Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Turkish adaptation of childrens perceived use of self-regulated learning inventory

This research aims to adapt the Children’s Perceived Use of Self-Regulated Learning Inventory developed by Vandevelde. The inventory was developed to understand children’s self-regulated learning. The sampling in this research included 500 children who are attending primary school at Istanbul in Turkey. First of all, the inventory was translated into Turkish. After the data collection, to understand the factor structure of the data exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were utilised. Statistical package for social science (SPSS) 22 and Lisrel 8.80 was used to analyse the data. Throughout the exploratory factor analysis, the items of the scale were reduced to 32 items and 3 factor. Confirmatory factor analysis also showed that the structure of the scale was valid. Cronbach alpha coefficient for the total score of the scale was calculated as 0.972. Test re-test reliability was also calculated as 0.999. This study showed that the inventory adapted into Turkish can be considered as valid and reliable. Key words: Self-regulated learning, primary students, scale adaptation.
Evaluation of Performance of Background Traffic-based CMT-SCTP with Active Queue Management Algorithms

Existing researches on performance analysis of SCTP’s Concurrent Multipath Transfer (CMT-SCTP) usually use DropTail algorithm as queue management algorithm without considering the impact of the background traffic. However, the background traffic of realistic network environments has an important impact on the QoS of SCTP. Besides, more and more Active Queue Management (AQM) algorithms have been proposed as a router-based mechanism for early congestion detection to keep the stability of the whole network. This paper investigates the effect of background traffic on the performance of CMT-SCTP, and evaluates the performance of CMT-SCTP under two realistic simulation topologies with reasonable background traffic and different AQM algorithms in NS-2. The simulation results show that: 1) the performance of CMT-SCTP depends on characteristic of background traffic; and 2) the different AQM algorithms used as queue management algorithm under same background traffic have the different effects. Finally, this paper summarizes the proposals to satisfy the QoS requirements in terms of throughput, end-to-end packet delay and loss rate. Since CMT-PF2 is recommended by RFC4960 but without taking impact of cross traffic into account. In the second part, we use the most promising topology which meets the developing network and base on result of analysis mentioned in the first part to analyze the performance CMTPF1/2/3/4 played respectively, in this part, the most common scenario, symmetric CMT-SCTP, is adopted and CMT-PF algorithm is turned on. A conclusion had been nailed down that, CMT-PF3 can get more advantage in terms of average throughput than CMT-PF2 which is recommended by RFC4960. Per reasonable analyzing, we lastly recommend a more reasonable resolution for realistic network in order to reaching more satisfied QoS.
Tilt and scale invariant iris recognition system

Iris recognition system is the secure authentication tool to control access to physical assets based on iris texture. It is the most reliable biometric system because of its uniqueness and stability over time, even the genetically identical twins have different Iris textures. This paper presents a system that is immune to tilt and scale variations. The iris region of interest is segmented based on selective cropping. Scale variation is compensated during normalization by fixing the pupil radius. A novel technique has been proposed to compensate for tilt variations. Template matching is performed by bit to bit comparisons.
Three distinct mutational mechanisms acting on a single gene underpin the origin of yellow flesh in peach

Peach flesh color (white or yellow) is among the most popular commercial criteria for peach classification, and has implications for consumer acceptance and fruit nutritional quality. Despite the increasing interest in improving cultivars of both flesh types, little is known about the genetic basis for the carotenoid content diversity in peach. Here we describe the association between genotypes at a locus encoding the carotenoid cleavage dioxygenase 4 (PpCCD4), localized in pseudomolecule 1 of the Prunus persica reference genome sequence, and the flesh color for 37 peach varieties, including two somatic revertants, and three ancestral relatives of peach, providing definitive evidence that this locus is responsible for flesh color phenotype. We show that yellow peach alleles have arisen from various ancestral haplotypes by at least three independent mutational events involving nucleotide substitutions, small insertions and transposable element insertions, and that these mutations, despite being located within the transcribed portion of the gene, also result in marked differences in transcript levels, presumably as a consequence of differential transcript stability involving nonsense-mediated mRNA decay. The PpCCD4 gene provides a unique example of a gene for which humans, in their quest to diversify phenotypic appearance and qualitative characteristics of a fruit, have been able to select and exploit multiple mutations resulting from a variety of mechanisms.
Delta-1 Activation of Notch-1 Signaling Results inHES-1 Transactivation

ABSTRACT The Notch receptor is involved in many cell fate determination events in vertebrates and invertebrates. It has been shown inDrosophila melanogaster that Delta-dependent Notch signaling activates the transcription factor Suppressor of Hairless, leading to an increased expression of the Enhancer of Splitgenes. Genetic evidence has also implicated the kuzbaniangene, which encodes a disintegrin metalloprotease, in the Notch signaling pathway. By using a two-cell coculture assay, we show here that vertebrate Dl-1 activates the Notch-1 cascade. Consistent with previous data obtained with active forms of Notch-1 aHES-1-derived promoter construct is transactivated in cells expressing Notch-1 in response to Dl-1 stimulation. Impairing the proteolytic maturation of the full-length receptor leads to a decrease in HES-1 transactivation, further supporting the hypothesis that only mature processed Notch is expressed at the cell surface and activated by its ligand. Furthermore, we observed that Dl-1-inducedHES-1 transactivation was dependent both on Kuzbanian and RBP-J activities, consistent with the involvement of these two proteins in Notch signaling in Drosophila. We also observed that exposure of Notch-1-expressing cells to Dl-1 results in an increased level of endogenous HES-1 mRNA. Finally, coculture of Dl-1-expressing cells with myogenic C2 cells suppresses differentiation of C2 cells into myotubes, as previously demonstrated for Jagged-1 and Jagged-2, and also leads to an increased level of endogenousHES-1 mRNA. Thus, Dl-1 behaves as a functional ligand for Notch-1 and has the same ability to suppress cell differentiation as the Jagged proteins do.
Energy consumption awareness for resource-constrained devices

The devices running embedded applications tend to be battery-powered, and the energy efficiency of their operations is an important enabler for the wide adoption of the Internet-of-Things. Optimization of energy usage depends on modelling power consumption. A model-based simulation must consider parameters that depend on the device used, the operating system, and the distributed application under study. A realistic simulation thus depends on knowledge regarding how and when devices consume energy. Direct measurement in wireless sensors is a common approach to evaluate the power consumed by the embedded devices in their different execution states. This paper presents an approach to direct measurement of consumed energy. We present the architecture and the measurement process that were implemented. Details are given regarding the setup of the experimental tests, and a discussion of the results hints at which architecture is the best for each application under study. The presented methodology can be easily extended to new architectures and applications, to streamline the process of building realistic models of power consumption.
Opportunistic scheduling for wireless network coding

This letter addresses a scheduling problem for wireless network coding (WNC). In our previous work, we have theoretically shown that the optimum number of nodes to be included into a network coded packet as well as its transmission rate depends on time varying link condition between a transmitting node and receiving nodes [1]. Based on this observation, this letter designs practical scheme which opportunistically selects scheduled nodes, packets to be coded and an employed modulation level according to time varying channel conditions and packet length. The numerical results show that the proposed opportunistic scheduling can improve the overall throughput as compared with non-opportunistic approach.
Distributed Topological Convex Hull Estimation of Event Region in Wireless Sensor Networks without Location Information

In critical event (e.g., fire or gas) monitoring applications of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), convex hull of the event region is an efficient tool in handling the usual tasks like event report, routes reconstruction and human motion planning. Existing works on estimating convex hull of event region usually require location information of sensor nodes, which needs high communication cost or hardware cost. In this paper, to avoid the requirement of location information, we define topological convex hull (T-convex hull) which presents the convex contour of an event region directly with a route passing by nodes, and hence becomes more efficient in handling the above tasks. To obtain the T-convex hull of event region in the absence of locations, we propose a low-weight (in terms of computation and storage resource requirement) distributed algorithm, with which sensor nodes just need to count the hop counts from some nodes. The communication cost of the algorithm is also low and independent of the network size. Comprehensive and largescale simulations are conducted, showing the effectiveness and much lower communication cost of the proposed algorithm, compared with related method.
PRIMA: A case study of using information visualization techniques for patient record analysis

We have created an application, called PRIMA (Patient Record intelligent Monitoring and Analysis), which can be used to visualize and understand patient record data. It was developed to better understand a large collection of patient records of bone marrow transplants at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, Israel. It is based on an information visualization toolkit, Opal, which has been developed at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. Opal allows intelligent, interactive visualization of a wide variety of different types of data. The PRIMA application is generally applicable to a wide range of patient record data, as the underlying toolkit is flexible with regard to the form of the input data. This application is a good example of the usefulness of information visualization techniques in the bioinformatics domain, as these techniques have been developed specifically to deal with diverse sets of often unfamiliar data. We illustrate several unanticipated findings which resulted from the use of a flexible and interactive information visualization environment.
MEDIUM ACCESS CONTROL SPOOF DETECTION AND PREVENTION ALGORITHM (MAC SDP DoS) FOR SPOOFING ATTACKS IN WLAN

Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) is widely used today because of its mobility and ease of deployment. Providing complete security to the WLAN users is a challenge due to the open nature and undefined boundaries of the wireless networks. This paper is intended to protect the 802.11 WLAN environments from Medium Access Control (MAC) layer Denial of Service (DoS) attacks especially, the deauthentication and disassociation attacks. This paper proposes an algorithm to detect and prevent deauthentication/ disassociation DoS attacks. These attacks are launched due to the vulnerability of the management frames which carries the MAC address of the client or Access Points (AP) that are not encrypted. So, there is an urgent requirement for a security mechanism to prevent MAC layer DoS attacks which does not require any change in the hardware or protocols. In this paper, an algorithm is proposed to detect and prevent MAC spoofing DoS attacks with an exchange of passkey values. The proposed algorithm, MAC Spoof Detection and Prevention (MAC SDP DoS) is compared with the existing algorithm which is used for MAC spoof detection. This algorithm is validated by NS2, a network simulator tool. The proposed algorithm improves the performance of WLAN by increasing the throughput and reduces the packet resend rates to a greater extend. The recovery time has also been reduced compared with the existing method.
A Common Variant of NGEF Is Associated with Abdominal Visceral Fat in Korean Men

Central adiposity, rather than body mass index (BMI), is a key pathophysiological feature of the development of obesity-related diseases. Although genetic studies by anthropometric measures such as waist circumference have been widely conducted, genetic studies for abdominal fat deposition measured by computed tomography (CT) have been rarely performed. A total of 1,243 participants who were recruited from two health check-up centers were included in this study. We selected four and three single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in NGEF and RGS6, respectively, and analyzed the associations between the seven SNPs and central adiposity measured by CT using an additive, dominant, or recessive model. The participants were generally healthy middle-aged men (50.7 ± 5.3 years). In the additive model, the rs11678490 A allele of NGEF was significantly associated with total adipose tissue, visceral adipose tissue (VAT), and subcutaneous adipose tissue (all P < 0.05). The AA genotype of this SNP in the recessive model showed a more significant association with all adiposity traits, and its association with VAT remained significant even after adjustment for BMI (P = 0.005). In the overall or visceral obesity group analysis, the AA genotype of rs11678490 showed no association with overall obesity (P = 0.148), whereas it was significantly associated with visceral obesity both before (P = 0.010) and after (P = 0.029) adjustment for BMI. In particular, an AA genotype effect was conspicuous between lower and upper groups with 5% extreme VAT phenotypes (OR = 9.59, 95% CI = 1.50–61.31). However, we found no significant association between SNPs of RGS6 and central adiposity. We identified a visceral-fat-associated SNP, rs11678490 of NGEF, in Korean men. This study suggests that the genetic background of central adiposity and BMI is different, and that additional efforts should be made to find the unique genetic architecture of intra-abdominal fat accumulation.
MAGiC: A Multimodal Framework for Analysing Gaze in Dyadic Communication

The analysis of dynamic scenes has been a challenging domain in eye tracking research. This study presents a framework, named MAGiC, for analyzing gaze contact and gaze aversion in face-to-face communication. MAGiC provides an environment that is able to detect and track the conversation partner’s face automatically, overlay gaze data on top of the face video, and incorporate speech by means of speech-act annotation. Specifically, MAGiC integrates eye tracking data for gaze, audio data for speech segmentation, and video data for face tracking. MAGiC is an open source framework and its usage is demonstrated via publicly available video content and wiki pages. We explored the capabilities of MAGiC through a pilot study and showed that it facilitates the analysis of dynamic gaze data by reducing the annotation effort and the time spent for manual analysis of video data.
Using value locality to reduce memory encryption overhead in embedded processors

Memory encryption has gained much attention lately as a way to offer a secure environment to fight against software and hardware attacks. Many researchers provided memory encryption schemes whereby one or more levels of the memory hierarchy were encrypted using a cryptographic algorithm such as AES. Counter mode (CM) encryption, also called one-time-pad (OTP) encryption, is proven to be quite effective for main memory encryption. However, CM encryption requires an extra sequence number (counter) to be associated with every memory location (L2 block cacheline granularity is used). The per-block counters must be updated every time a block is written back to memory otherwise known-plaintext attacks may occur. Thus, the size of those counters is a critical parameter in the system design. In this work, we propose the use of silent stores as a method of providing the CM encryption with less overhead. Silent stores, i.e. stores, to memory that write the same value as already stored in that memory location, have been observed to occur frequently. These stores create redundant memory write-backs (and counter updates), so eliminating them will lower performance overheads introduced by the encyption/decryption process. Our initial results show significant benefits across the board indicating the promising nature of the proposed idea.
Sampling-based stochastic optimal control with metric interval temporal logic specifications

This paper describes a method to find optimal policies for stochastic dynamic systems that maximise the probability of satisfying real-time properties. The method consists of two phases. In the first phase, a coarse abstraction of the original system is created. In each region of the abstraction, a sampling-based algorithm is utilised to compute local policies that allow the system to move between regions. Then, in the second phase, the selection of a policy in each region is obtained by solving a reachability problem on the Cartesian product between the abstraction and a timed automaton representing a real-time specification given as a metric interval temporal logic formula. In contrast to current methods that require a fine abstraction, the proposed method achieves computational tractability by modelling the coarse abstraction of the system as a bounded-parameter Markov decision process (BMDP). Moreover, once the BMDP is created, this can be reused for new specifications assuming the same stochastic system and workspace. The method is demonstrated with an autonomous driving example.
Multimodal Musician Recognition

This research is an initial effort in showing how a multimodal approach can improve systems for gaining insight into a musician’s practice and technique. Embedding a variety of sensors inside musical instruments and synchronously recording the sensors’ data along with audio, we gather a database of gestural information from multiple performers, then use machine-learning techniques to recognize which musician is performing. Our multimodal approach (using both audio and sensor data) yields promising performer classification results, which we see as a first step in a larger effort to gain insight into musicians’ practice and technique.
Pushing Back on School Pushout: Youth at an Alternative School Advocate for Educational Change Through Youth Participatory Action Research

In the United States, a staggering four thousand students drop out every school day. Moreover, in 2016, the graduation rate in Oregon was only 74.8%, one of the lowest in the nation. Research shows that a disproportionate number of youth leaving school are from historically marginalized communities. Many of these youth resiliently return to education at alternative schools. This research sought to explore the educational experiences of youth in alternative schools in their own voices and perspectives. From a theoretical framework based in sociocultural theory, cultural capital, and critical theory, this study underscored the importance of youth voice in changing the education system by incorporating qualitative methods and YPAR (Youth Participatory Action Research). Working alongside seven youth co-researchers who attended an alternative school in Oregon, we interviewed eight other students at the same school about their educational experiences and perceptions of the education system. The youth co-researchers and I coconstructed four themes collectively: “I felt invisible to the teachers”; “Teaching is a sacred act”; “Regular high school is like drowning, it’s cruel”; and “Dropping out was [actually] a success. ” We also compiled counternarratives in the words of the eight student participants, which highlighted how the school system pushed them out despite their desire to learn. Finally, we spoke truth to power, in solidarity with the youth in this study, by presenting our recommendations for educational change to teachers, including how they can co-create spaces with students that foster care and empathy, value youth voice, and are culturally sustaining and identity affirming. PUSHING BACK ON SCHOOL PUSHOUT ii
Graduate Students Experiences of Learning Community in Relation to Self-Determined Motivation

This study attempted to explore the effect of inter- and intra-personal perceptions and practices of graduate students on their academic motivation from a Self Determination Theory perspective. Students in a large research university were surveyed to determine whether there is any association between their sense of learning community, the need for relatedness, and their reasons to be in graduate school. This study provides evidence to support the importance of the fulfillment of the need to belong in learning community. Differences between international and non-international students represented when they were engaged in their coursework as analyzed by using Ryan and Deci’s (2000) Self Determination and Tajfel and Turner’s (1979) Social Identity Theory.
Organization of F-Actin via Concerted Regulation of Kette by PTP61F and dAbl

ABSTRACT We identify Kette, a key regulator of actin polymerization, as a substrate for Drosophila protein tyrosine phosphatase PTP61F, as well as for dAbl tyrosine kinase. We further show that dAbl is a direct substrate for PTP61F. Therefore, Kette phosphotyrosine levels are regulated both directly and indirectly by PTP61F. Kette and PTP61F genetically interact in the regulation of F-actin organization in pupal eye discs, suggesting that tyrosine phosphorylation is essential for the proper regulation of Kette-mediated actin dynamics. This hypothesis was confirmed by demonstrating the loss of Kette-mediated F-actin organization and lamella formation in S2 cells in a Kette Y482F mutant in which the dAbl phosphorylation site was eliminated. Our results establish for the first time that PTP61F and dAbl ensure proper actin organization through the coordinated and reversible tyrosine phosphorylation of Kette.
Hand kinematics during activities of daily living: The impact of age and neurological disease

The thesis, comprising five studies, provides a prove of feasibility for the approach of kinematic analyses of human upper-limb end-effector movements in activities of daily living, delivers further insight into the impact of different neurological diseases, i.e., stroke and dementia, and age on the performance of everyday tasks. It further makes methodological suggestions for the optimization of kinematic assessment.