Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fuṣḥá, ‘āmmīyah, or both?: Towards a theoretical framework for written Cairene Arabic

The Arabic language is a complex, diglossic language, with varying written (fuṣḥa) and spoken (‘āmmīyah) forms. While the study of mixing between fuṣḥa and ‘āmmīyah in spoken Arabic has received some scholarly attention, far less attention has been paid to mixing in writing, which this study seeks to address. Badawi’s (1973) landmark study of Egyptian Arabic use identified five language levels, assuming naturally that written Arabic exists as either Classical or Modern Standard Arabic, while mixing between written and spoken forms is reserved as a feature of Educated Spoken Arabic (ESA), despite the proliferation of mixed literary works by renowned writers such as Tawfiq al-Hakim, Yusuf Idris and Yusuf Sibai at the time. Since Badawi’s (1973) study, studies of mixed Arabic have centred around ESA (Eid, 1988; Bassiouney, 2006), uncovering to some extent the type and degree of, and motivations for, mixing, which have been used as a backdrop for the examination of mixed writing in this study. More recently, Hoigilt & Mejdell (2017), Mejdell (2014), Ibrahim (2010), and Rosenbaum (2000) have identified occurrences of mixing in written Arabic. The aim of this study therefore, is to take a holistic view of Arabic writing, across different times and media, towards establishing a theoretical framework for Egyptian Arabic writing, including fuṣḥa, ‘āmmīyah and socalled ‘mixed’ forms. The catalyst for this study, as well as for the proliferation of mixed and ‘āmmīyah writing, has been the expansion of the internet and the rapid increase in online writing. For Arabic at least, the Arab Spring and social media within it, have played an important role in the widespread use of ‘āmmīyah in writing, which this study aims to place within the wider context of Arabic writing.
Cold Sintering: Progress, Challenges, and Future Opportunities

Cold sintering is an unusually low-temperature process that uses a transient transport phase, which is most often liquid, and an applied uniaxial force to assist in densification of a powder compact. By using this approach, many ceramic powders can be transformed to high-density monoliths at temperatures far below the melting point. In this article, we present a summary of cold sintering accomplishments and the current working models that describe the operative mechanisms in the context of other strategies for low-temperature ceramic densification. Current observations in several systems suggest a multiple-stage densification process that bears similarity to models that describe liquid phase sintering. We find that grain growth trends are consistent with classical behavior, but with activation energy values that are lower than observed for thermally driven processes. Densification behavior in these low-temperature systems is rich, and there is much to be investigated regarding mass transport within and across the liquid-solid interfaces that populate these ceramics during densification. Irrespective of mechanisms, these low temperatures create a new opportunity spectrum to design grain boundaries and create new types of nanocomposites among material combinations that previously had incompatible processing windows. Future directions are discussed in terms of both the fundamental science and engineering of cold sintering.
Farm-management tools: reasons for the decision not to use specific tools

There are a large number of management tools available to farmers, however, some are utilised by only a small percentage. The reasons behind the choice not to use a particular tool were investigated using a postal questionnaire that was distributed to all New Zealand sheep farmers in 2014. Farmers were asked first to indicate from a list of 40 farm-management tools those they had used in the previous three years. For tools they had not used, they were asked to select one from a list of eight reasons. A total of 1659 usable questionnaires were received. The most commonly cited reason for not using any given tool was “not relevant to my situation” (50.3%) followed by “benefits not apparent” (15.3%) and “it’s an unwanted complication” (15.0%). Demographic factors (age, education, gender, farm type and flock size) influenced the reasons for non-use of 20 of the 22 tools. Reasons for nonuse of fecundity-boosting vaccine or quarantine treatment for footrot were not influenced (P>0.05) by any demographic factors. The results suggest that although many farmers do not see the relevance of particular tools to their enterprise, demographic factors can influence their reasons for not using a tool.
Investigating Embodied Interaction in Near-Field Perception-Action Re-Calibration on Performance in Immersive Virtual Environments

Immersive Virtual Environments (IVEs) are becoming more accessible and more widely utilized for training. Previous research has shown that the matching of visual and proprioceptive information is important for calibration. Many state-of-the art Virtual Reality (VR) systems, commonly known as Immersive Virtual Environments (IVE), are created for training users in tasks that require accurate manual dexterity. Unfortunately, these systems can suffer from technical limitations that may force de-coupling of visual and proprioceptive information due to interference, latency, and tracking error. It has also been suggested that closed-loop feedback of travel and locomotion in an IVE can overcome compression of visually perceived depth in medium field distances in the virtual world [33, 47]. Very few experiments have examined the carryover effects of multi-sensory feedback in IVEs during manual dexterous 3D user interaction in overcoming distortions in near-field or interaction space depth perception, and the relative importance of visual and proprioceptive information in calibrating users distance judgments. In the first part of this work, we examined the recalibration of movements when the visually reached distance is scaled differently than the physically reached distance. We present an empirical evaluation of how visually distorted movements affects users’ reach to near field targets in an IVE. In a between subjects design, participants provided manual reaching distance estimates during three sessions; a baseline measure without feedback (open-loop distance estimation), a calibration session with visual and proprioceptive feedback (closed-loop distance estimation), and a post-interaction session without feedback (open-loop distance estimation). Subjects were randomly assigned to one of three visual feedbacks in the closed-loop condition during which they reached to target while holding a tracked stylus: i) Minus condition (-20% gain condition) in which the visual stylus appeared at 80% of the distance of the physical stylus, ii) Neutral condition (0% or no gain condition) in which the visual stylus was co-located with the physical stylus, and iii) Plus condition
The Rule of Law and the EU Budget for 2021–2027: More Solidarity or Renouncing the Values of the EU?

Artykuł analizuje propozycje Komisji Europejskiej dotyczące wieloletnich ram finansowych na lata 2021–2027 i rozważa sposoby zapewnienia Europie lepszej przyszłości poprzez przestrzeganie prawnie wiążących wartości i celów UE: demokracji, równości, rządów prawa, spójności gospodarczej, społecznej i terytorialnej oraz solidarności między państwami członkowskimi. Postawiono tezę, że wprowadzenie progresywności, reforma finansów UE obejmująca zmianę paradygmatu w finansowaniu polityk o skutkach redystrybucyjnych i reforma systemu „zasobów własnych” UE zapewnią, że solidarność zostanie zapewniona przez rządy prawa, a nie zarządzanie poprzez warunkowość i grzywny. Zwraca się uwagę, że jeżeli UE nie podejmie skutecznej reformy swojej polityki redystrybucyjnej zapewniającej, że progresywność i solidarność w UE staną się kwestią rządów prawa, Unia będzie coraz mniej przypominać demokrację, a coraz bardziej imperium z silniejszym gospodarczo i szybciej rozwijającym się „rdzeniem” oraz słabszym gospodarczo „peryferiami” na wschodzie i południu, które pozostają w tyle za „rdzeniem. ” Potrzebne jest wspólne działanie państw członkowskich najbardziej zainteresowanych reformą, aby system regionalny UE stał się mniej regresywny i wprowadził progresywność w finansowaniu polityk UE. Państwa członkowskie musiałyby się wykazać znacznymi umiejętnościami zorganizowania się w grupę i wspólnego działania w trakcie przyjmowania wniosków ustawodawczych dotyczących kolejnych WRF, aby uczynić UE bardziej sprawiedliwą.
Ratio between virtual and visual lesion size as a measure to describe reduction in leaf photosynthesis of rice due to leaf blast.

The effect of Pyricularia oryzae, the causal organism of blast in rice, on net photosynthetic rate of rice leaves was measured in the field and in a greenhouse experiment. Leaf blast reduced photosynthesis not only through a reduction in green leaf area, but also through an effect on photosynthesis of the remaining green leaf tissue. A function was derived to relate the net photosynthetic rate of diseased leaf area (P x ) to the photosynthesis of comparable healthy leaf area (P o ) and disease severity (x): P x =P o (1-x) β (.)
Contested Development Paths and Rural communities: Sustainable Energy or Sustainable Tourism in Iceland?

The Icelandic economy has transitioned from being dependent on fishing and agriculture to having tourism and refined aluminum as its main exports. Nevertheless, the new main industries still rely on the country’s natural resources, as the power intensive industry uses energy from rivers and geothermal areas whereas tourism uses the natural landscape, where geysers, waterfalls and thermal pools are part of the attraction to visitors. Although both industries claim to contribute to sustainability they utilize the same resources, and land-use conflicts can be expected, illustrating the contestation that can occur between different visions and understandings of sustainability. This paper focuses on the attitudes of Icelandic tourism operators towards power production and proposed power plants using data from questionnaires and face-to-face interviews. Results show that the majority of Icelandic tourism operators assume further power utilization would be in conflict with nature-based tourism, and they are generally negative towards all types of renewable energy development and power plant infrastructure. Respondents are most negative towards transmission lines, reservoirs and hydro power plants in the country’s interior Highlands. About 40% of the respondents perceive that existing power plants have negatively affected tourism, while a similar proportion think they had no impact. According to the respondents, the two industries could co-exist with improved spatial planning, management and inter-sectoral cooperation.
Socio-Economic Factors Influencing Attitudes of Landowners Towards Free-Roaming Cheetahs

The largest area of the South African cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) distribution occurs outside formally protected areas, making cheetahs vulnerable to conflict-related killings. This conflict is assumed to be related to negative attitudes of landowners towards predators. Our study assessed the socio-economic factors influencing landowner attitudes towards cheetahs on private properties adjacent to the Kruger National Park (Kruger), South Africa. We used structured questionnaires to interview 199 landowners. Attitudes of landowners towards cheetahs were generally positive; 58% of landowners had attitude index scores between eight and 11. However, 11% had fairly negative or low scores (scores between -2 and 4). First language, land use and respondent knowledge of cheetahs were key drivers of attitude. English speaking landowners (49.8%) were more likely to display positive attitudes towards cheetahs than Afrikaans first-language speakers (46.8%). In addition, the likelihood of having a more positive attitude increased significantly as respondent knowledge of cheetahs increased. Attitudes were also influenced by land use, with wildlife ranchers or ecotourism ventures having a significantly higher probability of having more positive attitudes than livestock farmers. With the Kruger being a stronghold for cheetah conservation in Africa, and large carnivores being vulnerable to edge effects in protected areas, it is important to understand the factors driving conflict so that mitigation efforts can be targeted for maximum impact.
Disordered eating prevalence and nutritional knowledge assessment in undergraduate club sport athletes

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine nutritional knowledge and disordered eating symptoms in the undergraduate club sport athlete population. Design: An online survey including a demographics section, two surveys aimed at assessing eating disorder symptoms, and two questionnaires that tested nutritional knowledge, was administered to club sport athletes. Main Outcome Measurements: Eating disorder symptoms were assessed using the ORTO-15, a survey designed to detect orthorexia, and the EAT-26, a self-report measure of disordered eating behaviors. The first two sections of the General Nutritional Knowledge Questionnaire were used to test participants’ understanding of proper nutrition. Section one evaluated their understanding of expert dietary advice and section two tested their knowledge about the nutrient composition of major food groups. Results: Thirty-six athletes responded to the survey, though only 29 went on to complete all four sections. Of the 36 subjects that completed the EAT-26, 5 (14.3%) met the 20-point cut-off typically used to warrant referral to mental health services. Over 65% of the sample that completed the ORTO-15 scored below the 40-point threshold used in other literature to indicate orthorexia; when using a 35-point threshold, 28.1% reported clinically significant scores. The mean scores on the GNKQ were relatively high. Conclusions: The proportion of athletes that reported significant scores on both the ORTO-15 and EAT-26 is concerning because these athletes are not as well-monitored and lack the extensive mental health resources provided to varsity athletes. This should be studied further, as the high mean score on the GNKQ indicates that other variables may play a greater role in driving these trends.
The effects of contextual information in processing race: exploring the nature of the black as fear stereotype

CHERYL L. DICKTER: The Effects of Contextual Information in Processing Race: Exploring the Nature of the Black as Fear Stereotype (Under the direction of Bruce D. Bartholow) The current research was conducted in order to test the effects of contextual information on the social categorization process and to examine the nature of the Black stereotype. Two studies sought to accomplish these goals by using a modified flanker paradigm in which participants categorized targets as Black or White while context information, determined by emotion words (Experiment 1) or stereotype-related words (Experiment 2), was simultaneously presented. Additionally, participants in each study completed a well-established test of racial bias (weapons task; Payne, 2001) to try to ascertain possible connections between the categorization of racial cues amid distracting context information and automatic and controlled components of racial bias. Behavioral and physiological results indicated that White participants did not process contextual information until later stages of processing and attended first to Black targets and then to White targets. Finally, although not fully supported, there was some preliminary evidence that a stereotype involving fear may be more connected to the Black social category than are other negative stereotypes.
Pattern and Outcome Of Infantile Spasms in Sohag University Hospital :A reterospective study

Background: Infantile spasms (IS) are a unique form of seizure disorder that their occurrence is almost entirely limited to infancy (the first year of life) and they are refractory to conventional anticonvulsant drugs. IS usually are associated with developmental retardation or deterioration and a characteristic electroencephalographic (EEG) pattern (hypsarrhythmia) that together form a syndrome . IS involves a sudden, generally bilateral and symmetric contractions of muscles of the neck, trunk, and extremities. Patients with IS can be classified into focal IS and diffuse groups. Objective: Our main objective in this study is to evaluate the clinical profile, laboratory data, and outcome of children having infantile spasms in Sohag University Hospital. Methods: This retrospective study was conducted on 540 patient (mean age 8.4 ± 6.9 months.: ) from December 2015 to November 2016 in neuropediatric outpatient Clinic, Pediatric department at Sohag University Hospital. Detailed clinical data of the patient, Investigation done for the patient including the neuroimaging (MRI or CT) , EEG pattern, basic metabolic studies , serum enzymes and Karyotyping were retrospectively collected from files and records . Results: In this study ; ( 66.1%) of cases were males. (33,9% ) of cases were females ,mean age of presentation (8.4± 6.9 months). Positive consanguinity was found in (7.6%) of cases. (79.2%)of cases presented with flexor spasms, (8.9%) with extensor spasms and (11.9%) with mixed spasms . (8%) of cases were idiopathic, (13.5%) of cases were cryptogenic and (78.5%) of cases were symptomatic,(15.2%) of cases showed favorable outcome, and (84.8%) cases showed unfavorable outcome, of them (11.5%) of cases developed other type of seizures, (54.3%) of cases had mental retardation, (28.8%) of cases died and (5.2%) of cases had autistic features . In univeriate analysis (symptomatic) etiology (P= <0.001, OR= 4.7) and absence of primary control of infantile spasm (P= <0.001, OR= 18.3), and frequency of spasm (P= <0.017, OR= 1.8) were significantly related to unfavorable outcome. In Multiple variable analysis primary response to treatment(odd ratio=16.9,P-value=<0.001), etiology(symptomatic)(odd ratio=3.2,P-value=0.002) significantly associated with unfavorable
HINT: A Hierarchical Independent Component Analysis Toolbox for Neuroimaging

The modular behavior of the human brain is commonly investigated using independent component analysis (ICA) to identify spatially or temporally distinct functional networks. Investigators are commonly interested not only in the networks themselves, but in how the networks differ in the presence of clinical or demographic covariates. To date, group ICA methods do not directly incorporate these effects during the ICA decomposition. Instead, two-stage approaches are used to attempt to identify covariate effects (Calhoun, Adali, Pearlson, and Pekar, 2001; Beckmann, Mackay, Filippini, and Smith, 2009). Recently, Shi and Guo (2016) proposed a novel hierarchical covariate-adjusted ICA (hc-ICA) approach, which directly incorporates covariate information in the ICA decomposition, providing a statistical framework for estimating covariate effects and testing them for significance. In this work we introduce the Hierarchical Independent Component Analysis Toolbox, HINT, to implement hc-ICA and other hierarchical ICA techniques.
Efficiency of adaptive importance sampling

The \textit{sampling policy} of stage t, formally expressed as a probability density function qt, stands for the distribution of the sample (xt,1,…,xt,nt) generated at t. From the past samples, some information depending on some \textit{objective} is derived leading eventually to update the sampling policy to qt+1. This generic approach characterizes \textit{adaptive importance sampling} (AIS) schemes. Each stage t is formed with two steps : (i) to explore the space with nt points according to qt and (ii) to exploit the current amount of information to update the sampling policy. The very fundamental question raised in the paper concerns the behavior of empirical sums based on AIS. Without making any assumption on nt, the theory developed involves no restriction on the split of computational resources between the explore (i) and the exploit (ii) step. It is shown that the asymptotic behavior of AIS is the same as some oracle'' strategy that knows the optimal sampling policy from the beginning. From a practical perspective, weighted AIS is introduced, a new method that allows to forget poor samples from early stages.
Position estimation of nodes moving in a wireless sensor network

This thesis investigates the use of measured radio signal strength indicator (RSSI) in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to provide an estimated distance. Estimated distances are arrived at using experimental calibration of a free space model to find the best free space model exponent and transmission power level over distances up to 7.78 m. We use these distances to estimate the position of a moving wireless sensor node. A new application called MobiPos for indoor distance determination using TelosB module has been developed and tested. In our MobiPos application, the moving node collects RSSI values from TestFtsp messages sent by up to eight stationary nodes. The moving node, in turn, collects valid RSSI observations from the same set, and formulates a special MULTI RSSI message that is sent to a stationary gateway node. The gateway node collects and time stamps received MULTI RSSI messages for post processing using a least squares position estimation process. We experimentally verified our research on a 23.92 m long mobile wireless sensor network testbed with up to six stationary nodes and one moving node.
Flexible Simulation for Neuromorphic Circuit Design: Motion Detection Case Study

Les architectures neuromorphiques sont l’une des approches les plus prometteuses pour continuer l’amelioration des capacites de calcul apres la fin imminente de la loi de Moore. En effet les reseaux de neurones affichent aujourd’hui des succes retentissants dans le domaine de l’intelligence artificielle et sont naturellement tolerants a la variabilite du materiel due aux processus de fabrication aux echelles nanometriques. Ils permettent en outre d’esperer un fonctionnement tres econome en energie. Nous presentons ici une etude de cas montrant la flexibilite de notre simulateur en logiciel libre d’architectures neuromorphiques, N2S3, et les gains energetiques potentiels de ces architectures.
C L ] 2 3 M ar 2 01 8 Automated Evaluation of Out-of-Context Errors

We present a new approach to evaluate computational models for the task of text understanding by the means of out-of-context error detection. Through the novel design of our automated modification process, existing large-scale data sources can be adopted for a vast number of text understanding tasks. The data is thereby altered on a semantic level, allowing models to be tested against a challenging set of modified text passages that require to comprise a broader narrative discourse. Our newly introduced task targets actual real-world problems of transcription and translation systems by inserting authentic out-of-context errors. The automated modification process is applied to the 2016 TEDTalk corpus. Entirely automating the process allows the adoption of complete datasets at low cost, facilitating supervised learning procedures and deeper networks to be trained and tested. To evaluate the quality of the modification algorithm a language model and a supervised binary classification model are trained and tested on the altered dataset. A human baseline evaluation is examined to compare the results with human performance. The outcome of the evaluation task indicates the difficulty to detect semantic errors for machine-learning algorithms and humans, showing that the errors cannot be identified when limited to a single sentence.