors with different SiO 2 doped content were investigated. According to the XRD analysis, many secondary phases were detected due to the SiO 2 doping. Meanwhile, the average grain size decrease with increasing SiO 2 -doped content. The improved nonlinear characteristics were obtained in SiO 2 -doped samples, which can be attributed to the ion migration and oxygen absorption induced by the doped SiO 2 . The �ash-sintered ZBMS varistor ceramics for x=2 wt. % exhibited excellent comprehensive electrical properties, with the nonlinear coe�cient of 24.5, the threshold voltage and leakage current of 385 V×mm -1 and 11.8 µA, respectively.
Twenty-Year Outcome of a Longitudinal Prospective Evaluation of Isolated Endoscopic Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction With Patellar Tendon or Hamstring Autograft:

Background:Long-term prospective follow-up studies of single-incision endoscopic anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction are limited and may include confounding factors.Purpose:This longitudinal prospective study reports the outcomes of isolated ACL reconstruction using middle-third patellar tendon autografts in 90 patients over 20 years.Study Design:Case series; Level of evidence, 4.Methods:Between January 1993 and April 1994, a total of 90 patients met study inclusion criteria: evaluation at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 15, and 20 years after surgery. Exclusion criteria were associated ligamentous injuries requiring surgery, previous meniscectomy or meniscal injuries requiring more than one-third meniscectomy, chondral injuries, and an abnormal contralateral knee.Results:At 20 years, 32 (36%) patients had sustained another ACL injury: 8 (9%) to the index limb and 27 (30%) to the contralateral limb (3 injuring both knees). The mean International Knee Documentation Committee (IKDC) score was 86. Of the p.
Defining Healthy Intimate Relationships: A Qualitative Pilot Study of Rural Hispanic Women

: This study aimed to explore Hispanic women’s views of their relationships with current and previous partners. Researchers conducted interviews with Eight (8) women within a local rural Hispanic community. We interviewed in a semi-structured format using the participants' preferred language either English or Spanish. Interviews were audiotaped, transcribed, and reviewed for accuracy. Data were analyzed using a phenomenological focus. Half of the participants reported experiencing some type of intimate partner violence in a past relationship. Participants described positive concepts such as fidelity, respect, and communication and negative concepts such as alcohol, fear, and machismo in describing healthy versus unhealthy relationships. There were four overarching themes: Essential characteristics of healthy relationships, operationalization, threats, and ideal relationships. This pilot study provides preliminary insight into rural Hispanic women's experiences in intimate relationships. More research is needed to examine providers' understanding of how Hispanic women define a healthy relationship. This can impact screening measures and facilitate interventions toward intimate partner violence.
A lightweight permissioned distributed ledger for credentialing in higher education institutions

Blockchain and similar distributed ledger technologies are often referred as the next disruptor in Information-Communication Technologies. The security properties blockchain technologies offer have surpassed the initial use-cases in cryptocurrencies, and a variety of blockchain-based solutions are appearing daily in healthcare, financial technology, supply chain management, and education. In this paper, we examine a permissioned blockchain, i.e., a distributed ledger solution for students’ credentialing during their studies at a Higher Education Institution. Utilizing the Hyperledger platform, which allowed us to use a lightweight consensus mechanism, we aim to incorporate the model within an existing faculty-or university-level information system. With the innate properties of immutability and transparency, the presented model provides authorized users with a secure proof of student credentials which can be verified at any time.
The Authors Holger Görg is a Reader in International Economics in the School of Economics

This paper investigates the relationship between government support for R&D and R&D expenditure financed privately by firms using a comprehensive plant level data set for the manufacturing sector in the Republic of Ireland. Our empirical strategy combines a nonparametric matching procedure with a difference-in-differences estimator in order to deal with the potential selection problem inherent in the analysis. We find that for domestic plants small and medium sized grants serve to increase private R&D spending, particularly for the former where it can induce R&D spending even beyond the subsidy, while too large a grant may crowd out private financing of R&D. In contrast, evidence for foreign establishments suggests that grant provision causes neither additionality nor crowding out effects of private R&D financing, regardless of the size of the subsidy. JEL classification: L2, H2, F2, O3
Bridging the Gap between Buyers and Sellers in Data Marketplaces with Personalized Datasets

Sharing, discovering, and integrating data is a crucial task and poses many challenging spots and open research direction. Data owners need to know what data consumers want and data consumers need to find datasets that are satisfactory for their tasks. Several data market platforms, or data marketplaces (DMs), have been used so far to facilitate data transactions between data owners and customers. However, current DMs are mostly shop windows, where customers have to rely on metadata that owners manually curate to discover useful datasets and there is no automated mechanism for owners to determine if their data could be merged with other datasets to satisfy customers’ desiderata. The availability of novel artificial intelligence techniques for data management has sparked a renewed interest in proposing new DMs that stray from this conventional paradigm and overcome its limitations. This paper envisions a conceptual framework called DataStreet where DMs can create personalized datasets by combining available datasets and presenting summarized statistics to help users make informed decisions. In our framework, owners share some of their data with a trusted DM, and customers provide a dataset template to fuel content-based (rather than metadata-based) search queries. Upon each query, the DM creates a preview of the personalized dataset through a flexible use of dataset discovery, integration, and value measurement, while ensuring owners’ fair treatment and preserving privacy. The previewed datasets might not be pre-defined in the DM and are finally materialized upon successful transaction.
The RoboCoq Project: Modelling and Design of Bird-like Robot

The RoboCoq project aims at designing a prototype of autonomous biped based on the avian model. According to biological studies conducted at National Museum of Natural History in Paris (MNHN) the locomotion system of birds appears to be more efficient than the human model in terms of stability, stride length and mobility. Moreover due to its morphology the foot of a bird seems to be more polyvalent and suitable for support and crossing of pebbly terrain. The objective of this project is to design a robot capable of exploring cluttered environments. The design of the robot will rely on experimental kinematics and dynamic data obtained from the animal. The information collected will serve as a basis for modelling and simulating the locomotion system of the bird, and will help reproduce the head-bobbing reflex on the robot. This project has just started and involves the participation of biologists and roboticians issued from the MNHN, the LNRS, and the LRV. This paper presents some features of the avian model compared with the human model, describes the experimental protocol to be conducted to get all the biological data from the animal, gives a first simplified kinematics model of the locomotion system presents as well as a direct geometric model. The model constructed under ADAMS is exposed at the end of the article.
A subpixel target detection algorithm for hyperspectral imagery

The goal of this research is to develop a new algorithm for the detection of subpixel scale target materials on the hyperspectral imagery. The signal decision theory is typically to decide the existence of a target signal embedded in the random noise. This implies that the detection problem can be mathematically formalized by signal decision theory based on the statistical hypothesis test. In particular, since any target signature provided by airborne/spaceborne sensors is embedded in a structured noise such as background or clutter signatures as well as broad band unstructured noise, the problem becomes more complicated, and particularly much more under the unknown noise structure. The approach is based on the statistical hypothesis method known as Generalized Likelihood Ratio Test (GLRT). The use of GLRT requires estimating the unknown parameters, and assumes the prior information of two subspaces describing target variation and background variation respectively. Therefore, this research consists of two parts, the implementation of GLRT and the characterization of two subspaces through new approaches. Results obtained from computer simulation, HYDICE image and AVIRIS image show that this approach is feasible.
High levels of PIWI‐interacting RNAs are present in the small RNA landscape of prostate epithelium from vitamin D clinical trial specimens

Vitamin D, a hormone that acts through the nuclear vitamin D receptor (VDR), upregulates antitumorigenic microRNA in prostate epithelium. This may contribute to the lower levels of aggressive prostate cancer (PCa) observed in patients with high serum vitamin D. The small noncoding RNA (ncRNA) landscape includes many other RNA species that remain uncharacterized in prostate epithelium and their potential regulation by vitamin D is unknown.
Interactions of pyrethroids with the voltage-gated sodium channel.

Resumen Interacciones de los piretroides con el canalde sodio controlado por tension electrica Un modelo homologado de la region delporo del canal de sodio controlado portension electrica de la mosca domesticafue desarrollado, basado en la estructuradel canal de sodio Kv1.2, y utilizado parapredecir un punto de ligamiento para pi-retroides y DDT. Algunas prediccionesderivadas del modelo fueron validadasexperimentalmente. El modelo permitedeterminar algunos de los factores cen-trales del mecanismo de accion de los piretroides:1. El punto de ligamiento esta localizadoen una bolsa hidrofobica delimitadapor la ligadura IIS4-S5 y las helicesIIS5/IIIS6, accesible por los lipidos dedoble capa y para los insecticidas li-pido-solubles.2. El punto de ligamiento se forma du-rante la activacion (apertura) del canalde sodio y es consistente con observa-ciones de que los piretroides ligan pre-ferencialmente a canales abiertos.3. Se asume que el ligamiento de pire-troides estabiliza el estado de aperturadel canal. Esto podria tambien expli-car las senales electricas que se obser-varon despues de la repolarizacion 6. Das Modell identifiziert Schlusselstel-len in den Helices des Kv 1.2-Na-trium-Kanals, die wahrscheinlich zurdiese Substanzen beitragen.
The mediating role of negative affect in the relationship between family functioning and subjective happiness in Spanish college students

y desequilibrado) y felici-dad subjetiva. Con respecto a los patrones familiares disfuncionales, encon-tramos que el afecto negativo medió la relación entre las escalas de desa-pego, dependencia y caos, y felicidad. Sin embargo, este patrón mediacional no se observó para la escala de rigidez. Se discuten las implicaciones socia-les y clínicas que estos resultados tienen en la promoción de la felicidad subjetiva en la adultez temprana, teniendo en cuenta las creencias culturales españolas sobre funcionamiento familiar y bienestar.
Democracy, rule of law, corruptions incentives and growth

We bridge the gap between the standard theory of growth and the mostly static theory of corruption. Some public investment can be diverted from its purpose by corrupt individuals. Voters determine the level of public investment subject to an incentive constraint equalizing the returns from productive and corrupt activities. We concentrate on two exogenous institutional parameters: the "technology of corruption" is the ease with which rent-seekers can capture a proportion of public spending. The "concentration of political power" is the extent to which rent-seekers have more political influence than other people. One theoretical prediction is that the effects of the two institutional parameters on income growth and equilibrium corruption are different according to the constraints that are binding at equilibrium. In particular, the effect of judicial quality on growth should be stronger when political power is concentrated. We estimate a system of equations where both corruption and income growth are determined simultaneously and show that income growth is more affected by our proxies for legal and political institutions in countries where political rights and judicial institutions respectively are limited.
Acceleration of Binning Nearest Neighbour Methods

A new solution method to the Nearest Neighbour Problem is presented. The method is based upon the triangle inequality and works well for small point sets, where traditional solutions are particularly ineffective. Its performance is characterized experimentally and compared with k-d tree and Elias approaches. A hybrid approach is proposed wherein the triangle inequality method is applied to the k-d tree and Elias bin sets. The hybridization is shown to accelerate the k-d tree for large point sets, resulting in 20% improvement in time performance. The space efficiencies for both the k-d tree and Elias methods also improve under the hybrid scheme.
Specific Training Programme and Batting Technique in Cricket: An Experimental Study

: Cricket is a popular sport that requires a combination of physical fitness, technical skills, and strategic thinking. To enhance technique in cricket, specific training programmes targeting different aspects of the game are often employed. This experimental study aimed to investigate the impact of a specific training programme on the overall batting ability of cricketers. Participants for this study were male students in grades 9 and 10, selected randomly from Viswa Porichoy cricket Academy, Bolpur santiniketan in India. A total of 60 students were included, with an age range of 13½ to 15½ years. The control group consisted of 30 students with a mean age of 14.38 and a mean height of 154.937 cm. The experimental group also consisted of 30 students with a mean age of 14.41 and a mean height of 154.900 cm. The experimental group underwent a cricket-specific training programme for duration of ten weeks, with training sessions held four days per week (Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday). Each training session lasted for 90 minutes. The control group continued with their regular cricket-related training practices. To evaluate the batting technique of the participants, three judges rated their batting performance on a 10-point rating scale. The judges assessed various aspects of batting technique, skill, and decision-making. The ratings provided an overall measure of batting technique. A t-test was conducted to determine the significance of any improvement in batting technique between the experimental and control groups. The level of confidence for statistical significance was set at 0.05. The results of the study revealed a significant improvement in the batting technique of the experimental group compared to the control group, who continued with their regular cricket training practices. The findings of this study suggest that a specific training programme targeting batting skills can lead to a significant improvement in the batting technique of cricketers. By incorporating such training programmes, coaches and trainers can help cricketers enhance their overall performance in the game.
Implementation Of Wireless Sensor Network For Four sensors On Natural Disaster Early Warning System

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is likely to be implemented as a long-range transmission network for sensor data to detect potential natural disaster like flood, landslide, and soil liquefaction. The sensor parameters: for example rainfall, soil humidity, vibration, type of soil, and so forth were sent from the location at which natural disaster potentially occurs and were forwarded to data center in real time for further analysis and observation. Therefore, the natural disaster which potentially occurs in the area was easily detected by the parameter of nodes that were gathered in server. When sensor detected the sign of natural disaster, the information would be conveyed through WSN to information center and was broadcasted to society as an early warning of natural disaster such as flood, landslide, soil liquefaction, etc. Such information was automatically broadcasted to society and was adjusted to the impending circumstance e.g. secure, cautious, and warning. By the implementation of WSN technology as an early warning system, it is expected to information concerning natural disaster is broadcasted accurately and rapidly to society, hence society can take quick action and response to natural disaster.
Historical overview of the Biosphere 2 project

An extensive historical overview is given of the Biosphere 2 project. The overview begins in late 1969, as the moon landings commenced, when work began on ecological projects which laid the conceptual foundation for the current Biosphere 2 project. Continuing through to taking a complete functional suite of microbes together with their associated aquatic elements and an air volume and putting them inside a closed lab flask in which to measure the oxygen and CO2 levels, study energy flows and visually observe the changes therein. The laws of biospherics formulated by the author which can be tested in the Biosphere 2 project are listed.