Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
THE EFFECT OF TOPIC INTEREST ON IMPROVING WRITING SKILL AMONG PRE-INTERMEDIATE EFL LEARNERS

This study investigated the effect of topic interest on Iranian EFL learners’ writing skill. To fulfil this objective, two intact pre-intermediate classes were selected from a private language institute in Sarab, East Azerbaijan, Iran were selected. The selected participants were then non-randomly divided into two equal groups; experimental group and control group. After that, the topic interest questionnaire was given to the students to assess their interest level in each topic. When the students’ level of interest was specified, the experimental group received five high-interest topics and five low-interest topics were given to the control group. Then, the researcher measured the participants’ English writing skill by administering a researcher-made writing pre-test. In both groups’ classroom, the interested topics were taught to learners in 12 sessions and learners wrote on each topic. After the instruction, a writing post-test was administered to the both groups and finally the data were analyzed by using paired and independent samples t-tests. The obtained results indicated that there was a significant difference between the post-tests of experimental and control groups. The findings indicated that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group ( p < .05) on the post-test. The implications of this study can make the teachers aware that topic interest plays an important role in improving writing skill. Article visualizations:
MS MARCO: A Human Generated MAchine Reading COmprehension Dataset

We introduce a large scale MAchine Reading COmprehension dataset, which we name MS MARCO. The dataset comprises of 1,010,916 anonymized questions---sampled from Bing's search query logs---each with a human generated answer and 182,669 completely human rewritten generated answers. In addition, the dataset contains 8,841,823 passages---extracted from 3,563,535 web documents retrieved by Bing---that provide the information necessary for curating the natural language answers. A question in the MS MARCO dataset may have multiple answers or no answers at all. Using this dataset, we propose three different tasks with varying levels of difficulty: (i) predict if a question is answerable given a set of context passages, and extract and synthesize the answer as a human would (ii) generate a well-formed answer (if possible) based on the context passages that can be understood with the question and passage context, and finally (iii) rank a set of retrieved passages given a question. The size of the dataset and the fact that the questions are derived from real user search queries distinguishes MS MARCO from other well-known publicly available datasets for machine reading comprehension and question-answering. We believe that the scale and the real-world nature of this dataset makes it attractive for benchmarking machine reading comprehension and question-answering models.
Synthesis and characterization of pyridine‐containing poly(imide‐siloxane)s and their adhesion to copper foil

A series of pyridine-containing poly(imide-siloxane) (PIS) copolymers with different amounts of PDMS with various segmental lengths were synthesized from 2,6-diaminopyridine (DAP), α,ω′-aminopropylpoly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS), 1,3-bis(4-aminophenoxy)benzene (APB), and 4,4′-oxydiphthalic dianhydride (ODPA). A modified synthetic approach was applied instead of approaches commonly reported in the literature, to ensure the incorporation of DAP and PDMS. The effects of the content and the segmental length of PDMS on the thermal glass transition temperature (Tg), dielectric constant, and surface electrical resistivity of the copolymer are investigated. The copolymers were attached to copper foil by hot-pressing, and changes in wettability caused the peel strength of the laminates to increase with the PDMS content, but to decrease as the DAP content increased. Furthermore, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy was employed to determine the loci of failures (LOF) of the laminates and to monitor the movement of LOF, which varies with the PDMS content. For those laminates with good peel strengths, the LOF occur in the interior of PIS layer, indicating that the adhesion is cohesive rather than adhesive. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2007
Assessment of MISR Cloud Motion Vectors (CMVs) Relative to GOES and MODIS Atmospheric Motion Vectors (AMVs)

AbstractCloud motion vector (CMV) winds retrieved from the Multiangle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on the polar-orbiting Terra satellite from 2003 to 2008 are compared with collocated atmospheric motion vectors (AMVs) retrieved from Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) imagery over the tropics and midlatitudes and from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) imagery near the poles. MISR imagery from multiple view angles is exploited to jointly retrieve stereoscopic cloud heights and motions, showing advantages over the AMV heights assigned by radiometric means, particularly at low heights (<3 km) that account for over 95% of MISR CMV sampling. MISR–GOES wind differences exhibit a standard deviation ranging with increasing height from 3.3 to 4.5 m s−1 for a high-quality [quality indicator (QI) ≥ 80] subset where height differences are <1.5 km. Much of the observed difference can be attributed to the less accurately retrieved component of CMV motion along the.
Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology Publications and Papers Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology Interrelations among Immune Defense Indexes Reflect Major Components of the Immune System in a Free-living Vertebrate Division of Comparative Physiology and Biochemistry, Society for Integrati

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. ABSTRACT Understanding the relationships among immune components in free-living animals is a challenge in ecoimmunology, and it is important not only for selecting the immune assays to be used but also for more knowledgeable interpretation of results. In this study, we investigated the relationships among six immune defense indexes commonly used by ecoimmunologists and measured simultaneously in individual free-living tree swallows. Three main axes of variation in immune function were identified using a principal components analysis, representing variation in T-cell, B-cell, and innate immunity. Measures within each axis tended to be positively correlated among individuals , while measures in different axes were uncorrelated. A trade-off between T-cell function and B-cell function became apparent only when variation among individuals in body condition , age, and general quality was taken into account. Interestingly , the level of natural antibodies, a component of innate immunity, showed the strongest association with components of acquired B-cell function, possibly reflecting a common underlying genetic mechanism, as has been documented in poultry. Our results indicate that despite the complexity of the immune system, important insights can be gained by using the currently available assays but in a more comprehensive approach than has generally been used in the field of ecoimmunology.
The circular Bedrosian identity and multidimensional periodic analytic signals

The analytic signal method via the Hilbert transform is a classical manner of defining without ambiguity the instantaneous amplitude and frequency of one-dimensional signals. In real applications such as image processing, signals are usually of finite duration and belong to higher dimensions. Extension of this method to the multidimensional space is needed. We shall justify that partial Hilbert transforms can be used to define multidimensional periodic analytic signals. The important associated circular Bedrosian identity for partial Hilbert transforms is then studied, where f and g are multidimensional periodic signals. Several characterizations and a necessity theorem are established. These characterizations provide us an efficient way of constructing a larger class of multivariate intrinsic mode functions with nonlinear phases, which are key ingredients for the celebrated empirical mode decomposition.
Symmetry Reduction of Ordinary Differential Equations Using Moving Frames

The symmetry reduction algorithm for ordinary differential equations due to Sophus Lie is revisited using the method of equivariant moving frames. Using the recurrence formulas provided by the theory of equivariant moving frames, computations are performed symbolically without relying on the coordinate expressions for the canonical variables and the differential invariants occurring in Lie’s original procedure.
Extending CHR with negation as absence

In this exploratory paper we introduce CHR¬, an extension of the CHR language with negation as absence, an established feature in production rule systems. Negation as absence is a procedural notion that allows a more concise and clean programming style. We propose a formal operational semantics for CHR¬ close to CHR’s refined operational semantics. We illustrate and motivate its properties with examples.
Neural Conversational QA: Learning to Reason v.s. Exploiting Patterns

In this paper we work on the recently introduced ShARC task - a challenging form of conversational QA that requires reasoning over rules expressed in natural language. Attuned to the risk of superficial patterns in data being exploited by neural models to do well on benchmark tasks (Niven and Kao 2019), we conduct a series of probing experiments and demonstrate how current state-of-the-art models rely heavily on such patterns. To prevent models from learning based on the superficial clues, we modify the dataset by automatically generating new instances reducing the occurrences of those patterns. We also present a simple yet effective model that learns embedding representations to incorporate dialog history along with the previous answers to follow-up questions. We find that our model outperforms existing methods on all metrics, and the results show that the proposed model is more robust in dealing with spurious patterns and learns to reason meaningfully.
To steal or not to steal: firm attributes

Apparatus to enable efficient cleaning of the tape-contacting and associated elements of a cartridge tape machine. An open-backed tape cartridge shell is inserted in conventional fashion into a cartridge tape machine to provide access through the tape cartridge shell to the tape-contacting elements of the cartridge tape machine. Included within the tape cartridge shell are batteries and a light bulb aimed toward the tape-contacting elements of the tape machine as well as a switch for energizing the light bulb.
When Opportunity Knocks, Who Answers?

We evaluate the effects of academic achievement awards for first-and second-year college students studying at a Canadian commuter college. The award scheme offered linear cash incentives for course grades above 70. Awards were paid every term. Program participants also had access to peer advising by upperclassmen. Program engagement appears to have been high but overall treatment effects were small. The intervention increased the number of courses graded above 70 and points earned above 70 for second-year students but generated no significant effect on overall GPA. Results are somewhat stronger for a subsample of applicants who correctly described the program rules.
The Elasticity of Taxable Income with Respect to Marginal Tax Rates : A Critical Review

T notion of a behavioral elasticity occupies a critical place in the economic analysis of taxation. Graduate textbooks teach that the two central aspects of the public sector, optimal progressivity of the tax-andtransfer system, as well as the optimal size of the public sector, depend (inversely) on the compensated elasticity of labor supply with respect to the marginal tax rate. Indeed, until recently, the labor supply elasticity was the closest thing that public finance economics had to a central parameter. In a static model where people value only two commodities— leisure and a composite consumption good— the real wage in terms of the consumption good is the only relative price at issue. This real wage is equal to the amount of goods that can be consumed per hour of leisure foregone (or, equivalently, per hour of labor supplied). At the margin, substitution possibilities, and therefore the excess burden of taxation, can be captured by a compensated labor supply elasticity. With some notable exceptions, the profession has settled on a value for this elasticity close to zero for prime-age males, although The Elasticity of Taxable Income with Respect to Marginal Tax Rates: A Critical Review
Nonperturbative functions for SIDIS and Drell–Yan processes

We update the well-known BLNY fit to the low transverse momentum Drell–Yan lepton pair productions in hadronic collisions, by considering the constraints from the semi-inclusive hadron production in deep inelastic scattering (SIDIS) from HERMES and COMPASS experiments. We follow the Collins–Soper–Sterman (CSS) formalism with the b∗-prescription. A nonperturbative form factor associated with the transverse momentum dependent quark distributions is found in the analysis with a new functional form different from that of BLNY. This releases the tension between the BLNY fit to the Drell–Yan data with the SIDIS data from HERMES/COMPASS in the CSS resummation formalism.
Adaptive neural network output feedback control for flexible multi-link robotic manipulators

ABSTRACT In this paper, a novel approach for adaptive control of flexible multi-link robots in the joint space is presented. The approach is valid for a class of highly uncertain systems with arbitrary but bounded dimension. The problem of trajectory tracking is solved through developing a stable inversion for robot dynamics using only joint angles measurement; then a linear dynamic compensator is utilised to stabilise the tracking error for the nominal system. Furthermore, a high gain observer is designed to provide an estimate for error dynamics. A linear in parameter neural network based adaptive signal is used to approximate and eliminate the effect of uncertainties due to link flexibilities and vibration modes on tracking performance, where the adaptation rule for the neural network weights is derived based on Lyapunov function. The stability and the ultimate boundedness of the error signals and closed-loop system is demonstrated through the Lyapunov stability theory. Computer simulations of the proposed robust controller are carried to validate on a two-link flexible planar manipulator.
Spillovers and correlations between US and major European stock markets: the role of the euro

This article investigates the impact of the introduction of the euro on the interactions across the New York, London, Frankfurt and Paris stock markets. After controlling for possible returns and volatility spillovers, we focus on the correlations of shocks using the framework of Dynamic Conditional Correlations (DCC). Daily pseudo-closing prices (recorded at 16:00 London time) are used to avoid conflating correlation and spillover effects. Statistical break tests confirm that the introduction of the euro significantly affects the cross-market correlations. Although dynamic correlations of shocks between all market pairs increase, the correlation in the post-euro period is highest between Frankfurt and Paris, indicating increased integration of these markets. Other findings include the presence of spillover effects from foreign markets for both returns and volatilities, with asymmetries in volatilities and conditional correlations such that negative shocks have larger effects than positive ones.
Oracle inequalities for sparse additive quantile regression in reproducing kernel Hilbert space

This paper considers the estimation of the sparse additive quantile regression (SAQR) in high-dimensional settings. Given the nonsmooth nature of the quantile loss function and the nonparametric complexities of the component function estimation, it is challenging to analyze the theoretical properties of ultrahigh-dimensional SAQR. We propose a regularized learning approach with a two-fold Lasso-type regularization in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS) for SAQR. We establish nonasymptotic oracle inequalities for the excess risk of the proposed estimator without any coherent conditions. If additional assumptions including an extension of the restricted eigenvalue condition are satisﬁed, the proposed method enjoys sharp oracle rates without the light tail requirement. In particular, the proposed estimator achieves the minimax lower bounds established for sparse additive mean regression. As a by-product, we also establish the concentration inequality for estimating the population mean when the general Lipschitz loss is involved. The practical effectiveness of the new method is demonstrated by competitive numerical results.
Search for a heavy Higgs boson decaying into a Z boson and another heavy Higgs boson in the and final states in pp collisions at with the ATLAS detector

A search for a heavy neutral Higgs boson, A, decaying into a Z boson and another heavy Higgs boson, H , is performed using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb−1 from proton–proton collisions at √ s = 13 TeV recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The search considers the Z boson decaying into electrons or muons and the H boson into a pair of b-quarks or W bosons. The mass range considered is 230–800 GeV for the A boson and 130–700 GeV for the H boson. The data are in good agreement with the background predicted by the Standard Model, and therefore 95% confidence-level upper limits for σ × B(A → ZH) × B(H → bb or H → WW ) are set. The upper limits are in the range 0.0062–0.380 pb for the H → bb channel and in the range 0.023–8.9 pb for the H → WW channel. An interpretation of the results in the context of two-Higgs-doublet models is also given.
A Novel of Repulsive Function on Artificial Potential Field for Robot Path Planning

In this paper, the issue of local minima associated with GNRON (Goal Nonreachable with Obstacles Nearby) has been solved on the Artificial Potential Field (APF) for robot path planning. A novel of repulsive potential function is proposed to solve the problem. The consideration of surrounding repulsive forces gives a trigger to escape from the local mi- nima. Addition of signum function on the repulsive force which considers relative distance between the robot and the goal ensures that the goal position is the global optima of the total potential. Simulation conducted to prove that the proposed algorithm can solve GNRON and local minima problem on APF. Scenario of each simulation set in different type of obs- tacle and goal condition. The results show that the proposed method is able to handle local minima and GNRON problem.
Power dissipation in HTS coated conductor coils under the simultaneous action of AC and DC currents and fields

This paper presents a comprehensive alternating current (AC) loss study of a circular high temperature superconductor (HTS) coated conductor coil. The AC losses from a circular double pancake coil were measured using the electrical method. A 2D axisymmetric H-formulation model using the FEM package in COMSOL Multiphysics has been established to match the circular geometry of the coil used in the experiment. Three scenarios have been analysed: Scenario 1 with AC transport current and DC magnetic field (experiment and simulation); Scenario 2 with DC transport current and AC magnetic field (simulation); and Scenario 3 with AC transport current and AC magnetic field (simulation and experimental data support). The angular dependence analysis on the coil under a magnetic field with different orientation angle θ has been carried out for all three scenarios. For Scenario 3, the effect of the relative phase difference Δφ between the AC current and the AC field on the total AC loss of the coil has been investigated. In summary, a current/field/angle/phase dependent AC loss (I, B, θ, Δφ) study of a circular HTS coil has been carried out. The obtained results provide useful indications for the future design and research of HTS AC systems.
Free Vibration Analysis of Cross ply Laminated Composite Thick Plates

In this study, it is aimed to analyze the free vibration behavior of cross-ply laminated composite rectangular thick plates with mixed finite element method based on the Gâteaux differential. Mixed finite element model has eight unknowns, displacement, bending and twisting moments, rotations and shear forces. In the free vibration analysis, laminated composite rectangular thick plates are considered for different geometrical and material parameters, lamination scheme and boundary conditions. Accuracy of the presented functional and mixed finite element formulation is shown by comparing the results of numerical examples with the ones available in the literature. The results obtained in this study are found to be in good agreement. Keywords—free vibration analysis, composite thick plates, Gâteaux differential, mixed finite element method
Intersection tests for single marker QTL analysis can be more powerful than two marker QTL analysis

Like all articles in BMC journals, this peer-reviewed article was published immediately upon acceptance. It can be downloaded, printed and distributed freely for any purposes (see copyright notice below). Articles in BMC journals are listed in PubMed and archived at PubMed Central. For information about publishing your research in BMC journals or any BioMed Central journal, go to http://www.biomedcentral. com/info/authors/
A Modified Chemical Imaging Sensor System for Real‐Time pH Imaging of Accelerated Crevice Corrosion of Stainless Steel

The measurement system of a chemical imaging sensor is combined with the circuitry for polarization of a metal test piece. The surface of the metal test piece is brought into contact with the sensor surface forming a crevice of about 12 µm width. The course of initiation and propagation of corrosion are observed as serial images of pH in the crevice. A local change of the pH value down to 2 is observed in synchronization with the change of the anodic current.