Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Investigating domain-independent nlp techniques for precise target selection in video hyperlinking

Automatic generation of hyperlinks in multimedia video data is a subject with growing interest, as demonstrated by recent work undergone in the framework of the Search and Hyperlinking task within the Mediaeval benchmark initiative. In this paper, we compare NLP-based strategies for precise target selection in video hyperlinking exploiting speech material, with the goal of providing hyperlinks from a specified anchor to help information retrieval. We experimentally compare two approaches enabling to select short portions of videos which are relevant and possibly complementary with respect to the anchor. The first approach exploits a bipartite graph relating utterances and words to find the most relevant utterances. The second one uses explicit topic segmentation, whether hierarchical or not, to select the target segments. Experimental results are reported on the Mediaeval 2013 Search and Hyperlinking dataset which consists of BBC videos, demonstrating the interest of hierarchical topic segmentation for precise target selection.
Recognition of printed Amharic documents

In Africa, there are a number of languages with their own indigenous scripts. This paper presents an OCR for Amharic scripts. Amharic is the official and working language of Ethiopia. This is possibly the first attempt towards the development of an OCR system for Amharic. Research in the recognition of Amharic script faces major challenges due to (i) the use of more than 300 characters in writing and (ii) existence of a large set of visually similar characters. In this paper, we propose a two-stage feature extraction scheme using PCA and LDA, followed by a decision DAG classifier with SVMs as the nodes. Recognition results are presented to demonstrate the performance on the various printing variations (fonts, styles and sizes) and real-life degraded documents such as books, magazines and newspapers.
Mechanical, chemical and laser treatments of the implant surface in the presence of marginal bone loss around implants.

PURPOSE The objective of this review was to summarise current evidence with regard to the decontamination of implant surfaces by mechanical, chemical and physical methods in the presence of marginal bone loss arising from peri-implant infections. MATERIALS AND METHODS A PubMed search identified studies and publications dealing with 'peri-implantitis', 'treatment', 'surface decontamination', 'laser application' 'air-abrasive treatment' and 'photodynamic therapy'. Only studies in international peer-reviewed journals were selected for further evaluation; case reports were not included. RESULTS Several therapeutic approaches were identified such as mechanical treatment, antiseptics and air-abrasive treatment, photodynamic treatment, and laser applications. Since treatment of infected surfaces with air-powder +/- citric acid, gauze soaked with saline + citric acid or gauze soaked with chlorhexidine led to similar results in experimental studies, cotton pellets with saline may be adequate for cleaning micro-rough surfaces. Antimicrobial photodynamic therapy can effectively reduce the prevalence of pathogens on implant surfaces, but the clinical benefits remain unknown. The increase in temperature of the implant surface caused by the CO2 laser poses a risk. The Er:YAG laser is considered to possess the best properties for implant surface decontamination. In vivo, no single method of surface decontamination (chemical agents, air abrasives or lasers) was found to be superior. In several animal experiments, thorough cleaning of the infected implant surfaces and implantation of these previously infected devices into freshly prepared sites resulted in re-osseointegration, while currently there are no controlled clinical trials where re-osseointegration has been demonstrated in patients. CONCLUSIONS For decontamination of the infected implant surfaces, rinsing with saline (or cleaning with cotton pellets soaked with sterile saline) and air-abrasive treatment seem to work. Laser decontamination of the surface does not improve healing results. Non-surgical therapy of implants with peri-implantitis does not lead to successful treatment outcomes.
Performance Evaluation of Integrated Voice/Data Services Over GSM/EGPRS With Radio Resource Dimensioning

In this paper an analytical model for GSM/EGPRS is developed. It is based on the performance of M/M/C/co/N queueing system with FCFS queue discipline. This model is adapted to guarantee GPRS/EGPRS system constraint and Internet traffic (ON/OFF traffic) over a single cell. The interaction of voice calls with GPRS/EGPRS connections is studied. Different performance parameters are calculated which are blocking and delay probability, average throughput, average number of waiting users and queueing time. These performance parameters are obtained under different coding schemes (C-Sc) and three main radio resource strategies which are Complete Partitioning (CP), Partial Sharing (PS), and Complete Sharing (CS). The obtained results show that the (CP) strategy is better than the (PS) and (CS) strategies.
G‐CSF AND NEUTROPHIL CHEMOTAXIS

Spiekermann et al (1994) recently reported that the chemotaxis of neutrophils induced by recombinant human granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (rhuG-CSF) in patients undergoing chemotherapy and healthy test subjects was significantly decreased. We hereby report a similar finding in patients with the recovery phase of chemotherapy and following bone marrow transplantation. The study group included seven patients with acute myeloblastic and two with chronic granulocytic leukaemia and one with malignant lymphoma. Laboratory investigations were performed 19-2 1 d following induction chemotherapy and 13-24 d after completing conditions for bone marrow transplantation whilst on rhuG-CSF and at a time when neutrophil count exceeded 1 x 109/l. The time taken to reach this level was 8-19 d, with a mean of 13.5 d. All patients were restudied between 4 and 32 d after terminating rhuG-CSF therapy, Neutrophils from healthy donors ( n = 10) were studied simultaneously. Chemotaxis was measured in vitro using the agarose technique (Nelson et al, 1975). This was found to be significantly reduced in neutrophils collected during administration of the rhuG-CSF (1.9 7f0.74 rnm) when compared to those restudied after the therapy had been discontinued (2.88f0.51 mm; P < 0.001), with each patient acting as his own control. The latter values are essentially the same as normal volunteers (2.8f0.74 mm). Although factors such as aggressive chemotherapy and the presence of underlying infection may have contributed to the decrease in chemotaxis, it appears likely that this finding may be a consequence of the stimulatory peptide itself, as previously reported (Spiekermann et al, 1994). These findings may have clinical implications.
The effect of condensed tannins on the site of digestion of amino acids and other nutrients in sheep fed on Lotus corniculatus L

1. Sheep were used to evaluate the nutritional consequences of a low condensed-tannin concentration (22 g/kg dry matter (DM)) in lotus (Lotus corniculatus L.) (control group) compared with lotus given to sheep receiving intraruminal polyethylene glycol (PEG) infusion (PEG group). PEG selectively binds to tannins and prevents tannins from binding proteins. 2. DM intakes (1430 (SE 28) g/d) and digestibility of energy (663 (SE 4.5) kJ/MJ intake) were similar for both groups but the apparent digestion of nitrogen was lower in the control sheep (0.70) than in the PEG sheep (0.78; P < 0.001). 3. The proportion of N apparently digested before the abomasum (i.e. in the rumen) was lower (P < 0.05) in control sheep (0.12) than in PEG sheep (0.21; P < 0.05). Rumen ammonia concentrations were lower (P < 0.001) in control sheep than in PEG sheep. The proportion of neutral-detergent fibre (NDF) digested in the rumen was similar for both groups (0.48 (SE 0.012)) but less energy was digested in the rumen of the control (0.42) than of the PEG sheep (0.47; P < 0.05). 4. The flux of essential amino acids (EAA) through the abomasum of control sheep was 50% greater than that in PEG sheep; flux of non-essential amino acids (NEAA) was 14% higher in control than in PEG sheep. Apparent digestibility of EAA in the small intestine was similar for both treatments (0.67), but NEAA were less well digested in the control (0.55) than in the PEG sheep (0.69). 5. The presence of tannins in the control group increased net apparent absorption of threonine (57%), valine (89%), isoleucine (94%), leucine (30%), tyrosine (41%), phenylalanine (93%), histidine (90%) and lysine (59%), and reduced NEAA absorption by 10%, compared with PEG sheep.
Integrating SERVQUAL and Kano’s model into QFD for service excellence development

With increasing market competition, it is not sufficient for organizations to rely solely on continuous improvement in order to maintain and develop their competitive edge. There is a need to begin a strategic move towards innovation. This paper proposes an integrated approach involving SERVQUAL, Kano’s model, and quality function deployment. The approach aims to help organizations to evaluate customer satisfaction, to guide improvement efforts in strengthening their weak attributes, and to expedite the development of innovative services through the identification of attractive attributes and embedding them into future services. A case study is presented to evaluate the image of Singapore from the Indonesian tourists’ perspective. Several strong and weak attributes of Singapore tourism were identified and analyzed. Strategies to improve the weak attributes were identified.
Investigation of the surface potential of TiO2 (110) by frequency-modulation Kelvin probe force microscopy

We investigate the surface potential distribution on a TiO2 (110)-1 × 1 surface by Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM) and atom-dependent bias-distance spectroscopic mapping. The experimental results demonstrate that the local contact potential difference increases on twofold-coordinated oxygen sites, and decreases on OH defects and fivefold-coordinated Ti sites. We propose a qualitative model to explain the origin of the surface potential of TiO2 (110). We qualitatively calculate the surface potential induced by chemical potential and permanent surface dipole. The calculated results agree with our experimental ones. Therefore, we suggest that the surface potential of TiO2 (110) is dominated not only by the permanent surface dipole between the tip apex atom and surface, but also by the dipoles induced by the chemical interaction between the tip and sample. The KPFM technique demonstrate the possibility of investigation of the charge transfer phenomenon on TiO2 surface under gas conditions. It is useful for the elucidation of the mechanism of the catalytic reactions.
Androgen Responses to Stress: I. Psychoendocrine Relationships and Assessment of Androgen Activity

&NA; There is good evidence to support extention of the psychoendocrine model beyond the adrenal to include the hypothalamic‐pituitary‐gonadal system. However, androgen secretion and metabolism is more complex than that of cortisol. Total 17‐ketosteroids (17‐KS) have been used historically to estimate changes in androgen activity. Because they are derived from glucocorticoids, the adrenal androgens as well as testosterone, they are an unreliable index of changes in androgen activity. To properly evaluate alterations in testosterone secretion, which is the most potent of androgens, it is best to measure blood or urinary production rates. It is also possible to measure the excretion of testosterone glucuronide to evaluate the possible inhibition of testosterone secretion during exposure to potential stress.
CONSTRUCTION AND VALIDATION OF A HUMAN RESOURCE AUDIT SCALE IN SELECTED DELUXE HOTELS IN THE PHILIPPINES

This study investigated the current practices of Philippine deluxe hotels and aimed to construct a new Human Resource (HR) Audit Scale, based on the best practices of HR management in the Philippine hospitality industry. To achieve this, employees from deluxe hotels across the Philippines were interviewed regarding the present state of their work place’s HR practices. This led to the development of a preliminary HR audit questionnaire composed of 50 items that identified the best practices among the following HR management areas: Recruitment and Selection, Compensation and Benefits, Training and Development, Performance Management and Employee Engagement. A total of 300 deluxe hotel employees were then surveyed using this questionnaire to validate and optimize its contents. Cronbach’s Alpha and Exploratory Factor Analysis was utilized to examine the survey data, and its results suggested that the 50 item questionnaire can be reduced to an adjusted 25 item HR scale. This improved scale, through association and modeling analyses of the previous survey data, accounts to 73% of the variance of the answers of respondents. These results reveal that the newly developed 25-item HR Audit Scale is valid and reliable.
Implementing Corporate Sustainable Development: A Case of an SME from India

Studies have repeatedly illustrated how institutions struggle to implement sustainable development models, even when their formal claims indicate strict adoption of principles of sustainable development (Sean Markey, 2010). Relevance of innovative and feasible projects for sustainable development is escalating rapidly among the business community (Brower, 2011). The efforts of many organizations to recognize sustainable development principles as an important community vision is encouraging, but only very few of them have proved themselves in successfully translating their goals into actionable strategies (Sean Markey, 2010). Extra Weave Pvt. Ltd, a small and medium enterprise (SME) in Allapuzha district of the state of Kerala, India, stands out from the crowd in its remarkable achievements in sustainability, overcoming initial challenges and issues in implementation of a sound sustainability development model. This article is a case study of the implementation issues of sustainable development practices at Extra Weave Pvt. Ltd. The study focuses on how communication plays a role in the implementation of sustainable development practices in Extra Weave. The study also discusses how soft system methodology (SSM) was used to identify the issues in implementation and facilitate for appropriate solutions.
The Effects of Corporate Social Responsibility and Brand Image on Corporate Favorableness and Purchase Intention: Focused on LH

기업의 지속가능경영을 위해서 기업의 사회적 책임의 중요성이 최근 더욱 커지고 있다. 본 연구의 목적은 일반기업을 대상으로 한 선행연구들에서 확인된 기업의 CSR 활동의 효과가 공기업에서도 동일하게 나타나는지 실증분석을 통해 알아보고자 한다. 이를 위해 독립변수로 'CSR 활동'과 '브랜드 이미지'를 설정하고, 종속변수로 '기업호감도'와 '구매의도'를 설정하였다. 실증분석 결과 'CSR 활동' ${\rightarrow}$ '기업호감도', 'CSR 활동' ${\rightarrow}$ '구매의도' 및 '브랜드 이미지' ${\rightarrow}$ '기업호감도', '브랜드 이미지' ${\rightarrow}$ '구매의도'의 관계에서 모두 유의한 인과관계를 보였다. 이로써 제품 관련 브랜드 이미지가 제품 구매의도에 긍정적 영향을 미치는 것과 마찬가지로 CSR 활동이 기업의 전반적 이미지를 향상시킬 뿐 아니라 제품 구매의도에도 긍정적 영향을 미치고 있음을 알 수 있다. 【The importance of corporate social responsibility has been more highlighted recently for the sustainable management of the company. The purpose of this study is to empirically find out if the effects of CSR activities on public corporation are shown as same as they are on the private companies which have been verified in the previous studies. We set 'CSR activities' and 'Brand Image' to the independent variables and 'Corporate favorableness' and 'Purchase intention' to the dependent variables. The empirical analysis results are as follows. We have found that high positive causal relations are shown in 'CSR activities' ${\rightarrow}$ 'Corporate favorableness', 'CSR activities' ${\rightarrow}$ 'Purchase intention' and 'Brand image' ${\rightarrow}$ 'Corporate favorableness', 'Brand image' ${\rightarrow}$ 'Purchase intention'. Therefore just as product related 'Brand image' influences positively on purchase intention, the CSR activities have positive influence on product purchase intention and on the whole corporate image as well. 】
EFFECTIVE EQUATIONS ON THE 3-BRANE WORLD FROM TYPE IIB STRING

The effective field equations on a 3-brane are established considering the massless bosonic sector of the type IIB string compactified on S5. The covariant embedding formalism in a space endowed with Z2-symmetry is applied. Recently the derivation of the effective equations on the 3-brane, where only gravity penetrates in the bulk was performed by Shiromizu, Maeda, and Sasaki. We extend this approach to the situation when the bulk contains a set of fields given by the type IIB string. The notion of the Einstein–Cartan space is considered in order to avoid extra suppositions about the embedding of these fields. The interactions between the brane and the bulk fields are understood in a purely geometric way, which fixes the form of these interactions. Finally, we present the dynamically equivalent effective equations expressed completely in Riemannian terms and make conclusions.
Robust Stereo Feature Descriptor for Visual Odometry

In this paper, we propose a simple way to utilize stereo camera data to improve feature descriptors. Computer vision algorithms that use a stereo camera require some calculations of 3D information. We leverage this pre-calculated information to improve feature descriptor algorithms. We use the 3D feature information to estimate the scale of each feature. This way, each feature descriptor will be more robust to scale change without significant computations. In addition, we use stereo images to construct the descriptor vector. The SIFT and FREAK descriptors are used to evaluate the proposed method. The scale normalization technique in feature tracking test improves the standard SIFT by 8.75% and improves the standard FREAK by 28.65%. We also use a simple visual odometry algorithm and test it on the KITTI datasets. The stereo FREAK descriptor raises the number of inlier matches by 19% and consequently improves the accuracy of visual odometry by 23%.
Pricing Electronic Journals

A fundamental problem facing publishers is how to recover costs. This is a problem for all publishers, but is of special significance to publishers of digital documents. This is because a basic characteristic of digital documents is that it is very costly to produce the first copy, but quite inexpensive to produce subsequent copies. Hence ``recovering the first copy costs'' takes on a special significance in digital media.
A Theoretical Analysis of the Enterprise Cooperation and Innovation within Industrial Clusters

Clusters contribute to reducing the transaction cost of cooperative innovation and obtaining cooperating partners' recessive knowledge.The purposes of cooperative innovation are to solve the problem of technical exteriority,to share the cost and risk of research and development,to obtain partners' silent knowledge,to realize technology transfer,to obtain huge domestic and international market share and so on.The game analysis of cooperative innovation indicates that if the enterprise wants to form a cooperative innovation alliance,this alliance must satisfy the ultra additivity.Otherwise,its members do not have the motive to form the alliance.The already formed alliance will face the threat of breakup.A reasonable benefit distribution plan is the foundation of cooperative innovation.This plan is a result of bargaining among all parties.
Infertility revisited: the state of the art today and tomorrow. The ESHRE Capri Workshop. European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology.

Fertility: Based on the distribution of fecundity observed in a 'normal' population, normal fertility was denned by the ESHRE Group as achieving a pregnancy within 2 years by regular coital exposure. Sterility, subfertility, infertility: Those couples who do not achieve a pregnancy within 2 years include the sterile members of the population, for whom there is no possibility of natural pregnancy, and the remainder who are subfertile. Together, these comprise the infertile population. The term sterile may refer to either the male or the female, whereas the term subfertile refers to the couple. Fecundability, fecundity: Fecundability is the probability of achieving a pregnancy within one menstrual cycle. Fecundity is the ability to achieve a live birth from one cycle's exposure to the risk of pregnancy.
Driving Distributors’ Satisfaction in Multilevel Marketing (MLM) Companies

The purpose of this study is to identify the major factors that will influence the satisfaction of distributors towards multilevel marketing (MLM) companies in Malaysia. The five antecedents investigated are: up-line support, methods of diffusing business opportunity, perceived quality of recruiting process, perceived quality of training program and perception of products/services. A proposed conceptual framework that serves as the foundation in this research is adopted from Delgado (2000), with the inclusion of an additional independent variable, perception of products and services (Osei, Katsner & Narteh, 2014). Results from the study indicate that among the five factors, only the perceived quality of training program has no significant impact on distributors satisfaction. Method of diffusing business opportunity, perceived quality of recruiting process, up-line support and perception on products/services are shown to have positive impact on distributors satisfaction.
Using Neural Networks for Modeling and Representing Natural Languages

Artificial neural networks are powerful statistical models that have been shown to provide excellent results in a number of domains. In the last few years, the computer vision and automatic speech recognition communities have been heavily influenced by these techniques. Applications to problems that involve natural language, such as machine translation or computational semantics, are becoming mainstream in the NLP research. This tutorial aims to introduce the basic concepts and provide intuitive understanding of neural networks, including the very popular field of deep learning. This should help the researchers who are entering this field to quickly understand the major tricks of the trade. The structure of the tutorial is as follows:
Supply chain risk management: Understanding the business requirements from a practitioner perspective

– This paper seeks to understand business requirements for supply chain risk management (SCRM) from a practitioner perspective. , – Based on the findings from an exploratory quantitative survey and qualitative focus group discussions with supply chain managers, some issues of SCRM are derived and structured along the three conceptual levels of “philosophy”, “principles” and “processes”. , – The survey showed that 44 per cent of all eight responding companies expect the vulnerability of their supply chains to increase in the next five years. However, the concept of SCRM is still in its infancy. , – The paper contributes to our knowledge on SCRM by presenting the business requirements from a practitioner perspective and by deriving a structure for an integrated approach to SCRM which can guide further research.