Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A novel framework for envisaging a learner's performance using decision trees and genetic algorithm

In order to improve the overall performance of an institution, individual performances must be looked into. Hence it is useful for educational institutions to analyze learners' performances to identify the areas of weakness to guide their students to a better future. In this paper, an algorithm is proposed for predicting a learner's performance using decision trees and genetic algorithm. Id3 algorithm is used to create multiple decision trees, each of which predicts the performance of a student based on a different feature set. Since each decision tree provides us with an insight to the probable performance of each student; and different trees give different results, we are not only able to predict the performance but also identify areas or features that are responsible for the predicted result. For higher accuracy of the obtained results, genetic algorithm is also incorporated. The genetic algorithm is implemented on the n-ary trees, by calculating the fitness of each tree and applying crossover operations to obtain multiple generations, each contributing to creating trees with a better fitness as the generations increase, and finally resulting in the decision tree with the best accuracy. The results so obtained are quite encouraging.
A Delay-Locked Loop for Multiple Clock Phases/Delays Generation

iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to everyone who has helped to make this thesis possible. I would like to deliver my special thanks to my wife and my parents for their love, support, and patience. My deep appreciation also goes to Alfred Andrew for their time and valuable suggestions. Finally, I owe gratitude to all of my friends and colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The friendship will stay forever in my heart.
An analysis of ABCR mutations in British patients with recessive retinal dystrophies.

PURPOSE Several reports have shown that mutations in the ABCR gene can lead to Stargardt disease (STGD)/fundus flavimaculatus (FFM), autosomal recessive retinitis pigmentosa (arRP), and autosomal recessive cone-rod dystrophy (arCRD). To assess the involvement of ABCR in these retinal dystrophies, the gene was screened in a panel of 70 patients of British origin. METHODS Fifty-six patients exhibiting the STGD/FFM phenotype, 6 with arRP, and 8 with arCRD, were screened for mutations in the 50 exons of the ABCR gene by heteroduplex analysis and direct sequencing. Microsatellite marker haplotyping was used to determine ancestry. RESULTS In the 70 patients analyzed, 31 sequence changes were identified, of which 20 were considered to be novel mutations, in a variety of phenotypes. An identical haplotype was associated with the same pair of in-cis alterations in 5 seemingly unrelated patients and their affected siblings with STGD/FFM. Four of the aforementioned patients were found to carry three alterations in the coding sequence of the ABCR gene, with two of them being in-cis. CONCLUSIONS These results suggest that ABCR is a relatively polymorphic gene. Because putative mutations have been identified thus far only in 25 of 70 patients, of whom only 8 are compound heterozygotes, a large number of mutations have yet to be ascertained. The disease haplotype seen in the 5 patients carrying the same "complex" allele is consistent with the presence of a common ancestor.
Detecting development of speaking proficiency with a group oral test: A quantitative analysis

This paper is an investigation into the use of the group oral discussion test (GOT) to detect changes in speaking proficiency over a two-year period. In this test, three or four test-takers discuss a topic for up to 10 minutes without outside intervention. The performance of 53 Japanese university English major students on this test was videoed before their classes started and at the end of their first and second years of study. Indices of complexity, accuracy, and fluency were calculated and interactive function was analysed to create indices that tracked initiating, responding, developing, and collaborating functions. Improvements were detected in most of the indices over the three administrations, with varying patterns of development. However, the test-takers’ scores in five rated scales only improved significantly in the second administration. Possible reasons for this discrepancy are discussed, as are the implications this study has for the GOT format and its administration.
An Investigation of Two-Dimensional Ultrasound Carotid Plaque Presence and Intima Media Thickness in Middle-Aged South Asian and European Men Living in the United Kingdom

Objectives Ultrasound studies of carotid intima media thickness (cIMT) and plaques are limited in South Asians, a group at elevated cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. We determined whether South Asians have a difference in these ultrasound markers compared to Europeans living in the United Kingdom and whether measured risk factor(s) could account for any such differences. Methods One hundred South Asian men, aged 40 to 70 years and 100 European men of similar age and BMI, without diagnosed CVD or diabetes, underwent carotid ultrasound for measurement of cIMT and carotid plaque presence. Physical activity, cardiorespiratory fitness, anthropometry and blood pressure were assessed, fasted blood taken for measurement of cardiometabolic risk factors and demographic and lifestyle factors recorded. Results Age-adjusted mean (SD) cIMT was similar in South Asians and Europeans (0.64 (0.16) mm v 0.65 (0.12) mm, p = 0.64). Plaque was present in 48 South Asians and 37 Europeans and overall, there was no age-adjusted difference between South Asian and Europeans for plaque score(odds ratio 1.49, 95% CI, 0.86-2.80, p = 0.16), however, South Asians appeared to have more plaques at a younger age than Europeans; at age 40-50 years the odds of South Asians having plaques was 2.63 (95% CI, 1.16-5.93) times that for Europeans. Conclusions cIMT is similar between healthy South Asian and European men. Whilst there was no overall difference in plaque presence in South Asians, there is an indication of greater plaque prevalence at younger ages - an observation requiring further investigation. Prospective studies linking plaques to CVD outcomes in South Asians are needed to investigate whether these measures help improve CVD risk prediction.
Transcriptome sequencing and microarray development for the woodrat (Neotoma spp.): custom genetic tools for exploring herbivore ecology

Massively parallel sequencing has enabled the creation of novel, in‐depth genetic tools for nonmodel, ecologically important organisms. We present the de novo transcriptome sequencing, analysis and microarray development for a vertebrate herbivore, the woodrat (Neotoma spp.). This genus is of ecological and evolutionary interest, especially with respect to ingestion and hepatic metabolism of potentially toxic plant secondary compounds. We generated a liver transcriptome of the desert woodrat (Neotoma lepida) using the Roche 454 platform. The assembled contigs were well annotated using rodent references (99.7% annotation), and biotransformation function was reflected in the gene ontology. The transcriptome was used to develop a custom microarray (eArray, Agilent). We tested the microarray with three experiments: one across species with similar habitat (thus, dietary) niches, one across species with different habitat niches and one across populations within a species. The resulting one‐colour arrays had high technical and biological quality. Probes designed from the woodrat transcriptome performed significantly better than functionally similar probes from the Norway rat (Rattus norvegicus). There were a multitude of expression differences across the woodrat treatments, many of which related to biotransformation processes and activities. The pattern and function of the differences indicate shared ecological pressures, and not merely phylogenetic distance, play an important role in shaping gene expression profiles of woodrat species and populations. The quality and functionality of the woodrat transcriptome and custom microarray suggest these tools will be valuable for expanding the scope of herbivore biology, as well as the exploration of conceptual topics in ecology.
The supermembrane revisited

The M2-brane is studied from the perspective of superembeddings. We review the derivation of the M2-brane dynamics and the supergravity constraints from the standard superembedding constraint and we discuss explicitly the induced d = 3, N = 8 superconformal geometry on the worldvolume. We show that the gauged supermembrane, for a target space with a U(1) isometry, is the standard D2-brane in a type IIA supergravity background. In particular, the D2-brane action, complete with the Dirac–Born–Infeld term, arises from the gauged Wess–Zumino worldvolume 4-form via the brane action principle. The discussion is extended to the massive D2-brane considered as a gauged supermembrane in a massive D = 11 superspace background. Type IIA supergeometry is derived using Kaluza–Klein techniques in superspace.
Chemical composition and variability among some Ocimum gratissinum accessions.

Leaves of seven accessions of Ocimum gratissinumcollected from Nigeria was analyzed for proximate, mi n- erals and phytochemical constituents with a view of ascertaining if there are variations in these access ions and if there are to determine the heritable and non -heritable components and estimate the heritability and genetic a dvance expected. All the determinants were carried out in triplicates. Analysis of variance showed that all the pro ximate, mineral, Vitamin C and Phytochemical were highly significant (P<0.01) except magnesium that was not significant. The result showed that Ocimum gratissinum is a good source of essential nutrients, minerals and Vitamin C. Considerable variability exists among the accessions as shown by PCA and genetic component analysis and there exists room for improvement of the nutritional and phytochemical traits in this all important herb and spice and increase its availability to the vast majority of the people that rely on its as a source of food and medicine.
Adaptive random testing: an illusion of effectiveness?

Adaptive Random Testing (ART) has been proposed as an enhancement to random testing, based on assumptions on how failing test cases are distributed in the input domain. The main assumption is that failing test cases are usually grouped into contiguous regions. Many papers have been published in which ART has been described as an effective alternative to random testing when using the average number of test case executions needed to find a failure (F-measure). But all the work in the literature is based either on simulations or case studies with unreasonably high failure rates. In this paper, we report on the largest empirical analysis of ART in the literature, in which 3727 mutated programs and nearly ten trillion test cases were used. Results show that ART is highly inefficient even on trivial problems when accounting for distance calculations among test cases, to an extent that probably prevents its practical use in most situations. For example, on the infamous Triangle Classification program, random testing finds failures in few milliseconds whereas ART execution time is prohibitive. Even when assuming a small, fixed size test set and looking at the probability of failure (P-measure), ART only fares slightly better than random testing, which is not sufficient to make it applicable in realistic conditions. We provide precise explanations of this phenomenon based on rigorous empirical analyses. For the simpler case of single-dimension input domains, we also perform formal analyses to support our claim that ART is of little use in most situations, unless drastic enhancements are developed. Such analyses help us explain some of the empirical results and identify the components of ART that need to be improved to make it a viable option in practice.
Protective Effect on Leishmania major Infection of Migration Inhibitory Factor, TNF-α, and IFN-γ Administered Orally via Attenuated Salmonella typhimurium

The genes encoding murine macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF), IL-2, IFN-γ or TNF-α were cloned individually into an expression plasmid under the control of the inducible promoter nirB and transfected into the aroA−aroD− deletion mutant strain of Salmonella typhimurium (BRD509). These S. typhimurium derivatives (henceforward called constructs and termed GIDMIF, GIDIL2, GIDIFN and GIDTNF) expressed their respective cytokines in vitro under anaerobic conditions and stably colonized BALB/c mice up to 14 days after oral administration. The highly susceptible BALB/c mice that had received the constructs orally and that had been subsequently infected via the footpad with Leishmania major, developed significantly reduced disease compared with control mice administered the untransfected Salmonella strain (BRD509). Importantly, a combination of GIDMIF, GIDIFN, and GIDTNF administered orally after L. major infection was able to significantly limit lesion development and reduced parasite loads by up to three orders of magnitude. Spleen and lymph node cells of mice administered this combination expressed markedly higher levels of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) compared with those from mice receiving an equivalent dose of the control strain of Salmonella (BRD509). These data therefore demonstrate the feasibility of therapeutic treatment in an infectious disease model using cytokines delivered by attenuated Salmonella. The protective effect observed correlates with the induction of inducible nitric oxide synthase in vivo.
Low symbiont diversity in southern Great Barrier Reef corals, relative to those of the Caribbean

The specific identity of endosymbiotic dinoflagellates (Symbiodinium spp.) from most zooxanthellate corals is unknown. In a survey of symbiotic cnidarians from the southern Great Barrier Reef (GBR), 23 symbiont types were identified from 86 host species representing 40 genera. A majority (>85%) of these symbionts belong to a single phylogenetic clade or subgenus ("C") composed of closely related (as assessed by sequence data from the internal transcribed spacer region and the ribosomal large subunit gene), yet ecologically and physiologically distinct, types. A few prevalent symbiont types, or generalists, dominate the coral community of the southern GBR, whereas many rare and/or specific symbionts, or specialists, are found uniquely within certain host taxa. The comparison of symbiont diversity between southern GBR and Caribbean reefs shows an inverse relationship between coral diversity and symbiont diversity, perhaps as a consequence of more‐rapid diversification of Caribbean symbionts. Among clade C types, generalists C1 and C3 are common to both Caribbean and southern GBR symbiont assemblages, whereas the rest are regionally endemic. Possibly because of environmental changes in the Caribbean after geographic isolation through the Quaternary period, a high proportion of Caribbean fauna associate with symbiont taxa from two other distantly related Symbiodinium clades (A and B) that rarely occur in Pacific hosts. The resilience of Porites spp. and the resistance of Montipora digitata to thermal stress and bleaching are partially explained by their association with a thermally tolerant symbiont type, whereas the indiscriminant widespread bleaching and death among certain Pacific corals, during El Niño Southern Oscillation events, are influenced by associations with symbionts possessing higher sensitivity to thermal stress.
Price fluctuations, market activity and trading volume

We investigate the relation between trading activity - measured by the number of trades [iopmath latex="$N_{Delta t}$"] N t [/iopmath] - and the price change [iopmath latex="$G_{Delta t}$"] G t [/iopmath] for a given stock over a time interval [iopmath latex="$[t,~t+Delta t]$"] [t, t + t] [/iopmath]. We relate the time-dependent standard deviation of price changes - volatility - to two microscopic quantities: the number of transactions [iopmath latex="$N_{Delta t}$"] N t [/iopmath] in [iopmath latex="$Delta t$"] t [/iopmath] and the variance [iopmath latex="$W^2_{Delta t}$"] W 2 t [/iopmath] of the price changes for all transactions in [iopmath latex="$Delta t$"] t [/iopmath]. We find that [iopmath latex="$N_{Delta t}$"] N t [/iopmath] displays power-law decaying time correlations whereas [iopmath latex="$W_{Delta t}$"] W t [/iopmath] displays only weak time correlations, indicating that the long-range correlations previously found in [iopmath latex="$vert G_{Delta t} vert$"] |G t| [/iopmath] are largely due to those of [iopmath latex="$N_{Delta t}$"] N t [/iopmath]. Further, we analyse the distribution [iopmath latex="$P{N_{Delta t} gt x}$"] P{N t>x} [/iopmath] and find an asymptotic behaviour consistent with a power-law decay. We then argue that the tail-exponent of [iopmath latex="$P{N_{Delta t} gt x}$"] P{N t>x} [/iopmath] is insufficient to account for the tail-exponent of [iopmath latex="$P{G_{Delta t} gt x}$"] P{G t>x} [/iopmath]. Since [iopmath latex="$N_{Delta t}$"] N t [/iopmath] and [iopmath latex="$W_{Delta t}$"] W t [/iopmath] display only weak interdependence, we argue that the fat tails of the distribution [iopmath latex="$P{G_{Delta t} gt x}$"] P{G t>x} [/iopmath] arise from [iopmath latex="$W_{Delta t}$"] W t [/iopmath], which has a distribution with power-law tail exponent consistent with our estimates for [iopmath latex="$G_{Delta t}$"] G t [/iopmath]. Further, we analyse the statistical properties of the number of shares [iopmath latex="$Q_{Delta t}$"] Q t [/iopmath] traded in [iopmath latex="$Delta t$"] t [/iopmath], and find that the distribution of [iopmath latex="$Q_{Delta t}$"] Q t [/iopmath] is consistent with a Lévy-stable distribution. We also quantify the relationship between [iopmath latex="$Q_{Delta t}$"] Q t [/iopmath] and [iopmath latex="$N_{Delta t}$"] N t [/iopmath], which provides one explanation for the previously observed volume-volatility co-movement.
Communicating with Cost-based Implicature: a Game-Theoretic Approach to Ambiguity

A game-theoretic approach to linguistic communication predicts that speakers can meaningfully use ambiguous forms in a discourse context in which only one of several available referents has a costly unambiguous form and in which rational interlocutors share knowledge of production costs. If a speaker produces a low-cost ambiguous form to avoid using the high-cost unambiguous form, a rational listener will infer that the high-cost entity was the intended entity, or else the speaker would not have risked ambiguity. We report data from two studies in which pairs of speakers show alignment of their use of ambiguous forms based on this kind of shared knowledge. These results extend the analysis of cost-based pragmatic inferencing beyond that previously associated only with fixed lexical hosts.
Real world data--retrieval and validation of consultation data from four general practices.

OBJECTIVE We aimed to retrieve data on consultations from general practice databases and to develop and use appropriate methods of validation for these data. METHOD MIQUEST software was used to retrieve the data from four practices. The data were validated by comparing them with figures generated by practice-based searches, measuring the uptake of recording of consultations over time, and comparing records of consultations in the case notes with those on the practice computers. RESULTS The required data were retrieved from general practice databases, but the path to success was difficult, and typified by uncertainty and unpredictability. The recording of consultations on the computers of four practices was more complete than the recording in the paper case records. There was a time period in the early months of computer use when the recording of consultations was less complete. There were differences in the completeness of recording consultations between practices, doctors, and patients. CONCLUSIONS This study confirms the potential of general practice databases for research, demonstrates how MIQUEST software can be a useful tool in retrieving data from general practice databases, and indicates how the completeness of data recording permitted further analysis for the purposes of our study.
Combining curriculum studies and cultural studies as a move toward the concrete in postqualitative research

ABSTRACT This paper posits a move “toward the concrete” as a specific combination of curriculum studies and Cultural Studies, placing it squarely within the frames of postqualitative research (Lather & St. Pierre, 2013; St. Pierre, 2011, 2013b, 2014). In addition to examining the theoretical legacies of the aforementioned fields, this paper focuses on four areas, posited by Helfenbein (2003), in which Cultural Studies can inform postqualitative educational research: materialism, (anti)antiessentialism, social constructivism, and radical contextuality. In doing so, this paper contends that for researchers, a sound theoretical base is needed if one is to engage in postqualitative research and offers toward the concrete as one such possibility.
Endodontic Management of a Mandibular First Molar with Four Canals in a Distal Root by Using Cone-Beam Computed Tomography: a Case Report

ABSTRACT Background Aberrations in the root canal anatomy are clinically challenging for clinicians. Mandibular first molars usually have 2 roots and 3 or 4 canals, but various combinations may exist. A distal root with three canals is rare and its incidence in literature is about 0.2 - 3%. As a diagnostic tool, cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) may be a better choice for diagnosis of extra roots or canals comparing to conventional radiography. Methods An endodontic management of a mandibular first molar with six canals was performed. CBCT was used to confirm the diagnosis and to understand the morphology of the canals. Results Evaluation of the axial and coronal slices of CBCT images confirmed the presence of 2 roots and 6 canals. The distal root had four distinct root canal orifices with two apical foramens, being described as type XIV canal configuration. Conclusions Dentists should be aware of unexpected canal morphology when performing endodontic treatment. The present case demonstrated the use of CBCT in diagnosis and negotiation of extra canals in a mandibular first molar.
Duplicate bug report detection with a combination of information retrieval and topic modeling

Detecting duplicate bug reports helps reduce triaging efforts and save time for developers in fixing the same issues. Among several automated detection approaches, text-based information retrieval (IR) approaches have been shown to outperform others in term of both accuracy and time efficiency. However, those IR-based approaches do not detect well the duplicate reports on the same technical issues written in different descriptive terms. This paper introduces DBTM, a duplicate bug report detection approach that takes advantage of both IR-based features and topic-based features. DBTM models a bug report as a textual document describing certain technical issue(s), and models duplicate bug reports as the ones about the same technical issue(s). Trained with historical data including identified duplicate reports, it is able to learn the sets of different terms describing the same technical issues and to detect other not-yet-identified duplicate ones. Our empirical evaluation on real-world systems shows that DBTM improves the state-of-the-art approaches by up to 20% in accuracy.