Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intergenerational gameplay: evaluating social interaction between younger and older players

In this paper, we compared the digital gameplay of three user groups comprising of younger and older adults. Players were paired together with the game objective of cooperatively nurturing and maintaining a set of virtual garden plants using a novel form of silhouette interaction. Questionnaire and observations revealed marked differences in the communicative behavior of the age groups, with higher verbal communication amongst the older pairs, but lower gameplay competency. Variations were identified in the paired interaction of the younger and older players, highlighting the challenge of designing games to encourage intergenerational bonding.
Evaluation of the Reanalysis Surface Incident Shortwave Radiation Products from NCEP, ECMWF, GSFC, and JMA Using Satellite and Surface Observations

Solar radiation incident at the Earth’s surface (Rs) is an essential component of the total energy exchange between the atmosphere and the surface. Reanalysis data have been widely used, but a comprehensive validation using surface measurements is still highly needed. In this study, we evaluated the Rs estimates from six current representative global reanalyses (NCEP–NCAR, NCEP-DOE; CFSR; ERA-Interim; MERRA; and JRA-55) using surface measurements from different observation networks [GEBA; BSRN; GC-NET; Buoy; and CMA] (674 sites in total) and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) EBAF product from 2001 to 2009. The global mean biases between the reanalysis Rs and surface measurements at all sites ranged from 11.25 W/m2 to 49.80 W/m2. Comparing with the CERES-EBAF Rs product, all the reanalyses overestimate Rs, except for ERA-Interim, with the biases ranging from −2.98 W/m2 to 21.97 W/m2 over the globe. It was also found that the biases of cloud fraction (CF) in the reanalyses caused the overestimation of Rs. After removing the averaged bias of CERES-EBAF, weighted by the area of the latitudinal band, a global annual mean Rs values of 184.6 W/m2, 180.0 W/m2, and 182.9 W/m2 were obtained over land, ocean, and the globe, respectively.
ISI at ImageCLEF 2012: Scalable System for Image Annotation

We participate in the ImageCLEF 2012 Photo Annotation Tasks. We devote our attention to make our system scalable for the data amount. Therefore we train linear classifiers with our online multilabel learning. For Flickr Photo task, we extract visual Fisher Vectors (FVs) from some kinds of local descriptors and used the provided Flickr-tags for textual features. For Web Photo tasks, we just use the provided Bagof-Visual-Words (BoVW) of some kinds of SIFT descriptors. A linear classifier for each label is obtained with an online multilabel learning, Passive-Aggressive with Averaged Pairwise Loss (PAAPL). The results have shown that our scalable system achieves pretty good performances in all tasks we take part in.
Culture, religion and childrearing practice : a case study of practicing Muslim-Moroccan immigrants in Québec

English) The purpose of this research was to explore parenting strategies in cultural transmission of participating Muslim Moroccans immigrant parents residing in two areas of Quebec using a qualitative approach. In particular, this study highlighted the childrearing choices as the parents attempted to pass on their culture to the next generations in a cultural conflict context. Through focus group and semi-structure interviews, this study explored the participants' perceptions regarding their immigration struggles while providing an insider's view on their childrearing strategies in acculturation context. Three findings were made based on the analysed data as 1) identity ensuring cultural transmission; 2) cultural transmission strategies, and 3) culture integration strategies in sampled Muslim-Moroccan immigrant parents. The first finding of this study is that religious identity was ensured in cultural transmission in the sampled Muslim Moroccan immigrant parents living in a secular society. The religious identity was constructed through the parents’ connection and association with the Moroccan community, and their identity primacy of religion was over their ethnicity. Secondly, this study identified five strategies of cultural transmission used by the Moroccan participants to tackle the challenges from the host culture, which included cultural transmission within the family, transmitting culture values as a part of cultural transmission, ensuring their children attended Muslim schools, ensuring strong connections with the country of origin, and monitoring their children socialisation to limt the perceived threat to their cultural heritage from the host society. The third and final finding is about the biculturalism, secularization as adaptation and acculturation in culture integration strategies. The participating Muslim-Moroccan parents were attempting to face the host society challenges with limited openness and integration strategies. The culture integration strategies of the participants included their biculturalism strategies, their secularization as a form of adaptation, and their acculturation strategies. The implications of this study to future research, intervention strategies, and training or education of social workers were given at the end of this thesis.
A method for software aging state evaluation

The software aging modeling and state evaluation method of a real VOD (Video on Demand) system are investigated. Firstly, the data on several system resource usage and application server are collected. Then, the linear regression method is adopted to remove the various workloads' affection on the system resource consumption, and the software aging process is obtained. Next, an information entropy-based iterative self-organizing data analysis technique arithmetic (IE-ISODATA) is proposed, the statistical metric of a segment is calculated by the information entropy, and the distance between two different segments is evaluated by the relative entropy. Based on the IE-ISODATA method, the software system aging state under different interval is obtained. Finally, several experiments are taken to evaluate the proposed methods. The results show that the abnormal consumption of system resource reveals the software aging process after the analysis of linear regression model. And the software aging states are gotten by using the presented IE-ISODATA method with better effect and high efficiency. Based on the models employed here, software rejuvenation policies can be triggered by actual measurements.
Monolithic Systems Using Standard Three-Leg Inverter Supplying Independently Two Motors

This paper presents two series-connected motor drive system topologies. These configurations have been designed for applications in which it is necessary to control two motors independently by using a standard three-leg inverter. The systems will be called in this work as a monolithic systems, since both machines and the three legs inverter have been considered as the same product. The monolithic systems are seen as a potentially viable industrial solution for applications requiring one high- power (three-phase machine) and one low-power machine (single- phase machine). Furthermore, the paper presents: i) relevant characteristics of the systems, ii) pulse-width modulation techniques; iii) control strategies; iv) voltage and current analysis; v) unconventional induction machine design to improve the performance of the monolithic system; and vi) simulated and experimental results.
Developmental processes in peer problems of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in The Multimodal Treatment Study of Children With ADHD: Developmental cascades and vicious cycles

Abstract We examined the developmental processes involved in peer problems among children (M age = 10.41 years) previously diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) at study entry (N = 536) and a comparison group (N = 284). Participants were followed over a 6-year period ranging from middle childhood to adolescence. At four assessment periods, measures of aggression, social skills, positive illusory biases (in the social and behavioral domains), and peer rejection were assessed. Results indicated that children from the ADHD group exhibited difficulties in each of these areas at the first assessment. Moreover, there were vicious cycles among problems over time. For example, peer rejection was related to impaired social skills, which in turn predicted later peer rejection. Problems also tended to spill over into other areas, which in turn compromised functioning in additional areas across development, leading to cascading effects over time. The findings held even when controlling for age and were similar for males and females, the ADHD and comparison groups, and among ADHD treatment groups. The results suggest that the peer problems among children with and without ADHD may reflect similar processes; however, children with ADHD exhibit greater difficulties negotiating important developmental tasks. Implications for interventions are discussed.
Rule-based Coreference Resolution in German Historic Novels

Coreference resolution (CR) is a key task in the automated analysis of characters in stories. Standard CR systems usually trained on newspaper texts have difficulties with literary texts, even with novels; a comparison with newspaper texts showed that average sentence length is greater in novels and the number of pronouns, as well as the percentage of direct speech is higher. We report promising evaluation results for a rule-based system similar to [Lee et al. 2011], but tailored to the domain which recognizes coreference chains in novels much better than CR systems like CorZu. Rule-based systems performed best on the CoNLL 2011 challenge [Pradhan et al. 2011]. Recent work in machine learning showed similar results as rule-based systems [Durett et al. 2013]. The latter has the advantage that its explanation component facilitates a fine grained error analysis for incremental refinement of the rules.
Optimal Smoothing of Stored Video and the Impact on Network Resource Requirements

VBR compressed video is known to exhibit significant, multip le-time-scale bit rate variability. In this paper, we consider the transmission of stored vi deo from a server to a client across a high speed network, and explore how the client buffer space c n be used most effectively toward reducing the variability of the transmitted bit rate. We present two basic results. First, we show how to achieve th e greatest possible reduction in rate variability when sending stored video to a client with given buffer size. W formally establish the optimality of our optimal smoothing approach, and illus trate its performance over a set of long MPEG-1 encoded video traces. Second, we evaluate the im pact of optimal smoothing on the network resources needed for video transport, under two net work service models: Deterministic Guaranteed service [1, 11] and Renegotiated CBR (RCBR) serv ice [9, 8]. Under both models, we find the impact of optimal smoothing to be dramatic. An earlier version of this paper appeared at the 1996 ACM SIGMETRICS conferen c . yThis work was supported by NSF under grant NCR-9206908 and by ARPA u nder ESD/AVS contract F-19628-92-C0089.
Efficacy of epicardially delivered adipose stroma cell sheets in dilated cardiomyopathy.

AIMS Few studies have assessed the effects of cell therapy in non-ischaemic cardiomyopathies which, however, contribute to a large number of cardiac failures. Assuming that such conditions are best suited for a global delivery of cells, we assessed the effects of epicardially delivered adipose tissue-derived stroma cell (ADSC) sheets in a mouse model of dilated cardiomyopathy based on cardiac-specific and tamoxifen-inducible invalidation of serum response factor. METHODS AND RESULTS Three weeks after tamoxifen administration, the function of the left ventricle (LV) was assessed by echocardiography. Twenty-nine mice were then allocated to control (n = 9, non-transgenic), sham (n = 10, transgenic non-treated), and treated (n = 10, transgenic) groups. In the treated group, 3 × 10(6) allogeneic ADSCs were cultured for 2 days onto temperature-responsive polymers and the generated sheets were then transplanted over the surface of the heart. In 10 additional mice, the sheet was made of green fluorescent protein (GFP)-labelled ADSCs to track cell fate. Function, engraftment, and fibrosis were blindly assessed after 3 weeks. In the non-treated group, fractional shortening declined compared with baseline, whereas the sheet application resulted in its stabilization. This correlated with a lesser degree of LV remodelling, as LV end-diastolic and end-systolic diameters did not differ from baseline values. Many GFP(+) cells were identified in the epicardial graft and in the myocardium. Treated animals also displayed a reduced expression of the stress-induced atrial natriuretic factor and beta-myosin heavy chain genes. These protective effects were also accompanied by a reduction of myocardial fibrosis. CONCLUSION These results strongly suggest the functional relevance of epicardially delivered cell-seeded biomaterials to non-ischaemic heart failure.
A randomized clinical trial of adjuvant chemotherapy with doxorubicin, ifosfamide, and cisplatin followed by radiotherapy versus radiotherapy alone in patients with localized uterine sarcomas (SARCGYN study). A study of the French Sarcoma Group.

BACKGROUND There is no proven benefit of adjuvant treatment of uterine sarcoma (US). SARCGYN phase III study compared adjuvant polychemotherapy followed by pelvic radiotherapy (RT) (arm A) versus RT alone (arm B) conducted to detect an increase ≥ 20% of 3-year PFS. METHODS Patients with FIGO stage ≤ III US, physiological age ≤ 65 years; chemotherapy: four cycles of doxorubicin 50 mg/m² d1, ifosfamide 3 g/m²/day d1-2, cisplatin 75 mg/m² d3, (API) + G-CSF q 3 weeks. Study was stopped because of lack of recruitment. RESULTS Eighty-one patients were included: 39 in arm A and 42 in arm B; 52 stage I, 16 stage II, 13 stage III; 53 leiomyosarcomas, 9 undifferenciated sarcomas, 19 carcinosarcomas. Gr 3-4 toxicity during API (/37 patients): thrombopenia (76%), febrile neutropenia (22%) with two toxic deaths; renal gr 3 (1 patient). After a median follow-up of 4.3 years, 41/81 patients recurred, 15 in arm A, 26 in arm B. The 3 years DFS is 55% in arm A, 41% in arm B (P = 0.048). The 3-year overall survival (OS) is 81% in arm A and 69% in arm B (P = 0.41). CONCLUSION API adjuvant CT statistically increases the 3 year-DFS of patients with US.
Speculation Spillovers

This paper demonstrates that speculative activities can be contagious and spill over across markets. Specifically, we test the hypothesis that during China's warrants bubble period, speculative activities in the warrants market grabbed investors' attention and caused them to trade more speculatively in the underlying stocks. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that turnover and return volatility of the underlying stocks are positively associated with the warrants' unexpected turnover and price deviation from their fundamental values during the previous day, controlling for information-driven trading and hedging motives, and that such a spillover effect is more pronounced when warrants attract more investor attention. Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi. org/10.1287/mnsc.2014. 1914 . This paper was accepted by Wei Xiong, finance.
A Bacillus Flagellar Motor That Can Use Both Na+ and K+ as a Coupling Ion Is Converted by a Single Mutation to Use Only Na+

In bacteria, the sodium ion (Na+) cycle plays a critical role in negotiating the challenges of an extremely alkaline and sodium-rich environment. Alkaliphilic bacteria that grow optimally at high pH values use Na+ for solute uptake and flagellar rotation because the proton (H+) motive force is insufficient for use at extremely alkaline pH. Only three types of electrically driven rotary motors exist in nature: the F-type ATPase, the V-type ATPase, and the bacterial flagellar motor. Until now, only H+ and Na+ have been reported as coupling ions for these motors. Here, we report that the alkaliphilic bacterium Bacillus alcalophilus Vedder 1934 can grow not only under a Na+-rich and potassium ion (K+)-poor condition but also under the opposite condition in an extremely alkaline environment. In this organism, swimming performance depends on concentrations of Na+, K+ or Rb+. In the absence of Na+, swimming behavior is clearly K+- dependent. This pattern was confirmed in swimming assays of stator-less Bacillus subtilis and Escherichia coli mutants expressing MotPS from B. alcalophilus (BA-MotPS). Furthermore, a single mutation in BA-MotS was identified that converted the naturally bi-functional BA-MotPS to stators that cannot use K+ or Rb+. This is the first report that describes a flagellar motor that can use K+ and Rb+ as coupling ions. The finding will affect the understanding of the operating principles of flagellar motors and the molecular mechanisms of ion selectivity, the field of the evolution of environmental changes and stresses, and areas of nanotechnology.
Reshaping Political Order in Mali 2012 and after - What does a (post-)crisis stand for?

ABSTRACT:This paper analyses the transformations of international intervention in Mali since the crisis that burst in March 2012. It shows that the crisis in Mali has generated interesting debates about international intervention in Mali and debates within the Bamako-based donor community in 2012 and 2013. Attempts at stopping doing “business as usual” were short-lived, but major changes in Mali’s transnational government have occurred under the influence of “new” stakeholders (emergency NGOs, the military, UN blue helmets and civilian staff), agendas (the war on terror, “stabilization”, peace and state-building) and practices (for instance, the UN “cluster” approach). This has created a renewed competition and a negotiated division of labour between different categories of international actors. This entails that there be no “merging” between logics and practices of security and development (as argued by Mark Duffield, 2001). The presentation draws on empirical evidence accumulated through eight months of field-work, policy documents, non-participant observation and over 200 interviews carried out in Bamako since 2007.
Partner Selection in Public Goods Experiments

The effect of introducing costly partner selection for the voluntary contribution to a public good is examined. Participants are in six sequences of five rounds of a two-person public good game in partner design. At the end of each sequence, they can select a new partner out of six group members. Unidirectional and bidirectional partner selection mechanisms are introduced and compared to controls with random partner rematching. Results demonstrate significantly higher cooperation in correspondence to unidirectional partner selection than to bidirectional selection and random rematching. Average monetary effort for being able to choose a partner is substantially high and remains stable.
Constrained adaptive learning in Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces: The beamforming paradigm

This paper presents a novel framework for constrained adaptive learning in reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHS). A low complexity algorithmic solution is established. Constraints that encode a-priori information and several design specifications take the form of multiple intersecting closed convex sets. A cost function and the training data stream create a sequence of closed convex sets in the RKHS. The resulting recursive solution generates a sequence of estimates which converges to such an infinite intersection of closed convex sets. A time-adaptive beamforming task in an RKHS, rich in constraints, is also established. The numerical results show that the proposed method exhibits a significant improvement in resolution, when compared to the classical linear solution, and outperforms a recently unconstrained online kernel-based regression technique.
Synchronous system and perfect failure detector: Solvability and efficiency issues

We compare, in terms of solvability and efficiency, the synchronous model, noted Ss, with the asynchronous model augmented with a perfect failure detector, noted S/sub P/. We first exhibit a problem that, although time-free, is solvable in S/sub S/ but not in S/sub P/. We then examine whether one of these two models allows more efficient solutions for designing fault-tolerant applications. In particular, we concentrate on the uniform consensus problem which is solvable in both models, and we design a uniform consensus algorithm for the S/sub S/ model that is more efficient than any algorithm solving uniform consensus in S/sub P/ with respect to some significant time complexity measure. From a practical viewpoint, the synchronous model thus seems better than the asynchronous model augmented with a perfect failure detector.
Hydrothermal Preparation and Characterization of Ultralong Strontium-Substituted Hydroxyapatite Whiskers Using Acetamide as Homogeneous Precipitation Reagent

The ultralong strontium- (Sr-) substituted hydroxyapatite (SrHAp) whiskers were successfully prepared using acetamide as homogeneous precipitation reagent. The effect of the Sr substitution amount on the lattice constants and proliferation of human osteoblast cells (MG-63) was further investigated. The results showed that the SrHAp whiskers with diameter of 0.2–12 μm and ultralong length up to 200 μm were obtained and the Sr substitution level could be facilely tailored by regulating the initial molar ratio of Sr/(Sr + Ca) in raw materials. The Sr2+ replaced part of Ca2+ and the lattice constants increased apparently with the increase of the Sr substitution amount. Compared with the pure HAp whiskers, the Sr substitution apparently stimulated the proliferation of MG-63 at certain extracted concentrations. Our study suggested that the obtained SrHAp whiskers might be used as bioactive and mechanical reinforcement materials for hard tissue regeneration applications.
TEACHERS’ CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK ON STUDENTS’ PRONUNCIATION AT THE DAFFODILS ENGLISH COURSE KAMPUNG INGGRIS PARE INDONESIA

Pronunciation is a micro skill of any languages. However, pronunciation is overlooked in the teaching and learning English, and it is not explicitly taught but it is taught in spoken activity in speaking by giving correction on pronunciation errors made they students or corrective feedback. It is one of key in teaching English for EFL learners.This study is aim at describing teachers’ corrective feedback strategies used by the teachers, the timing of corrective feedbacks and their influences on students’ psychological performance during speaking activity at the Daffodils English course . The research design of this research is a case study and the samples of this study were five experience teachers of The Daffodils English Course who are aware of giving corrective feedback on students’ pronunciation. The result of data analysis indicated that there were four types of corrective feedback strategies used by the samples (by the teachers) which involved recast strategies was 58%, metalinguistic was 28.03%, clarification request was 11.21% and elicitation and elicitation was 1.86%. In addition, from total of data, it indicated that the samples gave corrective feedback in two different times that involved immediate and delayed correction. It indicated that 28.03% total of data was immediate correction, and 71.96% data indicated the use of delayed correction.