Towards Quantifying Magnitude of Political Bias in News Articles Using a Novel Annotation Schema

Media bias is a predominant phenomenon present in most forms of print and electronic media such as news articles, blogs, tweets, etc. Since media plays a pivotal role in shaping public opinion towards political happenings, both political parties and media houses often use such sources as outlets to propagate their own prejudices to the public. There has been some research on detecting political bias in news articles. However, none of it attempts to analyse the nature of bias or quantify the magnitude ofthe bias in a given text. This paper presents a political bias annotated corpus viz. PoBiCo-21, which is annotated using a schema specifically designed with 10 labels to capture various techniques used to create political bias in news. We create a ranking of these techniques based on their contribution to bias. After validating the ranking, we propose methods to use it to quantify the magnitude of bias in political news articles.

It's Not Just Size That Matters: Small Language Models Are Also Few-Shot Learners

When scaled to hundreds of billions of parameters, pretrained language models such as GPT-3 (Brown et al., 2020) achieve remarkable few-shot performance. However, enormous amounts of compute are required for training and applying such big models, resulting in a large carbon footprint and making it difficult for researchers and practitioners to use them. We show that performance similar to GPT-3 can be obtained with language models that are much greener'' in that their parameter count is several orders of magnitude smaller. This is achieved by converting textual inputs into cloze questions that contain a task description, combined with gradient-based optimization; exploiting unlabeled data gives further improvements. We identify key factors required for successful natural language understanding with small language models.

Study of Grain Size Parameters of Ras Ben Hane Beach Sediments -Latakia

The study of textural characteristics of marine sediments is very important to understand the evolution and distribution of coastal deposits, the hydrodynamic conditions of the depositional environments, and seasonal changes along the coasts, by collecting samples during seasonal periods. Due to the lake of sach studies in our coast, aset of 14 samples has been collected from superficial sediments of Ras Ben Hane beache during the beriod that range between 10/2015 and 6/2016. the grain size parameters (Mean, Standarddiviation, Skewness, and Kurtosis) showed that the grains are coarse to very coarse in their size, moderately to poorly sorted, coarse to strongly coarse skewed, and mesokurtic to platykurtic. Based on the CM patterns, the samples fall in rolling fields, while their morphological study showed that most of grains are subrounded.these parameters confirm that the sediments were deposited under high energy conditions, as the coarse and very coarse grains need high energy to more by rolling on the sea bed. while the subrounded shape of the grains indicates that the grains are transported for along distance befor they settels down in their site of deposition.

The effect of diabetes mellitus type II on pulmonary function

Background: Diabetes mellitus is a leading public health problem with increasing incidence and long term complications. These complications are mainly a consequence of macro-vascular and microvascular damages of the target organs. The incidence of several pulmonary abnormalities during the course of Diabetes Mellitus because the presence of an extensive microvascular circulation and abundant connective tissue in the lungs , raises the possibility that lung tissue may be a target organ in diabetic patients. Objectives: This research is designed to study the impact of DM and both the duration of the disease and the glycemic control on pulmonary function tests. Methodology: This is a cross-sectional study carried out on 75 patients with type II diabetes mellitus patients at Tishreen University Hospital in the period between October 2015 and October 2016 .We compared with a control group consisted of 75 non diabetic healthy persons . Measurement of HbA1C , fasting plasma glucose (FPG) , and spirometry were made to all subjects and the following pulmonary function parameters were recorded: Forced Expiratory Volume in the first second (FEV1), Forced Vital Capacity (FVC), and Forced Expiratory Volume percent (FEV1/ FVC%) . Results were analyzed by calculating Mean ± SD, using X2 test , Karl Pearson correlation and ANOVA test. Results: The mean FEV1, FVC, FEV1/FVC% values were low in diabetics (p value <0.05) compared to healthy non-diabetics (control group). Also, uncontrolled diabetics show a greater decrease in these values than controlled diabetics. There was a greater decrease in these values in patients with long period of disease . Conclusion: The findings of the present study suggest that, the lung is a target organ for damage in DM and diabetics show a decrease in PFTs with a restrictive pattern lesion compared with non-diabetics . And this deterioration is exaggerated in uncontrolled diabetics and with the long duration of DM .

Textural Characteristics and distribution of Coastal Sediments in the northern section of the Syrian continental shelf

Detailed textural study of the Northern section of the Syrian Continental shelf (N35.92991 E35.91785: N35.35752 E35.91542) has been carried out in order to determine the sediment nature and distribution. The sediments are mainly coarse to very fine-grained particles, moderately sorted, negatively skewed to fine skewed and leptokurtic to mesokurtic in nature. Interrelationship of various parameters shows bimodal nature of sediments having dominance of mainly medium to coarse sand. The major part of the sediment fall in coarse to very fine grained category (sand, silt and clay). Based on the CM (Coarser one percentile and Median size values in micron) pattern, the sediment fall in rolling and suspension field. These factors indicate that the sediments discharged from the rivers mixes with offshore sediments and with the sediments eroded from a source rock. Moreover, the wave energy conditions were high enough to disperse the sediments along the shelf and passing it to the open ocean and later dispersing them by littoral currents.

Compare of the effect of (salbutamol-ipratropium bromide) with the effect of salbutamol alone in the treatment of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

COPD is a major public health problem , and it results with an extensive social and economical burden on both the patient and his family on one hand and the healthcare system on the other . Despite the great advances in the management of patients with COPD , the use of the optimal treatment of the proposed treatment options is still being discussed , and Must achieve greater benefit for both patients and the healthcare system . This research is designed to study and compare the effect of the combination (salbutamol and ipratropium bromide) with the effect of salbutamol alone in the treatment of patients with stable COPD , by studying and comparing the improvement in the forced expiratory volume in the first second (FEV1) and in forced vital capacity ( FVC) after a month of a treatment . The study included 80 patients (53 males and 27 females), the patients were between 45-81 years of age , 63 patients were smokers and 17 were nonsmokers. The study showed that after a month on therapy , for patients treated with the combination (salbutamol + ipratropium bromide) the increasing in FEV1 was 0.35 liters and in FVC was 0.61-liter , while , for the patients treated with salbutamol alone , the increasing in FEV1 was 0.28 liters and FVC was 0.48-liter . We concluded that a combination of ipratropium bromide and salbutamol is more effective at improving pulmonary function than salbutamol alone.

تقدير حجم الانتاج ( المعظم للربح, الامثل للتلوث ) في الشركة العامة لإسمنت طرطوس باستخدام دالة الربح

On the fact that the production process held by a cemint' factory at tartous region province , cause air , land , pollution that might be reflected in bad health of people those either work at factory or live nearby. Therefor the present studies take into its considerations the new alternatives to lower such pollution level so as the production cost therefor higher profits will be gained as a result the higher welfare is.

MEASSURING the TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY OF ISLAMIC BANKS in SYRIA USING DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS (DEA)

This study aimed to measure technical efficiency of Islamic banks in Syria. This study used data envelopment analysis (DEA) method to estimate overall, pure and scale technical efficiency during the period (2010-2015). to that end, constant return to scale model and variable return to scale model was used. It has also been using windows analysis technique in order to follow banks performance during the studied period. This study also followed Intermediation approach for the choice of variables banking inputs and outputs.

Internationalization of Medium-Sized Business Organizations in Syria: Motives & Gains "A Field Comparative Study between Internationalized and Non- Internationalized Business Organizations"

This study aimed to characterize the factors affecting the entrepreneurs' decisions during the internationalization process of medium-sized firms in Syria, and to disclosure the implications of the differences about the motives and gains from working internationally through a comparison between internationalized and non-internationalized firms. The sample comprised of (35) firms in Damascus and its countryside, which are working in industrial and commercial sectors. The sample consists of (17) internationalized firms and (18) non-internationalized. The researcher has used the "descriptive analytical method" and taken of the "case study" as a procedural framework, and developed a questionnaire especially for this purpose based on scale previously applied in the study of internationalization of Egyptian companies.

Analyzing Financial Statements Using Window Data Envelopment Analysis

Internal and external data users are interested in financial data analysis, because of their need to obtain financial information about the company and to know the strength of its financial position. Although ratio analysis is always considered as one of the best financial statements analysis methods, but its interpretation is often difficult and controversial. Where each group of ratios can only show a single financial dimension, thus it may be difficult, when analyzing financial statements, tointe grate the results of different groups of financial analyses. So, an approach namely Data Envelopment Analysis, which is used in this research with Window approach by using variable returns of scale model, known as BCC related to researches Banker, Charnes and Coopers. In order to study the efficiency of the 19 subcompany of the General Establishment for food industries during the period 2008-2010. And also to study the direction of performance changes, in order to determine the best and the worst company through the company's efficiency using Super-Efficiency model. The study results showed that the number of efficient companies are six, and the number of inefficient companies are 13. Also showed that the Boken Water Company got the highest efficiency, and the company conserves Hasaka got less efficiency. All companies have less efficiency during the study period.