Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
DEVELOPMENT OF FLOW STATE SCALE IN ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE CONTEXT

The flow theory with its components ‘anxiety’, ‘boredom’, ‘skills’ and ‘challenges’ can be associated with foreign language learning contexts. Although there are some attempts in several studies to examine the link between EFL context and the flow theory, no scale to measure the flow state in EFL context has been found in the related literature. The study presents the development and validation of the Flow State Scale in English as a Foreign Language Context (FSSEFL). A cross-sectional research design was used in the study. The scale was administered to a total of 438 students at Department of Foreign Languages at a state university in Turkey. Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to the data collected from two separate participant groups in the study. The findings suggest that FSSEFL provides a valid and reliable instrument for the flow state in EFL context. The scale has three-factor structure with 10 items. The explained variance of the scale is 71.80% and alpha values are ranged from 0.78 to 0.82. Article visualizations:
On the Characterization of Inconsistency: A Prime Implicates Based Framework

Measuring inconsistency is recognized as an important issue for handling inconsistencies. Good measures are supposed to satisfy a set of rational properties. However, defining sound properties is sometimes problematic. In this paper, we emphasize one such property, named dominance, rarely satisfied by syntactic measures. Based on prime implicates canonical representation, we first characterize the conflicting variables allowing us to refine an existing inconsistency measure. Secondly, we propose a new measure, to circumscribe the internal conflicts in a knowledge base. This measure is proved to satisfy a new but weaker form of dominance.
Object Relations and Syntactic Mechanisms in Design Patterns

This work investigates the syntactical mechanisms used in design patterns. A taxonomy of patterns is presented, and a data set of design patterns is selected from this taxonomy. We argue that composition is the syntactical mechanism most used in design patterns. Several critera to classify and implement composition in our data set of design patterns are suggested. We postulate that the knowledge of design patterns should be incorporated into object-oriented languages using the analyzed syntactical mechanisms.
A population cage test for heterosis in Drosophila pseudoobscura.

HE existence of high levels of heterozygosity in some natural populations, perhaps as high as 10-200/0 of the genome per individual, seems by now a well-established phenomenon (see review by SPIESS 1968). Given the rather small suspected size of these populations, some explanation of how this variability is maintained seems necessary. In addition, as emphasized by LEWONTIN and HUBBY (1 966), such explanation should take into account the high degree of similarity with respect to particular polymorphisms amongst populations, suggesting the likelihood that the polymorphisms are maintained by natural selection (see also PRAKASH, LEWONTIN and HUBBY 1969). Heterozygote advantage, or heterosis, is one of the principal selective mechanisms at present under consideration. In the present article we will describe an experiment which is designed to investigate the adequacy of this explanation. Tests for heterosis: KING ( 1967) and SVED, REED and BODMER (1967) have recently emphasized the rather obvious point that an efficient method for testing whether the homozygote is usually at a disadvantage to the heterozygote is to compare the fitness of ordinary outbred individuals with that of individuals having a greater than normal proportion of homozygous loci, produced through some form of inbreeding. The results of many such tests are of course available, and it was argued that these results were compatible with only a limited amount of heterozygote advantage. A point which must be noted here is that tests such as the above give infonnation only on the overall homozygous disadvantage. They do not indicate whether at any given locus the heterozygote is at an advantage to both homozygotes, but only whether heterozygotes are at an advantage overall. Either dominance or partial dominance in fitness at individual loci, as well as overdominance, could produce such a result. It is argued later, however, that these considerations may not be as crucial from the point of view of the maintenance of heterozygosity as might at first be thought. Numerous experiments could be cited which give evidence on the relative fitness, or components of fitness, of inbred offspring. These experiments may be roughly divided into two classes, namely those which test the effect of making a particular chromosome or chromosome region homozygous by mating schemes
Nonredundant Requirement for Multiple Histone Modifications for the Early Anaphase Release of the Mitotic Exit Regulator Cdc14 from Nucleolar Chromatin

In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the conserved phosphatase Cdc14 is required for the exit from mitosis. It is anchored on nucleolar chromatin by the Cfi1/Net1 protein until early anaphase, at which time it is released into the nucleoplasm. Two poorly understood, redundant pathways promote Cdc14 release, the FEAR (Cdc fourteen early release) network and the MEN (mitotic exit network). Through the analysis of genetic interactions, we report here a novel requirement for the ubiquitination of histone H2B by the Bre1 ubiquitin ligase in the cell cycle–dependent release of Cdc14 from nucleolar chromatin when the MEN is inactivated. This function for H2B ubiquitination is mediated by its activation of histone H3 methylation on lysines 4 and 79 (meH3K4 and meH3K79) but, surprisingly, is not dependent on the histone deacetylase (HDAC) Sir2, which associates with Cdc14 on nucleolar chromatin as part of the RENT complex. We also observed a defect in Cdc14 release in cells lacking H3 lysine 36 methylation (meH3K36) and in cells lacking an HDAC recruited by this modification. These histone modifications represent previously unappreciated factors required for the accessibility to and/or action on nucleolar chromatin of FEAR network components. The nonredundant role for these modifications in this context contrasts with the notion of a highly combinatorial code by which histone marks act to control biological processes.
The Feet in Human--Computer Interaction

Foot-operated computer interfaces have been studied since the inception of human--computer interaction. Thanks to the miniaturisation and decreasing cost of sensing technology, there is an increasing interest exploring this alternative input modality, but no comprehensive overview of its research landscape. In this survey, we review the literature on interfaces operated by the lower limbs. We investigate the characteristics of users and how they affect the design of such interfaces. Next, we describe and analyse foot-based research prototypes and commercial systems in how they capture input and provide feedback. We then analyse the interactions between users and systems from the perspective of the actions performed in these interactions. Finally, we discuss our findings and use them to identify open questions and directions for future research.
Fast and Robust Data Association Using Posterior Based Approximate Joint Compatibility Test

Data association is a fundamental problem in multisensor fusion, tracking, and localization. The joint compatibility test is commonly regarded as the true solution to the problem. However, traditional joint compatibility tests are computationally expensive, are sensitive to linearization errors, and require the knowledge of the full covariance matrix of state variables. The paper proposes a posterior-based joint compatibility test scheme to conquer the three problems mentioned above. The posterior-based test naturally separates the test of state variables from the test of observations. Therefore, through the introduction of the robot movement and proper approximation, the joint test process is sequentialized to the sum of individual tests; therefore, the test has O(n) complexity (compared with O(n2) for traditional tests), where n denotes the total number of related observations. At the same time, the sequentialized test neither requires the knowledge to the full covariance matrix of state variables nor is sensitive to linearization errors caused by poor pose estimates. The paper also shows how to apply the proposed method to various simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithms. Theoretical analysis and experiments on both simulated data and popular datasets show the proposed method outperforms some classical algorithms, including sequential compatibility nearest neighbor (SCNN), random sample consensus (RANSAC), and joint compatibility branch and bound (JCBB), on precision, efficiency, and robustness.
Longer Research Statement

My research interests are in stochastic processes and mathematical finance. In particular, my dissertation provides a weak existence result which has application to the financial engineer’s calibration problem and essentially generalizes an earlier result of Gyöngy [9]. In this research statement I will briefly review the calibration problem, show how my work fits into the literature, and discuss future research goals. As is well known, the Black-Scholes model does not do a very good job of capturing the riskneutral dynamics for many price processes. Local volatility models attempt to correct this shortcoming by replacing the constant volatility parameter with a function of time and level. Although Dupire [8] has shown that this function may be implied from the full term structure of European option prices across all strikes, in practice the financial engineer has only a finite number of prices, and she must exercise care when interpolating these prices to avoid introducing arbitrage. As an alternative to this approach, Brigo and Mercurio [3, 4] show how to choose the local volatility function so that European option prices have a particularly nice form. Using the Fokker-Planck or Kolmogorov forward equation, Brigo and Mercurio choose the local volatility function in such a way that the risk-neutral one-dimensional marginal distributions of the price process are mixtures of lognormal distributions and European option prices are convex combinations of Black-Scholes prices. Related work by Derman & Kani and Britten-Jones & Neuberger [5, 7] has shown how to construct a local volatility model with the same European option prices as a given stochastic volatility model. This line of research essentially culminated in the rediscovery of the following theorem of Gyöngy.
Dynamic overloading with copy semantics in object-oriented languages: a formal account

Mainstream object-oriented languages often fail to provide complete powerful features altogether, such as, multiple inheritance, dynamic overloading and copy semantics of inheritance. In this paper we present a core object-oriented imperative language that integrates all these features in a formal framework. We define a static type system and a translation of the language into the meta-language λ_object, , in order to account for semantic issues and prove type safety of our proposal.
Using empirical likelihood methods to obtain range restricted weights in regression estimators for surveys

Design weights in surveys are often adjusted to accommodate auxiliary information and to meet pre-specified range restrictions, typically via some ad hoc algorithmic adjustment to a generalised regression estimator. In this paper, we present a simple solution to this problem using empirical likelihood methods or generalised regression. We first develop algorithms for computing empirical likelihood estimators and model-calibrated empirical likelihood estimators. The first algorithm solves the computational problem of the empirical likelihood method in general, both in survey and non-survey settings, and theoretically guarantees its convergence. The second exploits properties of the model-calibration method and is particularly simple. The algorithms are adapted for handling benchmark constraints and pre-specified range restrictions on the weight adjustments.
Teacher Career Motivation and Professional Development in Special and Inclusive Education in China

Limited evidence is available from the existing literature that relates teachers' career motivation to their attitudes towards special and inclusive education and their motivation for professional development in China. A mixed-method approach was used to investigate teachers' perspectives on their professional life in this respect. A sample of teachers at seven mainstream schools (N=326), two special schools (N=37) and student teachers from one university (N=565) in a city in China was identified. Triangulation of data collected from questionnaire surveys, interviews and observations facilitated the identification of cases for narrative enquiry. Self-Determination Theory (SDT) was applied in data analysis and discussion. The key findings are as follows: First, teachers researched were mostly extrinsically motivated. Some were amotivated (unwilling) and were regretful of their career choice. The majority of them would have chosen other professions if possible. Second, special school teachers' extrinsic motivation for working in special schools became less controlled and more autonomous with the accumulation of knowledge and skills in teaching practice. Similarly, their initial unwillingness had altered to controlled extrinsic motivation or even autonomous motivation. Third, initial teacher education had prepared teachers with limited knowledge and understanding about special and inclusive education. This contributed to the less positive attitudes towards inclusive education. Despite a high awareness of, and motivation for professional development, most teachers were not taking an active initiative in engaging themselves in professional development. The thesis highlights the impact of teacher recruitment policies on career motivation, models of initial and continuing teacher training on teacher attitudes values and incentives for professional development. This study implies a correlation between the key themes and extends the discussion of the SDT model in terms of the continuum of extrinsic motivation.
Measuring Similarity between Graphs Based on the Levenshtein Distance

Graph data has been commonly used and widely researched both in academia and industry for many applications. And measuring similarity between graphs (i.e., graph matching) is the essential step for graph searching, pattern recogni tion and machine vision. At present, the most widely used approach to address the graph matching problem is graph edit distance (GED). However, the computation complexity of GED is expensive and it takes unacceptable time when the graph becomes larger. Generally, graph could be canonical labeled by some sort of strings and we use the depth-first search (DFS) code as our canonical labeling system. Ba sed on DFS codes, combining the Levenshtein distance (i.e., string edit distance, SED), we proposed a novel method for similarity measurement of graphs. Processing and calculating the distance between two DFS codes, we turned the graph matching problem into string matching, which gains great improvement on the matching performance. The experimental results prove its usefulness.
A data center network featuring low latency and energy efficiency based on all optical core interconnect

In this paper, we introduce a novel optical interconnect for data center networks (DCNs) with low latency and high throughput. The hybrid architecture features MEMS OXCs for low cost. The low latency is achieved using fast optical switches. We evaluate the performance of the system using simulation by considering different capacities of slow and fast optical switches and also investigate a trade-off between cost and power consumption of our design by comparing it with conventional interconnects. The proposed technique, when only 40% of the interconnect capacity is provided by fast switches, demonstrates performance comparable to that of an interconnect exclusively using fast switches, while the cost of the hybrid architecture is reduced by more than half compared to using fast switches only. The additional CAPEX incurred in deploying our solution instead of traditional architecture is mitigated by reduced OPEX, due to its greater energy efficiency.
Itus: an implicit authentication framework for android

Security and usability issues with pass-locks on mobile devices have prompted researchers to develop implicit authentication (IA) schemes, which continuously and transparently authenticate users using behavioural biometrics. Contemporary IA schemes proposed by the research community are challenging to deploy, and there is a need for a framework that supports: different behavioural classifiers, given that different apps have different requirements; app developers using IA without becoming domain experts; and real-time classification on resource-constrained mobile devices. We present Itus, an IA framework for Android that allows the research community to improve IA schemes incrementally, while allowing app developers to adopt these improvements at their own pace. We describe the Itus framework and how it provides: ease of use: Itus allows app developers to use IA by changing as few as two lines of their existing code - on the other hand, Itus provides an oracle capable of making advanced recommendations should developers wish to fine-tune the classifiers; flexibility: developers can deploy Itus in an application-specific manner, adapting to their unique needs; extensibility: researchers can contribute new behavioural features and classifiers without worrying about deployment particulars; low performance overhead: Itus operates with minimal performance overhead, allowing app developers to deploy it without compromising end-user experience. These goals are accomplished with an API allowing individual stakeholders to incrementally improve Itus without re-engineering new systems. We implement Itus in two demo apps and measure its performance impact. To our knowledge, Itus is the first open-source extensible IA framework for Android that can be deployed off-the-shelf.
Secret sharing mechanism with cheater detection

Cheater detection is essential for a secret sharing approach which allows the involved participants to detect cheaters during the secret retrieval process. In this article, we propose a verifiable secret sharing mechanism that can not only resist dishonest participants but can also satisfy the requirements of larger secret payload and camouflage. The new approach conceals the shadows into a pixel pair of the cover image based on the adaptive pixel pair matching. Consequently, the embedding alteration can be reduced to preserve the fidelity of the shadow image. The experimental results exhibit that the proposed scheme can share a large secret capacity and retain superior quality.
Infrared Tracking System for Immersive Virtual Environments

In this paper, we describe the theoretical foundations and engineering approach of an infrared-optical tracking system specially design for large scale immersive virtual environments (VE) or augmented reality (AR) settings. The system described is capable of tracking independent retro-reflective markers arranged in a 3D structure (artefact) in real time (25Hz), recovering all possible 6 Degrees of Freedom (DOF). These artefacts can be adjusted to the user’s stereo glasses to track his/her pose while immersed in the VE or AR, or can be used as a 3D input device. The hardware configuration consists in 4 shutter-synchronized cameras attached with band-pass infrared filters and the artefacts are illuminated by infrared array-emitters. The system was specially designed to fit a room with sizes of 5.7m x 2.7m x 3.4 m, which match the dimensions of the CAVE-Hollowspace of Lousal where the system will be deployed. Pilot lab results have shown a latency of 40ms in tracking the pose of two artefacts with 4 infrared markers, achieving a frame-rate of 24.80 fps and showing a mean accuracy of 0.93mm/0.52o and a mean precision of 0.08mm/0.04o, respectively, in overall translation/rotation DOFs, fulfilling the system requirements initially defined.
Multi-class from Binary - Divide to conquer

Several researchers have proposed effective approaches for binary classification in the last years. We can easily extend some of those techniques to multi-class. Notwithstanding, some other powerful classifiers (e.g., SVMs) are hard to extend to multi-class. In such cases, the usual approach is to reduce the multi-class problem complexity into simpler binary classification problems (divide-and-conquer). In this paper, we address the multi-class problem by introducing the concept of affine relations among binary classifiers (dichotomies), and present a principled way to find groups of high correlated base learners. Finally, we devise a strategy to reduce the number of required dichotomies in the overall multi-class process.
A Silhouette Based Technique for the Reconstruction of Human Movement

A number of promising applications have renewed researchers' interest in the analysis of human movements. In general, motion capture could play an important role in many areas that require storing, analyzing, or reproducing the motion of human beings. Current motion capture techniques are based on intrusive sensory systems, which might be disturbing or impossible to apply in several application areas. In this paper we present a novel non-intrusive technique able to reconstruct unconstrained motion. From multiple-viewpoint images taken with an ordinary camera a 3D reconstruction is computed with a technique known as volume intersection. Motion data are acquired by fitting a model of the performer to the reconstructed volume. Data about the reconstruction accuracy achievable with our technique in a virtual environment are also provided.
Dendritic Cells Activated with Products Released by Schistosome Larvae Drive Th2-Type Immune Responses, Which Can Be Inhibited by Manipulation of CD40 Costimulation

ABSTRACT The early immune events in response to infective larvae of the parasitic helminth Schistosoma mansoni are poorly understood, but here for the first time we report on the potential of products released by schistosome larvae (material released in the first 3 h after transformation [0-3hRP]) to stimulate the maturation of dendritic cells (DC) and alter their T-cell-polarizing function. This was performed in comparison with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and zymosan A, which classically activate DC to prime for Th1- and Th2-type responses, respectively. In our study, immature bone marrow-derived DC stimulated in vitro with 0-3hRP exhibited up-regulated expression of major histocompatibility complex class II, CD40, and CD86 and increased production of interleukin 12p40 (IL-12p40) and IL-6, albeit at lower levels than in response to LPS or zymosan A. Using an in vitro ovalbumin peptide-restricted priming assay, DC matured with 0-3hRP exhibited a potent capacity to drive Th2 polarization of CD4+ cells from DO11.10 transgenic mice. This was characterized by increased IL-4 production (but not gamma interferon) of a magnitude similar to that primed by DC matured with zymosan A. Inoculation of DO11.10 mice with 0-3hRP-activated DC pulsed with ovalbumin peptide also led to the development of a Th2-type polarized response in the skin-draining lymph nodes and spleen. However, ligation of CD40 on DC by anti-CD40 antibody treatment reversed the ability of 0-3hRP-activated DC to prime for Th2-type responses and instead caused the induction of a more Th1-type response.