Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptive atomistic‐to‐continuum modeling of propagating defects

An adaptive atomistic‐to‐continuum method is presented for modeling the propagation of material defects. This method extends the bridging domain method to allow the atomic domain to dynamically conform to the evolving defect regions during a simulation, without introducing spurious oscillations and without requiring mesh refinement. The atomic domain expands as defects approach the bridging domain method coupling domain by fine graining nearby finite elements into equivalent atomistic subdomains. Additional algorithms coarse grain portions of the atomic domain to the continuum scale, reducing the degrees of freedom, when the atomic displacements in a subdomain can be approximated by FEM or extended FEM elements to within a certain homogeneity tolerance. The extended FEM approximations are created by fitting the broken inter‐atomic bonds of fractured surfaces and dislocation slip planes. Because atomic degrees of freedom are maintained only where needed for each timestep, the solution retains the advantages of multiscale modeling, with a reduced computational cost compared with other multiscale methods. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A Qualitative Analysis of Scaffolding Use in a Resource-Based Learning Environment Involving the World Wide Web

A qualitative analysis of eighteen college students using different types of scaffolding (instructional supports) while working on a World Wide Web (WWW) project was conducted. Four different support mechanisms were examined: a) WWW resources; b) procedural guidelines for the instructional activity; c) student-student interactions; and d) instructor-student interactions. Three major findings related to use of the WWW as a resource-based learning environment are discussed: a) the utility of scaffolds and WWW resources seem dependent on the ability of learners to readily grasp how the scaffold or resource could help them; b) learners' preconceptions and search strategies were difficult to alter, despite ongoing evidence that searching was not leading to project clarification; and c) social scaffolding based on face to face dialogue with instructors and peers was critical to helping learners manage the complexity of the open-ended project. Implications related to the role of instructional scaffolding in encouraging shared meaning and learning with WWW resources are considered.
A‐scalability and an integrated computational technology and framework for non‐linear structural dynamics. Part 2: Implementation aspects and parallel performance results

An integrated framework and computational technology is described that addresses the issues to foster absolute scalability (A‐scalability) of the entire transient duration of the simulations of implicit non‐linear structural dynamics of large scale practical applications on a large number of parallel processors. Whereas the theoretical developments and parallel formulations were presented in Part 1, the implementation, validation and parallel performance assessments and results are presented here in Part 2 of the paper. Relatively simple numerical examples involving large deformation and elastic and elastoplastic non‐linear dynamic behaviour are first presented via the proposed framework for demonstrating the comparative accuracy of methods in comparison to available experimental results and/or results available in the literature. For practical geometrically complex meshes, the A‐scalability of non‐linear implicit dynamic computations is then illustrated by employing scalable optimal dissipative zero‐order displacement and velocity overshoot behaviour time operators which are a subset of the generalized framework in conjunction with numerically scalable spatial domain decomposition methods and scalable graph partitioning techniques. The constant run times of the entire simulation of ‘fixed‐memory‐use‐per‐processor’ scaling of complex finite element mesh geometries is demonstrated for large scale problems and large processor counts on at least 1024 processors. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An Improved Ultimate Sensitivity Method and PID; I-PD Control Characteristics

(4) calculating the optimal values of the PID; I-PD control parameter from the followings, the proportional gain Kp=fK•EKc the integral time TI=fI•EPc the derivative time TD=fD•EPc For controlled objects with the wide range of the ratio of dead time L to lag time constant T, step response curves, which are demonstrated in simulation studies, show the effectiveness of the method, and the importance of the parameter LN in the design of control system.
Secured Reversible Color Image Data Hiding Technique Using Image Classifiers and Lempel-Ziv-Welch Image Compression Technique

Recent advancement in data transfer and networking techniques has put forward a considerable threat for secure data transfer. It is the sensitive information that flows via network fuels the engine of global economy. One of the main concerns in data communication is the ability to exchange information in a secured fashion and embed the information of interest in any multimedia carrier like audio, video and an image. The proposed work is an ideal modernistic novel approach for secured sensitive information communication over an encrypted color host image carrying exceptionally confidential data. Distortion less retrieval of both payload and host signal information from marked image is an appealing feature in scenarios like medical, Military and satellite applications. Reversibility not only assures zero error retrieval of sensitive information hidden and also perfect reconstruction of host medium information contents while safeguarding the confidentiality of secret information. Most popular and widely in use Advanced Encryption Standard(AES) stream cipher in Counter mode is used for encrypting the cover image content, by performing XOR operation over cover image information bits with key dependent pseudorandom bits. Signal Processing over the encrypted domain is one of the most demanding features for most of the privacy preserving applications like cloud computing and remote sensing. High Embedding capability is achieved through Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) compression technique. High performance reversible data hiding technique is assured via public key modulation scheme. Two of the most powerful image classifiers Support Vector Machine (SVM) and KNearest neighbor (KNN) algorithms are used at the decoder end to distinguish between encrypted and non encrypted image blocks. Performance evaluation of image classifiers is done, considering their ability to accurately categorize image patches as encrypted and unencrypted using feature vectors. Features used for ca tegorizing encrypted and unencrypted image blocks are variation of pixel intensity in all four directions, entropy, standard deviation and histogram plot of segmented image blocks. Proposed algorithm comes with a unique feature of simultaneous retrieval of both host image and payload information in an error free fashion with zero distortion. Proposed algorithm is proven more secured considering several security attacks as evaluation parameters. Few of Cryptanalysis and Steganalysis techniques considered to verify the security feature of proposed algorithm are Sample pair analysis (SPA), Number of changing pixel rate (NPCR), Unified averaged changed intensity (UACI) and Chisquare attack.
Prevalence of Dental Caries of the First Permanent Molars among 6-14 Years Old Sudanese Children

Background: Dental caries is the most prevalent and common chronic infectious disease of childhood. It cause tooth pain, discomfort, eating impairment, loss of tooth and delay language development. Furthermore, dental caries has been increasing among school children due to unlimited consumption of sugary substances, poor oral care practices and inadequate health service utilization. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of dental caries of the first permanent molars among Sudanese children at Pediatric clinic Faculty of Dentistry University of Khartoum. Methodology: Descriptive retrospective study of fully documented dental records from school children attending a pediatric dental clinic was conducted. Total of 300 dental records of 139 (46.3%) boys and 161 (53.7%) girls aged 6 to 14 years old were studied. Results: The prevalence of the dental caries in first permanent molar (FPM) was 183 (61%) from total 300 children, 73 (39.9%) boys and 110 (60.1%) girls. Mandible was more prone to caries than maxilla. Conclusion: The most prevalence tooth surface was the occlusal surface. Girls was more susceptible to dental caries than boys. Children 7 years old recorded the highest susceptible age to dental caries. Recommendation: Along with nutritional factors, a comprehensive approach to preventing dental caries in children must include improved general dietary habits, good oral hygiene, appropriate use of fluorides, and access to preventive and restorative dental care.
Representations of Idioms for Natural Language Processing: Idiom type and token identification, Language Modelling and Neural Machine Translation

An idiom is a multiword expression (MWE) whose meaning is noncompositional, i.e., the meaning of the expression is different from the meaning of its individual components. Idioms are complex constructions of language used creatively across almost all text genres. Idioms pose problems to natural language processing (NLP) systems due to their non-compositional nature, and the correct processing of idioms can improve a wide range of NLP systems. Current approaches to idiom processing vary in terms of the amount of discourse history required to extract the features necessary to build representations for the expressions. These features are, in general, statistics extracted from the text and often fail to capture all the nuances involved in idiom usage. We argue in this thesis that a more flexible representations must be used to process idioms in a range of idiom related tasks. We demonstrate that high-dimensional representations allow idiom classifiers to better model the interactions between global and local features and thereby improve the performance of these systems with regard to processing idioms. In support of this thesis we demonstrate that distributed representa-
Hearing Matters More Than Seeing: A Cross-Modality Study of Statistical Learning and Reading Ability

ABSTRACT There is growing interest in the link between implicit statistical learning (SL) and reading ability. Although learning to read involves both auditory and visual modalities, it is not known whether reading skills might be more strongly associated with auditory SL or visual SL. Here we assessed SL across both modalities in 36 typically developing children and 36 healthy adults using the classic triplet-learning paradigm. Auditory SL was significantly associated with sentence reading fluency (Woodcock Johnson III Test of Achievement) in the combined sample of children and adults after controlling for age and nonverbal intelligence. In further analysis of the child data, auditory SL was significantly associated with nonword reading accuracy (Woodcock Reading Mastery Test), a relationship which appeared to be mediated by phonological processing abilities (Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing). These findings suggest that auditory SL might contribute more strongly to certain aspects of reading development compared to visual SL.
Information-driven data gathering in wireless sensor networks

INFORMATION-DRIVEN DATA GATHERING IN WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS Jing Wang, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Arlington, 2010 Supervising Professor: Sajal K. Das, Yonghe Liu Since the advance of wireless technology enables the mass production of lowcost, small-sized sensor nodes, sensor nodes can be densely deployed in an area for high tolerance to node failure or to achieve better coverage statistically. The redundancy of sensor nodes results in the temporal and spatial correlation of sensory data, which motivates the information-driven data gathering approaches for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Since existing approaches target at the sensory data that are already highly correlated with each other, little attention has been paid to the idea of changing the sampling schedules of the sensor nodes to reduce the correlation among sensory data. In this dissertation, sampling strategies and the relevant medium access control (MAC) protocol are presented to demonstrate how the correlation can be reduced through adjusting the sampling time shifts of sensor nodes. The asynchronous lossless data gathering strategy aims at extending the sampling cycle of individual node while guaranteeing the original signal to be fully recovered by the sink. Based on the correlation signal model, details of the collaborative
Key factors that improve knowledge-intensive business processes which lead to competitive advantage

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to empirically test the knowledge-intensive process of creative problem-solving and its outcomes. Design/methodology/approach This study uses survey data from 113 leading Italian companies. To test the structural relations of the research model the authors used the partial least square (PLS) method. Findings Results show that work design and training have a positive direct impact on creative problem-solving process while organizational culture has a positive impact on both creative problem-solving process and its outcomes. Finally creative problem-solving process has a strong direct impact on its outcomes and this, in turn, on firms’ competitiveness. Practical implications This study suggests that managers must highlight the problem-solving process as it affects a firm’s capability to find creative solutions and therefore its competitiveness. Moreover, the present paper suggests managers should invest in specific knowledge management (KM) practices for enhancing knowledge-intensive business processes. Originality/value The present paper fills an important gap in the BPM literature by empirically testing the relationship among KM practices, multistage processes of creative problem-solving and their outcomes, and firms’ competitiveness.
Aspects of 3D Perception, Abstraction, and Interpretation in Autonomous Mobile Robotics

This thesis presents novel insights and solutions to the problem of perceiving, abstracting, and interpreting the 3D structure of human environments with autonomous mobile robots. It focuses on the goal of retrieving a meaningful representation of objects from 3D laser range data for purposes of object recognition. As such, it represents an important contribution to the development of cognitive technical systems, which depend on intelligent perception as a core capability. A chain of abstraction is developed throughout the chapters, that leads from raw point cloud data to recognized objects. Following a thorough review of state-of-the-art sensing approaches, new studies and methods for feature computation, surface-based point cloud segmentation and Bayesian part-based object recognition are presented. The results show that with the framework a large number of structured objects can be learned and robustly recognized from few examples.
The exponential CCII-, a building block for log-domain circuits

In this paper an implementation which features a very precise exponential voltage-current relationship is presented, based on introducing BJT base current compensation as well as collector and emitter currents equalization methods. Such a circuit can be used as a basic building block for the design of log-domain circuits and other nonlinear techniques demanding an accurate exponential behavior. Both simulations and experimental results are provided in order to confirm its practical value.
The Impact of Call Instruction on Classroom Computer Use: A Foundation for Rethinking Technology in Teacher Education

This purpose of this study is to examine how language teachers apply practical experiences from computer-assisted language learning (CALL) coursework to their teaching. It also examines ways in which teachers continue their CALL professional development. Participants in the study were 20 English as a second language and foreign language teachers who had, within the last 4 years, completed the same graduate-level CALL course and who are currently teaching. Surveys and follow-up interviews explored how participants learn about CALL activities; how what they learned in the course interacts with their current teaching contexts; the factors that influence whether or not they use technology in their classrooms; and how they continue to acquire and master new ideas in CALL. The findings support previous research on technology teacher education as it suggests that teachers who use CALL activities are often those teachers who had experience with CALL prior to taking the course; that lack of time, support, and resources prohibits the use of CALL activities in some classrooms; and that colleagues are the most common resource of new CALL activity ideas outside of formal coursework. Implications for teacher education are that teachers learn better in situated contexts, and technology courses should be designed accordingly.
Efficient Dialogue Policy Learning with BBQ-Networks

We present a new algorithm that significantly improves the efficiency of exploration for deep Q-learning agents in dialogue systems. Our agents explore via Thompson sampling, drawing Monte Carlo samples from a Bayes-by-Backprop neural network. Our algorithm learns much faster than common exploration strategies such as \epsilon-greedy, Boltzmann exploration, and bootstrapping-based approaches. Additionally, we show that spiking the replay buffer with experiences from just a few successful episodes can make Q-learning feasible when it might otherwise fail.
CHORD ESTIMATION USING CHORD TEMPLATES AND HMM

This document describes a submission to the Music Information Retrieval Evaluation eXchange in the Audio Chord Recognition task. A set of chroma vectors representing the pitch content of the audio ﬁle over time is extracted. From these observations the chord progression is then estimated using hidden Markov models. The system takes into account the presence of higher harmonics of pitch notes and includes some music knowledge. In this approach, no training is needed.
Fundamental Frequency Characteristics of Modal and Vocal Fry Registers

This study examined the distribution of fundamental frequencies in the connected speech of 14 healthy young adults. Acoustic analysis of fundamental frequency was performed on previously collected speech samples of a phonetically balanced reading passage. For the first three sentences of the reading passage, fundamental frequency contours were extracted using PRAAT, a speech analysis software package. The accuracy of these contours were visually verified and manually corrected when needed. The distribution of the fundamental frequency histories for each sample were then analyzed using Gaussian Mixture Model analyses in MATLAB. For most speakers, four statistical modes were identified in the data based on model optimization. The lowest statistical mode was located in a frequency region that was consistent with the vocal fry register. This lowest statistical mode made up only around 5 percent of all glottal cycles, on average across both male and female participants. The results are discussed in relation to normal voice production, voice disorders, and vocal performance.
O-MUSUBI: Ad-hoc Grouping System Enhanced by Ambient Sound - The Similarity based on Information Theoretical Features for Sound-Fields -

—The aim of this paper is to achieve ad-hoc grouping systems enhanced by ambient sounds or sound-ﬁelds. As an elemental technology of ad-hoc grouping, systems have to be equipped with a search engine with sufﬁcient accuracy to ﬁnd out users who are in similar contexts. Systems require another similarity criterion for sound-ﬁelds. Because search results from well-known similarities, such as cosine-similarity, cannot exclude false negative and cannot restrict false positives. Moreover, in order to cover a wide-variety of mobile devices including smartphones, we have the problem of the deterioration of search accuracy due to differences in microphone performances. We may also have to decrease the system-wide load. This suggests that original sound-ﬁeld data should be resized as small as possible without losing valuable features to ﬂexibly recognize different contexts. We thus propose a new similarity criterion on sound-ﬁelds for ad-hoc grouping. We also show experimental results to ensure all requirements are fulﬁlled.
Using Design Experiments As a Means of Guiding Software Development

The following report illustrates how educational researchers and software developers can work in conjunction with teachers to optimize learning and provide an empirical basis for software revision. Using the Design Experiment Technique, teachers and researchers together determined, through successive classroom implementations, how to optimize the use of new software. Objective assessments made along the way indicated whether the curricular adjustments led to improved learning. The current research involved four implementations of software that teaches science content and inquiry skills. After each implementation, the data were analyzed, and classroom activities were revised. Revisions included the addition of time tables, the jigsaw method for doing background research, daily questions, and activity summaries. These revisions will also be incorporated into future versions of the software.
Interarticulatory Coordination: Speech Sounds

There is probably no speech utterance that involves only a single organ of the vocal tract. In a sense, full coverage of the topic of interarticulatory coordination therefore requires coverage of speech production in its entirety, and it is important at the beginning of this chapter to outline how we intend to define a task of manageable proportions. Thinking in terms of the three processes defined by Catford (2001), initiation, phonation, and articulation, we will focus on articulation, defined as the process of modifying an airstream. So we will not go into areas such as the coordination of respiratory and phonatory activity, nor the patterns of coordinated movement that are required for non‐pulmonic initiation. We will, however, be devoting a section to laryngeal‐oral coordination in which we treat the alternation between voicing and voicelessness as articulatory behavior of the larynx. A basic distinction in articulation is that between temporal and spatial aspects. We will be looking at interarticulatory coordination above all in its temporal aspects. Spatial aspects, namely how multiple articulators collaborate to achieve some functional goal, are dealt with by Perrier and Fuchs in Chapter 11 of this volume under the title of motor equivalence, a key theoretical issue in speech motor control. Even from the temporal point of view, we will not attempt to cover one big area, namely timing issues with respect to coarticulation. Coarticulation necessarily involves issues of interarticulatory coordination. For example, when investigating the extent of anticipatory labial coarticulation, the activity of the lips in the articulation of some sound must be referenced in time to the activity of some other speech organ, or perhaps to some acoustic goal. Since good reviews of coarticulation are readily available, and full coverage of this topic would involve discussion of a multitude of acoustic studies, we refer the reader to the relevant sources (e.g., Farnetani and Recasens 2010). 7 Interarticulatory Coordination Speech Sounds