Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Action towards Universal Health Coverage and Social Protection for Tuberculosis Care and Prevention: Workshop on the End TB Strategy Pillar 2 in the Western Pacific Region 2017

Although the End TB Strategy highlights that major global progress towards universal health coverage (UHC) and social protection are fundamental to achieving the global targets for reductions in tuberculosis (TB) incidence and deaths, there is still a long way to go to achieve them in low- and middle-income countries. A workshop on the End TB Strategy Pillar 2 in the Western Pacific Region focusing on action towards UHC and social protection was held between 27 and 29 November in 2017 at the Korean Institute of Tuberculosis in Cheonju, Republic of Korea. The workshop brought together key personnel from national TB programmes and other stakeholders or researchers with experience in this topic from six countries with a high burden of TB in the region. During the workshop, participants shared country experiences, best practices, and challenges in achieving UHC and enhancing social protection in the context of TB service delivery, and also explored policy options to address the challenges, to be applied in their respective countries. This report describes the content of the meeting and the conclusions and recommendations arising from the meeting.
THE STRENGTHS AND SHORTCOMINGS OF THE FIRST DISTANCE LEARNING MPH COURSE AT KERMAN MEDICAL UNIVERSITY FROM THE STUDENTS' VIEWPOINT: A QUALITATIVE STUDY

Introduction: In order to equip health system administrators with further education, for the first time in Iran, Kerman Medical University enrolled 30 of them as MPH (Master of Public Health) distance learning students in 2008. It seemed necessary to document the experiences of this course to design better programs in the future. Methods: This study was a qualitative descriptive study. All third semester distance MPH students were invited to participate in two focus groups. The total participants were 19 students. Open-unstructured questions were asked. Each focus group lasted for about 1.5 hours. The discussions were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The data analysis was done by thematic analysis. Results: Students commented on two main themes: benefits and shortcomings. The data was categorized in several subthemes. Among the benefits, they mentioned saving time and money, not commuting, active participation in learning, students’ interaction, and the benefits of cuncurrent study and work. In the shortcomings they spoke about the weak infrastructure, limited access to teachers, learning less, the difficulties of scuncurrent study and work, inappropriateness of the learning material, pile up of undone assignment and absence from educational environment. Conclusion: In this study the benefits and shortcomings of the distance learning program were discussed. Comments such as embarkment on distance learning only after a successful experience of running the same degree program in attended format, providing high speed internet and proper software infra-structure, familiarizing teachers about distance teaching, constant quality surveillance and conducting workshops for some topics were made for the improvementof the course.
Doing it differently in science: An evaluation of the process

With the benefit of a CUTSD Grant for 1999, the authors sought to develop an integrated programme supporting the development of key learning competencies in undergraduate science students at the University of Western Sydney (UWS) Nepean. The subject chosen to contextualise this programme, was a second year biological sciences subject, Immunology, which in itself aimed to provide students with an understanding of the development and functioning of the immune system, as well as expertise in a range of clinical assessment and research techniques involving immunological principles. The targeted competencies included:  group leadership and membership;  oral and written communication;  critical analysis;  problem solving;  reflective skills; and  independent learning.
Mixed-mode Integration for Real-time Simulation

The new possibilities of multi-domain hierarchical modelling often lead to models with both fast and slow parts. In this paper a new approach to simulate such systems is discussed that is especially useful in real-time applications. Mixed-mode integration represents a middle course between implicit and explicit integration. The main idea is to split up the system into a fast and a slow part and to apply implicit discretization only to the fast part. The partitioning of the system can be performed offline using a newly developed automatic selection routine, before real-time simulation starts. Mixed-mode integration was applied to several Modelica models from different fields, e.g. models of a diesel engine and an industrial robot and tested using Dymola. Speedup factors from about 4-16 were recorded. In this paper, mixed-mode integration is introduced, the selection routine is described and numerical results are presented.
Effects of grip span in one-handed thumb interaction with a smartphone

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether different grip spans affected the touch performance of one-handed thumb interaction with a smartphone. Tapping time, hit count, and thumb-tip displacement were measured while using three mock-ups of an iPhone 5S, 6, and 6 Plus, respectively. In the tapping task, four positions were tested: top-left, top-right, bottom-left, and bottom-right. The results showed that the hit count (F2,14=8.596, p=.004) and thumb-tip displacement (F2,14=11.348, p=.001) significantly decreased as the grip span increased. Thus, we concluded that there existed another problem beyond the limit of thumb length that caused a reachability issue when using a large smartphone. Thus, this should be considered in the user interface design of a large smartphone.
Categorization and theories of mind : The case of the appearance/reality distinction

D'apres de nombreuses recherches relatives au developpement des theories de l'esprit, les enfants de moins de quatre a cinq ans n'auraient pas acquis une conception de l'esprit leur permettant de comprendre qu'un individu peut avoir differentes representations mentales d'un seul et meme objet, d'ou leur echec dans les tâches de distinction entre apparence et realite. Dans une premiere recherche, les donnees classiques relatives a la maitrise de la distinction entre apparence et realite ont ete reproduites aupres d'un echantillon de 64 enfants francais âges de 3 a 5 ans. Cependant, les recherches sur la categorisation precoce, menees suivant le paradigme du choix-image-force, ont montre que des enfants de moins de quatre ans sont capables de placer un seul et meme objet dans differentes categories : activation perceptive/inhibition taxonomique, et vice versa. Etant donne l'isomorphisme entre ces tâches de categorisation et les tâches de distinction entre apparence et realite (activation de l'apparence/inhibition de la realite et vice versa), un entrainement metacognitif (guidage de la procedure de resolution des tâches de choix-image-force) visant a favoriser l'emergence plus precoce de la distinction entre apparence et realite a ete mene dans une seconde etude. On n'observe aucun effet de cet entrainement, mais une interaction entre l'activite de categorisation dans la tâche de choix-image-force et le type d'erreurs produites dans la tâche de distinction entre apparence et realite. Les enfants qui font des choix preferentiels perceptifs dans la tâche de categorisation font principalement des erreurs phenomenistes dans la tâche d'apparence/realite. Ceux qui font des choix preferentiels taxonomiques dans la tâche de categorisation font principalement des erreurs realistes dans la tâche d'apparence/realite. La plus grande difficulte des tâches d'apparence/realite pourrait relever de la necessite d'un controle metacognitif pour la gestion des processus d'activation et d'inhibition impliques dans la resolution de problemes-pieges doublement trompeurs.
L'incorporation nominale en émérillon : une approche lexicale et discursive

L'incorporation nominale en emerillon est essentiellement representee par une incorporation morphologique d'un nom au role semantique de patient, nom tire de la classe morphologique des noms dependants – c'est-a-dire obligatoirement possedes en position de tete de syntagme nominal. Le complexe verbal ainsi forme est transitif et regit comme objet un participant humain. Dans cet article, nous argumentons contre la vision transformationnelle de la phrase a nom incorpore, et les notions d'« incorporation de l'objet », de « montee du possesseur », et de « possession externe» qui en decoulent. Nous analysons l'incorporation nominale comme un procede lexical lie a une fonction discursive: elle permet de presenter le participant humain comme affecte par l'action et a comme corollaire la destitution d'un patient non specifique.
Sketch2VF: Sketch‐based flow design with conditional generative adversarial network

We present an interactive user interface to support sketch‐based fluid design with a perceptual understanding of human sketches. In particular, the proposed system generates a 2D fluid animation from hand‐drawn sketches. The proposed system utilizes a conditional generative adversarial network model to generate stationary velocity fields from a sketch input. The network model is trained with hand‐drawn strokes and corresponding 2D velocity fields. On the basis of the generated velocity field, the system calculates fluid dynamics using a semi‐Lagrangian method. We ran a user study of the proposed system and confirmed that the proposed interface is effective for a 2D fluid design and that the system achieves good results based on user input.
Motion Control of Three Links Robot Manipulator (Open Chain) with Spherical Wrist

Robot manipulator is a multi-input multi-output system with high complex nonlinear dynamics, requiring an advanced controller in order to track a specific trajectory. In this work, forward and inverse kinematics are presented based on Denavit Hartenberg notation to convert the end effector planned path from cartesian space to joint space and vice versa where a cubic spline interpolation is used for trajectory segments to ensure the continuity in velocity and acceleration. Also, the derived mathematical dynamic model is based on Eular Lagrange energy method to contain the effect of friction and disturbance torques beside the inertia and Coriolis effect. Two types of controller are applied ; the nonlinear computed torque control (CTC) and the simpler form of its Proportional Derivative plus Gravity (PD+G) where they are designed to reduce the tracking trajectory errors which tend to zero where the used Kp and Kv gains are 900,60. Also, the RMS errors for tracking a step input of CTC were equal to [2.5E-14, 4.4E-14, 5.0E-14, -4.7E-14, -3.9E-14, -4.6E-14] (deg) and of PD+G were equal to [-1.77E-5, -1.22E-6, -4.28E-6, -8.97E-6, -1.32E-5, 1.05E-5] (deg) for joints one to six, respectively. The results show that CTC is more accurate but requires additional acceleration input and is more computationally extensive and PD+G controller is performed with acceptable tracking errors in manipulator position control applications.
Psychophysical Measurements of Temporal Integration Effects in Cochlear Implant Users

In this study, the effect of high stimulation rates on temporal integration in cochlear implant hearing was investigated. We measured threshold amplitudes, maximal acceptable levels and a line of equal loudness in 11 cochlear implant users (all with implants from MED-EL). The measurements were done (a) with a clinically used single channel stimulation rate of 1500 pulses per second (pps) and (b) at a high stimulation rate of 18000 pps, both for an apical electrode and a basal electrode. The duration of the stimulation pulse trains varied from 1 pulse to 5400 pulses. Additionally, we collected data on the perception of the different stimulation rates and stimulation electrodes using a questionnaire. A power-law like function was used to fit the threshold amplitudes of individual subjects with a high accuracy (R² = 0.96 +/- 0.05). The change of the stimulation electrode did not cause any systematic effects regarding threshold amplitudes or the slope of the temporal integration (TI) curve. We found lower thresholds for the high rate and slopes of 3.48 dB and 5.55 dB per tenfold increase in duration for the low and high rate, respectively. The DR was increased with the high rate by 6.58 +/- 3.79 dB. Since the increased DRs at the high rate were accompanied by higher variability of the given answers, the same number of audible loudness steps in the given DR is expected for both rates. Some of the subjects perceived the change in stimulation rate with a change in pitch, whereas most participants were only sensitive to a variation of the stimulation electrode. It is noteworthy, that besides pitch, the perception of other characteristics like sharpness are affected by changes in stimulation rate and stimulation electrode.
Estudio de una arquitectura modular neuronal para control robótico autónomo

Resumen: El presente trabajo trata de los problemas relacionados en la construcción de una arquitectura de control robótico mediante redes neuronales. Dicha arquitectura de control es aplicada a un modelo de robot tipo Khepera para llevar a cabo tareas dentro de un ambiente desconocido por el robot. Las tareas que el robot debe llevar a cabo, abarcan desde navegación con obstáculos hasta aprendizaje robótico. La arquitectura propuesta está basada en arquitecturas de redes del tipo perceptrón multicapa (MLP), las cuales son estructuradas en una organización modular y entrenadas mediante backpropagation (BP). Diferentes trabajos con arquitecturas modulares neuronales, señalan que éste tipo de arquitecturas proveen un control apropiado de robots en tareas vinculadas a detección y evasión de obstáculos, y han sido frecuentemente utilizados en el mundo real.
The Influence of Text—Present or Absent—in my Music

In this article I discuss the influence of text—in a broad sense—on my music. Careful elaboration of the written text (le travail d’écriture), made possible by musical notation, can be amplified in the context of computer music, where structural representations may suggest specific transformations of motives or intimate mutations of the sound itself. Certain texts have been influential to my musical options, especially the play Little Boy by Pierre Halet. The computer imposes complex mediations, whereas the voice is the closest sound source to the body: their confrontation brings a theatrical aspect, obvious in my composition Inharmonique. When texts are set to music, intelligibility is an issue. In Oscura, I introduce the spoken text in counterpoint with the song to preserve the poem's intelligibility. Words, poetic fragments, texts affect the mood of the music in L'autre face, Aventure de ligne, La Nouvelle Atlantide, Une aube sans soleil, Invisible, Mokee, The Other Isherwood.
The administration of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors α/γ agonist TZD18 inhibits cell growth and induces apoptosis in human gastric cancer cell lines

Aim of Study: This study is to investigate the effects of a novel peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) α/γ dual agonist TZD18 on cell growth, apoptosis, caspase activity, mitochondrial membrane potential, cytochrome c release, and apoptotic-related protein expression in MKN-45 cells. Materials and Methods: 3-(4, 5-dimethylthiazolyl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide assay against various human cancer cell lines was performed to investigate the whether TZD18 could in reduce the proliferation rates of cancer cells. The percentages of apoptotic cells and mitochondrial membrane potential level were determined by flow cytometry. The subcellular localization of cytochrome c was examined by immunofluorescence microscopy. Western blotting assay was performed to reveal the expression of apoptosis-related proteins. Results: The results showed that the administration of TZD18 could inhibit the growth of MKN-45 cells in a dose- and time-dependent manner. In addition, the apoptotic ratio increased sharply along with a significant increase of caspase activities, mitochondrial membrane potential, and cytochrome c release following TZD18 exposure. The expression of Bax and p27kip1 increased significantly, whereas the expression level of Bcl-2 protein was downregulated. Conclusion: These results indicated that the administration of PPAR α/γ agonist TZD18 may inhibit cell growth by inducing the apoptotic process in MKN-45 cells.
Recycling Random Access Opportunities with Secondary Access Class Barring

The random access procedure in cellular networks suffers from a congestion problem caused by massive access requests from a large number of devices. Since this congestion problem causes inefficient energy consumption and increases the random access delay, an efficient random access procedure is required for various types of devices. In this paper, we propose a new access control scheme to reduce the access delay and the energy consumption by mining hidden random access resources. The proposed scheme consists of the random access procedure and the resource allocation algorithm. The proposed random access procedure utilizes the multiple access class barring (ACB) procedure to mine and utilize the hidden random access opportunities (RAOs) in order to increase the number of successfully admitted devices. The proposed algorithm optimizes the resource allocation parameters according to the estimated number of devices. We provide an analytical model for the proposed scheme by using an embedded Markov chain. The proposed scheme is shown to reduce the random access delay and the energy consumption for green communications by achieving 53 percent maximum efficiency compared to 37 percent in the conventional schemes with the ACB and random access procedure.
LANGUAGE EXTENSIONS FOR MULTIPLE CODE INHERITANCE IN JAVA

The object-oriented programming paradigm provides strong support for code re-use via inheritance mechanisms. Currently, Java is one of the most widely used objected-oriented programming languages, but Java supports only single code inheritance. Unfortunately, code repetition is sometimes unavoidable without some form of multiple code inheritance. Historically, multiple code inheritance mechanisms in programming languages have been problematic. This is due to the tight coupling of code and data layout, along with fundamental semantic issues with multiple data layout inheritance. Since Java’s class mechanism is used for both inheriting code for methods (i.e., code-type) and inheriting state information (i.e., data-type), a mechanism for separating the code-type and data-type inheritance is necessary to solve the multiple code inheritance problem. We describe the implementation of MCI-Java, an extension to Sun’s Java 1.2. 2 that separates code-types and data-types and thereby enables a multiple code inheritance mechanism. IBM’s Jikes Compiler 1.15 is modified to provide compiler support for MCI-Java. At the source-code level, minor Java syntax changes are required for MCI-Java. At the Virtual Machine level, minor changes to the code loader and linker are required, but no change is made to the highly-optimized bytecode execution procedure. Lastly, we empirically demonstrate that the MCI-Java Virtual Machine, and the modified IBM Jikes Compiler, do not degrade the performance of Java programs, when compared with the classic Java Virtual Machine and the original IBM Jikes Compiler.
Segmentation and shape tracking of overlapping macrophages in fluorescent microscopy images

This thesis investigates the complex movement of migrating cells and small organisms. Whilst special emphasis has been devoted to macrophages observed with fluorescent confocal microscopy, the segmentation, tracking and shape analysis techniques developed here can be extended to various other applications, not exclusively of cells. With the acquisition conditions and particular resolution, macrophages exhibit very complex shapes. In some cases, the cells overlap, complicating the analysis considerably. A software framework is proposed to detect, track and analyse the shape and movement of macrophages. The framework, called macrosight, includes the following: (i) a novel 2D matrix with multiscale angle variation, called the anglegram, based on the angles between the points of the boundary of an object through which its general shape can be characterised. For the case of the macrophages, the anglegram helped identify the intersection of overlapping cell boundaries. (ii) A cell shape tracking algorithm providing a measured evolution of shape parameters and categorisation of shape types. This was based on metrics extracted from the anglegram and used for non-overlapping cells. (iii) An algorithm to assess the changes of direction derived from cell-cell contact. The algorithm may assist in the identification of cell-cell interactions, which may influence migration patterns. The anglegram showed promising results identifying two types of junctions in the boundaries of segmented objects, both in synthetic and real data. Tests on synthetic data showed that the method outperformed the classic junction detection technique by Harris. The framework can be used to explore the influence of cell-cell contact in movement patterns. The early experiments presented provided statistically significant evidence of such influence, opening the path for additional information of the tracks being included to further investigate on a larger number of interactions. This thesis provides preliminary studies of macrophages’ shapes and interactions. Future developments incorporating the techniques proposed in this thesis would provide a precise analysis of cell movement in biological studies, which could lead to pioneering insights concerning cell migration.
Word-to-word Machine Translation: Bilateral Similarity Retrieval for Mitigating Hubness

Nearest neighbor search is playing a critical role in machine word translation, due to its ability to obtain the lingual labels of source word embeddings by searching k Nearest Neighbor ( k NN) target embeddings from a shared bilingual semantic space. However, aligning two language distributions into a shared space usually requires amounts of target label, and k NN retrieval causes hubness problem in high-dimensions feature space. Although most the best-k retrievals get rid of hubs in the list of translation candidates to mitigate the hubness problem, it is flawed to eliminate hubs. Because hub also has a correct source word query corresponding to it and should not be crudely excluded. In this paper, we introduce an unsupervised machine word translation model based on Generative Adversarial Nets (GANs) with Bilingual Similarity retrieval, namely, Unsupervised-BSMWT. Our model addresses three main challenges: (1) reduce the dependence of parallel data with GANs in a fully unsupervised way. (2) Significantly decrease the training time of adversarial game. (3) Propose a novel Bilingual Similarity retrieval for mitigating hubness pollution regardless of whether it is a hub. Our model efficiently performs competitive results in 74min exceeding previous GANs-based models.