Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
YOUTH PERCEPTION ON CONTROL MEASURES IN REDUCING SUBSTANCE ABUSE IN SOKOTO, SOKOTO STATE, NIGERIA

Substance abuse is a maladaptive use of a drug, resulting in impairment of functioning or distress, as manifested by a failure to perform adequately at home, school or work. In Nigeria, a large number of the population mostly the youth buy drugs without any physician’s prescription. The aim of this study was to explore the perceptions of the youth on measure in reducing or controlling substances abuse in Sokoto, Sokoto state, Nigeria. An exploratory descriptive qualitative design was used. Twelve youth between the ages 18 to 30 years who abuse different substances but were not in psychotic state were recruited using snowball and purposive sampling methods. Semi-structured interview guide was used to interview the respondents after obtaining an informed consent from the respondents. The interviews were audio taped and transcribed verbatim, the data was analyzed using content analysis. The findings of this study revealed that Job provision, enlightenment and education were perceived measures in prevention, reduction or controlling substance abuse in Sokoto. Recommendations were made based on the findings of the study such as the government and non-governmental organizations should provide job opportunities for the youth. Keywords: Substances, Substance Abuse, Youth, Sokoto, Measures
Robot Navigation Using View Sequences and Sliding Window Search

In previous work the authors developed algorithms to navigate a robot based on sequences of visual memories stored into a Sparse Distributed Memory—a kind of associative memory suitable to work with high-dimensional binary vectors. In that system, the robot's localisation is based on similarity between the robot's view and one previously stored image. In that system, prediction errors occur from time to time, when the robot's captured image re- trieves a wrong image from the memory. This paper describes a method in which the number of prediction errors is substantially reduced, through the use of a
Direct gaze captures visuospatial attention

This study investigated whether the direct gaze of others influences attentional disengagement from faces in an experimental situation. Participants were required to fixate on a centrally presented face with varying gaze directions and to detect the appearance of a peripheral target as quickly as possible. Results revealed that target detection was delayed when the preceding face was directly gazing at the subject (direct gaze), as compared with an averted gaze (averted gaze) or with closed eyes (closed eyes). This effect disappeared when a temporal gap was inserted between the offset of the centrally presented face and the onset of a peripheral target, suggesting that attentional disengagement contributed to the delayed response in the direct gaze condition. The response delay to direct gaze was not found when the contrast polarity of eyes in the facial stimuli was reversed, reinforcing the importance of gaze perception in delayed disengagement from direct gaze.
Query optimization by attributes annotation in a database mediation system

The large amount of information available on autonomous, distributed and heterogeneous data sources requires a scheme of retrieval, selection and analysis, increasingly powerful to locate and extract precisely the desired information. The information integration systems offer an access to multiple data sources through queries on a global schema. A query posed on a database mediation system will be divided and sent to all the databases containing the attributes appearing in the query. But obviously, there are some databases which do not contain any answer. In this paper we propose to annotate numerical and enumerated attributes and to save these annotations in the mediator. By using these annotations, a query on the mediator will be sent only to the databases that surely contain answers.
Intention-Aware Risk Estimation for General Traffic Situations, and Application to Intersection Safety

This work tackles the risk estimation problem from a new perspective: a framework is proposed for reasoning about traffic situations and collision risk at a semantic level, while classic approaches typically reason at a trajectory level. Risk is assessed by estimating the intentions of drivers and detecting conflicts between them, rather than by predicting the future trajectories of the vehicles and detecting collisions between them. More specifically, dangerous situations are identified by comparing what drivers intend to do with what they are expected to do according to the traffic rules. The reasoning about intentions and expectations is performed in a probabilistic manner, in order to take into account sensor uncertainties and interpretation ambiguities. This framework can in theory be applied to any type of traffic situation; here we present its application to the specific case of road intersections. The proposed motion model takes into account the mutual influences between the maneuvers performed by vehicles at an intersection. It also incorporates information about the influence of the geometry and topology of the intersection on the behavior of a vehicle, and therefore can be applied to arbitrary intersection layouts. The approach was validated with field trials using passenger vehicles equipped with Vehicle-to-Vehicle wireless communication modems, and in simulation. The results demonstrate that the algorithm is able to detect dangerous situations early and complies with real-time constraints.
University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics Pseudo-allomorphs in Modern Russian Pseudo-allomorphs in Modern Russian Pseudo-allomorphs in Modern Russian

In this paper I argue that apparent complementary, phonologically conditioned distribution in a group of affixes with the same function (diminutive) does not necessarily imply that they are allomorphs. I show it on the example of Russian diminutive suffixes [-ok,-ik,-t͡ ɕik], previously considered to be allomorphs. I also show that semantic factors may contribute to the choice of a suffix realization on a par with phonological factors. I call such suffixes pseudo-allomorphs, as they have phonologically conditioned distribution as well as different meanings.
‘Working-class’ student teachers: Not beingencouraged at school and impact on motivationto become a teacher

Diversifying Ireland’s relatively homogeneous teaching population has been a policy concern for over a decade in the context of the rapid transformation of Irish society and schooling. This paper draws on the Access to Post-primary Teaching (APT) project, funded by the Higher Education Authority, which supports the participation of those from lower socio-economic groups in initial teacher education at one of the seven universities in the Republic of Ireland. The research component of the project involves an in-depth qualitative (interview-based) study examining APT participants’ perspectives and experiences relating to their education to date and their engagement in the Professional Master of Education programme. Data are analysed using grounded theory techniques including open and focused coding and categorising. The focus in this paper arises from an initial analysis of round one interviews with the first group of APT participants. An important category generated connects participants’ frequently negative school experiences (not feeling encouraged at school, generally and regarding future careers including teaching) to their perspectives about reasons for a lack of diversity in the teaching profession, and to how their own (frequently social justice-based) motivation to become a teacher fits therein. This focus will guide a discussion about attracting, supporting and preparing a diverse student teacher population.
Resolving global and local drifts in data stream regression using evolving rule-based models

In this paper, we present new concepts for dealing with drifts in data streams during the run of on-line modeling processes for regression problems in the context of evolving fuzzy systems. Opposed to the nominal case based on conventional life-long learning, drifts are requiring a specific treatment for the modeling phase, as they refer to changes in the underlying data distribution or target concepts, which makes older learned concepts obsolete. Our approach comes with three new stages for an appropriate drift handling: 1. ) drifts are not only detected, but also quantified with a new extended version of the Page-Hinkley test, which overcomes some instabilities during downtrends of the indicator; 2. ) based on the current intensity quantification of the drift, the necessary degree of forgetting (weak to strong) is extracted (adaptive forgetting); 3. ) the latter is achieved by two variants, a. ) a single forgetting factor value, accounting for global drifts, and b. ) a forgetting factor vector with different entries for separate regions of the feature space, accounting for local drifts. Forgetting factors are integrated into the learning scheme of both, the antecedent and consequent parts of the evolving fuzzy systems. The new approach will be evaluated on high-dimensional data streams, where the results will show that 1. ) our adaptive forgetting strategy outperforms the usage of fixed forgetting factors throughout the learning process and 2. ) forgetting in local regions may improve forgetting in global ones when drifts appear locally.
A variety weapons and armors design algorithm for role-playing games

A search algorithm for role-playing games (RPGs) equipments design is proposed to automatic set the adequate parameter values of weapons and armors. The typical RPGs combat algorithm and their skills are carefully chosen to be simultaneously simple and expressive. The goal of the proposed system is to provide various sorting lists based on different player characters and boss scenarios to game designer to quickly select the parameter values in RPG's equipments design. At the foundation of the experiment is a simple RPG combat system that allows game developers to generate parameter values of weapons and armors for reference. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can assist game developers to quickly and reasonably design the equipments in RPGs. Furthermore, cooperating with the appropriate naming system and art design, the proposed algorithm also can quickly provide a variety and personalization equipment selection to embed into a game engine. Finally, areas for both PC and APP applications on RPGs of this technique and potential academic research topics for game balance are speculated upon.
Distributed representation of vocabularies in the RECONTRA neural translator

A simple neural translator called RECONTRA (REcurrent CONnectionist TRAnslator) has recently shown to successfully approach simple text-to-text limited-domain Machine Translation tasks. In this approach the vocabularies involved in the translations were represented according to (simple and clear) local codifications. However, in order to deal with large vocabularies local representations would led to networks with an excessive number of connections to be trained. Consequently, distributed representations of both source and target vocabularies are required. This paper studies appropriate types of distributed codifications to represent large vocabularies in the RECONTRA translator.
Capacity of All Nine Models of Channel Output Feedback for the Two-User Interference Channel

In this paper, we study the impact of different channel output feedback architectures on the capacity of the two-user interference channel. For a two-user interference channel, a feedback link can exist between receivers and transmitters in nine canonical architectures (see Fig. 3 ), ranging from only one feedback link to four feedback links. We derive the exact capacity region for the symmetric deterministic interference channel and the constant-gap capacity region for the symmetric Gaussian interference channel for all of the nine architectures. We show that for a linear deterministic symmetric interference channel, in the weak interference regime, all models of feedback, except the one, which has only one of the receivers feeding back to its own transmitter, have the identical capacity region. When only one of the receivers feeds back to its own transmitter, the capacity region is a strict subset of the capacity region of the rest of the feedback models in the weak interference regime. However, the sum-capacity of all feedback models is identical in the weak interference regime. Moreover, in the strong interference regime, all models of feedback with at least one of the receivers feeding back to its own transmitter have the identical sum-capacity. For the Gaussian interference channel, the results of the linear deterministic model follow, where capacity is replaced with approximate capacity.
Incremental computation of delay fault detection probability for variation-aware test generation

Large process variations in recent technology nodes present a major challenge for the timing analysis of digital integrated circuits. The optimization decisions of a statistical delay test generation method must therefore rely on the probability of detecting a target delay fault with the currently chosen test vector pairs. However, the huge number of probability evaluations in practical applications creates a large computational overhead. To address this issue, this paper presents the first incremental delay fault detection probability computation algorithm in the literature, which is suitable for the inner loop of automatic test pattern generation methods. Compared to Monte Carlo simulations of NXP benchmark circuits, the new method consistently shows a very large speedup and only a small approximation error.
Teacher Leadership in the Context of Whole School Reform

This article presents findings from a qualitative case study that examined the role of teacher leaders amid whole school reform. Findings suggest that leadership is ambiguous: a contested notion between principal and teacher(s) and among teachers as well. This ambiguity was manifest on the conceptual and operational levels and significantly affected the ways teachers operated as leaders. The article also describes the role and implications of whole school reform as a mediating factor in teachers’ work as leaders.
Statistical bandwidth sharing: a study of congestion at flow level

In this paper we study the statistics of the realized throughput of elastic document transfers, accounting for the way network bandwidth is shared dynamically between the randomly varying number of concurrent flows. We first discuss the way TCP realizes statistical bandwidth sharing, illustrating essential properties by means of packet level simulations. Mathematical flow level models based on the theory of stochastic networks are then proposed to explain the observed behavior. A notable result is that first order performance (e.g., mean throughput) is insensitive with respect both to the flow size distribution and the flow arrival process, as long as "sessions" arrive according to a Poisson process. Perceived performance is shown to depend most significantly on whether demand at flow level is less than or greater than available capacity. The models provide a key to understanding the effectiveness of techniques for congestion management and service differentiation.
Extremal Surface Based Projections Converge and Reconstruct with Isotopy

Many real world applications need to model a smooth surface from a noisy point sample. In order to eliminate unnecessary undulations on the output surface, it is necessary to project the points on a nearby smooth surface and then approximate the smooth surface with a surface reconstruction algorithm. Moving Least Square (MLS) surfaces in the family of extremal surfaces have been shown to be useful as projection targets. However, it is unknown if the extremal surface based projection procedure converges and if the target extremal surface is isotopic to the original sampled surface. We prove these two facts. The success of the entire projection method depends on the quality of the estimated normals at the sample points. We suggest an algorithm to estimate the normals from the noisy samples which can be of independent interest for other applications. We also present some experimental results.
Implementation of Core-Lock mechanism as a Data Synchronization Method in Embedded Multi-core Systems

: Multi-core processors have become prevalent in the embedded systems for High-performance computations especially in the high-end digital applications. One of the major challenges in multi-core system is Data synchronization which facilitates the simultaneous execution of multiple threads in the same processor environment. Traditional methods solved the Data Synchronization issues using Lock based methods like semaphores or mutual exclusion of critical data. More advanced methods use transactional memory to achieve the same purpose. But there are advantages and disadvantages in both methods. So we propose a mechanism which exploits advantages of Traditional Lock based methods and evolving transactional memory methods. This Hybrid method will be termed as Core Locking (C-Lock) which is performance and energy efficient. C-Lock allows parallelism by detecting true conflicts and disables the clocks of the idle cores thereby minimizing the dynamic power consumption. This paper aims to implement the C-Lock manager using Verilog HDL, simulated using Cadence ncsim and synthesized using Cadence RTL compiler.
Methodology and Techniques for the Translation of Sdl to Acsr

We are developing a methodology and software engineering environment which can be used to analyze a real-time system and test its correctness. In this paper, we especially focus on the methodology of the translation of SDL programs to ACSR speciications. A system in SDL is described as an extended state machine, in which the processes of a system are composed of states and transitions. We translate a subset of an SDL system to an ACSR speciication ready to be veriied.
Cognitive profile of patients with newly diagnosed Parkinson ’ s disease

Cognitive deficits can occur even in the early stages of Parkinson disease (PD). In many instances these deficits may not be clinically apparent, but they are detectable with specific neuropsychological tests. However, the exact pattern of these impairments and their frequencies are still subjects of considerable controversy. To investigate the cognitive profile of patients with newly diagnosed Parkinson disease (PD) and to determine the demographic and medical variables those contribute to the cognitive outcome. Forty three consecutive patients with newly diagnosed PD and 30 healthy controls were given a neuropsychological test battery investigating psychomotor speed, attention, language, memory, executive and visuospatial functions. Patients also received quantitative ratings of motor symptom severity. Neuropsychological performance of PD patients was compared with that of healthy controls and with available normative data. Independent demographic and clinical predictors of cognitive impairment were identified with multiple logistic regression analysis. Relative to controls, PD patients performed significantly worse on most cognitive measures. However, further analysis revealed that group differences in cognitive performance could mainly be explained by measures of immediate memory and executive function. Comparison with normative data showed that impairments were most frequent on measures of executive function, memory and psychomotor speed. In all, 25.6% of PD patients (6.7%of controls) displayed defective performance on at least three neuropsychological tests and were classified as cognitively impaired. Late onset of disease was an independent predictor of cognitive dysfunction in PD.The observed cognitive impairments in patients with newly diagnosed Parkinson disease are more than expected for normal aging, with deficits being most prominent in the domains of memory and executive functions. Older age at disease onset is likely to be an important determinant of cognitive dysfunction in Parkinson disease.
School Working Papers Series 2002 SWP 2002 / 35 Implementation of electronic commerce and human resource management strategies in an Australian Retail Banking context

As organisations deploy eCommerce and internet technologies for competitive advantage and to satisfy increasingly demanding customers, they will need to develop human resource (HR) strategies that prepare their employees to work with these technologies effectively. Little is known about how companies manage their HR functions to achieve these outcomes. In the retail banking sector these issues have become very important with increased competition, industry changes and heightened competition. This paper examines HR management strategy in one Australian bank as it moves towards online service provision and adopts other eCommerce applications. The paper draws on theoretical insights from Porter’s (2001) views of competitive advantage from the internet and writers discussing the informational society (Castells, 2001) and post-fordist organisations (Clegg, 1990). An analysis of interview data from this case study shows the issues that one bank is dealing with as it seeks competitive advantage from its customer service offerings while it revises its HR strategies.
One year of 222 Rn concentration in the atmospheric surface layer

A one-year time series of 222 Rn measured in a rural area in the North of Italy in 1997 is analyzed. The scope of the investigation is to better understand the behavior of this common atmospheric tracer in relation to the meteorological conditions at the release site. Wavelet analysis is used as one of the investigation tools of the time series. The measurements and scalograms of 222 Rn are compared to those of wind-speed, pressure, relative humidity, temperature and NO x . The use of wavelet analysis allows the identification of the various scales controlling the influence of the meteorological variables on 222 Rn dispersion in the surface layer that are not visible through classical Fourier analysis or direct time series inspection. The analysis of the time series has identified specific periods during which the usual diurnal variation of radon is superimposed to a linear growth thus indicating the build up of concentration at the measurement level. From these specific cases an estimate of the surface flux of 222 Rn is made. By means of a simple model these special cases are reproduced.
Is it really worth it? : Cost-based selection of system responses to speech-in-overlap

For purposes of discussion and feedback, we present a preliminary version of a simple yet powerful cost-based framework for spoken dialogue sys-tems to continuously and incrementally decide whether to speak or not. The framework weighs the cost of producing speech in overlap against the cost of not speaking when something needs saying. Main features include a small number of parameters controlling characteristics that are readily understood, al-lowing manual tweaking as well as interpretation of trained parameter settings; observation-based estimates of expected overlap which can be adapted dynami-cally; and a simple and general method for context dependency. No evaluation has yet been undertaken, but the effects of the parameters; the observation-based cost of expected overlap trained on Switchboard data; and the context de-pendency using inter-speaker intensity differences from the same corpus are demonstrated with generated input data in the context of user barge-ins.