Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Computing-Efficient Algorithm for Accelerometer-Based Real-Time Activity Recognition Systems

Considered as fundamental part of many pervasive applications, human Activity Recognition (AR) systems have recently attracted interest of the research community. One of the many challenges in developing reliable AR systems is accurate recognition of human daily physical activities while maintaining simplicity of the recognition algorithm, essential to meeting real-time functionality of AR systems as well as dealing with their processing ability constraint. In this paper, we propose a real-time computing-efficient AR algorithm for accelerometer-based AR systems. Evaluation of the proposed algorithm is conducted in a laboratory setting using a simple learning based AR system with single wearable triaxial accelerometer attached to human thigh or wrist. Simple sequential human gestures are shown to be recognized with an average recognition accuracy of 98.8% and 96% for ambulatory movements and hand gestures, respectively.
Presidential Policymaking: Race to the Top, Executive Power, and the Obama Education Agenda

Abstract This article offers an analysis of the origins, evolution, and impact of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top (RTTT) competitive grant program and places it in the broader context of the debate over President Obama’s aggressive use of executive power. Faced with divided control and partisan gridlock in Congress – which has been unable to reauthorize ESEA, the largest federal education program – the Obama administration has opted to make education policy from the executive branch. While many observers have questioned the expansive interpretation of statutory and regulatory authority that undergirds RTTT – and the NCLB waiver process – there is little doubt that the efforts have had a significant impact on the national political discourse around education and pushed many states to propose or enact important policy changes, particularly around charter schools, common core standards, and teacher evaluation processes. Along with health care, education reform is likely to be remembered as the most significant policy legacy of the Obama administration. However, while the Affordable Care Act was drafted by Congress and secured through the “normal” legislative process, the Obama education agenda has largely been designed and enacted through unilateral executive branch authority. As a result, these actions may well set significant precedents for the separation of powers as well as for education policy.
Public and Catholic Schools: A Reanalysis of "Public and Private Schools".

In this study we reanalyze the impact of Catholic school attendance on the reading and mathematics achievement of senior and sophomore pupils using the same data base employed by Coleman, Hoffer and Kilgore in their report, "Public and Private Schools. " We identify four variables they did not control for-sex, handicap status, region of residence, and eighth grade college attendance expectations-that could be associated with self-selection into Catholic schools, and hence responsible for the apparent significant impact of Catholic school attendance on cognitive outcomes reported by Coleman et al. Using a variety of specifications and techniques for handling missing data, we find that we cannot confirm Coleman et al.'s findings. Except for a statistically significant but small advantage on sophomore reading tests, Catholic school pupils are found to do no better-or worse-than public school pupils.
Exploring graph mining approaches for dynamic heterogeneous networks

As we become a more ’connected’ society, a greater need exists to understand complex network structures. While many in the field of data mining analyze network data, most models of networks are straightforward focusing on many connections of a single type. In order to better understand relationships between different types of entities and extract meaningful structure from heterogeneous data, data mining algorithms need to be developed for new models of complex graphs. In this extended abstract, we describe some existing graph models and propose directions for more robust models that can serve as a backbone for analysis and mining of heterogeneous network data sets. We also identify possible metrics that attempt to capture the relationship of heterogeneous components of the network and serve to give insight into the topological relationships that exist among different node and edge types. The development of these different metrics will be important for designing meaningful clustering and graph mining algorithms for these data. Finally, we consider dynamic versions of these networks and present issues for the next generation of mining algorithms related to community identification, pruning and large graph approximations, privacy preservation of complex graph data.
Can science account for taste? Psychological insights into art appreciation

The popular notion that “there's no accounting for taste” reflects a widely held belief that aesthetic preferences are inherently unpredictable. Yet a growing body of research suggests that subjective art appreciation is amenable to objective scientific investigation. This paper reviews the state of the art in the science of art research, examining the extent to which psychological research can account for art appreciation. Taking a two-pronged approach, we first examine how bottom-up variables intrinsic to paintings, including abstraction, form, complexity, and symmetry, reliably influence art appreciation. As the beauty of an artwork can only be appreciated by a beholder, we then examine how top-down influences, such as artwork novelty and viewer expertise, affect the understanding of, and preferences for, paintings. Though the notion that one could ever “fully” explain or predict an aesthetic preference may appear implausibly reductionist, this review demonstrates that scientific methods have shed significant light on a variety of factors that reliably influence art appreciation, paving the way to a greater understanding of the psychology underlying visual art.
Notice of RetractionObject perception model in visual cortex based on Bayesian network

Motivating from biological visual cues in the cortex, by simulating visual information processing and transmission mechanism in the human brain, and using Bayesian network to design object perception model in the visual cortex, this paper proposed an object perception model based on Bayesian network. First, extracted shape feature, color feature, texture feature of the given images; Second, normalized these features and inputed them all to Bayesian network for inference and learning; Third, carried out two experiments to test the validity and reliability of the proposed model. Experiment results shown that the proposed model is reasonable and robust, can integrate all possible information and combine varieties of evidence to implement uncertainty inference, can solve problems with uncertainty and incomplete effectively. The proposed model achieved better recognition performance on the given experimental image datasets, obtained a higher recognition accuracy compared with other methods, and better solved various of recognition difficulties in visual object recognition.
Speech-augmented eye gaze interaction with small closely spaced targets

Eye trackers have been used as pointing devices for a number of years. Due to inherent limitations in the accuracy of eye gaze, however, interaction is limited to objects spanning at least one degree of visual angle. Consequently, targets in gaze-based interfaces have sizes and layouts quite distant from "natural settings". To accommodate accuracy constraints, we developed a multimodal pointing technique combining eye gaze and speech inputs. The technique was tested in a user study on pointing at multiple targets. Results suggest that in terms of a footprint-accuracy tradeoff, pointing performance is best (~93%) for targets subtending 0.85 degrees with 0.3-degree gaps between them. User performance is thus shown to approach the limit of practical pointing. Effectively, developing a user interface that supports hands-free interaction and has a design similar to today's common interfaces is feasible.
Immunostimulatory RNA Oligonucleotides Induce an Effective Antitumoral NK Cell Response through the TLR71

RNA oligonucleotides containing immune-activating sequences promote the development of cytotoxic T cell and B cell responses to Ag. In this study, we show for the first time that immunostimulatory RNA oligonucleotides induce a NK cell response that prevents growth of NK-sensitive tumors. Treatment of mice with immunostimulatory RNA oligonucleotides activates NK cells in a sequence-dependent manner, leading to enhanced IFN-γ production and increased cytotoxicity. Use of gene-deficient mice showed that NK activation is entirely TLR7-dependent. We further demonstrate that NK activation is indirectly induced through IL-12 and type I IFN production by dendritic cells. Reconstitution of TLR7-deficient mice with wild-type dendritic cells restores NK activation upon treatment with immunostimulatory RNA oligonucleotides. Thus, by activating both NK cells and CTLs, RNA oligonucleotides stimulate two major cellular effectors of antitumor immunity. This dual activation may enhance the efficacy of immunotherapeutic strategies against cancer by preventing the development of tumor immune escape variants.
Design of a component-based augmented reality framework

The authors propose a new approach to building augmented reality (AR) systems using a component-based software framework. This has advantages for all parties involved with AR systems. A project manager can reuse existing components in new applications; an end user can reconfigure his system by plugging modules together, an application developer can view the system at a high level of abstraction; and a component developer can focus on technical problems. Our proposed framework consists of reusable distributed services for key subproblems of AR, the middleware to combine them, and an extensible software architecture. We have implemented services for tracking, modeling real and virtual objects, modeling structured navigation or maintenance instructions, and multimodal user interfaces. As a working proof of our concept, we have built an indoor and outdoor campus navigation system using different modes of tracking and user interaction.
Specialized transduction with lambda plac5: dependence on recB

Genetically disabled lambda plac5 transducing phage derivatives were used to study the recB dependence of recombination during specialized transduction. The frequency of transduction was normalized to colony-forming units, and the end product of recombination was monitored by scoring for addition and substitution transductants. When a chromosomal lac gene was the recipient DNA substrate molecule, both the normalized transduction frequency and the proportion of addition and substitution transductants showed essentially no recB dependence. There was a pronounced recB dependence for both normalized transduction frequency and recombination end product formation when F42 lac was the recipient DNA substrate. recB appears to have no significant role in the recombination that occurs between the two lac regions in an addition transductant. UV irradiation of the transducing phages increased the absolute level of both addition and substitution transductants obtained with a chromosomal lac gene but resulted in a considerable change in the relative frequency of addition versus substitution transductants.
JUMPRUN: A hybrid mechanism to accelerate item scanning for in-memory databases

In this paper, we introduce a simple and effective mechanism, called JUMPRUN (jump and run), to accelerate the scanning operation of KEY-VALUE datasets and alleviate the massive data traffic across the memory hierarchy. The proposed JUMPRUN incorporates a software acceleration scheme as well as a dedicated hardware accelerator designed on the near-memory processing (NMP) concept. In evaluation results, compared to a conventional Memcached system with stacked memory layers, the proposed JUMPRUN mechanism provides an average 8.4 times higher performance in the scanning operation and also delivers average 1.37 times overall speedup. The proposed mechanism also delivers a significant reduction of data traffic in both the on-chip memory hierarchy (72%) and stacked DRAM layers (59%), compared to a conventional Memcached system.
Fos Imaging Reveals Differential Patterns of Hippocampal and Parahippocampal Subfield Activation in Rats in Response to Different Spatial Memory Tests

We compared neuronal activation, as measured by Fos staining, during different spatial tasks in two experiments. The counts of Fos-stained neurons in the hippocampus increased as the spatial demands of the tasks increased, the tasks having been carefully matched for other factors. In Experiment 1, matched groups of rats either ran a standard eight-arm radial maze task or were trained to run up and down just one arm of the maze; the number of runs and rewards was identical in both conditions. In Experiment 2, rats were trained on the eight-arm maze but in different rooms. On the critical test day, both groups were run in the same room so that one group now performed with novel landmarks. All hippocampal subfields (dentate gyrus, CA3, CA1, dorsal, ventral, and caudal subiculum) showed a relative increases in c-fos activation in the eight-arm (Experiment 1) and novel room (Experiment 2) conditions, the sole exception being the ventral subiculum in Experiment 2. Although increased c-fosactivation was found in both dorsal and ventral hippocampus, in Experiment 2 the relative increase was significantly greater in the dorsal hippocampus. Parahippocampal cortices responded heterogeneously: the perirhinal cortex failed to show increased activation in both experiments, in contrast to the entorhinal and postrhinal cortices. Subsequent comparisons confirmed that the perirhinal and postrhinal cortices responded in qualitatively different ways, the perirhinal cortex differing from the rest of the hippocampal formation. These experiments, which provide the first analysis of hippocampal Fos production during tests of allocentric spatial working memory, reveal that all components of the hippocampus are activated, but that under certain conditions the dorsal hippocampus is disproportionately involved.
Explaining attitudes toward genetically modified foods in the European Union

This article examines the factors that condition citizens’ attitudes toward genetically modified (GM) foods by considering individual-level attitudes in 15 European Union member states. Previous research has shown that European attitudes toward GM foods are influenced by overall levels of scientific literacy, consumer exposure to media coverage, and broader socio-political preferences. This article seeks to expand on this literature by testing some of these explanations in a multivariate analysis. To test our propositions, we develop and estimate a logistic regression model using data derived from Eurobarometer surveys. While the sources of information that people value and their attitudes toward EU policy in related areas explain to some extent support for GM foods, our strongest finding confirms the importance of public understanding of science as a basis for support for this emerging technology.
Parent Involvement: A Survey of Teacher Practices

The Elementary School Journal Volume 83, Number 2 ? 1982 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 001 3-5984183/8302-0009$01o.00 Teachers approach their instructional tasks with a variety of perspectives and strategies that emphasize certain aspects of teaching and deemphasize others. For example, some teachers teach language skills using organized games, while other teachers teach the same skills by direct instruction. Teachers adopt different approaches to the same subject matter partly because their teaching situations differ. Their students may have different learning problems or their classrooms may have varied resources and facilities. Even in the
A Multiloop Method for Minimization of Parasitic Inductance in GaN-Based High-Frequency DC–DC Converter

Gallium nitride high electron mobility transistors (GaN HEMTs) are promising switching devices in high-efficiency and high-density dc–dc converters due to their fast switching speed and small conduction resistance. However, GaN HEMTs are very sensitive to parasitic inductance because of their high switching speed, low-threshold voltage, and small driving safety margin. Parasitic inductance can cause severe voltage overshoot and ringing, which may result in electromagnetic interference issues, false turn-on, or even device breakdown. This paper aims at reducing the parasitic inductance (including power loop inductance and driver loop inductance) by optimizing the layout. First, a multiloop method is proposed to reduce the parasitic inductance. Optimization of both the conventional single-loop structure and the proposed multiloop structure are presented. Second, three kinds of power loop layouts based on the proposed multiloop structure are realized on PCB substrate and one of them is realized on aluminum nitride (AlN) substrate, which has higher thermal conductivity but less copper layers. The power loop inductance on PCB substrate is reduced to 0.1 nH, which is only 25% of the state-of-art layout. The power loop inductance on AlN substrate is reduced to 0.22 nH. Third, the driver loop layout is optimized and achieves 50% reduction of driver loop inductance compared with the conventional single-layer layout. Finally, integrated modules using the proposed layouts are built to validate the analyses and designs.
A study on Mobil racks automated storage and retrieval system (M-AS/RS)

Our work consists in studying a storage system with Mobil racks (M-AS/RS) which are a variation of the multi aisles AS/RS. This system consists of storage racks moving laterally on rails so that one can open an aisle between any two joint racks, storage/retrieval (S/R) machines, the control system and an input/output (I/O) station. In this paper, our interest was concerned with the mathematical modeling of the average cycle time of the (S/R) machine which is an important criteria of performances for these systems. We developed a continuous analytical expression allowing an approximate calculation of the cycle time of a Mobil -AS/RS. This expression was compared with an existing exact discrete expression.
Determinants of condom use among African Americans who smoke crack cocaine

This paper presents findings from an elicitation study that focused on the sexual risks and condom use behaviour of African American crack smokers. Of interest were the attitudes, beliefs, and barriers that affect the adoption and maintenance of condoms as an HIV prophylactic. Thick descriptive data were collected from 64 heterosexual African Americans who smoke crack cocaine. Data were content analysed for descriptions of condom use attitudes, normative beliefs, and barriers or facilitators of condom use. Participants described few positive condom use outcome expectations, while detailing several negative expectations. Normative beliefs were found to be weakly related to condom use with casual partners. However, descriptions of sexual relationships with intimate partners indicated that the normative expectations of the partner strongly influenced condom use. Participants described few contextual barriers to condom use, although situational barriers, including crack addiction, were identified.
Increase the Lifetime of Wireless Sensor Network using Clustering and Compression

Sensor Network (WSN) consists of small, light weighted, low cost sensor nodes to monitor the presence of environmental and physical phenomena like wind speed, temperature etc. The nodes in the WSN have limited battery- power. Improving the lifetime is one objective of any wireless sensor network. There are different solutions to fulfill this objective. Clustering approach is one solution clustering algorithm is used to create the cluster of the nodes and select the cluster head to perform the data collection and transmission operation. LEACH (Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) are examples of clustering algorithms. A sensor node requires more energy for transmission rather than sensing and processing the information. Hence, data compression is another solution used to transfer lesser bits to final location. In this paper, we proposed a model where we use both clustering algorithm and compression algorithm to increase the Life of Wireless Sensor Network. To form a cluster we use a PSO clustering algorithm and to compress the data into smaller bits we use a Huffman compression algorithm.
Production of Blastospore of Entomopathogenic Beauveria bassiana in a Submerged Batch Culture

Abstract The principal objective of this study was to determine the optimal liquid culture conditions in shake flasks for maximal sporulation of Beauveria bassiana. The optimal initial pH for the spore production of B. bassiana using Potato Dextrose Broth was 5.2. The screening in shake flasks of carbon and nitrogen sources resulted in the identification of an optimal medium based on 3% sucrose and 1% casamino acid, with a C : N ratio of 22 : 4. Using this medium, a production level of 5.65 × 107 spores per ml was obtained after 5 days of culture. Using 3% corn meal, 2% corn steep powder, and 2% rice bran, the maximum spore concentration of 8.54 × 108/ml was achieved 8 days after inoculation at 25°C in a rotary shaking incubator operated at 200 rpm. This represents a yield gain of approximately 2.89 times that of pre-optimization.
The air and noise situation in the alpine transit valleys of Fréjus, Mont-Blanc, Gotthard and Brenner

Les consequences du trafic routier, en termes de nuisances sonores et de qualite de l’air, ont ete analysees et comparees pour quatre vallees de transit alpin (Frejus, Mont Blanc, Gothard et Brenner) durant l’annee 2004. Au regard du trafic alpin dans son ensemble, des disparites considerables apparaissent entre les vallees etudiees, mais egalement a l’interieur de ces memes vallees. Les immissions (concentration de polluants) produites par unite d’emission du trafic routier sont deux a trois fois plus elevees dans ces vallees alpines qu’en plaine. Ceci s’explique principalement par la topographie et le climat particuliers de ces vallees. A de nombreux points d’observation, les seuils d’immission ont ete depasses. Les vallees sont egalement affectees durement par la pollution sonore. « L’effet amphitheâtre » transporte le bruit a des altitudes superieures, qui n’auraient pas ete exposees a autant d’irradiation acoustique si la source de nuisances etait situee a egale distance, mais dans un « paysage ouvert ». De plus, la protection contre le bruit qui se reflechit sur les pentes est malaisee. En resume, toutes les vallees de transit etudiees peuvent etre considerees comme des regions sensibles.
The Relation of Sociocultural Factors to Eating Attitudes and Behaviors among Middle School Girls

Three hundred and eighty-five girls ages 10 through 14 years were surveyed about eating behavior, body satisfaction, concern with being slender, and cues from parents, peers, and magazines in regard to weight management techniques and the importance of slenderness. A majority reported receiving a clear message from fashion magazines and peers or family members that slenderness is important and attainable through dieting and other methods. Two strong correlates of drive for thinness and disturbed patterns of eating were (a) reading magazines that contain information and ideas about an attractive body shape and about weight management, and (b) weight/shape-related teasing and criticism by family. This study indicates that body dissatisfaction and weight concerns reflect adoption of a socially approved female role. It also raises the possibility that some young adolescent girls live in a subculture of intense weight and body-shape concern that places them at risk for disordered eating behavior: