Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Methods for Identifying Songs

The goal of the thesis was to identify algorithms that can be used to tell if two songs are the same based on the artist, tile and duration metadata. I based my research on metadata for more than 95000 songs from the game SongArc. From this large data set I have selected three smaller data sets to focus on. The first sample set contained the three popular songs, their variances and songs that were similar in either the title or the artist to those songs. The second sample set contained songs with similar titles. The third sample set included songs that had metadata containing non-Latin characters. These three sample set were used to measure how well algorithms perform at detecting similar songs. I have selected various approximate string matching algorithms to examine. These algorithms were based on two distinct approaches: edit-distance and tokens. My final goal was to improve the accuracy of the algorithms by transforming their input. I have found that removing text starting with the first bracket character improved the results significantly. The edit-distance based algorithms benefited the most, especially when the goal was to find a low number of false positives. Ignoring the artist metadata field if it contained the word “unknown” improved the accuracy of all algorithms. I have found that it had the greatest effect on token based algorithms. In conclusion, I have found that using my improvements the cosine similarity metric is best to be used to detect if two songs are similar based on the artist and title metadata, being able to detect 87.27% of the similar songs when high accuracy is required at a sensitivity of 0.55. When high accuracy is not required, it is able to detect 96.78% of the similar songs using a sensitivity of 0.42.
Spatial Information Theory: A Theoretical Basis for GIS

An improved document support system for use in a character by character printer of the type that employs a rear striking hammer to drive the document, at the printing position, into contact with a selected symbol on a rotating type font. Typically, the type font would be on the surface of a constantly rotating wheel. In application, a front paper guide is provided which limits and defines the normal spacing between the document and the type font in the area of the printing position; the said spacing normally being quite small. A rear paper guide is supported by the hammer structure and is spring biased towards the front paper guide. Both paper guides include cutouts or openings so that the printing hammer can drive the document towards the selected character of the font to effect a printing action. The paper guides cooperate to maintain the document in a fixed location, relative to the type font, and serve to compress the document pack which may comprise an original document, carbons, and multiple copies, so that there are no separations, or air pockets, therebetween at the printing position. The paper guides enable the production of a more uniform appearing print of improved quality. Supporting and holding the document in a known position allows a constant portion of the kinetic energy of the print hammer to be available for affecting a print action, thus increasing the quality of the print.
USE OF REMOTE SENSING AND GIS TO ASSESS THE ANTHROPOGENIC IMPACT ON FOREST FIRES IN NAHR IBRAHIM WATERSHED, LEBANON

The Mediterranean forests are exposed yearly to several forest fire events threatening the social, economical, ecological and living conditions of human being. The majority of these fires are of anthropogenic origin. The Nahr Ibrahim watershed (NIW) represents a typical example of the Lebanese areas having abundant forest surface (38.23% of its surface) but suffering recently from forest fires. The preservation of these natural resources is a priority for the continuity, stability and prosperity of the country. Several methods were applied to evaluate the potential forest fire risk in order to identify hot spots and reduce the potential damage. In this context mapping forest fire risk is a priority and a preliminary tool for the prevention of catastrophic fire events and development of sustainable forest management plans. The use of remote sensing and GIS provided the solid base for similar studies such as the forest fire risk map done for Lebanon at 1:200.000 scale. Therefore, the need for more detailed analysis at the watershed level arises. In this study a comparative analysis was conducted at a large scale (1: 50.000) on the NIW to assess the effect of several natural factors (climate, topography, vegetation and soil conditions) on forest fire risk. A combination of natural and anthropogenic factors (urban settlements, roads and zones with agricultural activity) provided better understanding of the impact of anthropogenic activities on forest hazards and forest resources conservation. The results show that forest fire in high risk zones is aggravated by anthropogenic activities: an increase from 5% to 38% was detected. In areas of moderate risk the increase goes from 7 to 25%. On the other hand, areas with low risk zones noticed a significant decrease when the anthropogenic activities were incorporated. Areas with very low risk have almost vanished.
Transportation Energy Data Book, Edition 18

The Transportation Energy Data Book: Edition 18 is a statistical compendium prepared and published by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) under contract with the Office of Transportation Technologies in the Department of Energy (DOE). Designed for use as a desk-top reference, the data book represents an assembly and display of statistics and information that characterize transportation activity, and presents data on other factors that influence transportation energy use. The purpose of this document is to present relevant statistical data in the form of tables and graphs. This edition of the Data Book has 11 chapters which focus on various aspects of the transportation industry. Chapter 1 focuses on petroleum; Chapter 2 - energy Chapter 3 - emissions; Chapter 4 - transportation and the economy; Chapter 5 - highway vehicles; Chapter 6 - Light vehicles; Chapter 7 - heavy vehicles; Chapter 8 - alternative fuel vehicles; Chapter 9 - fleet vehicles; Chapter 10 - household vehicles; and Chapter 11 - nonhighway modes. The sources used represent the latest available data.
Local Experience with Generic Sofosbuvir and Ribavirin With or Without Pegylated-IFN in Chronic Hepatitis C Predominantly Genotype 3 Patients

Local Experience with Generic Sofosbuvir and Ribavirin With or Without Pegylated-IFN in Chronic Hepatitis C Predominantly Genotype 3 Patients Asad A Chaudhry1, Rabeeya Arif1, Bushra Ali2, Anam Khalid1, Shahid Majid3, Neeta Maheshwary4*, Ahson Siddiqi5 and Adnan Anwar 6 1Hepatologist, Gujranwala Gut & Liver Center, Gujranwala, Pakistan 2Assistant Professor, Fatima Memorial Hospital, Pakistan 3Assistant Professor, Dow University Health sciences, Pakistan 4Manager Medical Affairs & Clinical Research, Hilton Pharma Pvt Ltd, Pakistan 5Senior Director Medical, Regulatory & business development, Hilton Pharma Pvt ltd, Pakistan 6Senior Lecturer, Al tibri medical college, Karachi, Pakistan
A regional estimate of postfire streamflow change in California

The effect of fire on annual streamflow has been examined in numerous watershed studies, with some studies observing postfire increases in streamflow while other have observed no conclusive change. Despite this inherent variability in streamflow response, the management of water resources for flood protection, water supply, water quality, and the environment necessitates an understanding of postfire effects on streamflow at regional scales. In this study, the regional effect of wildfire on annual streamflow was investigated using 12 paired watersheds in central and southern California. A mixed model was used to pool and statistically examine the combined paired‐watershed data, with emphasis on the effects of percentage area burned, postfire recovery of vegetation, and postfire wetness conditions on postfire streamflow change. At a regional scale, postfire annual streamflow increased 134% (82%–200%) during the first postfire year assuming 100% area burned and average annual wetness conditions. Postfire response decreased with lower percentages of percentage area burned and during subsequent years as vegetation recovered following fire. Annual streamflow response to fire was found to be sensitive to annual wetness conditions, with postfire response being smallest during dry years, greatest during wet years, and slowly decreasing during very wet years. These findings provide watershed managers with a first‐order estimate for predicting postfire streamflow response in both gauged and ungauged watersheds.
Discrete Mathematics Cube Intersection Concepts in Median Graphs

In this paper, we study different classes of intersection graphs of maximal hypercubes of median graphs. For a median graph G and k ≥ 0, the intersection graph Q k (G) is defined as the graph whose vertices are maximal hypercubes (by inclusion) in G, and two vertices H x and H y in Q k (G) are adjacent whenever the intersection H x ∩ H y contains a subgraph isomorphic to Q k. Characterizations of clique-graphs in terms of these intersection concepts when k > 0, are presented. Furthermore, we introduce the so-called maximal 2-intersection graph of maximal hypercubes of a median graph G, denoted Q m2 (G), whose vertices are maximal hypercubes of G, and two vertices are adjacent if the intersection of the corresponding hypercubes is not a proper subcube of some intersection of two maximal hypercubes. We show that a graph H is diamond-free if and only if there exists a median graph G such that H is isomorphic to Q m2 (G). We also study convergence of median graphs to the one-vertex graph with respect to all these operations.
Constrained Spectral Clustering through Affinity Propagation

Pairwise constraints specify whether or not two samples should be in one cluster. Although it has been successful to incorporate them into traditional clustering methods, such as K-means, little progress has been made in combining them with spectral clustering. The major challenge in designing an effective constrained spectral clustering is a sensible combination of the scarce pairwise constraints with the original affinity matrix. We propose to combine the two sources of affinity by propagating the pairwise constraints information over the original affinity matrix. Our method has a Gaussian process interpretation and results in a closed-form expression for the new affinity matrix. Experiments show it outperforms state-of-the-art constrained clustering methods in getting good clusterings with fewer constraints, and yields good image segmentation with user-specified pairwise constraints. There is an emerging interest in incorporating pairwise constraints into clustering algorithms in the machine learning and data mining communities. In addition to the data values, we assume there are a number of instance-level constraints on cluster assignment. More specifically, we consider the following two types of pairwise constraints: must-link constraints, which specify that two samples should be assigned to the same cluster; and cannot-link constraints, which specify that two samples should be assigned to different clusters. Pairwise constraints may arise from knowledge of domain experts [15], perceived similarity (or dis-similarity) [11], or even common sense [12]. There are generally two categories of methods using pairwise constraints in clustering. The first category adapts the traditional centroid-based clustering methods, such as k-means [15, 1] or Gaussian mixtures [12, 11] to follow the pair-wise constraints. The second category tries to learn a Maha-lanobis distance that minimizes the distance between must-linked samples and maximizes the distance between cannot-linked samples; this can be done in the original vector space [16] or in kernel feature space [2]. After the metric learning , a clustering method such as k-means is used to get the final clustering result. In this paper, we try to adapt to using pairwise constraints another popular clustering method, spectral clustering, on which only some preliminary effort [10] is known to us. The major difficulty is that pairwise constraints specify a highly informative affinity measure, but that is only available for a small number of pairs. For the rest, we have to rely on the abundant but less informative affinity measure derived from the feature vectors (or provided for each pair). Prior to this paper, there is no …
The Use of Family Members and Peers as Resources during Adolescence.

In this study, 242 adolescents were asked to indicate the likelihood that they would seek support from their mother, father, closest sibling, and closest friend when confronted with each of 24 common concerns. Mean scores were generated in eight specific and three general categories for all four target individuals. Mean scores for target individuals were compared. Mothers were the most likely source of support in the family. Siblings were rated higher than mothers for dating support, and were a more likely source of support than fathers for several areas. Peers were the most likely source of support, with higher ratings than siblings in all categories, and with higher ratings than parents in all areas except financial support, career planning, and personal values. Although ratings were similar for both genders, where differences did exist, females were more likely to go to peers and mothers for support than were males. Younger adolescents showed strorg preferences for mothers and peers, while older adolescents were likely to give higher ratings to fathers and siblings in several areas. Peers were rated higher than other targets on most areas of support-seeking. Findings reinforce the importance of context and its interaction with gender and age in determining adolescents' support-seeking behavior. (Author/RH) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** U. & DEPAIMMENT OF EDUCATION Offic.4 Um:enamel fbAsierch end Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) hul Ucument has been reproduced u Mud from the person or orgonliaeon originating it 0 minor champs have been rude to improve reoroduchon Quarry. Points -r. ) vie'« of °p.m. :ma stawd in thtsdocument do not ncessarily represent official OER1 position of palmy. The Use of Family Members and Peers as Resources during Adolescence.
Can institutions resolve ethnic conflict? Abstract: High quality institutions, such as rule of law, bureaucratic quality, freedom from government expropriation, and freedom from government repudiation of contracts, mitigate the adverse economic consequences of ethnic fractionalization identified by 

High quality institutions, such as rule of law, bureaucratic quality, freedom from government expropriation, and freedom from government repudiation of contracts, mitigate the adverse economic consequences of ethnic fractionalization identified by Easterly and Levine 1997 and others. In countries with sufficiently good institutions, ethnic diversity does not lower growth or worsen economic policies. High quality institutions also lessen war casualties on national territory and lessen the probability of genocide for a given amount of ethnic fractionalization.
Thirty years on: future demand for long-term care in England

The financing of long-term care for older people is a topical issue, especially in view of demographic trends. A number of key questions arise. How many older people are likely to require long-term care services in thirty or forty years’ time? How much are these services likely to cost? Will the cost to public funds prove affordable? Who should pay? How should costs be divided between public expenditure and private sources of finance?
Warming Role of Land-Surface Changes in Arctic Summer

http://www.sciencemag. org/cgi/content/full/310/5748/657 version of this article at: including high-resolution figures, can be found in the online Updated information and services, http://www.sciencemag. org/cgi/content/full/1117368/DC1 can be found at: Supporting Online Material found at: can be related to this article A list of selected additional articles on the Science Web sites http://www.sciencemag. org/cgi/content/full/310/5748/657#related-content http://www.sciencemag. org/cgi/content/full/310/5748/657#otherarticles , 2 of which can be accessed for free: cites 4 articles This article 37 article(s) on the ISI Web of Science. cited by This article has been http://www.sciencemag. org/cgi/content/full/310/5748/657#otherarticles 4 articles hosted by HighWire Press; see: cited by This article has been http://www.sciencemag. org/cgi/collection/atmos Atmospheric Science : subject collections This article appears in the following
Analysis of monthly mean cloud amount for China: 1951--1994

The distribution of clouds over the globe greatly influences the regimes of other important climatic variables, such as temperature and precipitation. While satellite records of cloudiness are extremely valuable in the study of the earth`s climate (spanning now 2--3 decades), the longer records of surface-observed cloudiness for much of the earth`s surface are preferred for integration with long-term records of other surface variables in attempting to understand these variables` relationships and trends. As databases of surface-based cloud observations have become available for research use over recent decades, there have been many studies concerned with examining trends in regional cloud cover. Kaiser and Vose (1997) performed a gridded analysis of variations and trends in cloud amount using 187 Chinese weather stations for the period 1954--1990. The main findings were significant decreases in annual mean cloud amount over much of northern China, coupled with corresponding increases in the frequency of occurrence of clear skies. The decreased trends in annual mean cloud amount over northern China were found to be driven by decreasing cloud amount over most months of the year. The current study uses an expanded period of record of China cloud observations (1951--1994) to re-examine trends in cloud amount at individuals stations and over eight regions of China.
Ination, Investment and Growth: a Money and Banking Approach

Output growth, investment and the real interest rate are all found empirically to be negatively a¤ected by ination. But a seeming puzzle arises of opposite Tobin-like ination e¤ects because theory indicates a negative Tobin e¤ect when investment falls and a positive Tobin e¤ect when the real interest rate rises. We de ne inations Tobin e¤ect more speci cally in terms of the e¤ect on the capital to e¤ective labor ratio and resolve the puzzle by showing the simultaneous occurrence of all three negative ination e¤ects, on growth, investment and real interest rates, in a model calibrated to postwar US data. Here, investment along with consumption are exchanged for within a monetary endogenous growth economy with human capital and a decentralized credit-producing sector. JEL: C23, E44, O16, O42
Water and Energy Balance of a Riparian and Agricultural Ecosystem along the Lower Colorado River

This paper presents the potential of remotely-sensed data in managing irrigation schemes, as well as in addressing spatially distributed irrigation equity, adequacy, and sustainability. The “Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land (SEBAL)” was implemented over an irrigation district along the Lower Colorado River in southern California. Satellite and ground-based data were combined in an ArcGIS environment to estimate daily components of water balance. On an annual basis, the water balance closure error was less than 1%. Out of 2,266 mm of applied water (diverted water minus canal spills, plus precipitation), 1,286 mm was used in evapotranspiration processes. This amount of agricultural consumptive use was about 52% of the total diverted water, and 7% of the annual flow in the Colorado River above the diversion dam. Evaluating several irrigation and drainage performance indicators revealed that, overall, irrigation practice was adequate and highly uniform. The extensive network of deep open drains was also found to be functioning at an optimal level. In addition, the application of two commonly used methods in estimating spatially-distributed potential evapotranspiration under advective conditions was studied and suggestions were made to avoid the error introduced by ignoring the effect of horizontally-transported energy on enhancing/suppressing water consumption.
Cost-effectiveness of high-dose atorvastatin compared with usual-dose simvastatin: less than IDEAL?

The use of statins in the management and prevention of coronary artery disease has been shown to be associated with significant reductions in the incidence of major adverse events, including death, myocardial infarction (MI), and stroke.1 Clinical practice reflects the impact of this evidence: between the EUROASPIRE I and II surveys, reported rates of statin use in Europe increased from 18.5% in 1995–96 to 57.7% in 1999–2000 among patients with coronary heart disease.2 Despite this increase, over 40% of the patients had failed to reach targeted cholesterol concentrations. Four recent trials have examined the impact of higher dose statins compared with standard dose statins in meeting more stringent low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol goals and thereby reducing cardiovascular outcomes.3 The most recent of these, the Incremental Decrease in End Points Through Aggressive Lipid Lowering (IDEAL) trial, randomized 8888 patients with a history of acute MI (AMI) to either 80 mg/day atorvastatin (the high dose treatment) or 20 mg/day simvastatin (the moderate dose treatment). 4 The high dose treatment was not associated with a significant decrease in the primary outcome of a major coronary event (including death, confirmed non-fatal AMI, or cardiac arrest with resuscitation) but was associated with a reduction in secondary endpoints and non-fatal AMI. In this article, Lindgren et al . present the results of a cost-effectiveness analysis of the IDEAL study.5 This study is important for several reasons: it is the first published economic evaluation of high-dose vs. moderate-dose statin therapy; and the first study to be conducted after the introduction of generic simvastatin. The incremental cost per quality adjusted life year … Corresponding author. Tel: +1 780 407 8680; fax: +1 780 407 8368. E-mail address : pkaul{at}ualberta.ca
Exact Nonlinear and Non-Gaussian Kalman Smoother for State Space Models with Implicit Functions and Equality Constraints

In this paper, I present a novel implementation of the exact nonlinear and non-Gaussian Kalman smoother that can also deal with implicit functions in the measurement and/or state equations as well as equality constraints. Read the accompanying paper CPB Discussion Paper 360 . My approach has the additional advantage that it can be fully automated, on the basis of which I have developed a toolbox that can handle a wide class of discrete-time state space models. The toolbox is documented in an accompanying paper, while the technical details are presented in the current one.
Combined pole placement/sensitivity function shaping method using convex optimization criteria

This paper deals with the design of robust digital controllers by the combined pole placement / sensitivity function shaping method. It shows that the design problem can be formulated and solved as a convex optimization problem. Specifications like dominant closed-loop poles or integration controller action may be introduced just as well as other fixed parts for the controller. Experimental results obtained in controller design for a very flexible 360° arm are presented.