nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Relationship Between FDI, Terrorism and Economic Growth in Pakistan: Pre and Post 9/11 Analysis

The study examines cointegration and causal relationship between FDI, terrorism and economic growth in Pakistan using quarterly frequencies for the period 1988 2010. For empirical analysis data is divided into two sub periods i.e. pre 9/11 (1988 2001) and post 9/11 (2002 2010) periods. The results show that long run cointegration holds between FDI, terrorism and economic growth. Granger causality results indicate that there is bidirectional short and long run causality between economic growth and FDI for both sub samples. These findings are supported by variance decomposition and impulse response analysis. The findings suggest applicability of modernization theory to explain FDI and economic growth relationship. The results also reveal that terrorism has a deteriorating impact on FDI.
Determinants of domestic terrorism: An examination of ethnic polarization and economic development

Many scholars have sought to explain why countries with ethnically heterogeneous populations experience higher levels of political violence, but these studies have produced mixed findings. Unlike most studies that use ethno linguistic fractionalization indices to examine this relationship, we argue that ethnic polarization is a more appropriate measure to assess the role of ethnicity as a causal factor of domestic terrorism. This paper hypothesizes that high ethnic polarization influences the incidence of domestic terrorism, particularly when intervening economic factors are present. To test three hypotheses, we use negative binomial regression to model data from the Global Terrorism Dataset, World Bank, and the Reynal Querol (RQ) ethnic polarization index of 116 countries between 1970 and 2012. Our findings show that terrorism is more likely to emerge in societies with high ethnic polarization and economic malaise.
Community Based Tourism in the South West Region of Cameroon: Opportunities and Challenges for Women

Cameroon like many other sub Saharan African countries has identified tourism as a sector that can enhance the development of local communities by creating jobs and encouraging income generating activities. This is expected to help reduce poverty and empower local communities. The challenge, however has been to integrate gender concerns into the tourism industry so that both men and women can benefit equally. Using empirical data, this paper addresses the challenges women face in taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the tourism industry to reduce poverty and empower themselves. The paper identifies gender issues, cultural and traditional dictates, low education, limited knowledge of their rights as the major challenges that affect women's participation in and benefits from community based tourism. The paper further identifies rural women's project that can be transformed and sustained as part of the tourism industry. The paper concludes that unless gender is employed as a unit of analysis in the design and conception of local tourism projects in Cameroon, women's empowerment and poverty reduction through community based tourism remains a myth.
La promotion du tourisme patrimonial en Egypte et les pays Africains Vision pour un echange culturel et un developpement touristique durable

With the globalization and economic competition, there are many challenges facing the African continent in order to catch up with the world. Cultural tourism is one of the basic components of the African tourism and one of the factors that support the economy of the continent and highlights its distinct identity, and for Africa to succeed in reaching the tourist place it deserves to be, it must overcome the many obstacles that stand on the way. To show the value of cultural tourism in Africa there must be a sustainable development strategy that supports the unique global position of the continent, and the various arts and cultures. a strategy that encourages dialogue between African societies on one hand and between them and the world on the other hand, a strategy that concludes a specific action plan that requires a strong commitment to Africa and to harness all available resources. La promotion du tourisme patrimonial en Egypte et les pays Africains Vision pour un echange culturel et un developpement touristique durable 31
Evaluation of poor performance in competition horses: A musculoskeletal perspective. Part 1: Clinical assessment

Lack of willingness to go forward freely, lack of power, shortened steps, stiffness of the cervical or thoracolumbosacral regions are common nonspecific signs of musculoskeletal causes of poor performance in sports horses. Understanding musculoskeletal causes of poor performance requires knowledge of how normal horses move, the requirements of specific work disciplines, the nomenclature used by riders to describe how a horse is performing and the interactions between horses and riders. Determining the underlying causes needs an in depth history and clinical assessment, including in hand, on the lunge and ridden. Ridden exercise should include all aspects with which the rider is experiencing problems. Change of the rider can sometimes help to differentiate between horse and rider problems, but most normal horses are compliant and just because a horse goes better for a more skilled rider does not preclude an underlying pain related condition. Lungeing and ridden exercise should include not only trot but also transitions and canter which may highlight gait abnormalities not seen at trot. An accurate history combined with thorough clinical examination of the whole horse should permit the establishment of a list of problems requiring further investigation.
Food safety expertise among professional food handlers and consumers related to foodborne viruses case Slovenia

The objective of this quantitative survey was to determine the knowledge of Slovenian consumers and food handlers about viral food safety. For this reason, interviews were conducted using structured questionnaires and included 417 consumers and 61 food handlers. Foodborne viruses were not recognisable as distinctive foodborne hazards by food handlers, which demonstrates the lack of viral food safety knowledge using the chi square test. The analysis pointed out that higher educated food handlers showed a lack of food safety expertise. However, at the same time, higher educated food handlers possessed more knowledge compared to less educated handlers. Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed on data restricted to consumer study group. The results pointed out that the lack of awareness and knowledge strongly prevails over the viral food safety knowledge and awareness. The analysis showed that consumers' knowledge and awareness varied by consumers' education level, age and gender. On the basis of these results, we can conclude that the profile of comprehension and consequences is not the same for food handlers and for consumers. The obtained results revealed that food safety educational initiatives should be developed to better inform consumers about safe food handling practices and habits to protect their health form foodborne disease, including viral infections.
Pitch Adaptive Front End Features for Robust Children's ASR
Venue: INTERSPEECH

In the presented work, we explore some of the challenges in recognizing children's speech on automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems developed using adults' speech. In such mismatched ASR tasks, a severely degraded recognition performance is observed due to the gross mismatch in the acoustic attributes between those two groups of speakers. Among the various sources of mismatch, we focus on the large differences in the average pitch values across the adult and child speakers in this work. Earlier studies have shown that the Mel filterbank employed in the feature extraction is not able to smooth out the pitch harmonics sufficiently in particularly for the high pitched child speakers. As a result of that, the acoustic features derived for the adult and the child speakers turn out to be significantly mismatched. For addressing this problem, we propose a simple technique based on adaptive liftering for deriving the pitch robust features. This enables us to reduce the sensitivity of the acoustic features to the gross variations in pitch across the speakers. The proposed features are found to result in improved performance in the context of deep neural network based ASR system. Further with the use of the existing feature normalization techniques, additional gains are noted.
Towards End to End Speech Recognition with Deep Convolutional Neural Networks
Venue: INTERSPEECH

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are effective models for reducing spectral variations and modeling spectral correlations in acoustic features for automatic speech recognition (ASR) Hybrid speech recognition systems incorporating CNNs with Hidden Markov Models/Gaussian Mixture Models (HMMs/GMMs) have achieved the state of the art in various benchmarks. Meanwhile, Connectionist Temporal Classification (CTC) with Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) which is proposed for labeling unsegmented sequences, makes it feasible to train an end to end speech recognition system instead of hybrid settings. However, RNNs are computationally expensive and sometimes difficult to train. In this paper, inspired by the advantages of both CNNs and the CTC approach, we propose an end to end speech framework for sequence labeling, by combining hierarchical CNNs with CTC directly without recurrent connections. By evaluating the approach on the TIMIT phoneme recognition task, we show that the proposed model is not only computationally efficient, but also competitive with the existing baseline systems. Moreover, we argue that CNNs have the capability to model temporal correlations with appropriate context information.
Improved ETSI advanced front end for ASR based on robust complex speech analysis
Venue: 2016 Asia Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association Annual Summit and Conference (APSIPA)

An automatic speech recognition (ASR) is commonly used in these days. Current ASR systems perform well in ideal environment, however it does not perform well in realistic noisy environment. As a robust ASR, ETSI has standardized Advanced Front End (AFE) that adopts two stage of iterative Wiener filter (IWF) to realize a speech enhancement as the front end of ASR. In the ETSI AFE, FFT is used to estimate speech spectrum that designs the Wiener filter. On the other hand, we have already proposed robust complex speech analysis for an analytic signal. It can estimate more robust and more accurate speech spectrum due to the introduced robust criterion and nature of analytic signal. This paper proposes an improved AFE using wide band robust ELS (Extended Least Square) complex analysis and real valued analysis instead of FFT. The experimental results using the CENSREC 2 speech database demonstrates that the performance is improved.
End to end keywords spotting based on connectionist temporal classification for Mandarin
Venue: 2016 10th International Symposium on Chinese Spoken Language Processing (ISCSLP)

Traditional hybrid DNN HMM based ASR system for keywords spotting which models HMM states are not flexible to optimize for a specific language. In this paper, we construct an end to end acoustic model based ASR for keywords spotting in Mandarin. This model is constructed by LSTM RNN and trained with objective measure of connectionist temporal classification. The input of the network is feature sequences, and the output the probabilities of the initials and finals of Mandarin syllables. Compared with hybrid based ASR systems, the end to end system achieves a significant improvement of 6.32% on ATWV relatively. The best result of our system is ATWV 0.8310 on RASC863 data set. The proposed CTC based method applies to KWS in a specific language.
Biomonitoring and exposure assessment of people living near or working at an Italian waste incinerator: methodology of the SPoTT study
Venue: Environmental Monitoring and Assessment

Only few studies on the health effect of waste incinerators were focused on human biomonitoring (HBM) Our aim is to describe a protocol for assessing early variation of selected items in a population group living close to a waste incinerator in Turin, Italy. A cohort of 394 subjects was randomly selected, among residents near the incinerator and residents far from it. To achieve this sample size, 765 subjects were contacted. The cohort was monitored before the start up of the plant and will be followed up 1 and 3 years after, with measurements of respiratory function, selected blood and urine parameters including 19 metals, 17 congeners of PCDDs/Fs, 12 congeners of DL PCBs, 30 congeners of NDL PCBs, 11 OH PAHs, specific hormones (T3, T4, TSH, cortisol and ACTH) and common health parameters. The same protocol is applied for plant workers and breeders living near the plant. Individual exposure to urban pollution and waste incinerator fallout were assessed through the use of mathematical models. Information on individual habits was assessed using a specific questionnaire. SPoTT is the first Italian study that adopts a longitudinal design of appropriate statistical power to assess health impacts of waste incinerator plants' emission. The initial results comparing the baseline to the first follow up are due at the end of 2016.
Alone Of All Her Sex The Myth And The Cult Of The Virgin Mary

Thank you for reading alone of all her sex the myth and the cult of the virgin mary. Maybe you have knowledge that, people have search numerous times for their favorite novels like this alone of all her sex the myth and the cult of the virgin mary, but end up in harmful downloads. Rather than reading a good book with a cup of coffee in the afternoon, instead they juggled with some infectious virus inside their laptop.
Support Vector Machine

Support Vector Machine is one of the classical machine learning techniques that can still help solve big data classification problems. Especially, it can help the multidomain applications in a big data environment. However, the support vector machine is mathematically complex and computationally expensive. The main objective of this chapter is to simplify this approach using process diagrams and data flow diagrams to help readers understand theory and implement it successfully. To achieve this objective, the chapter is divided into three parts: (1) modeling of a linear support vector machine; (2) modeling of a nonlinear support vector machine; and (3) Lagrangian support vector machine algorithm and its implementations. The Lagrangian support vector machine with simple examples is also implemented using the R programming platform on Hadoop and non Hadoop systems.
Incretin Based Therapy and Risk of Pancreatic Cancer in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: A Meta analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials
Venue: Diabetes Therapy

present study aims to evaluate the risk of pancreatic cancer with incretin based therapy among patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).MethodsWe searched EMBASE, MEDLINE, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials and ClinicalTrials.gov for eligible studies published up to March 06 2016. This meta analysis includes all studies reporting adverse events of pancreatic cancer with use of incretin based therapies compared with placebo or non incretin anti diabetic drugs in patients with T2DM. We used fixed effect model to compare pooled relative risk (RR) with related 95% confidence intervals (CI).ResultsA total of 159 randomized trials were identified. Out of these, 135 studies were excluded as pancreatic cancer occurrence had not been included as an end point. The remaining 24 trials enrolling 47,904 participants were further assessed. Overall, no increased risk of pancreatic cancer were detected in association with incretin based treatment (RR 0.7, 95% CI 0.37 1.05) The incidence of pancreatic neoplasm was even lower among incretin based groups than controls (RR 0.50, 95% CI 0.29 0.87) in trials with duration more than 104 weeks. There was even decreased risk of pancreatic cancer within groups paralleled by incretin matched placebos (RR 0.55, 95% CI 0.32 0.93) than by non incretin anti diabetic drugs. Neither monotherapy (RR 0.62, 95% CI 0.38 1.01) nor combination regimen (RR 0.92, 95% CI 0.45 1.90) of incretin mimetics increased the risk of pancreatic cancer.ConclusionThis meta analysis shows that incretin based therapies are not associated with increase in the risk of pancreatic cancer. Interestingly, subgroup analyses suggested lower risk of pancreatic cancer in incretin groups than placebo in long term studies >104 weeks) Considering the inconsistent results among randomized trials and previous epidemiological investigations, more such studies should be conducted to clarify the existence or non existence of this association.FundingThis work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (
The anti diabetic drug metformin inhibits pancreatic cancer cell proliferation in vitro and in vivo: Study of the microRNAs associated with the antitumor effect of metformin.
Venue: Oncology reports

Recent studies suggest that metformin, which is a commonly used oral anti hyperglycemic agent of the biguanide family, may reduce cancer risk and improve prognosis, yet the detailed mechanisms by which metformin affects various types of cancers, including pancreatic cancer, remain unknown. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effects of metformin on human pancreatic cancer cell proliferation in vitro and in vivo, and to study microRNAs (miRNAs) associated with the antitumor effect of metformin. We used the human pancreatic cancer cell lines Panc1, PK1 and PK9 to study the effects of metformin on human pancreatic cancer cells. Athymic nude mice bearing xenograft tumors were treated with or without metformin. Tumor growth was recorded after 5 weeks, and the expression of cell cycle related proteins was determined. In addition, we used miRNA microarray tips to explore the differences in the levels of miRNAs in Panc1 cells and xenograft tumors treated with metformin or without. Metformin inhibited the proliferation of Panc1, PK1 and PK9 cells in vitro. This inhibition was accompanied by a strong decrease in G1 cyclins (particularly in cyclin D1) and retinoblastoma protein (Rb) phosphorylation. In addition, metformin reduced the phosphorylation of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) particularly the phosphorylation of EGFR at Tyr845, and insulin like growth factor 1 receptor (IGF 1R) in vitro and in vivo. miRNA expression was markedly altered by the treatment with metformin in vitro and in vivo. Our results revealed that metformin inhibits human pancreatic cancer cell proliferation and tumor growth, possibly by suppressing the cell cycle related molecules via alteration of miRNAs.
Exploring preservice teachers' conceptions after 'living a hybrid curriculum'

Physical education reform efforts support constructivist learning theory (CLT) to re conceptualize K 12 physical education. Advocates of models based instruction (MBI) indicate that sport education and a tactical games approach are grounded in CLT. A key implication for physical education teacher education (PETE) programmes is to develop preservice teachers (PSTs) capable of implementing MBI. Often, PSTs enter PETE programmes with the pre conception that learning can only occur through passive transfer of information. As a result, PETE programmes must help PSTs re conceptualize physical education. The two purposes of this study were to: (a) explore the use of a 'living the curriculum' experience to influence PSTs' conceptions of learning and teaching in physical education; and (b) examine the usefulness of visual methods to further understand students' experiences in a PETE course. Participants were undergraduate PSTs (N 12; five women, seven men) who experienced living a hybrid curriculum. PSTs took five to seven photographs to create a photo collage that best depicted their experiences in the class. Semi structured focus group interviews centered on discussion of the PSTs' photo collages. Data analysis revealed two major themes and sub themes: (1) Learning in physical education (a) knowledge is socially constructed and (b) learning is active; and (2) The role of the professor (a) professor as facilitator and (b) clinging to old conceptions. PSTs experienced cognitive conflict and conceptual addition, suggesting old ideas were not completely extinguished but revised. Overall, the PSTs' conceptions indicated an openness to and basic understanding of alternate forms of physical education.
Why the Constraints Led Approach is not Teaching Games for Understanding: a clarification

There is some apparent confusion regarding similarities and differences between two popular physical education (PE) pedagogical frameworks, that is, the Constraints Led Approach (CLA) and Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU)  Our aim in this commentary is to detail important theoretical and pedagogical concepts that distinguish these approaches, as well as to recognise where commonalities exist.  In particular, we note that TGfU had its roots in the 1960s in the absence of a substantial theoretical framework, although several attempts to retrospectively scaffold theories around TGfU have subsequently emerged in the literature. TGfU is a learner centred approach to PE in which teachers are encouraged to design modified games to develop the learner's understanding of tactical concepts. In contrast, the CLA has arisen more recently from the umbrella of Nonlinear Pedagogy (NLP) emerging from the empirically rich theoretical framework of ecological dynamics. The CLA adopts a 'learner environment' scale of analysis in which practitioners are encouraged to identify and modify interacting constraints (of task, environment and learner) to facilitate the coupling of each learner's perceptual and action systems during learning. The CLA is a broader framework which has been adapted for the design of (re)learning environments in PE, sport and movement therapy. Other key distinctions between the approaches include: the overall goals; the way in which the learner and the learning process are modelled; the use of questioning as a pedagogical tool; the focus on individual differences vs. generic concepts; and how progressions and skill interjections are planned and implemented.  Despite such distinctions, the two approaches are somewhat harmonious and key similarities include: their holistic perspective of the learner; the proposed role of the teacher and the design characteristics of learning tasks in each. Both TGfU and the CLA have a powerful central focus on the nature of learning activities undertaken by each individual learner. This clarification of TGFU and the CLA is intended to act as a catalyst for more empirical work into the complementarity of these juxtaposed pedagogical approaches to learning design.