Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Construction of A Diagnostic Test of Listening Comprehension

Importance of listening comprehension. A democracy is based on the ability of its citizens to think and act intelligently. Since accurate complete information is basic to sound thinking, reading and listening, the two language channels through which information is received, hold pos itions of paramount importance. While reading, perhaps, more than any other school subject has been the object of scientific study and investigation, listening has been al most completely neglected. If the average in dividual depended less upon listening than upon reading, there might be reason for this neglect. But such is not the case, judging from Rankin'sl study, which indicates that listening is the most frequently used language activity, the average adult spending approximately three times as much time listening as reading. Recently the belief2 has arisen that listening can and should be taught, that the development of listening skill, like the development of other skills, is a matter of training. Need for a test of listening comprehension. This growing awareness of the importance of listening has brought with it an increasing need for a measure of listening ability. Up to the present a preponderance of the publications on listening have been expressions of theory. As recently as last year, Nichols3 found only four teen scientific studies relating to classroom listening among the seventy-one references on listening in his bibliography. Goldstein4 some what earlier found and reviewed only twelve such studies. And even among the relatively few research studies in this field there is little agreement in the findings. For example, Goldstein's summary of the literature reveals that three studies favor ,an auditory and three a visual presentation. An other study points to a reversal of superiority be tween the fifth and ninth grades, the visual mode becoming superior as the student progresses in school. Another study finds the auditory mode superior among college students, the visual for non-college adults. Still another study shows the visual mode superior in college for rapid read ers, the auditory superior for slow readers. Such contradictory findings are the apparent result of failure to use adequate controls and accurate measuring instruments. Accurate ex perimental results are not possible with inac curate measuring instruments, yet in previous studies of listening the test instrument has re ceived only incidental attention. The Third Men tal Measurements Yearbook (1949) has seventy pages devoted to describing and evaluating available tests in the field of reading, but no ref erence to any listening test. Such a test is need ed. Previous research. --From the twenty-five previous studies of listening reviewed for this study, the following conclusions may be drawn, relative to listening tests and the listening pro cess:
Fast FAST

We present a randomized subexponential time, polynomial space parameterized algorithm for the k -Weighted Feedback Arc Set in Tournaments ( k -FAST ) problem. We also show that our algorithm can be derandomized by slightly increasing the running time. To derandomize our algorithm we construct a new kind of universal hash functions, that we coin universal coloring families . For integers m, k and r , a family F of functions from [ m ] to [ r ] is called a universal ( m, k, r )-coloring family if for any graph G on the set of vertices [ m ] with at most k edges, there exists an f ∈ F which is a proper vertex coloring of G . Our algorithm is the ﬁrst non-trivial subexponential time parameterized algorithm outside the framework of bidimensionality.
On the Existence of Martingale Measures in Jump Diffusion Market Models

In the context of jump-diffusion market models we construct examples that satisfy the weaker no-arbitrage condition of NA1 (NUPBR), but not NFLVR. We show that in these examples the only candidate for the density process of an equivalent local martingale measure is a supermartingale that is not a martingale, not even a local martingale. This candidate is given by the supermartingale deflator resulting from the inverse of the discounted growth optimal portfolio. In particular, we con- sider an example with constraints on the portfolio that go beyond the standard ones for admissibility.
Councils, consultations and community: rethinking the spaces for children and young people's participation1

The participation of children and young people in decisions that affect them is now mainstream in social and public policy in the UK. Yet for many young people formal participation opportunities are abstracted from everyday lives and concerns. Children may not feel empowered despite the existence of formal structures for participation. This raises questions about how ‘spaces’ for participation are constructed. This paper critiques prevailing models of participation in formal structures and instead, argues for the need to rethink children's participation as a more diverse set of social processes rooted in everyday environments and interactions.
Sketch-based data placement among geo-distributed datacenters for cloud storages

With the increasing demand of big data applications, a variety of problems on how to operate the supporting infrastructures more intelligently and efficiently have attracted much attention in the literature. To optimize the data placement among distributed network locations is one of the fundamental problems, which aims at facilitating the data storage and access. However, traditional schemes meet challenges on the running time and the overhead introduced due to the increasing scale of datasets. Therefore, we propose a novel data placement scheme based on sketches to overcome these challenges. We first justify the effectiveness of applying the hypergraph sparsification on the data placement problem, and then present the method of constructing sparsifiers through the sketches of request traffic. Besides, the scheme features on the support of aggregating distributed sketches to make the decision and capturing the pattern of recent traffic through sliding windows. Finally, we obtain numerical results through simulations which confirm that the proposed scheme can place data effectively while reducing the introduced overhead in terms of algorithm running time, space and network traffic.
An Agent-based Approach to Transport Chain Management

The International Conference on e-Business, ICE-B, aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners who are interested in e-Business technology and its current applications. The mentioned technology relates not only to more low-level technological issues, such as technology platforms and web services, but also to some higher-level issues, such as context awareness and enterprise models, and also the peculiarities of different possible applications of such technology. These are all areas of theoretical and practical importance within the broad scope of e-Business, whose growing importance can be seen from the increasing interest of the IT research community.
Winning the PASCAL 2011 MAP Challenge with Enhanced AND / OR Branch-and-Bound

This paper describes our entry for the MAP/MPE track of the PA SC L 2011 Probabilistic Inference Challenge, which placed first in al l three time limit categories, 20 seconds, 20 minutes, and 1 hour. Our baseline is a b ranch-and-bound algorithm that explores the AND/OR context-minimal search graph of a graphical model guided by a mini-bucket heuristic. Augmented with rec ent advances that convert the algorithm into an anytime scheme, that improve t he heuristic power via cost-shifting schemes, and using enhanced variable ord ering schemes, it constitutes one of the most powerful MAP/MPE inference methods t date.
Efficient Query Answering over Datalog with Existential Quantifiers

This paper faces the problem of answering conjunctive queries over Datalog programs allowing existential quantifiers in rule heads. Such an extension of Datalog is highly expressive, enables easy yet powerful ontology-modelling, but leads to undecidable query answering in general. To overcome undecidability, we first define Shy, a subclass of Datalog with existential quantifiers preserving not only decidability but also the same complexity of query answering over Datalog. Next, we design and implement a bottom-up evaluation strategy for Shy programs. Our computation strategy includes a number of optimizations resulting in DLV∃, a powerful reasoner over Shy programs. Finally, we carry out an experimental analysis comparing DLV∃ with some state-of-the-art systems for ontology-based query answering. The results confirm the effectiveness of DLV∃, which outperforms all other systems in the benchmark.
The Perceived Quality of Leisure Experiences among Smoking and Nonsmoking Adolescents

The leisure experiences of 1,407 smoking and nonsmoking adolescents were contrasted with respect to their perceived quality. Leisure attitudes and behavior were measured with regard to both the adolescents' general approach to free time and their most common use of free time. Compared with nonsmokers, adolescents who smoked during their most common leisure activity were found to be more bored, and less challenged; they felt less competent and evaluated their performance more severely. Similarly, a general pattern of cigarette smoking over the previous year was associated with a general percepton of leisure time as having produced boredom, anxiety, a feeling of low compentence, and less challenge. Smokers and nonsmokers, however, were equally aware of leisure opportunities. These findings indicated that adolescents who smoke find their leisure time to be qualitatively less fulfilling than do nonsmoking adolescents.
Children and Young People's Views of Social Research

In recent years there has been a concern to produce guidelines and explore ethical practice in social research with children. Much of this is framed within a general concern to empower children. However, there has been little attention paid to exploring how children can view research and what understandings inform their decisions about participation. This article draws on empirical data to argue that children's views of research are linked to the meaning of the particular research topic in the pre-existing and interlocking personal, local and wider societal contexts of their lives generally. Researchers may seek to provide children with the means to make an informed consent about participation in, and to empower them through, research. However, children can view children in different ways, whatever our intentions.
Immunocytologic analysis of cells obtained from bronchoalveolar lavage in a model of rat lung allograft rejection.

Left lung transplantation (n = 30) between BN rat (RT1n) and LEW rat (RT1(1)) was performed to examine serial changes in the inflammatory cell profile and T-cell subsets occurring in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) obtained after transplantation. Transplanted animals were sacrificed on Days 1 to 7 post-transplantation. Previous studies show that lung allografts between these rat strains were strongly rejected within 7 days. The serial change in the cell profile of BAL showed a marked initial predominance of polymorphonuclear leukocytes, a decrease in macrophages, and a temporary increase in number of eosinophils on Day 2 post-transplantation. A gradual increase in lymphocytes coincident with progression of rejection was also noted. Immunocytologic studies using monoclonal antibodies specific for rat T-cell subsets and interleukin-2 receptor (IL-2R) showed significant increase in pan-T-cells on Days 3, 4, and 5 and T-suppressor/cytotoxic (CD8 positive) fraction on Days 4 and 5, whereas the T-helper (CD4 positive) fraction peaked on Day 2. The frequency of T-cells expressing IL-2R (55 kDa), indicating activated T-cells, significantly increased as early as Day 2 and maintained its high value thereafter. mRNA levels for IL-2R were detectable in the allografts on Day 2 and peaked on Day 5 post-transplantation. The value of CD4/CD8 T-cell ratios rose initially and then dropped below 1.0 on Days 4 and 5. These values differed markedly from those of syngeneic transplants (Lew-->Lew) examined on Day 5 post-transplantation. First, no significant changes in BAL cytology were seen when syngeneic transplants were compared with normal (Lew) lung. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
A work-stealing scheduling framework supporting fault tolerance

Fault tolerance and load balancing are critical points for executing long-running parallel applications on multicore clusters. This paper addresses both fault tolerance and load balancing on multicore clusters by presenting a novel work-stealing task scheduling framework which supports hardware fault tolerance. In this framework, both transient and permanent faults are detected and recovered at task granularity. We incorporate task-based fault detection and recovery mechanisms into a hierarchical work-stealing scheme to establish the framework. This framework provides low-overhead fault-tolerance and optimal load balancing by fully exploiting task parallelism.
Evolutionary algorithms for finding optimal gene sets in microarray prediction

MOTIVATION Microarray data has been shown recently to be efficacious in distinguishing closely related cell types that often appear in different forms of cancer, but is not yet practical clinically. However, the data might be used to construct a minimal set of marker genes that could then be used clinically by making antibody assays to diagnose a specific type of cancer. Here a replication algorithm is used for this purpose. It evolves an ensemble of predictors, all using different combinations of genes to generate a set of optimal predictors. RESULTS We apply this method to the leukemia data of the Whitehead/MIT group that attempts to differentially diagnose two kinds of leukemia, and also to data of Khan et al. to distinguish four different kinds of childhood cancers. In the latter case we were able to reduce the number of genes needed from 96 to less than 15, while at the same time being able to classify all of their test data perfectly. We also apply this method to two other cases, Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma data (Shipp et al., 2002), and data of Ramaswamy et al. on multiclass diagnosis of 14 common tumor types. AVAILABILITY http://stravinsky.ucsc. edu/josh/gesses/.
Variation in within‐bone stiffness measured by nanoindentation in mice bred for high levels of voluntary wheel running

The hierarchical structure of bone, involving micro‐scale organization and interaction of material components, is a critical determinant of macro‐scale mechanics. Changes in whole‐bone morphology in response to the actions of individual genes, physiological loading during life, or evolutionary processes, may be accompanied by alterations in underlying mineralization or architecture. Here, we used nanoindentation to precisely measure compressive stiffness in the femoral mid‐diaphysis of mice that had experienced 37 generations of selective breeding for high levels of voluntary wheel running (HR). Mice (n = 48 total), half from HR lines and half from non‐selected control (C) lines, were divided into two experimental groups, one with 13–14 weeks of access to a running wheel and one housed without wheels (n = 12 in each group). At the end of the experiment, gross and micro‐computed tomography (μCT)‐based morphometric traits were measured, and reduced elastic modulus (Er) was estimated separately for four anatomical quadrants of the femoral cortex: anterior, posterior, lateral, and medial. Two‐way, mixed‐model analysis of covariance (ancova) showed that body mass was a highly significant predictor of all morphometric traits and that structural change is more apparent at the μCT level than in conventional morphometrics of whole bones. Both linetype (HR vs. C) and presence of the mini‐muscle phenotype (caused by a Mendelian recessive allele and characterized by a ∼50% reduction in mass of the gastrocnemius muscle complex) were significant predictors of femoral cortical cross‐sectional anatomy. Measurement of reduced modulus obtained by nanoindentation was repeatable within a single quadrant and sensitive enough to detect inter‐individual differences. Although we found no significant effects of linetype (HR vs. C) or physical activity (wheel vs. no wheel) on mean stiffness, anterior and posterior quadrants were significantly stiffer (P < 0.0001) than medial and lateral quadrants (32.67 and 33.09 GPa vs. 29.78 and 30.46 GPa, respectively). Our findings of no significant difference in compressive stiffness in the anterior and posterior quadrants agree with previous results for mice, but differ from those for large mammals. Integrating these results with others from ongoing research on these mice, we hypothesize that the skeletons of female HR mice may be less sensitive to the effects of chronic exercise, due to decreased circulating leptin levels and potentially altered endocannabinoid signaling.
Reframing the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan: new communication and mobilization strategies for the Twitter generation

The USA and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have been waging war against the Taliban in Afghanistan for more than a decade, with territorial gains by coalition forces often proving to be ephemeral. This paper traces the origins and evolution of the current Afghan insurgency and explores the framing of the Taliban movement's discourse on Twitter and other interactive websites. The paper postulates that Taliban activists are utilizing social media to disseminate their views and frame their movement in the phraseology of militant Islamism, traditional Pashtun folklore, anti-imperialism, social justice, and universal human rights. Taliban militants are attempting to align their discursive frames with various transnational ideologies that resonate not only with prospective recruits and supporters in Central and South Asia and the Middle East, but also potentially receptive audiences in the West. Such frame alignments are essential components in the micro-mobilization of movement participants. Taliban activists apparently recognize that there are important symbols, narratives, and channels already in existence that can facilitate the growth of their insurgency, while effectively discrediting coalition forces. This paper examines frame alignments and other insurgent-mobilization communication strategies by conducting a content analysis of recent tweets and blogs written by Taliban cyber-activists.
Site-specific single amino acid changes to Lys or Arg in the central region of the movement protein of a hybrid bromovirus are required for adaptation to a nonhost.

A hybrid Cowpea chlorotic mottle virus (CCMV) [CCMV(B3a)] in which the CCMV 3a movement protein gene is replaced by the 3a (B3a) gene of Brome mosaic virus cannot infect cowpea systemically. Previously, analysis of RNA3 cDNA clones constructed from cowpea-adapted mutants derived from CCMV(B3a) revealed that a single codon change in the B3a gene allowed CCMV(B3a) to infect cowpea systemically. In this study, to extend the analysis of the CCMV(B3a) adaptation mechanism, we directly sequenced B3a gene RT-PCR products prepared from 28 cowpea plants in which cowpea-adapted mutants appeared, and found seven patterns of a codon change localized at five specific positions in the central region (Ser(118), Glu(132), Glu(138), Gln(178), and Ser(180)). All of the patterns involved an amino acid change to Lys or Arg. Mutational analysis of the B3a gene demonstrated that a single codon change resulting in either Lys or Arg at any of the five positions was sufficient for the adaptation of CCMV(B3a) to cowpea. In contrast, CCMV(B3a) variants with a codon change resulting in Lys or Arg at three other positions (137, 155, and 161) in the B3a gene not only showed lack of systemic infection of cowpea but also showed weakened initial cell-to-cell movement in the inoculated leaves and diminished B3a accumulation in protoplasts. These results suggest that adaptive changes in the B3a gene are site-specifically selected in cowpea plants.
Quantitative theory of ordinary differential equations and tangential Hilbert 16th problem

These highly informal lecture notes aim at introducing and explaining several closely related problems on zeros of analytic functions defined by ordinary differential equations and systems of such equations. The main incentive for this study was its potential application to the tangential Hilbert 16th problem on zeros of complete Abelian integrals. The exposition consists mostly of examples illustrating various phenomena related to this problem. Sometimes these examples give an insight concerning the proofs, though the complete exposition of the latter is mostly relegated to separate expositions. For related and quoted articles, check the author's homepage this http URL .
Monitoring changes in lean mass of elite male and female swimmers.

PURPOSE To characterize within-subject changes in anthropometric characteristics of elite swimmers within and between seasons. METHODS The subjects were 77 elite swimmers (31 females, 46 males, age 15 to 30 years) monitored over 0.4 to 9.2 years. One anthropometrist recorded their body mass (M) and sum of 7 skinfold thicknesses (S) on 2042 occasions over 14 years from phase to phase within a season and over consecutive seasons. We estimated change in lean mass using a newly derived index (LMI) that tracked changes in M controlled for changes in S. RESULTS The LMI is M/Sx, where x = 0.16 +/- 0.04 for females and 0.15 +/- 0.05 for males (mean +/- SD). The LMI of males increased 1.1% (95% confidence limits +/- 0.2%) between preseason and taper phases, almost twice as much as that of females (0.6% +/- 0.3%). During the same period, M and S fell by approximately 1% and approximately 11%, respectively. From season to season LMI increased by 0.9% (0.8% to 1.0%) for males and 0.5% (0.3% to 0.7%) for females. All these within-subject effects on LMI were well defined (+/-approximately 0.3%). The typical variation (SD) of an individual's LMI was 1.2% for assessments within a season and 1.9% between seasons, with a short-term technical error of measurement of approximately 0.5%. CONCLUSION Coaches and conditioners should typically expect a twofold greater increase in lean mass in male swimmers within and between seasons than in females. An LMI of the form M/Sx should be useful for monitoring individual swimmers and athletes in other sports in which body composition affects performance.
Legal Discourse and Decisions, Teacher Policymaking and the Multilingual Classroom: Constraining and Supporting Khmer/English Biliteracy in the United States

This paper looks at the ways US English-language policies at the micro and macro levels have influenced the development of Khmer biliteracy for children and adults. It shows the power of teacher policymaking and the role of the legal system in shaping what is possible in multilingual classrooms in the United States. By focusing on ESL teachers in four multilingual classrooms, the analysis shows that it is not just that legal decisions have shaped the realities of schools, but that the discourse of the legal system has become part of students' and teachers' perspectives on what is possible in the classroom and, further, reifies and legitimises commonplace assumptions about assimilation, subtractive bilingualism, and the relative value of some languages over others. Even so, the analysis of four teachers and four classrooms show the ways that teacher policies can contest these assumptions and provide support for Khmer language and culture in the classroom. The paper ends with a call for educators to engage not only in micro-level policymaking as teachers but also more in macro-level policymaking as voting and engaged citizens in order to create emancipatory multilingual classroom ecologies that support linguistic diversity.