Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Cross-Text Annotation Sharing Mechanism for Enhancing Students' Comprehension of Poetry

Poems are usually expressed with elaborate rhetoric techniques, which make them hard to be understood. In this study, a cross-text annotation sharing mechanism is proposed to help students comprehend poetry by creating and sharing individual annotations. Furthermore, relevant annotations among various texts can be retrieved to stimulate and help students make connections while reading. A quasi-experiment has been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The experimental results show that a cross-text annotation sharing approach is significantly more helpful to the students for poetry comprehension than a conventional annotation sharing approach in terms of learning achievements; moreover, the students highly accepted the developed learning system in terms of “ease of use” and “usefulness. ”
Assessing the representativeness of the AmeriFlux network using MODIS and GOES data

[1] The AmeriFlux network of eddy covariance towers has played a critical role in the analysis of terrestrial water and carbon dynamics. It has been used to understand the general principles of ecosystem behaviors and to scale up those principles from sites to regions. To support the generalization from individual sites to large regions, it is essential that all major ecoregions in North America are represented in the AmeriFlux network. In this study, we examined the representativeness of the AmeriFlux network by comparing the climate and vegetation across the coterminous United States in 2004 with those at the AmeriFlux network in 2000–2004 on the basis of remote sensing products. We found that the AmeriFlux network generally captured the climatic and vegetation characteristics in the coterminous United States with under-representations in the Rocky Mountain evergreen needleleaf forest, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the Sonora desert, the northern Great Plains, the Great Basin Desert, and New England. In terms of site representativeness, our analysis suggested that Indiana Morgan Monroe State Forest, Indiana, and Harvard Forest, Massachusetts, were among the forest sites with high representativeness extents; while Audubon Research Ranch, Arizona, and Sky Oaks Young Chaparral were among the nonforest sites with high representativeness extents.
Process visualisation to support e-business configuration decisions

A significant challenge in any system design situation is that the parties involved in the decision-making have different mental models of how the desired and emerging systems compare. This paper proposes the use of modelling software to enable visualisation of the necessary business processes for the fulfilment of any planned e-business initiative. Simple stock-flow structures can be drawn to visualise and reflect on the two-way flows of information, product/service and money that define the critical structure of any e-Business. The process of envisioning the proposed systems can be built from scratch or use pre-formed representations of Weill and Vitale’s ‘atomic’ e-Business models. The visualisation system would ideally be used in a group decision support situation using projected screen images or even a purpose built ‘decision room’.
Design and Analysis of a Novel Multimode Transmission for a HEV Using a Single Electric Machine

This paper presents the mathematical modeling and analysis of a novel multimode transmission (MMT) for a hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) using a single electric machine (EM), which implies compactness and low cost. The single-EM solution avoids losses from another EM and its power electronics, which are employed in many existing HEVs. The topology of the MMT planetary gearset is the same as that of conventional four-speed automatic transmissions (ATs). The MMT realizes five power flow modes, which are developed into 16 operation modes, including one Motor_only mode, four Engine_only modes, four Compound driving modes, six Braking modes, and one Charging while parking mode. The properly arranged clutches transmit power flow more flexibly, allow direct mechanical power transmission from the engine to the drive shaft, and avoid spin loss for the engine and energy conversion loss for the electric components. Simulation under the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) shows that the fuel consumption of the proposed HEV is comparable to a benchmark “THS II-like” vehicle, which uses a planetary gearset, two EMs, and no clutch, which indicates the fuel economy potential of this concept.
Correlations of Prompt and Afterglow Emission in Swift Long and Short Gamma-Ray Bursts

Correlation studies of prompt and afterglow emission from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) between different spectral bands have been difficult to do in the past because few bursts had comprehensive and comparable afterglow measurements. In this paper we present a large and uniform data set for correlation analysis based on bursts detected by the Swift mission. For the first time, short and long bursts can be analyzed and compared. It is found for both classes that the optical, X-ray, and gamma-ray emission are linearly correlated, but with a large spread about the correlation line; stronger bursts tend to have brighter afterglow, and bursts with brighter X-ray afterglow tend to have brighter optical afterglow. Short bursts are, on average, weaker in both prompt and afterglow emission. No short bursts are seen with extremely low optical-to-X-ray ratios, as occurs for “dark” long bursts. Although statistics are still poor for short bursts, there is no evidence yet for a subgroup of short bursts with high extinction, as there is for long bursts. Long bursts are detected in the dark category in the same fraction as pre-Swift bursts. Interesting cases of long bursts that are detected in the optical, and yet have a low enough optical-to-X-ray ratio to be classified as dark, are discovered. For the prompt emission, short and long bursts have different average tracks on flux versus fluence plots. In Swift, GRB detections tend to be fluence-limited for short bursts and flux-limited for long events.
Promoting inquiry skills in Curriculum for Excellence in Science: conceptualising inquiry to improve practice

This paper describes a Scottish initiative (arising out of a EU funded development project) involving university researchers, a local authority curriculum development officer and a group of teachers interested in developing more inquiry based approaches in science education. The project is not one in which the researchers bring prescriptions from research. Rather, it is seen as a joint effort aimed at solving practitioners' conceptual and practice issues. The overall question for the teachers was, How do I (we) make our practice more inquiry based? The question for the researchers was, How do we help you (the interested science teachers) to make your practice more inquiry based? This has two sub-questions: How do we help you to conceptualise the issues? How do we help you to solve the practice problems? As it turned out, the particular group of teachers we worked with did not ask for help with practice issues, so we have not made much progress in answering the second question. Therefore, this paper will focus on the first. We seem to have been successful in helping the teachers to acquire some useful conceptual tools for thinking about and changing their practice in ways that they valued for themselves. Perhaps the answer to the second question is that researchers can help teachers to solve their practice problems by helping them to conceptualise the issues.
Understanding Same-Side Interactions with Wrist-Worn Devices

We investigate one-handed, same-side gestural interactions with wrist-worn devices. We contribute results of an elicitation study with 26 participants from various backgrounds to learn about gestures people would like to do when only able to interact using the arm on which they wear the device, e.g. while carrying something in the opposite hand. Based on the analysis of 1,196 video-taped gestures, 145 atomic gestures could be identified, which in turn were used to create a set of 296 unique gesture combinations. From these, we identified a conflict-free set of 43 gestures to trigger 46 common smartwatch tasks. The results show that symbolic gestures such as drawing a question mark for activating a help function are consistently used across participants. We further found symbolic and continuous gestures to be used significantly more often by men. Based on the results, we derived guidelines that should be considered when designing gestures for SSI.
Tempe: An Interactive Data Science Environment for Exploration of Temporal and Streaming Data

Over the last two decades, data scientists performed increasingly sophisticated analyses on larger data sets, yet their tools and workflows remain low-level. A typical analysis involves different tools for different stages of the work, requiring file transfers and considerable care to keep everything organized. Temporal data adds additional complexity: users typically must write queries offline before porting them to production systems. To address these problems, this paper introduces Tempe, a web application providing an integrated, collaborative environment for both real-time and offline temporal data analysis. Tempe’s central concept is a persistent research notebook retaining data sources, analysis steps and results. Analysis steps are carried out in script editor that uses a live programming approach to display interactive, progressively updated visualizations. Tempe uses a temporal streaming engine, Trill [17], as its backend data processor. In the process of creating Tempe, we have discovered new interactivity and responsiveness requirements for Trill. Conversely, building around Trill has shaped the user experience for Tempe. We report on this cross-disciplinary design process to argue that end user experience can be an integral part of creating a data engine.
1 Seismic Characterization of Geotechnical Sites By Multichannel Analysis of Surface Waves ( MASW ) Method

Shear wave velocity (Vs) information of a soil site is one of the critical parameters in soil dynamics and earthquake engineering. Although it can be obtained from a shear-wave seismic survey either at the surface or through a borehole method, the surface-wave method is an excellent alternative. It utilizes the dispersion of Rayleigh waves that usually take more than two thirds of total seismic energy generated by an impact seismic source at the surface. This indicates a relative easiness in the field survey and sometimes also during the post-acquisition processing steps. Although because of this reason the method appears highly attractive, complications, however, may arise as with all other types of seismic method. Source-generated body waves (e.g., direct and refracted compressional waves), higher modes of Rayleigh waves, random ambient noise (e.g., cultural noise), and coherent arrivals scattered from surface objects (e.g., from building foundations) all interfere with the signal, the planar fundamental-mode Rayleigh waves propagating directly from source. A multichannel seismic method similar to the one long used in the oil industry provides a highly effective quality control during both acquisition and processing stages. In addition, a 2-D pattern-recognition processing technique has an extraordinary capability to differentiate signal from noise even under a severe noise contamination. This seismic method is applied to various soil-site projects to produce 1-D and 2-D Vs maps. Compressional wave velocity (Vp) is one of the valuable by-products obtainable from the same data set used for Vs analysis through a different processing step.
Slightly Supervised Learning of Part-Based Appearance Models

We extend the GMM-based approach of [Selection of scale-invariant parts for object class recognition], for learning part-based appearance models of object categories, to the unsupervised case where positive examples are corrupted with clutter. To this end, we derive an original version of EM which is able to fit one GMM per class based on partially labeled data. We also allow ourselves a small fraction of un-corrupted positive examples, thus obtaining an effective, yet cheap, slightly supervised learning. Proposed technique allows as well a saliency-based ranking and selection of learnt mixture components. Experiments show that both the semi-supervised GMM fitting with side information and the component selection are effective in identifying salient patches in the appearance of a class of objects. They are thus promising tools to learn class-specific models and detectors similar to those by Weber et al.[Unsupervised learning of models for recognition], but at a lower computational cost, while accommodating larger numbers of atomic parts.
PCVOS: Principal component variances based off-line signature verification

Offline signature verification system is widely used as a behavioral biometric for identifying a person. This behavioral biometric trait is a challenge in designing the system that has to counter intrapersonal and interpersonal variations. In this paper, we propose a novel technique PCVOS: Principal Component Variances based Off-line Signature Verification on two critical parameters viz., the Pixel Density (PD) and the Centre of Gravity (CoG) distance. It consists of two parallel processes, namely Signature training which involves extraction of features from the samples of database and Test signature analysis which performs extraction of features from the test samples. The trained values from the database are compared with the features of the test signature using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The PCVOS algorithm shows a notable improvement over the algorithms in [21], [22] and [23].
EGENES: Transcriptome-based plant metabolic pathway database in KEGG

EGENES is a knowledge-based database for efficient analysis of plant ESTs that was recently added to the KEGG suite of databases. It links plant genomic information with higher order functional information in a single database. It also provides gene indices for each genome. The genomic information in EGENES is a collection of EST-contigs constructed from assembly of expressed sequence tags (ESTs). Due to the extremely large genomes of plant species, the bulk collection of data such as ESTs is a quick way to capture a complete repertoire of genes expressed in an organism. Using ESTs for reconstructing metabolic pathways is a new expansion in KEGG and provides researchers with a new resource for species in which only EST sequences are available. Functional annotation in EGENES is a process of linking a set of genes/transcripts in each genome with a network of interacting molecules in the cell. EGENES is a multispecies, integrated resource consisting of genomic, chemical, and network information containing a complete set of building blocks (genes and molecules) and wiring diagrams (biological pathways) to represent cellular functions. Using EGENES, genome-based pathway annotation and EST-based annotation can now be compared and mutually validated. The ultimate goals of EGENES will be to bring new plant species into KEGG by clustering and annotating ESTs; to abstract knowledge and principles from large-scale plant EST data; and to improve computational prediction of systems of higher complexity. EGENES will be updated at least once a year. EGENES is publicly available and is accessible by following link or by KEGG’s navigation
An Improved QoS Multipath Routing Using Bandwidth Estimation and Rate Adaptation

Mobile Adhoc Networks (MANETs) are composed of nodes which communicate with one another without network infrastructure. Their advantage being that they can be used in isolation or along with wired infrastructure, usually via a gateway node to ensure traffic relay for both networks. Quality of Service (QoS) is harder to ensure in ad hoc networks than in other network types, as wireless bandwidth is shared by adjacent nodes with network topology changing as nodes move. Most QoS protocols are implemented for specific scenarios and consider parameters such as network topologies, bandwidth, mobility, security and so on. This work proposes a novel multipath routing protocol which is an extension of AOMDV by discovering routes based on available bandwidth and rate adaptation. The method with Hello message box is used to calculate available bandwidth for a route. Relative Fairness and Optimized Throughput is an approach for rate adaptation in this paper which is to ensure fairness and allow nodes to adapt transmission rates and contention windows to channel quality. In sequence this is determined by calculating the access probability of a channel for each node in a distributed manner approximating successful and failed transmissions.
GEOGRAPHIC AND INSTITUTIONAL DETERMINANTS OF REAL INCOME:A SPATIO-TEMPORAL SIMULTANEOUS EQUATION APPROACH

This paper tests a series of prominent hypotheses regarding the determinants of per-capita income using a novel spatial econometric approach to control for spillovers among neighboring countries and for spatially correlated omitted variables. We use simultaneous equations to identify alternative channels through which country characteristics might affect income, and then test the robustness of those effects. We find support for both “institutionalist” and “geographic” determinants of income. A time-varying index of institutional quality has a strong independent effect on current income, but there is also a persistent effect of geographic factors such as seasonal frost, malaria transmission, and coastal location, which influence income through their links to agricultural output, health, urbanization and trade. The data cover 95 countries across the world from 1960 through 2002, which we use to construct a pooled dataset of nine 5-year averages centered on 1960, 1965, and so on through 2000. We use both limited and full information estimators, partly based on a generalized moments (GM) estimator for spatial autoregressive coefficients, allowing for spatial error correlation, correlation across equations, and the presence of spatially lagged dependent variables
Restoration of Brick and Stone Relief from Single Rubbing Images

We present a two-level approach for height map estimation from single images, aiming at restoring brick and stone relief (BSR) from their rubbing images in a visually plausible manner. In our approach, the base relief of the low frequency component is estimated automatically with a partial differential equation (PDE)-based mesh deformation scheme. A few vertices near the central area of the object region are selected and assigned with heights estimated by an erosion-based contour map. These vertices together with object boundary vertices, boundary normals as well as the partial differential properties of the mesh are taken as constraints to deform the mesh by minimizing a least-squares error functional. The high frequency detail is estimated directly from rubbing images automatically or optionally with minimal interactive processing. The final height map for a restored BSR is obtained by blending height maps of the base relief and high frequency detail. We demonstrate that our method can not only successfully restore several BSR maps from their rubbing images, but also restore some relief-like surfaces from photographic images.
Inflammation Regulates Functional Integration of Neurons Born in Adult Brain

Inflammation influences several steps of adult neurogenesis, but whether it regulates the functional integration of the new neurons is unknown. Here, we explored, using confocal microscopy and whole-cell patch-clamp recordings, whether a chronic inflammatory environment affects the morphological and electrophysiological properties of new dentate gyrus granule cells, labeled with a retroviral vector encoding green fluorescent protein. Rats were exposed to intrahippocampal injection of lipopolysaccharide, which gave rise to long-lasting microglia activation. Inflammation caused no changes in intrinsic membrane properties, location, dendritic arborization, or spine density and morphology of the new cells. Excitatory synaptic drive increased to the same extent in new and mature cells in the inflammatory environment, suggesting increased network activity in hippocampal neural circuitries of lipopolysaccharide-treated animals. In contrast, inhibitory synaptic drive was more enhanced by inflammation in the new cells. Also, larger clusters of the postsynaptic GABAA receptor scaffolding protein gephyrin were found on dendrites of new cells born in the inflammatory environment. We demonstrate for the first time that inflammation influences the functional integration of adult-born hippocampal neurons. Our data indicate a high degree of synaptic plasticity of the new neurons in the inflammatory environment, which enables them to respond to the increase in excitatory input with a compensatory upregulation of activity and efficacy at their afferent inhibitory synapses.
The Glycemic Index of Partially Refined Yellow Sugar and Plantation White Sugar : A comparative Study

The Glycemic index (GI) is a measure of the effects of carbohydrates in food on blood sugar levels. It estimates how much each gram of available carbohydrate (total carbohydrate minus fiber) in a food raises a person's blood glucose level following consumption of the food, relative to consumption of glucose. Cane sugar requires further processing to provide the free-flowing white table sugar required by the consumer. The completely refined white sugar product is now over 99.9% sucrose and for all practical purposes contains no nutritional elements such as vitamins, minerals, proteins or fibers. Refined sugar is lethal when ingested by humans because it provides only that which nutritionists describe as "empty" or "naked" calories. It lacks the natural minerals which are present in the sugar beet or cane. The main objective of this study was to estimate and compare the GI values of the Partially Refined Yellow Sugar and PlantationWhite Sugar. In vivo study was conducted by using Male wistar rats as a model and blood glucose analysis was done on semiautoanalyser by GOD – POD method. In this study, it was observed that the GI value of the Partially Refined Yellow Sugar was 84% and GI value of the PlantationWhite Sugar was 100%. From this we concluded that Partially Refined Yellow Sugar has low GI value as compared to the PlantationWhite Sugar and thus it can be used for the preparation of food items for the diabetic patients and for the weight loss program. Key wordsGlycemic Index, Partially Refined Yellow Sugar, Plantation White Sugar, Glucose