Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessing Regional Economic Performance in the Southern Thailand Special Economic Zone Using a Vine-COPAR Model

Special economic zones (SEZ) can play an integral role in enhancing both regional and national economic growth. To explore the relationship between regional growth and the presence of an SEZ in Songkhla province, Thailand, the CD Vine–Copula AutoRegressive (CD-Vine COPAR) models were constructed using annual datasets of Songkhla’s economic performance from 1995 to 2016. The findings indicate that the D Vine-COPAR model produced better fitting predictions for the manufacturing sector, while the C Vine-COPAR models better fit for the agriculture and service sectors. A five-year forecast (2017–2021) was also created. For Vine-COPAR-based Granger causality, the Gross Provincial Production, Foreign Direct Investment and Border Trade are evidently important contributors to regional economic development. Consequently, the government should adopt comprehensive strategies to ensure comparative advantages for operating in the region based on favorable local factors.
Educational Choice and Risk Aversion: How Important Is Structural vs. Individual Risk Aversion?

According to sociological theories on educational choice, risk aversion is the main driving force for class-specific educational decisions. Families from upper social classes have to opt for the academically most demanding, long-lasting courses to avoid an intergenerational status loss. Families from lower social classes by contrast, tend instead to opt for shorter tracks to reduce the risk of failing in a long-lasting and costly education and, as a consequence, entering the labor market without a degree. This argument is deeply rooted in the social structure. Yet, the importance of individual risk preferences for educational choice has been neglected in sociology of education. We discuss these different forms of risk in the context of social inequalities in educational decision-making and demonstrate how they influence the intentions for further education of students attending the most demanding, academically orientated secondary school type in Germany. According to our argument, children from upper social classes are structurally almost compelled to opt for the academically most demanding educational courses, virtually without having a choice in the matter. In contrast, working class children do have to make an active decision and, thus, individual risk aversion comes into play for these students. - For our empirical analyses, we rely on data from the youth questionnaire of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) collected in the years 2003 to 2010, and estimate multinomial logit models. Our empirical findings underline the importance of the structural risk aversion. Students with a higher social background are not only less sensitive to their school performance, but individual risk aversion is also completely irrelevant to their educational plans. The opposite applies to students with a lower social background: the more risk-averse they are, the more likely they are to opt for a double qualification rather than just a purely academic university degree course.
HOTEL SERVICE, ASSUMPTION AND STARTER OF THE TOURISM DEVELOPMENT

The tourism worldwide is continuously making high development ascent and the same is a result of the expansion in the hotel industry. About that is very remarkable the improvement of the working processes, i.e. the quality of the service, but also the construction of numerous new facilities, which together affects the competition on the international tourism market, where Republic of Macedonia also gives its national tourism product. This paper pays special attention to the hotel service and the staff which are its inevitable and irreplaceable factor, and on which depends the guest satisfaction. In this paper is emphasized the monitoring the satisfaction of the hotel guests with hotel service, in the hotel complexes. The results confirm that Republic of Macedonia is recognized on the tourism market for the great and unique hospitality of the population in general, but also of the tourism staff. But that doesn’t mean that in future shouldn’t be paid attention on even greater improvement of the services quality.
Alopecia Totalis Treated with 1064 nm Picosecond Nd:YAG Laser: A Case Report

Alopecia areata (AA) is an autoimmune disorder causing nonscarring hair loss. Alopecia totalis (AT), the severe form of AA, is usually refractory to many first-line treatments including topical and intralesional corticosteroids and topical immunotherapy. Systemic corticosteroids, ultraviolet light phototherapy, and immunosuppressants may be effective but can cause side effects and high recurrence rates after discontinuing treatment. Janus kinase inhibitors and numerous types of lasers, such as 308 nm excimer laser or light, low-level laser therapy, and fractional lasers have been explored for alternative treatment of AA over the past few years with beneficial effects. Herein, we presented a case of AT treated with the novel 1064 nm picosecond Nd:YAG laser (ps-Nd:YAG) (Cutera, Brisbane, CA, USA) under a split-scalp study. A 25-year-old woman presenting with AT for two years was treated with topical and intralesional steroid and the 1064 nm Nd-YAG picosecond laser on the right half of the scalp. The laser treatment interval was once a month. The left half of the scalp was treated with topical and intralesional steroids alone. After treatment for six times, the right half of the scalp had greater improvement than the left half of the scalp. 1064 nm picosecond Nd:YAG laser therapy may be an effective alternative adjuvant treatment for AT.
An interactive application for malaria elimination transmission and costing in the Asia-Pacific [version 2; peer review: 2 approved, 1 approved with reservations]

Leaders in the Asia-Pacific have endorsed an ambitious target to eliminate malaria in the region by 2030. The emergence and spread of artemisinin drug resistance in the Greater Mekong Subregion makes elimination urgent and strategic for the global goal of malaria eradication. Mathematical modelling is a useful tool for assessing and comparing different elimination strategies and scenarios to inform policymakers. Mathematical models are especially relevant in this context because of the wide heterogeneity of regional, country and local settings, which means that different strategies are needed to eliminate malaria. However, models and their predictions can be seen as highly technical, limiting their use for decision making. Simplified applications of models are needed to allow policy makers to benefit from these valuable tools. This paper describes a method for communicating complex model results with a user-friendly and intuitive framework. Using open-source technologies, we designed and developed an interactive application to disseminate the modelling results for malaria elimination. The design was iteratively improved while the application was being piloted and extensively tested by a diverse range of researchers and decision makers. This application allows several target audiences to explore, navigate and visualise complex datasets and models generated in the context of malaria Open Peer Review
Risk Management of Contingent Liabilities and Public Debt

The subject matter of sovereign contingent liability (CL) risk management has been receiving increasing attention, since it is widely acknowledged that it poses potential hidden fiscal risks. These risks arise as a result of the uncertainty of: (i) whether the CL risk event(s) will materialise; (ii) the precise timing of the occurrence of the event leading to ownership of an obligation; and (iii) the exact amount of this obligation. Notwithstanding this, it is unsurprising that more countries are making use of contingent liabilities. The primary reason for this is that they are balance sheet neutral (from a cash-based accounting perspective), which provides the incentive to use this mechanism over direct lending to achieve policy objectives. This paper presents a framework within which active risk management of contingent liabilities can be undertaken in a manner that covers the lifespan of the liability and which also incorporates the portfolio effects of other liabilities. This is achieved by providing various frameworks for the calculation of provisions, as well as a general framework for CL risk management.
Speci ¢ c identi ¢ cation and molecular typing analysis of Lactobacillus johnsonii by using PCR-based methods and pulsed-¢ eld gel electrophoresis

A fast and reliable Multiplex-PCR assay was established to identify the species Lactobacillus johnsonii. Two opposing rRNA genetargeted primers have been designed for this specific PCR detection. Specificity was verified with DNA samples isolated from different lactic acid bacteria. Out of 47 Lactobacillus strains isolated from different environments, 16 were identified as L. johnsonii by PCR. The same set of strains was investigated with five alternative molecular typing methods: enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus PCR (ERIC-PCR), repetitive extragenic palindromic PCR (REP-PCR), amplified fragment length polymorphism, single triplicate arbitrarily primed PCR, and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis in order to compare the discriminatory power of these methods. The reported data strongly support the highly significant heterogeneity among all L. johnsonii isolates, potentially linked to their origin of isolation. The use of species-specific primers as well as rapid and highly powerful PCR-based molecular typing tools (namely ERICand REP-PCR techniques) should be respectively envisaged for identifying, differentiating and monitoring L. johnsonii strains from various environmental samples, for product monitoring, for species tracing in clinical studies as well as bacterial profiling of various microecological or gastrointestinal environments. 6 2002 Federation of European Microbiological Societies. Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
The Impact of Attention Mechanisms on Speech Emotion Recognition

Speech emotion recognition (SER) plays an important role in real-time applications of human-machine interaction. The Attention Mechanism is widely used to improve the performance of SER. However, the applicable rules of attention mechanism are not deeply discussed. This paper discussed the difference between Global-Attention and Self-Attention and explored their applicable rules to SER classification construction. The experimental results show that the Global-Attention can improve the accuracy of the sequential model, while the Self-Attention can improve the accuracy of the parallel model when conducting the model with the CNN and the LSTM. With this knowledge, a classifier (CNN-LSTM×2+Global-Attention model) for SER is proposed. The experiments result show that it could achieve an accuracy of 85.427% on the EMO-DB dataset.
What do adult black caiman (Melanosuchus niger) actually eat?

The black caiman (Melanosuchus niger) is one of the largest predators in South America, yet we know little about adult diets. We studied stomach contents of adults in Guyana and found the largest individuals target mammals instead of fish and males exhibit cannibalism, a behavior never recorded for this species previously.
Strategies to Hierarchical Porosity in Carbon Nanofiber Webs for Electrochemical Applications

Morphology and porosity are crucial aspects for designing electrodes with facile transport of electrons, ions and matter, which is a key parameter for electrochemical energy storage and conversion. Carbon nanofibers (CNFs) prepared by electrospinning are attractive for their high aspect ratio, inter-fiber macroporosity and their use as self-standing electrodes. The present work compares several strategies to induce intra-fiber micro-mesoporosity in self-standing CNF webs prepared by electrospinning polyacrylonitrile (PAN). Two main strategies were investigated, namely i) a templating method based on the addition of a porogen (polymethyl methacrylate, polyvinylpyrrolidone, Nafion® or ZnCl2) in the electrospinning solution of PAN, or ii) the activation in ammonia of previously formed CNF webs. The key result of this study is that open intra-fiber porosity could be achieved only when the strategies i) and ii) were combined. When each approach was applied separately, only closed intra-fiber porosity or no intra-fiber porosity was observed. In contrast, when both strategies were used in combination all CNF webs showed high mass-specific areas in the range of 325 to 1083 m2·g−1. Selected webs were also characterized for their carbon structure and electrical conductivity. The best compromise between high porosity and high electrical conductivity was identified as the fibrous web electrospun from PAN and polyvinylpyrrolidone.
Senile osteoporosis: Modern view of the problem

The article summarizes the data on senile osteoporosis and presents a clinical case of this disease. The reference sources on peculiarities of bone remodeling in senile osteoporosis are summarized; low bone formation takes place against the background of a pronounced bone resorption. The article also presents pathomorphological features of bone tissue remodeling resul­ting in pronounced impairments of the compact bone, which increase the risk of fracture. Vitamin D plays a significant role in the complex mechanism of senile osteoporosis. The data on the combined effect of vitamin D and parathormone on bone remodeling are summarized. The paper presents data on other cumulative effects of senile osteoporosis development. Against the background of ­ageing-associated systemic changes, calcium and vitamin D deficiency, increased pro-inflammatory cytokine expression, loca­lized bone disorders develop. An important link to the development of senile osteoporosis is an increased marrow adipose tissue with an intensified adipogenesis, resulting in a decrease of osteoblasts due to the toxic effects of adipokines, reduced differentiation and proliferation of osteoblasts. Age-associated immune-related mechanisms of inflammation, indirectly affecting the bone, are consi­dered. Peculiarities of the senile osteoporosis diagnostics by means of bone mineral density assessment tools are described. Despite the successes achieved in the study of senile osteoporosis development mechanisms, further research is required to explore local and systemic factors affecting bone tissue which are involved in the development of this disease.
Expressive Body Capture: 3D Hands, Face, and Body From a Single Image

To facilitate the analysis of human actions, interactions and emotions, we compute a 3D model of human body pose, hand pose, and facial expression from a single monocular image. To achieve this, we use thousands of 3D scans to train a new, unified, 3D model of the human body, SMPL-X, that extends SMPL with fully articulated hands and an expressive face. Learning to regress the parameters of SMPL-X directly from images is challenging without paired images and 3D ground truth. Consequently, we follow the approach of SMPLify, which estimates 2D features and then optimizes model parameters to fit the features. We improve on SMPLify in several significant ways: (1) we detect 2D features corresponding to the face, hands, and feet and fit the full SMPL-X model to these; (2) we train a new neural network pose prior using a large MoCap dataset; (3) we define a new interpenetration penalty that is both fast and accurate; (4) we automatically detect gender and the appropriate body models (male, female, or neutral); (5) our PyTorch implementation achieves a speedup of more than 8x over Chumpy. We use the new method, SMPLify-X, to fit SMPL-X to both controlled images and images in the wild. We evaluate 3D accuracy on a new curated dataset comprising 100 images with pseudo ground-truth. This is a step towards automatic expressive human capture from monocular RGB data. The models, code, and data are available for research purposes at https://smpl-x.is. tue.mpg. de.
Vision Based Runway Detection and Alignment for UAV

This paper presents the design and implementation of a synthetic vision overlay for UAV auto land procedures that is intended for conformance and integrity monitoring during final approach. In this Synthetic Vision (SV) technology provides the opportunity to use conform ally integrated guidance reference image data to aligning of the UAV for proper alignment to the runway to auto land an aircraft system using the imagery of the nose-mounted camera. A potential use of this is to support the operator in determining whether the vehicle is flying towards the correct location in the real world, for example the desired touchdown position on the runway.
Measuring Portfolio Performance: Sharpe, Alpha, or the Geometric Mean?

The most popular portfolio performance measures are the Sharpe ratio and alpha. While the Sharpe ratio is optimal under the CAPM assumptions of normal return distributions and unlimited borrowing at the risk-free rate, we find that it is not well aligned with investors’ preferences in more realistic settings. Alpha is a poor measure under both the theoretical and the realistic settings. For investors with typical borrowing constraints, the geometric mean provides an alternative measure that is much better than both the Sharpe ratio and alpha. It may very well be the most important single number to consider in portfolio selection.
Electrochemical Behaviour of Magnesium Alloys Study on the influence of rare earths as alloying elements

Magnesium alloys ZK31, EZ33 and WE54 were studied in passivating media (NaOH – pH13) and aggressive solutions (Na2B4O7 buffer solution – pH9 and NaCl 0.5 M neutral pH). The electrochemical study was performed by potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-Ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) were employed for surface analysis. The EIS results revealed that the passive layer formed on the surface of the three alloys has a bilayer structure, with an external layer of constant thickness, covering an internal layer whose thickness increases with immersion time in the passive solution. According to the XPS results the outer layer seems composed by Mg(OH)2 and the internal layer by MgO. In the corrosion tests, the WE54 alloy revealed the highest corrosion resistance due to the higher amount of rare earths. The EZ33, which also contains rare earths, showed the weakest corrosion resistance as a result of the ageing treatment that segregated the rare earth elements out of solid solution and into intermetallic compounds at the grain boundaries. The EIS results showed that the corrosion resistance of the WE54 alloy is one order of magnitude higher than that of the ZK31 alloy and two orders of magnitude higher than the EZ33 alloy. All the samples showed less corrosion in the NaCl solution than in the borate buffer due to severe solution alkalinisation. The main corrosion product found in the three alloys was Mg(OH)2.
A Comparison of North American Surface Temperature and Temperature Extreme Anomalies in Association with Various Atmospheric Teleconnection Patterns

The atmospheric teleconnection pattern reflects large-scale variations in the atmospheric wave and jet stream, and has pronounced impacts on climate mean and extremes over various regions. This study compares those patterns that have significant circulation anomalies over the North Pacific–North American–North Atlantic sector, which directly influence surface temperature and temperature extremes over North America. We analyze the pattern associated anomalies of surface temperature and warm and cold extremes over North America, during the northern winter and summer seasons. In particular, we assess the robustness of the regional temperature and temperature extreme anomaly patterns by evaluating the field significance of these anomalies over North America, and quantify the percentages of North American temperature and temperature extreme variances explained by these patterns. The surface temperature anomalies in association with the Pacific–North American pattern (PNA), Tropical–Northern Hemisphere pattern (TNH), North Pacific pattern (NP), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), Arctic Oscillation (AO), Western Pacific pattern (WP), circumglobal teleconnection (CGT), and Asian–Bering–North American (ABNA) patterns are similar to those reported in previous studies based on various datasets, indicating the robustness of the results. During winter, the temperature anomaly patterns considered are field significant at the 5% level over North America, except the WP-related one. These pattern associated anomalies explained about 5–15% of the total interannual temperature variance over North America, with relatively high percentages for the ABNA and PNA patterns, and low for the WP pattern. The pattern associated warm and cold extreme anomalies resemble the corresponding surface mean temperature anomaly patterns, with differences mainly in magnitude of the anomalies. Most of the anomalous extreme patterns are field significant at the 5% level, except the WP-related patterns. These extreme anomalies explain about 5–20% of the total interannual variance over North America. During summer, the pattern-related circulation and surface temperature anomalies are weaker than those in winter. Nevertheless, all of the pattern associated temperature anomalies are of field significance at the 5% level over North America, except the PNA-related one, and explain about 5–10% of the interannual variance. In addition, the temperature extreme anomalies, in association with the circulation patterns, are comparable in summer and winter. Over North America, the NP-, WP-, ABNA-, and CGT-associated anomalies of warm extremes are field significant at the 5% level and explain about 5–15% of the interannual variance. Most of the pattern associated cold extreme anomalies are field significant at the 5% level, except the PNA and NAO related anomalies, and also explain about 5–15% of the interannual variance over North America.
Channel Coding for Interference Alignment Onto a Lattice for Real-Valued Channels

Interference is usually viewed as an obstacle to communication in wireless networks, so we developed a new methodology to quantize the channel coefficients in order to realize in- terference alignment onto a lattice. Our channel model is the same as the compute-and-forward strategy. In this work, we suppose that our interference channel is real-valued and we describe a way to find a nested lattice partition chain, for any dimension n = 2r−2, where r ≥ 3, in order to quantize the channel coefficients. For that, we make use of the maximal real subfield K of L = Q(ξ2r ), where r ≥ 3, ξ = ξ2r is the 2r -th root of unity and K = Q(θ), with θ = ξ + ξ−1.