Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
EFFECTS OF OUTSOURCING OF NON-CORE SERVICES ON ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE : A CASE STUDY OF PUBLIC PROCUREMENT OVERSIGHT AUTHORITY

The growth in outsourcing over the last two decades has been unprecedented and today many firms use outsourcing. The study sought to analyze the effects outsourcing of noncore services on organizational performance. The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of outsourcing of noncore services on organization performance of the Public Procurement Oversight Authority (PPOA). The objectives of this study are; to identify how outsourcing of noncore services affects the performance of PPOA; to identify the benefits of outsourcing of noncore services at PPOA; and to find out the problems of carrying out outsourcing of noncore services at PPOA. The research study employed the use stratified random sampling technique where the respondents stratified into two strata: managers and other junior employees‟ stratum. Stratified random was used because the population was heterogeneous. The study population consisted of staff at PPOA. A sample of 40% comprising managers and other junior staff was surveyed. The study established that supplier selection process, relationship management, contract management and organizational resources are essential element in outsourcing of noncore services that influences organizational performance at PPOA. The study concluded that outsourcing of noncore services significantly impacted on the organizational performance at PPOA. The establishment and management of a contractual relationship with external supplier have influenced organizational performance at PPOA. The study recommends that Public Procurement Oversight Authority management should create a crucial distinction to using outsourcing as an effective strategy and determine which activities are best suited for outsourcing.
Can Europe survive ? Ten Commandments for Europe ’ s Next Ten Years

What can political economy say about the immediate future of Europe? This paper tries to provide practical answers. It is structured into proposals for necessary short-term policy measures, a consistent set of mid-term dynamics initiated by these measures, and a few remarks on the long-run vision underpinning and hopefully helping to implement a welfare enhancing future Europe.
Adaptive Ensembling: Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for Political Document Analysis

Insightful findings in political science often require researchers to analyze documents of a certain subject or type, yet these documents are usually contained in large corpora that do not distinguish between pertinent and non-pertinent documents. In contrast, we can find corpora that label relevant documents but have limitations (e.g., from a single source or era), preventing their use for political science research. To bridge this gap, we present adaptive ensembling, an unsupervised domain adaptation framework, equipped with a novel text classification model and time-aware training to ensure our methods work well with diachronic corpora. Experiments on an expert-annotated dataset show that our framework outperforms strong benchmarks. Further analysis indicates that our methods are more stable, learn better representations, and extract cleaner corpora for fine-grained analysis.
Design and realization of a video-on-demand demonstration system

Video-an-Demand is defined as: 'The ability of a person, subscribed to an Information-Provider, to choose a film of choice and be able to watch the film whenever the person wants, using VCR-like functions like pause, stop, fast/slow-forward, fast/slow-backward, and goto to control the playing of the film. ' To provide a Video-an-Demand service a bidirectional network between Information-Providers and subscribers is needed. The Electro-Optical Communication Group performs research on such a network, and research on a Video-an-Demand service. In this report the design and realization of a Video-an-Demand Demonstration Network is described. This work has been done for the master thesis degree. The Video-an-Demand demonstration system consists of: a Video-an-Demand server application, running on the Windows NT operating system for a PC, and a Set-Top Box application running under DOS. The connection between the server and the set-top box is implemented using Ethernet cards, in combination with TCP lIP software for sending data between the computers. The video information for the system is encoded using MPEG-l. The screens to be shown at the set-top box are implemented as ASCII-files. The Video-an-Demand server's main functions are: providing the set-top box with a UserInterface for the Video-an-Demand service offering a menu structure for choosing a movie to be watched; handling the subscriber's responses to the menu screens shown at the set-top box; sending MPEG-l encoded video towards individual set-top boxes when a movie is played. The set-top box main functions are: decoding and playing the MPEG-l video information at a television set; sending the users responses of the menu screens towards the server. The User-Interface is controlled by the server and stored in a linked-list. The linked-list contains: pointers to menu screens to be shown at the subscriber's set-top box; the possible responses to these menu screens; pointers to text screens to be shown at the set-top box; and pointers to MPEG-encoded movies to be sent towards the set-top box. The ASCII-files of the screens to be shown at the set-top box are sent using the Ethernet-link in combination with the TCP-protocol. The messages between the server and the set-top box containing for instance user responses are sent through the Ethernet-link using the UDP-protocol.
Speech production of rhotics in highly proficient bilinguals: Acoustic and articulatory measures

One of the biggest unresolved questions in bilingual speech production is how L2 phonological categories are constructed given the well-established L1 categories and how phonological categories are realized phonetically. The current study aimed to investigate how bilinguals’ two languages interact when the same phoneme in two languages was realized differently in phonetics. We examined the acoustic and articulatory features of English and Mandarin /ɹ/ produced by highly proficient Mandarin-English bilinguals. Ten Mandarin-English bilingual speakers and ten American English monolingual speakers were recorded with ultrasound imaging technique. Results showed that highly proficient Mandarin-English bilinguals produced English /ɹ/ without L1 influences. They used language-specific phonetic details for English and Mandarin /ɹ/. It implies that language-specific phonetic realizations can be learned for the same phonological category by highly proficient bilingual speakers.
Hematogenous spondylitis due to Aspergillus fumigatus in a patient with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome

ensayados. El valor de la CIM90 de tigeciclina fue considerablemente inferior a los correspondientes a linezolid y quinupristinadalfopristina (4 y 5 diluciones menos, respectivamente). Por otra parte, la actividad de tigeciclina no se afectó por la resistencia a vancomicina, ya que las 51 cepas resistentes a vancomicina se inhibieron por concentraciones de tigeciclina comprendidas entre p0,015 y 0,12mg/ml. En este estudio se confirma que la multirresistencia entre los aislamientos de E. faecium resistentes a ampicilina es común, lo que pone de manifiesto la necesidad de nuevos antimicrobianos con actividad frente a estos microorganismos multirresistentes. Tigeciclina ha mostrado una actividad excelente frente a todas las cepas de E. faecium resistentes a ampicilina ensayadas, incluidas las resistentes a vancomicina, tetraciclina o quinupristina-dalfopristina. El nuevo antibiótico inhibe el 98,9% de las cepas a la concentración de 0,25mg/ml. Nuestros resultados son similares a los publicados previamente. A la vista de estos datos, creemos que tigeciclina puede considerarse como una alternativa eficaz en el tratamiento de las infecciones causadas por E. faecium multirresistente.
Immunoinformatics-Guided Designing of Peptide Vaccine against Lassa Virus with Dynamic and Immune Simulation Studies

Lassa virus (LASV) is responsible for a type of acute viral haemorrhagic fever referred to as Lassa fever. Lack of adequate treatment and preventive measures against LASV resulted in a high mortality rate in its endemic regions. In this study, a multi-epitope vaccine was designed using immunoinformatics as a prophylactic agent against the virus. Following a rigorous assessment, the vaccine was built using T-cell (NCTL=8 and NHTL=6) and B-cell (NLBL=4) epitopes from each LASV-derived protein with suitable linkers and adjuvant. The physicochemistry, immunogenic potency and safeness of the designed vaccine (~68 kDa) were assessed. In addition, chosen CTL and HTL epitopes of our vaccine showed 97.37% worldwide population coverage. Besides, disulphide engineering also improved the stability of the chimeric vaccine. Molecular docking of our vaccine protein with toll-like receptor (TLR2) showed binding efficiency followed by dynamic simulation for stable interaction. Furthermore, higher levels of cell-mediated immunity and rapid antigen clearance were suggested by immune simulation and repeated-exposure simulation, respectively. Finally, the optimized codons were used in in silico cloning to ensure higher expression within E. coli K12 bacterium. With further assessment both in vitro and in vivo, we believe that our proposed peptide-vaccine would be potential immunogen against Lassa fever.
UC Office of the President Recent Work Title The Interaction between ORF 18 and ORF 30 Is Required for Late Gene Expression in Kaposi ' s Sarcoma-Associated Herpesvirus

In the betaand gammaherpesviruses, a specialized complex of viral transcriptional activators (vTAs) coordinate to direct expression of virus-encoded late genes, which are critical for viral assembly and whose transcription initiates only after the onset of viral DNA replication. The vTAs in Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) are ORF18, ORF24, ORF30, ORF31, ORF34, and ORF66. While the general organization of the vTA complex has been mapped, the individual roles of these proteins and how they coordinate to activate late gene promoters remain largely unknown. Here, we performed a comprehensive mutational analysis of the conserved residues in ORF18, which is a highly interconnected vTA component. Surprisingly, the mutants were largely selective for disrupting the interaction with ORF30 but not the other three ORF18 binding partners. Furthermore, disrupting the ORF18ORF30 interaction weakened the vTA complex as a whole, and an ORF18 point mutant that failed to bind ORF30 was unable to complement an ORF18 null virus. Thus, contacts between individual vTAs are critical as even small disruptions in this complex result in profound defects in KSHV late gene expression. IMPORTANCE Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) is the etiologic agent of Kaposi’s sarcoma and other B-cell cancers and remains a leading cause of death in immunocompromised individuals. A key step in the production of infectious virions is the transcription of viral late genes, which generates capsid and structural proteins and requires the coordination of six viral proteins that form a complex. The role of these proteins during transcription complex formation and the importance of protein-protein interactions are not well understood. Here, we focused on a central component of the complex, ORF18, and revealed that disruption of its interaction with even a single component of the complex (ORF30) prevents late gene expression and completion of the viral lifecycle. These findings underscore how individual interactions between the late gene transcription components are critical for both the stability and function of the complex.
Turn-Taking Prediction Based on Detection of Transition Relevance Place

We address turn-taking prediction in which spoken dialogue systems predict when to take the conversational floor. In natural conversations, many turn-taking decisions are arbitrary and subjective. In this study, we propose taking into account the concept of the transition relevance place (TRP) for turn-taking prediction. TRP is defined as a timing when the current speaking turn can be completed and other participants are able to take the turn. We conducted annotation of TRP on a human-robot dialogue corpus, ensuring the objectivity of this annotation among annotators. The proposed turn-taking prediction model adopts a two-step approach that detects TRP at first and then predicts a turn-taking event if TRP is detected. Experimental evaluations demonstrate that the proposed model improves the accuracy of turn-taking prediction by incorporating TRP detection.
The Co-Evaluation of Endometrial Karyorrhexis and Uterus Congestion after Erythropoietin Effect on Uterine Ischemia Reperfusion Injury

Aim: This study co-evaluated the 2 quoted histologic variables after erythropoietin (Epo) administration. The calculation was based on the results of 2 preliminary studies, each one evaluating a respective histologic variable of endometrial karyorrhexis (EK) or uterus congestion (UC) in an induced ischemia reperfusion (IR) animal experiment. Materials and methods: The 2 main experimental endpoints at which the EK and UC scores were evaluated the reperfusion 60th min (for A & C groups) and the reperfusion 120th min (for B & D groups). Specially, the groups A and B were processed without drugs, whereas the groups C and D after Epo administration. Results: The first preliminary study showed that Epo non-significantly reduced the EK scores by without lesions 0.2727273±0.17222171 (p-value=0.1102). The other preliminary study showed that Epo also non-significantly reduced the UC scores by without lesions 0.0090909±0.12689199 (p-value=0.9414). Both studies were co-estimated since they belong to the same experimental setting. This study co-evaluated the combined diagnostic values of both variables together. Conclusions: Epo has a non-significant recessing potency for these histological parameters at the “without lesions” grade 0.1409091±0.12249148 (p-values=0.2421) since they were coevaluated together.
A Comparative Study of Retail Banking Services of Sbi and Icici on Customer Perception Levels Leading to Customer Satisfaction with Special Reference to Hyderabad East District .

The banking sector is under a competitive trench exclusively, both the private and public bank managements are at a lure to provide healthier services to their customers in offering valid and efficient services. Customer satisfaction is a vital part of any organization to lead with profit maximization and its necessary to learn the key success factors impacting it and which leads to enhance real earning to the bank and in turn has proven crucial in order to increase customers in number. To develop and sustain business of a bank, they must ensure quality in customer service that can associate a cordial relationship with the customer. The present research article is an effort to measure satisfaction level of customers and identify the factors which promote the future growth of banking services of SBI and ICICI banks sited in Hyderabad. In banking sector, the whole range of activity and generation of income spins around the customer satisfaction, over the perception of bank serviceability.
Better Morphology Prediction for Better Speech Systems

Prediction of morphological forms is a well-studied problem and can lead to better speech systems either directly by rescoring models for correcting morphology, or indirectly by more accurate dialog systems with improved natural language generation and understanding. This includes both lemmatization, i.e. deriving the lemma or root word from a given surface form as well as morphological inflection, i.e. deriving surface forms from the lemma. We train and evaluate various languageagnostic end-to-end neural sequence-to-sequence models for these tasks and compare their effectiveness. We further augment our models with pronunciation information which is typically available in speech systems to further improve the accuracies of the same tasks. We present the results across both morphologically modest and rich languages to show robustness of our approach.
Practical Support Recovery using Sub-Nyquist Sampling

This paper presents a work in progress on the support recovery in wideband analog signals. The paper discusses an approach towards the spectrum sensing and carrier recovery of the frequency bands for cognitive radio (CR) operation. The purpose of this research is to design a simulation model and FPGA implementation of a method that detects the unused frequency regions using sub-Nyquist sampling and blind support recovery in sparse wideband analog signals for use in CR.
Equipamentos de tomografia computorizada em Portugal (1990-2011)

The use of Computed Tomography (CT) has increased every year since its introduction into medicine in 1972. Technological developments have made CT one of the most important imaging modalities in modern medicine. This importance is evidenced in the increasing demand and number of CT scanners installed in Portugal and worldwide. This review compiles the most recent national statistics from official publications on the number of CT scanners installed in Portugal and compares them with data available in international publications. We conclude that the number of CT scanners installed in Portugal exceeded the EU27 average by 61.5 % and the OECD average by 78.2 %, and that in 2011 there were 203 CT scanners installed in hospitals in Portugal, which equated to 19.23 CT scanners per million inhabitants.
physica status solidi Electronic Properties of Defective MoS 2 Monolayers Subject to Mechanical Deformations : A First-Principles Approach

1 Bremen Center for Computational Materials Science, Department of Physics, Bremen University, Am Fallturm 1, 28359 Bremen, Germany 2 Computational Materials Science Laboratory, Nano Research and Training Center, 1478934371 Tehran, Iran 3 Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, Department of Resource Ecology, Research Center Leipzig, Permoser 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany 4 Department of Physics & Earth Science, Jacobs University Bremen, 28759 Bremen, Germany
Simulation Analysis of Resonant Converters

The conflict between high frequency and switching losses is always observed. Power converters that operate near high frequencies suffers from high switching losses that results into low efficiency. There is one key to this ,which nothing but replacement of switch with the resonating switch. The paper spotlights the performance analysis for various resonant converters which helps in choosing an appropriate resonant converter pertaining to an application.
A Case of 3-D Small Pile Group Modeling in Stiff Clay Under Vertical Loading

The behavior of experimental pile groups is simulated by 3-D finite element modeling in this paper. The modeled results are compared to small-scale tests in a row of three closely spaced piles in the London clay. The tests aimed at investigating soil-pile-cap interaction and pile-group effect. It is shown that 3-D FE modeling can be regarded as an appropriate tool to predict settlements and load-transfer mechanisms in pile groups under working conditions, with a satisfactory match between simulated and measured results.
Using MAUS to Investigate Children’s Production of Lexical Stress

Contrasting strong versus weak syllables within words (lexical stress) is critical for effective communication in English. Yet acoustic data required to shed light on stress contrastivity are usually obtained via laborious manual methods, an obstacle to large-scale studies. The automatic alignment procedure in the Munich Automatic Segmentation tool (MAUS) [1] might reduce the manual effort required for acoustic analyses. However, there is little data on the reliability of MAUS when compared with manual measurements in analysing child speech. We report on a subsample taken from a large study designed to investigate lexical stress production in typically developing Australian English-speaking children. We compared manual acoustic measurements with measurements obtained via MAUS. The results from analysis of 200 word productions showed moderate to high correlations between the measurements. However, MAUS tended to overestimate the duration of weak vowels (but not strong vowels). Use of MAUS in combination with manual checks is recommended.
The role of lightness in color discrimination among adults with autism

There is a growing body of evidence that Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) entails diverse vision alterations, which, in turn, may lead to many behavioral symptoms of ASD. A handful of studies have focused on color vision, reporting unanimously atypical color discrimination in ASD. Despite its importance in visual perception, very little is known about the role of lightness in color vision in ASD. This study aimed to examine whether color discrimination in varying lightness is atypical among adults with ASD. A computer program with three test blocks differing in types of stimuli was specifically developed for carrying out this study. 15 adults with Asperger syndrome (AS) and 15 typically developing adults (TD) participated. Three of the participants in the former group were also diagnosed with ADHD. This study found (1) that the AS group performed as well as the TD group in most tested color categories; (2) several differences were found in the red color category in the AS group related to age; and (3) individuals with ADHD outperformed the others in the AS group in the blue color category. However, the analysis also showed a lack of consistency across the different types of stimuli and color categories. This thesis concludes with insights gained from the analysis which can be used to shed further light on the role of lightness in color perception
CycleGAN-Based Emotion Style Transfer as Data Augmentation for Speech Emotion Recognition

Cycle consistent adversarial networks (CycleGAN) have shown great success in image style transfer with unpaired datasets. Inspired by this, we investigate emotion style transfer to generate synthetic data, which aims at addressing the data scarcity problem in speech emotion recognition. Specifically, we propose a CycleGAN-based method to transfer feature vectors extracted from a large unlabeled speech corpus into synthetic features representing the given target emotions. We extend the CycleGAN framework with a classification loss which improves the discriminability of the generated data. To show the effectiveness of the proposed method, we present results for speech emotion recognition using the generated feature vectors as (i) augmentation of the training data, and (ii) as standalone training set. Our experimental results reveal that when utilizing synthetic feature vectors, the classification performance improves in within-corpus and cross-corpus evaluation.