Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evidence for extensive anaerobic dechlorination and transformation of the pesticide chlordecone (C10Cl10O) by indigenous microbes in microcosms from Guadeloupe soil

Chlordecone (C10Cl10O) is a bishomocubane molecule, that has been used as pesticide, in many countries in Europe, America, and Africa, from the 1960’s to 1990’s. In the French West Indies, the historic use of chlordecone to control banana weevil infestations has resulted in pollution of large land areas. Although currently banned, chlordecone persists because it adsorbs strongly to soil and its complex structure is stable, particularly under aerobic conditions. A leaching model established that CLD pollution will last in French west indies soils several decades to half a millennium depending on soil type. However, abiotic chemical transformation catalyzed by reduced vitamin B12 has been shown to break down chlordecone by opening the cage structure to produce C9 polychloroindenes, and more recently these C9 polychloroindenes were also observed as products of anaerobic microbiological transformation by Citrobacter. To assess the potential for bioremediation, the anaerobic biotransformation of chlordecone by microbes native to soils from the French West Indies was investigated. Anaerobic microcosms were constructed from chlordecone impacted Guadeloupe soil and sludge to mimic natural attenuation and eletron donor-stimulated reductive dechlorination. Original microcosms and transfers were incubated over a period of 8 years, during which they were repeatedly amended with chlordecone and electron donor (ethanol and acetone). Using LC/MS, chlordecone and degradation products were detected in all the biologically active microcosms. Observed products in active incubations included monohydro-, dihydro- and trihydrochlordecone derivatives (C10Cl10−nO2Hn, n= 1,2,3), as well as “open cage” C9 polychloroindene compounds (C9Cl5−nH3+n, n=0,1,2) and C10 carboxylated polychloroindene derivatives (C10Cl4−nO2H4+n, n=0−3). Products with as many as 9 chlorine atoms removed were detected. These products were not observed in sterile incubations. Chlordecone concentrations decreased in active microcosms as concentrations of products increased, indicating that anaerobic dechlorination processes have occurred. An crude estimation of partitioning coefficients between soil and water showed that carboxylated intermediates sorb poorly, and as a consequence may be flushed away while polychlorinated indenes sorb strongly to soil. Microbial community analysis in microcosms showed enrichment of anaerobic fermenting and acetogenic microbes possibly involved in anaerobic chlordecone biotransformation. It thus should be possible to stimuilate anaerobic dechlorination through donor amendment to contaminated soils, particularly as some metabolites (in particular pentachloroindene) were already detected in field samples as a result of intrinsic processes. Extensive dechlorination in the microcosms, with evidence for up to 9 Cl atoms removed from the parent molecule is game-changing, giving hope to the possibility of using bioremediation to reduce the impact of CLD contamination.
Short-term load forecast of electrical power system by radial basis function neural network and new stochastic search algorithm

Summary In this paper a new model of radial basis function (RBF) neural network based on a novel stochastic search algorithm is presented for short-term load forecast (STLF). STLF is an important operation function in both regulated and deregulated power systems. Accurate STLF is effective for area generation control and resource dispatch as well as electricity market clearing. The proposed STLF method optimizes the structure of the RBF-based forecasting engine. Random selection of the number of hidden neurons may cause overfitting or underfitting problem of the network. For this purpose, a new stochastic search algorithm is presented to find the optimum number of neurons for the hidden layer. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed STLF approach, it is tested on three real-world engineering case studies, and the obtained results are compared with the results of several other recently published STLF methods. These comparisons confirm the validity of the developed approach. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The Reform of the Romanian Accounting System â€“ between the Need and Reality of the Process

The Romanianâ€™s account modernization process began long ago, somewhere around 2000 under the conditions of Romania's pre-accession to the European Union. The present article aims to analyze the approach taken by highlighting the main evolutionary stages from the harmonization and convergence of Romanian accounting to its normalization and standardization.
Optimal Mobile Computation Offloading with Hard Deadline Constraints

This paper considers mobile computation offloading where task completion times are subject to hard deadline constraints. Hard deadlines are difficult to meet in conventional computation offloading due to the stochastic nature of the wireless channels involved. Rather than using binary offload decisions, we permit concurrent remote and local job execution when it is needed to ensure task completion deadlines. The paper addresses this problem for homogeneous Markovian wireless channel models. An online energy-optimal computation offloading algorithm, OnOpt, is proposed. Its energy optimality is shown by constructing a time-dilated absorbing Markov process and applying dynamic programming. Closed form results are derived for general Markovian processes, and the Gilbert-Elliott channel model is used to show how the particular structure of the Markov chain can be exploited in computing optimal offload initiation times more efficiently. It is shown that job completion time probabilities can be computed recursively, which leads to a significant reduction in the computational complexity of OnOpt. The performance of the proposed algorithm is compared to three others, namely, Immediate Offloading, Channel Threshold, and Local Execution. Performance results show that the proposed algorithm can significantly improve mobile device energy consumption compared to the other approaches while guaranteeing hard task execution deadlines.
Link capacity analysis for virtual antenna arrays

The previously introduced concept of virtual antenna arrays (VAA) promises a significant increase in link and system capacity. These therefore constitute a promising candidate for ad-hoc oriented 4G networks. VAA successfully emulates a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) transmission channel to which space-time codes (STC) can be applied. The realisation of VAA is accomplished by letting spatially close mobile terminals communicate with each other, which overcomes the disadvantage of having only one receiving antenna in a mobile handset. The thus created ad-hoc network represents a general form of MIMO channels for which a new approach to link capacity calculation is required. The work presented establishes some fundamental tenets for the calculation of link capacity in the Shannon sense to ad-hoc networks, such as VAA. It shows that the capacity drastically increases over a network where each terminal maintains a single link to the base station. The results are somewhat preliminary since VAA constitutes only a minor subset of possible ad-hoc network configurations.
What Makes an Organization a Great Place to Work in South Korea

The purpose of this study is to identify diverse factors that positively and negatively affect a workplace and to suggest a model for great places to work in South Korean organizational contexts. The research questions guiding the study are (a) What are the most desirable characteristics of a great place to work? and (b) What are the most undesirable characteristics of a bad place to work? An online survey and mobile application with two questions asking about the components of the most desirable and undesirable characteristics of workplaces were distributed to 1,500 randomly selected job seekers and currently employed persons in various organizations in South Korea. Out of the 1,500 surveys sent, 786 people responded (a response rate of 53%). Based on the survey data, the study identified various factors that positively and negatively affect people's perceptions of a great or bad place to work, including employee welfare, pay, working hours, work environments, and interpersonal relationships. From an in-depth analysis, the study proposes a model for great places to work in South Korea. Discussions and implications for practice and future research are included.
Quantifying human behaviour with online images

From online searches to social media posts, our everyday interactions with the Internet are creating vast amounts of data. Large volumes of this data can be accessed rapidly at low cost, opening up unprecedented possibilities to monitor and analyse social processes and measure human behaviour. As Internet connectivity has continued to improve, photo-sharing platforms such as Instagram and Flickr have gained widespread popularity. At the same time, considerable advances have been achieved in the power of computers to analyse the contents of images. In particular, deep learning based methods such as convolutional neural networks have radically transformed the performance of systems seeking to identify objects in images, or classify the contents of a scene. Here, we showcase a series of studies in which we seek to quantify various aspects of human behaviour by exploiting both the large quantities of photographic data shared online and recent developments in computer vision. Specifically, we investigate whether data extracted from photographs shared on Flickr and Instagram can help us track global protest outbreaks; estimate the income of inhabitants living in different areas of London and New York; and predict the occurrence of noise complaints in New York City. Our findings are in line with the striking hypothesis that information extracted through automatic analysis of photographs shared online may help us measure human behaviour, whether in individual cities or across the globe
EXPERT AND NOVICE TEACHERS TALKING TECHNOLOGY: PRECEPTS, CONCEPTS, AND MISCONCEPTS

When new teachers, teacher trainers, and administrators consider the ways in which technologies can best serve practice, they are wise to turn to experienced teachers and veteran technology users. It is the voices and experiences of these professionals who have worked through the complex processes of adapting curricula, classroom design, dynamics, and teaching approaches that can best inform those new to teaching and learning in general, and teaching with technologies in particular. This study compares and contrasts the "technology talk" of novice and expert teachers of K-8 language and literacy (ESOL). Interview data with eight teachers - two expert (experienced teachers and technologies users), five novice (limited experience in teaching and teaching with computers) and one transitional expert (experienced teacher and non-technology user) serve to illustrate the conceptual and practical differences between those who have adapted technologies as powerful teaching and learning tools and teachers who, in spite of specific formal training in instructional technology, speak about it and its application in starkly contrasting ways. These contrasts are presented as a set of four conceptual continua that can help in explicating novice starting points, transitional issues, and the expertise of computer-using language professionals.
Beyond Recursion: Critique of Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch

In 2002, Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch published an article in which they introduced a distinction between properties of language that are exclusively part of human communication (i.e., the FLN) and those properties that might be shared with other species (i.e., the FLB). The sole property proposed for the FLN was recursion. Hauser et al. provided evidence for their position based on issues of evolution. The question of the required properties of human language is central to developing theories of language processing and acquisition. In the present critique of Hauser et al. we consider two examples from non-English languages that argue against the suggestion that recursion is the sole property within the human language faculty. These are i) agreement of inflectional morphemes across sentence constructions, and ii) synthetic one-word constructions.
Evaluating stereoscopic displays: both efficiency measures and perceived workload sensitive to manipulations in binocular disparity

Stereoscopic displays are known to offer a number of key advantages in visualizing complex 3D structures or datasets. The large majority of studies that focus on evaluating stereoscopic displays for professional applications use completion time and/or the percentage of correct answers to measure potential performance advantages. However, completion time and accuracy may not fully reflect all the benefits of stereoscopic displays. In this paper, we argue that perceived workload is an additional valuable indicator reflecting the extent to which users can benefit from using stereoscopic displays. We performed an experiment in which participants were asked to perform a visual path-tracing task within a convoluted 3D wireframe structure, varying in level of complexity of the visualised structure and level of disparity of the visualisation. The results showed that an optimal performance (completion time, accuracy and workload), depend both on task difficulty and disparity level. Stereoscopic disparity revealed a faster and more accurate task performance, whereas we observed a trend that performance on difficult tasks stands to benefit more from higher levels of disparity than performance on easy tasks. Perceived workload (as measured using the NASA-TLX) showed a similar response pattern, providing evidence that perceived workload is sensitive to variations in disparity as well as task difficulty. This suggests that perceived workload could be a useful concept, in addition to standard performance indicators, in characterising and measuring human performance advantages when using stereoscopic displays.
Age and second language acquisition

The idea that there is an age factor in language development has long been — and continues to be — a hotly debated topic. This review begins by briefly revisiting some of the early perspectives on this issue; it goes on to sketch some of the relevant findings which emerged in the three decades following the onset in the late 1960s of serious empirical investigation of the age factor in L2 acquisition; and, finally, in the third section of the survey, it hones in on the results of some more recently published age-related research. The article concludes with a short discussion — in the light of the foregoing — of (a) the degree of absoluteness of the age factor in L2 acquisition; and (b) the notion that there may be not one, but a number, of age-related factors at work.
Pretopology and Topic Modeling for Complex Systems Analysis: Application on Document Classification and Complex Network Analysis. (Prétopologie et modélisation de sujets pour l'analyse de systèmes complexes: application à la classification de documents et à l'analyse de réseaux complexes)

The work of this thesis presents the development of algorithms for document classification on the one hand, or complex network analysis on the other hand, based on pretopology, a theory that models the concept of proximity. The first work develops a framework for document clustering by combining Topic Modeling and Pretopology. Our contribution proposes using topic distributions extracted from topic modeling treatment as input for classification methods. In this approach, we investigated two aspects: determine an appropriate distance between documents by studying the relevance of Probabilistic-Based and Vector-Based Measurements and effect groupings according to several criteria using a pseudo-distance defined from pretopology. The second work introduces a general framework for modeling Complex Networks by developing a reformulation of stochastic pretopology and proposes Pretopology Cascade Model as a general model for information diffusion. In addition, we proposed an agent-based model, Textual-ABM, to analyze complex dynamic networks associated with textual information using author-topic model and introduced Textual-Homo-IC, an independent cascade model of the resemblance, in which homophily is measured based on textual content obtained by utilizing Topic Modeling.
The development of second language productive vocabularyin an intensive ESL classroom

The aim of this study was to investigate how second language (L2) productive vocabulary develops over time by targeting multiple dimensions of word knowledge. The research questions addressed were: a) How does the productive vocabulary of 11-12 year-old L2 learners in an intensive ESL program in Quebec develop over time with regard to vocabulary size, lexical richness, and lexical depth? and b) What similarities or differences can be observed between written vocabulary development and spoken vocabulary development? The study drew on a 58,000-word written corpus and a 28,000-word spoken corpus produced by 108 beginner-level francophone learners of English (11-12-year-olds). Data analyses were based on several measures which included counts of word families, percentages of 1K, 2K, and 3K+ words, types-per-family ratios, and counts of 2-word lexical bundles, all analyzed using the tools available at www.lextutor. ca. Two-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) with modality (written, oral) and time (T1, T2) as between-participants factor were used to compare the four learner corpora (written and oral at T1 and T2). Findings indicate that learners’ written vocabulary developed in all three dimensions (vocabulary size, lexical richness, and lexical depth), and that their spoken vocabulary improved only in lexical richness but showed no significant growth in size and lexical depth. The results suggest that overall learners performed better in written than in spoken modality, which could be attributed to a) task-specific effects, b) differences between spoken and written language access, and c) differences in the nature of spoken and written vocabulary used.
Comparing Elo, Glicko, IRT, and Bayesian IRT Statistical Models for Educational and Gaming Data

Statistical models used for estimating skill or ability levels often vary by field, however their underlying mathematical models can be very similar. Differences in the underlying models can be due to the need to accommodate data with different underlying formats and structure. As the models from varying fields increase in complexity, their ability to be applied to different types of data may have the ability to increase. Models that are applied to educational or psychological data have advanced to accommodate a wide range of data formats, including increased estimation accuracy with sparsely populated data matrices. Conversely, the field of online gaming has expanded over the last two decades to include the use of more complex statistical models to provide real-time game matching based on ability estimates. It can be useful to see how statistical models from educational and gaming fields compare as different datasets may benefit from different ability estimation procedures. This study compared statistical models typically used in game match making systems (Elo, Glicko) to models used in psychometric modeling (item response theory and Bayesian item response theory) using both simulated data and real data under a variety of conditions. Results indicated that conditions with small numbers of items or matches had the most accurate skill estimates using the Bayesian IRT (item response theory) one-parameter logistic (1PL) model, regardless of whether educational or gaming data were used. This held true for all sample sizes with small numbers of items. However, the Elo and the non-Bayesian IRT 1PL models were close to the Bayesian IRT 1PL model’s estimations for both gaming and educational data. While the 2PL models were not shown to be accurate for the gaming study conditions, the IRT 2PL and Bayesian IRT 2PL models outperformed the 1PL models when 2PL educational data were generated with the larger sample size and item condition. Overall, the Bayesian IRT 1PL model seemed to be the best choice across the smaller sample and match size conditions.
Lexical organisation in Chinese spoken word production : evidence from studies of homophones

The research reported in this thesis was designed to shed light on the nature of the functional lexical organisation in Mandarin Chinese spoken word production. Two main theoretical issues were investigated: The lexical representations of homophones in Chinese, and how activation is transmitted from lexical to phonological levels in Chinese spoken word production. The results of two experimental studies of word reading responses to homophones and non-homophonic words (matched for word frequency, and a range of other variables) found no effect of frequency inheritance, contrary to the hypothesis that homophones have a shared phonological representation. The results of six experimental studies that examined the priming of object naming times by the prior presentation of prime words of various relationships showed that there are clear direct effects of repetition, homophone, and phonological (atonal syllable) priming. However, the experiments found no homophone-to-semantic, phonological-to-semantic, or semantic-to-homophone mediated priming effects. These results offer no support for interactive processing models of Chinese word production. However, two experimental studies found that Chinese-English bilinguals show homophone priming of object naming that is mediated by the Chinese translation-equivalents of English prime words. The results of the research reported in this thesis support two general conclusions concerning the Chinese speech production system: homophones have independent lexical phonological representations, and the processing underlying spoken word production operates in a mainly serial and discrete manner.
Patent literature trends in Medline throughout 1965-2005

One of the most reliable ways to track science and technology activities is the study of scientific literature (journal articles, news, reviews, comments, letters, editorials, newspaper articles, etc.): co-authorship, citations, co-citations. Examining scientific literature underpins analysis of the scientific community and its structure in a given society, as well the motivations and networks of researchers.
A sub-mW MPEG-4 motion estimation processor core for mobile video application

This paper describes a sub-mW motion estimation processor core for MPEG-4 video encoding. It features a gradient descent search (GDS) algorithm that reduces required computational complexity to 15 MOPS. The GDS algorithm combined with a sub-block search method upgrades picture quality. The quality is almost equal to that of a full search method. An SIMD datapath architecture optimized for the algorithm decreases a clock frequency and supply voltage. A dedicated three-port SRAM macro for image data caches of the processor is newly designed to reduce power consumption. It has been fabricated with 0.18-/spl mu/m five-layer metal CMOS technology. The VLSI processing QCIF 15-f/s video consumes 0.4-mW power at 0.85-MHz clock frequency with 1.0-V supply voltage. It is applicable to mobile video applications.