Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Impact of Connectivity in Africa: Grand Visions and the Mirage of Inclusive Digital Development

Corporations, development organisations and governments have launched ambitious programmes to ‘connect the unconnected’, reasoning that this creates economic growth and inclusive development. This paper contrasts these actors’ discourses with evidence from academic research. The evidence suggests a highly uneven economic impact of Internet connectivity across geographies and social strata. The analysed sources of discourse (African ICT policies and reports by international organisations) instead propose Grand Visions of connectivity, attributing a self‐evident positive, widespread, and transformational impact to the Internet. We discuss technological determinism, acontextual modernism, and optimistic simplism as underlying this contrast, calling for more reflexivity towards the opportunities of ‘digital development’.
Methodologically speaking: innovative approaches to knowledge and text in creative writing research

ABSTRACT This article considers how creative writers use research to experiment with and expand the written form. Focussing on modes of storytelling for fiction and non-fiction, four current research degree candidates and a supervisor-mentor from RMIT University present snapshots of research works in progress, to reveal how they are negotiating the sticky yet rich relationship between theory and practice. Specifically, they offer innovative ways of expanding the written form to combine creative and critical modes of thought, resulting in distinctive contributions to knowledge and practice that are relevant to their genres, forms and subject matters. The candidates, who are working across the lyric essay, screenwriting, performance writing and radio, are also members of a peer-to-peer group facilitated by the supervisor-mentor, which over a four-year period has supported research training in creative writing and assisted in the formation of new research identities. This collaborative support structure has helped candidates to transform from creative writers to creative writing researchers, encouraging playfulness and experimentation yet underpinned by the needs of academic rigour. This article thus offers a collective, reflective approach to finding innovation in/through creative writing research – methodologically speaking.
Spin generalization of the Ruijsenaars-Schneider model, the non-Abelian 2D Toda chain, and representations of the Sklyanin algebra

Contents §1. Introduction §2. The generating linear problem §3. The direct problem §4. Finite-gap solutions of the non-Abelian Toda chain §5. Difference analogues of Lame operators §6. Representations of the Sklyanin algebra §7. Concluding remarks Bibliography
Design and Analyze the various m-sequences codes in MATLAB

— Pseudo noise sequences (PN) are widely used in telecommunications and for measurement purposes. In this paper, cross correlation results of PN family codes: Gold, Kasami sequences are shown. PN sequences have random like properties that help in reducing the correlation among speech samples. In Spread Spectrum CDMA system each user is assigned a pseudo noise sequence for the purpose of spreading as well as despreading. The maximal length PN-sequence (m-sequence) is the best-described PN-sequence whose length is equal to its period. Various PN-codes can be generated using Linear Feedback Shift Register (LFSR). All the results presented here were tested and simulated via MatLab programs. In modern communication systems, spread spectrum is playing an increasingly important role day by day due to its inherent advantages like noise immunity and also due its practical applications like mobile communications in CDMA. A comparison of PN sequence, Gold sequence, Kasami sequence is studied. The SNR Performance of Gold, Kasami & M-sequence of sufficiently long periods are close to that of the purely random and independent binary sequence of same length.
An intelligent algorithm of Support Vector Regression parameters optimization in soft measurements

The Support Vector Regression (SVR) parameters selection problem is considered in this report. The purpose of work is to create an intelligent algorithm for SVR parameters optimization and, thus, to improve the accuracy of modeling in soft measurements (on example of the rice leaves modeling and data processing). Initially, the program collects the statistical data of learning assemblies analysis results and evaluates the values of SVR parameters, after then it uses developed by the authors improved fruit fly optimization algorithm to get more accurate values of SVR parameters. During the experiments, the obtained results were compared with the results of work of classical Fruit Fly Optimization Algorithm (FOA). It was found, that the authors' algorithm works more effective in convergence speed and accuracy. Thus, it provides the better solution of SVR optimal parameters selection problem.
Empirically derived psychosocial states among adolescents diagnosed with cancer during the acute and extended phase of survival.

BACKGROUND To, during the acute and extended phase of survival, identify psychosocial states among adolescents diagnosed with cancer and to analyse these in relation to demographic and clinical characteristics and self-reported depression. PATIENTS AND METHODS Participants completed the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale and two subscales, Vitality and Mental Health, in the SF-36 4-8 weeks (T1) (n = 61), 6 (T2) (n = 57), 12 (T3) (n = 50), and 18 (T4) months (n = 48) after diagnosis. I-State as Object of Analysis was used to identify a finite set of states based on three dimensions. Cluster analysis was carried out using Ward's method. RESULTS Five states were obtained: psychosocial dysfunction (state A) and poor (B), incomplete (C), good (D), and excellent (E) psychosocial function. At T1, more adolescents than expected by chance were in states A (P < 0.05) and C (P < 0.01) and fewer in states D (P < 0.05) and E (P < 0.001). At T4, more adolescents than expected by chance were in state E (P < 0.001) and fewer in state C (P < 0.05). Female gender and being in late adolescence when diagnosed is related to worse psychosocial function. CONCLUSION The findings provide support for subgroups of adolescents whose level of vitality, mental health, and anxiety differ during the acute and extended phase of survival of cancer. Clinical interventions tailored to the level of impairment as determined by the clusters may result in better psychosocial outcomes.
Cognitive deficits in multiple sclerosis: a systematic review.

OBJECTIVE To present the results of prospective and retrospective studies on multiple sclerosis patients cognitive dysfunctions, as well as to discuss the batteries of neuropsychological tests used in these investigations. METHOD A systematic review was performed involving 40 studies published from 1997 to 2009, in PubMed, Scopus, Ovid, ISI Web of Knowledge, Scientific Electronic Library on line (Scielo) and Latin-American and Caribbean Center of Health Sciences Informations database. Clear description of multiple sclerosis patients cognitive deficits evaluation, study design, sample size; inclusion-exclusion and discontinuation criteria; instruments for neuropsychological evaluation, diagnostic methods, evaluated functions and detailed statistical analysis had been the inclusion criteria. RESULTS There is consensus on cognitive impairment of multiple sclerosis patients, especially on memory, speed processing, executive function, attention and concentration domains. One has identified use of 23 batteries and 74 neuropsychological tests, despite the recommendation of Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers to the application of MACFIMS battery. CONSIDERATIONS The absence of the uniformization for multiple sclerosis patients cognitive evaluation battery has precluded to achieve evidences to recommend its incorporation on diagnostic routine. Nevertheless this tendency is already outlined.
Mobile sensing and simultaneously node localization in wireless sensor networks for human motion tracking

This paper exploits optimal position of the mobile sensor to improve the target tracking performance of wireless sensor networks and simultaneously localize both of the static sensor nodes and mobile sensor nodes when tracking the human motion. In our approach, mobile sensors collaborate with static sensors and move optimally to achieve the required detection performance. The accuracy of final tracking result is then improved as the measurements of mobile sensors have higher signal-to-noise ratios after the movement. Specifically, we can simultaneously localize the mobile sensor and static sensors position when localizing the human's position based on augmented extended Kaiman filters (EKF). In the algorithm, we develop a sensor movement optimization algorithm that achieves near-optimal system tracking performance. We also presented an sensor nodes management scheme in order to deduce the computation complexity when localizing the static sensor nodes. The effectiveness of our approach is validated by extensive simulations.
Chronic Pain and the Emotional Brain: Specific Brain Activity Associated with Spontaneous Fluctuations of Intensity of Chronic Back Pain

Living with unrelenting pain (chronic pain) is maladaptive and is thought to be associated with physiological and psychological modifications, yet there is a lack of knowledge regarding brain elements involved in such conditions. Here, we identify brain regions involved in spontaneous pain of chronic back pain (CBP) in two separate groups of patients (n = 13 and n = 11), and contrast brain activity between spontaneous pain and thermal pain (CBP and healthy subjects, n = 11 each). Continuous ratings of fluctuations of spontaneous pain during functional magnetic resonance imaging were separated into two components: high sustained pain and increasing pain. Sustained high pain of CBP resulted in increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC; including rostral anterior cingulate). This mPFC activity was strongly related to intensity of CBP, and the region is known to be involved in negative emotions, response conflict, and detection of unfavorable outcomes, especially in relation to the self. In contrast, the increasing phase of CBP transiently activated brain regions commonly observed for acute pain, best exemplified by the insula, which tightly reflected duration of CBP. When spontaneous pain of CBP was contrasted to thermal stimulation, we observe a double-dissociation between mPFC and insula with the former correlating only to intensity of spontaneous pain and the latter correlating only to pain intensity for thermal stimulation. These findings suggest that subjective spontaneous pain of CBP involves specific spatiotemporal neuronal mechanisms, distinct from those observed for acute experimental pain, implicating a salient role for emotional brain concerning the self.
A search result ranking algorithm based on web pages and tags clustering

With the rapid development of network techniques, huge information resources glut the whole web world. Locating useful information effectively from the World Wide Web (WWW) is of wide interest. The huge volume of the return results makes the user only focus on the top results. So the ranking problem becomes the important task for the search systems. Now, so many ranking algorithms were proposed. But the existing search systems just use the relationships or links between user query and web pages in the traditional Web1.0 environment. Now, the success and popularity of social network systems, such as del.icio. us, Facebook, etc., have generated many interesting problems to the research community. This gives us a new viewpoint on how to improve the quality of information retrieval. This paper firstly summarizes the present ranking algorithms, and analyses their merits and demerits. Secondly, we present a new search ranking algorithm bases on web pages and tags clustering, and use several evaluating methods to assess and contrast with Google.
Neural correlates of the Pythagorean ratio rules

Millennia ago Pythagoras noted a simple but remarkably powerful rule for the aesthetics of tone combinations: pairs of tones – intervals – with simple ratios such as an octave (ratio 2 : 1) or a fifth (ratio 3 : 2) were pleasant sounding (consonant), whereas intervals with complex ratios such as the major seventh (ratio 243 : 128) were harsh (dissonant). These Pythagorean ratio rules are the building blocks of Western classical music; however, their neurophysiologic basis is not known. Using functional MRI we have found the neurophysiologic correlates of the ratio rules. In musicians, the inferior frontal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, medial frontal gyrus, inferior parietal lobule and anterior cingulate respond with progressively more activation to perfect consonances, imperfect consonances and dissonances. In nonmusicians only the right inferior frontal gyrus follows this pattern.
Education and Early Career Outcomes of Second-Generation Immigrants in France

We estimate a flexible dynamic model of education choices and early career employment outcomes of the French population. Individuals are allowed to choose between 4 options: continue to the next grade, accept a permanent contract, accept a temporary contract, or withdraw from the labor force (a residual state). Our analysis focuses on the comparison between French Second-Generation Immigrants whose parents are born in Africa and French-natives. We find that schooling attainments explain around two thirds of the differences in access to early career employment stability. However, one third cannot be linked to observed investment in human capital.
Activity theory: basic concepts and applications

This tutorial introduces participants to Activity Theory, a conceptual approach that provides a broad framework for describing the structure, development, and context of computer-supported activities. The tutorial will consist of lectures, discussion and small group exercises. A Web community will be established so attendees will be able to continue to learn about and use activity theory.
Maximum Allowable Delay Bound Estimation in Networked Control of Bounded Nonlinear Systems

Net worked Control Systems (NCSs) has been recognized as an area where theory is behind the development of technology. The defining feature of NCSs can be considered as the information is exchanged through a network among control system co mponents. So the network induced time delay is inevitable in NCSs. The time delay may degrade the performance of control systems and even destabilize the systems if they are designed without considering the effects of the time delays properly. Once the structure of a NCS is confirmed, it is essential to identify what the maximu m t ime delay is allo wed for maintaining the system stability which, in turn, is also associated with the process of controller design. Th is paper proposes a new method for estimating the maximu m allowab le time delay in networked control systems with norm bounded nonlinearity. The relation between the maximu m nonlinearity and the maximu m allowable delay is studied using the proposed method, and it is found that increasing the maximu m nonlinearity bound reduces the maximu m allo wable delay. Furthermore, increasing the time delay leads to shrink the domain of attraction. The results of the maximu m allo wable delay bound and the maximu m nonlinearity are co mpared with some of the published results.
GPL: A GPU-based Pipelined Query Processing Engine

Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) have evolved as a powerful query co-processor for main memory On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) databases. However, existing GPU-based query processors adopt a kernel-based execution approach which optimizes individual kernels for resource utilization and executes the GPU kernels involved in the query plan one by one. Such a kernel-based approach cannot utilize all GPU resources efficiently due to the resource underutilization of individual kernels and memory ping-pong across kernel executions. In this paper, we propose GPL, a novel pipelined query execution engine to improve the resource utilization of query co-processing on the GPU. Different from the existing kernel-based execution, GPL takes advantage of hardware features of new-generation GPUs including concurrent kernel execution and efficient data communication channel between kernels. We further develop an analytical model to guide the generation of the optimal pipelined query plan. Thus, the tile size of the pipelined query execution can be adapted in a cost-based manner. We evaluate GPL with TPC-H queries on both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. The experimental results show that 1) the analytical model is able to guide determining the suitable parameter values in pipelined query execution plan, and 2) GPL is able to significantly outperform the state-of-the-art kernel-based query processing approaches, with improvement up to 48%.
A review of differences between basal ganglia and cerebellar control of movements as revealed by functional imaging studies.

The role of the basal ganglia and cerebellum in the control of movements is unclear. We summarize results from three groups of PET studies of regional CBF. The results show a double dissociation between (i) selection of movements, which induces differential effects in the basal ganglia but not the cerebellum, and (ii) sensory information processing, which involves the cerebellum but not the basal ganglia. The first set of studies concerned motor learning of a sequence of finger movements; there was a shift of activation in the anterior-posterior direction of the basal ganglia which paralleled changes in the motor areas of the frontal cortex. During new learning, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and striatum (caudate nucleus and anterior putamen) were activated. When subjects had to select movements, the premotor cortex and mid-putamen were activated. With automatic (overlearned) movements, the sensorimotor cortex and posterior putamen were activated. When subjects paid attention to overlearned actions, activation shifted back to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and striatum. The cerebellum was not activated when subjects made new decisions, attended to their actions or selected movements. These results demonstrate components of basal ganglia-(thalamo)-cortical loops in humans. According to earlier studies in animals we propose that the basal ganglia may be concerned with selecting movements or the selection of appropriate muscles to perform a movement selected by cortical areas (e.g. premotor cortex). Secondly, a visuomotor co-ordination task was examined. In the absence of visual control over arm movements, subjects were required to use a computer mouse to either generate new lines or to re-trace lines on a computer screen. The neocerebellum (hemispheres of the posterior lobe, cerebellar nuclei and cerebellar vermis), not the basal ganglia, was more engaged when lines were re-traced (compared with new line generation). Animal experiments have shown that error detection (deviation from given lines) and correction occurs during line re-tracing but not line generation. Our data suggest that the neocerebellum (not the basal ganglia) is involved in monitoring and optimizing movements using sensory (proprioceptive) feedback. Thirdly, the relative contribution of sensory information processing to the signal during active/passive execution of a motor task (flexion and extension of the elbow) was examined; it was found that 80-90% of the neocerebellar signal could be attributed to sensory information processing. The basal ganglia were not involved in sensory information processing. They may be concerned with movement/ muscle selection (efferent motor component); the neocerebellum may be concerned with monitoring the outcome (afferent sensory component) and optimizing movements using sensory (feedback) information.
Ghosts, strong coupling and accidental symmetries in massive gravity

We show that the strong self-interaction of the scalar polarization of a massive graviton can be understood in terms of the propagation of an extra ghostlike degree of freedom, thus relating strong coupling to the sixth degree of freedom discussed by Boulware and Deser in their Hamiltonian analysis of massive gravity. This enables one to understand the Vainshtein recovery of solutions of massless gravity as being due to the effect of the exchange of this ghost, which gets frozen at distances larger than the Vainshtein radius. Inside this region, we can trust the two-field Lagrangian perturbatively, while at larger distances one can use the higher derivative formulation. We also compare massive gravity with other models, namely, deconstructed theories of gravity, as well as the Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati model. In the latter case, we argue that the Vainshtein recovery process is of a different nature, not involving a ghost degree of freedom.
The application of sum-product algorithm for data association

Data association uncertainty occurs when remote sensing devices yield measurements whose origin is uncertain, which is a fundamental problem in target tracking. Based on the number of modes involved, data association can be divided into single-mode data association and multiple-mode data association, the latter of which needs to address the additional uncertainty of measurement-to-mode association (mode association), apart from the uncertainty of target-to-measurement association. This paper formulates the data association problem as a graphical model with three different cases including single target single mode (STSM), multiple targets single mode (MTSM) and multiple targets multiple modes (MTMM), and utilizes the sum-product algorithm to approximate the marginal probability of the association matrix. Some toy examples are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the sum-product algorithm.
The Narrative of Gay Male Teachers in Contemporary Catholic Malta

This thesis seeks to raise awareness of the pervasive heteronormativity of Maltese culture and on the effects that exclusionary practices may have on gay students and teachers. The culturally-saturating influence of the Roman Catholic faith in Malta, and the effects of a vigorously heterosexist society are chief elements which discourage Maltese homosexual educators from presenting their true sexuality to students, their parents, and teacher colleagues; in this and other related socio-cultural ways, Maltese gay teachers have thus been rendered an invisible presence in their schools. The study investigates the significance of being a gay teacher in contemporary Maltese culture through a set of narratives which reveal how five teachers construct and negotiate their personal and professional identities. The thematically-driven narratives themselves are made ‘transgressively’ (St Pierre, 1997) from an artistic re-casting of interview data as composite fictional accounts; in this way, the identities of the actual participants are invisible, whilst the issues that characterise their lives can be dramatically foregrounded. Each of the fictionalised narratives is followed by a critical deconstruction which both locates the story in the context of the literature and features the reflections of the interviewees themselves on the re-working and re-presentation of their life accounts. The accounts themselves tell of suffering and exclusion, of ambiguity but also of success; of experiences which are heavily conditioned by the sexuality of these teachers and by the context in which they are situated. The study concludes with an anticipation of the further research and of the developments in education policy which are needed if Maltese institutions are to realise the national commitment to inclusive cultures of schooling.