Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Kinematic templates: end-user tools for content-relative cursor manipulations

This paper introduces kinematic templates, an end-user tool for defining content-specific motor space manipulations in the context of editing 2D visual compositions. As an example, a user can choose the "sandpaper" template to define areas within a drawing where cursor movement should slow down. Our current implementation provides templates that amplify or dampen the cursor's speed, attenuate jitter in a user's movement, guide movement along paths, and add forces to the cursor. Multiple kinematic templates can be defined within a document, with overlapping templates resulting in a form of function composition. A template's strength can also be varied, enabling one to improve one's strokes without losing the human element. Since kinematic templates guide movements, rather than strictly prescribe them, they constitute a visual composition aid that lies between unaided freehand drawing and rigid drawing aids such as snapping guides, masks, and perfect geometric primitives.
RT‐PCR Based Analysis of T‐Cell Receptor B Variable Region Gene Usage in Normal Human Breast Skin Resident T Lymphocytes (SRT)

The skin interfaces directly with the external environment that contains innumerable infectious agents. Therefore, an appropriate and rapid immunologic response is required to preserve internal homeostasis. An essential feature of the ‘skin immuno system' (SIS) is the presence of substantial numbers of T cells in normal skin. The T‐cell receptor repertoire from normal human breast skin was analysed quantitatively and qualitatively by using PCR amplification of reverse transcribed RNA, T‐cell receptor BV3 and BV14 gene usage was increased in skin T lymphocytes in all individuals tested (n = 8) compared to peripheral blood CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes from the same individuals. The T‐cell receptor junctional diversity analysed by high resolution gel electrophoresis showed skin T‐cell BV3 and BV14 gene usage to be predominantly polyclonal. Superantigen stimulation of T cells in human skin is considered a likely explanation of the present finding.
Segmental and prosodic issues in romance phonology

1. Introduction 2. Part 1: Segments and processes 3. Detection of liaison consonants in speech processing in French: Experimental data and theoretical implications (by Nguyen, Noel) 4. Patterns of VCV coarticulatory direction according to the DAC model (by Recasens, Daniel) 5. The stability of phonological features within and across segments: The effect of nasalization on frication (by Sole, Maria-Josep) 6. Pre- and postaspirated stops in Andalusian Spanish (by Torreira, Francisco) 7. Part 2: Prosodic structure 8. Variation in the intonation of extra-sentential elements (by Astruc-Aguilera, Lluisa) 9. Voicing-dependent cluster simplification asymmetries in Spanish and French (by Colantoni, Laura) 10. The phonetics and phonology of intonational phrasing in Romance (by Frota, Sonia) 11. Disentangling stress from accent in Spanish: Production patterns of the stress contrast in deaccented syllables (by Ortega-Llebaria, Marta) 12. Part 3: Acquisition of segmental contrasts and prosody 13. On the effect of (morpho)phonological complexity in the early acquisition of unstressed vowels in European Portuguese (by Freitas, M. Joao) 14. The perception of lexical stress patterns by Spanish and Catalan infants (by Pons, Ferran) 15. Logistic regression modelling for first and second language perception data (by Morrison, Geoffrey-Stewart) 16. Rhythmic typology and variation in first and second languages (by White, Laurence) 17. Subject Index
Metacognitive analysis of pre-service teacher conception of Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) using blogs

Previous studies have sought to ascertain Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) conception in pre-service teachers. This exploratory study investigated the problems outlined in the literature surrounding the development of TGfU understanding among pre-service teachers (n = 44) of the curriculum instruction model. Blog postings were analysed over an eight-week period to identify the varying levels of student conception of TGfU using the Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO) taxonomy in order to ascertain whether there are specific aspects of TGfU conception that prevent learning of deeper concepts. The study found that students move through at least two SOLO levels of metacognitive development. For pre-service teachers, TGfU represents a challenge to their pedagogical paradigm. This may limit their understanding of TGfU when they perceive that it is not antithetical to their existing paradigm but rather it represents a balanced approach to achieving the goals of skill-based instruction.
Image Enhancement of Historical Documents Using Directional Wavelet

This paper proposes a novel algorithm to clean up a large collection of historical handwritten documents kept in the National Archives of Singapore. Due to the seepage of ink over long period of storage, the front page of each document has been severely marred by the reverse side writing. Earlier attempts have been made to match both sides of a page to identify the offending strokes originating from the back so as to eliminate them with the aid of a wavelet transform. Perfect matching, however, is difficult due to document skews, differing resolutions, inadvertently missing out reverse side and warped pages during image capture. A new approach is now proposed to do away with double side mapping by using a directional wavelet transform that is able to distinguish the foreground and reverse side strokes much better than the conventional wavelet transform. Experiments have shown that the method indeed enhances the readability of each document significantly after the directional wavelet operation without the need for mapping with its reverse side.
Gesture ≈ Sound Experiments: Process and Mappings

This paper reports on outcomes of a residency undertaken at STEIM, Amsterdam, in July 2007. Our goal was to explore methods for working with sound and whole body gesture, with an open experimental approach. In many ways this work can be characterised as prototype development. The sensor technology employed was three-axis accelerometers in consumer gamecontrollers. Outcomes were intentionally restrained to strippedback experimental results. This paper discusses the processes and strategies for developing the experiments, as well as providing background and rationale for our approach. We describe “vocal prototyping” – a technique for developing new gesture-sound mappings, the mapping techniques applied, and briefly describe a selection of our experimental results.
Anchor loss simulation in resonators

Surface-micromachined resonators and filters are attractive for many RF applications. While existing simulation tools allow designers to compute resonant frequencies, few tools provide estimates of the damping in these devices. This paper reports on a new tool that allows designers, for the first time, to compute anchor losses in high-frequency resonators and account for sub-surface scatterers. By exercising the tool on a family of radially driven disk resonators, we show that the anchor loss mechanism for this class of devices involves a parasitic mixed-mode bending action that pumps energy into the substrate. Further, using the tool, we predict a large variation in resonator quality depending upon film thickness. Our simulation shows that the source of this variation is a complex radial-to-bending motion interaction, which we visualize with a root-locus diagram. We experimentally verify this predicted sensitivity using poly-SiGe disk resonators having Q's ranging from 200 to 54,000.
Optimized Crossover Genetic Algorithm for Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows

Problem statement: In this study, we considered the application of a genetic algorithm to vehicle routing problem with time windows where a set of vehicles with limits on capacity and travel time are available to service a set of customers with demands and earliest and latest time for serving. The objective is to find routes for the vehicles to service all the customers at a minimal cost without violating the capacity and travel time constraints of the vehicles and the time window constraints set by the customers. Approach: We proposed a genetic algorithm using an optimized crossover operator designed by a complete undirected bipartite graph that finds an optimal set of delivery routes satisfying the requirements and giving minimal total cost. Various techniques have also been introduced into the proposed algorithm to further enhance the solutions quality. Results: We tested our algorithm with benchmark instances and compared it with some other heuristics in the literature. The results showed that the proposed algorithm is competitive in terms of the quality of the solutions found. Conclusion/Recommendations: This study presented a genetic algorithm for solving vehicle routing problem with time windows using an optimized crossover operator. From the results, it can be concluded that the proposed algorithm is competitive when compared with other heuristics in the literature.
Genome-Scale Screening of Drug-Target Associations Relevant to Ki Using a Chemogenomics Approach

The identification of interactions between drugs and target proteins plays a key role in genomic drug discovery. In the present study, the quantitative binding affinities of drug-target pairs are differentiated as a measurement to define whether a drug interacts with a protein or not, and then a chemogenomics framework using an unbiased set of general integrated features and random forest (RF) is employed to construct a predictive model which can accurately classify drug-target pairs. The predictability of the model is further investigated and validated by several independent validation sets. The built model is used to predict drug-target associations, some of which were confirmed by comparing experimental data from public biological resources. A drug-target interaction network with high confidence drug-target pairs was also reconstructed. This network provides further insight for the action of drugs and targets. Finally, a web-based server called PreDPI-Ki was developed to predict drug-target interactions for drug discovery. In addition to providing a high-confidence list of drug-target associations for subsequent experimental investigation guidance, these results also contribute to the understanding of drug-target interactions. We can also see that quantitative information of drug-target associations could greatly promote the development of more accurate models. The PreDPI-Ki server is freely available via: http://sdd.whu. edu.cn/dpiki.
A Biography: Fabrications in the Life of an ERP Package

This paper provides an account of the way Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems change over time. These changes are conceptualized as a biographical accumulation that gives the specific ERP technology its present character, attributes and historicity. The paper presents empirics from the implementation of an ERP package within an Australasian organization. Changes to the ERP take place as a result of imperatives which arise during the implementation. Our research and evidence then extends to a different time and place where the new release of the ERP software was being `sold' to client firms in the UK. We theorize our research through a lens based on ideas from actor network theory (ANT) and the concept of biography. The paper seeks to contribute an additional theorization for ANT studies that places the focus on the technological object and frees it from the ties of the implementation setting. The research illustrates the opportunistic and contested fabrication of a technological object and emphasizes the stability as well as the fluidity of its technologic.
Knowledge and Information Systems REGULAR PAPER

Alzheimer’s disease is the most frequent type of dementia for elderly patients. Due to aging populations, the occurrence of this disease will increase in the next years. Early diagnosis is crucial to be able to develop more powerful treatments. Brain perfusion changes can be a marker for Alzheimer’s disease. In this article, we study the use of SPECT perfusion imaging for the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease differentiating between images from healthy subjects and images from Alzheimer’s disease patients. Our classification approach is based on a linear programming formulation similar to the 1-norm support vector machines. In contrast with other linear hyperplane-based methods that perform simultaneous feature selection and classification, our proposed formulation incorporates proximity information about the features and generates a classifier that does not just select the most relevant voxels but the most relevant “areas” for classification resulting in more robust classifiers that are better suitable for interpretation. This approach is compared with the classical Fisher linear discriminant (FLD) classifier as well as with statistical parametric mapping (SPM). We tested our method on data from four European institutions. Our method achieved sensitivity of 84.4% at 90.9% specificity, this is considerable better the human experts. Our method also outperformed the FLD and SPM techniques. We conclude that our approach has the potential to be a useful help for clinicians.
Basic Concepts for Convection Parameterization in Weather Forecast and Climate Models: COST Action E50905 Final Report.

The research network “Basic Concepts for Convection Parameterization in Weather Forecast and Climate Models” was organized with European funding (COST Action ES0905) for the period of 2010–2014. Its extensive brainstorming suggests how the subgrid-scale parameterization problem in atmospheric modeling, especially for convection, can be examined and developed from the point of view of a robust theoretical basis. Our main cautions are current emphasis on massive observational data analyses and process studies. The closure and the entrainment–detrainment problems are identified as the two highest priorities for convection parameterization under the mass–flux formulation. The need for a drastic change of the current European research culture as concerns policies and funding in order not to further deplete the visions of the European researchers focusing on those basic issues is emphasized.
“Touching the sentiments of everyone”;: Nationalism and state broadcasting in thirties Mexico

This paper provides a historical perspective on the intersection of media, popular culture, and nationalism through a study of the broadcasting policies and programs of one of Mexico's earliest government radio stations. This study analyzes the musical programs that formed the centerpiece of government radio programming in order to evaluate the racial and class ideologies imbedded in the nationalist discourse of state broadcasters. By viewing these government programs through the lens of a broader literature on nationalism in the Third World and among diasporic communities, it is possible to identify a fundamental tension in Mexico's official nationalism between a search for the roots of an “authentic”; ethnic identity, and a need to position Mexican culture within the constellation of Western “civilization. ”; Finally, this paper investigates audience reactions to state broadcasts in order to explore the meaning of early broadcast nationalism for Mexico's radio listeners.
Nox2 and Rac1 Regulate H2O2-Dependent Recruitment of TRAF6 to Endosomal Interleukin-1 Receptor Complexes

ABSTRACT Reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated by NADPH oxidases (Nox) have been implicated in the regulation of signal transduction. However, the cellular mechanisms that link Nox activation with plasma membrane receptor signaling remain poorly defined. We have found that Nox2-derived ROS influence the formation of an active interleukin-1 (IL-1) receptor complex in the endosomal compartment by directing the H2O2-dependent binding of TRAF6 to the IL-1R1/MyD88 complex. Clearance of both superoxide and H2O2 from within the endosomal compartment significantly abrogated IL-1β-dependent IKK and NF-κB activation. MyD88-dependent endocytosis of IL-1R1 following IL-1β binding was required for the redox-dependent formation of an active endosomal receptor complex competent for IKK and NF-κB activation. Small interfering RNAs to either MyD88 or Rac1 inhibited IL-1β induction of endosomal superoxide and NF-κB activation. However, MyD88 and Rac1 appear to be recruited independently to IL-1R1 following ligand stimulation. In this context, MyD88 binding was required for inducing endocytosis of IL-1R1 following ligand binding, while Rac1 facilitated the recruitment of Nox2 into the endosomal compartment and subsequent redox-dependent recruitment of TRAF6 to the MyD88/IL-1R1 complex. The identification of Nox-active endosomes helps explain how subcellular compartmentalization of redox signals can be used to direct receptor activation from the plasma membrane.
A digital ISO expansion technique for digital cameras

Market's demands of digital cameras for higher sensitivity capability under low-light conditions are remarkably increasing nowadays. The digital camera market is now a tough race for providing higher ISO capability. In this paper, we explore an approach for increasing maximum ISO capability of digital cameras without changing any structure of an image sensor or CFA. Our method is directly applied to the raw Bayer pattern CFA image to avoid non-linearity characteristics and noise amplification which are usually deteriorated after ISP (Image Signal Processor) of digital cameras. The proposed method fuses multiple short exposed images which are noisy, but less blurred. Our approach is designed to avoid the ghost artifact caused by hand-shaking and object motion. In order to achieve a desired ISO image quality, both low frequency chromatic noise and fine-grain noise that usually appear in high ISO images are removed and then we modify the different layers which are created by a two-scale non-linear decomposition of an image. Once our approach is performed on an input Bayer pattern CFA image, the resultant Bayer image is further processed by ISP to obtain a fully processed RGB image. The performance of our proposed approach is evaluated by comparing SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio), MTF50 (Modulation Transfer Function), color error ∝E*ab and visual quality with reference images whose exposure times are properly extended into a variety of target sensitivity.
Speech Perception in Dyslexic Children With and Without Language Impairments

Developmental dyslexia refers to a group of children who fail to learn to read at the normal rate despite apparently normal vision and neurological functioning. Dyslexic children typically manifest problems in printed word recognition and spelling, and difficulties in phonological processing are quite common (Lyon, 1995; Rack, Snowling, & Olson, 1992; Stanovich, 1988; Wagner & Torgesen, 1987). The phonological processing problems include, but are not limited to difficulties in pronouncing nonsense words, poor phonemic awareness, problems in representing phonological information in short-term memory and difficulty in rapidly retrieving the names of familiar objects, digits and letters (Stanovich, 1988; Wagner & Torgesen, 1987; Wolf & Bowers, 1999). The underlying cause of phonological deficits in dyslexic children is not yet clear. One possible source is developmentally deviant perception of speech at the phoneme level. A number of studies have shown that dyslexics' categorizations of speech sounds are less sharp than normal readers (Chiappe, Chiappe, & Siegel, 2001; Godfrey, Syrdal-Lasky, Millay, & Knox, 1981; Maassen, Groenen, Crul, Assman-Hulsmans, & Gabreels, 2001; Reed, 1989; Serniclaes, Sprenger-Charolles, Carre, & Demonet, 2001;Werker & Tees, 1987). These group differences have appeared in tasks requiring the labeling of stimuli varying along a perceptual continuum (such as voicing or place of articulation), as well as on speech discrimination tasks. In two studies, there was evidence that dyslexics showed better discrimination of sounds differing phonetically within a category boundary (Serniclaes et al, 2001; Werker & Tees, 1987), whereas in one study, dyslexics were poorer at both within-phoneme and between phoneme discrimination (Maassen et al, 2001). There is evidence that newborns and 6-month olds with a familial risk for dyslexia have reduced sensitivity to speech and non-speech sounds (Molfese, 2000; Pihko, Leppanen, Eklund, Cheour, Guttorm & Lyytinen, 1999). If dyslexics are impaired from birth in auditory processing, or more specifically in speech perception, this would affect the development and use of phonological representations on a wide variety of tasks, most intensively in phonological awareness and decoding. Although differences in speech perception have been observed, it has also been noted that the effects are often weak, small in size or shown by only some of the dyslexic subjects (Adlard & Hazan, 1998; Brady, Shankweiler, & Mann, 1983; Elliot, Scholl, Grant, & Hammer, 1990; Manis, McBride-Chang, Seidenberg, Keating, Doi, Munson, & Petersen (1997); Nittrouer, 1999; Snowling, Goulandris, Bowlby, & Howell, 1986). One reason for small, or variable effects, might be that the dyslexic population is heterogeneous, and that speech perception problems are more common among particular subgroups of dyslexics. A specific hypothesis is that speech perception problems are more concentrated among dyslexic children showing greater
Developing a general purpose simulation model for steel pipe-rack installation

Construction and installation of pipe-racks, which are one of the most important structures in the majority of oil and gas projects, are complex and resource consuming operations. Pipe-racks are used to support pipes, cables and various types of equipment. Therefore this type of construction operation is the predecessor of many activities such as piping, mechanical installations, electrical and instrumentation works. Consequently optimizing this time consuming and resource intensive operation will lead to smooth and timely start of the subsequent works and results in shorter project duration. This paper describes a recently developed simulation model for optimizing construction and installation of "steel structure" pipe-racks in oil, gas and petrochemical projects. The model was built using Simphony simulation software. The results show that the simulation model is able to reasonably predict the time duration of pipe-rack installation based on risks and uncertainties and to verify the resource utilization of both humans and equipment. This enables the construction management team to develop proactive strategies and alternate solutions to optimize resources for pipe rack construction and installation operations.
Johnson Noise

An experiment was performed that determines the Boltzmann constant k and the centigrade temperature of absolute zero by measuring the thermal noise of resistors. The Nyquist theorem provides a quantitative relationship between the thermal electromotive force across a conductor and its resistance and temperature. Measurement of the root-mean-square RMS voltage for a variety of resistors at a fixed temperature was used to calculate the Boltzmann constant. The RMS voltage for a 22.5 kΩ resistor was measured over 300 degree temperature range. This latter data extrapolated to zero centigrade gave an estimate of absolute zero and provided an additional method for determining the Boltzmann constant. The experimentally determined values of the Boltzmann constants, 1.37 ± 0.06 × 10 J/K & 1.363 ± 0.025 × 10 J/K, and the centigrade temperature of absolute zero, −265.5± 6.9C, are in good agreement with the accepted values.