Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Vector control and foliar nutrition to maintain economic sustainability of bearing citrus in Florida groves affected by huanglongbing.

BACKGROUND Huanglongbing (HLB) or citrus greening is a bacterial disease vectored by the Asian citrus psyllid (ACP) causing tree decline, and yield loss. Vector control and foliar nutrition are used in Florida to slow the spread of HLB and mitigate debilitating effects of the disease. A four year replicated field study was initiated February 2008 in a 5.2-ha commercial block of young 'Valencia' orange trees employing a factorial design to evaluate individual and compound effects of vector management and foliar nutrition. Insecticides were sprayed during tree dormancy and when psyllid populations exceeded a nominal threshold. A mixture consisting primarily of micro- and macro-nutrients was applied three times a year corresponding to the principal foliar flushes. RESULTS Differences in ACP numbers from five- to 13-fold were maintained in insecticide treated and untreated plots. Incidence of HLB estimated by polymerase chain reaction (PCR), rose from 30% at the beginning of the study to 95% in only 18 months. Highest yields all four years were seen from trees receiving both foliar nutrition and vector control. Production for these trees in the fourth year was close to the pre-HLB regional average for 10 year old 'Valencia' on 'Swingle'. Nevertheless, at current juice prices, the extra revenue generated from the combined insecticide and nutritional treatment did not cover the added treatment costs. CONCLUSIONS This experiment demonstrated that vector control, especially when combined with enhanced foliar nutrition, could significantly increase yields in a citrus orchard with high incidence of HLB. Economic thresholds for both insecticide and nutrient applications are needed under different market and environmental conditions.
Access control to people location information

Ubiquitous computing uses a variety of information for which access needs to be controlled. For instance, a person's current location is a sensitive piece of information that only authorized entities should be able to learn. Several challenges arise in the specification and implementation of policies controlling access to location information. For example, there can be multiple sources of location information. The sources can be within different administrative domains, which might allow different entities to specify policies, and policies need to be flexible. We address these issues in our design of a distributed access control mechanism for a people location system. Our design encodes policies as digital certificates, which enables decentralized storage of policies. We also present an algorithm for the discovery of distributed certificates. Furthermore, we discuss several privacy issues and show how our design addresses them. To show feasibility of our design, we built an example implementation based on SPKI/SDSI certificates. Using measurements, we quantify the influence of access control on query processing time. We also discuss trade-offs between RSA-based and DSA-based signature schemes for digital certificates.
Development and evaluation of a gravity compensated training environment for robotic rehabilitation of post-stroke reaching

External support of the arm against gravity has a beneficial impact on reaching movements performed by moderately and severely impaired stroke survivors. Provision of scalable gravity compensation may therefore be an important component of robot-based upper limb rehabilitation. This study reports the development and initial evaluation of a scalable gravity-compensated training environment based on the haptic capabilities of the MACARM cable robot. The feasibility of end-point force compensation for gravity torques at the shoulder and elbow is evaluated for movements performed in a vertical plane. Our Progressive Support Training approach is described in detail and the initial results of testing with human subjects are reported.
Investigating multiple approaches for SLU portability to a new language

The challenge with language portability of a spoken language understanding module is to be able to reuse the knowledge and the data available in a source language to produce knowledge in the target language. In this paper several approaches are proposed, motivated by the availability of the MEDIA French dialogue corpus and its manual translation into Italian. The three portability methods investigated are based on statistical machine translation or automatic word alignment techniques and differ in the level of the system development at which the translation is performed. The first experimental results show the efficiency of the proposed portability methods in general for a fast and low-cost SLU porting from French to Italian and the best performance are obtained by using translation only at the test level.
A review of the characteristics of intermediate assessment and their relationship with student grades

Abstract In-course assessment, such as midterms, quizzes or presentations, is often an integral part of higher education courses. These so-called intermediate assessments influence students’ final grades. The current review investigates which characteristics of intermediate assessment relate to these grades. In total, 88 articles were reviewed that examined the relationship between intermediate assessment and student grades. Four main characteristics were identified: the use of feedback, whether the assessment is mandatory, who is the assessor, and the reward students get for participating. Results indicate that corrective feedback leads to the most positive results, but elaborate feedback may benefit lower achieving groups. No difference in results was found for mandatory versus voluntary intermediate assessments. Peer assessment seemed to be beneficial, and rewarding students with course credit improves grades more than other rewards. Three scenarios are presented on how teachers can combine the different characteristics to optimise their intermediate assessment.
A QEEG Activation Methodology That Obtained 100% Accuracy in the Discrimination of Traumatic Brain Injured from Normal and Does the Learning Disabled Show the Brain Injury Pattern?

Previous research has focused on determining whether the quantitative EEG (QEEG) can discriminate a traumatic brain injury (TBI) participant from a normal individual. The research has differed with respect to the critical variables involved in the discrimination task. All the research has limited its approach to the collection of eyes-closed data and most confine themselves to less than 32 Hz. The present research employs four cognitive activation tasks, an eyes-closed task, 19 locations, Spectral Correlation Coefficient (SCC) and phase algorithms in the beta2 frequency range (32–64 Hz), and the relative power of beta2 in six frontal locations to obtain 100% correct identification in original discriminant analysis. In addition, 50 random misclassifications—involving different participants—across the five tasks in a group of 196 subjects were correctly identified as misclassifications. To determine if a learning disability would show a similar pattern to a TBI pattern, a preliminary analysis of a group of 94 normal and learning disability (LD) participants were examined for their QEEG differences. The pattern evident in the analysis for the LD group (decreased coherence and phase alpha) was not the pattern evident in the TBI group, while the TBI pattern of decreased coherence and phase beta2 was not dominant in the LD group.
The groupy shift: conformity to liberal in-group norms as a group-based response to threatened personal control

Testing a model of group-based control, we hypothesized that, as a response to threatened control, people strive for collective agency, leading to increased in-group norm conformity. To distinguish this mechanism from possible conservative shift we investigated liberal norms (i.e., change and anti–right-wing norms). In a field experiment (N = 82), salient personal control increased managers’ commitment to organizational change under conditions of a pro-change in-group norm. Two laboratory experiments showed control threat to heighten students’ support for educational innovations when salient in-group norms were supportive but not when they were ambivalent (N = 152), or when only out-group norms were supportive (N = 170). Applying this logic, perceived terrorist threat after a major attack predicted German students’ intention to support anti–right-wing protests for those who perceived a strong anti–right-wing norm among students (N = 74). We discuss implications for both theory and societal polarization (i.
Elementary students' meaning-making of graphic novels

ABSTRACT During a study conducted in two Grade 4 classrooms, the students were provided with numerous opportunities to engage with multimodal print and digital texts, and various compositional tools and devices. The eight- and nine-year-old students’ participation in the research included the reading and discussing of, and writing about graphic novels. Instruction during the study included a variety of activities that focused on a selection of elements of visual art and design, and conventions of the medium of comics. The content analysis of students’ responses to a selection of graphic novels revealed how their aesthetic understanding of and critical thinking about the graphic novels was influenced by learning about the what, why and how of the mode of image and the medium of comics.
Vector multiprocessors with arbitrated memory access

The high latency of memory accesses is one of the factors that contributes to reduce the performance of current vector supercomputers. The conflicts that can occur in the memory modules plus the collisions in the interconnection network in case of multiprocessors make the execution time of applications increase significantly. In this work we propose a memory access method for vector uniprocessors and multiprocessors that allows to perform stream accesses with the smallest possible latency in the majority of the cases. The basic idea is to arbitrate the memory access by defining the order in which the memory modules are visited. The stream elements are requested out of order. In addition, the access method also reduces the cost of the interconnection network.
Recognizing unseen actions in a domain-adapted embedding space

With the sustaining bloom of multimedia data, Zero-shot Learning (ZSL) techniques have attracted much attention in recent years for its ability to train learning models that can handle “unseen” categories. Existing ZSL algorithms mainly take advantages of attribute-based semantic space and only focus on static image data. Besides, most ZSL studies merely consider the semantic embedded labels and fail to address domain shift problem. In this paper, we purpose a deep two-output model for video ZSL and action recognition tasks by computing both spatial and temporal features from video contents through distinct Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and training a Multi-layer Perceptron (MLP) upon extracted features to map videos to semantic embedding word vectors. Moreover, we introduce a domain adaptation strategy named “ConSSEV” - by combining outputs from two distinct output layers of our MLP to improve the results of zero-shot learning. Our experiments on UCF101 dataset demonstrate the purposed model has more advantages associated with more complex video embedding schemes, and outperforms the state-of-the-art zero-shot learning techniques.
Rehabilitation of grasping and forearm pronation/supination with the Haptic Knob

This paper investigates robot-assisted rehabilitation after stroke using the Haptic Knob, a 2 degree-of-freedom end-effector based robotic device to train grasping and wrist pronation/supination. Nine chronic stroke subjects trained over a period of 6 weeks, with 3 one-hour sessions of robot-assisted therapy per week, consisting of two exercises requiring active participation promoted by therapeutic games. Results of standard clinical assessments demonstrate the positive effects of robot-assisted therapy with the Haptic Knob. Subjects improved by a mean of 4.3 points in the Fugl-Meyer assessment scale, together with a decrease in hand impairments such as abnormal muscle tone frequently observed in stroke subjects. Significant improvements were also observed in motor function of the upper arm as a result of the robot-assisted therapy, suggesting homogeneous improvement of upper limb function as a result of distal training.
The Role of CNS Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 (7-36) Amide Receptors in Mediating the Visceral Illness Effects of Lithium Chloride

Peripheral administration of large doses of lithium chloride (LiCl) to rats causes a spectrum of effects that are consistent with visceral illness. LiCl reduces food intake, decreases salt ingestion after sodium depletion, induces pica, and produces robust conditioned taste aversions. Because some of the effects of peripheral LiCl are mimicked by centrally administered glucagon-like peptide-1 (7-36) amide (GLP-1), we hypothesized that this peptide is involved in the neural pathways by which LiCl causes visceral illness. To test this hypothesis, we pretreated rats with a selective and potent GLP-1 receptor antagonist given directly into the third ventricle via an indwelling cannula before administration of peripheral LiCl. The GLP-1 receptor antagonist completely blocked the effect of LiCl to reduce food intake, induce pica, and produce a conditioned taste aversion. The same dose of GLP-1 receptor antagonist did not reverse the LiCl-induced reduction in NaCl intake. The data indicate a role for GLP-1 receptors in the CNS pathway that mediates some of the effects of visceral illness.
Relationships between environmental governance and water quality in a growing metropolitan area of the Pacific Northwest, USA

We investigate relationships between environmental governance and water quality in two adjacent growing metropolitan areas in the western US. While the Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington metro areas share many common biophysical characteristics, they have different land development histories and water governance structures, providing a unique opportunity for examining how differences in governance might affect environmental quality. We conceptualize possible linkages in which water quality influences governance directly, using monitoring efforts as a metric, and indirectly by using the change in the sale price of single-family residential properties. Governance may then influence water quality directly through riparian restoration resulting from monitoring results and indirectly through land use policy. We investigate evidence to substantiate these linkages. Our results showed that changes in monitoring regimes and land development patterns differed in response to differences in growth management policy and environmental governance systems. Our results also showed similarities in environmental quality responses to varying governance systems. For example, we found that sales prices responded positively to improved water quality (e.g., increases in DO and reductions in bacteria counts) in both cities. Furthermore, riparian restoration efforts improved over time for both cities, indicating the positive effect of governance on this land-based resource that may result in improved water quality. However, as of yet, there were no substantial differences across study areas in water temperature over time, despite an expansion of these urban areas of more than 20 % over 24 years. The mechanisms by which water quality was maintained was similar in the sense that both cities benefited from riparian restoration, but different in the sense that Portland benefited indirectly from land use policy. A combination of long-term legacy effects of land development, and a relatively short history of riparian restoration in both the Portland and Vancouver regions, may have masked any subtle differences between study areas. An alternative explanation is that both cities exhibited combinations of positive indirect and direct water quality governance that resulted in maintenance of water quality in the face of increased urban growth. These findings suggest that a much longer-term water quality monitoring effort is needed to identify the effectiveness of alternative land development and water governance policies.
Estimation of Voicing-Character of Speech Spectra Based on Spectral Shape

This letter presents a method for estimation of the voicing-character of speech spectra. It is based on a calculation of a similarity between the shape of the signal short-term magnitude spectra and spectra of the frame-analysis window, which is weighted by the signal magnitude spectra. It is demonstrated that the proposed voicing measure is related to the local SNR of noise-corrupted voiced speech. The performance is evaluated for detection of voiced regions in the spectra of speech corrupted by various types of noise. The experimental results in terms of false-acceptance and false-rejection show errors of less than 5% for speech corrupted by white noise at the local SNR of 10 dB and in terms of recognition accuracy obtained by an ASR system using the voicing information estimated by the proposed method and by the full a priori knowledge about the noise show similar recognition performance
Variations in the Wage Returns to a First Degree: Evidence from the British Cohort Study 1970

As in many other countries, government policy in the UK has the objective of raising the participation rate of young people in higher education, while increasing the share of the costs of higher education paid by students themselves. A rationale for the latter element comes from evidence of a high private return to university undergraduate degrees. However, much of this evidence pre-dates the rapid expansion in the graduate population. In the current paper, we use evidence from a cohort of young people born in Britain in 1970 to update influential evidence on returns to a first degree based on a previous 1958 birth cohort. We also analyse variations in returns by degree subject and by class of degree. Our analysis incorporates proxying and matching, control function and propensity score matching methods. Among other results, we find (i) that the returns to a first degree for men changed very little across the two cohorts while the return for women declined substantially and (ii) evidence of differences in returns to a first degree according to subject area of study and class of degree awarded.
Tilburg University Empirical Evidence on the Role of Trading Suspensions in Disseminating New Information to the Capital Market

This paper examines the effect of temporarily suspending the trading of exchange-listed individual stocks. We evaluate whether the regulatory authorities can successfully use the mechanism of trading halts in forcing companies to disclose new and material information to the capital market. In contrast to previous studies which mainly concentrate on NorthAmerican stock markets, this study utilises a new data set comprising of firms listed on the Brussels Stock Exchange. Our results show that suspension is indeed an effective means of disseminating new information. Stock prices adjust completely and instantaneously to the new information released during trading suspensions. We also observe a significant increase in trading volume after the reinstatement of trading. On the other hand, we do not find any increase in stock return volatility around trading suspensions. Overall, our results confirm the efficacy of trading suspensions in disseminating new information.
A longitudinal study to identify the influence of quality of chronic care delivery on productive interactions between patients and (teams of) healthcare professionals within disease management programmes

Objective The chronic care model is an increasingly used approach to improve the quality of care through system changes in care delivery. While theoretically these system changes are expected to increase productive patient–professional interaction empirical evidence is lacking. This study aims to identify the influence of quality of care on productive patient–professional interaction. Setting Longitudinal study in 18 Dutch regions. Participants Questionnaires were sent to all 5076 patients participating in 18 Disease Management Programmes (DMPs) in 2010 (2676 (53%) respondents). One year later (T1), 4693 patients still participating in the DMPs received a questionnaire (2191 (47%) respondents) and 2 years later (in 2012; T2) 1722 patients responded (out of 4350; 40% response). Interventions DMPs Primary outcome measure Patients’ perceptions of the productivity of interactions (measured as relational coordination/coproduction of care) with professionals. Patients were asked about communication dimensions (frequent, accurate, and problem-solving communication) and relationship dimensions (shared goals and mutual respect). Findings After controlling for background characteristics these results clearly show that quality of chronic care (T0), first-year changes in quality of chronic care (T1—T0) and second-year changes in quality of chronic care (T2—T1) predicted productive interactions between patients and professionals at T2 (all at p≤0.001). Furthermore, we found a negative relationship between lower educational level and productive interactions between patients and professionals 2 years later. Conclusions We can conclude that successfully dealing with the consequences of chronic illnesses requires proactive patients who are able to make productive decisions together with their healthcare providers. Since patients and professionals share responsibility for management of the chronic illness, they must also share control of interactions and decisions. The importance of patient-centeredness is growing and this study reports a first example of how quality of chronic care stimulates productive interactions between patients and professionals.
RFID in the supply chain : lessons from European early adopters

Purpose – Radio frequency identification (RFID) is increasingly being presented as a technology with the potential to improve supply chain performance, but empirical evidence from early adopters is sparse. This paper aims to rectify this scarcity and contribute to a more informed discussion in and between academic and practitioner communities.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on a conceptual model of factors influencing the success of adoption efforts. It then reports the results of a survey of 612 European supply chain managers, focusing on the 128 respondents who have begun RFID trials.Findings – A significant influence on operational deployment is the presence of mandates from key customers requiring the technology's use. Customer mandates also impact the anticipated benefits of a faster sales cycle and of enhanced systems integration, though the relationships are complex. By contrast, greater cost reduction benefits are anticipated in two industries where mandates are less common – indu.