Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effects of Higher Levels of Immersion on Procedure Memorization Performance and Implications for Educational Virtual Environments

Researchers have proposed that immersion could have advantages for tasks involving abstract mental activities, such as conceptual learning; however, there are few empirical results that support this idea. We hypothesized that higher levels of immersion would benefit such tasks if the mental activity could be mapped to objects or locations in a 3D environment. To investigate this hypothesis, we performed an experiment in which participants memorized procedures in a virtual environment and then attempted to recall those procedures. We aimed to understand the effects of three components of immersion on performance. The results demonstrate that a matched software field of view (SFOV), a higher physical field of view (FOV), and a higher field of regard (FOR) all contributed to more effective memorization. The best performance was achieved with a matched SFOV and either a high FOV or a high FOR, or both. In addition, our experiment demonstrated that memorization in a virtual environment could be transferred to the real world. The results suggest that, for procedure memorization tasks, increasing the level of immersion even to moderate levels, such as those found in head mounted displays (HMDs) and display walls, can improve performance significantly compared to lower levels of immersion. Hypothesizing that the performance improvements provided by higher levels of immersion can be attributed to enhanced spatial cues, we discuss the values and limitations of supplementing conceptual information with spatial information in educational VR.
The newer aspect of dexmedetomidine use in dentistry: As an additive to local anesthesia, initial experience, and review of literature

Introduction: Despite the availability of a wide variety of pharmacological agents in the field of anesthesia, there has always been a continuous search for newer local anesthetic agents with improved efficacy, potency, and better handling properties. Dexmedetomidine, a selective alpha-2 adrenergic receptor agonist, is an emerging agent for provision of additive local anesthetic effect if used with conventional local anesthetics, which can be implicated in dentistry for performing many minor oral surgical procedures. The present paper reports a pilot study comparing clinical efficacy and potency of this newer emerging drug in combination with lignocaine. Materials and Methods: Ten patients undergoing orthodontic extraction for correction of malocclusion and other dentofacial deformities requiring orthodontic treatment were locally infiltrated with 2% lignocaine plus dexmedetomidine 1μ/ml and 2% lignocaine plus adrenaline in 1:200,000 dilution at two different appointments. The onset of action, duration of action, and pain threshold were assessed. Results: Onset of action was found to be faster with longer duration of action with the newer drug dexmedetomidine and lignocaine combination when compared with combination of lignocaine and adrenaline. Conclusion: The study demonstrated that the combination of dexmedetomidine with lignocaine enhances the local anesthetic potency of lignocaine without significant systemic effects when locally injected into oral mucosa.
Path Analysis of the Effects of Teaching Attitudes and Anxiety on Pre-Service Teachers' Efficacy Beliefs

The current study examined two hypothesized models in which teachers' efficacy beliefs are predicted by teaching attitudes and teaching anxiety. Attitudes and anxiety, as predictors, interchanged the role of being exogenous variable in the two suggested models. Data from 329 pre-service teachers showed moderate relationships among the three variables with the strongest relationship reported between teaching anxiety and efficacy beliefs. Path analysis showed support for the model in which teaching attitude was the predictor of both anxiety and efficacy beliefs. The study results emphasized the need for paying attention to the nature of applied experiences the pre-service teachers get during university years and the importance of careful design of preparation teacher programs. Further studies should investigate the model through intervention and longitudinal researches.
Connecting functional brain imaging and Parallel Distributed Processing

Functional neuroimaging and Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) theory, both introduced to cognitive science in the 1980s, led to influential research programmes that have proceeded in parallel with little mutual influence. The PDP approach advanced specific claims about the nature of neural representations that, perhaps surprisingly, have gone largely untested in functional brain imaging. One reason may be the widespread use of univariate statistical methods for analysing brain imaging data, which typically rely on assumptions that render them unable to detect distributed representations of the kind that PDP predicts. More recent multivariate methods for image analysis may be better suited to detecting such representations. In the current article, we consider why univariate methods have been insufficient to test PDP's representational claims, articulate some of the properties that neural representations ought to have if the PDP view is valid and then survey the recent neuroimaging literature for evidence that neural representations do or do not have these properties. The survey establishes that the PDP view of distributed representations has considerable evidential support. This analysis underscores the importance of understanding how the assumptions underlying methods for analysing functional imaging data constrain the kinds of questions that can be addressed. We then consider the implications for our developing understanding of the neural bases of cognition and for the design of future brain imaging studies.
Paper 7

—Big data analytics is the process of examining large amounts of data (big data) in an effort to uncover hidden patterns or unknown correlations. Big Data Analytics Applications (BDA Apps) are a new type of software applications, which analyze big data using massive parallel processing frameworks (e.g., Hadoop). Developers of such applications typically develop them using a small sample of data in a pseudo-cloud environment. Afterwards, they deploy the applications in a large-scale cloud environment with considerably more processing power and larger input data (reminiscent of the mainframe days). Working with BDA App developers in industry over the past three years, we noticed that the runtime analysis and debugging of such applications in the deployment phase cannot be easily addressed by traditional monitoring and debugging approaches. In this paper, as a first step in assisting developers of BDA Apps for cloud deployments, we propose a lightweight approach for uncovering differences between pseudo and large-scale cloud deployments. Our approach makes use of the readily-available yet rarely used execution logs from these platforms. Our approach abstracts the execution logs, recovers the execution sequences, and compares the sequences between the pseudo and cloud deployments. Through a case study on three representative Hadoop-based BDA Apps, we show that our approach can rapidly direct the attention of BDA App developers to the major differences between the two deployments. Knowledge of such differences is essential in verifying BDA Apps when analyzing big data in the cloud. Using injected deployment faults, we show that our approach not only significantly reduces the deployment verification effort, but also provides very few false positives when identifying deployment failures. I. INTRODUCTION Big Data Analytics Applications (BDA Apps) are a new category of software applications that leverage large-scale data, which is typically too large to fit in memory or even on one hard drive, to uncover actionable knowledge using large-scale parallel-processing infrastructures [1]. The big data can come from sources such as runtime information about traffic, tweets during the Olympic games, stock market updates, usage information of an online game [2], or the data from any other rapidly growing data-intensive software system. For instance, EBAY 1 has deployed BDA Apps to optimize the search of products by analyzing over 5 PBs data using more than 4,000 CPU cores [3].
Profiles of CH 4 , HDO, H 2 O, and N 2 O with improved lower tropospheric vertical resolution from Aura TES radiances

Abstract. Thermal infrared (IR) radiances measured near 8 microns contain information about the vertical distribution of water vapor (H2O), the water isotopologue HDO, and methane (CH4), key gases in the water and carbon cycles. Previous versions (Version 4 or less) of the TES profile retrieval algorithm used a "spectral-window" approach to minimize uncertainty from interfering species at the expense of reduced vertical resolution and sensitivity. In this manuscript we document changes to the vertical resolution and uncertainties of the TES version 5 retrieval algorithm. In this version (Version 5), joint estimates of H2O, HDO, CH4 and nitrous oxide (N2O) are made using radiances from almost the entire spectral region between 1100 cm−1 and 1330 cm−1. The TES retrieval constraints are also modified in order to better use this information. The new H2O estimates show improved vertical resolution in the lower troposphere and boundary layer, while the new HDO/H2O estimates can now profile the HDO/H2O ratio between 925 hPa and 450 hPa in the tropics and during summertime at high latitudes. The new retrievals are now sensitive to methane in the free troposphere between 800 and 150 mb with peak sensitivity near 500 hPa; whereas in previous versions the sensitivity peaked at 200 hPa. However, the upper troposphere methane concentrations are biased high relative to the lower troposphere by approximately 4% on average. This bias is likely related to temperature, calibration, and/or methane spectroscopy errors. This bias can be mitigated by normalizing the CH4 estimate by the ratio of the N2O estimate relative to the N2O prior, under the assumption that the same systematic error affects both the N2O and CH4 estimates. We demonstrate that applying this ratio theoretically reduces the CH4 estimate for non-retrieved parameters that jointly affect both the N2O and CH4 estimates. The relative upper troposphere to lower troposphere bias is approximately 2.8% after this bias correction. Quality flags based upon the vertical variability of the methane and N2O estimates can be used to reduce this bias further. While these new CH4, HDO/H2O, and H2O estimates are consistent with previous TES retrievals in the altitude regions where the sensitivities overlap, future comparisons with independent profile measurement will be required to characterize the biases of these new retrievals and determine if the calculated uncertainties using the new constraints are consistent with actual uncertainties.
Cyclooxygenase-2-expressing macrophages in human pterygium co-express vascular endothelial growth factor

Purpose To evaluate cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) expression and to characterize COX-2-expressing stromal cells in human pterygium. Methods Primary pterygium tissue of Korean patients (eight males and nine females) was analyzed. The clinical characteristics were classified, and immunohistochemical staining using primary antibodies against cyclooxygenease-2, vascular endothelial growth factor-A, cluster of differentiation (CD)68, CD3, CD20, and leukocyte common antigen was performed. Results COX-2 expression was detected in all pterygium tissues evaluated (17 primary pterygia). Diffuse expression of COX-2 in the epithelial layer was observed in nine samples. Infiltration of strongly positive COX-2 cells into the epithelial layer was a more common observation than diffuse epithelial COX-2 expression. Scattered COX-2-expressing cells in the stromal layer were found in all samples. Some COX-2-positive cells were found within microvessels. In addition to stromal COX-2-expressing cells, a few vascular endothelial cells strongly expressed COX-2; however most of the vessels were negative for COX-2 expression. Stromal COX-2-expressing cells were positive for the macrophage marker CD68 and co-expressed vascular endothelial growth factor. COX-2 expression in normal conjunctiva was not observed in seven control samples. Conclusions These COX-2- and vascular endothelial growth factor-expressing macrophages may have relevance to the pathogenesis of pterygium.
Oseltamivir Carboxylate, the Active Metabolite of Oseltamivir Phosphate (Tamiflu), Detected in Sewage Discharge and River Water in Japan

Background Oseltamivir phosphate (OP; Tamiflu) is a prodrug of the anti-influenza neuraminidase inhibitor oseltamivir carboxylate (OC) and has been developed for the treatment and prevention of both A and B strains of influenza. The recent increase in OP resistance in influenza A virus (H1N1; commonlly called “swine flu”) has raised questions about the widespread use of Tamiflu in seasonal epidemics and the potential ecotoxicologic risk associated with its use in the event of a pandemic. Objectives The objectives of this study were to develop an analytical method for quantitative determination of OC in sewage treatment plant (STP) effluent and receiving river water, and to investigate the occurrence of OC in STP effluent and river water in Japan during a seasonal flu outbreak. Methods We developed an analytical method based on solid-phase extraction followed by liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry. Using this method, we analyzed samples from three sampling campaigns conducted during the 2008–2009 flu season in Kyoto City, Japan. Results The highest concentration of OC detected in STP discharge was 293.3 ng/L from a conventional activated-sludge–based STP; however, we detected only 37.9 ng/L from an advanced STP with ozonation as a tertiary treatment. In the receiving river water samples, we detected 6.6–190.2 ng/L OC, during the peak of the flu season. Conclusion OC is present in STP effluent and river water only during the flu season. Ozonation as tertiary treatment in STP will substantially reduce the OC load in STP effluent during an influenza epidemic or pandemic.
Modeling and analysis of dynamic coscheduling in parallel and distributed environments

Scheduling in large-scale parallel systems has been and continues to be an important and challenging research problem. Several key factors, including the increasing use of off-the-shelf clusters of workstations to build such parallel systems, have resulted in the emergence of a new class of scheduling strategies, broadly referred to as dynamic coscheduling. Unfortunately, the size of both the design and performance spaces of these emerging scheduling strategies is quite large, due in part to the numerous dynamic interactions among the different components of the parallel computing environment as well as the wide range of applications and systems that can comprise the parallel environment. This in turn makes it difficult to fully explore the benefits and limitations of the various proposed dynamic coscheduling approaches for large-scale systems solely with the use of simulation and/or experimentation.To gain a better understanding of the fundamental properties of different dynamic coscheduling methods, we formulate a general mathematical model of this class of scheduling strategies within a unified framework that allows us to investigate a wide range of parallel environments. We derive a matrix-analytic analysis based on a stochastic decomposition and a fixed-point iteration. A large number of numerical experiments are performed in part to examine the accuracy of our approach. These numerical results are in excellent agreement with detailed simulation results. Our mathematical model and analysis is then used to explore several fundamental design and performance tradeoffs associated with the class of dynamic coscheduling policies across a broad spectrum of parallel computing environments.
New unambiguous BOC(n,n) tracking technique

Galileo and Modernized GPS have included in their signal structures a new signal modulation: the Binary Offset Carrier (BOC). In the navigation field, this modulation is characterized by the chipping rate of its spreading code (m×1.023 MHz) and the frequency of its square sub-carrier (n×1.023 MHz). As a consequence, it is usually referred to as a BOC(n,m) modulation. The choice of the parameters n and m has a significant impact on the signal tracking performance and characteristics [1]. It is well known that each BOC modulation brings many improvements when compared against a classical Bi-Phase Shift Keying (BPSK) modulation with the same chipping rate [1]. Among other examples, it provides a lower code tracking error in thermal noise, better multipath mitigation, and better rejection of narrow-band interference. However, its multi-peak autocorrelation function is a major drawback. This implies that when using classical acquisition and tracking techniques, there is a possibility of detecting and tracking the signal by locking onto a side-peak. This can lead to severe undesirable measurement biases when not corrected. Several methods have been developed in order to prevent such an event to occur [2, 3, 4, and 5]. These methods are usually generic to all BOC modulations. However, they have to incorporate trade-offs, such as a degraded code tracking accuracy, or the risk of a certain period of potential false peak tracking. This research uses a different approach to the problem. Instead of trying to find a generic solution, it was decided to study this ambiguity problem on a particular signal in order to try to apply relevant methods using this specific signal? s characteristics. The BOC modulation chosen was the sine-BOC(n,n) (sine- stands for the use of a sine square as the sub-carrier). This decision was motivated by the fact a sine-BOC(1,1) will most likely be used for the Galileo civil signal on L1, and potentially on GPS III [6, 7]. Moreover, the Galileo L1 signal will constitute the main Galileo signal for mass market applications due to its narrow frequency bandwidth and low sampling frequency required for its processing. As a result, finding an optimal way to track Galileo BOC(1,1) unambiguously is critical, as well as very challenging. This paper presents a new unambiguous BOC tracking method that can be applied to any sine-BOC(n,n) signal. It consistently removes the bias threat while having a close-to-optimum tracking accuracy. Sine-BOC modulation will be referred to as BOC modulation for simplicity throughout this paper. The first part focuses on the shortcomings of traditional BOC(n,n) tracking and the second part offers a detailed description of the new proposed method. The third part then focuses on the theoretical tracking performance of the proposed method in thermal noise only. Its behaviour in a multipath environment is then investigated before some simulation results are shown in the last section.
Sex and the sexual dysfunctions: The role of disgust and contamination sensitivity

Cunent psychological views of sexual behavioi roughly consider sexual dysfunction to be a consequence of a negative emotional leaction to eiotic stimulation, which then becomes the focus of attention (e.g., Bailow, 1986; Janssen & Eveiaeid, 1993). Although disgust seems an obvious candidate foi being one of these negative emotional teactions that interferes with healthy sexual behavior and/or sexual pleasure, cunent theories and empirical research focus piedominantly on emotional and cognitive processes related to fear and pain (e.g., Payne, Binik, Amsel, & Khalife, 2005), wheieas the reference to disgust is mainly anecdotal (e.g. Games, 1998; Kaneko, 2001). In a similar vein, cunent cognitive-behavioral interventions often include some foim of feat reduction exeicises (exposuie oi cognitive restructuring) and pain man agement techniques (e.g., van Lankveld et al, 2006), wheieas inteiventions taigeted at reducing or neutralizing disgust-related feelings, appraisals, and/oi action tendencies aie virtually absent in the liteiatuie (fot a short overview of current psychological inteiventions, see Heiman, 2002). Theiefoie, it appeals that disgust is laigely overlooked as a potentially relevant factor in the etiology of sexual dysfunction. In this chapter we defend the notion that disgust nevertheless has a gteat promise for improving our understanding of common sexual behavior and sexual complaints and may
X-ray flaring from the young stars in Cygnus OB2

Aims. We characterize individual and ensemble properties of X-ray flares from stars in the Cygnus OB2 and ONC star-forming regions. Methods. We analyzed X-ray lightcurves of 1003 Cygnus OB2 sources observed with Chandra for 100 ks and of 1616 ONC sources detected in the “Chandra Orion Ultra-deep Project” 850 ks observation. We employed a binning-free maximum likelihood method to segment the light-curves into intervals of constants signal and identified flares on the basis of both the amplitude and the timederivative of the source luminosity. We then derived and compared the flare frequency and energy distribution of Cygnus OB2 and ONC sources. The effect of the length of the observation on these results was investigated by repeating the statistical analysis on five 100 ks-long segments extracted from the ONC data. Results. We detected 147 and 954 flares from the Cygnus OB2 and ONC sources, respectively. The flares in Cygnus OB2 have decay times ranging from <0.5 to about 10 h. The flare energy distributions of all considered flare samples are described at high energies well by a power law with index α = −(2.1 ± 0.1). At low energies, the distributions flatten, probably because of detection incompleteness. We derived average flare frequencies as a function of flare energy. The flare frequency is seen to depend on the source’s intrinsic X-ray luminosity, but its determination is affected by the length of the observation. The slope of the high-energy tail of the energy distribution is, however, affected little. A comparison of Cygnus OB2 and ONC sources, accounting for observational biases, shows that the two populations, known to have similar X-ray emission levels, have very similar flare activity. Conclusions. Studies of flare activity are only comparable if performed consistently and taking the observation length into account. Flaring activity does not vary appreciably between the age of the ONC (∼1 Myr) and that of Cygnus OB2 (∼2 Myr). The slope of the distribution of flare energies is consistent with the micro-flare explanation of the coronal heating.
1 S ep 2 00 5 ON NORMAL SUBGROUPS OF PRODUCT OF GROUPS

The object of this paper is to find a necessary and sufficient condition for the groups G1, G2, . , Gn so that every normal subgroup of the product ∏ n i=1 Gi is of the type ∏ n i=1 Ni with Ni E Gi, i = 1, 2, . , n. As a consequence we obtain a well-known result due to R. Remak about centreless completely reducible groups having finitely many direct factors.