Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Curvature-based Scheme for Improving Road Vehicle Guidance by Computer Vision

An efficient method for guiding high speed land vehicles along roadways by computer vision has been developed and demonstrated with image sequence processing hardware in a real-time simulation loop 1. The approach is tailored to a well structured highway environment with good lanemarkings. Contour correlation and high order world models are the basic elements of the method, realised in a special multi-microprocessor (on board) computer system. Perspec-tive projection and dynamical models (Kalman filter) are used in an integrated approach for the design of the visual feedback control system. By determining road curvature explicity from the visual input, previously encountered steady state errors in curves are eliminated. The performance of the system will be demonstrated by a video film. The operation of the image sequence processing system has been tested on a typical Autobahn-scene at velocities up to 100 km/h.
adabag: An R Package for Classification with Boosting and Bagging

Boosting and bagging are two widely used ensemble methods for classification. Their common goal is to improve the accuracy of a classifier combining single classifiers which are slightly better than random guessing. Among the family of boosting algorithms, AdaBoost (adaptive boosting) is the best known, although it is suitable only for dichotomous tasks. AdaBoost.M1 and SAMME (stagewise additive modeling using a multi-class exponential loss function) are two easy and natural extensions to the general case of two or more classes. In this paper, the adabag R package is introduced. This version implements AdaBoost.M1, SAMME and bagging algorithms with classification trees as base classifiers. Once the ensembles have been trained, they can be used to predict the class of new samples. The accuracy of these classifiers can be estimated in a separated data set or through cross validation. Moreover, the evolution of the error as the ensemble grows can be analysed and the ensemble can be pruned. In addition, the margin in the class prediction and the probability of each class for the observations can be calculated. Finally, several classic examples in classification literature are shown to illustrate the use of this package.
On the Stability of Slotted ALOHA Systems

In this correspondence we prove the following properties of the stability of the finite population model of slotted ALOHA systems. 1) The input-output packet flow balance principle [1] and the concept of expected drift [2] used for the stability analysis of the slotted ALOHA system are mathemtaically equivalent. 2) The slotted ALOHA system can only have either one stable equilibrium point or three equilibrium points, with the first one and the third one stable and the second one unstable. 3) If the retransmission probability (which is assumed to be greater than the probability of new packet generation) is less than or equal to 2/N , where N is the total number of active users in the system, then the system has only one stable equilibrium point.
Conversation and Community: Chat in a Virtual World

From the Publisher: Conversation and Community: Discourse in a Social MUD is an examination of the Speech community in an Internet "virtual community". Based on ethnographic research on a community of users of a MUD. or "multi-user dimension", the book describes a closeknit community united in features of their language use, shared history, and relationships to other online communities. Routines, conventional vocabulary, and abbreviations, syntactic and semantic phenomena, and special turn-taking and repair strategies distinguish the MUD community's register. Discussion of methods and ethics for online research are included.
Pre-service teachers' use of technology to create instructional materials: a school-college partnership

Abstract The field experience component has always been a vital part of teacher education programs (Paese, 1989). This article describes collaborative work designed to give an opportunity to pre-service teachers to mesh theory with practice in an instructional material preparation course. Pre-service teachers were assigned to complete a computer project, which will be used to support classroom lessons. These projects were supervised by the classroom teachers at the basic education schools and the supervising professor at the College of Education. As a result of this collaborative work, pre-service teachers and classroom teachers practiced developing instructional materials and integrating technology in subject content areas, became more comfortable with the technology and developed greater proficiency in their computer use
Cold frontal structure derived from radar wind profilers

Colocated UHF and VHF wind profiler radars have been operated during the passage of a sharp cold front. The results demonstrate the utility of the profilers, in conjunction with a conceptual model, for identifying and quantifying many of the features commonly associated with such fronts: low‐level and upper‐level jets, and rearward‐sloping warm‐conveyor‐belt flow with underlying rear‐inflow. The UHF radar detected much of the transverse circulation and also the vertical distribution of precipitation, including a possible region of evaporation associated with the dry rear‐inflow jet. The VHF radar, in addition to extending the velocity measurements above the level of the precipitation, mapped the tropopause and, in particular, identified a tropopause fold, the position of which corresponded to the origin of the rear‐inflow jet detected by both profilers. Copyright © 1998 Royal Meteorological Society
Testing of an Indoor Air Cleaner for Particulate Pollutants under Realistic Conditions in an Office Room

Mobile air cleaners have been gaining popularity as potentially effective tools for improving indoor air quality. Usually, the efficacy of an air cleaner is quantified by determination of the clean air delivery rate (CADR) under strictly defined conditions within test chambers lacking furniture and featuring adequate and homogeneous mixing of the test aerosol. By contrast, real-world scenarios may considerably differ from these conditions, resulting in adverse consequences, as a less homogeneous distribution of the cleaned air may produce spatial differences in the CADR and lead to lower overall efficacy for the air cleaner. Therefore, in this study, the spatial variance of a mobile air purifier’s cleaning efficacy across several positions in a furnished and in-use office room was investigated for four different scenarios, in each of which the air cleaner was placed in a different position inside the room. Ambient outdoor air was supplied as target aerosol by opening a window prior to the measurements, and the local CADR was calculated based on the decay rate of the lung-deposited surface area (LDSA) concentration. It was found that the relative decay of the LDSA concentration was almost identical for all of the measuring points throughout the room, hinting at a homogeneous distribution of the cleaned air. Varying the position of the air cleaner in the room resulted in only minor differences, except when the device was placed in an intentionally unfavourable location under a desk, which significantly reduced the cleaning efficacy. Despite the high spatial homogeneity, the CADR in the office room was significantly lower than the one determined according to the Chinese standard GB/T 18801-2015 in a standardized test chamber, which is presumably mainly attributable to the differing size distributions of the realistic and the standard test aerosol.
Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy testing on the Advanced Technology Development Program lithium-ion cells

The US DOE Advanced Technology Development (ATD) Program is investigating electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) as a new measure of cell degradation. As part of the program, the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) is aging 18650-size cells using cycle-life tests developed under the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, which has been superseded by FreedomCAR in January 2002. At the beginning of life and every four weeks thereafter, cycle-life testing is interrupted for reference performance tests (RPT) to assess the capacity and power fade rates. The EIS impedance is measured at 60% state-of-charge over a range of frequencies at each RPT. The resulting Nyquist plots show that the two semi-circles, representing the anode and cathode impedance growth, are poorly resolved due to the influence of the high frequency capacitive tail and the low-frequency Warburg impedance. However, impedance growth is clearly visible at the trough frequency of the second semi-circle. The magnitude at this frequency is comparable to the standard measure of cell degradation, which is based on the percent-fade in power as a function of test time while delivering 300 Wh. The percent growth in EIS magnitude at the trough frequency highly correlates with the power fade. This suggests that the EIS test is a useful alternate measure of cell degradation.
Implication of Course Context and Learning Style on Adaptive Educational Hypermedia System Design in Higher Education

As a key research area of E-learning Adaptive educational hypermedia system (AEHS) often takes into account the different aspects that influence the learning preference. However, adaptation based on the context of course/subject itself is seldom if not never considered. The study was conducted using a questionnaire on 73 undergraduate students from University of Malays. This paper aim to compare student’s learning preference with regards to individual learning style and context of 3 courses. Data analysis was done to assess the association of both learning style and course context with the learning preference of undergraduate students. The results shown that course context has more significant outcome as compared to learning style. Therefore, apart from individual learning styles, course context should be considered as well when developing an AEHS.
Corrective Feedback in L2 Writing: Theoretical Perspectives, Empirical Insights, and Future Directions

The role of (written) corrective feedback (CF) in the process of acquiring a second language (L2) has been an issue of considerable controversy among theorists and researchers alike. Although CF is a widely applied pedagogical tool and its use finds support in SLA theory, practical and theoretical objections to its usefulness have been raised (e.g. Truscott, 1996; 1999; 2004; 2007; 2009). In the present paper, I start by summarizing the theoretical arguments underpinning the use of CF in L2 classrooms. Subsequently, the objections raised against error correction are reviewed, and some controversies concerning different CF methodologies and error types are discussed. Next, the paper provides a critical summary of the findings produced by empirical work to date, and sketches out some of the issues that need to be attended to in future research. Based on the available empirical evidence, I conclude that, by offering learners opportunities to notice the gaps in their developing L2 systems, test interlanguage hypotheses, and engage in metalinguistic reflection, written CF has the ability to foster SLA and to lead to accuracy development.
Management Strategies for Complex Adaptive Systems Sensemaking, Learning, and Improvisation

Misspecification of the nature of organizations may be a major reason for difficulty in achieving performance improvement. Organizations are often viewed as machine-like, but complexity science suggests that organizations should be viewed as complex adaptive systems. I identify the characteristics of complex adaptive systems and give examples of management errors that may be made when these characteristics are ignored. Command, control and planning are presented as managerial tasks that come to the fore when a machine view of organizations dominates thinking. When we treat organizations as complex adaptive systems the focus of managerial activity changes, and sensemaking, learning and improvisation become appropriate strategies for performance improvement. Each of these is defined and described. A modest research agenda is presented.
A Review of Theoretical Perspectives in Cognitive Science on the Presence of Scaling in Coordinated Physiological and Cognitive Processes

Time series of human performances present fluctuations around a mean value. These fluctuations are typically considered as insignificant, and attributable to random noise. Over recent decades, it became clear that temporal fluctuations possess interesting properties, however, one of which the property of fractal 1/f scaling. 1/f scaling indicates that a measured process extends over a wide range of timescales, suggesting an assembly over multiple scales simultaneously. This paper reviews neurological, physiological, and cognitive studies that corroborate the claim that 1/f scaling is most clearly present in healthy, well-coordinated activities. Prominent hypotheses about the origins of 1/f scaling are confronted with these reviewed studies. It is concluded that 1/f scaling in living systems appears to reflect their genuine complex nature, rather than constituting a coincidental side-effect. The consequences of fractal dynamics extending from the small spatial and temporal scales (e.g., neurons) to the larger scales of human behavior and cognition, are vast, and impact the way in which relevant research questions may be approached. Rather than focusing on specialized isolable subsystems, using additive linear methodologies, nonlinear dynamics, more elegantly so, imply a complex systems methodology, thereby exploiting, rather than rejecting, mathematical concepts that enable describing large sets of natural phenomena.
Use of Characteristic Basis Function Method for Scattering from Terrain Profiles

An integral equation (IE) based solution procedure is presented for the rigorous analysis of scattering from terrain profiles. The procedure uses characteristic basis function method (CBFM), which is hybridized with the forward-backward method (FBM), to reduce the storage requirements of the resultant Method of Moments (MoM) impedance matrix, as well as to accelerate the solution procedure. Numerical results in the form of induced current and scattered field are presented to assess the accuracy and efficiency of the solution procedure.
Developing an “Intelligent” DSS for the multicriteria evaluation of railway timetables: problems and issues

ABSTRACT Given a Railway network, a Rolling stock and a Timetable (RRT), it is a very difficult task to ex ante evaluate the loss of quality of the service offered to travelers in case of incidents. We have designed a System for Robustness Evaluation (SRE) to measure the effects of incidents. This system starts from the RRT then the decisions of the dispatchers, in case of incident, are simulated by an expert system. After the incidents are resolved, the resulting perturbed timetable is analysed along five criteria. This system is now completed. It appears as an integrated multicriteria decision support system which constitutes a very useful tool, both to appreciate the interest of investments intended to improve the network or the rolling stocks, and to guide the choice of a timetable. Moreover, starting from this case and according to our experience, we discuss some problems and issues met during the development of multicriteria DSSs.
Introduction of Microcomputers: A Case Study of Patterns of use and Children's Perceptions

Children's attitudes toward and perceptions of the use of computers were monitored in two upper primary classrooms over a nine-month period, following the introduction of computer use. Unstructured use during non-class hours became the dominant pattern in both classrooms, with boys dominating the access and use in one of these classrooms. The resulting reduced computer use by girls contributed to the boys' and teachers' perceptions that girls are less interested in computers. Girls tended to be less positive than boys about the usefulness of computers in the classroom and their attitude scores were even more polarized after the year's experiences. The research highlights the potential role that patterns of computer use in classrooms may play in the formulation of children's attitudes toward and perceptions of computers.
A multi-sources knowledge management system

Abstract Nowadays the development of a product involves different types of actors (employees, managers, board of directors) which must be able to share knowledge, experiences and work together efficiently. Each actor has a professional specialty and use one or several software tools (CAO, project management, PLM tools …) dedicated to his specific skills. Each of these software tools produces different information sources (databases, XML files, text files) which are distributed through the enterprise network. We present in this paper a Knowledge Management System (KMS) which allows the capitalization of the distributed and heterogeneous knowledge all along the development of mechanical product projects on the basis of the heterogeneous and distributed information sources.
The study of the role of the background languages in third language acquisition. The state of the art

Abstract The aim of this article is to give an up-to-date picture of study of the role of the background languages (the first language, L1, and the second language, L2) in third language (L3) acquisition, mainly in the two areas of vocabulary and syntax. These seem to be the two linguistic levels on which there has so far been most research concerning cross-linguistic influence (CLI). Lexical CLI and syntactic transfer have in most cases been studied separately, but as we will see studies indicate that L3 learners seem to rely on both vocabulary and grammar from their background languages, at least to some extent. The role of the background languages in morphology and phonology has been less investigated in L3 studies, although there are a few studies that indicate that L3 performance can reflect activation of previously acquired languages at these linguistic levels too. The paper also includes a survey of neurolinguistic approaches to multilingualism and discusses how these findings can contribute to the understanding of transfer in L3 acquisition.
Vision based forest smoke detection using analyzing of temporal patterns of smoke and their probability models

In general, since smoke appears before flames, smoke detection is particularly important for early fire detection systems. To detect fire-smoke using video camera is a difficult work because main characteristics of a smoke are uncertain, vague, constant patterns of shape and color. Thus, this paper proposes a new fire-smoke detection method, especially forest smoke using analyzing of temporal patterns of smoke and Fuzzy Finite Automata (FFA). To consider the smoke characteristics over time, the temporal patterns of intensity entropy, wavelet energy and motion orientation have been used for generating, multivariate probability density functions (PDFs) are applied Fuzzy Finite Automata (FFA) for smoke verification. The proposed FFA consist of a set of fuzzy states (VH, H, L, VL), and a transition mapping that describes what event can occur at which state and resulting new state. For smoke verification, FFA is most appropriate method in case variables are time-dependent and uncertain. The proposed algorithm is successfully applied to various fire-smoke videos and shows a better detection performance.
UNSUPERVISED QUERY SEGMENTATION USING CLICK DATA AND DICTIONARIES INFORMATION

We describe results of experiments with an unsupervised framework for query segmentation, transforming keyword queries into structured queries. The resulting queries can be used to more accurately search product databases, and potentially improve result presentation and query suggestion. The key to developing an accurate and scalable system for this task is to train a query segmentation or attribute detection system over labeled data, which can be acquired automatically from query and click-through logs. The main contribution of our work is a improving method to automatically acquire such training data — resulting in significantly higher segmentation performance, compared to previously reported methods.
Source microphone identification from speech recordings based on a Gaussian mixture model

Microphone identification is a specific type of media forensics that investigates whether it is possible to identify the source microphone from speech recordings. The main aim of this study is to find out which of the several feature extraction techniques are best suited to the source microphone identification systems. We perform microphone identification experiments with 16 different microphones using 3 datasets. In order to improve the results on the datasets, we also investigate the important parameters that may affect the microphone identification performance. Our experimental results show that the proposed method is comparable to the existing studies in a closed-set identification rate.
Linking Professional Development to Teacher Learning and Practice: A Multi-Case Study Analysis of Urban Teachers

This study describes and analyzes the pedagogical activities of two professional development models aimed at helping teachers effectively integrate technology in their classrooms. Most importantly, it investigates the impact of those activities on teacher learning and practice. Results of the study provide empirical evidence that links key components of professional development to changes in teacher knowledge, practices, and beliefs. Specifically, findings of the study indicate that both professional development models enabled participating teachers to: a) improve their technology proficiency, b) understand how to use technology as an instructional tool, c) incorporate technology into their professional and instructional practices, and d) reinforce and reconsider their beliefs toward teaching with technology. The study also offers much needed insights into the process by which teacher learning and change occur. The results of this study have significant implications for the design of in-service programs on the use of technology. They also include implications for policy and future research.
Two schemes for detecting CMOS analog faults

A design-for-testability scheme for detecting CMOS analog faults was reported by Favalli et al. (see ibid., vol.25, no.5, p.1239-46, 1990). The authors propose two alternative designs, one for small circuits and another for large circuits, which require significantly less area overhead (about 1/4 to 1/3) than that of Favalli's design. With the proposed modification in the first design, the untestable problem, which occurred in Favalli's design, can be alleviated. Furthermore, the proposed schemes are also fit to be implemented in VLSI circuits. >
The Discovery Process: A Counterfactual Strategy

Claims that college students as well as scientists follow a strategy of confirmation bias in rule-discovery tasks are challenged in this study. A more fine-grained analysis of inquiry behaviour in a standard rule discovery task indicates that the best predictor of a reasoner's success is the use of a rational strategy called `conterfactual inference'. Contrary to earlier results, a disconfirmation strategy fails to distinguish between solvers and non-solvers. More strikingly, evidence shows that over half of the unsuccessful adults employ the same counterfactual reasoning which bears a superficial resemblance to confirmation bias. This normal inquiry behaviour is described in terms of a process model, and supports views in the philosophy of science that advocate the use of multiple hypotheses in testing theories. The data present a challenge to educators, cognitive scientists and psychologists regarding their selection of an `expert' discovery strategy for the purpose of guiding students. Training in counterfactual reasoning is advised, since it may make explicit an implicit strategy already in use.