NECE: Narrative Event Chain Extraction Toolkit

To understand a narrative, it is essential to comprehend the temporal event flows, especially those associated with main characters; however, this can be challenging with lengthy and unstructured narrative texts. To address this, we introduce NECE, an open-access, document-level toolkit that automatically extracts and aligns narrative events in the temporal order of their occurrence. Through extensive evaluations, we show the high quality of the NECE toolkit and demonstrates its downstream application in analyzing narrative bias regarding gender. We also openly discuss the shortcomings of the current approach, and potential of leveraging generative models in future works. Lastly the NECE toolkit includes both a Python library and a user-friendly web interface, which offer equal access to professionals and layman audience alike, to visualize event chain, obtain narrative flows, or study narrative bias

Microfinance and gender in the context of millennium development goals (MDGs) in Nigeria

Issues in client targeting are two in nature; gender targeting or poverty targeting (Brau and Woller, 2004 ). The nature of target to some extent will determine the 'best practices' in conjunction with local specific situation. In the first issue of gender targeting, the question has always been whether to lend to women or men in the context of which will give wider reach and benefit the society. This position was examined in the context of what are contained in recent literature with respect to microfinance activities in Nigeria using Chi-square non-parametric method of analysis to test the hypothesis differentials. It has, therefore, not been universally confirmed that extending microfinance to women alone or more than men will benefit the society more than otherwise. What has been observed was that giving more microfinance access to women will definitely empower them, but without examining the implication of that on the African social structure. Also when this is examined in context of targeting the poor, fundamental problem of still defining the purpose of microfinance as poverty alleviation is raised. This study recommends that gender distribution characteristics should not be a determinant of modus operandi of microfinance institutions in Nigeria, but rather the choice of poverty targeting, which is one of its target

Between-assay coefficients of variation and mean inaccuracies.

Between-assay coefficients of variation and mean inaccuracies.</p

Sample set up with the EVA.

(TIF)</p

Serial dilution of calibration standards.

Serial dilution of calibration standards.</p

A schematic of urine sample stability test with GC-MS.

(TIF)</p

A representative standard curve.

The y-axis plots the response ratio between the internal standard and the analyte.</p

Example of a temperature profile modulation for MOX sensors for IBM EVA^™: (i) periodic waveform of heater voltage, expressed as a percentage of the maximum operating voltage recommended by the sensor manufacturer; (ii) corresponding variations in MOX sensor resistance under constant environment.

Example of a temperature profile modulation for MOX sensors for IBM EVA™: (i) periodic waveform of heater voltage, expressed as a percentage of the maximum operating voltage recommended by the sensor manufacturer; (ii) corresponding variations in MOX sensor resistance under constant environment.</p

Preparation details for QC standards.

Preparation details for QC standards.</p

Within-assay coefficients of variation and mean inaccuracies.

Within-assay coefficients of variation and mean inaccuracies.</p