Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Email communications in team writing projects.

Nystrand's social interactive model of writing (1989) describes composing as a social construct between the reader and writer. Although many researchers are debating whether the language of computer mediated communication (CMC) veers towards written or spoken discourse, or has developed a style of its own (e.g. Baron 1998, 2001; Ferrara et al. 1991; Harrison 2000a; Yates 1996), genre now plays an important role in fixity of documents in a digital medium (Yates and Sumner 1997). I therefore analysed the adaptations in linguistic 'style' of email writing as a non intrusive means to study social-interactive behaviour in networked team writing projects. Based on the premise that socio-emotional communications benefit team performance (Argyle 1994; Barker et al. 2000; Hyland 1998; Panteli 2004), I tested the concept that social interactive adaptations in email writing describe the social-task balance on projects and are reflected in the social interactivity applied to the team writing of the document. Communication markers and writing influences were extracted from email content analysis to compare academic and commercial writing projects. Evaluating documents with Sless's social desirability model (2004) showed a parallelism between the social-task balance described by team emails and social desirability of the final documents. Further studies are required to prove this concept.Social interactive adaptations demonstrated in socio-emotional behaviour in the emails of the academic project were also demonstrated in the final document. Higher pro-social behaviour was represented in Dutch emails in the academic project, and in English emails in the commercial project. Face to face contact influenced pro-social CMC behaviour and perceptions of behaviour. The methodology provides a standard, unintrusive tool for monitoring the social dimensions of projects to identify and correct problem areas, and to research multiple contexts and inform more broadly on professional practice. Relating the social-task dimensions to document evaluations is the first step towards a causal model, to understand how team culture can influence virtual team writing. The merging of personal and professional email styles predicted by Danet (2001a) is already apparent in communications from the academic context. Findings suggest that to encourage informal exchange of ideas and improve socio-emotional relations, professional email communications would benefit from a more conversational style.
Characterization of Respiratory Conditions Using Labview and Digital Spirometer

One of the effective ways to diagnose various respiratory diseases is using spirometry test. Good spirometer comes with excellent graphical user interface. Spirometer is used to measure lung parameters such as Forced Expiratory Volume in the first second and the sixth seconds (FEV1 and FEV6). This paper presents an algorithm with Graphical User Interface (GUI) for characterization of respiratory conditions using LabVIEW Software. The whole spirometry system consists of a breathing circuitry with pressure sensor and a data acquisition board (NI sbRIO FPGA board). Results obtained from three different volunteers with different health performances are also presented in this paper. The FEV1/FEV6 ratio of a healthy volunteer is 81.1%, an asthma volunteer is 72.04%, and suspected bronchitis volunteer is 33.4%. Based on these results, the unhealthy volunteers tend to have smaller value of FEV1 with lower area under the curve when compared to healthy volunteer.
Low-noise active-RC low-, high- and band-pass allpole filters using impedance tapering

It is shown that low-sensitivity active resistance-capacitance (RC) filters are also low in output thermal noise. The design procedure of second- and third-order low-sensitivity allpole filters, using impedance tapering, has already been published. The component values selected for impedance tapering account for the considerable decrease in output thermal noise. The method of Zurada and Bialko (1975) was used to determine output noise spectral density and total RMS output noise of filters. Passive elements and operational amplifiers are represented by substitute noise models. The noise contribution of each device to the output node is calculated using noise transfer functions. The noise analysis was performed on the second-order (class 4) Sallen and Key low-pass, high-pass and band-pass filter sections using MATLAB. The extension to third- and higher-order filters follows the same principles. It was found that the filters with minimum noise coincide with the filters with minimum sensitivity to component tolerances.
STREAMING CONTENT DISTRIBUTION NETWORKS WITH MINIMUM DELIVERY COST

A Content Distribution Network, or CDN, is a system to improve the delivery of content to the end users (or clients) in the Internet, in which popular content may be cached or replicated at a number of servers, placed closer to some of the client populations. The design of a CDN consists of defining: (a) which content should be replicated at each server (server content), (b) the number of servers and where they should be placed in the network (server placement), (c) which server a client's requests should be sent to (server selection) and (d) how the server responses should be routed to the clients (routing). CDNs were originally designed for traditional web files (i.e., HTML, image files). However, given the increase in streaming media (i.e., video and audio) content in the Internet, the development of efficient CDN design methods that take into account the special characteristics of media objects is of great interest. These characteristics include the sustained high bandwidth requirements and the new and complex tradeoffs introduced by multicast delivery. The main goal of this thesis is to develop methods for designing streaming media CDNs with (near) minimum delivery cost, where the delivery cost includes both the server and the network bandwidth costs. We propose and evaluate a new simple minimum cost caching algorithm for conventional CDNs that use unicast delivery. We also develop cost models to determine the optimal server content, server placement and routing for scalable CDNs that use multicast delivery, and new approximate algorithms for determining the near optimal server placement and routing for scalable CDNs. In order to develop the cost models and to evaluate our solutions, a reasonably small set of system and workload parameters that have primary impact on a CDN delivery cost are
Engaging Learner Diversity through Learning by Design

Diversity is a key issue in education not only because of ongoing inequalities in student learning outcomes but also because of the importance of supporting each individual to reach his/her potential to contribute to national economic prosperity, individual well-being and social cohesion. Through an ethnographical approach, this research investigates how the Learning by Design pedagogy, developed by Kalantzis & Cope, addresses diversity in two Year 8 (students aged 14 years) classrooms in Australia. Student and teacher perspectives emphasize the importance of incorporating students' lifeworlds and their individual attributes in learning designs, of scaffolding learning, creating student agency, including challenge and intellectual quality, and providing a metalanguage for students to participate in their learning.
Sentiment Mining of Community Development Program Evaluation Based on Social Media

It is crucial to support community-oriented services for youth awareness in the social media with knowledge extraction, which would be useful for both government agencies and community group of interest for program evaluation. This work provided to formulate effective evaluation on community development program and addressing them to a correct action. By using classification based SVM, evaluation of the achievement level conducted in both quantitative and qualitative analysis, particularly to conclude which activities has high success rate. By using social media based activities, this study searched the sentiment analysis from every activities comments based on their tweet. First, we kicked off preprocessing stage, reducing feature space by using principle of component analysis and estimate parameters for classification purposes. Second, we modeled activity classification by using support vector machine. At last, set term score by calculating term frequency, which combined with term sentiment scores based on lexicon.The result shows that models provided sentiment summarization that point out the success level of positive sentiment.
Multi-disciplinary planning in health care: a review

Multi-disciplinary planning in health care is an emerging research field that applies to many health care areas with similar underlying planning characteristics. We provide a review of the literature and describe cross-relations between different applications. We identify multiple fields to classify the literature upon. These fields relate to the system characteristics, decision characteristics, and applicability. The relevant papers for each of these fields are discussed, which provides a broad and thorough overview of the present research, and guides readers towards identifying the applicable literature for their research based on the characteristics of their problem. Furthermore, we disclose research gaps and present open challenges for further research.
The smartphone as a snapshot of its use: Mobile media elicitation in qualitative interviews

Smartphones are increasingly used to advance mobile media methods. The devices’ capabilities to automatically log behavioural data as well as the integration of this log data into qualitative interviews for elicitation purposes promise increased validity. The paper argues that despite recent efforts in mixed methods, the methodological potential of the personalized user interfaces of smartphones has been overlooked. As these smartphone interfaces are the result of continuous personalization processes, they can be seen as snapshots of the phone’s current use. Thus, this form of data should have strong explanatory powers for understanding the related mobile media practices. The paper discusses the implications of this interface-based approach with two example studies where smartphone interfaces were integrated into qualitative interviews. It concludes that the approach is a useful addition to existing mobile media methods and enforces the notion that researchers need to discover new forms of data.
Repetitive control of power conversion system from a distributed generator to the utility grid

An AC-DC-AC converter is employed as an interface between a distributed generator and the utility grid. A corresponding control system for the converter is proposed to offer good waveform quality of a local grid where a large proportion of the load is non-linear, and to regulate the exported power as well. The control system consists of two nested loops. In the inner loop, a voltage controller based on repetitive control and H/sup /spl infin// control is used to achieve good waveform tracking. Decoupling control is used in the outer loop to control active power (P) and reactive power (Q) accurately and independently. A PLL (phase-locked loop) is used to synchronise the conversion system It also identifies the fundamental frequency voltage magnitude of the utility grid and generates quadrature voltage signals which are used for the control system.
On-line arithmetic modules for recursive digital filters

An online multiply-add (MA) module is designed for implementing second-order direct-form IIR filters. The MA module is implemented in a 0.7- mu m HCMOS gate array technology. An array of MA modules is developed to perform the second-order recursive computations at 128 Msamples/s with two levels of scattered lookahead. A conventional (bit-parallel) design using similar lookahead is implemented in the same technology. The 104-Msample/s conventional design implements a carry-free recursive loop and uses radix-4 recoding to reduce the number of partial products. The online array has a sampling rate higher than the conventional implementation for 12 or more bits. <<ETX>>
Comparison between the application of the conventional mine planning and of the direct block scheduling on an open pit mine Project

Historically, since the 60's, traditional mine planning consists of several distinct stages: 1) Definition of the ultimate pit the portion of the blocks that results in the greatest total value; 2) Pushback selection based on the generation of nested pits, obtained with the change in the value of the ore price; 3) Long-term production scheduling. Although considered quite satisfactory, this methodology presents some flaws: The stages, even if considered individually optimal, may not be when put together. The opportunity cost is not considered and the cut-off is fixed. Due to the recent computational advances, a new technique has been growing and is more reliable: the direct block sequencing. In this methodology, the steps are consolidated into only one process, improving the economic results, reducing the total execution time and obtaining, in fact, an optimal planning. The aim of this work is to compare the results of the two planning methods applied in a database of a Brazilian iron ore mine and to show the real advantages and disadvantages of each one. To solve the direct block sequencing technique, Doppler was used, a tool developed by Delphos Mine Planning Laboratory, located at the University of Chile. The traditional methodology was executed through Whittle software. Lastly, a medium-term scheduling was performed using Deswik software.
Measuring Perceived Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction for Service Managers: The case of the Lebanese Retail Banking Industry

Abstract:As an economic pillar, the high quality banking service in Lebanon is the highest single contributor to the GDP. This Lebanese service-based sector was neither investigated for the quality of banking services from the customers' perspective, nor for analyzing the key strategic advantage of customer satisfaction in this highly competitive sector. Based on Cronin & Taylor's (1992) SERVPERF, this study analyses the customer perceived service quality's effect on the bank customers' satisfaction, and suggests a novel model to measure perceived service quality that is culture and industry-specific, and includes online banking. The tool is tested with 1049 respondents providing thorough statistical evidence that culminate into putting forth a developed model of the original SERVPERF labelled the Lebanese Bank Quality Tool (LEBANKQUAL).
COMPUTER-MEDIATED CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK AND LANGUAGE ACCURACY IN TELECOLLABORATIVE EXCHANGES

We build on this growing body of research by presenting the findings of a three-monthlong research project that explored the impact of peer feedback on the development of learner accuracy. Our aim was to study participants’ attention to form and the relative effectiveness of error correction strategies. In order to do so, we organised an e-mail exchange between seventeen post-secondary learners of Spanish and German. Data consist of exchanges between the five dyads who completed the full three-month project. As suggested by Vinagre and Lera (2008), analysis of these data indicate that despite frequent use of error correction, the use of remediation led to a higher percentage of errors recycled and was more conducive to error recycling in later language production.
Training Learners to Self-Explain: Designing Instructions and Examples to Improve Problem Solving

In this experiment, we integrated two learning methods – subgoal learning and constructive learning – to explore their interactions and effects on solving computer programming problems. We taught learners to solve problems using worked example and practice problem pairs with one of three kinds of instructional design that either did not highlight the subgoals, described the subgoals, or prompted participants to describe the subgoals for themselves. In addition, we varied the distance of transfer between the worked example and practice problem pairs. We found that instructions that highlighted subgoals improved performance on later problem solving tasks. The groups that performed best were those that received subgoal descriptions with farther transfer between examples and practice problems and those that described subgoals for themselves with nearer transfer.
A look into the future of radar scattering research and development

In estimating future trends in radar scattering research and development, the authors take the view that the dynamics of progress and change will be governed largely by user demands. Emerging developments in radar for space applications, reflectivity from plasma and other permeable bodies, object resolution and recognition, and synthesis of radar cross-section characteristics will in the main stimulate and constrain the direction of future scattering research. The authors speculate on the likely contributions to be expected from known theoretical and experimental approaches to scattering problems. The relative merits of quasi-optical approximation, boundary value solutions, and integral equation formulations suitable for high-speed digital computers are examined. The scientific frontier includes the response of targets to partially coherent electromagnetic waves and the resolution and identification of distributed and statistically representable objects by tomorrow's data processing radar sensors. Available techniques needed to control or modify the diffraction and scatter of targets are discussed in terms of future requirements assuming that objects with resonant dimensions and composed of complex materials will be of growing importance. Promising experimental methods are evaluated which will be of aid in attacking such difficult problems as plasma reflectivity, bistatic characteristics of extended targets, and near zone scattering. It is anticipated that the electromagnetic scattering properties of matter in shaped and distributed form will provide the essential information needed for space exploration and many vital military operations.
Libguides : a portal to the next dimension of library instruction

Traditionally, librarians have used printed, and more recently, online library guides to provide assistance and guidance to students about resources relevant to a specific subject or discipline area. The creation involves a significant amount of duplication of effort and the ongoing maintenance is often labour intensive. The Central Queensland University (CQU) Library has now embarked upon improving the process and is using Learning Objects to duplicate the more common content found within online library instruction. However, the time still spent formatting and publishing web pages has led to an investigation for a solution to this problem. The increasing presence and popularity of Web 2.0 technologies along with a move towards self directed learning has created a nexus which librarians can use to advantage. This situation allows for the creation of online instructional material which delivers synchronous as well as asynchronous media-rich library assistance. CQU Library has investigated various Web 2.0 technologies, as well as the literature relating to their use in academic libraries. As a result of this investigation, we discovered Libguides. As a Web 2.0 application, built specifically for libraries, Libguides enables librarians to incorporate learning objects, videos, RSS feeds, podcasts, polls and user comments into a library guide, without having HTML or Javascript expertise. This paper will outline CQU Library’s journey from the initial discovery of Libguides, through the investigation into the pedagogical implications of using this type of tool, along the testing and evaluation path and finally to the creation of the first library guide. As the door opens to a new world of
Modelling the Variability of Evolutionary Processes

The evolutionary processes that act at the molecular level are highly variable. For example, the substitution rates and the natural selection regimes vary extensively during the course of evolution and across sequence sites. This chapter describes the mathematical tools and concepts to describe and understand these variations. We show how the standard Markov models of sequence evolution are extended through mixture models to account for variability among sites, and how the mixture approach is further generalised by Markov-modulated Markov models (MMM) to incorporate variability among lineages. We illustrate these models using data sets from plants and human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1). Both data sets are processed under the 3-component mixture codon-based model of Nielsen and Yang (1998) and its MMM extension (Guindon, 2004). We show that these models allow to get insight into important biological features such as positively selected sites at the surface of the envelope protein of HIV-1 and site-specific changes within selection regimes correlated to duplication events in plant genes.
Option Return Predictability, A Machine-Learning Approach

We apply the Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) to make option return forecasts using 101 signals as candidate predictors. We investigate the entire option universe from January 1996 to December 2016. We hold the options till maturity and buy the options from inception with corresponding positions in the underlying stocks to establish a delta-hedge. Our LASSO results yield delta-hedged trading strategies with annualized Sharpe Ratios above 1 for at-the-money calls and puts with 30 days-to-maturity. The LASSO selected predictors also work well out-of-sample. The LASSO selected predictors are different if we restrict our attention to options of different moneyness or maturities (30-, 60-, or 90-day). Overall, the results emphasize the importance of Capital gains overhang in predicting options returns, as it is one of the most frequently selected characteristics, in addition to lagged one month return of the underlying stock and 12 month momentum of the stock, institutional ownership, Standardized Unexplained Volume, cash-to-asset ratio and book-to-market ratio.
Understanding information culture: Conceptual and implementation issues

Information culture is a concept with multiple and sometimes conflicting definitions. Nevertheless at a time when social and cognitive aspects of information and communication systems are recognized as being of similar signif - icance as the technological functionality, the concept of information culture is demonstrating considerable value. This paper explains the concept of information culture and considers its value from two main perspectives: firstly as providing an analytical tool, and secondly as a means of providing practitioners with insight and sensitivity to the organisational contexts of their workplaces.
Implementation and evaluation of a reactive multi-robot system

This paper presents the implementation of an experimental setup to study the behavior of a group of purely reactive mobile robots subject to serious unrecoverable failures: some of them have lost mobility, others have lost infrared vision. To survive, each robot must reach a supply center. The eventually degraded mission uses complementary capabilities of the two types of robots by letting a blind robot, meeting by chance an invalid one, carry it. The latter is able to "see" a supply center within a wide range. The hardware and software of the experimental devices are described, using very simple and low-cost components. Experiments are run with the robots in different initial positions. The results are compared to those obtained by many computer simulations and by a Markovian process model, both are also described.