Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Speeding-Up Hoeffding-Based Regression Trees With Options

Data streams are ubiquitous and have in the last two decades become an important research topic. For their predictive non-parametric analysis, Hoeffding-based trees are often a method of choice, offering a possibility of any-time predictions. However, one of their main problems is the delay in learning progress due to the existence of equally discriminative attributes. Options are a natural way to deal with this problem. Option trees build upon regular trees by adding splitting options in the internal nodes. As such they are known to improve accuracy, stability and reduce ambiguity. In this paper, we present on-line option trees for faster learning on numerical data streams. Our results show that options improve the any-time performance of ordinary on-line regression trees, while preserving the interpretable structure of trees and without significantly increasing the computational complexity of the algorithm.
On a Yamabe Type Problem on Three Dimensional Thin Annulus

We consider a Yamabe type problem on a family $A_\epsilon$ of annulus shaped domains of $\R^3$ which becomes "thin" as $\epsilon$ goes to zero. We show that, for any given positive constant $C$, there exists $\epsilon_0$ such that for any $\epsilon < \epsilon_0$, the problem has no solution $u_\epsilon$ whose energy is less than $C$. Such a result extends to dimension three a result previously known in higher dimensions. Although the strategy to prove this result is the same as in higher dimensions, we need a more careful and delicate blow up analysis of asymptotic profiles of solutions $u_\epsilon$ when $\epsilon$ goes to zero.
Content-Based Instruction: What Can We Learn from Content-Trained Teachers’ and Language-Trained Teachers’ Pedagogies?

This article reports on a study of the pedagogies of two content-trained teachers and two language-trained teachers in their content-based second language (L2) classrooms at the middle-school level in two Chinese contexts: Hong Kong and Xi’an. The study aims to identify pedagogies that support content and language learning, referred to here as ‘content and language pedagogies. ’ The findings suggest that while the complex content at the middle-school level leads to correspondingly more complex language use, which therefore provides a strong foundation for advancing both content and language learning, the content must be explored in depth and from different perspectives to enable complex knowledge relationships to be co-constructed by the teacher and students through the use of correspondingly complex language to support this learning. This requires teachers to be aware of language form–function relationships. Le présent article porte sur une étude de la pédagogie de deux professeurs formés en contenu et de deux professeurs formés en langue dans leur classe de langue seconde basée sur le contenu (L2) au niveau de l’école intermédiaire dans deux milieux en Chine : Hong Kong et Xi’an. L’étude vise à déterminer les pédagogies qui soutiennent l’apprentissage d’une langue et le contenu, intitulées dans le présent contexte « pédagogies du langage et du contenu ». Les résultats suggèrent que, bien que le contenu complexe de l’école intermédiaire mène à une utilisation correspondante encore plus complexe du langage, ce qui offre donc une bonne base qui permet de faire progresser l’apprentissage tant du langage que du contenu, le contenu doit être étudié en profondeur et de différents points de vue afin de permettre au professeur et aux étudiants de construire ensemble les relations complexes du savoir grâce à l’emploi d’un langage complexe correspondant qui viendra soutenir cet apprentissage. Les professeurs doivent donc être au courant des relations forme-fonction du langage.
The Effects of Information Systems Quality on Nurses’ Acceptance of the Electronic Learning System

Background: To ensure the quality of healthcare provision, nurses must continuously enhance their professional knowledge and competencies via continuing education. As compared with traditional learning, electronic learning (e-learning) is a more flexible method for nurses’ in-service learning. Hence, e-learning is expected to play a key role in providing continuing education for nurses. Purpose: The main purpose of this study was to examine whether system quality, information quality, service quality, and user-interface design quality as the antecedents to nurse beliefs can affect nurses’ intention to use the e-learning system. Methods: A cross-sectional design was used to investigate the effects of information systems quality on nurses’ acceptance of the e-learning system. This study gathered sample data from nurses at 3 hospitals in Taiwan. A total of 450 questionnaires were distributed, and 320 effective questionnaires were analyzed in this study, indicating an effective response rate of 71.1%. Collected data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results: System quality, information quality, and user-interface design quality had significant effects on perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU), and perceived enjoyment (PE), and service quality had significant effects on PU and PEOU. Moreover, PEOU had significant effects on PU and PE, and the effects of PU, PEOU, and PE on intention to use were significant. Conclusions/Implications for Practice: User-interface design quality is the most key antecedent that can make significant impacts on nurses’ PU and PE, and more efforts should be made to develop a friendlier user interface via designing useful and enjoyable features to induce nurses to use the e-learning system. Moreover, system quality can make the greatest impact on nurses’ PEOU; thus, medical institutions should effectively enhance system quality to deliver benefits and pleasure to boost nurses’ usage intention of the e-learning system via reducing the complexity.
Nearwork-induced transient myopia in preadolescent Hong Kong Chinese.

PURPOSE To compare the magnitude and time course of nearwork-induced transient myopia (NITM) in preadolescent Hong Kong Chinese myopes and emmetropes. METHOD Forty-five Hong Kong Chinese children, 35 myopes and 10 emmetropes aged 6 to 12 years (median, 7.5), monocularly viewed a letter target through a Badal lens for 5 minutes at either 5.00- or 2.50-D accommodative demand, followed by 3 minutes of viewing the equivalent target at optical infinity. Accommodative responses were measured continuously with a modified, infrared, objective open-field autorefractor. Accommodative responses were also measured for a countercondition: viewing of a letter target for 5 minutes at optical infinity, followed by 3 minutes of viewing the target at a 5.00-D accommodative demand. The results were compared with tonic accommodation and both subject and family history of refractive error. RESULTS Retinal-blur-driven NITM was significantly greater in Hong Kong Chinese children with myopic vision than in the emmetropes after both near tasks, but showed no significant dose effect. The NITM was still evident 3 minutes after viewing the 5.00-D near task for 5 minutes. The magnitude of NITM correlated with the accommodative drift after viewing a distant target for more than 4 minutes, but was unrelated to the subjects' or family history of refractive error. CONCLUSIONS In a preadolescent ethnic population with known predisposition to myopia, there is a significant posttask blur-driven accommodative NITM, which is sustained for longer than has previously been found in white adults.
A visual approach to text corpora comparison

Email is an important part of our lives, almost everyone has at least one email account. It is not uncommon for an average professional email user to receive/send over a hundred emails a day. With all these personal and professional messages accumulated over time, email becomes our personal archive. In recently years, many interesting techniques are developed to improve email management, visualize mailbox content, explore historical events, and discover hidden knowledge from these electronic archives. In this paper, we propose an approach to visualize and compare email archives with Streamgraphs and Tag Clouds. Our preliminary results demonstrate the capability of this technique to compare any general text corpora with temporal information.
Keyboard Logs as Natural Annotations for Word Segmentation

In this paper we propose a framework to improve word segmentation accuracy using input method logs. An input method is software used to type sentences in languages which have far more characters than the number of keys on a keyboard. The main contributions of this paper are: 1) an input method server that proposes word candidates which are not included in the vocabulary, 2) a publicly usable input method that logs user behavior (like typing and selection of word candidates), and 3) a method for improving word segmentation by using these logs. We conducted word segmentation experiments on tweets from Twitter, and showed that our method improves accuracy in this domain. Our method itself is domain-independent and only needs logs from the target domain.
Emotional and social loneliness in later life

The adverse effects of loneliness on health and well-being accelerate with age, making it important to understand the relationship experiences that underlie loneliness in later life. The current study distinguished between emotional and social loneliness and compared their associations with parallel categories of positive and negative social exchanges in a representative sample of older adults. Given the high rates of marital loss in later life, analyses included comparisons of currently and formerly married individuals. The results revealed that emotional support and its negative counterpart (insensitive behavior) are particularly consequential for emotional loneliness among married participants. Companionship was associated with emotional and social loneliness among married and formerly married participants, whereas its negative counterpart (rejection) appeared to be particularly consequential for social loneliness among formerly married participants. The results underscore the value of a differentiated approach to older adults’ loneliness and social exchanges.
Aversions to the commodification of care: how young Swiss adults plan to organise their future families

Looking at how young Swiss adults anticipate their future families, we find a pronounced discourse of disapproval of any form of commodified childcare. Interviewees in their mid-twenties insist that children should be cared for at home and by their parents. This paper discusses these empirical findings in the light of recent debates on the commodification of care. On the one hand, the idealised notion of the home as a safe haven for children might reinforce existing inequalities in the gendered division of care work by confining women to the home and excluding them from paid labour; on the other hand, the aversion to commodified care can be read as a challenge to the neoliberal model of a universal adult worker which disregards care obligations. In this respect, the discourse of disapproval of commodified care might signify a tentative step towards a new ethic of care.
Snowblading injuries in Eastern Canada

Objectives: To evaluate injury patterns of snowbladers and compare them with those of skiers and snowboarders. To determine possible effects of helmet use in these sports on injury to the head and neck. Methods: This prospective case series observational study was conducted by collecting the injury reports from the ski patrol during the 1999–2000 season at Mont Tremblant ski resort, Quebec. All participants in downhill winter sports who presented themselves to the ski patrol with traumatic injury related to their sport were included. A concussion was defined as any loss of consciousness, amnesia, confusion, disorientation, vertigo, or headache that resulted from injury. The ski patroller reported helmet use on the accident report at the time of injury. Results: Snowbladers present with a unique pattern of injury compared with skiers and snowboarders. The incidence of leg, knee, and ankle/foot injuries were 20.5%, 25.6%, and 10.3% respectively. Concussions represented 11% of all injuries. There was no increase in other injury, including neck injury, related to helmet use. Conclusions: Unique injury patterns in snowbladers warrant reconsideration of equipment design. Concussion is a common injury on the ski slope. Although the effects of helmet use on concussion rate are inconclusive based on this study, helmet use did not increase the rate of neck injury, even when adjusted for age.
Networks as Channels of Policy Diffusion: Explaining Worldwide Changes in Capital Taxation, 1998–2006

This paper studies policy changes in capital taxation by focusing on policy interdependence induced by network dynamics at the international level. The empirical findings indicate that the competition mechanism induced by network position similarity in the network of portfolio investment and that of exports causes policy diffusion in corporate taxation; the socialization mechanism (policy learning and emulation) induced by network position proximity in the IGO networks also drives policy changes, and the evidence is much stronger in the IGO networks that facilitate policy learning than in those that facilitate emulation. The paper also discusses explicitly empirical challenges to incorporate network characteristics into connectivity matrices in spatial lag models often used to study policy diffusion. It suggests that students of policy diffusion should discuss as explicitly as possible the assumptions and procedures to construct connectivity matrices and present results from alternative specifications: our conclusion on the strength of policy diffusion is often sensitive to the choice of connectivity matrices.
A gamma-like DNA polymerase in spinach chloroplasts.

A DNA polymerase has been extracted from spinach chloroplasts and purified by chromatography on DEAE-cellulose and hydroxyapatite. A great similarity between the purified chloroplast polymerase and the mammalian mitochondrial DNA polymerase gamma was found by several criteria: preference for the synthetic primer-template (dT)12-18 . poly(rA), optimal requirement for Mn2+ (0.1-1.0 mM), KCl (100 mM) and pH (8-9), high relative molecular mass (approximately 105,000), resistance to aphidicolin and inhibition by N-ethylmaleimide. Some peculiar features of the chloroplast DNA polymerase have, however, been noticed. The mammalian DNA polymerase gamma has been suggested to be responsible for the replication of mitochondrial DNA. Thus, both the presence of a gamma-like DNA polymerase in chloroplasts and the similarities between the chloroplast and the mitochondrial DNA (absence of a nucleosomal structure an presence of displacement loops) lead to the suggestion that chloroplast DNA is also replicated by a gamma-like DNA polymerase and that the gamma polymerases present in eukaryotes are, therefore, involved in a strand-displacement DNA synthesis. An alpha-like DNA polymerase activity, present and predominant in crude leaf extracts, was practically absent from purified chloroplast preparations.
STEPS - an application for simulation of transsphenoidal endonasal pituitary surgery

Endonasal transsphenoidal pituitary surgery is a minimally invasive endoscopic procedure, applied to remove various kinds of pituitary tumors. To reduce the risk associated with this treatment, the surgeon must be skilled and well-prepared. Virtual endoscopy can be beneficial as a tool for training, preoperative planning and intraoperative support. This work introduces STEPS, a virtual endoscopy system designed to aid surgeons in getting acquainted with the endoscopic view, the handling of instruments, the transsphenoidal approach and challenges associated with the procedure. STEPS also assists experienced surgeons in planning a real endoscopic intervention by getting familiar with the individual patient anatomy, identifying landmarks, planning the approach and deciding upon the ideal target position of the actual surgical activity. Besides interactive visualization using two different first-hit ray casting techniques, the application provides navigation and perception aids and the possibility to simulate the procedure, including haptic feedback and simulation of surgical instruments.
Predicting Classroom Achievement From Active Responding on a Computer-Based Groupware System

The predictive validity of active responding on a computer-based groupware system was examined with 48 second graders. Students' achievement at the end of a school year (final performance) was predicted with two independent variables: (a) active responding during the school year and (b) achievement at the beginning of the school year (initial performance). The results showed that active responding correlated highly with initial and final performance measures and that active responding contributed significantly to predicting final performance when initial performance was controlled for. As expected, students with higher initial performance participated significantly more in classroom activities than did those with lower initial performance. We conclude that active responding on a computer-based groupware system can be used as a process variable indicative of later achievement and that classroom teachers can use students' active responding to formatively evaluate instruction.
E-business education worldwide: On the right track?

This study built on previous research to explore the availability and characteristics of e-business master’s degree programmes. Data were collected from college and university web sites. Required courses were categorised according to their apparent emphasis on business, e-business, or technical content. Findings suggest that the number of e-business master’s programmes has increased on all continents since 2001, with the exception of North America. The North American programmes appeared to require more non-technical business courses relative to programmes based on other continents, as represented in the data. Composition of the curricula is compared to literature on e-business success factors. Implications for educational programme design are discussed.
Self-Perception and Attitude-Behavior Consistency

An experiment tested the hypothesis that the degree to which an attitude is inferred from past behaviors toward an object is a determinant of attitude-behavior consistency. Subjects participated in a two-session experiment. During the first session, subjects' attitudes toward religion were assessed under one of two conditions. Control subjects' attitudes were measured before they completed a questionnaire wherein they indicated which of a list of behaviors pertaining to religion they had performed in the past. Self-Perception subjects completed the same two sets of items, but in the reverse order; thus, they were provided with an extensive opportunity to review and evaluate their past behaviors before indicating their attitudes toward religion. Approximately one month later, all subjects returned for the second session, during which three measures of their behaviors pertaining to religion since the first session were obtained. On two of the three measures, the predictive utility of religious attitudes was shown to be greater in the Self-Perception condition than in the Control condition.
The implementation of supply chain management theory in practice : an empirical investigation Structured

Design/methodology/approach: Based on a review of extant theory, the authors posit a new definitional construct for SCM – the Four Fundamentals – and investigated four research questions (RQs) that emerged from the theoretical review. The empirical work comprised three main phases: focussed interviews, focus groups and a questionnaire survey. Each phase used the authors’ definitional construct as its basis. While the context of the paper’s empirical work is Ireland, the insights and results are generalisable to other geographical contexts.
Key Implications of Ascending Fourth and Descending Fifth Openings

Substantial evidence is reported in support of the rule that, if a Western tonal composition opens melodically with an ascending fourth or a descending fifth ("4/5 opening"), then the second tone is the tonic of the composition's key, and the first tone its dominant. The evidence is taken from unaccompanied melodic openings of compositions by Bach, Mozart, Brahms, and of national anthems, hymns, and folksongs. The implementation of the hitherto unrecognised rule in a computational key-finding model (Vos and Van Geenen, 1996) appeared to improve the validity of the model. 4/5 openings were additionally explored in relation to their concomitant metrical structures. 4/5 openings corresponded to upbeat/downbeat progressions in 99% of surveyed German folksongs, but only 23% of hymns. The findings are discussed with an emphasis on the need for more historical, music-theoretical, and perceptual research of musical openings.
The Coronavirus Spike Protein Is a Class I Virus Fusion Protein: Structural and Functional Characterization of the Fusion Core Complex

ABSTRACT Coronavirus entry is mediated by the viral spike (S) glycoprotein. The 180-kDa oligomeric S protein of the murine coronavirus mouse hepatitis virus strain A59 is posttranslationally cleaved into an S1 receptor binding unit and an S2 membrane fusion unit. The latter is thought to contain an internal fusion peptide and has two 4,3 hydrophobic (heptad) repeat regions designated HR1 and HR2. HR2 is located close to the membrane anchor, and HR1 is some 170 amino acids (aa) upstream of it. Heptad repeat (HR) regions are found in fusion proteins of many different viruses and form an important characteristic of class I viral fusion proteins. We investigated the role of these regions in coronavirus membrane fusion. Peptides HR1 (96 aa) and HR2 (39 aa), corresponding to the HR1 and HR2 regions, were produced in Escherichia coli. When mixed together, the two peptides were found to assemble into an extremely stable oligomeric complex. Both on their own and within the complex, the peptides were highly alpha helical. Electron microscopic analysis of the complex revealed a rod-like structure ∼14.5 nm in length. Limited proteolysis in combination with mass spectrometry indicated that HR1 and HR2 occur in the complex in an antiparallel fashion. In the native protein, such a conformation would bring the proposed fusion peptide, located in the N-terminal domain of HR1, and the transmembrane anchor into close proximity. Using biological assays, the HR2 peptide was shown to be a potent inhibitor of virus entry into the cell, as well as of cell-cell fusion. Both biochemical and functional data show that the coronavirus spike protein is a class I viral fusion protein.
Promoting a Multilingual Future for Aotearoa/New Zealand: Initiatives for Change from 1989 to 2003

In the fifteen years from 1989 to 2003 considerable development has occurred in the area of international languages teaching in New Zealand’s schools. 1989 marked the beginning of serious moves to encourage the New Zealand government to develop a comprehensive national languages policy that would consider all aspects of language provision in an officially ‘bilingual’, and, in reality, multilingual and multicultural nation. 2003 witnessed a strategic step forward with a government supported recommendation that would make language learning an entitlement for all public school pupils of eleven to fourteen years of age. This paper examines this fifteen-year period, focusing on international languages of trade and tourism. It seeks to get in on the inside of understanding the policy process with a view to distinguishing what has been said from what has been done. We show that a situation that was uncoordinated and ad hoc prior to 1989 is, despite slow progress, taking more coherent shape.