Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Short-Term File Reference Patterns in a UNIX Environment,

Abstract : Data on short-term user file reference patterns have been collected from a local UNIX system supporting university research. These data provide detailed information of file opens a directory accesses. Somewhat coarser information on internal file operations has also been collected. An analysis of the data shows that referenced files in our environment are generally small(under 1000 bytes), usually completely read or written, and have short interopen intervals(a succeeding open to a file usually occurs within 60 seconds of the last open). In addition, while there is extensive sharing of some files, this sharing is restricted to standard system files. We see very little sharing of user files. This paper emphasizes the implications the patterns we observe have for distributed file systems. However the results may also be applied to the design and modeling of more traditional file systems. (Author)
Design Research: Ratio Table and Money Context as Means to Support the Development of Student’s Proportional Reasoning

In general, students use the algebra notation and cross multiplication to solve proportional problems. However, they may just memorize the procedure without understanding the mathematical concept behind it. In that case the learning process remains meaningless. Therefore, we designed a learning sequence based on the tenets of Realistic Mathematics Education (also known as PMRI in Indonesia), which can help the students to develop proportional reasoning. Twenty nine students of grade 4 in SDN 179 Palembang were involved. They did activities which used money as the context and the ratio table as the tool to do calculation and reasoning. This study is part of a Master Program research which aims to investigate how the ratio table can support the development of the students’ proportional reasoning. But, this paper will focus only on how the ratio table together with the money context can help the students to develop proportional thinking. Design research was used as research methods for this study. The result shows that the money context together with the ratio table may support students to develop their proportional understanding. Keyword: PMRI, Design Research, Ratio Table, Proportional Reasoning, Contextual Problem, Money Context.
Evaluating Legal Information Retrieval Systems: How Do the Ranked-Retrieval Methods of WESTLAW and LEXIS Measure Up?

Abstract This article contends that the relative effectiveness of Lexis and Westlaw should be measured by their ability to find and rank relevant documents. It contains an evaluation of Boolean systems and includes discussion of the Blair and Maron and the Dabney studies in which high recall was the goal of online searches. It then suggests that when other means of discovering relevant cases are available, the need for high recall is diminished. Finally, the article examines and presents performance test results of Lexis' Freestyle and Westlaw's Win natural language search engines.
Adaptation to temporal structure

time and individual experience. Everybody has a more or less clear-cut idea about time, but time is just as well “not a thing that, like an apple, may be perceived” (Woodrow, 1951, p. 1235; Pöppel, 1978). Time appears to have no physical reality that is accessible to the senses (Fraisse, 1992). Hence, the notion of time, while easily conceived, is immensely difficult to communicate. The seminal “Confessiones” by Augustine of Hippo (397/389 AD) contain an early, and probably the most famous quote that illustrates this discrepancy. He notes: “if no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks me, I do not know. ” Certainly not a satisfying solution to the problem, the conflict can be seen in light of another of Augustine’s remarks: “It is in you, O mind of mine, that I measure the periods of time”. This sober statement points straight to the crucial role of the individual in any realistic theory of time, or in more contemporary and convenient terms, the neuropsychological dimension of temporal processing and the adaptation to temporal structure. These processes represent the first major focus of the following chapters, which deal with temporal processing, the adaptation to temporal structure, and the neuropsychological underpinnings of these mechanisms, rather than any abstract notion of time that is detached from individual experience. In this context, the psychological component of “time” can thus be defined also in psychological terms as the “conscious experiential product of the processes, which allow the (human) organism to adaptively organize itself so that its behavior remains tuned to the sequential (order) relations in its environment” (Michon, 1985, p. 20). What remains to be specified, is the neural component, i.e. the anchoring of these adaptive psychological mechanisms in the (human) brain. From its beginnings as a discipline and into the present, the issue of time has been at the heart of experimental psychology (Mach, 1865; Vierordt, 1868; Münsterberg, 1889). While interest in the subject waxed and waned over the last century, the study of “time” in general
Increasing the Teaching Efficacy of a Beginning Special Education Teacher Using Differentiated Instruction: A Case Study.

This article provides a description of how a beginning special education teacher in an inclusion classroom used pre-assessment, self-assessment, and on-going assessment to implement the principles of differentiated instruction to become more responsive to her students’ needs in a systematic way. This article describes a case study of one beginning teacher’s use of differentiated instruction. First, a discussion of the usefulness of differentiated instruction in increasing the likelihood of success for children with disabilities is provided. Next, qualitative data supported the implementation of the differentiated instruction process to help the teacher realize how she could positively impact students’ learning using Tomlinson’s (2000) categories of content, product, process, and learning environments. Finally, recommendations are provided for how to engage teachers to implement differentiated instruction as a data-based iterative process of using evidence-based practices to meet the needs of all children in an inclusion classroom.
After Eighty Years: Experimental Study of Atmospheric Corrosion in the Metallic Dome of Hafez’s tomb, Shiraz, Iran

ABSTRACT Hafez’s tomb was constructed on the grave of the well-known Iranian poet in Shiraz, in the 1930s. The dome of this monument is made of copper metal and has been exposed to the urban environment for 80 years. In this study, corrosion mechanisms and conservation conditions of the metallic dome of the Hafez’s tomb are investigated by analytical methods including optical microscopy, ICP-MS, SEM-EDX, and X-ray diffraction. The results showed that the dome is constructed from many copper sheets that are hammered to shape the dome. The corrosion products formed on the surface of copper sheets include copper oxide and copper trihydroxichlorides. In fact, the corrosion mechanism occurring in the metallic dome consists of copper oxidation and redeposition of copper II products because of reaction with air pollutants.
3D scene reconstruction and understanding from single shot pictures

Augmented reality mixes computer generated graphics with real imaging using computer vision techniques. However, nowadays, augmented reality is still a very young field of research, and its applications usually involve predefi ned tags. This thesis has been directed to use computer vision and arti cial intelligence techniques to explore the viability of using natural landmarks as key points for computer graphics reference. Moreover, there are many techniques that infer 3D scenes from images like stereo-vision, structures from motion, depth images, shape from shading, etc. The aim of this work is to find a way of doing this from one single shot image. Finally, new virtual elements will be integrated on the final scene using contextual colors. The followed methodology has been to automatically segment an image in small planar surfaces using di fferent granularities of small regions. Each region is assumed to likely lie on only one planar surface, and thus it the 3D face that it came from can be inferred. The normal vector of the planes corresponding to the 3D faces are approximated along a discrete set of orientations. In addition, some regions do not have a regular orientation and thus, they are assumed as a texturized or porous region. Inferring the fi nal 3D orientation and location from the set of labelled regions is a non-trivial task. This work proposes a method based on the coherent topology of the neighborhood. The 3D position of each point of a region is found and a 3D scenario can be obtained. After that, the regions of the original images are textured in the 3D reconstructed faces. Finally, a color transfer approach is used to integrate new 3D objects inside the final scene.
The great siSwati locative shift

In siSwati the accumulation of a number of changes in the morphology and syntax of locative phrases has led to a more fundamental shift of restructuring of the underlying grammatical system 13 the great siSwati locative shift 13 so that locatives in siSwati are no longer, as in Proto-Bantu and most other present-day Bantu languages, part of the noun class system, but are prepositional. This shift explains aspects of changes in the siSwati locative system which are not otherwise independently motivated, including the degrammaticalization of a historic noun class marker into a preposition and distinct relative clause marking of locatives, and provides an example of a complex, systematic historical change of a sub-system of the grammar.
Fuzzy clustering based applications to medical image segmentation

Medical image segmentation is an indispensable process in the visualization of human tissues. However, medical images always contain a large amount of noise caused by operator performance, equipment and environment. This leads to inaccuracy with segmentation. A robust segmentation technique is required. In this paper, based on the traditional fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering algorithm, the neighborhood attraction is shown to improve the segmentation performance. Two factors of the neighborhood attraction depend on relative location and features of neighboring pixels in the image. Simulated and real brain magnetic resonance (MR) images are segmented to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method compared to the conventional FCM method.
Cultural Tunneling Effect

Many researchers have analyzed the relationship between the financial success patterns of a motion picture and many other factors, such as the production cost, marketing, stars, awards, reviews, genre, and rating. Through these studies, many researchers and investors concluded that big budgets to make a blockbuster movie can serve as an insurance policy to meet their ROI; thus the box office is dominated by blockbuster movies. High-budget blockbuster movies are more likely to receive attention because these movies are more recognizable given their high expenses for production and casting. Therefore, audiences choose blockbusters in an effort to reduce the searching cost and to mitigate the possibility of a regrettable choice. This behavior of consumers, in turn, causes distributors to allocate screens for blockbusters, resulting in “concentration of blockbuster consumption. ” As such, low-budget films cannot easily become popular due to the lack of distribution. Indeed, low-budget films released on a small number of screens often end up becoming dismal failures. However, there are exceptional examples which are contrary to the general idea in the movie industry that a big budget and showings on a large number of screens can guarantee the success of a movie. Although researchers have attempted to analyze the performances of movies with small budgets, such movies are likely to be regarded as outliers and then be entirely discarded, as they are far from the ‘three-sigma’ range, especially given that previous research methodologies could not explain the financial success of such unique examples. This study attempts to explain the financial success at the box office of low-budget movies by applying the concept of the tunnel effect in quantum mechanics, as the phenomenon found in the movie industry is similar to a particle’s movement in quantum physics. The tunneling effect is a phenomenon by which a particle without enough energy to pass over a potential barrier tunnels through it. Adopting the analogy, this study draws a tunneling probability function and cultural constant to forecast other outliers using the Schrodinger equation. Moreover, the study finds that word-of-mouth creates in the movie industry this phenomenon of finding outliers.
Wireless RFID Chip Impedance Measurement by Using an Reader and a Statistically Analysis

For the development of an RFID tag it is important to have a good knowledge of the input impedance of the RFID IC in order to design a matched antenna. A new approach for a wireless chip impedance measurement, that only requires an RFID reader and at least three similar tag antennas that have different impedances is presented. The antennas are connected to the IC and for each combination the minimum activation power and/or maximum distance is measured. From these results the chip impedance is calculated. Starting from the procedure with three antennas, the method is expanded to use more test antennas and a statistically technique.
Investigating the determinants of temporal integration

Physiological, clinical and empirical studies suggest that visual input is functionally segregated (e.g. Livingstone and Hubel, 1988; Hubel and Livingstone, 1987; Zeki, 1973). Moreover, this functional processing results in concurrently presented feature attributes being processed and perceived at different times (Moutoussis and Zeki, 1998). However, findings from the attentional and categorisation literature call into question a fixed account of feature processing (Posner, 1980; Stelmach and Herdman, 1991; Carrasco and McElree, 2001; Oliva and Schyns; 2000; Goldstone, 1995). In particular, previous research has demonstrated a processing advantage for attended information. From this literature it seems likely that the enhanced saliency of an attribute will accelerate the processing time of this dimension and consequently should modulate any perceptual asynchrony between concurrently presented features. Moreover, if attention offers a selective processing advantage this should induce processing asynchrony between attended and unattended information across the visual field. The present research set out to examine how the visual system constructs a seemingly unified and veridical representation from this asynchronous information. Results add weight to the proposal that visual processing is not synchronous. Secondly, because this asynchrony is revealed in perception it seems that the visual system fails to account for these asynchronies. Finally, asynchrony does not appear to be fixed. Instead the experimental or attentional demands of the task seem to modulate the perceptual processing of attribute or localised information.
Aesthetics and usability of virtual learning environment interfaces

There are many theories about what good aesthetics are and how they can be achieved. However, the importance of aesthetic attributes in the design of interactive computer systems has only recently come to the attention of researchers. The research described here uses design fundamentals (e. g. Gestalt theory, design principles and dynamic symmetry theory) as a model to manipulate the aesthetics of a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Another part of the thesis is concerned with the surprising fact that aesthetic have a role to play in determining judged system usability. The research is organized in three parts. The first part is about VLEs and how the communication features support online learning. It also presents a review of how aesthetics can be applied to graphic screen design. The second part presents an observational study of the use of a VLE and its communication tools. The third part presents four experiments that manipulate aesthetics and measure the effect on users. Experiment 1 evaluated the use of design principles on interface design and found that participants preferred the screen layouts that applied the design principles. Experiment 2 used a VLE prototype where the participants had to navigate through the interface and found that aesthetics influenced judgements of system usability. Experiment 3 was similar to the second, however, with a stronger manipulation of aesthetics and usability and showed an even greater effect of aesthetics on usability. Experiment 4 showed that order of rating did not affect the above conclusions. In summary, the experiments suggest that interface aesthetics play a substantial role in the evaluation of the usability attributes of a VLE. The research contributes to the fields of Human Computer Interaction and Graphic Design by further explaining the relationship between aesthetics and usability.
A Data Pump for Communication

Abstract : As computer systems become more open and interconnected, the need for reliable and secure communication also increases. In this paper, we introduce a communication device, the Pump, that balances the requirements of reliability and security. The Pump provides acknowledgements (ACKs) to the message source to insure reliability.These ACKs are also used to regulate the source to prevent the Pump's buffer from becoming/staying full. This is desirable because once the buffer is filled there exists a huge covert communication channel. The Pump controls the input rate from the source by attempting to slave the input rate to the service rate through the randomized ACK back to the source. An analysis of the covert channel is also presented. The purpose of the covert channel analysis is to provide guidelines for the designer of the Pump to choose appropriate design parameters (e.g., size of buffer) dependent upon the analysis presented in this paper and system requirements.
CSCL – a tool to motivate foreign language learners: The Finnish application

This article discusses the applications of the theory of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) to teaching and learning a foreign language, in this case, one of the ‘Less Commonly Taught Languages’, Finnish. The ‘Virtually Finnish’ project was based on the idea of creating a larger, virtual Finnish learning community among the second-year Finnish language students in five US universities during the fall semester, 2001. CSCL was chosen as a base, as its principal goal is to aid the learners in sharing and distributing their knowledge to the whole learning community. In addition to discussing the set up and the content of the project, the students’ feedback about their language learning experience in the CSCL-environment will be examined. Furthermore, the conclusions, and the realization of our goals from the perspective of CSCL, as well as the students’ feedback on the collaborative process will be discussed. Based on the knowledge gained from limited feedback, a discussion of tools to aid language students in becoming a part of motivating and authentic collaboration projects on-line will be discussed. Looking at the students’ work on-line, as well as the feedback received, it was realized that certain skills crucial for communication have been neglected in teaching. Furthermore, it was realized that teaching on-line learning strategies in addition to teaching the target language is crucial. Future plans, and ideas for research in the area of CSCL will be shared in anticipation of inspiring others to undertake further research.
Document Type Denition (DTD) Metrics

In this paper, we present two complexity metrics for the assessment of schema quality written in Document Type De�finition (DTD) language. Both "Entropy (E) metric: E(DTD)" and "Distinct Structured Element Repetition Scale (DSERS) metric: DSERS(DTD)" are intended to measure the structural complexity of schemas in DTD language. These metrics exploit a directed graph representation of schema document and consider the complexity of schema due to its similar structured elements and the occurrences of these elements. The empirical and theoretical validations of these metrics prove the robustness of the metrics.
Automatic noise-based detection of splicing in digital images. (Détection automatique du splicing dans les images digitales par exploitation du bruit)

L'objectif de la these est de mettre au point plusieurs methodes complementaires permettant de detecter differentes falsifications sur une image digitale, avec un minimum d'interpretation par un operateur humain. Nos approches se centrent principalement sur une exploitation du bruit de l'image, avec une breve exploration en anti-forensique pour mieux apprehender les methodes a contrer.
A Hybrid Difficulty Balancing Method on “Casual” Mobile Game

A new hybrid Video Game Difficulty Balancing method which stands in between the two traditional methods (Static and Dynamic) has been suggested in this project aiming to discreetly estimate the player’s difficulty preference and make the respective in-game adjustment. This method has been based on the hypothesis that the user’s difficulty preferences can be to some extent predicted by some of their in-game actions. A casual mobile game containing a User Testing part has been developed for this purpose and played by 56 participants. The extracted results offer some insights on various gamers’ demographic groups behaviors and some indications that the intended prediction is feasible.
Self- and Super-organizing Maps in R: The kohonen Package

In this age of ever-increasing data set sizes, especially in the natural sciences, visualisation becomes more and more important. Self-organizing maps have many features that make them attractive in this respect: they do not rely on distributional assumptions, can handle huge data sets with ease, and have shown their worth in a large number of applications. In this paper, we highlight the kohonen package for R, which implements self-organizing maps as well as some extensions for supervised pattern recognition and data fusion.
PIDE: physical intrusion detection for personal mobile devices

Authentication mechanisms are useful when a device is lost or stolen, but ineffective when it comes to preventing friends and family from snooping through contents. Most unlock authentication methods are vulnerable to observation attacks than can easily be performed by those in a close social circle. Moreover, unlock authentication does not address the common use case of device sharing. Intrusion Detection and Response Systems (IDRS) are based on the assumption that a system will eventually be attacked, and are widely used in network systems as an additional security measure that works around authentication flaws. The main contribution of this work was the design and development of an inconspicuous IDRS for Android smartphones, called Auric. A parallel contribution was the evaluation of the adequacy of that approach, intended to dissuade socially-close adversaries from snooping through device contents. This system runs on the background and attempts to determine, through face recognition, if the device is being operated by the owner. If it is not, it starts recording user actions, which can later be reviewed by the owner. We conducted a laboratory study to examine users concerns over other people looking through their data, and to present the system to participants. We also conducted a field study, where participants used the system for an extended period of time, in order to understand how they adopted it. Results indicate that the IDRS approach addresses previously unmet needs, namely by offering a security measure that does not require users to expend effort in every interaction with the device.