Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Study on Flexural Behaviour of Ferrocement Slabs Reinforced with PVC-coated Weld Mesh

The authors of this experimental research work have made an attempt to experimentally investigate the ultimate flexural load of ferrocement slabs of size 700mm. X 200mm. X 15mm. (thickness) reinforced with PVC coated steel weld mesh, and compare the results with slabs using GI-coated steel weld mesh, by varying the number of layers from 1-3. Ordinary Portland Cement, locally available river sand and potable water have been used in preparation of cement mortar, and the sand-cement ratio of 2:1 and water-cement ratio of 0.43 have been used in accordance with ACI codes. The flexural strength of ferrocement slabs was determined on four-point loading using a specially fabricated flexure loading frame. The flexural load, maximum deflection, crack-pattern and crack-width of ferrocement slabs reinforced have been analysed using varying PVC and GI coated weld mesh layers (1-3). Increasing the number of mesh layers from 1-3 caused a substantial increase in flexural load as well as improvement in ductility behavior of ferrocement slabs. It was also found that the flexural load of slabs with PVC-coated weld mesh is 90% that of specimens reinforced with GI-coated weld mesh, and therefore, PVC-coated weld mesh can be effectively used in ferrocement slabs, as non- corrosive reinforcement.
Good Education in an Age of Measurement: Ethics, Politics, Democracy

The widespread use of the measurement of educational outcomes in order to compare the performance of education within and across countries seems to express a real concern for the quality of education. This book argues that the focus on the measurement of educational outcomes has actually displaced questions about educational purpose. Biesta explores why the question as to what constitutes good education has become so much more difficult to ask and shows why this has been detrimental for the quality of education and for the level of democratic control over education. He provides concrete suggestions for engaging with the question of purpose in education in a new, more precise and more encompassing way, with explicit attention to the ethical, political and democratic dimensions of education.
Multi-weight multi-length strict optical orthogonal codes

In this paper, we present the construction of multi-weight, multi-length, strict optical orthogonal codes. This code set satisfies the conditions of the strictly orthogonal codes, namely, the maximum non-zero shift autocorrelation and the maximum cross-correlation constraints of one. Multi-length codes are designed to support multi-rate services, while the multi-weight codes are designed to support differentiated quality of service (QoS). A code set with two user classes is constructed, and its bit error rate performance is investigated.
Imaging Response Inhibition in a Stop-Signal Task: Neural Correlates Independent of Signal Monitoring and Post-Response Processing

Execution of higher cortical functions requires inhibitory control to restrain habitual responses and meet changing task demands. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to show the neural correlates of response inhibition during a stop-signal task. The task has a frequent “go” stimulus to set up a pre-potent response tendency and a less frequent “stop” signal for subjects to withhold their response. We contrasted brain activation between successful and failed inhibition for individual subjects and compared groups of subjects with short and long stop-signal reaction times. The two groups of subjects did not differ in their inhibition failure rates or the extent of signal monitoring, error monitoring, or task-associated frustration ratings. The results showed that short stop-signal reaction time or more efficient response inhibition was associated with greater activation in the superior medial and precentral frontal cortices. Moreover, activation of these inhibitory motor areas correlated negatively with stop-signal reaction time. These brain regions may represent the neural substrata of response inhibition independent of other cognitive and affective functions.
Trust-based Multi-Path Routing for Enhancing Data Security in MANETs

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) are comprised of highly mobile nodes that communicate with each other without relying on a pre-existing network infrastructure. Therefore they are ideally suited for use in rescue and emergency operations. Due to their applications in situations such as emergencies, crisis management, military and healthcare, message security is of paramount importance in mobile ad-hoc networks. However, because of the absence of a flxed infrastructure with designated centralized access points, implementation of hard-cryptographic security is a challenging prospect. In an adverse environment, both route discovery and data transmission are vulnerable to a variety of attacks. A misbehaving node can abide well in the route discovery phase and hence be placed on utilized routes. Later, it could tamper with the in-transit data in an arbitrary manner and degrade the network performance. This behavior can be nullifled by securing the data transmission phase. In this paper, we propose a novel method to enhance security in both phases using trust-based multi-path routing. The trustbased multi-path routing ensures secure discovery of multiple path between source and destination. Self-encrypted parts of a message are transmitted through these paths. Therefore it is di‐cult for malicious nodes to gain access to the minimum information required to break through the encryption strategy. Results show that our method is much more secure than other existing trust based multipath routing protocols.
Transferability of Higher Education from Abroad Unemployment and Skills-Mismatch in Early Career , by Ethnic Background and whether the Education is undertaken Abroad

Student mobility and immigration has lead to an increased number of people with higher education from abroad entering the Norwegian labour market. However, little is known about the labour market prospects of Norwegians who have returned from abroad, and there is also limited knowledge about labour outcomes of immigrants with higher education from abroad living in Norway. This paper investigates two aspects of transferability of higher education for graduates from abroad terms of unemployment rates and skills mismatch (overqualificatin). We use a data set that allows us to compare the situation of both immigrants and ethnic Norwegians (natives) educated abroad with immigrants and natives with a corresponding degree from Norwegian colleges and universities. Status 3 1⁄2 – 5 years after graduation and the situation more immediately after graduation is investigated. The analyses are based on binary logistic regression models, with a substantial number of independent variables, including among others things field of study, number of years living in Norway, proficiency of the Norwegian language, native country, entry grades to higher education, grades when graduating from higher education etc. Results show that natives educated abroad have a higher risk of unemployment than natives with a corresponding degree from Norway, both in the first phase after graduation and Status 3 1⁄2 – 5 years after graduation. There is also a tendency towards increased skills mismatch, when applying a broad definition of overqualification. Immigrants educated abroad have a high risk of unemployment; but this is only true for immigrants with non-western origin. The reason for this may be that the group of western immigrants probably contains a lot of experts who moved to Norway precisely because of their work. In such a group there will hardly be any risk of unemployment. Among non-western immigrants the unemployment risk was just as high in the group graduated in Norway as it was among those graduated abroad. For the non-western immigrants unemployment 3 1⁄2 – 5 years after graduation was partly due to their unemployment experiences in the first phase after graduation, while unemployment in the first phase did not affect the unemployment risk 3 1⁄2 – 5 years after graduation for ethnic Norwegians. Non-western immigrants also have a high risk of overqualification, whether they had graduated abroad or in Norway. Higher risks for unemployment and skills mismatch among both immigrants and natives educated abroad indicate that education from abroad is not fully transferable to the domestic labour market. In addition, the high risk of unemployment among non-western immigrants graduated in Norway also indicates that some forms of discrimination exist.
Negotiation-based track assignment considering local nets

Routability has become a very challenging issue in a modern VLSI design flow. Many works use global routing to estimate the routability in the early design stages. However, global routing cannot accurately capture local congestion, so it is hard to detect the detailed routability issue. To more accurately estimate the detailed-routing routability, this paper presents a track-assignment-based routability estimator. In this work, wire segments called iroutes are extracted from a global routing result, and then the proposed negotiation-based algorithm assigns these iroutes to proper tracks and minimizes the overlaps between the iroutes. Based on the assignment result, we can judge which regions may have critical routability issues by seeing where more overlaps reside.
Respiratory stroke volume variation assessed by oesophageal Doppler monitoring predicts fluid responsiveness during laparoscopy.

BACKGROUND This study was designed to assess the ability of the stroke volume respiratory variation (ΔrespSV) determined by oesophageal Doppler monitoring (ODM) to predict the response to volume expansion (VE) during pneumoperitoneum. The predictive value of ΔrespSV was evaluated according to the concept of the 'grey zone'. METHODS Patients operated on laparoscopy and monitored by ODM were prospectively included. The exclusion criteria were frequent ectopic beats or preoperative arrhythmia, right ventricular failure, and spontaneous breathing. Haemodynamic parameters and oesophageal Doppler indices [stroke volume (SV), peak velocity (PV), cardiac output (CO), corrected flow time (FTc), respiratory variation of PV (ΔrespPV) and SV (ΔrespSV)] were collected before and after VE. Responders were defined as a ≥15% increase in SV after VE. RESULTS Thirty-eight (64%) of the 59 patients were responders. A cut-off of >14% ΔrespSV predicted fluid responsiveness with an area under the ROC curve (AUC) of 0.92 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.82-0.98, P<0.0001]. The grey zone of ΔrespSV ranged between 13 and 15%. With an AUC of 0.71 (95% CI: 0.56-0.83, P=0.005), ΔrespPV fairly accurately predicted fluid responsiveness. FTc was unable to accurately predict fluid responsiveness. CONCLUSIONS ΔrespSV and ΔrespPV predicted fluid responsiveness during laparoscopy under strict physiological conditions. FTc was not predictive of fluid responsiveness during laparoscopy.
Matrix Metalloproteinase-1 (MMP-1) Promoter Polymorphisms are Well Linked with Lower Stomach Tumor Formation in Eastern Indian Population

Expression of matrix metalloproteinase-1 (MMP-1), an interstitial collagenase, plays a major role in cellular invasion during development of gastric cancer, a leading cause of death worldwide. A single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) −1607 1G/2G site of the MMP-1 gene promoter has been reported to alter transcription level. While the importance’s of other SNPs in the MMP-1 promoter have not yet been studied in gastric cancer, our aim was to investigate MMP-1 gene promoter polymorphisms and gastric cancer susceptibility in eastern Indian population. A total of 145 gastric cancer patients and 145 healthy controls were genotyped for MMP-1 −1607 1G/2G (rs1799750) by PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP), while MMP-1 −519 A/G (rs1144393), MMP-1 −422 T/A (rs475007), MMP-1 −340 T/C (rs514921) and MMP-1 −320 T/C (rs494379) were genotyped by DNA sequencing. A positive association was found with MMP-1 −422 T/A SNP that showed significant risk for regional lymph node metastasis (P = 0.021, Odd’s ratio (OR) = 3.044, Confidence intervals (CI) = 1.187–7.807). In addition, we found a significant association with lower stomach tumor formation among gastric cancer patients for three adjacent polymorphisms near the transcriptional start sites of [MMP-1 −422 T/A (P = 0.043, OR = 2.182, CI = 1.03–4.643), MMP-1 −340 T/C (P = 0.075, OR = 1.97, CI = 0.94–4.158) and MMP-1 −320 T/C (P = 0.034, OR = 2.224, CI = 1.064–40731)]. MMP-1 level in patients’ serum was correlated with MMP-1 promoter haplotypes conferring these three SNPs to evaluate the functional importance of these polymorphisms in lower stomach tumor formation and significant correlation was observed. Furthermore, MMP-1 −519 A/G polymorphism displayed poor cellular differentiation (P = 0.024, OR = 3.8, CI = 1.69–8.56) attributing a higher risk of cancer progression. In conclusion, MMP-1 proximal promoter SNPs are associated with the risk of lower stomach tumor formation and node metastasis in eastern Indian population.
The genome of human herpesvirus 6: maps of unit-length and concatemeric genomes for nine restriction endonucleases.

More than 50 fragments resulting from complete digestion of the DNA of human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6, strain U1102) with BamHI, EcoRI, HindIII, KpnI, NruI, SalI or SmaI have been isolated as clones in M13, plasmid, cosmid and lambda vectors. Using these clones, maps have been constructed for the fragments produced by nine restriction enzymes from unit-length virus genomes and from their concatemeric precursors. The unit-length genome is a linear, double-stranded molecule of 161.5 kbp composed of a central segment of a largely unique sequence of 141 kbp (U) with a sequence of 10 kbp duplicated in the same orientation at both 'left' and 'right' genomic termini (i.e. 'left' and 'right' copies of the direct repeat; DRL and DRR). Adopting as standard an orientation in which the major capsid protein gene is 'left' of the gene for alkaline exonuclease, then the 'right' genome termini and DRL. U junctions occur close to or within repetitive (GGGTTA)n sequences. Repetitions of short sequence motifs are present in at least two other regions of the genome. One of these regions consists of a simple repeat (TC/G) of approximately 1.5 kbp in length and is unstable as clones in bacterial vectors. The second region is stably maintained in such vectors and consists of a tandem array of at least 25 copies of a 110 bp sequence containing a single KpnI site. Comparisons of fragments arising from unit-length DNA with those from virus DNA from the nuclei of infected cells have shown that the concatemeric junctions in intracellular DNA contain head-to-tail dimers of the terminal duplications (i.e. .U1.DRR1.DRL2.U2.). The gross structure established here for the genome from the U1102 isolate of HHV-6 resembles closely that suggested by Pellett and his colleagues for the Z29 isolate and differs from that of the five previously characterized human herpesviruses. This structure of HHV-6 DNA bears a superficial resemblance to that proposed for DNA from channel catfish virus and equine cytomegalovirus.
Birefractive stereo imaging for single-shot depth acquisition

We propose a novel birefractive depth acquisition method, which allows for single-shot depth imaging by just placing a birefringent material in front of the lens. While most transmissive materials present a single refractive index per wavelength, birefringent crystals like calcite posses two, resulting in a double refraction effect. We develop an imaging model that leverages this phenomenon and the information contained in the ordinary and the extraordinary refracted rays, providing an effective formulation of the geometric relationship between scene depth and double refraction. To handle the inherent ambiguity of having two sources of information overlapped in a single image, we define and combine two different cost volume functions. We additionally present a novel calibration technique for birefringence, carefully analyze and validate our model, and demonstrate the usefulness of our approach with several image-editing applications.
Decreased Sensory Stimulation Reduces Behavioral Responding, Retards Development, and Alters Neuronal Connectivity in Caenorhabditis elegans

Activity-dependent plasticity is a critical component of nervous systems. We show that in Caenorhabditis elegans, worms raised in isolation made smaller responses to mechanosensory stimulation and were smaller and slower to begin laying eggs than age-matched group-raised worms. The glutamate receptor gene GLR-1 was critical for the observed alterations in behavior but not in size, whereas the cGMP-dependent protein kinase gene EGL-4 was critical for the observed changes in size but not the changes in behavior. Mechanosensory stimulation during development reversed the effects of isolation on behavior and began to reduce the effects of isolation on size. In C. elegans, the six mechanosensory touch neurons synapse onto the four pair of command interneurons for forward and backward movement. Touch (mechanosensory) neurons of worms raised in isolation expressed lower levels of green fluorescent protein (GFP)-tagged synaptobrevin than touch neurons of worms raised in colonies. Command interneurons of worms raised in isolation expressed lower levels of GFP-tagged glutamate receptors than command interneurons of worms raised in groups. Brief mechanical stimulation during larval development rescued the expression of GFP-tagged glutamate receptors but not GFP-tagged synaptobrevin. Together, these results indicate that the level of stimulation experienced by C. elegans during development profoundly affects the development of neuronal connectivity and has widespread cellular and behavioral consequences.
Disengagement from education among 14-16 year olds

This study uses data from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE) to carry out a quantitative analysis of disengagement from education among 14-16 year olds in England. The implications of disengagement for the young person and for wider society are well known and lead to poor labour market opportunities and the risk of being “not in education, employment or training”, as well as other associated negative outcomes. The engagement of young people is particularly crucial in relation to recent legislation raising the participation age, first to 17 by the year 2013, and then 18 by 2015. For this study an analytical approach was used that enables the capturing of different kinds of disengagement, creating a typology of engaged / disengaged young people.
Collaborative Filtering for Predicting User Preferences for Organizing Objects

As service robots become more and more capable of performing useful tasks for us, there is a growing need to teach robots how we expect them to carry out these tasks. However, different users typically have their own preferences, for example with respect to arranging objects on different shelves. As many of these preferences depend on a variety of factors including personal taste, cultural background, or common sense, it is challenging for an expert to pre-program a robot in order to accommodate all potential users. At the same time, it is impractical for robots to constantly query users about how they should perform individual tasks. In this work, we present an approach to learn patterns in user preferences for the task of tidying up objects in containers, e.g., shelves or boxes. Our method builds upon the paradigm of collaborative filtering for making personalized recommendations and relies on data from different users that we gather using crowdsourcing. To deal with novel objects for which we have no data, we propose a method that compliments standard collaborative filtering by leveraging information mined from the Web. When solving a tidy-up task, we first predict pairwise object preferences of the user. Then, we subdivide the objects in containers by modeling a spectral clustering problem. Our solution is easy to update, does not require complex modeling, and improves with the amount of user data. We evaluate our approach using crowdsourcing data from over 1,200 users and demonstrate its effectiveness for two tidy-up scenarios. Additionally, we show that a real robot can reliably predict user preferences using our approach.
Dimension Reduction in the l 1 norm

The Johnson-Lindenstrauss Lemma shows that any set of n points in Euclidean space can be mapped linearly down to O((log n)/ǫ) dimensions such that all pairwise distances are distorted by at most 1 + ǫ. We study the following basic question: Does there exist an analogue of the JohnsonLindenstrauss Lemma for the l1 norm? Note that Johnson-Lindenstrauss Lemma gives a linear embedding which is independent of the point set. For the l1 norm, we show that one cannot hope to use linear embeddings as a dimensionality reduction tool for general point sets, even if the linear embedding is chosen as a function of the given point set. In particular, we construct a set of O(n) points in l1 such that any linear embedding into l d 1 must incur a distortion of Ω( √ n/d). This bound is tight up to a log n factor. We then initiate a systematic study of general classes of l1 embeddable metrics that admit low dimensional, small distortion embeddings. In particular, we show dimensionality reduction theorems for tree metrics, circular-decomposable metrics, and metrics supported on K2,3-free graphs, giving embeddings into l O(log n) 1 with constant distortion. Finally, we also present lower bounds on dimension reduction techniques for other lp norms. Our work suggests that the notion of a stretch-limited embedding, where no distance is stretched by more than a factor d in any dimension, is important to the study of dimension reduction for l1. We use such stretch limited embeddings as a tool for proving lower bounds for dimension reduction and also as an algorithmic tool for proving posi-
Channel shortening for enhancing passive UHF RFID performance

This paper proposes using a channel shortening equalizer (CSE) to improve the performance of passive ultrahigh frequency radio frequency identification (UHF RFID) systems. In UHF RFID systems, the reader interrogates RF tags by transmitting continuous wave (CW) signals that power up the internal integrated circuitry of the tags that in turn, backscatter these signals to the reader after embedding their unique information. The overall performance of passive UHF RFID systems depends heavily on the power level of the signal impinged on the tag which is a function of the multipath channel environment in which the reader and the tags are deployed. In this paper, a channel shortening equalizer with a new constraint that exploits the knowledge of the propagation channel and the nature of the CW signal is proposed to boost the power of the impinged signal on the tag. The results show that using the proposed equalizer enhances the power level significantly which results in better performance.