Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Use of Logical Connectors by Arab EFL University Students : A Performance Analysis

Adopting a performance analysis approach, this stud y focuses on EFL learners' use of conjunctions. A total of 60 essays written by Arabi c-speaking second-year university English majors were scrutinized. Out of 2936 logical connec tors used, 2672 (91%) were judged to be correct, a finding which runs counter to those repo ted by other researchers. The correct production of most of the connectors was most proba bly due to systematic form-focused instruction, practice and feedback since they are c losed-class words and most of them have equivalents in Arabic. Thus, this study constitutes a departure from the previous studies on cohesion in terms of methodology and findings. A th ree-dimensional analysis of the 264 errors detected indicated that they were mostly sel ection and insertion errors committed for interlingual and intralingual reasons. Form-focused instruction can be made more effective and learner-centered by taking into account the cog nitive strategies underlying the most common errors. Further rigorous performance analyse s are needed in other aspects of cohesion before passing single-minded judgments abo ut EFL students' competence in the use of cohesive devices based on unreliable data collec ti n tools such as perception questionnaires, predictive contrastive analysis, re cognition tests and teacher-imposed composition topics.
mHealth for image-based diagnostics of acute burns in resource-poor settings: studies on the role of experts and the accuracy of their assessments

ABSTRACT Diagnostic assistance using mobile technology is instrumental to timely and adequate care in resource-scarce settings, particularly for acute burns. Little is known, however, as regards to how remote diagnostic consultation in burns affects the work process. This article reviews a doctoral thesis on this topic based on four studies conducted in the Western Cape, South Africa prior to and in a very early phase of the implementation of an app for burn remote diagnostic assistance. The aim was to increase knowledge on how remote diagnostic assistance for burn injuries can influence the role and work of medical experts in a resource-poor setting. The congruence model was used as a reference framework to study the ‘input’ (study 1), ‘tasks’ (studies 2 and 3) and ‘people’ (study 4) involved. The results show higher burn incidence in young children (75.4 per 10 000) and gender differences primarily among adults. The quality of images was considered by experts as better when viewed on smartphones and tablets than on computers. The accuracy of burn size assessments was high overall but low for burn depth (ICC = 0.82 and 0.53 respectively). Experts described four positions pertaining to remote consultations: clinical specialist, gatekeeper, mentor and educator. They perceived images as improving accuracy of consultation and stressed the need for verbal communication among clinicians during critical situations. In conclusion, experts are satisfied with the quality of images seen on handheld devices and can accurately assess burn size using these, yet burn depth assessment is more challenging without additional clinical information. mHealth for diagnostic assistance can benefit current image-based consultation by systematising information quality, introducing enhanced security and improved access to experts. Remaining challenges include the necessity of verbal communication in some instances and replacing existing informal organisational practices.
THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE YOUTH: THE GHANAIAN PERSPECTIVE

Today's world is a global village. Everyone is connected to one another in this vast network generated by the Internet. As social media sites continue to grow in popularity it promises a lot for the modern youth. Social media has been widely adopted, with high enthusiasm among youth around the world. With very few studies focusing on youth social media use in Ghana there is wide open array of work to be done. Based on the findings of several research studies in social media area, it has been found that these Social networking sites are having a great impact on the lives of young people. Also since most of the research works have been carried out in other countries, it was found necessary and important to carry out a study in Ghana on the impact of Social Media on the youth. The main objectives of this study were to investigate the extent of social media use and the purposes, access and impact of its use by the young people in Ghana. Two hundred youth aged between 15-25 participated in the study.
Cervical Spinal Injuries and Risk Assessment

As of mid 2001, out of the 34000 spinal injuries that took place in the previous year, over half (55%) were cervical spine injuries [18]. Additionally, out of all the cervical spinal injuries incurred by patients in the United States every year, 15% of those injuries are fatal [7]. Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for persons under 45 years of age, and the number one cause of head and spinal cord injury [1]. This study compiles and analyzes data that may be used to assess risk of cervical injury.
Lotus roudairei Bonnet and taxonomic relationships between African and North American species of the tribe Loteae (Papilionaceae)

Une analyse morphologique comparative de Lotus roudairei nord-ouest-africain, Lotus sect. Simpeteria nord-americain et Lotus sect. Microlotus (= gen. Acmispon s. str.) americain a ete realisee. En partant des donnees obtenues, il apparait que ces 3 taxons ne peuvent pas former un genre (ou sous-genre) particulier, Acmispon sensu P. LASSEN (1986). Une section nouvelle Pseudosimpeteria, avec une seule espece L. roudairei, est decrite dans le genre Lotus subgen. Lotus, repandu dans l'Ancien Monde. Les relations entre les Loteae de l'Ancien Monde et ceux du Nouveau Monde sont brievement discutees.
LARGE-SCALE PARALLEL MULTIBODY DYNAMICS WITH FRICTIONAL CONTACT ON THE GPU

In the context of simulating the frictional contact dynamics of large systems of rigid bodies, this paper reviews a novel method for solving large cone complementarity problems by means of a fixed-point iteration algorithm. The method is an extension of the Gauss-Seidel and Gauss-Jacobi methods with overrelaxation for symmetric convex linear complementarity problems. Convergent under fairly standard assumptions, the method is implemented in a parallel framework by using a single instruction multiple data (SIMD) computation paradigm promoted by the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) library for graphical processing unit (GPU) programming. The framework is anticipated to become a viable tool for investigating the dynamics of complex systems such as ground vehicles running on sand, powder composites, and granular material flow.Copyright © 2008 by ASME
Model Selection Methods for Linear Regression and Phylogenetic Reconstruction

Model selection is the task of selecting from a collection of alternative explanations (often probabilistic models) the one that is best suited for a given data set. This thesis studies model selection methods for two domains, linear regression and phylogenetic reconstruction, focusing particularly on situations where the amount of data available is either small or very large. In linear regression, the thesis concentrates on sequential methods for selecting a subset of the variables present in the data. A major result presented in the thesis is a proof that the Sequentially Normalized Least Squares (SNLS) method is consistent, that is, if the correct answer (i.e., the so-called true model) exists, then the method will find it with probability that approaches one as the amount of data increases. The thesis also introduces a new sequential model selection method that is an intermediate form between SNLS and the Predictive Least Squares (PLS) method. In addition, the thesis shows how these methods may be used to enhance a novel algorithm for removing noise from images. For phylogenetic reconstruction, that is, the task of inferring ancestral relations from genetic data, the thesis concentrates on the Maximum Parsimony (MP) approach that tries to find the phylogeny (family tree) which minimizes the number of evolutionary changes required. The thesis provides values for various numerical indicators that can be used to assess how much
Factor Endowments and Institutional Specialization : Why Countries Develop Different Forms of Corruption ?

Do countries specialize institutionally? A burgeoning literature investigates links between economic specialization and institutions, arguing that countries possess institutional comparative advantages (Treffler and Nunn 2013). This work builds on theory arguing that institutions provide the incentive structure for economic activities (North 1990), distribute economic resources (Acemoglu and Robinson 2005), or determine business opportunities (Hall and Soskice 2001). In these arguments, institutions do not only shape economic activity; economic and institutional environment coevolve in a symbiotic relationship. Institutions influence which activities are developed, while emergence of specialized organizations, technology, and concentration of economic power feeds back in to the institutional setting, adapting it to prevailing patterns of economic activity. Thus, institutions evolve to support existing economic specialization. While the channel from institutions to specialization has been studied extensively, this latter part of the symbiotic relationship remains understudied. More importantly, the empirical literature does not reflect the theoretical notion that differences in economic structure may relate to different types of institutions. This paper shows that sectoral specialization induces institutional specialization. Economies invest in combating those types of bribery that are comparatively harmful to their dominant economic activities. Empirical support comes from cross-country variation in the distribution of bribery over various branches of the public sector. By decomposing sectoral structure in its sources (tangible vs. intangible investment), which are affected differently by various forms of bribery, we link bribery types to different economic activities. Using historical variation in factor endowments as instrument for sectoral specialization, we show that the direction of causality runs (partly) from sectoral specialization to institutional specialization. JEL: F14, O43
COMBINED LINEAR - GEOMETRICALLY NONLINEAR FEM MODELING FOR HIGHLY EFFICIENT DYNAMICAL SIMULATIONS

Software packages for multi-body system (MBS) dynamics are efficient tools for modeling interconnected rigid and/or flexible bodies. Consideration of flexible bodies in commercially available MBS software packages is limited to linear elastic behavior. In many cases though, structural behavior includes geometrical nonlinearities, which are, however, restricted to a relatively small structural sub-domain. The paper addresses the idea of combined linear - geometrically nonlinear FEM modeling that aims at high accuracy with optimal numerical effort. The approach can be of great importance in all areas where highly efficient MBS or FEM models are required, such as robotics, car industry, etc. The idea is demonstrated in the paper on an example involving a tower crane with a suspended load. The model reduction based on modal superposition technique is used for the linear part of the model, which further improves the numerical efficiency. Dynamics is resolved by means of an explicit time integration scheme. The results by the proposed approach are compared with those computed by rigorous geometrically nonlinear approach in commercially available software package ABAQUS. Key words : geometrical nonlinearity, modal superposition, tower crane, explicit time-integration scheme
The effects of social fear, maternal warmth, and biological sex on the development of social withdrawal in middle childhood

Research has demonstrated a relation between the social fear aspect of temperament and the development of behavioral withdrawal. However, discontinuity in this pathway exists, indicating that different factors must influence the extent of the effect of this relationship. Maternal behaviors such as warmth and positivity may buffer against the risk of becoming socially withdrawn in middle childhood, and sex may affect the way a caregiver responds to a child when distressed, through differing processes of emotion socialization. The primary goal of the proposed study was to investigate the influence of social fear, maternal warmth, and the sex of the child on the development of childhood behavioral withdrawal. The proposed study examined the effects of social fear at age 2 on behavioral withdrawal at age 7, and specifically assessed the moderating effect of maternal warmth and positivity at age 4 and the sex of the child on this relation. Mother report of social fear, teacher report of withdrawal, and observed maternal warmth during mother-child interaction tasks were utilized in this study. A significant three-way interaction between sex, fear, and warmth was found, upon probing, the interaction was only significant for boys. Further, among boys, the interaction was not significant at low levels of maternal warmth, but achieved trend level significance at high levels of maternal warmth. The implications of these results for the understanding of how behavioral withdrawal develops are discussed.
Advanced array processing techniques and systems

Research and development on smart antennas, which are recognized as a promising technique to improve the performance of mobile communications, have been extensive in the recent years. Smart antennas combine multiple antenna elements with a signal processing capability in both space and time to optimize its radiation and reception pattern automatically in response to the signal environment. This paper concentrates on the signal processing aspects of smart antenna systems. Smart antennas are often classified as either switched-beam or adaptive-array systems, for which a variety of algorithms have been developed to enhance the signal of interest and reject the interference. The antenna systems need to differentiate the desired signal from the interference, and normally requires either a priori knowledge or the signal direction to achieve its goal. There exists a variety of methods for direction of arrival (DOA) estimation with conflicting demands of accuracy and computation. Similarly, there are many algorithms to compute array weights to direct the maximum radiation of the array pattern toward the signal and place nulls toward the interference, each with its convergence property and computational complexity. This paper discusses some of the typical algorithms for DOA estimation and beamforming. The concept and details of each algorithm are provided. Smart antennas can significantly help in improving the performance of communication systems by increasing channel capacity and spectrum efficiency, extending range coverage, multiplexing channels with spatial division multiple access (SDMA), and compensating electronically for aperture distortion. They also reduce delay spread, multipath fading, co-channel interference, system complexity, bit error rates, and outage probability. In addition, smart antennas can locate mobile units or assist the location determination through DOA and range estimation. This capability can support and benefit many location-based services including emergency assistance, tracking services, safety services, billing services, and information services such as navigation, weather, traffic, and directory assistance.
GADMS: Gathering Aggregated Data using Mobile Sink in Wireless Sensor Networks

WSNs consist of resource constrained sensor nodes that monitor the physical environment and transmit their data to the Sink through multi-hop communication. Mobile sinks are used to reduce the number of hops the data travels and thereby reducing the overall energy consumption. In this paper we propose Gathering Aggregated Data using Mobile Sink in Wireless Sensor Networks (GADMS) protocol that allows the mobile sink to collect data from WSNs where path of the mobile sink is not predetermined. The mobile sink halts at a point in the network and broadcasts an aggregate query. The average path length of a data packet is a constant and hence it can withstand node failures. The performance analysis shows that GADMS incurs less energy consumption and improved packet delivery ratio in comparison to SinkTrail.
Role of dust direct radiative effect on the tropical rain belt over Middle East and North Africa: A high‐resolution AGCM study

To investigate the influence of direct radiative effect of dust on the tropical summer rain belt across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the present study utilizes the high‐resolution capability of an Atmospheric General Circulation Model, the High‐Resolution Atmospheric Model. Ensembles of Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project style simulations have been conducted with and without dust radiative impacts, to differentiate the influence of dust on the tropical rain belt. The analysis focuses on summer season. The results highlight the role of dust‐induced responses in global‐ and regional‐scale circulations in determining the strength and the latitudinal extent of the tropical rain belt. A significant response in the strength and position of the local Hadley circulation is predicted in response to meridionally asymmetric distribution of dust and the corresponding radiative effects. Significant responses are also found in regional circulation features such as African Easterly Jet and West African Monsoon circulation. Consistent with these dynamic responses at various scales, the tropical rain belt across MENA strengthens and shifts northward. Importantly, the summer precipitation over the semiarid strip south of Sahara, including Sahel, increases up to 20%. As this region is characterized by the “Sahel drought,” the predicted precipitation sensitivity to the dust loading over this region has a wide range of socioeconomic implications. Overall, the study demonstrates the extreme importance of incorporating dust radiative effects and the corresponding circulation responses at various scales, in the simulations and future projections of this region's climate.
MELANISATION OF LICHENS: THE COMPOSITION OF MELANIN AND THE ROLE OF ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT (UV) IN PELTIGERALEAN AND NON-PELTIGERALEAN LICHENS

Lichens are unique organisms widely known for their ability to tolerate extreme environmental conditions due to the symbiotic relationship between a fungus and algae or cyanobacteria. This includes the ability to synthesise melanins to protect themselves from ultraviolet radiation and high light. Melanins are found in different forms, the eumelanins (DOPA), often synthesised by Peltigeralean lichens while the non-Peltigeralean produce dark pigments that appear not to be DOPA melanins. Increased levels of UV and high light affect the physiology of many organisms, as a result this study investigates the effects of the photoprotective pigment, melanin on the photosynthetic apparatus of both chlorophycean and cyanobacterial bionts. The first aim of this thesis was to study the effect of using different light regimes to induce melanins. The second aim was to compare the properties of melanin between different lichens with those from free-living fungi. Lastly, the effect of melanisation on the photosynthesis was investigated. Results presented here suggest that melanins are insoluble in organic solvents, except DMSO and strongly absorb in the UVB and UVA wavelengths. The induction of melanin was slow and was better induced beneath the screens that transmitted UV. Transplanting nonmelanised Lobaria pulmonaria, to an open site for four weeks induced melanic pigments. Melanised thalli had normal chlorophyll contents and normal maximum rates of photosynthesis. Chlorophyll fluorescence analysis showed that the maximum quantum yield and relative electron transfer rates were similar to those of nonmelanised thalli. However, at light levels lower than 100 μmol photons m-2 s-1 melanisation of the upper cortex of the lichen reduced rates of CO2 fixation by more than 40%. Melanic thalli also had a higher chlorophyll a/b ratio and more xanthophyll cycle pigments. In Lobaria retigera, the +UV screen decreased the photosynthetic rate more than other light treatments. Photoinhibition of wet thalli was rapid compared to dry, though complete recovery was reached after a day. From these results, it can be confirmed that melanisation has a protective action against high light as melanised thalli were more tolerant to excess light. While protecting photobionts from high light, melanisation reduced photosynthetic efficiency and protects lichens from photoinhibition in both the wet and dry states.
Sustainability as an entrepreneurial opportunity ? A typology of sustainability-driven entrepreneurs

In light of multiple crises and the necessity of a socio-ecological transformation, transformative processes at multiple levels play a crucial role. One important component in this context are alternative business models and, more particularly, entrepreneurs. Specifically, research into sustainability-driven entrepreneurship distinguishes the former from profit-driven entrepreneurship through a change of values and the manner in which opportunities are discovered and exploited – moving from personal to socio-ecological gain. In this paper, we operationalize this different understanding of entrepreneurship through the notion of a changing habitus – that is, (new) values, behaviours, routines and motivations. The empirical study, conducted in Vienna, critically evaluates how this habitus is illustrated in the three categories of knowledge systems, self-perception and metrics of success; ultimately providing a typology of habitus in sustainability-driven entrepreneurship.
Ensemble-Based Cascaded Constrained Energy Minimization for Hyperspectral Target Detection

Ensemble learning is an important group of machine learning techniques that aim to enhance the nonlinearity and generalization ability of a learning system by aggregating multiple learners. We found that ensemble techniques show great potential for improving the performance of traditional hyperspectral target detection algorithms, while at present, there are few previous works have been done on this topic. To this end, we propose an Ensemble based Constrained Energy Minimization (E-CEM) detector for hyperspectral image target detection. Classical hyperspectral image target detection algorithms like Constrained Energy Minimization (CEM), matched filter (MF) and adaptive coherence/cosine estimator (ACE) are usually designed based on constrained least square regression methods or hypothesis testing methods with Gaussian distribution assumption. However, remote sensing hyperspectral data captured in a real-world environment usually shows strong nonlinearity and non-Gaussianity, which will lead to performance degradation of these classical detection algorithms. Although some hierarchical detection models are able to learn strong nonlinear discrimination of spectral data, due to the spectrum changes, these models usually suffer from the instability in detection tasks. The proposed E-CEM is designed based on the classical CEM detection algorithm. To improve both of the detection nonlinearity and generalization ability, the strategies of “cascaded detection”, “random averaging” and “multi-scale scanning” are specifically designed. Experiments on one synthetic hyperspectral image and two real hyperspectral images demonstrate the effectiveness of our method. E-CEM outperforms the traditional CEM detector and other state-of-the-art detection algorithms. Our code will be made publicly available.