Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
To context-aware learner modeling based on ontology

One of the main motivations for better learner modeling is to make distance learning system intelligent so that they can present adaptive learning content to each learner according to his needs. This aspect of intelligence is mainly ensured by the exploitation of the learner model. However, the multiplicity of information about the learner makes their modeling a very complex activity and constitutes an open line of research, which has given rise to several proposals from different points of view. In this trend, this paper presents a new context-aware learner modeling approach enriched from existing models and based on the exploitation of ontology.
The effects of music on hospitalised preterm neonates

The use of music to soothe babies predates written history (1). As more medically vulnerable infants survive, and spend long periods hospitalised, Developmental Care has evolved to optimise neurodevelopment. As part of the emergence of Developmental Care, medical research has reflected a growing interest in the role of music with hospitalised neonates, its effectiveness and the mechanisms by which it may change infant outcomes. Here (2), Anderson and Patel examined studies of musical interventions for hospitalised neonates, excluding reviews and meta-analyses. They chose ten articles that they perceived as methodologically rigorous, and summarised them to ‘highlight the most well-supported data’ (2). Based on these articles, they suggested that music had effects on behavioural and physiological infant metrics, ranging from reduced inconsolable crying to reduced resting energy expenditure. Further, the authors emphasised studies that explored the mechanisms by which music affects behavioural and physiological markers. It should be noted that the strength of the selected evidence varied (e.g. methodologies ranging from within-subject comparison designs to randomised controlled trials [RCTs]) and was not subject to a standardised measure of methodological rigour. A further consideration, as the authors note, is that the examined studies used a range of stimuli, from commercially available recordings to live parent performance. This methodological heterogeneity may have a considerable effect on outcomes. While previous meta-analyses and systematic reviews on this topic exist (3–6), this review took a neurodevelopmental perspective and highlighted only those studies that seemed most rigorous, based on author perception. However, in the absence of a replicable, standardised evaluation of methodological quality, and a systematic approach to study selection, the conclusions must be interpreted cautiously. The authors (2) highlighted pertinent directions for research – uncovering mechanisms by which music affects preterm infants and investigating long-term neurodevelopmental effects of musical interventions. They further emphasised the need for trained music therapists to deliver direct interventions and to avoid overstimulation of the infant. We would add that indirect interventions delivered by music therapists such as training parents to deliver infant-led musical stimulation may provide a safe and culturally responsive intervention and merits further research (7). With recent evidence suggesting that preterm neonates may be suffering from sensory deprivation (8,9), this review complements previous evidence (3–6) in suggesting that music therapy may moderate the effects of preterm birth on neurodevelopment. However, further investigation through well-designed and adequately powered RCTs, which give appropriate consideration to the nature of the musical stimuli provided, will be essential in establishing the shortand longterm effectiveness and safety of this intervention.
DialogWAE: Multimodal Response Generation with Conditional Wasserstein Auto-Encoder

Variational autoencoders~(VAEs) have shown a promise in data-driven conversation modeling. However, most VAE conversation models match the approximate posterior distribution over the latent variables to a simple prior such as standard normal distribution, thereby restricting the generated responses to a relatively simple (e.g., unimodal) scope. In this paper, we propose DialogWAE, a conditional Wasserstein autoencoder~(WAE) specially designed for dialogue modeling. Unlike VAEs that impose a simple distribution over the latent variables, DialogWAE models the distribution of data by training a GAN within the latent variable space. Specifically, our model samples from the prior and posterior distributions over the latent variables by transforming context-dependent random noise using neural networks and minimizes the Wasserstein distance between the two distributions. We further develop a Gaussian mixture prior network to enrich the latent space. Experiments on two popular datasets show that DialogWAE outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches in generating more coherent, informative and diverse responses.
Hardware Trojan attacks in embedded memory

Embedded memory, typically implemented with Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) technology, is an integral part of modern processors and System-on-Chips (SoCs). The reliability and integrity of embedded SRAM arrays are essential to ensure dependable and trustworthy computing. In the past, significant research has been conducted to develop automated test algorithms aimed at comprehensively detecting SRAM faults. While such tests have advanced our ability to detect manufacturing imperfection induced faults, they cannot ensure detection of deliberately implemented design modifications, also known as hardware Trojans, in an SRAM array by untrusted entities in the design and fabrication flow. Indeed, these attacks constitute an emerging concern, since they can affect the integrity of fabricated ICs and cause severe consequences in the field. While a growing body of research addresses Trojan attacks in logic circuits, little to no research has explored these attacks in embedded memory arrays. In this paper, for the first time to our knowledge, we propose a new class of hardware Trojans targeting embedded SRAM arrays. The Trojans are designed to evade industry standard post-manufacturing memory tests (e.g. March test) while enabling targeted data tampering after deployment. We demonstrate various forms of Trojan circuits in SRAM that cause diverse malicious effects and have diverse activation conditions while incurring minimal overhead in power, performance, and stability. Further, the proposed layouts preserve the SRAM cell footprint and incur negligible silicon area overhead.
Validation of the particle finite element method (PFEM) for simulation of free surface flows

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the possibilities of the particle finite element method for simulation of free surface flows.Design/methodology/approach – A numerical simulation of a number of examples for which experimental data are available is performed. The simulations are run using the same scale as the experiment in order to minimize errors due to scale effects. Some examples are chosen from the civil engineering field: a study of the flow over a flip bucket is analyzed for both 2D and 3D models, and the flow under a planar sluice gate is studied in 2D. Other examples, such as a 2D and 3D “dam break” with an obstacle are taken from the smooth particle hydrodynamics literature.Findings – Different scenarios are simulated by changing the boundary conditions for reproducing flows with the desired characteristics. Different mesh sizes are considered for evaluating their influence on the final solution.Originality/value – Details of the input data for all the examples studied are given.
Towards more robust chronologies of coastal progradation: Optically stimulated luminescence ages for the coastal plain at Moruya, south-eastern Australia

Accurate chronologies are fundamental for detailed analysis of palaeoenvironmental conditions, archaeological reconstructions and investigations of Holocene coastal morphological changes. Chronological data enable estimation of rates of shoreline progradation, and provide appropriate context for forecasting future coastal changes. A previously reported radiocarbon chronology for the Moruya coastal plain in south-eastern Australia indicated a decelerating overall rate of progradation with minimal net seaward shoreline movement in the past ~2500 years. Single-grain and multi-grain aliquot optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) analyses demonstrate that marine sands from this region have excellent luminescence characteristics. A series of OSL ages across this coastal barrier indicates a remarkably linear trend of Holocene shoreline progradation. The linear trend of seaward shoreline movement indicates that the barrier has grown at an average rate of 0.27 m/yr with successive ridge formation every ~110 years. The oldest ridge on the barrier appears to correspond to cessation of rapid post-glacial sea-level rise, and the large foredune at the seaward margin of the barrier is <400 years old. The contrast between the existing radiocarbon chronology and the OSL ages reported in this study implies the need for a more cautious interpretation of coastal barrier chronologies, in Australia and around the world, where they have been based on radiocarbon dating of shell hash.
Comparative Evaluation of Glibenclamide and Insulin on the Pups’ Liver Cytoarchitectonic Properties and Some Dams’ Parameters in Pregnant Streptozotocin-Induced Diabetic Rats

Despite the significant achievements in the treatment modalities and preventive measures, the prevalence of gestational diabetes in Africa has continued to rise exponentially in the last few decades. There is growing concern on the use of oral hypoglycemic agents (OHAs) during pregnancy, due to the potential of the agents in causing adverse effect (s) on the developing fetus and its effectiveness in managing the gestational diabetes mellitus. The objective of this study was to investigate the action of glibenclamide compared with insulin on pups’ liver cytoarchitectonic property and oxidative stress markers, and on maternal glucose level and sexual hormonal profile. Twenty pregnant female Sprague-Dawley rats (120-160 g) divided into 4 groups A, B, C and D (n=5 per group) were used for the study. Rats in group A (control) were given 0.5ml distilled water daily while the rats in groups B, C, and D were rendered diabetic by administration of intraperitoneal low-dose streptozotocin (STZ) and subsequently treated with 0.5mls of distilled water, glibenclamide (0.29 mg/kg body weight) and insulin (1 UI daily) respectively. Blood glucose levels were monitored and recorded throughout the experiment. The rats were sacrificed on the 19 th day of gestational period. The pups’ liver and maternal blood sample were collected for analysis. The glibenclamide and insulin groups showed significant ( p≤0.05 ) decreased in blood glucose with an increased maternal body weight when compared to the diabetic group. The activities of GSH, SOD and CAT were significantly increased ( p≤0.05 ) in the glibenclamide and insulin treated groups compared to the diabetic group. Also, MDA significantly reduced in the glibenclamide and insulin treated groups (C & D) when compared to the diabetic untreated group (B) with the greater reduction observed for insulin. There was an improvement in the hormonal profiles of glibenclamide and insulin treated groups compared with the diabetic group. Histologically, glibenclamide and insulin showed an improvement in the arrangement of cytoarchitectonic property of pups’ liver with mild steatosis compared with diabetic group. Based on our observations in this study, it was concluded that glibenclamide is as effective as insulin with no or little negative effect and could be an optional drug to be used in the treatment of gestational diabetes mellitus in place of insulin.
Exploring Object-Centric and Scene-Centric CNN Features and Their Complementarity for Human Rights Violations Recognition in Images

Identifying potential abuses of human rights through imagery is a novel and challenging task in the field of computer vision, which will enable to expose human rights violations over large-scale data that may otherwise be impossible. While standard databases for object and scene categorization contain hundreds of different classes, the largest available dataset of human rights violations contains only four classes. Here, we introduce the human rights archive (HRA) database, a verified-by-experts repository of 3050 human rights violations photographs, labeled with human rights semantic categories, comprising a list of the types of human rights abuses encountered at present. With the HRA dataset and a two-phase transfer learning scheme, we fine-tuned the state-of-the-art deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to provide human rights violations classification CNNs. We also present extensive experiments refined to evaluate how well object-centric and scene-centric CNN features can be combined for the task of recognizing human rights abuses. With this, we show that the HRA database poses a challenge at a higher level for the well-studied representation learning methods and provide a benchmark in the task of human rights violations recognition in visual context. We expect that this dataset can help to open up new horizons on creating systems that are able to recognize rich information about human rights violations.
Flow and Hydraulics near the Sill of Hood Canal, a Strongly Sheared, Continuously Stratified Fjord

Abstract Hood Canal, a long fjord in Washington State, has strong tides but limited deep-water renewal landward of a complex constriction. Tide-resolving hydrographic and velocity observations at the constriction, with a depth-cycling towed body, varied markedly during three consecutive years, partly because of stratification variations. To determine whether hydraulic control is generally important and to interpret observations of lee waves, blocking, and other features, hydraulic criticality is estimated over full tidal cycles for channel wide internal wave modes 1, 2, and 3, at five cross-channel sections, using mode speeds from the extended Taylor–Goldstein equation. These modes were strongly supercritical during most of ebb and flood on the gentle seaward sill face and for part of flood at the base of the steep landward side. Examining local criticality along the thalweg found repeated changes between mode 1 being critical and supercritical approaching the sill crest during flood, unsurprising given l.
Switching from biosimilar (Basalin) to originator (Lantus) insulin glargine is effective in Chinese patients with diabetes mellitus: a retrospective chart review

Background: This study investigated the effectiveness and safety of switching from Basalin® to Lantus® in Chinese patients with diabetes mellitus (DM). Methods: A retrospective chart review conducted using the electronic medical records of patients hospitalized at the Qingdao Endocrine and Diabetes Hospital from 2005 to 2016. All patients were diagnosed with DM and underwent switching of insulin from Basalin to Lantus during hospitalization. Data collected included fasting (FBG), pre- and post-prandial whole blood glucose, insulin dose, reasons for insulin switching and hypoglycemia. Four study time points were defined as: hospital admission, Basalin initiation, insulin switching (date of final dose of Basalin), and hospital discharge. Blood glucose measurements were imputed as the values recorded closest to the dates of these four time points for each patient. Results: Data from 73 patients (70 patients with type 2 diabetes, 2 with type 1, and 1 undisclosed) were analyzed. At admission, mean glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) and FBG were 8.9% (SD=1.75) and 9.98 (3.22) mmol/L, respectively. Between Basalin initiation and insulin switch, mean FBG decreased from 9.68 mmol/L to 8.03 mmol/L (p<0.0001), over a mean 10.8 (SD=6.85) days of Basalin treatment, and reduced further to 7.30 mmol/L at discharge (p=0.0116) following a mean 6.6 (7.36) days of Lantus. The final doses of Basalin and Lantus were similar (0.23 vs. 0.24 IU/kg/day; p=0.2409). Furthermore, reductions in pre- and post-prandial blood glucose were also observed between Basalin initiation, insulin switch and hospital discharge. The incidence of confirmed hypoglycemia was low during Basalin (2 [2.4%]) and Lantus (1 [1.2%]) treatment, with no cases of severe hypoglycemia. Conclusion: In this study population, switching from Basalin to Lantus was associated with further reductions in blood glucose, although the dose of insulin glargine did not increase. Further studies are required to verify these findings and determine the reason for this phenomenon.
Self-care Education Needs in Gestational Diabetes Tailored to the Iranian Culture: A Qualitative Content Analysis

Background: Gestational diabetes is one of the most common health problems in pregnancy that requires participation through self-care to reduce the maternal and neonatal complications. The present study aimed to determine the needs of women as an essential first step to formulate a self-care guide fitting the Iranian culture. Materials and Methods: The present qualitative study was conducted through interviews with 13 diabetic pregnant women and 10 care providers using semi-structured questionnaires in several cities of Iran in 2016. Further, the data analysis was performed using conventional content analysis. In addition, purposive sampling was performed at the diabetes clinic of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Imam Reza Hospital, and health centers across Kermanshah, Shahroud, and Tehran. Results: In the present qualitative content analysis study, four themes were identified: awareness and ability (knowing diabetes, mothers training and empowerment, continuity and quality, information resources), lifestyle (healthy diet, physical activity), mental health (counseling, interaction, spirituality, and religion), and supportive family (the husband's unique role, the psychological atmosphere at home). Conclusions: The present study highlighted main aspects of self-care educational/supportive needs, specifically in the domains of lifestyle, awareness and capability, mental health, and family. The results of our analysis highlighted the needs that can be useful for developing comprehensive self-care educational programs, with a higher focus on physical activity, mental health, the role of the family, and the use of religious interests.
Heavy Chronic Ethanol Exposure From Adolescence to Adulthood Induces Cerebellar Neuronal Loss and Motor Function Damage in Female Rats

Over the last years, heavy ethanol consumption by teenagers/younger adults has increased considerably among females. However, few studies have addressed the long-term impact on brain structures’ morphology and function of chronic exposure to high ethanol doses from adolescence to adulthood in females. In line with this idea, in the current study we investigated whether heavy chronic ethanol exposure during adolescence to adulthood may induce motor impairments and morphological and cellular alterations in the cerebellum of female rats. Adolescent female Wistar rats (35 days old) were treated with distilled water or ethanol (6.5 g/kg/day, 22.5% w/v) during 55 days by gavage. At 90 days of age, motor function of animals was assessed using open field (OF), pole, beam walking and rotarod tests. Following completion of behavioral tests, morphological and immunohistochemical analyses of the cerebellum were performed. Chronic ethanol exposure impaired significantly motor performance of female rats, inducing spontaneous locomotor activity deficits, bradykinesia, incoordination and motor learning disruption. Moreover, histological analysis revealed that ethanol exposure induced atrophy and neuronal loss in the cerebellum. These findings indicate that heavy ethanol exposure during adolescence is associated with long-lasting cerebellar degeneration and motor impairments in female rats.
AUGUR: Forecasting the Emergence of New Research Topics

Being able to rapidly recognise new research trends is strategic for many stakeholders, including universities, institutional funding bodies, academic publishers and companies. The literature presents several approaches to identifying the emergence of new research topics, which rely on the assumption that the topic is already exhibiting a certain degree of popularity and consistently referred to by a community of researchers. However, detecting the emergence of a new research area at an embryonic stage, i.e., before the topic has been consistently labelled by a community of researchers and associated with a number of publications, is still an open challenge. We address this issue by introducing Augur, a novel approach to the early detection of research topics. Augur analyses the diachronic relationships between research areas and is able to detect clusters of topics that exhibit dynamics correlated with the emergence of new research topics. Here we also present the Advanced Clique Percolation Method (ACPM), a new community detection algorithm developed specifically for supporting this task. Augur was evaluated on a gold standard of 1,408 debutant topics in the 2000-2011 interval and outperformed four alternative approaches in terms of both precision and recall.
Physiology and modeling of mechanisms of silver uptake and toxicity in fish

In this review, we outline the physiological and toxicological effects of silver (Ag) in freshwater and marine fish. For freshwater fish, the acute toxicity of Ag appears to be caused solely by ionic Ag+ interacting at the gills, inhibiting basolateral Na+, K+‐ATPase activity. Disruption of this enzyme inhibits active Na+ and Cl− uptake and therefore osmoregulation by the fish. Silver is much less toxic to marine fish, mainly because ionic Ag+ is complexed by Cl−, but the mechanisms of acute toxicity and the toxic species of Ag are poorly understood. Osmoregulatory failure occurs in marine fish exposed to high concentrations of Ag, and the intestine appears to be a primary toxic site of action, perhaps along with a gill component. Modeling approaches to calculate Ag interactions at biological surfaces are used to illustrate the effects of water chemistry on Ag speciation and therefore toxicity to freshwater and marine fish. In these models, the most important components affecting Ag speciation are the complexing agents Cl− and dissolved organic matter followed by the competing agents Na+ and Ca2+, although a particulate component may be important to incorporate into the models in future. More precise knowledge of the actual toxic sites of Ag is necessary if we are to fully understand the effects of waterborne Ag in the environment.