Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Repetitively actively gain-switched strongly asymmetric waveguide laser diode for high brightness picosecond pulse generation

We analyse theoretically the advantages of an asymmetric waveguide structure with a large equivalent spot size for use in a repetitively gain switched laser diode. The proposed construction, which maintains a single transverse mode, with a large equivalent spot size, for an arbitrary stripe width. This allows for a large carrier density to be accumulated before the onset of the optical pulse thus making for high pulse energy and also makes for a large modal cross-section which reduces the characteristic power for gain saturation and thus helps achieve high peak pulse power as well as energy. The predicted pulse energies are up to about 0.5 nJ from a narrow stripe laser (5 μm), with promises a significant improvement in the brightness of laser radiation compared to results in the literature. The possible effect of carrier transport is considered, and recommendations on the laser design in order to minimise it are given.
Defining a Semantic Web-based Framework for Enabling Automatic Reasoning on CIM-based Management Platforms

CIM is the standard formalism for modeling management information developed by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) in the context of its WBEM proposal, designed to provide a conceptual view of the managed environment. In this paper, we propose the inclusion of formal knowledge representation techniques, based on Description Logics (DLs) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL), in CIM-based conceptual modeling, and then we examine the benefits of such a decision. The proposal is specified as a CIM metamodel level mapping to a highly expressive subset of DLs capable of capturing all the semantics of the models. The paper shows how the proposed mapping provides CIM diagrams with precise semantics and can be used for automatic reasoning about the management information models, as a design aid, by means of newgeneration CASE tools, thanks to the use of state-of-the-art automatic reasoning systems that support the proposed logic and use algorithms that are sound and complete with respect to the semantics. Such a CASE tool framework has been developed by the authors and its architecture is also introduced. The proposed formalization is not only useful at design time, but also at run time through the use of rational autonomous agents, in response to a need recently recognized by the DMTF. Keywords— CIM, Knowledge-based Information Models, Ontology Languages, OWL, Description Logics, Integrated Network Management, Intelligent Agents, Automatic Reasoning Techniques.
Lower bounds for high dimensional nearest neighbor search and related problems

In spite of extensive and continuing research, for various geometric search problems (such as nearest neighbor search), the best algorithms known have performance that degrades exponentially in the dimension. This phenomenon is sometimes called the curse of dimensionality. Recent results [37, 38, 40] show that in some sense it is possible to avoid the curse of dimensionality for the approximate nearest neighbor search problem. But must the exact nearest neighbor search problem suffer this curse? We provide some evidence in support of the curse. Specifically we investigate the exact nearest neighbor search problem and the related problem of exact partial match within the asymmetric communication model first used by Miltersen [43] to study data structure problems. We derive non-trivial asymptotic lower bounds for the exact problem that stand in contrast to known algorithms for approximate nearest neighbor search.
Adaptive OFDM Transmission for Broadband Fixed Wireless Access Systems

An improved piston ring assembly comprises a double-offset expander spring and a piston ring. The expander spring has a first wave portion that is continuously engaged in an annular groove of a piston body, the wave portion having an axial extent that is nearly identical to that of the groove. The spring also has a second wave portion with an axial extent less than that of the first wave portion. The second wave portion is adapted to engage a mating slot of the piston ring. The expander spring, rather than the piston ring, is primarily relied upon to engage the groove of the piston body to eliminate assembly slippage and provide axial centering. Thus, the radial thickness of the piston ring may be greatly reduced to improve conformability and reduce oil consumption.
The Teacher as Co-Musician: Exploring Practices in Music Teaching

In this paper, co-musicking in teaching is discussed on the basis of findings from a study on pop band and piano teaching. We understand co-musicking as collaboration between music-makers, including pupils. For this study, we chose to focus on the actions that teachers and student teachers take during pupils’ performance of a piece of music in a teaching session. The data was gathered using stimulated recall interviews. The findings include the use of different modes: teachers playing along with students, using their voice, or using gestures and body language. The purposes of these actions included scaffolding performances and experiences, recognizing pupils’ effort, and opening up a space for reflection. We suggest that the teaching practices studied can be interpreted as improvisational because the teachers and student teachers respond instantly, flexibly, and creatively to the pupils’ performances and expressions. IJEA Vol. 18 No. 22 http://www.ijea. org/v18n22/ 2
Parental Advocacy, Stress, and Efficacy: The Hidden Costs of Diagnosing Learning Disabilities

The allocation of educational resources has been a widely debated topic. While scholars and government officials have focused their attention on how resources are divided, significantly less attention has been paid to how parents are advocating for their children to obtain necessary resources themselves. Existing data agree that fighting for educational resources can cause stress to parents (Levine, 2006). This is especially true for parents of children with learning disabilities. These children often require more individualized academic and educational attention. Currently, little research exists which focuses on the relationship between parental stress and parental self efficacy (the belief that one has an ability to accomplish a task) and none of the existing research focuses on parents of learning disabled children specifically. Self-efficacy is particularly important for those seeking resources for their children because parents who believe they can gain resources for their children are more likely to attempt to do so. The purpose of this study was to understand the relationship between parental stress and parental self-efficacy as well as understand the impact socioeconomic status has on parental perception of efficacy. Using a series of regression models, I determined that there is a negative correlation between stress and self-efficacy but that socioeconomic status seems to have no impact on the strength of this relationship. Such results suggest that regardless of socioeconomic status, the more stress Generation X parents feel, the less self-efficacious they feel. While no significant moderation was found, understanding the relationship between self-efficacy and parental stress of Generation X parents is still important. This information can help inform mental health practitioner’s conceptualization and treatment of parents of learning-disabled children.
Anti dependency distance minimization in short sequences. A graph theoretic approach

Dependency distance minimization (DDm) is a word order principle favouring the placement of syntactically related words close to each other in sentences. Massive evidence of the principle has been reported for more than a decade with the help of syntactic dependency treebanks where long sentences abound. However, it has been predicted theoretically that the principle is more likely to be beaten in short sequences by the principle of surprisal minimization (predictability maximization). Here we introduce a simple binomial test to verify such a hypothesis. In short sentences, we find anti-DDm for some languages from different families. Our analysis of the syntactic dependency structures suggests that anti-DDm is produced by star trees.
Dynamic Deployment and Auto-scaling Enterprise Applications on the Heterogeneous Cloud

Over the past years, organizations have been moving their enterprise applications to the cloud with the aim of reducing infrastructure ownership and maintenance costs, and to take advantage of the elasticity and heterogeneity of the cloud. This paper joined the approaches of multi-cloud deployment using CloudML and identifying the ideal resource provisioning and deployment configuration using an optimization model, in order to dynamically scale an enterprise application across multiple clouds, without any user intervention. The approaches are discussed in detail along with the introduced extensions. Benchmark experiments were conducted on Amazon cloud infrastructure, based on one system with a single scalable component and two other systems with the basic workflow control structures, parallel and exclusive. The results of the experiments suggest that the approach is plausible for dynamic deployment and auto-scaling any web/services based enterprise workflow/application on the cloud.
The Effect of Financial Systems on Earnings Management Among Firms Reporting Under IFRS

This study examines the relation between financing system and earnings management and changes in the patterns of earnings management activities over time. Prior research suggests that managers are more likely to manage earnings in a credit financing system because the purpose of the financial reporting in this credit environment is to protect creditors by prudently calculating distributable profit. In addition, multinational enterprises’ financial reporting tends to be anchored in their home country’s practices and responsive to their national requirements. Using 121 firm-year observations of non-U.S. firms reporting under IFRS, we find some evidence that firms from credit financing systems manage earnings more than firms from equity financing systems. We find that firms in a credit financing environment report 1.6% higher in absolute discretionary accruals than equity firms. However, we did not find evidence that overall earnings management activities have decreased as the IASB’s Comparability/Improvements Project went into effect after 1995. This finding suggests that the IASB has not been effective in narrowing down the international differences in accounting practices and providing comparable financial statements to the public.
Spatio-temporal modeling of grasping actions

Understanding the spatial dimensionality and temporal context of human hand actions can provide representations for programming grasping actions in robots and inspire design of new robotic and prosthetic hands. The natural representation of human hand motion has high dimensionality. For specific activities such as handling and grasping of objects, the commonly observed hand motions lie on a lower-dimensional non-linear manifold in hand posture space. Although full body human motion is well studied within Computer Vision and Biomechanics, there is very little work on the analysis of hand motion with nonlinear dimensionality reduction techniques. In this paper we use Gaussian Process Latent Variable Models (GPLVMs) to model the lower dimensional manifold of human hand motions during object grasping. We show how the technique can be used to embed high-dimensional grasping actions in a lower-dimensional space suitable for modeling, recognition and mapping.
Spike-based models of neural computation

Neurons compute mainly with action potentials or “spikes”, which are stereotypical electrical impulses. Over the last century, the operating function of neurons has been mainly described in terms of firing rates, with the timing of spikes bearing little information. More recently, experimental evidence and theoretical studies have shown that the relative spike timing of inputs has an important effect both on computation and learning in neurons. This evidence has triggered considerable interest for spiking neuron models in computational neuroscience, but the theory of computation in those models is sparse. Spiking neuron models are hybrid dynamical systems, combining differential equations and discrete events. I have developed specific theoretical approaches to study this particular type of models. In particular, two specific properties seem to be relevant for computation: spiking models can encode time-varying inputs into trains of precisely timed spikes, and they are more likely fire to when input spike trains are tightly correlated. To simulate spiking models efficiently, we have developed specific techniques, which can now be used in an open source simulator (Brian). These theoretical and methodological investigations now allow us to address spike-based modeling at a more global and functional level. Since the mechanisms of synaptic plasticity tend to favor synchronous inputs, I propose to investigate computational mechanisms based on neural synchrony in sensory modalities.
How Do States Integrate Performance Assessment in Their Systems of Assessment

This paper reviews state strategies for incorporating performance assessment in policy and practice. Specifically, the paper reviews the use of performance assessment in 12 states in the Innovation Lab Network, a group committed to developing systems of assessment that provide meaningful measures of college and career readiness. This review suggests that states relied on four central approaches for integrating performance assessment in state and local systems of assessment: 1) classroom purposes, 2) graduation requirement, 3) school accountability purposes, or 4) federal accountability. We review these approaches and the benefits and challenges associated with each strategy.
Perceiving Real-World Viewpoint Changes

Retinal images vary as observers move through the environment, but observers seem to have little difficulty recognizing objects and scenes across changes in view. Although real-world view changes can be produced both by object rotations (orientation changes) and by observer movements (viewpoint changes), research on recognition across views has relied exclusively on display rotations. However, research on spatial reasoning suggests a possible dissociation between orientation and viewpoint. Here we demonstrate that scene recognition in the real world depends on more than the retinal projection of the visible array; viewpoint changes have little effect on detection of layout changes, but equivalent orientation changes disrupt performance significantly. Findings from our three experiments suggest that scene recognition across view changes relies on a mechanism that updates a viewer-centered representation during observer movements, a mechanism not available for orientation changes. These results link findings from spatial tasks to work on object and scene recognition and highlight the importance of considering the mechanisms underlying recognition in real environments.
Competitive Energy Trading Framework for Demand-Side Management in Neighborhood Area Networks

This paper, by comparing three potential energy trading systems, studies the feasibility of integrating a community energy storage (CES) device with consumer-owned photovoltaic (PV) systems for demand-side management of a residential neighborhood area network. We consider a fully competitive CES operator in a non-cooperative Stackelberg game, a benevolent CES operator that has socially favorable regulations with competitive users, and a centralized cooperative CES operator that minimizes the total community energy cost. The former two game-theoretic systems consider that the CES operator first maximizes their revenue by setting a price signal and trading energy with the grid. Then the users with PV panels play a non-cooperative repeated game following the actions of the CES operator to trade energy with the CES device and the grid to minimize energy costs. The centralized CES operator cooperates with the users to minimize the total community energy cost without appropriate incentives. The non-cooperative Stackelberg game with the fully competitive CES operator has a unique Stackelberg equilibrium at which the CES operator maximizes revenue and users obtain unique Pareto-optimal Nash equilibrium CES energy trading strategies. Extensive simulations show that the fully competitive CES model gives the best tradeoff of operating environment between the CES operator and the users.
Lack of Association between Body Weight, Bone Mineral Density and Vitamin D Receptor Gene Polymorphism in Normal and Osteoporotic Women

In an ethnically homogeneous population of women living in Tuscany, Italy, the relationships between age, body weight, bone mineral density and the vitamin D receptor (VDR) gene polymorphism were studied, with the objective of recognizing patients at risk for osteoporosis. In 275 women bone mineral density was measured by Dual Energy X-rays Absorptiometry (DEXA). In 50 of them the individual genetic pattern for VDR was evaluated by DNA extraction followed by PCR amplification of the VDR gene, and digestion with the restriction enzyme BsmI. Age and bone mineral density were inversely related (R2 = 0.298). Body weight was associated with bone mineral density (R2 = 0.059), but not with age. In osteoporotic women, mean (± SD) body weight was 59.9 ± 6.5 Kg, lower than that recorded in non osteoporotic women (64.2 ± 9.4 Kg), even though not significantly different (p = 0.18). No association was found between VDR gene polymorphism, bone density or body weight. The performance of anthropometric and genetic components appear to be poor, and, at least for the time being, bone mineral density measurement by means of MOC-DEXA represents the optimal method to detect women at risk for postmenopausal osteoporosis.
Unified form language: A domain-specific language for weak formulations of partial differential equations

We present the Unified Form Language (UFL), which is a domain-specific language for representing weak formulations of partial differential equations with a view to numerical approximation. Features of UFL include support for variational forms and functionals, automatic differentiation of forms and expressions, arbitrary function space hierarchies for multifield problems, general differential operators and flexible tensor algebra. With these features, UFL has been used to effortlessly express finite element methods for complex systems of partial differential equations in near-mathematical notation, resulting in compact, intuitive and readable programs. We present in this work the language and its construction. An implementation of UFL is freely available as an open-source software library. The library generates abstract syntax tree representations of variational problems, which are used by other software libraries to generate concrete low-level implementations. Some application examples are presented and libraries that support UFL are highlighted.
I like what I see: studying the influence of popularity cues on attention allocation and news selection

ABSTRACT Today, social network sites (SNS) are a major platform for news consumption. However, their interface differs dramatically from those of news sites. On SNS, news posts lack the traditional news cues that guide audience selection of stories. Instead, they are accompanied by social cues, traces of engagement by other users with news items. This process is known as the socialization of news. This study sought to test the effect of the socialization of news on users’ attention and selection processes. By means of an experimental design employing eye-tracking measurements (N = 86), the study (1) asked whether the existence of various social cues of endorsement (user comments, ‘Likes’, and ‘Reactions’) influenced attention and selection; (2) explored how users divided their attention between news information and social cues, and whether social endorsement affected the attention given by users to news cues; (3) identified differences among users regarding their sensitivity to social endorsement (relying on two psychological traits: self-monitoring and need for cognition). The findings demonstrate that social cues have some effect on attention and selection processes; however, users varied significantly in their response to social endorsement, both in terms of attention and selection. Together, the findings suggest that the socialization of news has changed news consumption processes, and that the consumption of news on SNS might require the development of a new theoretical approach to the consumption of news.
The Effect of “Kupas Rangkai” towards Reading Skill for Intellectual Disability Students of Grade IV in Special School

Rading has important position in learning proces, one of them student will be able to master various field studies. The subjects of this research have difficulties in basic reading. The purpose of this study was to know the effect of ‘Kupas Rangkai’ method towards reading skills for intellectual disability students of grade IV in Special School. The method was pre experiment with one group pretest-posttest design. Revenue in this research increased by 11 percen. So means there were differences of reading skill of intellectual disability students of grade IV before and after given treatment ‘Kupas Rangkai’ method. The suggestion for the teacher is make learning more creative and innovative
FATE: a FrameNet-Annotated Corpus for Textual Entailment

Several studies indicate that the level of predicate-argument structure is relevant for modeling prevalent phenomena in current textual entailment corpora. Although large resources like FrameNet have recently become available, attempts to integrate this type of information into a system for textual entailment did not confirm the expected gain in performance. The reasons for this are not fully obvious; candidates include FrameNets restricted coverage, limitations of semantic parsers, or insufficient modeling of FrameNet information. To enable further insight on this issue, in this paper we present FATE (FrameNet-Annotated Textual Entailment), a manually crafted, fully reliable frame-annotated RTE corpus. The annotation has been carried out over the 800 pairs of the RTE-2 test set. This dataset offers a safe basis for RTE systems to experiment, and enables researchers to develop clearer ideas on how to effectively integrate frame knowledge in semantic inferenence tasks like recognizing textual entailment. We describe and present statistics over the adopted annotation, which introduces a new schema based on full-text annotation of so called relevant frame evoking elements.