Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
PROBABILISTIC PROOF-CARRYING CODE

Proof-carrying code is an application of software verification techniques to the problem of ensuring the safety of mobile code. However, previous proof-carrying code systems have assumed that mobile code will faithfully execute the instructions of the program. Realistic implementations of computing systems are susceptible to probabilistic behaviours that can alter the execution of a program in ways that can result in corruption or security breaches. We investigate the use of a probabilistic bytecode language to model deterministic programs that are executed on probabilistic computing systems. To model probabilistic safety properties, a probabilistic logic is adapted to out bytecode instruction language, and soundness is proven. A sketch of a completeness proof of the logic is also shown.
Motor speech impairment predicts expressive language in minimally verbal, but not low verbal, individuals with autism spectrum disorder

Background and aims Developmental motor speech impairment has been suspected, but rarely systematically examined, in low- and minimally verbal individuals with autism spectrum disorder. We aimed to investigate the extent of motor speech impairment in this population and its relation to number of different words produced during a semi-structured language sample. Methods Videos of 54 low-verbal and minimally verbal individuals (ages 4;4–18;10) performing portions of a speech praxis test were coded for signs of motor speech impairment (e.g., childhood apraxia of speech). Age, autism spectrum disorder severity, nonspeech oral-motor ability, speech production ability, nonverbal IQ, and receptive vocabulary were compared between groups. Results Four groups emerged: (1) speech within normal limits (n = 12), (2) non-childhood apraxia of speech impairment (n = 16), (3) suspected childhood apraxia of speech (n = 13), and (4) insufficient speech to rate (n = 13). Groups differed significantly in nonspeech oral-motor ability, speech production ability, nonverbal IQ, and receptive vocabulary. Overall, only speech production ability and receptive vocabulary accounted for significant variance in number of different words. Receptive vocabulary significantly predicted number of different words only in Groups 1 and 2, while speech production ability significantly predicted number of different words only in Groups 3 and 4. Conclusions and implications If replicated, our findings have important implications for developing much-needed spoken language interventions in minimally verbal individuals with autism spectrum disorder.
The crime-reducing benefits of a college degree: evidence from a nationally representative U.S. sample

ABSTRACT This study uses data from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health to examine the robustness of the individual-level association between completing a college degree and involvement in crime in young adulthood. A concern in the study of education and crime is that the relationship might be spurious due to well-known background characteristics that predict both completing college and engaging in crime, such as prior delinquency and family socioeconomic status. To account for this, propensity score weighting and matching techniques are used so that differences in these characteristics are similar between individuals with and without a degree. Results show that compared to those with a high school diploma, attaining a bachelor’s degree is negatively associated with crime. After accounting for selection into higher education, the association between completing college and crime is attenuated in size, though still statistically significant. Findings are discussed in the context of current college enrollment and completion trends in the U.S.
Reaction time and stress tolerance of police officers in specific and non-specific tests in professional self-defence training

Introduction: The police forces performance is demanding on well-timed and quick reaction. Single reaction time and choice reaction time are crucial when the jeopardy appears. Performing under stress in life-threatening situations needs a good level of stress tolerance. In our study, we used two nonspecific, and two specific (shooting) tests to analyse the reactivity of police officer under different conditions. Material and methods: The research sample consisted of n=18 male Czech police training instructors. The group is unique as these police officers are specialised in the professional self-defence with focus on the coercive means use and shooting skills. Two standardized non-specific tests administrated with the Vienna Test System (VTS) by Schuhfried GmbH were used for data gathering. Single reaction time (SRT) was measured by the Reaction test, stress tolerance and choice reaction time (CRT) was measured by the Determination test. Two practical non-standardized shooting tests were used for the reactivity analysis in the goal oriented environment (shooting range). Results: The single reaction time among police training instructors was M=261.56±33.60 ms, which corresponds to the 66.28 percentile of age norm. Performance in the stress tolerance test also matches the average performance in population (M=45.56 percentile of correct reactions, M=61.67 percentile of incorrect reactions, M=51.44 percentile of skipped signals). According to the Pearson correlation coefficient, there is no correlation between single reaction time in the Reaction test and choice reaction time in the Determination test (r=-0.03). There is no correlation between single reaction time in the nonspecific Reaction test and performance in the specific Shooting test 1 (r=0.06) and Shooting test 2 (r=-0.01). Conclusions: There is no relation between the results in the specific and non-specific reaction tests. Nonspecific tests of single reaction time and choice reaction time are suitable for a general assessment of motor abilities. Specific tasks need specific training and specific evaluation methods.
PET preform defect detection based on RANSAC and uniformity of grey level

To detect the defect on the mouth of the PET preform in modern high-speed production line,this paper proposed a detection algorithm based on RANSAC and the uniformity of gray level.The algorithm located the mouth of the preform accurately through the RANSAC method and then detected the defect on the surface by checking the uniformity of grey level.Experiments show the algorithm achieve short execution time and high accuracy.For a typical image of 640×480,the execution time is in 10 ms/frame.And the algorithm can meet the real time requirements of the high-speed production line.
Testing Conditional Predictive Ability

This chapter discusses extensions of out-of-sample predictive ability testing to environments in which the predictive ability of a forecast model could depend on observables or be timevarying. The main focus is on pairwise comparisons of nested or non-nested models, but I mention how the techniques can be adapted to detect and predict a models forecast breakdowns. I emphasize the practical implementation of the techniques, briey discuss the underlying assumptions, and nally touch upon the implications of out-of-sample predictive ability testing for forecast selection.
Convenience of accounting education for the requirements of Saudi labour market: An empirical study

Article history: Received: April 8 2019 Received in revised format: April 28 2019 Accepted: May 28, 2019 Available online: June 1, 2019 Saudi labour market is unique in nature due to a number of aspects. It provides a picture of increasing job opportunity and, at the same time, higher level of youth unemployment. Like other countries, the employability of accounting graduates of Saudi Arabia is also subject to doubts. The present study assesses the convenience of accounting education for the unique requirements of Saudi labour market. The study collects data from 914 respondents from the three main stakeholders – students, faculty and accounting practitioners. The study finds that all the three stakeholders were of the opinion that the education was capable of meeting the unique requirements of the labour market in Saudi Arabia. A few suggestions are also presented, which would help improve the outcomes of the accounting programs and make the graduates employable.
The Role of Customer Emotions in a Call Center Setting

This thesis investigates the role of customer emotions in a call center setting. Three empirical studies are presented: 1. An exploratory qualitative study shows that emotions play an important role in a call center encounter. A measurement scale is developed using the negative emotions reported: frustration, anger, powerlessness, discouragement and stress, and positive emotions: happiness and relief. 2. A survey of 1440 customers of a French call center and subsequent Structural Equation Modeling shows that emotions have a significant effect on satisfaction and loyalty. 3. A follow-up qualitative study indicates that emotions change during the process of a call, and are accompanied by appraisals of reduced certainty and control. Frustration is shown to be a major customer emotional experience due to the set-up of call center services which generate reduced certainty and control, attributions of employee or company responsibility and appraisals of goal-blocking. The main theoretical contributions come from a) the finding that emotions have a stronger effect on loyalty than does satisfaction, b) empirical testing of a widely acknowledged (but not explicitly tested) notion that negative emotions decrease loyalty more than positive emotions increase it. In a call center context callers begin the call with some negative emotional ‘baggage’ which may enhance the effect on loyalty as compared to positive emotions, c) empirical support for Barrett et al. (2007) and Elfenbein (2007) who suggest that an emotional process characterizes emotional experience better than emotions alone. Managerial implications are a) that the call center industry needs to move away from its traditional performance-metrics basis for measuring customer satisfaction and take customer emotions into account, and b) that to ensure loyalty call center managers should focus more strongly on strategies for avoiding negative customer emotional states than for promoting positive emotions.
Instructional Mode: A Better Predictor of Performance Than Student Preferred Learning Styles

This study sought to investigate the link between preferred learning styles, performance, and cognitive load. After determining learning styles (visual or auditory), undergraduate students were assigned to three instructional formats, namely: Listen Only, Read Only, and Read + Listen. A pretest was administered to assess students’ prior knowledge on lightning. During acquisition, students received instructions specific to the instructional format they were assigned to. For example, students in the Read Only group received written materials only while those in the Listen Only group received auditory materials only. The acquisition phase was followed by a posttest phase. Based on cognitive load theory, it was hypothesized that different instructional formats would result in differences in student performances. Two-way between-groups ANOVA results confirm the hypotheses, in that student’s cognitive load was a better predictor of student performance than student learning styles. Educational implications and limitations are also discussed.
Improved Pattern Matching Algorithm of BMH

Based on the discussion of the most popular BM and BMH algorithms for pattern matching on the network,an improved algorithm BMH2 was presented.Considering the feature of pattern itself,a new skip distance array was added based on the old one.It can increase the skip distance by known information.Experimental data shows that the improved algorithm can increase the right shift of "bad characters" and enhance the matching speed effectively.
The Routledge Handbook of English Language Teacher Education

s of nine chapters in this handbook focus on ELT teaching knowledge; four of them address concerns of the first two knowledge generations. They do not focus on the disciplinary knowledge or teaching methodologies prevalent in ELT from the 1960s to 1980s. Rather, they categorize as disciplinary knowledge new additions to the ELT content and methods. For example, McCarthy and Clancy (Chapter 14) discuss the knowledge teachers need regarding authentic materials, while Pérez-Paredes (Chapter 17) outlines the knowledge of second language acquisition thought to be important to ELT teachers. The middle two generations, knowledge as pedagogy and knowledge-in-person, in-place, which are unshaded in Table 1.2, are represented by one abstract each. The abstract which was coded as knowledge as pedagogy focuses on teaching teachers about classroom interaction and research on interaction (Sert, Chapter 15). The chapter abstract coded knowledge in-person, inplace speaks to ELT teacher identity and the ‘native/non-native speaker’ distinction.
YOUTH VOICE IN A RURAL CRADLE-TO-CAREER NETWORK

Outmigration, economic restructuring, and other challenges require rural communities to adapt. Area-based initiatives, such as cradle-to-career networks, have been seen as a means for increasing community resiliency through the simultaneous creation of social capital and civic and economic redevelopment. Community resiliency is often seen as a single-generation issue; however, developing youth’s voices provides simultaneous positive youth development and community civic development that can support community resiliency. This qualitative case study examines how youth voice opportunities were used in a rural cradle-to-career network to build towards future research on the role of youth voice in area-based initiatives and community resiliency.
The Logic of Imagination Acts A Formal System for the Dynamics of Imaginary Worlds

Imagination has received a great deal of attention in different fields such as psychology, philosophy and the cognitive sciences, in which some works provide a detailed account of the mechanisms involved in the creation and elaboration of imaginary worlds. Although imagination has also been formalized using different logical systems, none of them captures those dynamic mechanisms. In this work, we take inspiration from the Common Frame for Imagination Acts, that identifies the different processes involved in the creation of imaginary worlds, and we use it to define a dynamic formal system called the Logic of Imagination Acts. We build our logic by using a possible-worlds semantics, together with a new set of static and dynamic modal operators. The role of the new dynamic operators is to call different algorithms that encode how the formal model is expanded in order to capture the different mechanisms involved in the creation and development of imaginary worlds. We provide the This work is funded by EC FP7 grant 621403 (ERA Chair: Games Research Opportunities), by the Project “Hybrid Intensional Logic” (ref. FFI2013-47126-P) given by the Spanish MINECO, the project 2018-2020: Traducciones, lógicas combinadas, descripciones, lógica intensiva, teoŕıa de tipos, lógica h́ıbrida, identidad, lógica y educación (ref. FFI2017-82554), given by the Spanish MICINN, and a doctoral grant from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Erkenntnis. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-01900136-z J. Casas-Roma (corresponding author) The Metamakers Institute, Falmouth University (Falmouth, UK) Tel. : +34 660 581 622 E-mail: joan.casasroma@falmouth.ac. uk A. Huertas, M. E. Rodŕıguez Department of Computer Science, Multimedia and Telecommunication, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Barcelona, Spain). 2 Joan Casas-Roma, Antonia Huertas, M. Elena Rodŕıguez definitions of the language, the semantics and the algorithms, together with an example that shows how the model is expanded. By the end, we discuss some interesting features of our system, and we point out to possible lines of future work.
Precoder Design Based on Mutual Information for Non-orthogonal Amplify and Forward Wireless Relay Networks

Cooperative relaying is a promising technique to enhance the reliability and data-rate of wireless networks. Among different cooperative relaying schemes, the half-duplex non-orthogonal amplify-and-forward (NAF) protocol is popular due to its low implementation complexity and performance advantages. This thesis investigates precoder design for a cooperative half-duplex single-relay NAF system from an informationtheoretic point of view using a novel mutual information-based design criterion. The first part of the thesis considers the design of a 2 × 2 precoder for the NAF half duplex single relay network in the presence of the direct link using mutual information (MI) as the main performance metric. Different from precoder design methods using pairwise error probability (PEP) analysis, which are valid only at high signal-to-noise ratios (SNR), the proposed precoder design can apply to any SNR region, which is of more interest from both information-theoretic and practical points of view. A MI-based criterion is developed for a cooperative frame length of 2, which corresponds to the case of using a 2× 2 precoder. The design criterion is established in a closed-form, which can be helpful in finding an optimal precoder. Then it is analytically shown that a good precoder should have all entries that are equal in magnitude, which is different from the optimal precoders obtained thus far using iii the conventional PEP criterion. Simulation results indicate that the proposed class of precoders outperform the existing precoders in terms of the mutual information performance. The second part of the thesis extends the precoder design to an arbitrary block length of 2T . In general, for this case, a precoder of size 2T×2T needs to be considered to optimize the MI performance. Similar to the 2 × 2 precoder design, a MI-based design criterion is first established. While the criterion can be expressed in closedform, the design of optimal precoders in this case is not possible, due to the complexity of the optimization problem. As an alternative, a novel grouping technique, which is referred to as symbol grouping, in which a group of only P = 2 information symbols are pre-coded to improve the MI, is proposed. It is then demonstrated that the grouping technique yields a much simpler design criterion and an optimal 2×2 precoder can be developed. Numerical results show that the proposed precoding technique outperforms existing precoder designs while keeping the receiver complexity at a minimum.
Exploring Effective Methods of Teacher Professional Development in University for 21st Century Education

In the 21st century, the new trends of technology, economy, politics impact social life, workplace and people lifestyle. In turn, university need to alter and innovate curriculum and instruction to teach students with “21st century skills”, such as critical thinking and problem solving, cross-cultural understanding, creativity and innovation, information, communications, media literacy, computing and ICT literacy. Teachers have to foster all of them then can teach students to learn. Under this situation, teacher professional development evoke teachers to meet students needs for 21st century education. Through systematical content analysis on related research works, the author conclude effective teacher professional development methods that contains need assessment of TPD, peer-mentoring, building collaboration, create positive school culture, develop 21st century skills, instructional strategies for active learning, embedding core values, continual professional development, research-based projects and integrated ICT teaching, which can address teacher learning and practice.
Change Facilitation Strategies Used in the Implementation of Innovations in Healthcare Practice: A Systematic Review

ABSTRACT To improve patient outcomes, healthcare practices undergo constant implementation of innovations. An implementation intervention that considers organizational and behavioural aspects is facilitation. Change Facilitators help individuals and groups realize what they need to change and how to make change happen. However, behavioural change trials require more sufficient details to improve delivery, fidelity and evaluation. The aim of this paper was to identify facilitation strategies used during the implementation of innovations in health care, determine those most frequently used and their relation to study outcomes. For this systematic review, randomized controlled trials reporting an onsite facilitator to aid in innovation implementation in a healthcare setting were identified. The database search yielded 2,350 articles, from which 35 studies were included. From these, 51 facilitation strategies were identified. Nine of the strategies appeared in more than 50% of studies and those reporting positive results included: goal-setting, assessing progress and outcomes, and providing tools and resources. These findings provide facilitators with evidence-based strategies to deliver in practice and to ensure consistency in facilitation training. Future research should aim to provide further tools that recommend the most effective facilitation strategies and a model to improve the effectiveness, efficiency and evaluation of the change facilitation process. MAD statement This article sets out to make a difference for those implementing innovations in the healthcare industry, by arming change facilitators with practical, evidence-based strategies to facilitate change more effectively. Furthermore, this article highlights the need for specific tools and models that improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the change facilitation process and its evaluation.
“Now as a teacher”: Novice Teachers Reflect on English Language Teacher Education in Iran

This study relied on the reflections of 12 novice English language teachers and 3 supervisors to explore the status quo of teacher training in 3 private language institutes with headquarters in Tehran and about 420 language schools throughout the country. Extensive data collection was done through semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and teacher diaries as well as informal peer interviews and observation of occasional meetings of supervisors and teachers. To analyze data, an inductive analysis procedure was used. Findings revealed that current language teacher training courses in the context of concern may require different types of improvements with regard to theory-practice gap, supervised in-service workshops, reflective teaching skills, use of technology, and teachers' experiential learning.
Identifying a typology of high schools based on their orientation toward STEM: A latent class analysis of HSLS:09

The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent that there is a typology of high schools based on their orientation toward STEM, as well as the extent to which school-level demographic variables and student high school outcomes are associated with subgroup membership in the typology, by analyzing data from a large nationally representative sample of high schools (n=940) from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09) using latent class analysis (LCA). We used a three-step LCA approach to identify significantly different subgroups of STEMoriented high schools, what covariates predict subgroup membership, and how subgroup membership predicts observed distal outcomes. We find that there are four significantly different subgroups of STEM-oriented high schools based on their principal’s perceptions: Abundant (12.3%), Support (23.3%), Bounded (10.1%), and Comprehensive (54.3%). In addition, we find that these subgroups are associated with school demographics, such as the percent of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, school locale, and control (public or private). Subgroup membership is also associated with student outcomes, such as postsecondary program enrollment and intent to pursue a STEM degree.