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Sexualization of Sharī‘a: Application of Islamic Criminal law (ḥūdūd) in Pakistan
No full textYesIn 1979, General Zia ul-Haq promulgated the Hudood Ordinances to provide Islamic punishments for several offenses, but the prosecution for extra-marital sex (zin.) has been disproportionately higher. Based on the analysis of reported judgments, I argue that the higher rate of prosecutions for zin. was a direct result of new laws. Despite carrying the name “Hudood”, these Ordinances specified several ta.z.r offenses with the objective of ensuring prosecutions. By incorporating .add and ta.z.r offenses for zin., the Zina Ordinance blurred the distinction between consensual sex and rape, and thus exposed victim women, who reported rape, to prosecution for consensual sex. The Qazf Ordinance, which might have curbed the filing of false accusations of zin., encouraged them by providing the complainants the defense of good faith. The number of zin. cases has decreased after the reform of the Zina Ordinance and the Qazf Ordinance under the Protection of Women Act, 2006
Data-driven subjective performance evaluation: An attentive deep neural networks model based on a call centre case
Get PDFYesEvery contact centre engages in some form of Call Quality Monitoring in order to improve agent performance and customer satisfaction. Call centres have traditionally used a manual process to sort, select, and analyse a representative sample of interactions for evaluation purposes. Unfortunately, such a process is characterised by subjectivity, which in turn creates a skewed picture of agent performance. Detecting and eliminating subjectivity is the study challenge that requires empirical research to address. In this paper, we introduce an evidence-based machine learning-driven framework for the automatic detection of subjective calls. We analyse a corpus of seven hours of recorded calls from a real-estate call centre using a Deep Neural Network (DNN) for a multi-classification problem. The study draws the first baseline for subjectivity detection, achieving an accuracy of 75%, which is close to relevant speech studies in emotional recognition and performance classification. Among other findings, we conclude that in order to achieve the best performance evaluation, subjective calls should be removed from the evaluation process, or subjective scores should be deducted from the overall results
Unitarily inequivalent local and global Fourier transforms in multipartite quantum systems
Get PDFYesA multipartite system comprised of n subsystems, each of which is described with
‘local variables’ in Z(d) and with a d-dimensional Hilbert space H(d), is considered.
Local Fourier transforms in each subsystem are defined and related phase space methods are discussed (displacement operators, Wigner and Weyl functions, etc). A holistic
view of the same system might be more appropriate in the case of strong interactions,
which uses ‘global variables’ in Z(dn) and a dn-dimensional Hilbert space H(dn).
A global Fourier transform is then defined and related phase space methods are discussed. The local formalism is compared and contrasted with the global formalism.
Depending on the values of d, n the local Fourier transform is unitarily inequivalent
or unitarily equivalent to the global Fourier transform. Time evolution of the system
in terms of both local and global variables, is discussed. The formalism can be useful
in the general area of Fast Fourier transforms
Dividend policy, systematic liquidity risk, and the cost of equity capital
Get PDFYesThis paper examines a new channel through which dividend policy can affect firm value. We find that firms that pay dividends exhibit lower systematic liquidity risk than those that do not. We also report a significant negative relationship between dividend payment and systematic liquidity risk. The liquidity improvement associated with dividend payments translates into an economically meaningful reduction in the cost of equity capital. Our results are robust to endogeneity concerns, to alternative measures of liquidity risk and dividend payouts, and to alternative model specifications. Further analysis suggests that the reduction in liquidity risk associated with dividend payouts is more pronounced for weakly governed firms and firms with opaque informational environment. Finally, we find that the recent financial crisis led to a greater increase in systematic liquidity risk for firms with no or low dividend payouts. Overall, our study implies that dividend policy can be used by corporate managers to shape liquidity risk and mitigate the adverse impact of economic downturns on the value of their firms
Development and Evaluation of Pediatric Versions of the Vanderbilt Fatigue Scale (VFS-Peds) for Children with Hearing Loss
No full textYesGrowing evidence suggests that fatigue associated with listening difficulties is particularly problematic for children with hearing loss (CHL). However, sensitive, reliable, and valid measures of listening-related fatigue do not exist. To address this gap, this paper describes the development, psychometric evaluation, and preliminary validation of a suite of scales designed to assess listening-related fatigue in CHL- the pediatric Vanderbilt Fatigue Scales (VFS-Peds).
Test development employed best practices, including operationalizing the construct of listening-related fatigue from the perspective of target respondents (i.e., children, their parents, and teachers). Test items were developed based on input from these groups. Dimensionality was evaluated using exploratory factor analyses. Item response theory (IRT) and differential item functioning (DIF) analyses were used to identify high-quality items which were further evaluated and refined to create the final versions of the VFS-Peds.
The VFS-Peds is appropriate for use with children aged 6-17 years and consists of a child self-report scale (VFS-C), parent proxy- (VFS-P), and teacher proxy-report (VFS-T) scales. Exploratory factor analyses of child self-report and teacher proxy data suggested listening-related fatigue was unidimensional in nature. In contrast, parent data suggested a multidimensional construct, comprised of mental (cognitive, social, and emotional) and physical domains. IRT analyses suggested items were of good quality, with high information and good discriminability. DIF analyses revealed the scales provided a stable measure of fatigue regardless of the child’s gender, age, or hearing status. Test information was acceptable over a wide range of fatigue severities and all scales yielded acceptable reliability and validity.
This paper describes the development, psychometric evaluation, and validation of the VFS-Peds. Results suggest the VFS-Peds provide a sensitive, reliable, and valid measure of listening-related fatigue in children that may be appropriate for clinical use. Such scales could be used to identify those children most affected by listening-related fatigue; and given their apparent sensitivity, the scales may also be useful for examining the effectiveness of potential interventions targeting listening-related fatigue in children.Research Development Fund Publication Prize Award winner, Mar 2022
Computational Techniques for Human Smile Analysis
No full textNoExplains how to implement computational techniques for human smile analysis
Shares insights into the human personality traits hidden in a smile
Enriches the understanding of human emotions through examples of face analysis
Includes key examples of the practical use of computer based smile analysis
You Will Never Be Indiana Jones: How Toxic Masculinity Spurs Sexism and Ableism in Archaeology
Get PDFYesThere’s much to unpack regarding the legacy of Indiana Jones and the rest of the archaeological adventure genre, particularly regarding the way these stories perpetuate colonialist and Orientalist thought. But popular culture has also presented a view of archaeology steeped in toxic masculinity, a view that bolsters both sexism and ableism within the discipline
Deep YOLO-Based Detection of Breast Cancer Mitotic-Cells in Histopathological Images
No full textyesCoinciding with advances in whole-slide imaging scanners, it is become essential to automate the conventional image-processing techniques to assist pathologists with some tasks such as mitotic-cells detection. In histopathological images analysing, the mitotic-cells counting is a significant biomarker in the prognosis of the breast cancer grade and its aggressiveness. However, counting task of mitotic-cells is tiresome, tedious and time-consuming due to difficulty distinguishing between mitotic cells and normal cells. To tackle this challenge, several deep learning-based approaches of Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) have been lately advanced to perform counting task of mitotic-cells in the histopathological images. Such CAD systems achieve outstanding performance, hence histopathologists can utilise them as a second-opinion system. However, improvement of CAD systems is an important with the progress of deep learning networks architectures. In this work, we investigate deep YOLO (You Only Look Once) v2 network for mitotic-cells detection on ICPR (International Conference on Pattern Recognition) 2012 dataset of breast cancer histopathology. The obtained results showed that proposed architecture achieves good result of 0.839 F1-measure
Compact and Highly Sensitive Bended Microwave Liquid Sensor Based on a Metamaterial Complementary Split-Ring Resonator
Get PDFYesIn this paper, we present the design of a compact and highly sensitive microwave sensor based on a metamaterial complementary split-ring resonator (CSRR), for liquid characterization at microwave frequencies. The design consists of a two-port microstrip-fed rectangular patch resonating structure printed on a 20 × 28 mm2 Roger RO3035 substrate with a thickness of 0.75 mm, a relative permittivity of 3.5, and a loss tangent of 0.0015. A CSRR is etched on the ground plane for the purpose of sensor miniaturization. The investigated liquid sample is put in a capillary glass tube lying parallel to the surface of the sensor. The parallel placement of the liquid test tube makes the design twice as efficient as a normal one in terms of sensitivity and Q factor. By bending the proposed structure, further enhancements of the sensor design can be obtained. These changes result in a shift in the resonant frequency and Q factor of the sensor. Hence, we could improve the sensitivity 10-fold compared to the flat structure. Subsequently, two configurations of sensors were designed and tested using CST simulation software, validated using HFSS simulation software, and compared to structures available in the literature, obtaining good agreement. A prototype of the flat configuration was fabricated and experimentally tested. Simulation results were found to be in good agreement with the experiments. The proposed devices exhibit the advantage of exploring multiple rapid and easy measurements using different test tubes, making the measurement faster, easier, and more cost-effective; therefore, the proposed high-sensitivity sensors are ideal candidates for various sensing applications.This work was supported by the Moore4Medical project, funded within ECSEL JU in collaboration with the EU H2020 Framework Programme (H2020/2014–2020) under grant agreement H2020-ECSEL-2019-IA-876190, and the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (ECSEL/0006/2019). This project received funding in part from the DGRSDT (Direction Générale de la Recherche Scientifique et du Développement Technologique), MESRS (Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research), Algeria. This work was also supported by the General Directorate of Scientific Research and Technological Development (DGRSDT)–Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MESRS), Algeria, and funded by the FCT/MEC through national funds and, when applicable, co-financed by the ERDF, under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement under the UID/EEA/50008/2020 project