Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Path Similarity Skeleton Graph Matching

This paper proposes a novel graph matching algorithm and applies it to shape recognition based on object silhouettes. The main idea is to match skeleton graphs by comparing the geodesic paths between skeleton endpoints. In contrast to typical tree or graph matching methods, we do not consider the topological graph structure. Our approach is motivated by the fact that visually similar skeleton graphs may have completely different topological structures. The proposed comparison of geodesic paths between endpoints of skeleton graphs yields correct matching results in such cases. The skeletons are pruned by contour partitioning with discrete. Curve evolution, which implies that the endpoints of skeleton branches correspond to visual parts of the objects. The experimental results demonstrate that our method is able to produce correct results in the presence of articulations, stretching, and contour deformations.
VISUAL INPUT ENHANCEMENT AND GRAMMAR LEARNING: A Meta-Analytic Review

Effects of pedagogical interventions with visual input enhancement on grammar learning have been investigated by a number of researchers during the past decade and a half. The present review delineates this research domain via a systematic synthesis of 16 primary studies (comprising 20 unique study samples) retrieved through an exhaustive literature search. The overall magnitude of visual input enhancement was addressed by calculating and aggregating effect size d values. The results indicate that second language readers provided with enhancement-embedded texts barely outperformed those who were exposed to unenhanced texts with the same target forms flooded in them (d = 0.22). A theoretical tension between form and meaning was indicated by a small but negative effect size value for learners' meaning processing (d = −0.26). The importance of improving methodological practices in this research domain, including the reporting of statistical and treatment-related information and the counteracting of a possible publication bias, was also revealed by the synthetic analyses and is further discussed.
Academic Language in Shared Book Reading: Parent and Teacher Input to Mono- and Bilingual Preschoolers

The current study examined academic language (AL) input of mothers and teachers to 15 monolingual Dutch and 15 bilingual Turkish-Dutch 4- to 6-year-old children and its relationships with the children’s language development. At two times, shared book reading was videotaped and analyzed for academic features: lexical diversity, syntactic complexity, and abstractness. The AL features in the input of mothers varied considerably among individuals, were strongly intercorrelated and stable over time, and positively related to children’s language skills. For Turkish children, input in Turkish was related to vocabulary in Dutch as well. Compared to mothers, teachers provided input that was more academic. The teachers of the Turkish group used more abstract language but relatively less lexically diverse and syntactically complex talk than the teachers of the Dutch group. By simplifying their language lexically and syntactically, teachers might provide impoverished input to children learning Dutch as a second language.
Passwords are not always stronger on the other side of the fence

The username-password pair is still a prevalent form of online authentication. However, attacks that are leveraging weak password habits are on the rise. The main response of the security community on the ground is to invest more in educating users. Such an approach leads to believe that the long held assumption stating that an ignorant user is the cause of an inadequate password behavior, still has many opponents. Although different research studies have presented other more likely reasons, practices are still perpetuating the same solution mindset of increasing end users’ education. The behavior of users has not improved dramatically over the last decade despite all these efforts. Therefore, this research work explores the hypothesis that knowledge of good password habits is a necessary but not by itself a satisfactory requirement for a safe password behavior. This will be achieved by studying the password habits of the same people advocating for more end user education. To investigate this hypothesis, we conducted a survey targeting an audience of IT professionals with good knowledge about security. The survey results show that cognitive knowledge of password security does not always materialize into practical and secure password practices. The anticipated results would be that confronting IT professionals with their own password practices which fail to adhere to what they preach to end users, will motivate them to let go of their long held assumptions that more education is the solution. This will further support the points made by other studies explaining the rationale behind the inadequate password habits of end users.
Transformational leadership and commitment: A multilevel analysis of group-level influences and mediating processes

Researchers in the field of leadership have shown an increasing interest in examining the additional effect of consensus, which reflects on the variability of leadership perceptions in a team on outcomes. Based on theoretical assumptions with regard to social group processes and group-related mechanisms of transformational leadership it is hypothesized in this study that besides group-level transformational leadership, the consensus among group members will positively predict affective and normative commitment. In contrast, no relationship with continuance commitment was expected. Further we proposed that the influence of group-level transformational leadership is mediated by perceptions of meaningful tasks, whereas consensus is mediated by positive organizational climate. Multisource data were collected from 21 CEOs of small pharmacies and their subordinates. Subordinates (N = 105) rated their supervisors' transformational leadership, as well as their individual perceptions of task content, organizational climate, and organizational commitment, and CEOs rated their scope of influence. As expected, group-level transformational leadership and consensus were positively related to affective commitment. Further multilevel analyses revealed that meaningful task content mediated the influence of leadership on affective commitment. Positive organizational climate slightly mediated the relationship between consensus and affective commitment. Practical implications are discussed with regard to commitment management by promoting meaningful work and strengthening consensus and climate.
Predicting loss of employment over three years in multiple sclerosis: clinically meaningful cognitive decline

Cognitive dysfunction is common in multiple sclerosis (MS), yet the magnitude of change on objective neuropsychological (NP) tests that is clinically meaningful is unclear. We endeavored to determine NP markers of the transition from employment to work disability in MS, as indicated by degree of decline on individual tests. Participants were 97 employed MS patients followed over 41.3 ± 17.6 months with a NP battery covering six domains of cognitive function. Deterioration at follow-up was designated as documented and paid disability benefits (conservative definition) or a reduction in hours/work responsibilities (liberal definition). Using the conservative definition, 28.9% reported deteriorated employment status and for the liberal definition, 45.4%. The Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT) and California Verbal Learning Test, Total Learning (CVLT2-TL) measures distinguished employed and disabled patients at follow-up. Controlling for demographic and MS characteristics, the odds ratio of a deterioration based on a change of 2.0 on the CVLT2-TL was 3.7 (95% CI 1.2–11.4 and SDMT by 4.0 was 4.2 (95% CI 1.2–14.8), accounting for 86.7% of the area under the ROC curve. We conclude that decline on NP testing over time is predictive of deterioration in vocational status, establishing a magnitude of decline on NP tests that is clinically meaningful.
Preserving Strong Connectivity in Directed Proximity Graphs

This paper proposes a method to maintain the strong connectivity property of a mobile robot ad hoc network in the presence of disturbances or additional control goals. Each robot has a communication range modeled by an $n$-dimensional sphere centered at the robot. The spheres for different robots may have different radii, resulting in a directed communication network. This paper is based on two concepts. The first is the structure of the Perron vector for reducible stochastic matrices. The second is the design of nonlinear controllers that ensure that two robots remain within a certain distance of each other despite disturbances. The results are supported by analysis and simulations.
A New Approach to Multicarrier Pulse Design for Doubly-Dispersive Channels

For doubly-dispersive channels, we propose a pulse-shaped multicarrier modulation scheme designed to yield an inter-symbol/inter-carrier interference (ISI/ICI) profile facilitating high-performance/low-complexity equalization. Specifically, sampled transmitter/receiver pulses are jointly optimized to maximize a particular signal to interferenceplus-noise ratio. Two low-complexity iterative equalization algorithms are proposed which leverage the resulting ISI/ICI structure, one based on soft feedback and the other on hard feedback. Simulations indicate that the soft feedback algorithm achieves estimation performance close to the matched filter bound in most scenarios. Post-cursor ISI cancellation is also considered, and found to be appropriate when the delay spread is large.
Gérer l’accès aux mathématiques dans la résolution de problèmes textuels : une exploration du côté de l’enseignement primaire

Cet article presente la gestion de l’accessibilite aux mathematiques dans la resolution de problemes textuels ayant des structures additives par des enseignantes de premiere et de deuxieme annee du primaire. Nous avons utilise un modele ethnomathematique pour analyser les effets de cette gestion sur l’acces aux mathematiques pour les eleves. Nous avons constate que les enseignantes attribuent plusieurs roles a la resolution de ces problemes et que les gestes didactiques qu’elles posent en fonction de ces roles peuvent affecter negativement cet acces. Afin de les outiller pour reconnaitre les roles qu’elles attribuent a la resolution de problemes et leurs effets sur l’accessibilite aux mathematiques par les eleves, de meme que pour les aider a modifier leurs perceptions de ces roles en vue de bonifier leurs interventions en classe, nous avons developpe une activite de formation portant sur l’analyse et la representation des structures additives presentes dans les problemes textuels. Dans cet article, nous discutons des gestes didactiques des enseignantes avant, pendant et apres la formation.
Religion and Migration around the Globe: Introducing the Global Religion and Migration Database

International migration is a global phenomenon involving nearly 215 million people, equivalent to 3% of the world's population. Previous databases of global migration catalog international migration using a variety of variables (sex, education, age); however, religion is rarely addressed within these data sets. Representing nearly half a million data points, the Global Religion and Migration Database (GRMD) was constructed – the only global database estimating the global migrant population (stock) by origin, destination, and religious affiliation. This research note serves as an introduction to the GRMD, detailing the construction of the database and providing key findings from a global perspective.
Religion in Britain: Neither Believing nor Belonging

‘Believing without belonging’ has become the catchphrase of much European work on religion in the past decade. The thesis that religious belief is fairly robust even if churchgoing is declining is examined using data from the British Household Panel Survey and the British Social Attitudes surveys. The evidence suggests that belief has in fact eroded in Britain at the same rate as two key aspects of belonging: religious affiliation and attendance. Levels of belief are lower than those of nominal belonging. The roles of period, cohort and age effects on religious change are considered; the conclusion is that decline is generational. In relation to the rates at which religion is transmitted from parents to children, the results suggest that only about half of parental religiosity is successfully transmitted, while absence of religion is almost always passed on. Transmission is just as weak for believing as for belonging.
Projecting health: community-led video education for maternal health

We present a qualitative study of Projecting Health, a public health project we deployed in rural Uttar Pradesh (India) to address persistently high maternal and infant mortality rates. This project is based on our model of Community-led Video Education (CVE), which leverages community resources for the generation, dissemination, and assimilation of visual media. We use the lens of information flows to examine how our instantiation of CVE enables the translation of globally approved health care norms to local household practices. We also demonstrate how CVE allows for integration with current community practices, existing state-supported health care infrastructure, social and patriarchal structures, and power dynamics within our target populations to drive community participation.
The Australian Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications on Stable Numerical Differentiation

Based on a regularized Volterra equation, two different approaches for numerical differentiation are considered. The first approach consists of solving a regularized Volterra equation while the second approach is based on solving a disretized version of the regularized Volterra equation. Numerical experiments show that these methods are efficient and compete favorably with the variational regularization method for stable calculating the derivatives of noisy functions.
Parents as ‘educators’: languages of education, pedagogy and ‘parenting’

In this article, we explore to what extent parents should be ‘educators’ of their children. In the course of this exploration, we offer some examples of these practices and ways of speaking and thinking, indicate some of the problems and limitations they import into our understanding of the parent–child relationship, and make some tentative suggestions towards an alternative way of thinking about this relationship.
Measures of linkage disequilibrium among neighbouring SNPs indicate asymmetries across the house mouse hybrid zone

Theory predicts that naturally occurring hybrid zones between genetically distinct taxa can move over space and time as a result of selection and/or demographic processes, with certain types of hybrid zones being more or less likely to move. Determining whether a hybrid zone is stationary or moving has important implications for understanding evolutionary processes affecting interactions in hybrid populations. However, direct observations of hybrid zone movement are difficult to make unless the zone is moving rapidly. Here, evidence for movement in the house mouse Mus musculus domesticus × Mus musculus musculus hybrid zone is provided using measures of LD and haplotype structure among neighbouring SNP markers from across the genome. Local populations of mice across two transects in Germany and the Czech Republic were sampled, and a total of 1301 mice were genotyped at 1401 markers from the nuclear genome. Empirical measures of LD provide evidence for extinction and (re)colonization in single populations and, together with simulations, suggest hybrid zone movement because of either geography‐dependent asymmetrical dispersal or selection favouring one subspecies over the other.
A Galois Connection for Weighted (Relational) Clones of Infinite Size

A Galois connection between clones and relational clones on a fixed finite domain is one of the cornerstones of the so-called algebraic approach to the computational complexity of non-uniform Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs). Cohen et al. established a Galois connection between finitely-generated weighted clones and finitely-generated weighted relational clones [SICOMP’13], and asked whether this connection holds in general. We answer this question in the affirmative for weighted (relational) clones with real weights and show that the complexity of the corresponding valued CSPs is preserved.
Risk Assessment for Domestically Violent Men: Tools for Criminal Justice, Offender Intervention, and Victim Services

From a domestic violence victim's first call to police or visit to a women's shelter, through the offender's bail, sentencing, parole, and treatment program, criminal justice officers and clinicians must make informed decisions about which cases need the most attention as well as ensure targeted provisions are in place to prevent recurrences of violence. The authors make a powerful case for using actuarial risk assessments to predict recidivism in male domestic violence offenders. They draw on the authors' in-depth empirical studies of violent men and their extensive experience with recidivism risk assessment in policing, court cases, offender assessment, and victim services. It is also a user's manual - replete with all the scoring, reporting, and interpreting details needed to effectively use the ODARA/DVRAG system.
Sidetracked by trolleys: Why sacrificial moral dilemmas tell us little (or nothing) about utilitarian judgment

Research into moral decision-making has been dominated by sacrificial dilemmas where, in order to save several lives, it is necessary to sacrifice the life of another person. It is widely assumed that these dilemmas draw a sharp contrast between utilitarian and deontological approaches to morality, and thereby enable us to study the psychological and neural basis of utilitarian judgment. However, it has been previously shown that some sacrificial dilemmas fail to present a genuine contrast between utilitarian and deontological options. Here, I raise deeper problems for this research paradigm. Even when sacrificial dilemmas present a contrast between utilitarian and deontological options at a philosophical level, it is misleading to interpret the responses of ordinary folk in these terms. What is currently classified as “utilitarian judgment” does not in fact share essential features of a genuine utilitarian outlook, and is better explained in terms of commonsensical moral notions. When subjects deliberate about such dilemmas, they are not deciding between opposing utilitarian and deontological solutions, but engaging in a richer process of weighing opposing moral reasons. Sacrificial dilemmas therefore tell us little about utilitarian decision-making. An alternative approach to studying proto-utilitarian tendencies in everyday moral thinking is proposed.
Statewide Implementation of Evidence-Based Programs

Evidence-based programs will be useful to the extent they produce benefits to individuals on a socially significant scale. It appears the combination of effective programs and effective implementation methods is required to assure consistent uses of programs and reliable benefits to children and families. To date, focus has been placed primarily on generating evidence and determining degrees of rigor required to qualify practices and programs as “evidence-based. ” To be useful to society, the focus needs to shift to defining “programs” and to developing state-level infrastructures for statewide implementation of evidence-based programs and other innovations in human services. In this article, the authors explicate a framework for accomplishing these goals and discuss examples of the framework in use.
Preschoolers and the Endowment Effect

We show that preschoolers exhibit the endowment effect as evidenced by experiments where children generally chose to keep their own toys rather than trading them for similar ones. Furthermore, we relate the emergence of this effect to children's innate psychobiological traits—emotional state, gender, handedness, and digit ratio. The trials were conducted with 141 children across 6 kindergartens. We also found support that children, like adults, exhibit a preference for physical possession as opposed to ownership. As with adults, emotions also seem to matter, as children who were described as quiet and calm were more likely to present the endowment effect. Also of note, right-handed children described as quiet were more likely to exhibit the phenomenon. Furthermore, female children were generally found to be calmer than males, while males tended to be more fearful than females. This result was also previously found in teenagers.
Robustness of Face Recognition to Variations of Illumination on Mobile Devices Based on SVM

With the increasing popularity of mobile devices, it has become necessary to protect private information and content in these devices. Face recognition has been favored over conventional passwords or security keys, because it can be easily implemented using a built-in camera, while providing user convenience. However, because mobile devices can be used both indoors and outdoors, there can be many illumination changes, which can reduce the accuracy of face recognition. Therefore, we propose a new face recognition method on a mobile device robust to illumination variations. This research makes the following four original contributions. First, we compared the performance of face recognition with illumination variations on mobile devices for several illumination normalization procedures suitable for mobile devices with low processing power. These include the Retinex filter, histogram equalization and histogram stretching. Second, we compared the performance for global and local methods of face recognition such as PCA (Principal Component Analysis), LNMF (Local Non-negative Matrix Factorization) and LBP (Local Binary Pattern) using an integer-based kernel suitable for mobile devices having low processing power. Third, the characteristics of each method according to the illumination variations are analyzed. Fourth, we use two matching scores for several methods of illumination normalization, Retinex and histogram stretching, which show the best and 2 nd best performances, respectively. These are used as the inputs of an SVM (Support Vector Machine) classifier, which can increase the accuracy of face recognition. Experimental results with two databases (data collected by a mobile device and the AR database) showed that the accuracy of face recognition achieved by the proposed method was superior to that of other methods.