Evaluation of woman fisherfolks involvement in fisheries activities in Kainji Lake basin

The extent of rural women fisherfolks contribution to fisheries was grossly under estimated and certainly under valued. The basis of their involvement in fisheries activities is to make themselves equal partners to men productive and self reliant participants in the process of improving their own and their family living standard and to enable them realize their full potentials. This survey is informed a system of data collection with the aid of questionnaires and analysis. Ninety-six of the questionnaires were administered to women fisher folks in eight fishing communities selected at random. Thirty seven (97) percent of the women fisher folks are between the ages of 25-35 years, 59.4% of them can only read and write in Arabic language and 21.9% only are literature in western education, which is a general characteristic of the rural population in Nigeria. 24.0% of the respondents are in full time fishing activities while 65-5% are fishmongers. They belong to cooperative societies but only 26% indicated to have benefited from loan and credit facilities. 84.4% of the respondents are sustained by the business. The major problems facing women fisherfolks includes poor market price, fish spoilage, high transport cost and lack of access to loan and credit facilities and extension assistance. Solution to these problems will increase their status benefit and development

Diego de Moxena, el 'Liber sine nomine' de Petrarca y el concilio de Constanza

Número monográfico dedicado a Petrarca y el humanismo en la Península Ibérica.

Estimating the food consumption of fishes: one step in linking a species with its ecosystem

Details are given of a new software package MAXIMS which may be used to estimate the daily food consumption of fish. The software estimates the feeding times, the rates of ingestion and evacuation and related parameters. Two applications of the program are described. The first pertains to anchovy (Engraulis ringens ) with one feeding period per day, and the second one to juvenile cod (Gadus morhua ), which feed during dawn and dusk.

A criação dos números e sua evolução Matemática: de escrava a rainha das ciências.

Este trabalho aborda, de maneira bem sucinta e objetiva, a história da evolução dos números desde o primeiro risco em um osso, até chegar na forma atual como os conhecemos. Ao longo de aproximadamente 30.000 anos de existência, os sistemas de numeração, suas bases e representações sofreram inúmeras modificações, adequando-se ao contexto histórico vigente. Podemos citar a mentalidade científica da época, a necessidade da conquista de territórios, religiões e crenças e necessidades básicas da vida cotidiana. Deste modo, mostramos uma corrente histórica que tenta explicar como e porque a ideia de número se modifica com o tempo, sempre tendo em vista os fatores que motivaram tais mudanças e quais benefícios (ou malefícios) trouxeram consigo. Com um capítulo dedicado a cada uma das mais importantes civilizações que contribuíram para o crescimento da matemática e, sempre que possível, em ordem cronológica de acontecimentos, o leitor consegue ter uma boa ideia de como uma civilização influencia a outra e como um povo posterior pôde apoiar-se nos conhecimentos adquiridos dos antepassados para produzir seus próprios algorítimos e teoremas.

Complementary Phone Error training

This paper introduces a novel method for the training of a complementary acoustic model with respect to set of given acoustic models. The method is based upon an extension of the Minimum Phone Error (MPE) criterion and aims at producing a model that makes complementary phone errors to those already trained. The technique is therefore called Complementary Phone Error (CPE) training. The method is evaluated using an Arabic large vocabulary continuous speech recognition task. Reductions in word error rate (WER) after combination with a CPE-trained system were obtained with up to 0.7% absolute for a system trained on 172 hours of acoustic data and up to 0.2% absolute for the final system trained on nearly 2000 hours of Arabic data.

Tandem system adaptation using multiple linear feature transforms

Adaptation to speaker and environment changes is an essential part of current automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems. In recent years the use of multi-layer percpetrons (MLPs) has become increasingly common in ASR systems. A standard approach to handling speaker differences when using MLPs is to apply a global speaker-specific constrained MLLR (CMLLR) transform to the features prior to training or using the MLP. This paper considers the situation when there are both speaker and channel, communication link, differences in the data. A more powerful transform, front-end CMLLR (FE-CMLLR), is applied to the inputs to the MLP to represent the channel differences. Though global, these FE-CMLLR transforms vary from time-instance to time-instance. Experiments on a channel distorted dialect Arabic conversational speech recognition task indicates the usefulness of adapting MLP features using both CMLLR and FE-CMLLR transforms. © 2013 IEEE.

手写体数字识别装置

本文叙述一种采用飞点扫描管沿字周边扫描的技术,和如何把得到的模拟文字信息按文字的高和宽以及光点运动的方向分成4×5格子和八个方向。这样就能够从大量的信息中提取出十七种用于特征描述的基本信息量。当然选择这一“模拟——数字”信息压缩的依据和数量是由特征抽取确定的。本文还讨论了筹划特征法分类的实践,着眼点是找出能代表被分类诸对象的特征(圆弧、线段等),在此基础上用得到的60个特征来描述被分类的诸对象。理想的情况下用这些特征去描述某个数字应当是唯一的,由于手写体变化较大,扫描结果部分失真,因此在分类逻辑中,还要依据大量实践的结果加上一些所谓技巧性的逻辑,才能组成一个合理的分类逻辑。本文叙述的方法和实践已用于沈阳市信函自动分拣样机上。

Albucasis, Traitier de Cyrurgie: Edition de la traduction en ancien fran?ais de la Chirurgie d'Abu'l Qasim Halaf Ibn ?Abbas al-Zahrawi du manuscrit BNF, fran?ais 1318.

Trotter, David, Albucasis, Traitier de Cyrurgie: Edition de la traduction en ancien fran?ais de la Chirurgie d'Abu'l Qasim Halaf Ibn ?Abbas al-Zahrawi du manuscrit BNF, fran?ais 1318 (Niemeyer, 2005)

Najważniejsze kierunki, motywy i podstawy konstrukcji wierszy Pirbala Muhammuda

Wydział Neofilologii: Katedra Studiów Azjatyckich

Buland al-Ḥaydarī – poeta pokolenia prekursorów współczesnej poezji arabskiej. Interpretacja twórczości

Głównym celem dysertacji jest interpretacja twórczości Bulanda al-Ḥaydarīego (iracki poeta kurdyjskiego pochodzenia (1926-1996)). Utwory Al-Ḥaydarīego zawierają w sobie charakterystyczne cechy współczesnego wiersza arabskiego. Opisują ponadto najważniejsze historyczne, społeczne i osobiste doświadczenia literackiego pokolenia tego poety, jak również innych członków społeczności arabskiej w okresie po II wojnie światowej. Praca doktorska składa się z dwóch części. Pierwszą część poprzedza krótki opis stanu badań nad liryką Al-Ḥaydarīego. W pierwszym jej rozdziale przedstawiono życiorys i biografię literacką poety oraz wyjaśniono pojęcia takie jak: ‘współczesna poezja arabska’, ‘wolna poezja’, ‘poemat prozą’ czy ‘ruch wolnej poezji’. Wspomniano również o głównych nurtach w poezji arabskiej w latach 50. i 60. XX w., jak również ukazano sposób, w jaki modernistyczni poeci postrzegali poezję. Natomiast w drugim rozdziale przedstawiono pokrótce charakterystyczne cechy (stylistyczne, składniowe i melodyczne) współczesnego wiersza arabskiego i zilustrowano je fragmentami utworów Al-Ḥaydarīego. Druga część dysertacji składa się z pięciu rozdziałów. W każdym z nich przedstawiono jeden lub kilka głównych motywów oraz ich różne warianty: w pierwszym rozdziale – motyw miłość, w drugim – motyw istnienia (życie i śmierć), w trzecim – motywy ojczyzny, obczyzny, zaangażowania społecznego twórcy i jego wyobcowania, w czwartym – motyw przestrzeni (np. dom, droga, raj, piekło) oraz w piątym – motyw czasu (przeszłość, teraźniejszość, przyszłość).

Qualidade de vida relacionada com a saúde oral

Dissertação apresentada à Universidade Fernando Pessoa como parte dos requisitos para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Psicologia, ramo de Psicologia Clínica e da Saúde

Functional imaging of numerical processing in adults and 4-y-old children.

Adult humans, infants, pre-school children, and non-human animals appear to share a system of approximate numerical processing for non-symbolic stimuli such as arrays of dots or sequences of tones. Behavioral studies of adult humans implicate a link between these non-symbolic numerical abilities and symbolic numerical processing (e.g., similar distance effects in accuracy and reaction-time for arrays of dots and Arabic numerals). However, neuroimaging studies have remained inconclusive on the neural basis of this link. The intraparietal sulcus (IPS) is known to respond selectively to symbolic numerical stimuli such as Arabic numerals. Recent studies, however, have arrived at conflicting conclusions regarding the role of the IPS in processing non-symbolic, numerosity arrays in adulthood, and very little is known about the brain basis of numerical processing early in development. Addressing the question of whether there is an early-developing neural basis for abstract numerical processing is essential for understanding the cognitive origins of our uniquely human capacity for math and science. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at 4-Tesla and an event-related fMRI adaptation paradigm, we found that adults showed a greater IPS response to visual arrays that deviated from standard stimuli in their number of elements, than to stimuli that deviated in local element shape. These results support previous claims that there is a neurophysiological link between non-symbolic and symbolic numerical processing in adulthood. In parallel, we tested 4-y-old children with the same fMRI adaptation paradigm as adults to determine whether the neural locus of non-symbolic numerical activity in adults shows continuity in function over development. We found that the IPS responded to numerical deviants similarly in 4-y-old children and adults. To our knowledge, this is the first evidence that the neural locus of adult numerical cognition takes form early in development, prior to sophisticated symbolic numerical experience. More broadly, this is also, to our knowledge, the first cognitive fMRI study to test healthy children as young as 4 y, providing new insights into the neurophysiology of human cognitive development.

ARAB MUSICIANS IN WASHINGTON, D.C. AREA: ETHNICITY AND IDENTITY

Musicians living in the Arab Diaspora around the Washington, D.C. metro area are a small group of multi-faceted individuals with significant contributions and intentions to propagate and disseminate their music. Various levels of identity are discussed and analyzed, including self-identity, group/ collective identity, and Arab ethnic identity. The performance and negotiation of Arab ethnic identity is apparent in selected repertoire, instrumentation, musical style, technique and expression, shared conversations about music, worldview on Arabic music and its future. For some musicians, further evidence of self-construction of one's ethnic identity entails choice of name, costume, and venue. Research completed is based on fieldwork, observations, participant-observations, interviews, and communications by phone and email. This thesis introduces concepts of Arabic music, discusses recent literature, reveals findings from case studies on individual Arab musicians and venues, and analyzes Arab identity and ethnicity in relation to particular definitions of identity found in anthropological and ethnomusicological writings. Musical lyrics, translations, transcriptions, quotes, discussions, analyses, as well as charts and diagrams of self-identity analyses are provided as evidence of the performance and negotiation of Arab identity.

The interaction of polymer-coated magnetic nanoparticles with seawater

Laboratory studies were conducted to evaluate the interaction between bare and polymer-coated magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) with various environmentally relevant carrying solutions including natural oceanic seawater with and without addition of algal exopolymeric substances (EPS). The MNPs were coated with three different stabilising agents, namely gum Arabic (GA-MNP), dextran (D-MNP) and carboxymethyl-dextran (CMD-MNP). The colloidal stability of the suspensions was evaluated over 48 h and we demonstrated that: (i) hydrodynamic diameters increased over time regardless of carrying solution for all MNPs except the GA-coated ones; however, the relative changes were carrying solution- and coat-dependent; (ii) polydispersity indexes of the freshly suspended MNPs are below 0.5 for all coated MNPs, unlike the much higher values obtained for the uncoated MNPs; (iii) freshly prepared MNP suspensions (both coated and uncoated) in Milli-Q (MQ) water show high colloidal stability as indicated by zeta-potential values below -30 mV, which however decrease in absolute value within 48 h for all MNPs regardless of carrying solution; (iv) EPS seems to "stabilise" the GA-coated and the CMD-coated MNPs, but not the uncoated or the D-coated MNPs, which form larger aggregates within 48 h; (v) despite this aggregation, iron (Fe)-leaching from MNPs is sustained over 48 h, but remained within the range of 3-9% of the total iron-content of the initially added MNPs regardless of suspension media and capping agent. The environmental implications of our findings and biotechnological applicability of MNPs are discussed.