Towards Understanding Egyptian Arabic Dialogues

Labelling of user's utterances to understanding his attends which called Dialogue Act (DA) classification, it is considered the key player for dialogue language understanding layer in automatic dialogue systems. In this paper, we proposed a novel approach to user's utterances labeling for Egyptian spontaneous dialogues and Instant Messages using Machine Learning (ML) approach without relying on any special lexicons, cues, or rules. Due to the lack of Egyptian dialect dialogue corpus, the system evaluated by multi-genre corpus includes 4725 utterances for three domains, which are collected and annotated manually from Egyptian call-centers. The system achieves F1 scores of 70. 36% overall domains.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1505.0308

Competitive Strategy through Innovative Partnerships at the Regional Level: The Case of Tomatoes and Soybean Value Chains in Northern Togo.

Agricultural intensification is widely seen as a condition sine-qua-non for overall economic growth and food security in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Though attention is shifting from technology development to more market-oriented approaches, the best examples of agricultural intensification seem to happen relatively independent of interventions from the development circuit. This paper argues that agricultural intensification and market development may be stimulated through grassroots and regional-level efforts when care is taken not to substitute for responsibilities that belong to farmers, traders, and other stakeholders themselves. An approach is required that carefully addresses the factors influencing the competitiveness of agricultural enterprises. A major role of facilitating institutions may be to develop efficient relationships between farmers - and their complex multi-purpose farming systems and traders and processors - engaged in commodity specific trade and processing market segments. Finally, competitiveness is not something to win for today it crucially depends on innovation and continuous learning. The paper present cases from Northern Togo, where effective linkages have been established between farmers, traders, processors and rural bankers and NGOs. The paper concentrate on three cases: tomato production and marketing, soy bean processing, and the development of credit structures and interlocked contracts for input provisioning. The article is based on qualitative data interviews with the major stakeholders, and accounts in progress reports from the NGOs and farmer organizations. In conclusion, it gives some observations on the major lessons learnt, and the contribution that social scientists can make to strengthen dialogue between theory and practice.Agribusiness,

Coxsackie B2 Virus Infection Causing Multiorgan Failure and Cardiogenic Shock in a 42-Year-Old Man

Infections from coxsackie B2 viruses often cause viral myocarditis and, only rarely, multisystem organ impairment. We present the unusual case of a 42-year-old man in whom coxsackie B2 virus infection caused multiorgan infection, necessitating distal pancreatectomy, splenectomy, renal dialysis, and venoarterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation with mechanical ventilation. In addition, the patient had a rapid-eye-movement sleep-related conduction abnormality that caused frequent sinus pauses of longer than 10 s, presumably due to myocarditis from the coxsackievirus infection. He recovered after permanent pacemaker placement and was discharged from the hospital. We discuss our aggressive supportive care and the few other reports of multiorgan impairment from coxsackieviruses

Optical-WiMAX Hybrid Networks

The emergence of bandwidth-intensive Internet services, such ascircuit-quality voice transfer and interactive video gaming, createa high demand for a very qualified next-generation access network.In addition to high bandwidth, these future access networks shouldalso provide improved network availability, flexibility, mobility,reliability, failure protection, quality of service (QoS) supportand cost-effective access. The integration between optical networksand Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) is apromising solution for future access networks. Accordingly, a fewdifferent architectures and MAC protocol components have recentlybeen proposed for the integration between the Ethernet PassiveOptical Network (EPON) and WiMAX. However, the proposedarchitectures contain several drawbacks. Moreover, the EPON-WiMAXhybrid does not yet contain a comprehensive Medium Access Control(MAC) protocol and a mechanism for Quality of Service (QoS) support.Finally, this work introduces the Resilient Packet Ring (RPR)standard, which aims to build high-performance metro edge and metrocore ring networks that interconnect multiple access networks. Theobjective of this thesis is to examine the integration of opticalstandards, such as RPR and EPON, with the WiMAX standard.Subsequently, this integration will be applied to the areas ofarchitecture and MAC Protocol as a promising solution for not onlyaccess networks but also for metro networks.The first part of the thesis examines the EPON-WiMAX integration asa solution for the access network. Specifically, the proposedsolution includes new EPON-WiMAX hybrid network architectures thatare suitable for both urban and rural environment requirements, andit also introduces a joint MAC protocol for these architectures. Theproposed architectures are reliable and provide extended networkcoverage; in particular, reliability is achieved by applying aprotection scheme to the most critical portion of the EPON part ofthe architecture. Additionally, the network coverage of thearchitecture is extended by inserting an intermediate networkbetween the front end and the backhaul network of the traditionalEPON-WiMAX architecture. Subsequently, we propose a comprehensivejoint MAC protocol for the proposed EPON-WiMAX architecture; thisprotocol provides a per-stream quality-of-service guarantee andimproves the network utilization. Also, the proposed joint MACprotocol includes an admission controller, a scheduler and abandwidth allocator.While the first part of the thesis strives to improve the hybridnetwork reliability through protection in the EPON part and extendthe network coverage through innovative methods, the second partattempts to maintain and enhance these objectives by adding areliable technology to the integrated network. Specifically, thissection examines the way in which the RPR network can be integratedwith the proposed EPON-WiMAX architecture to form an RPR-EPON-WiMAXhybrid network, which can be a solution for both access and metronetworks. The proposed architecture is reliable due to thedependability of the RPR standard and the protection mechanismemployed in the EPON network. Moreover, the architecture contains ahigh fault tolerance against node and connection failure. In thesecond part, the joint MAC protocol for the RPR-EPON-WiMAX hybridnetwork includes a multi-level dynamic bandwidth allocationalgorithm, a distributed admission control, a scheduler, and arouting algorithm. This MAC protocol aims to maximize the advantagesof the proposed architecture by distributing its functionalitiesover the parts of the architecture and jointly executing the partsof the MAC protocol

Employee Stock Options And Market Efficiency

This study investigates market reaction to SFAS 123 Revised, “Share Based Payment,” which requires companies to recognize the fair value of employee stock options as expense on the income statement. Using a sample of 128 firms for the 2004 and 2005 periods, we find that markets have efficiently incorporated information formerly disclosed only in footnotes to the financial statements, effectively nullifying the argument that formally recognizing the expense would have a deleterious effect on stock prices of firms offering this type of compensation

The solution of mixed integral equation of the first kind using toeplitz matrix method

In this work, the existence and uniqueness of the solution of mixed integral equation (MIE) of the first kind is considered in the  L2  *C[0,T], T<1 ,  is the domain of integration with respect to position and T is the time. Then, a numerical method is used to obtain a system of Fredholm integral equations (SFIE). The discontinuous kernel of the SFIE takes the form of Carleman function and logarithmic kernel. The existence and uniqueness of the solution SFIE can be proved. Moreover, Toeplitz matrix method (TMM) is used to obtain a linear algebraic system (LAS). The LAS is solved numerically, to get the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of SFIE

An elastic plate with a curvilinear hole and flowing heat in S-plane

 In the present paper, we apply complex variable method, Cauchy method, to derive exact expressions for Goursat functions for the boundary value problems of an infinite elastic plate weakened by a curvilinear hole. The hole considered is conformally mapped on the area of the right half-plane. Also, when an initial heat is uniformly flowing in the perpendicular direction of the hole, the thermo potential function and the stress components, in this case, are obtained. Some applications are considered, and the work of many previous authors is established as special cases of this work. Also, when the hole is conformally mapped inside and outside the unit circle is established from this work.&nbsp