Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MOBILE LEARNING ADOPTION FRAMEWORK : AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION FROM LEARNERS PERSPECTIVE

The purpose of this research was to identify factors influencing the adoption of mobile learning from learners’ perspective. Mobile learning has become an emerging educational platform which is gaining popularity in the context of developed countries. However, there is research gap that abstains from providing a complete view of mobile learning adoption in the context of developing countries. To the best of our knowledge, no notable conceptual model is proposed in order to measure students’ intention towards mobile learning. In order to address the gap, Mobile Learning Adoption Model (MLAM) is proposed on the basis of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Unified Theory of Technology and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model. An online survey is conducted to collect data from 158 students at undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate level in Pakistan. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is employed to observe the data fit for measurement model by using AMOS 20. The results of the study revealed differences in the perception of students belonging to the discipline of Information Technology (IT) and Non-IT. In addition, two constructs i.e. mobile readiness and perceived mobility are found to be strongest contributors in influencing the behavioural intention of students towards mobile learning systems. The authors assert that the key findings are useful for policy makers, decision makers and researchers. The proposed mobile learning adoption model i.e. MLAM can be used as a guideline for the implementation of mobile learning systems in Pakistan.
Macroscopic Modeling, Calibration, and Simulation of Managed Lane-Freeway Networks, Part I: Topological and Phenomenological Modeling

To help mitigate road congestion caused by the unrelenting growth of traffic demand, many transit authorities have implemented managed lane policies. Managed lanes typically run parallel to a freeway's standard, general-purpose (GP) lanes, but are restricted to certain types of vehicles. It was originally thought that managed lanes would improve the use of existing infrastructure through incentivization of demand-management behaviors like carpooling, but implementations have often been characterized by unpredicted phenomena that is often to detrimental system performance. This paper presents several macroscopic traffic modeling tools we have used for study of freeways equipped with managed lanes, or "managed lane-freeway networks. " The proposed framework is based on the widely-used first-order kinematic wave theory. In this model, the GP and the managed lanes are modeled as parallel links connected by nodes, where certain type of traffic may switch between GP and managed lane links. Two types of managed lane topologies are considered: full-access, where vehicles can switch between the GP and the managed lanes anywhere; and separated, where such switching is allowed only at certain locations called gates. We also describe methods to incorporate in three phenomena into our model that are particular to managed lane-freeway networks. The inertia effect reflects drivers' inclination to stay in their lane as long as possible and switch only if this would obviously improve their travel condition. The friction effect reflects the empirically-observed driver fear of moving fast in a managed lane while traffic in the adjacent GP lanes moves slowly due to congestion. The smoothing effect describes how managed lanes can increase throughput at bottlenecks by reducing lane changes. We present simple models for each of these phenomena that fit within the general macroscopic theory.
VIPER: Volume Invariant Position-based Elastic Rods

We extend the formulation of position-based rods to include elastic volumetric deformations. We achieve this by introducing an additional degree of freedom per vertex -- isotropic scale (and its velocity). Including scale enriches the space of possible deformations, allowing the simulation of volumetric effects, such as a reduction in cross-sectional area when a rod is stretched. We rigorously derive the continuous formulation of its elastic energy potentials, and hence its associated position-based dynamics (PBD) updates to realize this model, enabling the simulation of up to 26000 DOFs at 140 Hz in our GPU implementation. We further show how rods can provide a compact alternative to tetrahedral meshes for the representation of complex muscle deformations, as well as providing a convenient representation for collision detection. This is achieved by modeling a muscle as a bundle of rods, for which we also introduce a technique to automatically convert a muscle surface mesh into a rods-bundle. Finally, we show how rods and/or bundles can be skinned to a surface mesh to drive its deformation, resulting in an alternative to cages for real-time volumetric deformation. The source code of our physics engine will be openly available1.
Techniques for Using a Novel Intramedullary Cage Technology for Fixation of Proximal Humeral Fractures

consideration of patient age and functional level[4]. However, surgical treatment of these fractures has significantly increased in the US when comparing data from 1999-2000 to 20042005. The preference for surgical treatments has evolved with technological advances especially locking plate technology[4]. Although locking plate technology has become very popular, results are still unpredictable and complication rates remain high[5]. Hence, many surgeons resort toan arthroplasty, which is both costly and oftentimes without a solution for revision should a complication occur. For this reason, an alternative method of fixation of proximal humeral fractures is needed. This paper describes two techniques using a novel implant to treat proximal humeral fractures i.e. the PH Cage technology (Conventus Orthopedics, Maple Grove, MN).
Adversarial Learning of Privacy-Preserving Text Representations for De-Identification of Medical Records

De-identification is the task of detecting protected health information (PHI) in medical text. It is a critical step in sanitizing electronic health records (EHR) to be shared for research. Automatic de-identification classifiers can significantly speed up the sanitization process. However, obtaining a large and diverse dataset to train such a classifier that works well across many types of medical text poses a challenge as privacy laws prohibit the sharing of raw medical records. We introduce a method to create privacy-preserving shareable representations of medical text (i.e. they contain no PHI) that does not require expensive manual pseudonymization. These representations can be shared between organizations to create unified datasets for training de-identification models. Our representation allows training a simple LSTM-CRF de-identification model to an F1 score of 97.4%, which is comparable to a strong baseline that exposes private information in its representation. A robust, widely available de-identification classifier based on our representation could potentially enable studies for which de-identification would otherwise be too costly.
Calanus hyperboreus and the lipid pump

Lipid‐fuelled overwintering by copepods can be a regionally important contribution to carbon sequestration in the deep oceans. Here, we estimate the contribution for Calanus hyperboreus, found in abundance in the northern reaches of the North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean. Estimates for regions with high overwintering populations, Fram Strait, Greenland Sea and Iceland Sea lie between 3.5 gC m−2 yr−1 and 6.0 gC m−2 yr−1 at depths of 1000–3000 m, comparable to the flux of detrital organic carbon at commensurate depths. Apart from the variation in the abundance of overwintering populations, these estimates are most sensitive to mortality rates. We present a general model based on metabolic theory and isomorphism that can be used to constrain estimates for data poor species in other parts of the global ocean.
South African manufacturing performance in international perspective, 1970-1999

This paper analyses the historical performance of the South African manufacturing sector in an international perspective. After a brief overview of the industrialisation process of South Africa during the 20th century, a binary comparison of manufacturing output and productivity between South Africa and the US is presented. The industry-of-origin approach is used to construct unit value ratios (UVRs), as an alternative to the exchange range for converting US and South African output data into the same currency. Subsequently, the UVRs are used to estimate labour and total factor productivity levels for total manufacturing and 13 manufacturing branches for the period 1970-1999 in comparison to the USA. Next, these results are used to compute relative unit labour costs, which shed light on the international competitiveness of the South African manufacturing sector at a detailed level. The study is part of the International Comparisons of output and Productivity (ICOP) project carried out at the universities of Groningen and Eindhoven. We find that there exists a considerable labour and total productivity gap between the US and South Africa, which is continuously widening over time. In 1970, labour productivity stood at 32 percent of US level, while it was only 20 percent in 1999. With respect to relative unit labour costs, the results show that on average, South Africa is competitive with the USA, albeit there are some industries which show consistent relative unit labour costs above US level.
Structure-adaptive Manifold Estimation

We consider a problem of manifold estimation from noisy observations. Many manifold learning procedures locally approximate a manifold by a weighted average over a small neighborhood. However, in the presence of large noise, the assigned weights become so corrupted that the averaged estimate shows very poor performance. We suggest a novel computationally efficient structure-adaptive procedure, which simultaneously reconstructs a smooth manifold and estimates projections of the point cloud onto this manifold. The proposed approach iteratively refines the weights on each step, using the structural information obtained at previous steps. After several iterations, we obtain nearly "oracle" weights, so that the final estimates are nearly efficient even in the presence of relatively large noise. In our theoretical study we establish tight lower and upper bounds proving asymptotic optimality of the method for manifold estimation under the Hausdorff loss. Our finite sample study confirms a very reasonable performance of the procedure in comparison with the other methods of manifold estimation.
Female dominance in competition for gum trees in the Grey Mouse Lemur Microcebus murinus

Chez les mammiferes, les femelles sont generalement plus limitees par les ressources alimentaires que les mâles, du fait de leur plus grand investissement dans la reproduction. Dans une foret seche decidue de l'ouest de Madagascar, le poids corporel, la distribution spatiale, les comportements alimentaires et sociaux de Microcebes gris (Microcebus murinus) ont ete suivis pendant la periode d'engraissement automnal (mars-avril) a l'aide de captures-recaptures d'animaux marques et d'observations comportementales. Seuls quelques animaux (23 %) ont pris du poids et les femelles etaient en general plus lourdes que les mâles. La distribution spatiale des captures des animaux des deux sexes s'est superposee a celle des arbres a gomme, lesquels sont apparus comme une ressource-clef a cette periode (75 % du regime). De plus, les femelles etaient d'autant plus lourdes qu'elles etaient capturees pres des arbres a gomme, alors que cette correlation n'a pas ete retrouvee chez les mâles. Une exclusion spatiale des captures de mâles et de femelles a egalement ete observee. En fait, une competition locale pour les ressources, confirmee par les observations comportementales, semble expliquer le poids corporel eleve d'animaux dominants, c'est-a-dire en particulier des femelles. La mise en reserve de graisse corporelle pourrait affecter a la fois la survie a la saison seche et le succes reproducteur a la saison des pluies suivante. Ainsi, la competition alimentaire a l'automne pourrait avoir des consequences importantes sur l'organisation socio-spatiale du Microcebe gris en produisant une grande variabilite intra- et inter-sexuelle.
Intrinsic localized modes in two-dimensional vibrations of crystalline pillars and their application for sensing

We present a complete analysis on the possibility of exciting and observing the intrinsic localized modes (ILMs) in a crystalline linear array of nano pillars. We discuss the nano-fabrication techniques for these arrays and visualization procedures to observe the real-time dynamics. As a consequence, we extend previous models to the study of two dimensional vibrations to be consistent with these restrictions. For these pillars, the elastic properties and hence the dynamics depend on the pillar's shape and the orientation of the crystal axes. We show that ILMs do form in the system, but their stability, defect pinning, and reaction to friction strongly depend on the crystals properties, with the optimal dynamics only achieved in a rather small region of the parameter space. We also demonstrate fabrication techniques for these pillars and discuss the applications of these pillar arrays to sensing.
The EAS approach for graphical selection consistency in vector autoregression models

As evidenced by various recent and significant papers within the frequentist literature, along with numerous applications in macroeconomics, genomics, and neuroscience, there continues to be substantial interest in understanding the theoretical estimation properties of high‐dimensional vector autoregression (VAR) models. To date, however, while Bayesian VAR (BVAR) models have been developed and studied empirically (primarily in the econometrics literature), there exist very few theoretical investigations of the repeated‐sampling properties for BVAR models in the literature, and there exist no generalized fiducial investigations of VAR models. In this direction, we construct methodology via the ε ‐admissible subsets (EAS) approach for inference based on a generalized fiducial distribution of relative model probabilities over all sets of active/inactive components (graphs) of the VAR transition matrix. We provide a mathematical proof of pairwise and strong graphical selection consistency for the EAS approach for stable VAR(1) models, and demonstrate empirically that it is an effective strategy in high‐dimensional settings.
A Very Large Array Survey of Luminous Extranuclear Star-forming Regions in Luminous Infrared Galaxies in GOALS

We present the first results of a high-resolution Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array imaging survey of luminous and ultra-luminous infrared galaxies (U/LIRGs) in the Great Observatories All-sky LIRG Survey. From the full sample of 68 galaxies, we have selected 25 luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) that show resolved extended emission at sufficient sensitivity to image individual regions of star formation activity beyond the nucleus. With wideband radio continuum observations, which sample the frequency range from 3 to 33 GHz, we have made extinction-free measurements of the luminosities and spectral indicies for a total of 48 individual star-forming regions identified as having deprojected galactocentric radii (rG) that lie outside the 13.2 μm core of the galaxy. The median 3–33 GHz spectral index and 33 GHz thermal fraction measured for these “extranuclear” regions is −0.51 ± 0.13 and 65% ± 11%, respectively. These values are consistent with measurements made on matched spatial scales in normal star-forming galaxies, and suggests that these regions are more heavily dominated by thermal free–free emission relative to the centers of local U/LIRGs. Further, we find that the median star formation rate derived for these regions is ∼1 M⊙ yr−1, and when we place them on the sub-galactic star-forming main sequence of galaxies (SFMS), we find they are offset from their host galaxies’ globally averaged specific star formation rates. We conclude that while nuclear starburst activity drives LIRGs above the SFMS, extranuclear star formation still proceeds in a more extreme fashion relative to what is seen in local spiral galaxies.
First measurement of neutrino oscillation parameters using neutrinos and antineutrinos by NOvA.

The NOvA experiment has seen a 4. 4σ signal of ν[over ¯]_{e} appearance in a 2 GeV ν[over ¯]_{μ} beam at a distance of 810 km. Using 12.33×10^{20} protons on target delivered to the Fermilab NuMI neutrino beamline, the experiment recorded 27 ν[over ¯]_{μ}→ν[over ¯]_{e} candidates with a background of 10.3 and 102 ν[over ¯]_{μ}→ν[over ¯]_{μ} candidates. This new antineutrino data are combined with neutrino data to measure the parameters |Δm_{32}^{2}|=2. 48_{-0.06}^{+0.11}×10^{-3} eV^{2}/c^{4} and sin^{2}θ_{23} in the ranges from (0.53-0.60) and (0.45-0.48) in the normal neutrino mass hierarchy. The data exclude most values near δ_{CP}=π/2 for the inverted mass hierarchy by more than 3σ and favor the normal neutrino mass hierarchy by 1. 9σ and θ_{23} values in the upper octant by 1. 6σ.
Impact of heat load distribution and strength on airflow pattern in rooms with exposed chilled beams

The impact of the heat load strength and distribution on the performance of lengthwise installed exposed chilled beam was studied in a test room. The cooling capacity varied between 56 W/m 111 W/m, which are typical cooling loads in office buildings. In addition, two experiments at 84 W/m were performed with all of the heat sources close to the window side of the room and with the heat sources split on both sides of the room. The results from the physical measurements and the performed smoke visualization showed that the flow from the chilled beams was not disturbed with the heat load of 56 W/m. However higher loads depicted significant impact of the convective flow from the heat sources on the distribution of the air in the room. The maximum velocity increased from 0.20 m/s to 0.26 m/s when the cooling capacity increased from 56 W/m to 111 W/m.
Spectral Decomposition and Extremes of Atmospheric Meridional Energy Transport in the Northern Hemisphere Midlatitudes

The atmospheric meridional energy transport in the Northern Hemisphere midlatitudes is mainly accomplished by planetary and synoptic waves. A decomposition into wave components highlights the strong seasonal dependence of the transport, with both the total transport and the contributions from planetary and synoptic waves peaking in winter. In both winter and summer months, poleward transport extremes primarily result from a constructive interference between planetary and synoptic motions. The contribution of the mean meridional circulation is close to climatology. Equatorward transport extremes feature a mean meridional equatorward transport in winter, while the planetary and synoptic modes mostly transport energy poleward. In summer, a systematic destructive interference occurs, with planetary modes mostly transporting energy equatorward and synoptic modes again poleward. This underscores that baroclinic conversion dominates regardless of season in the synoptic wave modes, whereas the planetary waves can be either free or forced, depending on the season.
GluonTS: Probabilistic Time Series Models in Python

We introduce Gluon Time Series (GluonTS, available at this https URL), a library for deep-learning-based time series modeling. GluonTS simplifies the development of and experimentation with time series models for common tasks such as forecasting or anomaly detection. It provides all necessary components and tools that scientists need for quickly building new models, for efficiently running and analyzing experiments and for evaluating model accuracy.
The Effect of Ownership Structure on Financial Performance of Listed Companies in Palestine Exchange (PEX)

: Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report the results of the study carried out to examines the relationship between the Ownership structure on firms’ performance of Palestine Stock Exchange (PEX). Design/Methodology: This study is cross–sectional and correlation. This study utilizes OLS regression models based on a sample of 32 firms listed on the Palestine Stock Exchange (PEX) during the period of 2008-2016. Findings: The study finds that the relation between concentration ownership (own more than 5%) and performance in ROA is negative and significant whereas the relation between institutional ownership and performance in ROA, ROE and TobinQ is negative and significant. Research limitations/ implications: the size of the sample is a limitation because the market in Palestine is small and was reduced from 48 firms to 32 firms, and this study does not examine the impact of board sub-committees for Palestinian companies because no data are available from annual reports concerning them, Therefore, further research may want to consider other components of ownership structure variables, such as government ownership.
Nanowire single-photon detectors made of atomic layer-deposited niobium nitride

We demonstrate and characterize superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors made from atomic layer-deposited (ALD) NbN layers. To assess the suitability of these films as a detector material, transport properties of bare films and bridges of different dimensions and thicknesses are investigated. Similar ratios of the measured critical current to the depairing current are obtained for micro-bridges made from ALD and sputtered NbN films. Furthermore, we characterized the single-photon response for 5 and 10 nm thick nanowire detectors. A 100 nm wide straight nanowire with a length of 5 μm exhibits saturated count rate dependencies on bias current and a cut-off wavelength in the near-infrared range. The ALD technique could open up the possibility to fabricate NbN-based detectors on the wafer scale and to conformally cover also non-planar surfaces for novel device concepts.
Knowledge Gradient for Selection with Covariates: Consistency and Computation

Knowledge gradient is a design principle for developing Bayesian sequential sampling policies to consider in this paper the ranking and selection problem in the presence of covariates, where the best alternative is not universal but depends on the covariates. In this context, we prove that under minimal assumptions, the sampling policy based on knowledge gradient is consistent, in the sense that following the policy the best alternative as a function of the covariates will be identified almost surly as the number of samples grows. We also propose a stochastic gradient ascent algorithm for computing the sampling policy and demonstrate its performance via numerical experiments.