Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Track Record of Financial Institutions in Assisting the Poor in Asia

A variety of institutional forms of microfinance are being introduced in Asia including by the ADB-and financial institutions pursue different objectives, so it is difficult to assess how well microfinance is actually contributing to poverty alleviation. There is little systematic data available on which to make global or regional generalizations. The objective of this paper is to provide some insights into how well the industry is performing by summarizing and evaluating key studies and data for the region.
On-Site Sequencing "Anaerobic- Anoxic- Aerobic" Biological Process For Wastewater Reuse

The increasing scarcity of water around the world has become more evident at the beginning of this century. Management of this valuable resource is not only an environmental issue, it is also an important economic issue and its management has significant social implications. Moreover, the predicted decreases in annual rainfall around Australia, threatening the image of providing a sustainable water source for a majority of its population. The solution partly lies through the promotion of water conservation strategies involving wastewater recycling and reuse. A pilot scale 5-stage wastewater treatment system was investigated in regards to its feasibility for removing Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD5), Total Suspended Solids (TSS), Turbidity, Total Kjeldahl Nitrogen (TKN), Ammonia Nitrogen (NH3-N), Nitrate Nitrogen (N 03-N), Organic Nitrogen (Org-N) and Total Phosphorus (TP) for the period of one year from Jan.2004 to Dec. 2004. The system readily reduced the concentration of BOD5 from average 189 mg/L to 5 mg/L (removal rate of 94%), TSS from average 216 mg/L to 3 mg/L (removal rate of 97%) and Turbidity from average 105 NTU to 2 NTU (removal rate of 96%). The removal rate for nitrogen and phosphorus was also quite satisfactory and this system was capable of reducing the Total Nitrogen (TN) from average of 41 mg/L to 5 mg/L (removal rate of 86% ) and TP from average of 9 mg/L to 2 mg/L (removal rate of 81%).
REPRESENTATIONS IN MATEMATICS EDUCATION: AN ONTO-SEMIOTIC APPROACH

Research in didactics of mathematics has shown the importance that representations have in teaching and learning processes as well as the complexity of factors related to them. Particularly, one of the central open questions that the use of representations poses is the nature and diversity of objects that carry out the role of representation and of the objects represented. The objective of this article is to show how the notion of semiotic function and mathematics ontology elaborated by the ontosemiotic approach of mathematics knowledge, enables us to face such a problem, by generalizing the notion of representation and by integrating different theoretical notions used to describe mathematics cognition.c
Optimizing the Area Under the ROC Curve in Multilayer Perceptron-based Classifiers

This paper proposes a method to adapt existing multilayer perceptron (MLP) training algorithms for optimizing the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), in binary classification tasks. It is known that error rate minimization does not necessarily yield to optimal AUC and, rather than developing new MLP training algorithms for AUC optimization, we reuse the vast experience encoded into existing algorithms by replacing the error metrics used to guide their training processes, with a novel defined AUC loss function, leaving unmodified their core logic. The new method was evaluated over 2000 MLP configurations, using four different training algorithms (backpropagation, resilient propagation, simulated annealing and genetic algorithms) in 12 binary datasets from the UCI repository. AUC was improved in 5.86% in average and, in addition, the proposed definition preserves interesting properties of other error metrics. An efficient AUC calculation procedure was also developed to ensure the method remains computationally affordable.
Finding conjectures in graph theory with AutoGraphiX

Graph theoretical heuristics are used extensively in many fields to solve approximately large scale optimization problems. Graph theoretical heuristics can also be used to advance graph theory per se, i.e., to refute, find, corroborate, prove or give ideas of proof of conjectures on graph invariants, i.e., numerical quantities that not depend on vertex or edge labeling. In this paper, we present and discuss the AutoGraphiX system which finds automatically or in some cases, interactively conjectures in graph theory. We consider in particular conjectures on pairs of a set of 20 graph invariants, which gives rise to 1520 cases.
Food Safety Information and Food Demand – Effects of Temporary and Permanent News /доклад на 10 конгрессе ЕААЕ, Exploring Diversity in the European Agri-Food System, Zaragoza, Spain, 28-31 August 2002

This paper examines the cross-impacts of food safety news concerning one product on the demand for another product, using the Danish demand for pasteurized eggs versus shell eggs as an illustrative case. The study identifies news with a temporary impact and news with a permanent impact on consumers’ food demand behavior. The techniques used to identify the permanent versus temporary news are recursive estimation and parameter stability. Whereas “permanent” news is identified to be represented by a specific individual event, “temporary” news concerning salmonella in eggs is aggregated into a news-index variable. Both temporary and permanent news concerning salmonella in shell eggs appear to have significant positive impacts on the demand for pasteurized eggs. The model is estimated as an Error Correction Model. Consumers are found to adjust quite rapidly to both temporary and permanent news. Both the composition of egg consumption accounted as mean budget shares varies across socio-demographic household groups as well as the impact of the considered permanent news.
Diversification with Idiosyncratic Credit Spreads: A Pooled Estimation on Heterogeneous Panels

Following the method of Pesaran, Shin and Smith (1999), this study extends the results of Sun, Lin and Nieh (2007) to investigate the risk diversification issue of individual corporate bonds in portfolios. This is one of the few studies on the decomposition of individual corporate yield spreads. Specifically we adopt the robust econometric method of ARDL-based Pooled Mean Group cointegration analysis on panels of corporate bond data which yields results with rich economic implications for fixed income portfolio management. Empirical decomposition of yield spreads indicates, on the individual corporate bond level, that the idiosyncratic component serves as a good vehicle for risk diversification while considering long run market behavior. In the long run systematic credit spreads are found to be consistent with the agency hypothesis where higher interest rate raises endogenous default risk and it is particularly meaningful for the Taiwanese capital market. Option hypothesis of the structural approach is still valid in the short run in predicting yield spreads to be inversely related to interest rate. Our findings contribute in general to the risk practice of bond portfolio diversification. In particular, the pooled estimation we conducted proves to be superior in working with individual corporate bond data panels and helps related studies in the area.
Effect of supplementary cementitious materials on the properties of pervious concrete with fixed porosity

ABSTRACT Pervious concrete is significantly different to that of conventional concrete as it has the ability to allow water to percolate through it large sized pores. This unique ability presents many environmental benefits such as minimising storm water run-off, recharging groundwater and reducing the heat absorption in the pavement. This paper reports the results of an experimental investigation into the use of supplementary cementitious materials on the properties of pervious concrete (compressive strength, stiffness and water permeability) having the porosity of about 20%. The investigation considered four mixes with the following combinations of cement and supplementary cementitious materials, by weight proportion: (a) 100% cement; (b) 75% cement and 25% fly ash; (c) 92.6% cement and 7.4% silica fume; and (d) 84.2% cement, 8.2% fly ash and 7.6% silica fume. The results showed that the cement replacements with supplementary cementitious materials had improved the compressive strength, reduced modulus of elasticity and decreased the water permeability of pervious concrete with fixed porosity.
OPTIMIZATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF GREEN SYNTHESIZED SILVER NANOPARTICLES AND ITS INHIBITORY ACTIVITY AGAINST BIOFILM FORMING BACTERIAL PATHOGENS

In the present study, antibacterial activity of silver nanoparticles synthesized from entophytic fungi extracts were analysed against biofilm forming bacteria include the Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Proteus mirabilis, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolated from clinical specimens. Therefore, we tried to establish a combination of medicinal and nanotechnology possibly with the field of medicine for the development of antibacterial agents against these strains. The nanoparticles were characterized by UV–visible spectroscopy, the presented and capped molecules of proteins with nanoparticles was confirmed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD). UV–visible studies display an absorption band at 420 nm due to surface Plasmon resonance (SPR) of the silver nanoparticles. The intra cellular synthesized silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) size 15-35 nm was determination of X-ray diffraction (XRD) crystal calculation, antimicrobial activity higher than the standard antibiotic. The nanoparticle treated with isolated bacteria as result macromolecule of proteins denatures and oozing out the cells and measure the Bradford method. The nanoparticle treated bacterial cells were compared to negative control more amount of protein released. The nano size establishing the silver nanoparticles directly bind with DNA of the pathogenic bacterial strains most important to higher antimicrobial activity.
Title Reconfiguration of Pan-tilt-zoom Cameras

of Thesis This dissertation describes methods and improvements on controlling Pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras for human tracking. It begins by defining the control of PTZ cameras as a decision problem and formulating the corresponding problem as a Bayesian risk minimization. Further improvements are developed by employing historical information, multiple time-step estimations and online decision making for multiple cameras. Topics covered include multiple-view registration, ground plane modeling by planar homographies, occupancy map computation, fluid simulation, Bayesian risk formulation, variable time-step decision making using Dynamic Programming and comparative evaluation of PTZ human tracking methods. Finally, a simple yet necessary procedure to test the developed PTZ camera reconfiguration method is proposed. Due to the nature of PTZ camera configuration methods, experiments are not repeatable and competing methods cannot be evaluated on real data. This dissertation provides a way for doing repeatable experiments on real data with competing PTZ cameras reconfiguration methods. The devised method is compared against state-of-the-art methods from the PTZ camera reconfiguration literature and is shown to outperform them on real data.
A Distributed Community-based Routing Algorithms for Opportunistic Networks

According to the problem that there are redundant control overheads in community partitioning phase and the large transmission delay and the low success rate in transmission phase in the community-based opportunistic network, we propose EDCRA (Efficient Distributed Community-based Routing Algorithms for opportunistic networks). By distinguishing the community of the encounter node is single-node community or multi-node community, EDCRA simplify the interaction flow of the encounter node merging into other community in the community partitioning phase. And through the efficient cross-layer listening mechanism, the node carrying message find eligible forwarding nodes in its neighbor nodes in the data transmission phase, so that the message can be forwarded to the destination community more efficiently. Simulation results show that the performance of EDCRA algorithm is higher than that of CR and Bubble Rap in terms of control overhead, average end-to-end delay and transmission success rate.
FRP-Confinement of Hollow Concrete Cylinders and Prisms

Synopsis: The use of hollow-core reinforced concrete (RC) sections for bridge piers has become a popular engineering practice to obtain a reduction of the self-weight (especially in seismic zones) and a better structural efficiency in terms of the strength/ mass and stiffness/mass ratios. In contrast to this popularity in practice, scientific studies on the mechanical behavior of such structural elements are limited. The use of Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) materials for external confinement of hollow core columns and piers is an almost unknown field at the moment. The research work presented herein aims at evaluating the influence of various experimental parameters on the effectiveness of FRP jackets applied to hollow concrete columns. Hollow-core concrete prisms and cylinders were tested under uniaxial compression to study the stress-strain relationship before and after FRP jacketing. A range of experimental parameters were investigated: different concrete strength, type of fibers, number of wrap layers, column shape and dimensions, and for square and rectangular sections, the corner radius and the cross-sectional aspect ratio. Axial strain was measured by LVDTs, while strains in the fibers were recorded by electrical strain gauges. Circular columns wrapped with FRP showed a significant increase in terms of both strength and ultimate displacements. Results obtained by laboratory tests were close to those recorded for FRP-confined concrete, which means that the increase in ultimate load was found to be comparable to that found in full circular sections. Rectangular columns showed a lower increase in ultimate capacity, compared to circular sections, even if the results related to ultimate axial displacement encourage adopting this technique for seismic retrofit to fulfill higher ductility requirements in both prismatic and cylindrical columns.
Providing Multilinguality to Ontologies: An Overview

Ontologies play a decisive role in the development of the Semantic Web, since they are able to model the knowledge of a specific domain in a machine readable way. However, the need to provide multilinguality to ontologies poses new challenges in the Ontology Engineering research. In this paper we attempt to offer an overview of available strategies for the localizing process of lexical resources and ontologies. Detailed steps in the localizing process of the multilingual lexicon EuroWordNet, the multilingual ontology GENOMA-KB, and the ontology translation software LabelTranslator are presented with the aim of illustrating three different localization approaches, their main characteristics and limitations
Impact of solar radiation on the biological removal of dimethylsulfoniopropionate and dimethylsulfide in marine surface waters

The effect of natural surface solar radiation on the biological removal of dimethylsulfo- niopropionate (DMSP) and dimethylsulfide (DMS) was determined and compared to the photochem- ical removal of DMSP and DMS. Natural bacterial assemblages (0.8 µm filtered seawater) from the northern Adriatic Sea and the coastal North Sea were exposed to surface solar radiation and incu- bated in the dark; the DMSP and DMS concentrations were measured concurrently. Photochemical removal rates were determined in 0.2 µm filtered seawater. Biological removal of DMSP in the light was 62 ± 14% lower than the biological removal rate obtained in the dark. High spatial and temporal variability in the biological removal rates was observed for the dark treatments, as well as for its sen- sivity to solar radiation, with rates for light treatments varying from 29 to 81% of those in the dark. The DMSP concentration above which no further increase of the biological DMSP removal rate was observed was substantially lower in the light treatments (~30 nM) than in the dark treatments (>80 nM). UV-B radiation only accounted for a minor inhibitory effect (~15% of total inhibition), whereas UV-A and PAR (photosynthetically active radiation) both contributed ~42% of total inhibi- tion. Biological DMS removal under solar radiation was only ~40 ± 14% of the biological DMS removal in the dark. Under surface solar radiation, photochemical removal was always higher than the dark biological removal. Our results indicate therefore, that the DMSP and DMS dynamics in the oceanic surface waters are severely influenced by solar radiation due to the partial inhibition of the microbial consortia responsible for DMSP and DMS turnover.
Atomic-Scale Finite Element Method for Analyzing the Sensitivity of Graphyne-Based Resonators

An atomic-scale finite element method was applied to analyze the sensitivities of α-, β-, γ-, and 6,6,12-graphyne-based resonators in mass detection under different boundary conditions. These sensitivities are then compared with that of a graphene-based resonator obtained in a previous study. According to the analysis results, among the graphyne-based resonators, the α type shows the highest sensitivity, while the γ type shows the lowest. In addition, the sensitivity decreases as the resonator size increases. We also find that the location of the attached mass has a significant effect on the sensitivity of the γ-graphyne-based resonators with different attached masses. The α-graphyne-based resonator with a small attached mass is also sensitive to change in location. However, the situation is different for a large attached mass. This study is significant for the future design and application of a graphyne-based resonator with high sensitivity.
Static and Dynamic Strain Monitoring of Reinforced Concrete Components through Embedded Carbon Nanotube Cement-Based Sensors

The paper presents a study on the use of cement-based sensors doped with carbon nanotubes as embedded smart sensors for static and dynamic strain monitoring of reinforced concrete (RC) elements. Such novel sensors can be used for the monitoring of civil infrastructures. Because they are fabricated from a structural material and are easy to utilize, these sensors can be integrated into structural elements for monitoring of different types of constructions during their service life. Despite the scientific attention that such sensors have received in recent years, further research is needed to understand (i) the repeatability and accuracy of sensors’ behavior over a meaningful number of sensors, (ii) testing configurations and calibration methods, and (iii) the sensors’ ability to provide static and dynamic strain measurements when actually embedded in RC elements. To address these research needs, this paper presents a preliminary characterization of the self-sensing capabilities and the dynamic properties of a meaningful number of cement-based sensors and studies their application as embedded sensors in a full-scale RC beam. Results from electrical and electromechanical tests conducted on small and full-scale specimens using different electrical measurement methods confirm that smart cement-based sensors show promise for both static and vibration-based structural health monitoring applications of concrete elements but that calibration of each sensor seems to be necessary.
Role of Information Technology in Implementation of Telemedicine System

Introduction: Telemedicine is the wide description of providing medical and healthcare services by means of telecommunications. Methodology: A search of electronic databases including Medline, Excerpta Medica Database (EMBASE), Cochrane, and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) for relevant papers was performed. All studies addressing the use of telemedicine in emergency medical or pre-hospital care setting were included. Out of a total of 1,230 abstracts that were reviewed, result of 39 articles and 3 books and author 's experiences were gathered. Findings:Technologies do not only assist medical practitioners and patients receiving treatment, they also benefit perfectly healthy people by providing a wide range of general health assessments. Conclusion: telemedicine is medical services through the use of telecommunications.
Image Matching Based on Local Phase Quantization Applied for Measuring the Tensile Properties of High Elongation Materials

In recent years, high elongation materials are widely used. Therefore, it is important to investigate the tensile properties of high elongation materials for engineering applications. Video extensometer is equipment for measuring the materials’ tensile properties. It uses image processing technology to match data points and measures the actual deformation. However, when measuring high elongation materials, motion blur will appear on the collected images, which can affect the accuracy of image matching. In this paper, we proposed an image matching method which is based on Local Phase Quantization (LPQ) features to reduce the interference of the motion blur and improve the accuracy of the image matching algorithms as well. The experimental results on simulations show that the proposed initialization method is sufficiently accurate to enable the correct convergence of the subsequent optimization in the presence of motion blur. The experiment of uniaxial tensile also verifies the accuracy and robustness of the method.
Improving the Quality of Geological Structure Interpretation 1 of Magnetic Data : An Advanced Data Analytics Approach 2 3

12 Geological structures are recognisable as discontinuities within magnetic geophysical 13 surveys, typically as linear features. However, their interpretation is a challenging task in a 14 dataset with abundant complex geophysical signatures representing subsurface geology, 15 leading to significant variations in interpretation outcomes amongst, and within, individual 16 interpreters. Previously, numerous computational methods were developed to enhance and 17 delineate lineaments as indicators for geological structures. While these methods provide 18 rapid and objective analysis, selection and geological classification of the detected lineaments 19 for structure mapping is in the hands of interpreters through a time consuming process. This 20 paper presents new ways of assisting magnetic data interpretation, with a specific aim to 21 improve the confidence of structural interpretation through feature evidence provided by 22 automated lineament detection. The proposed methods produce quantitative measures of 23 feature evidence on interpreted structures and interactive visualisation to quickly assess and 24 modify structural mapping. Automated lineament detection algorithms find the feature 25 strengths of ridges, valleys and edges within data by analysing their local frequencies. Ridges 26 and valleys are positive and negative line-like features detected by the phase symmetry 27 algorithm which finds locations where local frequency components are at their extremum, the 28 most symmetric point in their cycle. Edge features are detected by the phase congruency 29 algorithm which finds locations where local frequency components are in phase. Their 30 outputs are used as feature evidence through interactive visualisation to drive data evidenced 31 interpretation. 32 Our experiment uses magnetic data and structural interpretation from the west Kimberley 33 region in northern Western Australia to demonstrate the use of automated analysis outputs to 34 quantitatively measure the data evidence on interpreted structures and graphically evaluate 35 the quality of interpretation. 36