Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Projected Smoking-Related Deaths Among U.S. Youth: A 2000 Update

This paper projects the long term consequences of the rise in youth smoking in the 1990s by updating the state estimates for projected smoking-related deaths among youth in the U.S. using information from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) 2000 and the U.S. Census 2000. This analysis is similar to that from an earlier study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Office on Smoking and Health (MMWR, 45[44], November 8, 1996). The 1996 analysis used young adult smoking prevalence data from 1994 and 1995; whereas, the analysis presented here represents smoking prevalence data from 2000. The overall number of potential future smoking-attributable deaths among persons aged 0-17 years in 2000 was 6,407,119 for the U.S., up from an estimated 5 million in 1995. Compared with the 1995 estimates, every state except Arizona shows increases in projected smoking-related deaths among youth for 2000. This upsurge is attributable to both increases in smoking prevalence among young adults and population aged 0-17 years from 1995 to 2000. The increase in smoking prevalence among young adults was statistically significant in nine states including Alabama, District of Columbia, Iowa, Kentucky, Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Vermont. With increasing attention and funding for comprehensive, research-based tobacco control programs in the U.S., one would expect smoking rates to decline over time, resulting in a reduction in projected smoking-related deaths among youth. The analysis reported here does not yet reflect this trend. This study clearly demonstrates that based on recent smoking patterns, there will continue to be a huge public health toll from tobacco. The results from this new analysis will be useful to states as they determine the overall public health benefits from increasing the state excise tax and consider funding for comprehensive tobacco control programs.
The distributions of a wide range of taxonomic groups are expanding polewards

Evidence is accumulating of shifts in species' distributions during recent climate warming. However, most of this information comes predominantly from studies of a relatively small selection of taxa (i.e., plants, birds and butterflies), which may not be representative of biodiversity as a whole. Using data from less well‐studied groups, we show that a wide variety of vertebrate and invertebrate species have moved northwards and uphill in Britain over approximately 25 years, mirroring, and in some cases exceeding, the responses of better‐known groups.
Real time selection of scheduling rules and knowledge extraction via dynamically controlled data mining

A new scheduling system for selecting dispatching rules in real time is developed by combining the techniques of simulation, data mining, and statistical process control charts. The proposed scheduling system extracts knowledge from data coming from the manufacturing environment by constructing a decision tree, and selects a dispatching rule from the tree for each scheduling period. In addition, the system utilises the process control charts to monitor the performance of the decision tree and dynamically updates this decision tree whenever the manufacturing conditions change. This gives the proposed system the ability to adapt itself to changes in the manufacturing environment and improve the quality of its decisions. We implement the proposed system on a job shop problem, with the objective of minimising average tardiness, to evaluate its performance. Simulation results indicate that the performance of the proposed system is considerably better than other simulation-based single-pass and multi-pass scheduling algorithms available in the literature. We also illustrate knowledge extraction by presenting a sample decision tree from our experiments.
Education as Service: The Understanding of University Experience Through the Service Logic

With the marketization of UK higher education, this paper develops a framework from services marketing that can assist universities in understanding what market orientation means and how students would value their offerings. Our study shows that the core service in a university experience is a learning experience that is cocreated and that the value is emergent, unstructured, interactive, uncertain, with a hedonic dimension. Our paper modifies the gap model of service quality to show that an ideological gap exists that may also impede the quality of the university experience. We propose that a one-sided expectation by students leads to student consumerism and disengagement. Paradoxically, we show that a true student-orientated marketing puts the university ideology at the center of marketing efforts and that marketing may well be an effective tool to communicate such ideologies.
Markovian State and Action Abstractions for Markov Decision Processes via Hierarchical Monte Carlo Tree Search

Markov decision processes (MDPs) provide a rich framework for planning and learning under uncertainty. In the context of hierarchical planning and learning for MDPs, state abstraction is an important technique for scaling MDP algorithms by treating a group of states as a unit. As is well known, however, it introduces difficulties due to the non-Markovian nature of state-abstracted models. Whereas prior approaches rely upon ad hoc fixes for this issue, we propose instead to view the state-abstracted model as a partially observable MDP (POMDP) and show that we can thereby take advantage of state abstraction without sacrificing the Markov property. We bound the performance loss induced by the abstraction, and exploit the hierarchical structure introduced by state abstraction by extending the theory of options to a POMDP setting. In this context, we propose a hierarchical Monte Carlo tree search algorithm for approximately solving the abstracted POMDP and show that it converges to a recursively optimal hierarchical policy. Both theoretical and empirical results suggest that abstracting an MDP into a POMDP yields a scalable solution approach.
A survey on Distributed File Systems

The scale of data and files is increasing dramatically nowadays. Distributed File System (DFS) had been introduced since the 1970s to deal with the massive data storage problem. An ideal DFS can provide data scalability, fault tolerance, and high concurrency through partitioning and replication of data on many nodes. Additionally, the issues of file locality and availability are also important. Last but not least, the use of commodity devices is significant for cost efficiency and practical value of a DFS. Many DFS’s have been proposed over the years and the techniques that they used to distribute and share files among different nodes varies, Client-Server Architectures, Cluster-Based Distributed File System, Symmetric Architecture, and so on. [1] In this paper, we will survey some representative DFSs from 1997 to 2011 in their design principles as well as performance in terms of scalability and fault tolerance. The systems surveyed are Frangipani [2], Google File System [3], Panasas [4] [5], Ceph [6], and TidyFS [7].
Energy and sustainability of operation of a wastewater treatment plant

The study summarises the energy consumption data obtained from the Slovak wastewater treatment plants. Overall, 51 large WWTPs using mesophilic anaerobic sludge digestion and biogas utilisation (the total capacity of 2.5 mil. p.e.) and 17 small rural WWTPs (the total capacity 15 000 p.e.) were compared in many technological and energy parameters. The average energy consumption in large WWTPs in Slovakia is 0.485 kWh/m and 0.915 kWh/m in small rural plants. The average energy demand related to BOD5 load represents the value of 2.27 kWh/kg BOD5, in Slovak plants. The specific energy production is relatively low – in average 1.2 kWhel/m of produced biogas and 0.1 kWhel/m of treated wastewater, respectively. The average energy autarky in Slovak plants is 25.2%. Some plants have high energy autarky (>65%), despite no external biowastes being dosed to these during operation.
An Analysis on Routing Protocols for Internet of Things

IoT provides interconnectivity between various devices crossover in sparse or dense areas. Devices may transfer data with each other through different routing protocols. A device movement can be controlled by movement model so it is clear that movement of nodes may effect on routing process. In this paper challenges in IoT routing protocols of IoT has been discussed in detail. After that comparative analysis of these routing protocols with various performance metrics like latency, route optimization and energy consumption has been done. Keywords-Internet of Things (IoT), Routing, AODV, DSR and Sensor.
Charged rotating black holes on a 3-brane

We study exact stationary and axisymmetric solutions describing charged rotating black holes localized on a 3-brane in the Randall-Sundrum braneworld. The charges of the black holes are considered to be of two types, the first being an induced tidal charge that appears as an imprint of nonlocal gravitational effects from the bulk space and the second is a usual electric charge arising due to a Maxwell field trapped on the brane. We assume a special ansatz for the metric on the brane taking it to be of the Kerr-Schild form and show that the Kerr-Newman solution of ordinary general relativity in which the electric charge is superseded by a tidal charge satisfies a closed system of the effective gravitational field equations on the brane. It turns out that the negative tidal charge may provide a mechanism for spinning up the black hole so that its rotation parameter exceeds its mass. This is not allowed in the framework of general relativity. We also find a new solution that represents a rotating black hole on the brane carrying both charges. We show that for a rapid enough rotation the combined influence of the rotational dynamics and the local bulk effects of themore » 'squared' energy-momentum tensor on the brane distort the horizon structure of the black hole in such a way that it can be thought of as composed of nonuniformly rotating null circles with growing radii from the equatorial plane to the poles. We finally study the geodesic motion of test particles in the equatorial plane of a rotating black hole with tidal charge. We show that the effects of negative tidal charge tend to increase the horizon radius, as well as the radii of the limiting photon orbit, the innermost bound and the innermost stable circular orbits for both direct and retrograde motions of the particles. « less
How Do Natural Resources Influence Civil War? Evidence from Thirteen Cases

Recent studies have found that natural resources and civil war are highly correlated. Yet the causal mechanisms behind the correlation are not well understood, in part because data on civil wars is scarce and of poor quality. In this article I examine thirteen recent civil wars to explore the mechanisms behind the resource-conflict correlation. I describe seven hypotheses about how resources may influence a conflict, specify the observable implications of each, and report which mechanisms can be observed in a sample of thirteen civil wars in which natural resources were “most likely” to have played a role. I find that two of the most widely cited causal mechanisms do not appear to be valid; that oil, nonfuel minerals, and drugs are causally linked to conflict, but legal agricultural commodities are not; and that resource wealth and civil war are linked by a variety of mechanisms, including several that others had not identified.For their comments on earlier drafts, I am grateful to Paul Collier, J. R. Deshazo, Pierre Englebert, Barbara Geddes, Anke Hoeffler, Macartan Humphreys, Philippe Le Billon, Roy Licklider, Dan Posner, Ken Shultz, and Libby Wood.
THE COMPARISON OF DIVORCEMENT CAUSES , ATTITUDE TOWARD DIVORCE AND MENTAL HEALTH IN UNCONTESTED AND CONTESTED DIVORCE OF AHVAZ METROPOLITAN WOMEN

This study compared the causes of divorce, attitudes to divorce and mental health in women with uncontested divorce and contested divorce. Population of this study were all women in Ahvaz city. Sample was 60 women with uncontested divorce and 46 women with contested divorce which were selected from the population by available sampling. The instrument used in this study was general information questionnaire, the scale of divorce causes, divorce Attitude Scale and General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28). After selecting the subjects into two groups of uncontested and contested divorce, questionnaires were distributed between two groups. Research methodology was casual postevent method. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and post-hoc test (LSD) in p>0.05 significance level was used. Results of this research showed that there are no significant differences in the causes of divorce, attitudes toward divorce and mental health between both groups.
Comparison of application value between CEUS and conventional ultrasound in preoperative and staging diagnosis of cervical cancer

Objective: To compare application value between Contrast-Enhanced Ultrasound (CEUS) and conventional ultrasound in preoperative and staging diagnosis of cervical cancer patients. Methods: CEUS and conventional ultrasound were used respectively for preoperative diagnosis of 126 cases of cervical cancer collected from our Hospital. A comparison was made for lesion sizes and ranges of cervical cancer as well as diagnostic results of different stages achieved through the two diagnostic methods. In this study, all the operations were approved by the hospital's ethics committee. Results: The cervical cancer lesion area (2328.18 ± 1153.06 mm2), cervical cancer lesion long diameter (51.09 ± 13.25 mm), and cervical cancer lesion anteroposterior diameter (42.56 ± 13.29 mm) displayed through CEUS were significantly better than the cervical cancer lesion area (1667.69 ± 943.34 mm2), cervical cancer lesion long diameter (44.49 ± 13.42 mm), and cervical cancer lesion anteroposterior diameter (36.06 ± 13.47 mm) through conventional ultrasound , which was statistically significant (P 0.05). Conclusion: Compared with conventional ultrasound, CEUS is more valuable in preoperative and staging diagnosis of cervical cancer patients as it can show lesion locations more clearly and has higher detection rates.
A Rare Triple Coexistence Of A Collision Tumor, A Benign Mature Cystic Teratoma And A Hemorrhagic Follicular Cyst Of The Ovaries

Ovarian collision tumors are rare entities and most commonly consist of a benign mature ovarian teratoma and an ovarian cystadenoma or cystadenocarcinoma. Serous cystadenomas are the most common ovarian neoplasms, representing 20% of them. Benign mature ovarian cystic teratomas are often diagnosed in women of child-bearing age (12-15% of ovarian neoplasms). Benign mature ovarian solid teratomas are less common than the cystic ones. Follicular cysts are cysts of unruptured mature ovarian follicles. We present a rare case of a triple coexistence of a large collision tumor (consisting of a serous cystadenoma and a benign mature cystic teratoma) in the right ovary and a benign mature solid teratoma and a hemorrhagic follicular cyst in the left ovary of a young-aged woman, with a palpable mass in the lower abdomen. Right-sided salpingo-oophorectomy and left ovarian cystectomy preserving as much intact ovarian tissue as possible, took place. The possible existence of an ovarian collision tumour should carefully be examined preand postoperatively and histologically, so as to avoid misdiagnosis of a possible malignancy.
Affective Citizenship and National Identity : From Blair to Obama

This paper analyses issues that underlie UK, US and Australian governments‘ attempts to manage the ̳risks‘ of globalisation, diversity and social change. It argues that one of the factors underlying many governments‘ emphasis on integration, national identity and values, and the increasing use of measures such as citizenship tests to reinforce them, is a deeper concern with what citizens are feeling. There is concern about the anxiety that so-called ̳mainstream‘ citizens from majority ethnic groups are feeling about the ̳other‘, including the challenges which multiculturalism and globalisation pose to more monocultural conceptions of national identity. There is also an anxiety about whether citizens from minority ethnic, racial or religious backgrounds feel ̳integrated‘ into society (thereby also reinforcing the traditional values and identities of majority groups); or whether they feel dangerously alienated.
AnoGen : Deep Anomaly Generator Nikolay Laptev

Validating and testing a machine learning model is a critical stage in model development. For time-series anomaly detection, validation and testing is challenging because of the lack of labeled data and the difficulty of generating a realistic time-series with anomalies. Motivated by the continued success of Variational Auto-Encoders (VAE) and Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to produce realistic-looking data we provide a platform to generate a realistic time-series with anomalies called AnoGen. Our contribution includes a sampling technique that allows us to sample from the latent z space of a trained variational auto-encoder to deterministically generate a realistic time-series with anomalies.
SEGMENTATION OF ORGAN OF INTEREST FROM VARIOUS BIOMEDICAL IMAGES USING RANDOM FORESTS CLASSIFIER AND GRAPH CUT METHOD

Over the last few decades the graph cuts method became very popular in image processing and analysis area due to smoothness and energy minimization. Image segmentation is a complex problem in the field of biomedical imaging despite various presented methods. We propose a fully automatic and manual segmentation method for various biomedical images using image features and syntactic knowledge using graph cuts. A region of interest is first identified and pixels within it are ordained labels (ROI and background) using random forests and graph cuts. Syntactic information obtained from the trained random forests classifier is used to contrive the smoothness cost. Image pre-processing, intensity normalisation, edges and boundaries detection and segmentation with graph cuts will be performed in applying the selected method. Use of context and syntactic information dispenses to higher segmentation accuracy.
Decision Making in Management Of Lateral Ventricular Tumors

Lateral ventricular tumors are usually slowly growing and become symptomatic after attaining a large size. The common tumors are ependymoma, choroid plexus papilloma and carcinoma, giant all astrocytoma and meningioma. The common symptoms and signs of presentation are due to rise of intracranial pressure. Approaches are determined upon several factors including: the size of the ventricles, location and size of the tumors, and the site of origin. The management options include: direct microscopic resection of the tumor (Transcortical or transcallosal), preliminary shunt before tumor attack, preliminary ETV, direct endoscopic resection of the tumor, and Gamma knife radiosurgery. Preliminary shunt may lead to seedling of the tumor and may convert a roomy lateral ventricle to a slit ventricle rendering tumor approach a difficult situation. Material and methods: Twelve cases of lateral ventricle tumors with hydrocephalus are managed surgically; six of them undergone direct tumor resection either microscopic or endoscopic via the transcortical approach, five cases managed by initial shunt and one case managed by initial ETV before tumor resection. Results: Negative effects of preliminary shunt appeared in the form of seedling via the shunt tube with the development of malignant CSF ascites in two cases and collapse of the lateral ventricles before tumor resection in two cases and development of subdural hematoma in one case. The outcome was good in 58%, fair in 17% and poor in 25% of cases. Conclusion: Lateral ventricle tumors present a unique surgical challenge. They should be managed in their early stages by aggressive surgical excision and the shunting of CSF is to be considered a second stage of the management to minimize the chance of CSF seedling and to avoid the development of slit lateral ventricles before tumor resection. [Mustafa H. Alwalily. Decision Making in Management Of Lateral Ventricular Tumors. Life Sci J 2014;11(12):953-963]. (ISSN:1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite. com. 165
Green Supply Chain Management and Economic Performance: A Review of Tea Processing Firms in Kericho and Bomet Counties, Kenya

Sustainability in the business operations stills remains a subject of interest especially in Kenya. This is because most organizations especially, manufacturing firms are in the initial stages of adopting sustainable practices. A few study already conducted in this area have revealed that there is still a knowledge gap that needs to be filled through research. For instance, a study conducted by Muma et al. (2014) on green supply chain management and environmental performance identified research gaps on the relationship between green supply chain management and other aspects of organizational performance. The study suggested further studies on the relationship between green supply chain management and economic performance. This study was therefore conducted to establish the relationship between green supply chain management and economic performance. The study adopted a correlational research design. The study concentrated on green procurement, green design and manufacturing, green distribution and reverse logistics aspects of green supply chain management and their relationship with economic performance. The study was conducted in all the 32 tea processing firms in Kericho and Bomet Counties-Kenya. To test the relationship between green supply chain management and economic performance, a correlation analysis was conducted. The findings of this study revealed a positive relationship between green supply chain management and economic performance. The study revealed that research gaps still exist on the relationship between green supply chain management and social performance and recommended further studies to be conducted to relate the two variables.