Popular Programming Research Articles

The Limits to Food and Beverage Industry Influence over Fiscal and Regulatory Policy in Latin America

Context: Little is known about the political, institutional, and social contexts contributing to a decline in food and beverage industry power and influence over fiscal policy (soda taxes) and regulatory policy (sales/advertising restrictions and food labels). This article addresses this issue by exploring why Mexico and Chile eventually saw such a decline in the food and beverage industry's influence, whereas a similar decline did not occur in Brazil. The article argues that in Mexico and Chile, these outcomes are explained by presidential, congressional, and bureaucratic interests shifting to pursue policies that went against industry preferences. Methods: This article took a qualitative methodological approach to comparative historical research. Findings: Policy makers’ interest in pursuing stronger food and beverage regulations were shaped by economic and public health concerns, new electoral contexts, epidemiological information, and normative beliefs. In Mexico, the infiltration of nutrition researchers within government facilitated this process. By contrast, Brazil's government was divided about pursuing regulatory policies, with presidents favoring partnerships with industry to implement a popular antihunger program; industry's power endured there with limited progress in policy reforms. Conclusion: Governments can eventually overcome industry power and policy influence, but it depends on a whole-government commitment to reform.

Review Paper — Hydroeconomic Analysis: History, Status, and Possibilities

This paper reviews recent advances in the motivation, conceptualization, development, application, and assessment of hydroeconomic models (HEMs), for which these models are implemented by conducting a hydroeconomic analysis (HEA). It addresses various dimensions of HEA, including problems motivating the need for an HEM, roles of HEA, policy debates informed by HEMs, important uses of HEA, recent achievements in the scientific literature performed by use of HEMs, future improvements desired in HEA, as well as one simple prototype HEM. Supplementary material is included describing some contributions made to HEA, with special attention given to four individual contributors to water resource economics generally, criteria for credibility, and a description of some of the more popular mathematical programming packages used to build an HEM.

‘Refresh your hearts so they might better remember’

The education of the medieval Islamic scholarly elite (ulema) required that they memorize and retain countless texts for verbatim recollection throughout their careers. The ulema composed treatises of ethics (adab), in part to describe the resiliences students needed to cultivate in order to cope with the physical and emotional strain of their education. Using such works of adab, this article documents the ulema’s understanding of the role of the heart (qalb, del) and concupiscent spirit (nafs) in memorization from the tenth through fourteenth centuries CE. By the end of the tenth century, the ulema had grown into a discrete class of urban professionals who described the toll exacted by memorization techniques as a virtue of their profession, serving to alienate students from worldly temptations and focus their attentions on learning. They viewed the highly sensitive and apperceptive heart as central to this process, channeling the acquisitive desires of the spirit toward the assimilation of knowledge. While the heart’s sensitive nature and the spirit’s concupiscence were assets in this regard, the ulema also understood that training these faculties for memorization risked exposing their bodies to numerous, unpleasant affective experiences, including intellectual exhaustion, career anxiety, and physical illness. Calls to balance the ulema’s emotional and physical health against the need to continuously integrate knowledge reached its highest pitch in the wake of al-Ghazali, whose works of adab put forward a popular but strident program of discipline designed to empty the ulema’s spirits of errant desires and maximize the heart’s acquisition of divine knowledge. Works of adab written by the more professionalized ulema of the later medieval period substantially tempered al-Ghazali’s program. These treatises urge students to complement challenging courses of study with reasonable periods of relaxation and self-indulgence, in order to maintain the health of their hearts and spirits. By tracing the ulema’s concern over the emotional health of their class as it professionalized across the medieval period, this article documents how central affective considerations were to medieval Islamic scholarly society.

Social and Cognitive Predictors of Collaborative Learning in Music Ensembles

There have been many attempts to find ways to make music education more relevant and useful for pupils. Learning theories, performance-based learning, contract-learning, discovery-learning, cooperative learning, daily clocking, stage practice, and music-focused required and elective courses are all part of the implementation of these methods. Since high vocational students tend to have lower GPAs, it is imperative that they discover strategies to enhance their academic performance. Reform, rather than relying on theoretical frameworks, should be grounded on practical, innovative human actions. Both instructors and pupils possess the capacity to comprehend what they have learnt, according to the humanistic perspective. This paper provides evidence that collaborative learning is beneficial for first-year music practice students in a popular music program at a Chinese institution. The students work in small, diverse groups. Data was collected and analyzed from students over the course of one academic year with grades 4-6.. Collaboration is a powerful tool that has many applications, including but not limited to popular music degree programs, which is implemented in this paper using machine learning techniques. It zeroed down on seven important characteristics, all of which had obvious applications in the educational process. Another online course could use the method to predict students' performance, including real-time tracking of their progress and risk of dropping out, after it has been adjusted to capture relevant features corresponding to different contexts. This method could also be applied to other management learning platforms.

Optimal vocal therapy for respiratory muscle activation in patients with COPD: effects of loudness, pitch, and vowels.

Vocal therapy, such as singing training, is an increasingly popular pulmonary rehabilitation program that has improved respiratory muscle status in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, variations in singing treatment protocols have led to inconsistent clinical outcomes. This study aims to explore the content of vocalization training for patients with COPD by observing differences in respiratory muscle activation across different vocalization tasks. All participants underwent measurement of surface electromyography (sEMG) activity from the sternocleidomastoid (SCM), parasternal intercostal muscle (PARA), seventh intercostal muscle (7thIC), and rectus abdominis (RA) during the production of the vowels/a/,/i/, and/u/at varying pitches (comfortable, +6 semitones) and loudness (-10 dB, +10 dB) levels. The Visual Analog Scale (VAS) was used to evaluate the condition of patients concerning vocalization, while the Borg-CR10 breathlessness scale was utilized to gauge the level of dyspnea following the task. Repeated-measure (RM) ANOVA was utilized to analyze the EMG data of respiratory muscles and the Borg scale across different tasks. Forty-one patients completed the experiment. Neural respiratory drive (NRD) in the SCM muscle did not significantly increase at high loudness levels (VAS 7-8) compared with that at low loudness levels (F (2, 120) = 1.548, P = 0.276). However, NRD in the PARA muscle (F (2, 120) = 55.27, P< 0.001), the 7thIC muscle (F (2, 120) = 59.08, P < 0.001), and the RA muscle (F (2, 120) = 39.56, P < 0.001) were significantly higher at high loudness compared with that at low loudness (VAS 2-3). Intercostal and abdominal muscle activation states were negatively correlated with maximal expiratory pressure (r = -0.671, P < 0.001) and inspiratory pressure (r = -0.571, P < 0.001) in the same loudness. In contrast to pitch or vowel, vocal loudness emerges as a critical factor for vocalization training in patients with COPD. Higher pitch and loudness produced more dyspnea than lower pitch and loudness. In addition, maximal expiratory/inspiratory pressure was negatively correlated with respiratory muscle NRD in the same loudness vocalization task.

A Quantitative Probabilistic Relational Hoare Logic

We introduce eRHL, a program logic for reasoning about relational expectation properties of pairs of probabilistic programs. eRHL is quantitative, i.e., its pre- and post-conditions take values in the extended non-negative reals. Thanks to its quantitative assertions, eRHL overcomes randomness alignment restrictions from prior logics, including pRHL, a popular relational program logic used to reason about security of cryptographic constructions, and apRHL, a variant of pRHL for differential privacy. As a result, eRHL is the first relational probabilistic program logic to be supported by non-trivial soundness and completeness results for all almost surely terminating programs. We show that eRHL is sound and complete with respect to program equivalence, statistical distance, and differential privacy. We also show that every pRHL judgment is valid iff it is provable in eRHL. We showcase the practical benefits of eRHL with examples that are beyond reach of pRHL and apRHL.

EMPLOYER-SPONSORED FINANCIAL WELLNESS PROGRAMS ON FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY OF WORKING-CLASS MILLENNIALS IN CAVITE

The study focused on determining the effect of employer-sponsored financial wellness initiatives on working-class millennial's capacity to maintain their financial sustainability, with a particular emphasis on Cavite residents. The survey evaluates a number of financial wellness factors, including income stability, retirement planning, debt management, expenditure management, and savings. In order to better understand how these programs improve employees' financial well-being, the study will assess participants' demographic profiles, financial behavior, and assessments of the programs' effectiveness.The effects of financial wellness initiatives supported by employers on the long-term financial stability of Cavite's working-class millennial population. To determine the efficacy of different financial wellness programs, the study examines participant perceptions of their financial situation as well as demographic characteristics like age, gender, income, and employment status. The majority of respondents to a survey of 200 millennial's were female, single, and between the ages of 28 and 30. They also made between Php 5,001 and Php 10,000 per month. Participants' budgeting, saving, and investing techniques were much enhanced by the most popular program chosen, which was financial literacy seminar. The ability to handle unforeseen financial problems and retirement planning was especially improved, according to the participants, who also reported feeling more confident about handling their money. Employer-sponsored programs significantly increase financial well-being by lowering stress, increasing financial stability, and improving preparedness for future financial demands, according to the study's findings. Employers are advised to improve and broaden these initiatives, offer focused financial literacy instruction, and conduct frequent assessments of their efficacy in order to meet the changing demands of the labor market.

Performance of machine learning tools. Comparve analysis of libraries in interpreted and compiled programming languages

The article compares machine learning tools using the example of several popular programming languages. Existing tools in the following programming languages were tested and compared with each other: Python, Java, R, Julia, C#. For the needs of article, algorithms were created in each studied language, operating on the same test set and using algorithms from the same group. The collected results included the program's running time, number of lines of code and accuracy of trained model. Based on the obtained data, conclusions were drawn that interpreted language libraries in terms of creating machine learning solutions are more effective than compiled language libraries.

SPEECH PORTRAIT OF A HOST AS A TYPE-FORMING FACTOR OF A TV PROGRAM

The article examines the speech portrait of the TV program host as a type-forming factor. The purpose of the study is to characterize the speech portrait of the host Leonid Kanevsky in the crime program “The investigation was conducted with Leonid Kanevsky”, which determines its features. The selection of the components of the speech portrait of Leonid Kanevsky allows us to justify his role in the program, and also helps specialists in the field of media production to take them into account when working on television programs on crime topics. The theoretical basis of the study is made up of the concepts of “speech portrait”, “speech strategy”, “speech tactics”, “speech impact”. Media linguistic analysis of three issues of the program “The investigation was conducted ...” made it possible to identify the most popular stylistic means that determine the specifics of the speech portrait of Leonid Kanevsky, as well as to characterize the speech features of the popular program. The results of the study show that the bright speech manner of the host attracts and holds the attention of the audience, determines the recognition and popularity of the program.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE COMPANY'S INTERNAL CONTROL SYSTEM IN THE DIGITAL ECONOMY

The problems of developing the internal control system of companies are becoming more acute in a rapidly improving digital economy. This article examines the issues and prospects of the business internal control system in the digital economy. A SWOT analysis was compiled through which the advantages and disadvantages of automation of the internal control system were discussed, noting possible benefits such as improved efficiency, reduced errors and risks, and accelerated decision-making processes. At the same time, they point to other problems, such as ensuring information security, and data protection, and training employees to use new technologies. The main purpose of the article is a comprehensive review of the relevance of the development and problems of internal control of the company in the digital economy on the world stage. The article discusses important topics such as the analysis of current trends in the digital economy at the global level and their impact on the requirements for internal control systems, such as compliance with international standards, local laws, and the conduct of state control. The article also discusses existing automation products, considering the positive aspects and problems of implementation, as well as popular programs according to the level of popularity of software implementation for internal control and financial reporting. In conclusion, the study emphasizes that in the digital economy, internal control systems must be constantly updated and developed, and companies, in turn, must actively use modern information technologies to increase efficiency and competitiveness.

Transnational Television Caricature: The Global Spread of Spitting Image 1984–1994

This article examines the transnational journeys of the popular puppet caricature sketch programme Spitting Image (1984-1996) at a moment of change in the global television industry. Satirical programming, which tends to be rooted in a specific time and place, is not an obvious candidate for the global television trade. Nevertheless, Spitting Image travelled, both in the sense of direct export of the series and as a television format, franchised across the globe. The article explores the origins of the series at a transitional moment in UK broadcasting, as a rare case of an independent co-production within the ITV network in the early 1980s. It traces the difficulties faced by its producers when attempting to export the series to the US market, with content deemed too ‘parochial’ for the American audience. It examines the series as a (qualified) television ‘format’, via the cases of the official Italian remake Teste di gomma (1987-88) and the French Les Guignols de l’info (1988 – 2018), informally inspired by Spitting Image. Finally, it details a failed attempt to remake the show in Post-Soviet Russia, and the political problems encountered by the puppet satire Kukly (1994-2002).

CALCULATION PROGRAM OF THE ABSORPTION PROCESS IN NITRIC ACID PRODUCTION

The modern technological process is a product of design and modeling. Verification of theories and technical solutions can be carried out not on existing equipment but on mathematical models, by means of calculations. This increases the safety of research activities and speeds up the design process. For large research institutions and manufacturers, it is advisable to use specialized software such as MatLab, ASPEN or SimSci. Such environments have a large number of libraries and applications, which make them multifunctional. At the same time, the vast majority of users use only a small number of narrowly specialized functions that correspond to the direction of their activity. Mastering programming skills has become an integral part of modern education. Creating calculation programs based on mathematical models is not a difficult task for scientists. The rapid development of programming languages and technologies allows choosing the most appropriate ways of creating programs. According to experts, C# has been in the top 5 popular programming languages for many years. The use of this language is closely related to the .NET technology, which is intended for creating cross-platform applications. Microsoft Corporation provides the possibility of free use of its product MS Visual Studio, which also includes C#. The article describes a program created for use in researching the operation of an absorption column for the absorption of nitrogen oxides in the production of nitric acid. When developing the program, a standard calculation algorithm was used, according to which industrial devices operating in Ukraine were calculated. The algorithm also takes into account the latest information on the influence of technological parameters and physico-chemical processes. The program is created with a minimalistic interface and data entry options both from the program window and from a text file. The results of calculating the influence of oxygen addition on the concentration of nitrogen oxides in the discharge gas are given. The main purpose of the program is to study the operation of the column as an object of automation. The proposed program can be supplemented with new options, such as automatic calculation of gain coefficients for specified channels, batch processing based on data from a file, and others. Also, the program can be used for teaching students and performing research.

Educational Activities in the Ljubljana University Botanic Gardens

Botanic gardens have an important role in educating people about plants. Direct contact with plants has a positive effect on the perception and understanding of plants and prevents plant blindness. In botanic gardens, pupils can learn about plants through practical work. At the Ljubljana University Botanic Gardens, educational programmes for schools have existed since 1986. Every year the Ljubljana University Botanic Gardens is visited by many different groups, from the youngest to oldest (kindergarten, primary school, graduate and professional school students, and faculties). We run around 350 guided tours for groups per year. Groups can choose either a guided tour with work sheets and workshops or they can visit the botanic gardens on their own. Most of groups are children from primary school. Ljubljana University Botanic Gardens offers programmes related to the valid school curriculum in Slovenia. Our programmes include guided tours based on level of pupils and/or practical work. The most popular time to visit is spring. But, we still have visitors in winter due to our tropical greenhouse. The most popular programme at our botanic gardens is the general tour. With our pedagogical programmes we contribute to plant knowledge, since we teach our pupils about nature.

A research brief investigating educational television and U.S. children’s interest in science and world culture

ABSTRACT Research on educational television has overwhelmingly investigated the impact of viewing on children’s knowledge acquisition. However, this content might influence other important outcomes, such as children’s interest in learning about new topics. To investigate this possibility, we invited parents of 3- to 8-year-old children (N = 83) to answer three surveys over 1 month. The first survey included a video encouraging families to view a popular science program (Hero Elementary) or cultural program (Let’s Go Luna). The remaining surveys asked about children’s exposure to science and cultural programs, as well as their engagement with science and cultural topics in everyday conversation. Although our encouragement intervention had no impact on children’s exposure to science or cultural programs, viewing that content was associated with increased science and cultural talk over time. These findings suggest that educational television might motivate children to explore new topics of interest in non-mediated contexts.

Using Brain Waves and Computer Interface Technology as a Communication System

ABSTRACT Introduction The existing methods for individual emergency alert systems often rely on physical or voice-based human intervention, which may not be practical or safe in certain emergency situations or for people with certain rare medical conditions or disabilities. Popular voice command programs such as Siri and Alexa can be loud, drawing unwanted attention. Additionally, existing devices are limited to indoor usage, lack portability, involve multiple wires, have low noise tolerance, and offer limited customization options. This study introduces a novel method for emergency alert using brain waves. Method An electroencephalography (EEG) headset device was used to capture the user’s brain waves. After calibration, the device identifies peak brain signals and stores them for future use. When a command is triggered, the device’s Bluetooth functionality communicates with a dedicated application installed on any digital device. The user can use their thoughts to select a predefined command within the application, which is then transmitted to any local WiFi network or internet connection. Results Overall, this pilot study achieved a success rate of 96–98% for receiving the brain-computer interface (BCI) commands and sending the appropriate SMS text messages. Conclusion By leveraging these technologies, disabled individuals may access and use new technologies, starting with the ability to text message using their mind.

Analysis on the Enlightenment Effect of Sesame Street on Children's Personality Exploration and Self-identity

Abstract: In recent years, with the progress of social economy and the development of education, children's mental health has increasingly become the focus of attention. As an important medium of children's education, TV programs are very popular with children, and have a profound significance in the shaping of children's health. American television program Sesame Street as a popular children's program, from the plot content, role setting, theme selection, present form, etc., conforms to the preschool childrens acceptance preferences, and successfully utilizes the medium for the key period of childrens mental development, accurately grasps the mental health characteristics of preschool childrens love of imitation. The program plays a good enlightening role in guiding children to discover their own personality and construct the self identity. The concept of "personality exploration and self-identity" is related to "self". In the pursuit of personality and self-positioning, children are guided to establish self-awareness, cultivate self-management ability and self-respect feelings. This paper mainly analyzes the enlightenment effect of Sesame Street on children's personality exploration and self-identity. The program promotes children to establish confidence, form self-identity, constitute the supporting conditions of mental health, for children to lay a solid foundation, and promote the formation of children's mental health and sound personality. At the same time, as a successful TV program that is deeply loved by children and has the significance of health education, it provides examples and references for creating more high-quality children's TV programs.

Beyond The Basics: A Detailed Survey of Advanced Python Applications and Innovations

Abstract: Python is the general purpose, high-level, scriptable, interpreted, object oriented and easy to learn language was developed by Guido van Rossum. Python is a popular programming language because of its simplicity, ease of use, open-source licensing, and accessibility. It provides various libraries and frameworks for learning and real world programming. Python’s versatility and active community make it an ideal language for Machine Learning, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Networking, Game Development, Web Development and various other domains. In this paper, we will provide an introduction to the main Python programming software tools used for Web development, Data science, Machine learning techniques, Educational Development, etc. In this paper will first introduce Python as a language, and give introduction about Web Development, Data science, Machine learning, Educational Development &amp; Financial Analysis and then describe packages that are popular in that sector

A large-scale analysis of the effectiveness of publicly reported security patches

Public vulnerability reports assist developers in mitigating recurring threats caused by software vulnerabilities. However, security patches that lack effectiveness (1) may fail to completely resolve target vulnerabilities after application (i.e., require supplementary patches), or (2) cannot be directly applied to the codebase without modifying the patch code snippets. In this study, we systematically assessed the effectiveness of security patches from the perspective of their reliability and flexibility. We define a security patch as reliable or flexible, respectively, if it can resolve the vulnerability (1) without being complemented by additional patches or (2) without modifying the patch code snippets. Unlike previous studies that relied on manual inspection, we assess the reliability of a security patch by determining the presence of supplementary patches that complement the security patch. To evaluate flexibility, we first locate vulnerable codes in popular open-source software programs and then determine whether the security patch can be applied without any modifications. Our experiments on 8,100 security patches obtained from the National Vulnerability Database confirmed that one in ten of the collected patches lacked effectiveness. We discovered 476 (5.9%) unreliable patches that could still produce security issues after application; for 84.6% of the detected unreliable patches, the fact that a supplementary patch is required is not disclosed through public security reports. Furthermore, 377 (4.6%) security patches were observed to lack flexibility; we confirmed that 49.1% of the detected vulnerable codes required patch modifications owing to syntax diversity. Our findings revealed that the effectiveness of security patches can directly affect software security, suggesting the need to enhance the vulnerability reporting process.

Algorithm XXXX: UltimateKalman, Flexible Kalman Filtering and Smoothing Using Orthogonal Transformations

UltimateKalman is a flexible linear Kalman filter and smoother implemented in three popular programming languages: MATLAB, C, and Java. UltimateKalman is a slight simplification and slight generalization of an elegant Kalman filter and smoother that was proposed in 1977 by Paige and Saunders. Their algorithm appears to be numerically superior and more flexible than other Kalman filters and smoothers, but curiously has never been implemented or used before. UltimateKalman is flexible: it can easily handle time-dependent problems, problems with state vectors whose dimensions vary from step to step, problems with varying number of observations in different steps (or no observations at all in some steps), and problems in which the expectation of the initial state is unknown. The programming interface of UltimateKalman is broken into simple building blocks that can be used to construct filters, single or multi-step predictors, multi-step or whole-track smoothers, and combinations. The paper describes the algorithm and its implementation as well as a test suite of examples and tests.

TrojanProbe: Fingerprinting Trojan tunnel implementations by actively probing crafted HTTP requests

Trojan is a well-known hidden tunnel protocol widely used to bypass Internet censorship and thus presents a big challenge to transparent network management and forensics. As claimed by the protocol designer, Trojan maintains its anti-identifiability by proxying real HTTPS/TLS traffic to react to unauthenticated requests, eliminating any subtle differences between the Trojan traffic and the legitimate HTTPS. Despite such a protocol seeming unidentifiable by design, the diverse Trojan implementations adopting very different programming languages will likely have varied coding logic and networking API calls, opening a new door to be identified and fingerprinted from the implementation level. In this paper, we propose TrojanProbe, a new class of active probing methods that can be used to fingerprint Trojan implementations by triggering their identifiable responses. Our basic idea is to audit the source code of the Trojan programs and discover the subtle logic discrepancy compared with the legitimate HTTPS counterparts, to craft specific HTTP requests as probes to trigger these differences for fingerprinting. By this idea, we choose the five most popular open-source Trojan programs off-the-shelf as our targets to audit, covering the majority of Trojan market share and the mainstream programming languages from traditional C++ to the cutting-edge Go and Rust, and design a suite of novel HTTP probes to differentiate them from their web server masquerades. Our probes exploit either the different responding/buffering logic to the malformed HTTP requests and the different HTTP versions, or the varied timeouts set in the different networking APIs by default. To this end, we have conducted extensive experiments to evaluate the TrojanProbe against a comprehensive set of configuration and networking conditions. The experimental results show that our TrojanProbe can effectively fingerprint our selected Trojan targets in most conditions, but leave a single Rust implementation with a minority market occupied that can only be identified in some constraint cases. Despite such an exception, our research sheds light on a new kind of possibility to fingerprint Trojans at their implementation level, even if such a hidden tunnel is widely known as unidentifiable at the protocol level.