Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Performance Enhancement of Cellular OFDM Based Wireless LANs by Exploiting Spatial Diversity Techniques

— This paper represents an investigation on how exploiting multiple transmit antennas by OFDM based wireless LAN subscribers can mitigate physical layer error rate. Then by comparing the Wireless LANs that utilize spatial diversity techniques with the conventional ones it will reveal how PHY and TCP throughputs behaviors are ameliorated. In the next step it will assess the same issues based on a cellular context operation which is mainly introduced as an innovated solution that beside a multi cell operation scenario benefits spatio-temporal signaling schemes as well. Presented simulations will shed light on the improved performance of the wide range and high quality wireless LAN services provided by the proposed approach.
Pengelolaan Pembelajaran melalui Blanded Learning dalam Meningkatkan Receptive Skill Peserta Didik di Pondok Pesantren

This study discusses the management of learning through blanded learning in improving receptive skill of students in boarding school Bahrul Ulum Besuk Kidul, Besuk, Probolinggo. Arabic is now widely provided by using varied models and online learning media. However, the various learning models are still less relevant and efficient, which causes students to understand less ability receptive skill, especially on learning Arabic. The rapid development of information technology has provided a great opportunity for the development of online learning model on motivation or increase student learning interest. This study aims to produce a blended learning model, which is a combination of online learning model and face to face learning, which can improve the receptive skills of learners.
An enhanced adaptive algorithm for PLI cancellation in ECG signals

This paper presents a technique for determining amplitude and phase of the power line interference (PLI), which is in sinusoidal waveform, by using two consecutive samples under identified sampling rate. The amplitude and phase information will then be employed to initialize parameters of the adaptive noise canceling algorithm whose the interfering noise is modeled as orthogonal sinusoidal functions. Based on computer simulation, the performance of the adaptive algorithm is improved over the conventional algorithm. In addition, the results in various cases of the PLI show that the proposed technique is superior to the results of the ASIC algorithm.
Higher-order statistics for fractional Fourier transform

The definition of the higher-order statistics associated with the fractional Fourier transform is presented in this paper. The proposed fractional higher-order statistics for order greater than two are blind to the additive white or colored Gaussian noise, which is similar to the conventional higher-order statistics; and it is suitable for the chirp signal. The proposed higher-order statistics can outperform the conventional higher-order statistics in the Fourier domain under the correlated Gaussian noises at lower SNR. Simulation results demonstrate the validity of this estimation method.
Design and Implementation of an Object-Oriented View Mechanism

We discuss the design and implementation of the O 2 Views object-oriented database view mechanism, which allows the redeenition of both the structure and the behavior of objects stored in a database. The data model extended with views is rst given and then the functionalities of the prototype implementing it are presented. The paper focuses on the requirements for the implementation of an object-oriented view mechanism, ranging from the conception of a view deenition language to optimization strategies for querying and updating through a view such as view materialization and consistency maintenance.
Electrical response of amorphous silicon thin-film transistors under mechanical strain

We evaluated amorphous silicon thin-film transistors (TFTs) fabricated on polyimide foil under uniaxial compressive or tensile strain. The strain was induced by bending or stretching. The on- current and hence the electron linear mobility μ depend on strain e as μ=μ0(1+26×e), where tensile strain has a positive sign and the strain is parallel to the TFT source-drain current path. Upon the application of compressive or tensile strain the mobility changes “instantly” and under compression then remains constant for up to 40 h. In tension, the TFTs fail mechanically at a strain of about +0.003 but recover if the strain is released “immediately. ”
Thematic event processing

Event-based systems follow a decoupled mode of interaction between event producers and consumers in space, time, and synchronization to enable scalability within distributed systems. We recognize a fourth dimension of coupling due to the need for mutual agreements on terms that describe event types, attributes, and values. Semantic coupling is challenging in large-scale, open, and heterogeneous environments such as the Internet of Things (IoT). It requires event producers and consumers to agree on event semantics and can limit scalability due to the difficulties in establishing such agreements. In this paper we propose a new thematic event processing approach based on enhancing events and subscriptions with terms representing their themes to clarify their domains and meanings in addition to their pay-load. Experiments conducted using large heterogeneous sets of smart-city and energy management events suggest up to 85% of matching accuracy at a rate of 500 events/sec of throughput. This represents around 15% improvement in accuracy and 150% in throughput over non-thematic approaches. This suggests the viability of thematic event processing to scale to environments such as the IoT.
Intelligent Search of Correlated Alarms for GSM Networks with Model-based Constraints

In order to control the process of data mining and focus on the things of interest to us, many kinds of constraints have been added into the algorithms of data mining. However, discovering the correlated alarms in the alarm database needs deep domain constraints. Because the correlated alarms greatly depend on the logical and physical architecture of networks. Thus we use the network model as the constraints of algorithms, including Scope constraint, Inter-correlated constraint and Intra-correlated constraint, in our proposed algorithm called SMC (Search with Model-based Constraints). The experiments show that the SMC algorithm with Inter-correlated or Intra-correlated constraint is about two times faster than the algorithm with no constraints.
Opinions of Teachers on Using Internet Searching Strategies: An Elementary School Case in Turkey

The purpose of the current study is to determine opinions of teachers on using internet searching strategies in an elementary school. The study conductad through qualitative method was designed on survey research model. Participants were consisted of 21 teachers at an elementary school in Eskisehir in Turkey. Questionnaires consisting of open-ended questions were used to collect data in the spring semester of 2008, which were analyzed through inductive coding technique. Findings reveal that elementary school teachers primarily use Google for searching on the internet. It is revealed that internet search strategies applied by teachers differ between the inception and the development processes of the search. In addition, teachers have several problems like irrelevant information, accessing insufficient information, accessing websites with virus threats while searching. A need for in-service training regarding the ways of accessing and retrieving information from Internet was stated along with creative suggestions in accordance with the content and structure of the instructional process assumed.
Age-Related Changes in Pre- and Postsynaptic Partners of the Cholinergic C-Boutons in Wild-Type and SOD1G93A Lumbar Motoneurons

Large cholinergic synaptic terminals known as C-boutons densely innervate the soma and proximal dendrites of motoneurons that are prone to neurodegeneration in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Studies using the Cu/Zn-superoxide dismutase (SOD1) mouse model of ALS have generated conflicting data regarding C-bouton alterations exhibited during ALS pathogenesis. In the present work, a longitudinal study combining immunohistochemistry, biochemical approaches and extra- and intra-cellular electrophysiological recordings revealed that the whole spinal cholinergic system is modified in the SOD1 mouse model of ALS compared to wild type (WT) mice as early as the second postnatal week. In WT motoneurons, both C-bouton terminals and associated M2 postsynaptic receptors presented a complex age-related dynamic that appeared completely disrupted in SOD1 motoneurons. Indeed, parallel to C-bouton morphological alterations, analysis of confocal images revealed a clustering process of M2 receptors during WT motoneuron development and maturation that was absent in SOD1 motoneurons. Our data demonstrated for the first time that the lamina X cholinergic interneurons, the neuronal source of C-boutons, are over-abundant in high lumbar segments in SOD1 mice and are subject to neurodegeneration in the SOD1 animal model. Finally, we showed that early C-bouton system alterations have no physiological impact on the cholinergic neuromodulation of newborn motoneurons. Altogether, these data suggest a complete reconfiguration of the spinal cholinergic system in SOD1 spinal networks that could be part of the compensatory mechanisms established during spinal development.
Optimization of relevance feedback weights

I)epartment of ('omputm $icience <brnell University ]thaca. NY 14 K5;j-7501 christ)@cs.cornell. du, gS{@CS.CC)rIIell.P(i II N[etllocls forlearilillg weightsuf{errnh nsiiig r(,levance infer-mation from a learning set of doctlnlents have been stll{lie{l for decadesin information retrieval research, The approach used here, Dynamic Feedback C)ptimization. starts with a good weighting scheme based npoa Rocchi(r ferxlback. and then improves those weights in a dynamic fashion by t,rw,-iug possible changes of query weights on th~ learning set, documents. The resulting optimized query performs 1o-1.5% better thant heoriginal whcncvaluated on t,het,est set. \Ve discuss the constant, tension het,ween describing what a relevant, document should contain, a,n(l ciescribing what the known relevant cfocnrnents do contain. 1 Irltrmdllction In the tvi>ical information retrieval environrnent, irrclrrd-ing both ad-hoc interactive retrieval and document, filtering based on long-term information needs, an original query is submitted to a system which then returns documents for inspection. (Isers then look at those retrieved documents and submit a new query based upon their original need and the returned documents. Relevance feedback is the process of automatically altering an existing query using information supplied by users abont tllerclcvance ofj)reviously retrieved documents. Relevance feedback has been an importalit research topic forwell over 15years[Ide71, Roc71, I{J76, S1390]. Irrcreaserf attention has been paid to relevance feedback in the past sever <al j-e,ars due to both t,fle in<le <ased acceptance of ~t,a-tistictrl inforrnatiou retrieval systems whith can easily use relevance feedback, and the effects of the TRf? (" ! confert=nces [Har9:l, Har94, Har95]. Eval~~atiollo frelevancef eedback(,n t,he small frre-TEtfX; test collections was notoriously f.liffi-crrlt. " ~he '1'REC routing environment offers a straip,htfor-warcl context in which relevance feedback can be evaluated and compared. " This study was supported m part by the National Science Foun. datlon under grant Ittl 93-(101? 1 Permission totnoke digit[ll/ll:~rci c{~pies () f:lll,)r l>:ll.t(~~tl~is matcri:~i without fee is granted provided [hot [he c(~pics arc m)l Ill:ldc or distributed for~>rofit c>rct)i~llncl.c i:ll aLivonL:lge, tIlc ACh4 ctJpyrigilt/ server notice, the title {)flllc pul>lic:lli{)n :Inci ils ci:]lc :Ippwr, :lnci notice is given that copyright is hy pemlls<ILIn of Lhc Ass(x_i:lli(ln I'or Computing Machinery, Inc. (ACM) T[lc[~l>y t,t\lcrwise, L[]rci>Ll(>lisll, to post on servers or to rcciislribulcto [is(s, requires sllcciiic permission andlor fee. Itecmrt work of our group at (70rn~ll and others has centered on expanding the original clnery by large rrun-i)ers of terms which occut in the relevant d&rrrreuts [BSA! L). We've shown that effectiveness contrnnes to increase even after adding hundreds of terms using …
Stability and Change in Health Behavior Profiles of U.S. Adults.

OBJECTIVES While understanding of complex within-person clustering of health behaviors into meaningful profiles of risk is growing, we still know little about whether and how U.S. adults transition from one profile to another as they age. This study assesses patterns of stability and change in profiles of tobacco and alcohol use and body mass index (BMI). METHOD A nationally representative cohort of U.S. adults 25 years and older was interviewed up to 5 times between 1986 and 2011. Latent transition analysis (LTA) models characterized the most common profiles, patterning of transitions across profiles over follow-up, and assessed whether some were associated with higher mortality risk. RESULTS We identified 5 profiles: "health promoting" with normal BMI and moderate alcohol consumption; "overweight"; "current smokers"; "obese"; and "nondrinkers". Profile membership was largely stable, with the most common transitions to death or weight gain. "Obese" was the most stable profile, while "smokers" were most likely to transition to another profile. Mortality was most frequent in the "obese" and "nondrinker" profiles. DISCUSSION Stability was more common than transition, suggesting that adults sort into health behavior profiles relatively early. Women and men were differently distributed across profiles at baseline, but showed broad similarity in transitions.
Light-Induced Stomatal Opening Is Affected by the Guard Cell Protein Kinase APK1b

Guard cells allow land plants to survive under restricted or fluctuating water availability. They control the exchange of gases between the external environment and the interior of the plant by regulating the aperture of stomatal pores in response to environmental stimuli such as light intensity, and are important regulators of plant productivity. Their turgor driven movements are under the control of a signalling network that is not yet fully characterised. A reporter gene fusion confirmed that the Arabidopsis APK1b protein kinase gene is predominantly expressed in guard cells. Infrared gas analysis and stomatal aperture measurements indicated that plants lacking APK1b are impaired in their ability to open their stomata on exposure to light, but retain the ability to adjust their stomatal apertures in response to darkness, abscisic acid or lack of carbon dioxide. Stomatal opening was not specifically impaired in response to either red or blue light as both of these stimuli caused some increase in stomatal conductance. Consistent with the reduction in maximum stomatal conductance, the relative water content of plants lacking APK1b was significantly increased under both well-watered and drought conditions. We conclude that APK1b is required for full stomatal opening in the light but is not required for stomatal closure.
Algorithm of Shot Detection Based on SVM with Modified Kernel Function

Improving the precision of shot boundary detection is very important. This paper presents an algorithm for shot boundary detection based on SVM (support vector machine) in compressed domain. It uses the features, such as the type of macroblock, the difference between DC coefficients of two co-located blocks in successive frames and the type of frame, to segment a video into the shots by classifying the frames into three classes, namely, the frames of cut change, gradual change and non-change. In order to further improve the detection accuracy of shot boundary, we modify the kernel function of SVM based on its nature, and some experiments have been done to compare with other kernel functions commonly used. The experimental results show that the classifier with the kernel function of RBF + Gaussian RBF has the better classification performance and achieved higher Recall and Precision of shot detection.
Reducing Communication and Merging Overheads for Distributed Clustering Algorithms on the Cloud

Many distributed clustering algorithms have been proposed to speed up data clustering on huge database. However, the existing distributed clustering algorithms still suffer from many issues on distributed system such as data synchronization, insufficient scalability, and maintenance difficulties. In this paper, we propose two distributed clustering algorithms named DDC and DGC, which are based on the cloud computing technique. The main ideas of proposed algorithms are to achieve load balance according to an efficient data partition, to cluster more data on many machines in parallel without data dependency, and to merge the result on a machine efficiently with minimal information overlap. The experimental results show that DDC and DGC are able to reduce the execution time and achieve great scalability on the cloud.
Microglial Dysregulation in Psychiatric Disease

Microglia, the brain's resident immune cells, are phagocytes of the macrophage lineage that have a key role in responding to inflammation and immune challenge in the brain. More recently, they have been shown to have a number of important roles beyond immune surveillance and response, including synaptic pruning during development and the support of adult neurogenesis. Microglial abnormalities have been found in several neuropsychiatric conditions, though in most cases it remains unclear whether these are causative or are a reaction to some other underlying pathophysiology. Here we summarize postmortem, animal, neuroimaging, and other evidence for microglial pathology in major depression, schizophrenia, autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and Tourette syndrome. We identify gaps in the existing literature and important areas for future research. If microglial pathology proves to be an important causative factor in these or other neuropsychiatric diseases, modulators of microglial function may represent a novel therapeutic strategy.
Performance comparison of PBFDAF algorithms

This paper compares the feedback cancellation performance of different partitioned block frequency-domain adaptive filter (PBFDAF) algorithms. The comparison is made for the error level of the echo canceler of an open and closed loop system of a hearing instrument setup. Special consideration is given to the different transformations and the number of partitions. The results enable a computationally efficient design of a hearing instrument for any combination of feedback reduction performance of the predictor and band spacing requirements for the hearing-loss compensator.
Using Community Members to Collect Observational Data: Observer Training and Data Quality Assessment

ABSTRACT This article highlights a structured approach to preparing community members for observational data collection in participatory research. Providing training related to the items that will be observed and conducting post-training assessments of observer accuracy and interrater reliability provides researchers with a measure of observer readiness to collect data. In addition, reassessing observer accuracy and interrater reliability at the end of data collection offers a measure of confidence in the data collection process. Discussion of this approach includes addressing survey items with low observer percentage agreement scores and training and evaluation strategies for intermittent and extended data collection periods.
The Host Galaxy Cluster of the Short Gamma-Ray Burst GRB 050509B

The first arcsecond localization of a short gamma-ray burst, GRB 050509B, has enabled detailed studies of a short-burst environment. We here report on studies of the environment of GRB 050509B using the Swift X-Ray Telescope (XRT). The XRT error circle of the burst overlaps with an elliptical galaxy in the cluster of galaxies ZwCl 1234.0+02916. Using the measured X-ray flux of the cluster, we estimate that the probability for a chance superposition of GRB 050509B and a cluster at least as X-ray bright as this cluster is <2 × 10-3, presenting the first strong case of a short burst located in a cluster of galaxies. We also consider the case for GRB 050509B being located behind ZwCl 1234.0+02916 and gravitationally lensed. From the velocity dispersion of the elliptical galaxy and the temperature of hot intracluster gas, we model the mass distribution in the elliptical galaxy and the cluster and calculate the gravitational lensing magnification within the XRT error circle. We find that, if GRB 050509B would be positioned significantly behind the cluster, it is most likely magnified by a factor less than 2, but that the burst could be strongly lensed if it is positioned within 2'' of the center of the bright elliptical galaxy. Further mapping of arcsecond-size short-burst error boxes is a new promising route to determine the spatial distribution of old stars throughout the universe.
BDD-based Algorithm for the Minimum Spanning Tree in Wireless Ad-hoc Network Routing

Dynamic power controlled routing has become a viable alternative to traditional routing protocols in wireless ad hoc networks, particularly with the goal of making a more efficient power management. The existing schemes in this approach tend to converge to a route comprised of a minimum spanning tree between the source and destination nodes. However, this final route is found by an iterative procedure. In the current paper, a proposal is made which builds the final route in one step, by calculating the corresponding minimum spanning tree using a low complexity algorithm based on BDDs.
Bayesian estimation of distance and surface normal with a time-of-flight laser rangefinder

We describe a Bayesian estimation method for measurement of both range and surface orientation using a laser rangefinder. The method not only provides more accurate estimates of range for dark surfaces that are difficult to measure, but also simultaneously provides estimates of surface normals. The paper describes our efforts for a commercially available sensor, the laser rangefinder Acuity Accu-Range 3000 LIR, a widely available device. We detail the Bayesian techniques, sensor calibration, and the processing required.
The Effectiveness of Career Counselling Model towards Career Maturity and Self-Concept Level of Former Drug Addicts

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of Career Counseling Model towards the inmates’ career maturity and their self-concept level. This research has used experimental design, in w hich experimental and control group, were involved. The total of 64 respondents was purposively selected, 32 of each group, were from two different drug rehabilitation centers. Two instruments were used in the experiment which were Career Maturity Scale (CMI) and Tennesse Self-Concept Scales (TSCS), to measure two variables which were career maturity and self-concept, respectively. The hypotheses were tested by using t-test and the mean score. The result showed that there is a positive significant difference of the mean score of CMI between pre-test (11.1563) and post-test (15.6250) of the experimental group, t= -4.874 (p= 0.00