Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
THE EXAMINATION OF NATIONAL-NUTRITION POLICIES ON NONCOMMUNICABLE DISEASE MORTALITY AT VARIOUS STAGES OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: A CROSS-COUNTRY PERSPECTIVE

Title of Thesis: THE EXAMINATION OF NATIONAL-NUTRITION POLICIES ON NONCOMMUNICABLE DISEASE MORTALITY AT VARIOUS STAGES OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: A CROSS-COUNTRY PERSPECTIVE Manisha Gupta, Master’s in Public Health, Degree Year: 2019 Thesis Directed By: Dr. Luisa Franzini, Chair of the Health Services Administration Department, School of Public Health The acceleration of economic growth over the past few decades introduces the need to reorient policy to address the needs and challenges for a healthier population. This paper will review the effectiveness of national nutrition policies targeting overweight, healthy diets during pregnancy, infancy and childhood, and noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) across advanced economies and transitional economies. The level of expansion and industrialization of food systems around the world have had a direct impact on nutritional status and health. Considering the magnitude of nationwide public health responses to shifts in mortality have varied over time, this introduces the need to assess the ability for dietary-related policies to successfully reduce NCDs. Results from this analysis can provide a strong rationale as to when interventions will be most effective as well as ways in which we can carry out a timely response in establishing effective policies for countries at different levels of economic development. THE EXAMINATION OF NATIONAL-NUTRITION POLICIES ON NONCOMMUNICABLE DISEASE MORTALITY AT VARIOUS STAGES OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: A CROSS-COUNTRY PERSPECTIVE by Manisha Gupta Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master’s in Public Health 2019 Advisory Committee: Chair: Dr. Luisa Franzini Dr. Lori Simon-Rusinowitz Dr. Michel Boudreaux
Using treatment to improve the production of emotive adjectives in aphasia: a single-case study

ABSTRACT Background: Emotive adjectives are used in everyday conversations to express opinions and feelings and make evaluations (e.g., “interesting”, “intelligent”). It has been reported that people with aphasia have difficulty using emotive language and that they would like this to be targeted in therapy. However, the literature provides little guidance whether it is possible to improve production of emotive adjectives. Aims: Our aim was to test the hypothesis that a treatment technique that has been found to be effective in improving noun and verb retrieval (Repetition in the Presence of a Picture) would be effective in improving production of emotive adjectives. Methods & Procedures: This study involved GEC, a 66-year-old English-speaking man who presented with non-fluent aphasia including frequent word-finding difficulties and impaired production of emotive adjectives following a left-hemisphere stroke. Treatment was carried out using a single-subject multiple-baseline design consisting of two treatment periods each of 2 weeks preceded by four baseline measurements, with one within-treatment measurement and three post-treatment measurements (immediately, 1-week, and 11 weeks after the end of the treatment programme). The treatment comprised weekly meetings with the therapist and computer-presented, self-paced, home-practice using to treat 72 emotive adjectives (36 positive and 36 negative adjectives) associated with 24 pictures. Outcomes & Results: GEC’s ability to produce treated adjectives for treated pictures significantly improved. The effect was maintained for the positive items with maintenance for negative items close to significant. However, these item-specific effects of treatment did not generalise: No significant improvement was observed in producing new, untreated labels for the treated pictures. Nor was GEC able to use treated labels with pictures other than those with which they were treated. In addition, GEC’s performance in a connected speech task remained unchanged. These results indicate that the treatment effects were not only item-specific but also task-specific. Conclusions: This study provides the first demonstration that emotive adjective retrieval may be improved using a treatment method similar to that commonly used for treating nouns and verbs. This result was achieved after only 2 weeks of practice at home with a computer including sparse meetings with a therapist and targeting only single-word production of adjectives. While there was no evidence of generalisation across items or tasks, this study encourages further exploration of the topic. This should include replication across participants and the inclusion of more natural conversational tasks in the treatment to facilitate transfer.
Designing Student Engagement in Project Based Learning

Purpose of this study is to describe the design and implementation of ethnology learning process by making video projects in project-based learning. The method used in this study is addie method in collaborative class for six months with 59 students as participant. The results of study are cultural learning map with project-based learning that has improve student's cognitive abilities to 47.73 point the results obtained from this study is student engagement design can increase student involvement in learning process and their cognitive abilities. Keywords—student involvement; project-based learning;
Optimized Face Image CAPTCHA as Graphical Password

— Most of the existing security primitives are based on hard AI problems. But these have been underexplored. This paper introduce a novel family of graphical password build on top of CAPTCHA technology. It is a combination of both CAPTCHA and a graphical password scheme. Many online security problems like online dictionary attack, relay attacks, brute force attacks can be overcomed by this scheme. Password can be found only probablistically in guessing attacks. The system uses a novel face image CAPTCHA which are optimized using genetic learning algorithm. The CAPTCHA combines touch based input methods favoured by mobile devices. They provide a high level security toward automated computer attacks.
Cross-industry distribution of R&D investments and economic growth

ABSTRACT This study empirically investigates the relationship between the cross-industry distribution of R&D investments and economic growth across 14 countries for the period from 1996 to 2013. Although countries can invest disproportionately in a handful of industries hoping to use their limited resources efficiently and boost economic growth, complementarity between industries calls for balanced investments. Using the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index as the measure of R&D concentration, we find an inverted U-shaped relationship between the concentration of R&D investment and economic growth. Some level of concentration may be good for growth; however, beyond a certain point, concentration has a negative effect on growth. Moreover, heavy investment in high-technology manufacturing industry alleviates this negative effect of concentration. The opposite holds for much investment in the service industry. Lastly, we find that the importance of diversification increases when countries advance, while developing countries can benefit from strategic concentration.
Social network for the choice of tourist destination: attitude and behavioral intention

Article history: Received: June 15 2019 Received in revised format: June 15 2019 Accepted: July 8, 2019 Available online: July 8, 2019 Social media is one of the most important elements in the process of industry 4.0. It has transformed itself into not just a platform for social interactions, but into a powerful marketing tool. People posting pictures or information through social media will likely influence others seeing it. This research investigates the impact of social media postings on millennial (Gen Y) tourists’ decision in choosing destinations, as well as the perceptions of social media users toward the information they gather from the social media about the tourism destinations. World Travel and Tourism Council in its release in 2018 revealed that tourism industry represents 10.4% of total global GDP. The industry has also contributed 20% of new jobs globally created in the last decade. The findings from samples taken from respondents in greater Jakarta (Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi) show that social media contributes significantly on shaping the millennial tourists’ decision in choosing their holiday destinations. © 2019 by the authors; licensee Growing Science, Canada
Age And Sex Matched Data- Two Ears Improved Social Interaction And Quality Of Life

Introduction: Hearing aids are electronic devices used by individuals with hearing loss to improve their quality of life. It is more useful to use bilateral hearing aids. Thus, the localization of the sound is better determined and an additional 6-10 dB increase in sound intensity can be achieved. In our study, we compared the satisfaction level of patients with hearing loss who used unilateral or bilateral devices. Methods: Patients with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss and using unilateral or bilateral hearing aids for at least 3 months and whose hearing loss cannot be treated with medical or surgical treatments were included. International Outcome Inventory for Hearing Aids Turkish Version (IOI-HA- R) was administered to them. Results: Matched data were used to standardize age and gender between the groups. In high school bilateral fitting increased. There was no difference between the groups in terms of hearing pure tone thresholds and speech discriminations. There was a significant difference between the groups in terms of the mean score of question 5 (p=0.047), question 7 (p=0.022) and mean total scale (p=0.028) in IOI-HA-TR. Conclusion: As a result, we found that the satisfaction level of bilateral hearing aid users was higher. Bilateral hearing aid use has a positive effect on the social life of patients and increases their quality of life.
Prevention Techniques for Sybil Attack

Mobile ad-hoc network is a self-governing network, consists of group of nodes that communicates with each other through wireless links. As it is a wireless network, so it is subjected to various attacks. There is one attack which is very dangerous called Sybil attack. In Sybil attack, attackers or malicious nodes uses multiple identities to disrupt the communication between the nodes by capturing necessary and important information and creating misunderstandings between the nodes. In this paper some measures are described to prevent Sybil attack.
Gratitude and the self: Amplifying the good within

ABSTRACT Social workers are increasingly interested in building individual resilience by leveraging positive psychological traits. Gratitude, in particular, is associated with a wide range of desirable psychological and physical outcomes. The amplification theory of gratitude explains these associations by positing that gratitude amplifies the good in people’s lives and orients them toward seeking out those good things. This study tested the hypothesis that gratitude would amplify the good that people see in themselves as evidenced by higher levels of self-compassion and self-acceptance. A second hypothesis was that grateful people would tend to derive their self-worth from intrinsic domains. Participants (N = 290) completed an online survey. Structural equation modeling with latent variables showed strong positive relationships between gratitude, self-compassion, and self-acceptance. There was a significant indirect association between gratitude and self-acceptance via self-compassion. Multiple regression analyses showed that grateful people tended to stake their self-worth in intrinsic domains. Results suggest that gratitude helps to reshape the relationship with the self in ways that are conducive to positive psychological functioning.
Random Forest Ability in Regionalizing Hourly Hydrological Model Parameters

This study investigated the potential of random forest (RF) algorithms for regionalizing the parameters of an hourly hydrological model. The relationships between model parameters and climate/landscape catchment descriptors were multidimensional and exhibited nonlinear features. In this case, machine-learning tools offered the option of efficiently handling such relationships using a large sample of data. The performance of the regionalized model using RF was assessed in comparison with local calibration and two benchmark regionalization approaches. Two catchment sets were considered: (1) A target pseudo-ungauged catchment set was composed of 120 urban ungauged catchments and (2) 2105 gauged American and French catchments were used for constructing the RF. By using pseudo-ungauged urban catchments, we aimed at assessing the potential of the RF to detect the specificities of the urban catchments. Results showed that RF-regionalized models allowed for slightly better streamflow simulations on ungauged sites compared with benchmark regionalization approaches. Yet, constructed RFs were weakly sensitive to the urbanization features of the catchments, which prevents their use in straightforward scenarios of the hydrological impacts of urbanization.
Effects of Poverty Funding on Literacy Achievement Over Time in Arkansas Schools

by Rick L. Gales Harding University July 2014 Title: Effects of Poverty Funding on Literacy Achievement over Time in Arkansas Schools (Under the direction of Dr. Bruce Bryant) This dissertation provides additional background to the limited research regarding the effectiveness of the use of state categorical money on literacy achievement measured by the Arkansas Literacy Benchmark Exam for a cohort of third through sixth grade students and a cohort of fifth through eighth grade students in Arkansas school districts. Using a non-experimental design, the researcher tested two hypotheses using a mixed factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA). The independent variables for the two hypotheses were change over time with two levels measured in school years (2008 versus 2009 versus 2010 versus 2011) and the two NSLA funding levels. The dependent variables were literacy achievement measured by the scaled scores from the 2009-2012 Arkansas Benchmark Examination for the students in the sample. Using descriptive statistics, the researcher also asked two research questions to determine how program expenditures were allocated among six researcher-defined categories by districts assigned to two categories, and the researcher sought to determine how the additional moneys were expended.
Electronic Word-of-Mouth in the Service Industry

Word-of-mouth is today considered among the most effective marketing communication tools. Indeed, consumers trust more their friends or other consumers than companies, advertisements, and brands. Moreover, due to the digital revolution, the electronic word-of-mouth plays a central role in consumers’ purchasing decisions. In particular, electronic word-of-mouth may be central in the context of services, where the perceived risk of the intangible offering triggers consumers’ need to find preliminary support from other consumers. This chapter focuses on comments and reviews regarding tourist products and other services shared by customers on different types of online platforms. The empirical analysis sheds light on the role that key motivational drivers, such as customer satisfaction, altruism, and self-esteem, may have in affecting consumers’ decision to share comments about traditional versus sharing economy businesses. Findings demonstrate that the observed motivational drivers significantly and differently affect consumers’ decision to engage in electronic word-of-mouth. Electronic Word-of-Mouth in the Service Industry: An Empirical Analysis on Sharing Economy Services
Numerical modelling of Cretaceous Pyrenean Rifting: The interaction between mantle exhumation and syn‐rift salt tectonics

The preshortening Cretaceous Pyrenean Rift is an outstanding geological laboratory to investigate the effects of a pre‐rift salt layer at the sedimentary base on lithospheric rifting. The occurrence of a pre‐rift km‐scale layer of evaporites and shales promoted the activation of syn‐rift salt tectonics from the onset of rifting. The pre‐ and syn‐rift sediments are locally affected by high‐temperature metamorphism related to mantle ascent up to shallow depths during rifting. The thermo‐mechanical interaction between décollement along the pre‐existing salt layer and mantle ascent makes the Cretaceous Pyrenean Rifting drastically different from the type of rifting that shaped most Atlantic‐type passive margins where salt deposition is syn‐rift and gravity‐driven salt tectonics has been postrift. To unravel the dynamic evolution of the Cretaceous Pyrenean Rift, we carried out a set of numerical models of lithosphere‐scale extension, calibrated using the available geological constraints. Models are used to investigate the effects of a km‐scale pre‐rift salt layer, located at the sedimentary cover base, on the dynamics of rifting. Our results highlight the key role of the décollement layer at cover base that can alone explain both salt tectonics deformation style and high‐temperature metamorphism of the pre‐rift and syn‐rift sedimentary cover. On the other hand, in the absence of décollement, our model predicts symmetric necking of the lithosphere devoid of any structure and related thermal regime geologically relevant to the Pyrenean case.
Northern Hemisphere Land Monsoon Precipitation Increased by the Green Sahara During Middle Holocene

Changes in land cover and dust emission may significantly influence the Northern Hemisphere land monsoon precipitation (NHLMP), but observations are too short to fully evaluate their impacts. The “Green Sahara” during the mid‐Holocene (6,000 years BP) provides an opportunity to unravel these mechanisms. Here we show that during the mid‐Holocene, most of the NHLMP changes revealed by proxy data are reproduced by the Earth System model results when the Saharan vegetation cover and dust reduction are taken into consideration. The simulated NHLMP significantly increases by 33.10% under the effect of the Green Sahara. The North African monsoon precipitation increases most significantly. Additionally, the Saharan vegetation (dust reduction under vegetated Sahara) alone remotely intensifies the Asian (North American) monsoon precipitation through large‐scale atmospheric circulation changes. These findings imply that future variations in land cover and dust emissions may appreciably influence the NHLMP.
Sanitation for Low-Income Regions: A Cross-Disciplinary Review.

Sanitation research focuses primarily on containing human waste and preventing disease; thus, it has traditionally been dominated by the fields of environmental engineering and public health. Over the past 20 years, however, the field has grown broader in scope and deeper in complexity, spanning diverse disciplinary perspectives. In this article, we review the current literature in the range of disciplines engaged with sanitation research in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). We find that perspectives on what sanitation is, and what sanitation policy should prioritize, vary widely. We show how these diverse perspectives augment the conventional sanitation service chain, a framework describing the flow of waste from capture to disposal. We review how these perspectives can inform progress toward equitable sanitation for all [i.e., Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6]. Our key message is that both material and nonmaterial flows-and both technological and social functions-make up a sanitation "system. " The components of the sanitation service chain are embedded within the flows of finance, decision making, and labor that make material flows of waste possible. The functions of capture, storage, transport, treatment, reuse, and disposal are interlinked with those of ensuring equity and affordability. We find that a multilayered understanding of sanitation, with contributions from multiple disciplines, is necessary to facilitate inclusive and robust research toward the goal of sanitation for all.
Effectiveness of Accommodation in the Assessment of Iranian EFL Learners

This study has investigated the impact of accommodation on test performance as well as achievement scores of Iranian EFL learners at the intermediate level. Initially, 60 female EFL learners of a language school took a version of PET following the standard procedure of the test with no accommodation. Ten days later, the same 60 learners took the second version of PET with some forms of accommodation including: extended time, setting alteration, test illustration, and response presentation. In the second phase, the 60 participants were divided into two 30-member groups of experimental and control and their equality was checked in terms of language proficiency. The experimental group, in addition to its regular lesson plan, underwent accommodated formative assessment. Consequently, as they finished each session, they took quizzes in the next session and received feedback on their progress in terms of four skills. The accommodation activities used during instruction included extended time, setting, presentation and response. The intervention in the control group was the same except for its accommodation. At the end, both groups sat for the achievement test of the language school to exhibit any possible impact of accommodation on their general achievement. On the whole, accommodation was found to be positively effective on the assessment of Iranian female intermediate learners as it contributed to better understanding of the test, reducing test anxiety, and finally an overall better performance on the achievement test.
Optical coherence tomography-based 3D intraoral scanner

We report fabrication and performance of the three-dimensional intraoral scanner based on optical coherence tomography (OCT) that enables three-dimensional structure images of tooth and diagnosis of the tooth through OCT images. The OCT system was configured the swept source OCT (SS-OCT), that is based on the swept source with center wavelength of 1310 nm, the scanner was built using MEMs mirror and optical collimator. The implemented SS-OCT based on MEMs scanner show axial resolution of 10 μm, scan length of 10 mm. With OCT system, OCT 2D images of the human tooth obtained by intraoral scanner based on OCT system. 3D OCT image of the human tooth was obtained by combining the 500 2D OCT images and also included internal information and structure of the human tooth. 3D images of a human tooth obtained were sequentially stitching using the iterative closet point (ICP). By equipping the implemented SS-OCT system with MEMs probe and using ICP algorithm, the intraoral scanner based on OCT system was constructed and used to demonstrate the feasibility of intraoral scanner, that is able to acquire the structure and function images of the human tooth, for intraoral scanner 3D image in dentistry.