Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The impact of surface projection on military tactics comprehension

ABSTRACT This experiment assessed how displaying information onto different surfaces (flat vs. raised) influenced the performance, workload, and engagement of cadets answering questions on military tactics. Sixty-two cadets in a within-subjects design each answered 24 tactics-related questions across 2 conditions (12 on flat, 12 on raised) which were measured by accuracy and time on task. After each set of 12 questions, the cadets took postsurveys assessing engagement, measured by a modified User Engagement Scale and the System Usability Scale, and workload measured by the NASA-TLX. Findings indicated that raised terrain surface led to reduced workload and increased engagement and time on task as compared to the flat terrain surface. A practice effect drove performance metrics (time on task and accuracy), where the learner performed better on the second surface type displayed. This research contributes to expanding the literature base that supports alternative display methods to increase engagement and augment instruction of military tactics tasks.
Securing the Network Client

We enumerate and compare a number of security-enabling architectures for network clients. These architectures, either proposed as methodologies or currently implemented in software and/or hardware, are capable of protecting the client’s software integrity and its environment. The most important methodologies include the reference monitor model, firewalls and virtual machines. Software implementations are the Java sandbox and the code signing concept. Hardware that can be used includes smart cards. We describe their most important features and provide a review and comparative study based on a number of criteria. We believe that ongoing research can empower these mechanisms for protecting network clients in a more effective way.
Cognitive Flexibility in the Context of Stress and Depressive Disorders

Disturbances of cognitive flexibility may contribute to difficulties in emotion regulation, which can lead to the emergence of depressive illness. However, there are limited data available as to how stressful experiences influence cognitive flexibility. The purpose of the present research was to examine the contribution of stressful events, including self-reported early-life trauma, on cognitive flexibility, and how disturbances in this regard were related to heightened depressive symptoms and to stress-reactivity. Given that the neutrophin brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) has been linked to mood, notably depression, the link between a BDNF polymorphism and cognitive flexibility was also examined. In Study 1 (N = 64), an acute psychosocial stressor (Trier Social Stress Test; TSST) was accompanied by enhanced cognitive flexibility, as reflected through greater set-shifting performance on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST), and this relationship was mediated by heightened threat appraisal. However, the enhanced set-shifting performance was not apparent among individuals with elevated depressive symptoms. Study 2 (N = 239) demonstrated that, among Met allele carriers for the BDNF Val66Met gene polymorphism, greater frequency of trauma was associated with decreased cognitive, and these relations depended on type of trauma experienced and gender. In Studies 3A, B, and C, a cognitive flexibility questionnaire (CFQ) was developed which identified the ways in which cognitive flexibility might be manifested in stressful situations. The CFQ, which comprised two sub-scales (cognitive control and cognitive resources), exhibited high internal consistency, and was associated with depressive symptoms even after controlling for other measures that have been linked to depression. Finally, in Study 4 (N = 44), it was demonstrated that reduced cognitive flexibility, as assessed by the CFQ, was associated with negative affect and cortisol levels following the TSST. The present findings indicate that the impact of stressful events on cognitive flexibility depends on the nature of the stressor as well as personal characteristics, including gender and genetic disposition. Moreover, the present research further supports the notion that disturbances in fundamental cognitive control processes, including cognitive flexibility, might contribute to the maintenance of negative emotional states and neuroendocrine activation, and might contribute to the evolution of depressive illness.
Disrupting the Player's Schematised Knowledge of Game Components

The concept of "conservatism" in game design has been a subject of debate for a number of years. This "conservatism" is linked to "player-centricity‟ in design. Such player-centricity can be suggested to place a limit on the fulfilment of high level cognitive player needs. A framework is thus proposed for disruptive game design that focuses on the player and how they learn about game components. It actively seeks the disruption of knowledge construction as well as the recall process used in applying that knowledge to new situations. Such disruption aims to increase the player‟s cognitive engagement with the game in a way that does not entirely prevent them from understanding the game, which may cause frustration or confusion. This design approach thus aims to provide greater potential for fulfilment of a player‟s high level cognitive needs. The framework is applied to a small case study of the game Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (The Chinese Room, 2013) that was designed and developed utilising its principles.
Dwell-time approach to stability analysis for hybrid control systems: Application to an industrial refrigeration process

We consider continuous-time switched linear systems associated with linear state reset during mode switches, which are called linear hybrid systems and can be commonly found in switched control systems via bumpless transfer during controller switches. We use a multiple Lyapunov functions approach to develop constructive tools for stability analysis of linear hybrid systems. In particular, we derive a linear-matrix-inequalities based procedure to compute upper bounds of dwell time for uniform global exponential stability in linear hybrid systems, and we apply it to stability verification of an industrial refrigeration process that is regulated by several switched proportional-integral controllers via bumpless transfer.
Variations in hospital worker perceptions of safety culture.

OBJECTIVE To compare the attitudes toward and perceptions of institutional practices that can influence patient safety between all professional groups at a university medical center. DESIGN A questionnaire measuring nine dimensions of organizational and safety culture was distributed to all hospital workers. Each item was rated on a 1 ('strongly disagree') to 5 ('strongly agree') scale. PARTICIPANTS Professionals (2995), grouped as 'physicians' (16.6%), 'nurses' (40.3%), 'clinical workers' (e.g. psychologists; 21.7%), 'laboratory workers' (e.g. technicians; 11%) and 'non-medical workers' (e.g. managers; 10.4%). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES One-way analysis of variances (ANOVAs) carried out separately on each dimension with professional group as the independent variable of interest. RESULTS Differences in ratings of organizational and safety culture were found across professional groups. Physicians and non-medical workers tended to rate the dimensions of organizational and safety culture more positively than did nurses, clinical workers and laboratory workers. For example, physicians gave more positive ratings of 'institutional commitment to safety' than did nurses, clinical workers and laboratory workers (mean = 3.71 vs. 3.62, 3.61 and 3.58, respectively, P < 0.01) and non-medical workers gave more positive ratings than did physicians, nurses, clinical workers and laboratory workers to 'perceptions towards the hospital' (mean = 3.69 vs. 3.39, 3.36, 3.49 and 3.47, respectively, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS Interventions to promote safety culture should be tailored to the target group as attitudes and perceptions may differ among groups.
Effect of electrical stimulation in mineralization and collagen enrichment of osteoporotic rat bones

Osteoporosis is a disease defined by decreased bone mass and alteration of microstructure which results in increased bone fragility and increased risk of fracture. An electromagnetic treatment having a pulsed output is adopted for prevention of induced osteoporosis in albino rats. Two groups of wistar rats were studied. Animals from group I were control and group II were experimental. Experimental group rats were bilaterally ovariectomized to induce osteoporosis. After one month of surgery capacitive coupled pulsed electric field delivered to one leg of experimatal rats and other leg kept as sham exposed. After 60 days of exposure treatment rats were sacrificed and femur and tibia bones were segregated into Control, Ovariectomized (OVX) and Ovariectomized+ Electrical stimulation (OVX+ES). The current study investigated the effect of external pused electric field exposure on induced osteoporotic rat bone quantity (bone density, bone mineral content and collagen I content) and quality (microstructure). Values of bone densities were fitted in multivariate regression model where bone mineral content and collagen I content were kept as independent variables.Capacitive pulsed electric field of specific characteristics prevents bone loss in ovariectomy induced osteoporotic bones. Bone density and mineral content of OVX+ES bones were significantly increased as compared to OVX bones. Biochemical analysis conveyed that exposed rat bones have high amount of collagen I than that of osteoporotic bones. Electron microscopic study revealed the enhancement of micro structural composition and compactness in cancellous part of treated bones.It is concluded that capacitive pulsed electric field can improve inorganic, organic and micro structural properties of bones.
Dynamic Selection of Model Parameters in Principal Components Analysis Neural Networks

One of the best known techniques for multidimensional data analysis is the Principal Components Analysis (PCA). A number of local PCA neural models have been proposed to partition an input distribution into meaningful clusters. Each neuron of these models uses a certain number of basis vectors to represent the principal directions of a particular cluster. Most of these neural networks are unable to learn the number of basis vectors, which is specified a priori as a fixed parameter. This leads to poor adaptation to input data. Here we develop a method where the number of basis vectors of each neuron is learned. Then we apply this method to a well known local PCA neural model. Finally, experimental results are presented where the original and modified versions of the neural model are compared.
Wide area network monitoring system for HEP experiments at Fermilab

Large, distributed High Energy Physics (HEP) collaborations, such as D0, CDF and US-CMS, depend on stable and robust network paths between major world research centers. The evolving emphasis on data and compute Grids increases the reliance on network performance. Fermilab's experimental groups and network support personnel identified a critical need for WAN monitoring to ensure the quality and efficient utilization of such network paths. This has led to the development of the Network Monitoring system we will present in this paper. The system evolved from the IEPM-BW project, started at SLAC three years ago. At Fermilab this system has developed into a fully functional infrastructure with bi-directional active network probes and path characterizations. It is based on the Iperf achievable throughput tool, Ping and Synack to test ICMP/TCP connectivity. It uses Pipechar and Traceroute to test, compare and report hop-by-hop network path characterization. It also measures real file transfer performance by BBFTP and GridFTP. The Monitoring system has an extensive web-interface and all the data is available through standalone SOAP web services or by a MonaLISA client. Also in this paper we will present a case study of network path asymmetry and abnormal performance between FNAL and SDSC, which wasmore » discovered and resolved by utilizing the Network Monitoring system. « less
Gravity and global symmetries.

There exists a widely held notion that gravitational effects can strongly violate global symmetries. If this is correct, it may lead to many important consequences. We argue, in particular, that nonperturbative gravitational effects in the axion theory lead to a strong violation of {ital CP} invariance unless they are suppressed by an extremely small factor {ital g}{approx_lt}10{sup {minus}82}. One could hope that this problem disappears if one represents the global symmetry of a pseudoscalar axion field as a gauge symmetry of the Ogievetsky-Polubarinov-Kalb-Ramond antisymmetric tensor field. We show, however, that this gauge symmetry does not protect the axion mass from quantum corrections. The amplitude of gravitational effects violating global symmetries could be strongly suppressed by {ital e}{sup {minus}{ital S}}, where {ital S} is the action of a wormhole which may absorb the global charge. Unfortunately, in a wide variety of theories based on the Einstein theory of gravity the action appears to be fairly small, {ital S}{similar_to}10. However, we find that the existence of wormholes and the value of their action are extremely sensitive to the structure of space on the nearly Planckian scale. We consider several examples (Kaluza-Klein theory, conformal anomaly, {ital R}{sup 2} terms) which show that modificationsmore » of the Einstein theory on the length scale {ital l}{approx_lt}10{ital M}{sub {ital P}}{sup {minus}1} may strongly suppress violation of global symmetries. We find also that in string theory there exists an additional suppression of topology change by the factor {ital e}{sup {minus}8{pi}2}/{ital g}{sup 2}. This effect is strong enough to save the axion theory for the natural values of the stringy gauge coupling constant. « less
Enhancing the Taverna workflow system for executing and analyzing the performance of image processing algorithms

In image processing, different groups of subalgorithms give similar outputs. Therefore, there are more than one solution to process an image for a specified result. This research uses Taverna Workbench, a workflow technology, to help the developer in designing and checking the performance of algorithm sets more easily. We propose our integrated web service operation working with the Taverna workflow editor. Currently, the tool supports the image processing function based on our case study, PSU's cell image analyzer. Experiments show that using the workflow tool can help reducing the design time and the user can easily obtain the results and make decision about which algorithm sets to be used.
The SenSem project: Syntactico-semantic annotation of sentences in Spanish

This paper presents SenSem, a project that aims to systematize the behavior of verbs in Spanish at the lexical, syntactic and semantic level. As part of the project, two resources are being built: a corpus where sentences are associated to their syntactico-semantic interpretation and a lexicon where each verb sense is linked to the corresponding annotated examples in the corpus. Some tendencies that can be observed in the current state of development are also discussed.
Integrating Formal Methods with Informal Digital Hardware Development

This paper presents some results from an industrial project to develop high-integrity digital hardware by integrating formal methods with a more traditional informal approach. The ultimate goal of the project team was to produce sythesisable VHDL that could be proven to meet given requirements for an embedded controller. The burden was on the formal methods experts to integrate themselves into the team. This paper describes the formal approach that was developed as a result.
Leadership of older adults’ service learning in Taiwan: a qualitative study

ABSTRACT In Taiwan, there are service learning programs organized by older adult educational institutions that are held in high esteem. Director leadership plays a key role in the effectiveness of such institutions, and the leadership experiences of such directors in guiding service learning are worth exploring. This study conducted a qualitative approach and selected directors from eight Active Aging Learning Centers (AALCs) who achieved outstanding leadership effectiveness to take part in one-on-one and in-depth semi-structured interviews. The results indicated that: 1. Directors infused the entire service learning process with inspirational motivation by adopting through individualized consideration as a starting point. 2. When directors led the preparation process for service learning, they focused on inducing intellectual stimulation among the older adult learners, such that they felt empowered and capable of providing community services. 3. During the community service phase, directors practiced a form of leadership characterized by idealized influence to encourage, accompany, and support the elderly while they engaged in service learning. 4. The dilemma faced by directors was dissatisfaction with the leadership. Directors responded by reminding them of their original service learning intention and downplaying issues, which made the service learning group undergo a positive transformation. 5. The results of directors’ leadership had a positive effect on the community as it led to more dynamism and more people participating in community service.
Monte-Carlo strategies for computer Go

The game of Go is one of the games that still withstand classical Artificial Intelligence approaches. Hence, it is a good testbed for new AI methods. Amongst them, Monte-Carlo led to promising results. This method consists of building an evaluation function by averaging the outcome of several randomized games. The paper introduces a new strategy, which we call Objective Monte-Carlo, to improve this evaluation. Objective Monte-Carlo is composed of two parts. The first one is a move-selection strategy that adjusts the amount of exploration and exploitation automatically. We show experimentally that it outperforms the two classical strategies previously proposed for Monte-Carlo Go: Simulated Annealing and Progressive Pruning. The second part of our algorithm is a new backpropagation strategy. We show that it gives better results than Minimax in this context. Finally we discuss the extension of this method to other problems.
An improved IDL compiler for optimizing CORBA applications

Building CORBA distributed applications for embedded and real-time systems has brought a number of requirements to be satisfied (small footprint, determinism.). A large part of the distributed application code is generated automatically from its IDL (Interface Definition Language) specification using an IDL compiler. Thus the IDL compiler has to be flexible in order to generate optimized code and to easily support new optimizations. In this paper, we present an IDL compiler architecture which is more amenable to generate optimized code. Then, we list some optimizations we implemented on the code generated by IAC (IDL Ada Compiler): the new IDL compiler and on PolyORB, our middleware, to make distributed applications suited for embedded real-time systems.
TEACHER’S PROXIMITY IN CONDUCTING CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT (A Case Study on English Teachers of SMP Negeri 1 Lembang)

The aim of the study is to find out how teacher utilize Proximity in conducting classroom management. The research was held in a junior high school in Lembang. The participants of this study were two teachers of the school chosen, who are English teachers there. One teacher is female and another is male. Both teachers teach 8 th grade. Three classes were chosen as the object of observation. This study was conducted using one of the Qualitative Research Design types, Case Study, as the research methodology. The data were obtained through classroom observation and interview. The result of this study shows that teachers utilized nonverbal communication in managing classroom. Among those nonverbal cues, teacher’s proximity was one of them. It was found that teachers should apply appropriate distance in certain situation. It was connected with the teachers’ characteristics, such as their mobility and understanding of students and the function of the distance. Several recommendations are offered for future researchers. It is expected the analysis to be more comprehensive because the limitation of participants. Last, it is recommended for future research, teacher’s proximity can be studied more deeply.
Complex permittivity determination from measured scattering parameters of TEM waveguide

This paper addresses the de-embedding of the propagation function of waveguides from the scattering responses of setups composed of TEM waveguides terminated by launchers that introduce generic discontinuities. The de-embedding is aimed at estimating the permittivity of dielectric samples from the scattering responses of waveguides including the samples. The de-embedding is based on the double-delay method, that is applied to setups involving different launchers.
Perioperative Risk Assessment, Prevention, and Treatment of Acute Kidney Injury

In the perioperative period, physicians strive to provide optimal care for their patients by first performing a thorough evaluation of all organ systems. This is most important for elective and nonelective highrisk procedures and for procedures performed on critically ill or medically complex patients. The perioperative period is unique as it is a distinct event in a patient’s health where certain hemodynamic derangements and insults are somewhat predictable based on the preoperative state of the patient and the type of surgery required. It is a time when preventive therapy can be instituted for certain patient populations if their risk is adequately determined. The field of perioperative medicine is advancing in many areas. For instance, many studies have focused on the risk and prevention of perioperative cardiac events. The risk and prevention of acute kidney injury (AKI) is less well understood and shall be the topic of this chapter.
A SEPIC-energy-regenerative-snubber with linear current regulator for power LEDs

This paper presents an AC electronic lighting system using a non-isolated SEPIC PFC rectifier to drive and control power LEDs currents. One energy regenerative snubber for reducing the converter switching losses and improve the system efficiency is proposed. To reduce ripple current in the LEDs array a linear current regulator is placed in the SEPIC's output terminals. In order to reduce the efficiency impairment, the conditions for achieving minimum energy loss in the current regulator are also detailed. The main equations of the proposed energy regenerative snubber as well as the experimental results of a prototype that feeds 35 LEDs / 42 W are presented. In this paper, the system operates with 127 Volts of input voltage and the point of minimum energy loss in the linear regulator is adjusted in open loop to validate the converter operation.