Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Interactive 3D sonification for the exploration of city maps

Blind or visually impaired people usually do not leave their homes without any assistance, in order to visit unknown cities or places. One reason for this dilemma is, that it is hardly possible for them to gain a non-visual overview about the new place, its landmarks and geographic entities already at home. Sighted people can use a printed or digital map to perform this task. Existing haptic and acoustic approaches today do not provide an economic way to mediate the understanding of a map and relations between objects like distance, direction, and object size. We are providing an interactive three-dimensional sonification interface to explore city maps. A blind person can build a mental model of an area's structure by virtually exploring an auditory map at home. Geographic objects and landmarks are presented by sound areas, which are placed within a sound room. Each type of object is associated with a different sound and can therefore be identified. By investigating the auditory map, the user perceives an idea of the various objects, their directions and relative distances. First user tests show, that users are able to reproduce a sonified city map, which comes close to the original visual city map. With our approach exploring a map with non-speech sound areas provide a new user interface metaphor that offers its potential not only for blind and visually impaired persons but also to applications for sighted persons.
A vision system for detecting and tracking of stop-lines

This paper presents a computer vision algorithm that detects, by analyzing lane-marking detection results, stop-lines and tracks, using an unscented Kalman filter, the detected stop-line over time. To detect lateral and longitudinal lane-markings, our method applies a spatial filter emphasizing the intensity contrast between lane-marking pixels and their neighboring pixels. We then examine the detected lane-markings to identify perpendicular, geometry layouts between longitudinal and lateral lane-markings for stop-line detection. To provide reliable stop-line recognition, we developed an unscented Kalman filter to track the detected stop-line over frames. Through the testings with real-world, busy urban street videos, our method demonstrated promising results, in terms of the accuracy of the initial detection accuracy and the reliability of the tracking.
Are the Greenhouse Gas Implications of New Residential Developments Understood Wrongly

Built environment carbon reduction strategies materialize predominantly in city-level greenhouse gas (GHG) management, where new residential development appears as one of the key instruments. However, city-level assessments are often incapable of producing data at a community or neighborhood level and thus they may heavily underestimate the emissions from new construction. This paper explores the implications of low-energy residential construction as an instrument of climate change mitigation in the built environment and demonstrates why city-level approaches easily fail to identify the significance of the emissions from construction. We employ a hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) approach to demonstrate that, when the temporal allocation of emissions from the construction and use phases is taken into account, construction phase emissions come to have a central role in finding effective GHG mitigation strategies—even when the emissions from all consumption activities during the use phase are included in the assessment. In fact, their role would seem to be so central that new residential construction cannot be utilized as an instrument of city carbon management, even over a relatively long period. While we analyze a case study from Finland, the analysis intends to highlight the situation throughout the globe.
Polyphenolic Antioxidant (‐)‐Epigallocatechin‐3‐Gallate from Green Tea Reduces UVB‐lnduced Inflammatory Responses and Infiltration of Leukocytes in Human Skin

Abstract— Identification of natural products capable of affording protection against UVB radiation‐induced inflammatory responses and generation of oxidative stress may have important human health implications. The UVB exposure‐induced skin injury and oxidative stress has been associated with a variety of skin disease conditions including photoaging, inflammation and cancer. Tea is a popular beverage consumed worldwide. In several mouse skin models, topical application as well as oral consumption of green tea has been shown to afford protection against chemical and UVB‐induced carcinogenesis and inflammatory responses. In the present study, we investigated in human skin, whether topical application of (‐)epigallocatechin‐3‐gallate (EGCG), the major polyphenolic constituent in green tea, inhibits UVB‐induced infiltration of leukocytes (macrophage/neutrophils), a potential source of generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), and generation of prostaglandin (PG) metabolites. Human subjects were UVB irradiated on sun‐protected skin to four times their minimal erythema dosage (MED) and skin biopsies or keratomes were obtained either 24 h or 48 h later. We found that topical application of EGCG (3 mg/2.5 cm2) before UVB (4 MED) exposure to human skin significantly blocked UVB‐induced infiltration of leukocytes and reduced myeloperoxidase activity. These infiltrating leukocytes are considered to be the major source of generation of ROS. In the same set of experiments we found that topical application of EGCG before UVB exposure decreased UVB‐induced erythema. In additional experiments, we found that microsomes from EGCG pretreated human skin and exposed to UVB, compared to UVB exposure alone, produced significantly reduced PG metabolites, particularly PGE2. The PG metabolites play a critical role in free radical generation and skin tumor promotion in multistage skin carcinogenesis. Careful microscopic examination of skin sections, stained with hematoxylin and eosin, under higher magnification (x400) also revealed that EGCG pretreated and UVB exposed human skin contained fewer dead cells in the epidermis with comparison to nonpretreated UVB‐exposed skin. Taken together, our data demonstrate that EGCG has the potential to block the UVB‐induced infiltration of leukocytes and the subsequent generation of ROS in human skin. This may explain the possible mechanism involved in anti‐inflammatory effects of green tea. We suggest that EGCG may be useful as a topical agent for protection against UVB‐induced ROS‐associated inflammatory dermatoses, photoaging and photocarcinogenesis. Further studies are warranted in this direction.
Special Issue: Trust in an Organizational Context: Trust Transfer on the World Wide Web

The World Wide Web (WWW) has been touted as providing great opportunities for small businesses to compete and thrive. Concerns about trust have been identified as a barrier to such businesses' success. This research explores how consumers' initial trust judgments about organizations they encounter on the Web may be influenced by hypertext links from trusted websites and associations with the more trust-inducing traditional retail channel. This paper develops and tests a cognitive model of the trust transfer process, arguing that trust is transferred across hypertext links based on the perceived interaction and similarity of the linked organizations, and that institution-based trust is transferred from the traditional shopping channel to a Web-based organization based on evidence that the Web-based organization has a physical store. An experimental study shows that a hypertext link from one website to another increased the extent to which the linked organizations were perceived to have a business relationship and be similar, and these perceptions had a positive influence on trusting beliefs regarding the linked site. Associating with the physical shopping channel by showing a picture of a building on a website increased the extent to which subjects reported intention to buy from the site. The study provided empirical evidence that trusting beliefs regarding the website had a significant positive effect on intention to buy from it. This paper discusses further development of the trust transfer model based on the social perception literature and explores implications for future research.
SURE-based optimization for adaptive sampling and reconstruction

We apply Stein's Unbiased Risk Estimator (SURE) to adaptive sampling and reconstruction to reduce noise in Monte Carlo rendering. SURE is a general unbiased estimator for mean squared error (MSE) in statistics. With SURE, we are able to estimate error for an arbitrary reconstruction kernel, enabling us to use more effective kernels rather than being restricted to the symmetric ones used in previous work. It also allows us to allocate more samples to areas with higher estimated MSE. Adaptive sampling and reconstruction can therefore be processed within an optimization framework. We also propose an efficient and memory-friendly approach to reduce the impact of noisy geometry features where there is depth of field or motion blur. Experiments show that our method produces images with less noise and crisper details than previous methods.
A Strengths-Based Approach to Outdoor and Adventure Education: Possibilities for Personal Growth

Outdoor and adventure education has been shown to result in positive psychological outcomes. This paper connects positive psychology—specifically, strengths-based education—to important outcomes in outdoor and adventure education. Strengths-based education encourages participants to intentionally use their talents to achieve success in the environment in which they are placed. In this paper, we explain why, when, and how to use a strengths-based approach in outdoor and adventure education. An illustrative example of a strengths-based approach to an international adventure education course will be discussed. Quantitative and qualitative data demonstrate that this strengths-based educational program was effective in helping students achieve positive outcomes related to personal growth. This paper will conclude by offering directions for practice and future research.
Balancing managerial and professional demands: school principals as evaluation brokers

The evaluation trend in the global education field implies new professional challenges for school principals. The purpose of this article is to describe and analyse Swedish school principals’ experiences of prevailing evaluations and the implications for the profession. Specifically, we examine: a) how principals respond to evaluations and their consequences in their schools; and b) the implications of the evaluations for the profession in light of professional responsibility and accountability. The interviewed principals are ascribed huge evaluation responsibilities and are in this respect key actors but to some extent are also ‘victims’ of external pressures. All schools are embedded in a web of evaluation systems. They share the view that evaluations that are useful for improving teaching, student achievement and everyday school life are those conducted close to practice, and involve teachers. Most of them are also aware of the risks for the reduction of the broad goals of schooling and for work overload. The principals express a desire to protect the fundamental values of professional responsibility but the total demands of the local evaluation web have involved a shift in their professional role towards professional accountability.
Childhood trauma, sexual functions, psychiatric comorbidity and socio- demographic data in obsessive-compulsive disorders with sexual obsessions Cinsel obsesyonlarla seyreden obsesif-kompulsif bozukluklarda çocukluk çaği travmasi, cinsel işlevler, psikiyatrik komorbidite ve sosyodemografik veriler

Objective: We compared the childhood trauma, the severity of sexual functions, comorbidity of axis I psychiatric disorder, the types and severity of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and sociodemographic data of patients with or without sexual obsession in OCD. Methods: Eighty patients of OCD were recruited from including consecutive admissions to an outpatient clinic. Primary OCD patients assessed each subject using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders (SCID-I). OCD symptoms and symptoms severity was assessed by the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (YBOCS). Traumas were assessed by the Childhood Trauma Experiences Questionnaire. Sexual functions severity was assessed by the Arizona Sexual Experience Scale (ASEX). Current depressive and anxiety symptoms score were assessed using the 17-item Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAM-D) and the Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAM-A). Results: The frequency of sexual obsession was 15% in our clinical populations diagnosed with OCD. History of emotional abuse and incest were associated with a significantly higher rate of OCD with sexual obsessions. Religious, aggressive, hoarding obsessions and hoarding compulsions were associated with a significantly higher rate of OCD with sexual obsessions. Comorbidity of Somatoform disorder was associated with a significantly higher rate of OCD with sexual obsessions. Subjects who have OCD with sexual obsessions did not significantly dif fer from those without sexual obsessions on any ASEX
The Solar Tachocline: Magnetic confinement and the sharp tachopause

The discovery by Spruit of a new small-scale turbulent dynamo has significantly changed the tachocline model proposed by Gough and McIntyre (GM98). The small-scale dynamo is shear driven, is characteristic of stably stratified flows, and is mediated by the kink or ‘tipping’ instability elucidated for such flows by R. J. Tayler. The dynamo works best in high latitudes and supports turbulent Maxwell stresses large enough to dominate the angular momentum transport, taking over from the pure mean meridional circulation (MMC) proposed in GM98. What survives from the GM98 tachocline scenario is the laminar thermomagnetic boundary layer at the tachopause, essential for the confinement of the interior field Bi by highlatitude downwelling. That downwelling is, however, itself confined within a double boundary layer at the tachopause. The thermomagnetic boundary layer sits just underneath a modified Ekman layer, in which the turbulent Maxwell stress of the small-scale dynamo diverges. The effects of compositional stratification in the helium settling layer under the tachopause are considered. It is concluded that GM98’s “polar pits” to burn lithium are dynamically impossible and that the tachopause is not only sharp but globally horizontal. That is, the tachopause, as marked by the top of the helium settling layer, follows a single heliopotential to within a very tiny fraction of a megametre from equator to pole. Therefore the stably-stratified tachocline, defined in high latitudes as the layer of dynamically significant shear beneath the convection zone, must be thick enough to burn lithium. This is consistent with the helioseismic evidence because the high-latitude shear, even though crucial to the maintenance of the dynamo action, is held down in magnitude, by the dynamo’s turbulent Maxwell stresses, to values too small to be visible.
Social Dominance in Context and in Individuals

We tested the internal reliability and predictive validity of a new 4-item Short Social Dominance Orientation (SSDO) scale among adults in 20 countries, using 15 languages (N = 2,130). Low scores indicate preferring group inclusion and equality to dominance. As expected, cross-nationally, the lower people were on SSDO, the more they endorsed more women in leadership positions, protecting minorities, and aid to the poor. Multilevel moderation models showed that each effect was stronger in nations where a relevant kind of group power differentiation was more salient. Distributions of SSDO were positively skewed, despite use of an extended response scale; results show rejecting group hierarchy is normative. The short scale is effective. Challenges regarding translations, use of short scales, and intersections between individual and collective levels in social dominance theory are discussed.
Trust and reciprocity: A theoretical distinction of the sources of social capital

The social capital literature has focused on the functional and structural properties of social relations, partially neglecting the way in which they are experienced by individuals. Drawing on anthropological and social theory, this article distinguishes two ideal-typical forms of social capital — reciprocity and trust — based on the meaning of the social relations that embed them. Reciprocity is the type of social capital embedded within personal relations, triply defined in the factual, social and temporal dimensions by co-presence, reciprocity and memory, respectively. Trust is the type of social capital embedded within relations with strangers, defined by the condition of impersonality or anonymity. These two types of social capital cannot be reduced to extremes in a continuum, nor are they fungible, and while reciprocity is by definition particularistic (this is the source of its strength as a linking mechanism), trust has a universalistic potential. Analytical and empirical implications of this distinction are outlined.
Endocytosis of chimeric influenza virus hemagglutinin proteins that lack a cytoplasmic recognition feature for coated pits

The influenza virus A/Japan/305/57 hemagglutinin (HA) can be converted from a protein that is essentially excluded from coated pits into one that is internalized at approximately the rate of uptake of bulk membrane by replacing the HA transmembrane and cytoplasmic sequences with those of either of two other glycoproteins (Roth et al., 1986. J. Cell Biol. 102:1271-1283). To identify more precisely the foreign amino acid sequences responsible for this change in HA traffic, DNA sequences encoding the transmembrane (TM) or cytoplasmic (CD) domains of either the G glycoprotein of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) or the gC glycoprotein of herpes simplex virus were exchanged for those encoding the analogous regions of wild type HA (HA wt). HA-HA-G and HA-HA-gC, chimeras that contain only a foreign CD, resembled HA wt in having a long residence on the cell surface and were internalized very slowly. HA-HA-gC was indistinguishable from HA in our assays, whereas twice as much HA-HA-G was internalized as was HA wt. However, HA-G-HA, containing only a foreign TM, was internalized as efficiently as was HA- G-G, a chimeric protein with transmembrane and cytoplasmic sequences of VSV G protein. Conditions that blocked internalization through coated pits also inhibited endocytosis of the chimeric proteins. Although the external domains of the chimeras were less well folded than that of the wild type HA, denaturation of the wild type HA external domain by treatment with low pH did not increase the interaction of HA with coated pits. However, mutation of four amino acids in the TM of HA allowed the protein to be internalized, indicating that the property that allows HA to escape endocytosis resides in its TM. These results indicate that possession of a cytoplasmic recognition feature is not required for the internalization of all cell surface proteins and suggest that multiple mechanisms for internalization exist that operate at distinctly different rates.
CPN-CORE: A Text Semantic Similarity System Infused with Opinion Knowledge

This article provides a detailed overview of the CPN text-to-text similarity system that we participated with in the Semantic Textual Similarity task evaluations hosted at *SEM 2013. In addition to more traditional components, such as knowledge-based and corpus-based metrics leveraged in a machine learning framework, we also use opinion analysis features to achieve a stronger semantic representation of textual units. While the evaluation datasets are not designed to test the similarity of opinions, as a component of textual similarity, nonetheless, our system variations ranked number 38, 39 and 45 among the 88 participating systems.
A review of KDD99 dataset usage in intrusion detection and machine learning between 2010 and 2015

Although KDD99 dataset is more than 15 years old, it is still widely used in academic research. To investigate wide usage of this dataset in Machine Learning Research (MLR) and Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS); this study reviews 149 research articles from 65 journals indexed in Science Citation In- dex Expanded and Emerging Sources Citation Index during the last six years (2010–2015). If we include papers presented in other indexes and conferences, number of studies would be tripled. The number of published studies shows that KDD99 is the most used dataset in IDS and machine learning areas, and it is the de facto dataset for these research areas. To show recent usage of KDD99 and the related sub-dataset (NSL-KDD) in IDS and MLR, the following de- scriptive statistics about the reviewed studies are given: main contribution of articles, the applied algorithms,
Cloud-Based Velocity Profile Optimization for Everyday Driving: A Dynamic-Programming-Based Solution

Driving style, road geometry, and traffic conditions have a significant impact on vehicles' fuel economy. In general, drivers are not aware of the optimal velocity profile for a given route. Indeed, the global optimal velocity trajectory depends on many factors, and its calculation requires intensive computations. In this paper, we discuss the optimization of the speed trajectory to minimize fuel consumption and communicate it to the driver. With this information the driver can adjust his/her speed profile to reduce the overall fuel consumption. We propose to perform the computation-intensive calculations on a distinct computing platform called the “cloud. ” In our approach, the driver sends the information of the intended travel destination to the cloud. In the cloud, the server generates a route, collects the associated traffic and geographical information, and solves the optimization problem by a spatial domain dynamic programming (DP) algorithm that utilizes accurate vehicle and fuel consumption models to determine the optimal speed trajectory along the route. Then, the server sends the speed trajectory to the vehicle where it is communicated to the driver. We tested the approach on a prototype vehicle equipped with a visual interface mounted on the dash of a test vehicle. The test results show 5%-15% improvement in fuel economy depending on the driver and route without a significant effect on the travel time. Although this paper implements the speed advisory system in a conventional vehicle, the solution is generic, and it is applicable to any kind of powertrain structure.
Integrating Reading and Writing through Extensive Reading.

This study explores whether an extensive reading (ER) approach can enhance L2 learners’ writing performance in an English for Academic Purposes context. Two classes were compared in terms of writing improvement after one semester: a ‘traditional’ writing class primarily focused on writing practice and grammar instruction, and an ER class in which students engaged in ER in and out of class, along with completing reading-related writing activities. Essay tests were administered at the beginning and the end of the semester to measure students’ writing improvement. The study found that although both classes demonstrated writing improvement after one semester, students who were exposed to more input through ER gained significantly higher holistic scores in their post-essay test. In addition, analytic evaluation found that the ER class improved more than the traditional class in the specific areas of content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics.