Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Two Different Communication Genres and Implications for Vocabulary Development and Learning to Read

This study examined potential differences in vocabulary found in picture books and adult’s speech to children and to other adults. Using a small sample of various sources of speech and print, Hayes observed that print had a more extensive vocabulary than speech. The current analyses of two different spoken language databases and an assembled picture book corpus replicated and extended these findings. The vocabulary in picture books was more extensive than that found in child-directed speech (CDS) and even adult-directed speech (ADS). The likelihood of observing a rare word not contained in the most common 5,000 words in English was more likely in a corpus of picture books than in two different corpora of CDS. The likelihood of a rare word in the picture books was even greater than that found in ADS. It is proposed that these differences are more indicative of informal versus formal language rather than the spoken versus written modalities per se. Nonetheless, these results highlight the value of rich read-aloud experiences for vocabulary development and potentially for reading comprehension once written language is acquired. These findings are described in terms of a distinction between formal and informal language, which has implications for views of literacy, cognitive and linguistic development, and learning to read.
Synthesis and Characterization of Self-Healing Poly (Carbonate Urethane) Carbon-Nanotube Composites

x CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 POLYURETHANE (PU) CHEMISTRY AND STRUCTURE 1 CARBON NANOTUBE COMPOSITES 6 SELF-HEALING POLYMERS 9 CHAPTER 2:ULTRA-FLEXIBLE AUTONOMOUSLY SELF-HEALING HIGH MOLAR MASS POLYURETHANES 15 INTRODUCTION 15 EXPERIMENTAL 19 Materials 19 Methods 20 Polyurethane Synthesis 20 Carbon Nanotube Composites 21 Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) 22 Tensile Test 23 Gel Permeation Chromatography 24 Raman 25 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 26 Reduced Elastomeric Crystallization 26 Mechanical Evaluation of Self-healing PCPU and CNT Composites 29
Load-Dependent Mechanical Behavior of Membrane Materials and Its Effect on the Static Behaviors of Membrane Structures

AbstractThis paper presents a systematic series of tests and analysis on the mechanical properties of membrane structures under static loading. First, the uniaxial and biaxial tests are conducted to study the mechanical properties of coated fabrics under different loading protocols. Then, the model experiments are carried out to evaluate the mechanical behaviors of membrane structures under uniform loading. Finally, the finite-element analysis is conducted to compare with the experiment results. Results show that with proper processed, the strength of double-layer membrane can achieve 1.8 times that of single-layer membrane. The loading history has significant effects on the mechanical properties of coated fabrics. The numerical results using the elastic constants of the material without initial loading are relatively compatible with the experiment data. Besides, slightly differences are still observed between the load-deflection curves of experiment results and numerical calculation. This is because the .
Mathematical Programming Decoding of Binary Linear Codes: Theory and Algorithms

Mathematical programming is a branch of applied mathematics and has recently been used to derive new decoding approaches, challenging established but often heuristic algorithms based on iterative message passing. Concepts from mathematical programming used in the context of decoding include linear, integer, and nonlinear programming, network flows, notions of duality as well as matroid and polyhedral theory. This paper reviews and categorizes decoding methods based on mathematical programming approaches for binary linear codes over binary-input memoryless symmetric channels.
Designing Acoustic Vector Sensors for localisation of sound sources in air

This paper investigates the design and application of an Acoustic Vector Sensor (AVS), traditionally used for underwater applications, for localisation of sound sources in air. The paper investigates the relation-ship between the design factors and the accuracy of Direction of Arrival (DOA) estimates for sources of varying frequency and compares the performance of an AVS with a Uniform Linear Array (ULA) of comparable size. Results show that the design of the AVS is critical in achieving polar responses that result in DOA estimates of high accuracy. For our proposed design, DOA estimates were found to be more accurate for a range of source frequencies when compared to an existing AVS design and were significantly more accurate than those obtained from a ULA of comparable size.
Resonant transmission through negative permittivity materials

At the heart of the field of photonics is the control of the reflection and transmission of light. Plasmonics looks at this problem of control of electromagnetic radiation in the context of surface plasmon polaritons (SPP). SPPs are propagating electromagnetic modes localized at the interfaces between media with positive and negative permittivities. Their excitation can accompany the enhancement of transmission, reflection, or absorption of EM radiation. There are a number of ways to excite SPPs and this work looks at several geometries and analyzes the transmission and reflection characteristics using a numerical approach based on the finite element method. The first method of excitation is by incident evanescent wave that was totally internally reflected from an earlier interface. It is shown that an evanescent wave can excite SPPs and create resonant transmisison. It is also found that high values of dissipation limit transmission and instead create resonant absorption. The second method involves the modulation of the negative permittivity of the plasma slab itself. Numerical results are compared to analytical ones and are in good agreement because harmonics of the solution above the first are negligible. An investigation of transmission through a plasma slab with a single thin diffraction grating placed nearby follows. Analytical and numerical calculations show that a single thin grating is sufficient to create transmission resonance. It is found that for large values of diffraction grating modulation parameter, higher harmonics, usually not accounted for in analytical solutions, results in discrepancies between analytical and numerical results. The next geometry considered is of a plasma layer with only part of it having modulated permittivity. The presence of modulation of only part of the plasma layer is shown to create transmission and reflection resonances. By tailoring parameters of the system, it is shown how the resonant frequencies can be shifted. The final geometry considers a copper grating beside a plasma and transmission of a radio frequency wave. Even though the copper used here in this simulation is very absorbing, there are ranges of frequencies when transmission or reflection are enhanced.
VGLUTs in Peripheral Neurons and the Spinal Cord: Time for a Review

Vesicular glutamate transporters (VGLUTs) are key molecules for the incorporation of glutamate in synaptic vesicles across the nervous system, and since their discovery in the early 1990s, research on these transporters has been intense and productive. This review will focus on several aspects of VGLUTs research on neurons in the periphery and the spinal cord. Firstly, it will begin with a historical account on the evolution of the morphological analysis of glutamatergic systems and the pivotal role played by the discovery of VGLUTs. Secondly, and in order to provide an appropriate framework, there will be a synthetic description of the neuroanatomy and neurochemistry of peripheral neurons and the spinal cord. This will be followed by a succinct description of the current knowledge on the expression of VGLUTs in peripheral sensory and autonomic neurons and neurons in the spinal cord. Finally, this review will address the modulation of VGLUTs expression after nerve and tissue insult, their physiological relevance in relation to sensation, pain, and neuroprotection, and their potential pharmacological usefulness.
Clinical Characteristics and Risk Factors for Poor Outcome in Infants Less Than 90 Days of Age With Bacterial Meningitis in the United Kingdom and Ireland

Background: To describe the clinical characteristics and risk factors associated with poor outcome in infants <90 days of age with bacterial meningitis. Methods: Prospective, enhanced, national population-based active surveillance for infants <90 days of age with bacterial meningitis in the United Kingdom and Ireland between July 2010 and July 2011. Infants were identified through the British Paediatric Surveillance Unit, laboratory surveillance and meningitis charities. Results: Clinical details was available for 263 of 298 (88%) infants where a bacterium was identified, 184 (70%) were born at term. Fever was reported in 143 (54%), seizures in 73 (28%), bulging fontanelle in 58 (22%), coma in 15 (6%) and neck stiffness in 7 (3%). Twenty-three (9%) died and 56/240 (23%) of the survivors had serious central nervous system complications at discharge. Temperature instability [odds ratio (OR), 2.99; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.21–7.41], seizures (OR, 7.06; 95% CI: 2.80–17.81), cerebrospinal fluid protein greater than the median concentration (2275 mg/dL; OR, 2.62; 95% CI: 1.13–6.10) and pneumococcal meningitis (OR, 4.83; 95% CI: 1.33–17.58) were independently associated with serious central nervous system complications while prematurity (OR, 5.84; 95% CI: 2.02–16.85), low birthweight (OR, 8.48; 95% CI: 2.60–27.69), coma at presentation (OR, 31.85; 95% CI: 8.46–119.81) and pneumococcal meningitis (OR, 4.62; 95% CI: 1.19–17.91) were independently associated with death. Conclusions: The classic features of meningitis were uncommon. The presentation in young infants is often nonspecific, and only half of cases presented with fever. A number of clinical and laboratory factors were associated with poor outcomes; further research is required to determine how knowledge of these risk factors might improve clinical management and outcomes.
Corrector-Predictor Methods for Sufficient Linear Complementarity Problems in a Wide Neighborhood of the Central Path

A higher order corrector-predictor interior-point method is proposed for solving sufficient linear complementarity problems. The algorithm produces a sequence of iterates in the $\caln_{\infty}^{-}$ neighborhood of the central path. The algorithm does not depend on the handicap k of the problem. It has $O((1+\kappa)\sqrt{n}L)$ iteration complexity and is superlinearly convergent even for degenerate problems.
The effective use of gastrointestinal histopathology: guidance for endoscopic biopsy in the gastrointestinal tract

This is the first of three articles, published in Frontline Gastroenterology, that provides practical guidance of what to, and what not to, biopsy in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. This initiative was established by the Endoscopy and Pathology Sections of the British Society of Gastroenterology, and the guidance is published with an initial general review (this manuscript), followed by practical guidance on upper GI and lower GI endoscopic biopsy practice. The three articles are written by experienced operatives, each one by a pathologist and an endoscopist, working in the same hospital/group of hospitals.
Pilesize dynamic one-pile Nim and Beatty's theorem.

In [4] we proved a generalization of Beatty’s Theorem which we stated came from the Nim value analysis of a game. In this paper we give the Nim value analysis of this game and show its relationship with Beatty’s Theorem. The game is a one-pile counter pickup game for which the maximum number of counters that can be removed on each successive move changes during the play of the game. The move size is bounded by a move function f whose arguments are pile sizes. After analyzing this game, we discuss a blocking version of this game as well as the misere version.
AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF

approved: Thomas G. Dietterich Object categorization is one of the fundamental topics in computer vision research. Most current work in object categorization aims to discriminate among generic object classes with gross differences. However, many applications require much finer distinctions. This thesis focuses on the design, evaluation and analysis of learning algorithms for finegrained object classification. The contributions of the thesis are three-fold. First, we introduce two databases of high-resolution images of arthropod specimens we collected to promote the development of highly accurate fine-grained recognition methods. Second, we give a literature review on the development of Bag-of-words (BOW) approaches to image classification and present the stacked evidence tree approach we developed for the fine-grained classification task. We draw connections and analyze differences between those two genres of approaches, which leads to a better understanding about the design of image classification approaches. Third, benchmark results on our two datasets are presented. We further analyze the influence of two important variables on the performance of fine-grained classification. The experiments corroborate our hypotheses that a) high resolution images and b) more aggressive information extraction, such as finer descriptor encoding with large dictionaries or classifiers based on raw descriptors, is required to achieve good fine-grained categorization accuracy. c ©Copyright by Junyuan Lin February 18, 2013 All Rights Reserved A Study of Methods for Fine-grained Object Classification of Arthropod Specimens
Effect of Hospital-Wide Chlorhexidine Patient Bathing on Healthcare-Associated Infections

Background. Chlorhexidine gluconate (CHG) bathing has been used primarily in critical care to prevent central line-associated bloodstream infections and infections due to multidrug-resistant organisms. The objective was to determine the effect of hospital-wide CHG patient bathing on healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). Design. Quasi-experimental, staged, dose-escalation study for 19 months followed by a 4-month washout period, in 3 cohorts. Setting. Academic medical center. Patients. All patients except neonates and infants. Intervention and Measurements. CHG bathing in the form of bed basin baths or showers administered 3 days per week or daily. CHG bathing compliance was monitored, and the rate of HAIs was measured. Results. Over 188,859 patient-days, 68,302 CHG baths were administered. Adherence to CHG bathing in the adult critical care units (90%) was better than that observed in other units (57.7%, P< .001). A significant decrease in infections due to Clostridium difficile was observed in all cohorts of patients during the intervention period, followed by a significant rise during the washout period. For all cohorts, the relative risk of C. difficile infection compared to baseline was 0.71 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.57–0.89; P = .003) for 3-days-per-week CHG bathing and 0.41 (95% CI, 0.29–0.59; P < .001) for daily CHG bathing. During the washout period, the relative risk of infection was 1.85 (95% CI, 1.38–2.53; P =< .001), compared to that with daily CHG bathing. A consistent effect of CHG bathing on other HAIs was not observed. No adverse events related to CHG bathing were reported. Conclusions. CHG bathing was well tolerated and was associated with a significant decrease in C. difficile infections in hospitalized patients.
Effect of canker size on availability of cassava planting materials in Nigeria

Cassava (Manihot esculenta L.) production is highly limited by cassava anthracnose disease (CAD) which causes significant losses in planting materials. An experiment was laid out at Ihiagwa, Owern in Nigeria with eighteen treatments replicated three times. Disease severity was scored on a scale of 1-5, and disease incidence was recorded as the percentage of infected plants in each host plant line. In all the three trials, TMS 30211 (425 mm) had cankers high up on the stem, showing that they were infected later in life. This will lead to more disease - free stems. Cultivars Akwakwuru (39.6 mm2), TMS 30555 (31.6 mm2), and Nwaocha (43.7 mm2), had the large canker size on whole plant, young stem, shoot and maturing stem. These cultivars had low resistance to anthracnose. In all the trials, TMS 4(2)1425, and TMS 30211, had the smallest canker size (1.80 and 6.3 mm2, respectively) on whole plant, young stems, shoots and maturing stems. TMS 4(2)1425 and TMS 30211 had higher resistance to anthracnose and can be recommended for further improvement through breeding, because plants producing smaller – size lesions survive much longer and would also mature and produce flowers needed for breeding for improving resistance to CAD and other diseases.
EGFR and FGFR Pathways Have Distinct Roles in Drosophila Mushroom Body Development and Ethanol-Induced Behavior

Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) signaling has a conserved role in ethanol-induced behavior in flies and mice, affecting ethanol-induced sedation in both species. However it is not known what other effects EGFR signaling may have on ethanol-induced behavior, or what roles other Receptor Tyrosine Kinase (RTK) pathways may play in ethanol induced behaviors. We examined the effects of both the EGFR and Fibroblast Growth Factor Receptor (FGFR) RTK signaling pathways on ethanol-induced enhancement of locomotion, a behavior distinct from sedation that may be associated with the rewarding effects of ethanol. We find that both EGFR and FGFR genes influence ethanol-induced locomotion, though their effects are opposite – EGFR signaling suppresses this behavior, while FGFR signaling promotes it. EGFR signaling affects development of the Drosophila mushroom bodies in conjunction with the JNK MAP kinase basket (bsk), and with the Ste20 kinase tao, and we hypothesize that the EGFR pathway affects ethanol-induced locomotion through its effects on neuronal development. We find, however, that FGFR signaling most likely affects ethanol-induced behavior through a different mechanism, possibly through acute action in adult neurons.
Experimental Development of Sealed-Bid Auction Theory; Calibrating Controls for Risk Aversion

We offer a brief survey of bidding theory in high price auctions, of experimental studies of behavior in such auctions, and of the interplay between the design and results of the experiments and efforts to further develop the theory. Two new series of experiments are reported. The first applies a convex transformation of payoffs in an attempt to induce a lowering of subject bids "as if" the bidders had become less risk averse. The second applies a method for inducing any prespecified utility function (for risky choices) on an individual. We use it to induce "as if " risk-neutral behavior. Both series use baseline control to "calibrate" the hypothesized effect of the procedures on "riskaverse" behavior.
Mimicking the Behaviour of Idiotypic AIS Robot Controllers Using Probabilistic Systems

Previous work has shown that robot navigation systems that employ an architecture based upon the idiotypic network theory of the immune system have an advantage over control techniques that rely on reinforcement learning only. This is thought to be a result of intelligent behaviour selection on the part of the idiotypic robot. In this paper an attempt is made to imitate idiotypic dynamics by creating controllers that use reinforcement with a number of different probabilistic schemes to select robot behaviour. The aims are to show that the idiotypic system is not merely performing some kind of periodic random behaviour selection, and to try to gain further insight into the processes that govern the idiotypic mechanism. Trials are carried out using simulated Pioneer robots that undertake navigation exercises. Results show that a scheme that boosts the probability of selecting highly-ranked alternative behaviours to 50% during stall conditions comes closest to achieving the properties of the idiotypic system, but remains unable to match it in terms of all round performance.
Content of trace metals (iron, zinc, manganese, chromium, copper, nickel) in canned variegated scallops (Chlamys varia)

This article presents the results obtained through a study of the concentration of trace metals (iron, zinc, manganese, chromium, copper, nickel) in some conserves of variegated scallops (Chlamys varia, Bivalvia, Mollusca). A total of 300 samples of seven different commercial brands (named A, B, D, H, J, L and M) and one processing type, ‘scallop sauce’, were analysed. Samples were collected weekly in a large shopping centre in Santa Cruz de Tenerife during a 12-month period. Variegated scallops have considerable concentrations of zinc, cupper and manganese, so that their dietary intake constitutes an important source of these metals. However, they have low concentrations of chrome and nickel, and the levels of iron are similar to those found in other bivalve molluscs.
Scheduling File Transfers for Trees and Odd Cycles

The scheduling of file transfers in networks to minimize the overall finishing time was studied by Coffman, et al. where the schedule does not permit interruption and each communication module can be used as a transmitter and as a receiver. They first presented complexity results under various conditions. Then they showed that the general problem is NP-complete and provided approximation algorithms. This paper first presents more efficient approximation algorithms with better performances than the above authors’ algorithms for the cases of trees and multitrees. Furthermore, there are simple distributed implementations of our approximation algorithms. Then this paper provides a polynomial time algorithm for finding an optimum schedule for an odd cycle, whose complexity was left as an open question by the above authors.
Efficient Processing of Top-k Spatial Preference Queries

Top-k spatial preference queries arrival a ranked set of the k best data objects based on the scores of mark objects in their spatial neighborhood. Despite the wide assortment of location-based applications that rely on spatial predilection queries, existing algorithms incur non-negligible processing cost resulting in high retort time. The reason is that computing the score of an information object requires examining its spatial locality to find the feature object with the highest score. In this paper, we suggest a novel technique to speed up the performance of top-k spatial predilection queries. To this end, we propose a mapping of pairs of information and feature objects to a distance-score space, which in rotate allows us to identify and materialize the minimal subset of pairs that is adequate to answer any spatial preference query. Furthermore, we present a novel algorithm that improves uncertainty processing performance by avoiding examining the spatial neighborhood of the information objects during query execution. In addition, we recommend an efficient algorithm for materialization and we express useful properties that reduce the cost of maintenance. We show through wide experiments that our approach significantly reduces the number of I/Os and completing time compared to the state-of-the-art algorithms for dissimilar setups.