Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
From Paper to Pixels : Evaluating the Usability of Digitised Books online

Research problem: Digital libraries have invested significant resources digitising and providing access to an increasing number of books. The various approaches taken to visualise digitised books online, has potential to effect the usability and usefulness of the book to the user. Previous usability studies focus on the digital library as a whole, this study narrows the focus to the digitised book. The intention being to identify usability issues and investigate the effects a visualisation approach may have on users. Methodology: An anonymous survey was conducted, employing the Interaction Triptych Framework (ITF) to frame the relationships between the user and digitised books. Two examples of digitised books from the New Zealand Electronic Text Collection and the Internet Archive were used. Participants from library, archives and history fields, as well as general users, were invited to participate. Results: 132 participants began the survey, with 86 participants completing all of the required parts. Results suggest a slightly positive attitude towards the usability and usefulness of the examples, with Open Library rated higher for usability and both examples rated similarly for usefulness. Participant comments suggest many users appreciate features analogous to physical books, with regard to aesthetics, learnability and navigation, while for ease of use and reading, rich text appeared to be preferred over digital image based visualisation. Implications: Digital Libraries need to continually strive to improve the usability and usefulness of digitised books to satisfy their users, further research is suggested creating prototypes and conducting user testing to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between users and digitised books online.
Second Language Processing: An Analysis of Theory, Problems and Possible Solutions

Second Language Processing examines the problems facing learners in the second language classroom from the theoretical perspectives of Processing Instruction (structured input) and Enhanced Input. These two theories are brought to bear on a variety of processing problems, such as the difficulty of connecting second language grammatical forms encoding tense and mood as well as noun-adjective agreement with their meaning. Empirical studies examine a range of languages including Japanese, Italian and Spanish, through which the authors suggest practical solutions to these processing problems.
The design of effective mobile-enabled tasks for ESP students: A longitudinal study

This paper describes and reports on the findings of the Enactment Phase of a longitudinal Design Based Research (DBR) study aiming to develop effective design principles for learning materials for English for Special Purpose (ESP) students, enabled by means of mobile devices. The process of data collection and analysis over an eighteen-month period, resulted in a conceptual model and design principles for a mobile-enabled language learning (MELL) solution. The study also generated a broader understanding of the context-embedded nature of ESP learning using mobile devices, specifically the role of aspects of the whole learning environment, ultimately contributing to real-life praxis of the Ecological Constructivist framework and the complementary approach of DBR methodology. This paper focuses on the intervention design and development completed during the Enactment phase (Phase 2). The key outcome of this phase, namely the prototype of the Mobile-Enabled Language Learning Eco-System (MELLES), encompassed eight ESP tasks accessible through a mobile-web portal which served as a gateway to the MELLES network. The design of the MELLES intervention and its constituent tasks are presented.
Editorial

This special focus issue on “Microbes and insects” features an array of six articles concerning the potential of microorganisms to control insects and symbiotic associations in fungal gardens of leaf-cutting ants. It shows nicely that also with respect to insects, fungi and bacteria are able to undergo specific pathogenic or mutually symbiotic interactions. This is, of course, known for a long time. Nevertheless, the mechanisms of insecticidal interactions, include many different activities. Enzymes expressed within the insect may substantially contribute to this activity, and hence, a lipase is studied from an entomopathogenic fungus, Isaria fumusorosea. The genus Isaria is well known to produce an array of secondary metabolites also useful as antibiotics. However, here specifically enzymatic activity is studied in the fungus–insect interaction. Another article is addressing a microsporidia isolate. This group of Eukarya still is lacking research. It has been discussed whether or not the organisms are early branches within the fungal clade, or rooted outside the true fungi. Here, the impact on insects is investigated. The Bacillus thuringesis insecticidal activity is probably the best known bacteria–insect interaction. Not only is the toxin widely used in plant protection, it also has been cloned into plants which is discussed worldwide with respect to release of genetically manipulated organisms into the wild. Here, an article addresses synergistic activity of two bacteria, with Photorhabdus being naturally carried by an entomopathogenic nematode and released into the insect hemolymph aiding nematode feeding. The Cry protein of B. thuringensis is specifically addressed in another article, where short peptides were screened for insecticidal activity. With the remaining two articles in this special focus, we can address plant interactions as well. The first concerns a streptomycete which does not only carry entomopathogenicity, but at the same time allows for general plant growth promoting and antifungal, plant protection activities. And in the remaining article, finally, the soil surrounding the fungus garden of leaf-cutter ants is addressed. The ants are raising fungal gardens in which they control the fungus helping the nest in providing a rich food source for the ants. The question addressed here was, however, whether the ants’ activity would, at the same time, exert a control over fungal communities within the soil surrounding their nest. Indeed, the authors could show a distinct and species specific impact of the ants on the soil surrounding nests. All in all, with this special focus, the Journal of Basic Microbiology can provide research articles which address important questions associated with interactions between fungal and bacterial interactions with insects.
An Assessment of Library Education Contributions to Business Student Learning

Abstract This article reports on a study of the impact of library education for improving the research skills of undergraduate students in business. The purpose of this education was to improve bibliographic research capabilities, a step thought necessary for enhancing student competency when performing a marketing course research project. A “special help” session was presented that included seminar training, use of a special reference booklet and Web page preparation. Based on a survey of students assessing the helpfulness of this education, the results indicate the desired learning objective was achieved.
It is worth thinking twice or Improving the performance of minority games

In this work the properties of multi choice minority games are studied by means of extensive computational simulations. We have considered several ways of rewarding the strategies of the players and compared the resulting behaviours of the ensemble. It is shown that introducing a reward for the second place can improve the overall performance significantly. Our new but still very simple architecture of stategies shows interesting properties. In the version of the multi choice minority game which also rewards second best choice the unordered phase is strongly suppressed and the global performance of the ensemble is significantly improved. The efficiency of this model can come close to the one of standard minority games that use adaptive genetic algorithms for searching good strategies.
Automatic Retrieval of SNS Opinion Document Using Machine Learning Technique

Recently, as Social Network Services(SNS) are becoming more popular, much research has been doing on analyzing public opinions from SNS. One of the most important tasks for solving such a problem is to separate opinion(subjective) documents from others(e.g. objective documents) in SNS. In this paper, we propose a new method of retrieving the opinion documents from Twitter. The reason why it is not easy to search or classify the opinion documents in Twitter is due to a lack of publicly available Twitter documents for training. To tackle the problem, at first, we build a machine-learned model for sentiment classification using the external documents similar to Twitter, and then modify the model to separate the opinion documents from Twitter. Experimental results show that proposed method can be applied successfully in opinion classification.
HOW LONG IS A TWEET? MAPPING DYNAMIC CONVERSATION NETWORKS ON TWITTER USING GAWK AND GEPHI

Twitter is now well established as the world's second most important social media platform, after Facebook. Its 140-character updates are designed for brief messaging, and its network structures are kept relatively flat and simple: messages from users are either public and visible to all (even to unregistered visitors using the Twitter website), or private and visible only to approved ‘followers’ of the sender; there are no more complex definitions of degrees of connection (family, friends, friends of friends) as they are available in other social networks. Over time, Twitter users have developed simple, but effective mechanisms for working around these limitations: ‘#hashtags’, which enable the manual or automatic collation of all tweets containing the same #hashtag, as well allowing users to subscribe to content feeds that contain only those tweets which feature specific #hashtags; and ‘@replies’, which allow senders to direct public messages even to users whom they do not already follow. This paper documents a methodology for extracting public Twitter activity data around specific #hashtags, and for processing these data in order to analyse and visualize the @reply networks existing between participating users – both overall, as a static network, and over time, to highlight the dynamic structure of @reply conversations. Such visualizations enable us to highlight the shifting roles played by individual participants, as well as the response of the overall #hashtag community to new stimuli – such as the entry of new participants or the availability of new information. Over longer timeframes, it is also possible to identify different phases in the overall discussion, or the formation of distinct clusters of preferentially interacting participants.
LibQUAL+TM at Rhodes University Library

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how LibQUAL+™, as a “turn‐key” survey instrument, can provide the type of benchmarking information that can facilitate targeted service improvements.Design/methodology/approach – This paper focuses on the Rhodes Library's implementation of the 2005 LibQUAL+™ survey. Results are looked at within the broader context of aggregate scores and score norms from the South African cohort. The library's first efforts to address areas where perceptions of service quality differed from users' expectations are described and plans for future efforts are indicated. The paper also details some lessons learnt by other LibQUAL+™ participants, as documented in published case studies.Findings – The paper found that all groups of library users at Rhodes were very dissatisfied with their library building. Rhodes performed very well in the “Information Control” dimension but less well in the “Affect of Service” dimension.Originality/value – The paper shows that other librarie.
Seven Principles of Effective Teaching: A Practical Lens for Evaluating Online Courses

The "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education," originally published in the AAHE Bulletin (Chickering & Gamson, 1987), are a popular framework for evaluating teaching in traditional, face-to-face courses. The principles are based on 50 years of higher education research (Chickering & Reisser, 1993). A faculty inventory (Johnson Foundation, "Faculty," 1989) and an institutional inventory (Johnson Foundation, "Institutional," 1989) based on these principles have helped faculty members and higher-education institutions examine and improve their teaching practices.
The integration of practical tasks in teaching Natural Sciences inGrade seven

The study was carried out to investigate how teachers integrate practical tasks at school level. The main aim was to explore the manner in which the teachers who participated in this study assisted the learners to develop 21 century scientific skills through the teaching of Natural Sciences in Grade 7 classes. The study was conducted in three districts of the Department of Education in the Limpopo Province. The study was qualitative in nature and used a case study research design. The techniques used to collect data included document analysis, lesson observations, semi-structured interviews and the researcher’s diary. Furthermore, the study used content analysis to analyse the data. Literature was reviewed and underpinned by the Profile of Implementation, which served as the theoretical framework of the study. These two sources of information contributed greatly to the final establishment of realities concerning the way these teachers attempted to develop skills in the learners. The findings of the study were interpreted based on the reviewed literature and the theoretical framework. Conclusions emerged that the teachers in this study integrated practical tasks in a traditional manner rather than using 21 century approaches in many cases. The most affected areas included practical lesson preparation, and presentation and assessment. In many cases, the teachers handled and used apparatus while the learners observed the unfolding events. Additionally, inadequate amounts of time allocated for the teaching of Natural Sciences, coupled with a lack of appropriate resources are some of the factors which disadvantaged the majority of the learners in this study from developing the potential to implement Science in real-life situations.
Empirical likelihood tests for stochastic ordering based on censored and biased data

Empirical likelihood tests for stochastic ordering based on censored and biased data Hsin-wen Chang In the classical two-sample comparison problem, it is often of interest to examine whether the distribution function is uniformly higher in one group than the other. This can be framed in terms of the notion of stochastic ordering. We consider testing for stochastic ordering based on two types of data: (1) right-censored and (2) sizebiased data. We derive our procedures using the empirical likelihood method, and the proposed tests are based on maximally selected local empirical likelihood statistics. For (1), the proposed test is shown via a simulation study to have superior power to the commonly-used log-rank test under crossing-hazard alternatives. The approach is illustrated using data from a randomized clinical trial involving the treatment of severe alcoholic hepatitis. As for (2), simulations show that the proposed test outperforms the Wald test and the test overlooking size bias in all the cases considered. The approach is illustrated via a real data example of alcohol concentration in fatal driving accidents.
A beginner's guide to structural equation modeling

This book provides the reader with a review of correlation and covariance among variables, followed by multiple regression and path analysis techniques to better understand the building blocks of structural equation modelling. The concepts behind measurement models are introduced to illustrate how measurement error impacts statistical analyses, and structural models are presented that indicate how latent variable relationships can be established. Examples are included throughout to make the concepts clear to the reader. The structural equation modelling examples are presented using either EQS5.0 or LISREL8-SIMPLIS programming language, both of which have an easy-to-use set of commands to specify measurement and strucural models. No complicated programming is required, nor does the reader need an advanced understanding of statistics of matrix algebra. A goal in writing this volume was to focus conceptually on the steps one takes in analyzing theoretical models. These steps encompass: specifying a model based upon theory or prior research; determining whether the model can be identified to have unique estimates for variables in the model; selecting an appropriate estimation method based on the distributional assumptions of variables; testing the model and interpreting fit indices; and finally respecifying a model based on suggested modification indices, which involves adding or dropping paths in the model to obtain a better model fit. The resources and references provided in this book should equip faculty, students and researchers to enhance their working knowledge of structural equation modelling. Not intended as an in-depth presentation of statistics or factor analysis, this text focuses on the basic ideas and principles behind structural equation modelling. Assuming that the reader has a basic understanding of correlation, the authors have built upon this understanding to present these basic ideas and principles.
The emergence of language.

Contents: Preface. J.L. Elman, The Emergence of Language: A Conspiracy Theory. E. Bates, J.C. Goodman, On the Emergence of Grammar From the Lexicon. T. Givon, Generativity and Variation: The Notion 'Rule of Grammar' Revisited. J. Allen, M.S. Seidenberg, The Emergence of Grammaticality in Connectionist Networks. R. Miikkulainen, M.R. Mayberry, III, Disambiguation and Grammar as Emergent Soft Constraints. M.C. MacDonald, Distributional Information in Language Comprehension, Production, and Acquisition: Three Puzzles and a Moral. A.E. Goldberg, The Emergence of the Semantics of Argument Structure Constructions. B. MacWhinney, The Emergence of Language From Embodiment. C.E. Snow, Social Perspectives on the Emergence of Language. L.B. Smith, Children's Noun Learning: How General Learning Processes Make Specialized Learning Mechanisms. R.M. Golinkoff, K. Hirsh-Pasek, G. Hollich, Emergent Cues for Early Word Learning. W.E. Merriman, Competition, Attention, and Young Children's Lexical Processing. R.N. Aslin, J.R. Saffran, E.L. Newport, Statistical Learning in Linguistic and Nonlinguistic Domains. D.C. Plaut, C.T. Kello, The Emergence of Phonology From the Interplay of Speech Comprehension and Production: A Distributed Connectionist Approach. J.P. Stemberger, B.H. Bernhardt, The Emergence of Faithfulness. P. Gupta, G.S. Dell, The Emergence of Language From Serial Order and Procedural Memory.
Feature Subset Selection: A Correlation Based Filter Approach

Recent work has shown that feature subset selection can have a positive affect on the performance of machine learning algorithms. Some algorithms can be slowed or their performance irrelevant or redundant to the learning task. Feature subset selection, then, is a method for enhancing the performance of learning algorithms, reducing the hypothesis search space, and, in some cases, reducing the storage requirement. This paper describes a feature subset selector that uses a correlation based evaluates its effectiveness with three common ML algorithms: a decision tree inducer (C4.5), a naive Bayes classifier, and an instance based learner (IB1). Experiments using a number of standard data sets drawn from real and artificial domains are presented. Feature subset selection gave significant improvement for all three algorithms; C4.5 generated smaller decision trees.
A compact algorithm for placement design using corner block list representation

Corner Block List (CBL) was recently proposed as an efficient representation of general packing of rectangles. Although the original method is really innovative, there still remains room of improvement. This paper proposes a compact algorithm for placement based on corner block list. By introducing the dummy blocks in CBL, our algorithm can intellective employ dummy blocks in the packing to represent the placement including empty rooms, which corner block list cannot represent. Our algorithm can obtain the fast convergence to an optimal solution, and at the end of packing, not only the compact packing but also the corresponding CBL can be obtained. The experiment results are demonstrated by some benchmark data and the performance shows effectiveness of the proposed method.
Grouped locations and object-based attention: Comment on Egly

Recently, R. Egly, J. Driver, and R. D. Rafal (1994) provided evidence for an object-based component of visual orienting in a simple cued reaction time task. However, the effects of objects on visual attention can be due to selection from either of two very different types of representations: (a) a truly object-based representation that codes for object structure or (b) a grouped array representation that codes for groups of spatial locations. Are Egly et al.'s results due to selection from an object-based representation or from a grouped array representation? This question was addressed by using a variant of Egly et al.'s task. The findings replicated those of Egly et al. and demonstrated that the selection in this task is mediated through a grouped array representation. The implications of these results for studies of attentional selection are discussed. In the past, the study of attentional selection has primarily focused on how visual attention selects stimuli on the basis of spatial location in the visual field. However, in recent years there has been an increase in the study of how visual attention selects stimuli on the basis of shape or structure. The former approaches have come to be known as spatial or location-based models of attention, and the latter have come to be known as object-based models of attention. (The literature concerning these two types of selection is quite large and continually growing, so it will not be reviewed here. The reader is referred to the following for reviews and characteristic positions: Duncan, 1984; Egly, Driver, & Rafal, 1994; Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974; Kramer & Jacobson, 1991; Posner, 1980; Posner, Snyder, & Davidson, 1980; Vecera & Farah, 1994) Egly, Driver, and Rafal (1994) used a clever procedure that was reported to show both location-based and objectbased components of visual selection in normal subjects as well as differential impairments in these attentional components in parietal-dama ged patients. The results from the normal subjects are of primary interest here. Subjects were shown two rectangles that appeared either above and below fixation or to the left and right of fixation. One of the corners was cued by brightening, and a target followed. Subjects made a simple reaction time (RT) response to the onset of the target, a procedure similar to Posner's classic spatial cuing paradigm (see Posner
Realization and Performance Analysis of a SOAP Server for Mobile Devices

A middleware platform for mobile devices to efficiently build distributed applications in a heterogenous mobile environment is essential. Especially for mobile Peer-to-Peer (P2P) applications and applications which have to call back a mobile device, server functionalities for mobile devices are required. In this paper the server building block of our mobile Web Service based middleware is introduced. This server is integrated in the wireless Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) in terms of a HTTP server binding to SOAP. Thus, the mobile application can define services which will be published and used by other devices. This paper presents a lightweight SOAP server architecture for Java2 Micro Edition (J2ME) devices as well as the implementation in Java. Finally, the results of a performance analysis are given in consideration of criteria like latency and memory usage.