Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SmartCon

Handling of storage IO in modern operating systems assumes that such devices are slow and CPU cycles are valuable. Consequently, to effectively exploit the underlying hardware resources, for example, CPU cycles, storage bandwidth and the like, whenever an IO request is issued to such device, the requesting thread is switched out in favor of another thread that may be ready to execute. Recent advances in nonvolatile storage technologies and multicore CPUs make both of these assumptions increasingly questionable, and an unconditional context switch is no longer desirable. In this article, we propose a novel mechanism called SmartCon, which intelligently decides whether to service a given IO request in interrupt-driven manner or busy-wait--based manner based on not only the device characteristics but also dynamic parameters such as IO latency, CPU utilization, and IO size. We develop an analytic performance model to project the performance of SmartCon for forthcoming devices. We implement SmartCon mechanism on Linux 2.6 and perform detailed evaluation using three different IO devices: Ramdisk, low-end SSD, and high-end SSD. We find that SmartCon yields up to a 39% performance gain over the mainstream block device approach for Ramdisk, and up to a 45% gain for PCIe-based SSD and SATA-based SSDs. We examine the detailed behavior of TLB, L1, L2 cache and show that SmartCon achieves significant improvement in all cache misbehaviors.
Person and Context in Becoming a New Teacher

The influence of, and the interplay between biographical and contextual factors in new teachers' professional learning and development during their first years of teaching are examined. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire. Findings suggest the powerful influence of prior experiences as students, the low impact of Initial Teacher Education on new teachers' socialisation and the strong effect of workplace conditions in shaping beginning teachers' practices and attitudes towards teaching. It is argued that more importance needs to be given to the structural and organisational factors of the workplace if a 'learning culture' is to be fostered in schools. Implications for Teacher Education and Induction are discussed.
FoodCam-256: A Large-scale Real-time Mobile Food RecognitionSystem employing High-Dimensional Features and Compression of Classifier Weights

In the demo, we demonstrate a large-scale food recognition system employing high-dimensional Fisher Vector and liner one-vs-rest classifiers. Since all the processes on image recognition perform on a smartphone, the system does not require an external image recognition server, and runs on an ordinary smartphone in a real-time way. The proposed system can recognize 256 kinds of food by using the UEC-Food256 food image dataset we built by ourselves recently as a training dataset. To implement an image recognition system employing high-dimensional features on mobile devices, we propose linear weight compression method to save memory. In the experiments, we proved that the proposed compression methods make a little performance loss, while we can reduce the amount of weight vectors to 1/8. The proposed system has not only food recognition function but also the functions of estimation of food calorie and nutritious and recording a user's eating habits. In the experiments with 100 kinds of food categories, we have achieved the 74.4% classification rate for the top 5 category candidates. The prototype system is open to the public as an Android-based smartphone application.
Prediction of an electromechanical system parameters using the Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm

In this study, the effect of the mechanical parts consisting of Tachometer/Gearbox, Digital Encoder, Input and Output Potentiometers, a brake disc, transmission belt, and some couplings which are directly connected to the shaft of a DC servo motor is investigated. The appropriate model of the DC servo motor can be achieved by modeling the effect of the mechanical parts correctly. The contribution of these mechanical parts is added to the mathematical model of the DC servo motor as new parameters. These parameters are estimated by using the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm since the convergence speed of the PSO is high. The result of the PSO algorithm is confirmed with experimental results. According to the experimental results, the obtained mathematical model including the effect of mechanical parts represents the real system more accurate.
Corridor Length and Patch Colonization by a Butterfly, Junonia coenia

Abstract: Corridors have been proposed to reduce isolation and increase population persistence in fragmented landscapes, yet little research has evaluated the types of landscapes in which corridors will be most effective. I tested the hypothesis that corridors increase patch colonization by a butterfly, Junonia coenia, regardless of the butterfly's initial distance from a patch. I chose J. coenia because it has been shown to move between patches preferentially through corridors. Individuals were released 16–192 m away from open experimental patches into adjacent open corridors or forest. Neither corridors nor distance had a significant effect on patch colonization, but there was a significant interaction between the presence or absence of corridors and distance. At small distances (16–64 m), J. coenia was more likely to colonize open patches when released within forest than within open corridors, most likely because J. coenia used corridors as habitat. Nevertheless, patch colonization by butterflies released within forest decreased rapidly as distance from patches increased, as predicted by a null model of random movement. Colonization did not change with distance in the corridor, and at long distances (128–192 m), butterflies released in corridors were twice as likely to colonize open patches as those released in forest. These results suggest that one critical factor, interpatch distance, may determine the relative effectiveness of corridors and other landscape configurations, such as stepping stones, in reducing isolation in fragmented landscapes. When distances between patches are short compared to an animal's movement ability, a stepping stone approach may most effectively promote dispersal. Alternatively, the conservation value of corridors is highest relative to other habitat configurations when longer distances separate patches in fragmented landscapes.
Post‐ “psychological contract” violation: the durability and transferability of employee perceptions: the case of TimTec

This paper is concerned with the role played by the psychological contract in the relationship between an individual and his or her employer. In particular, the research concentrates on a prior perceived violation of an employee’s psychological contract and the subsequent attitudes towards employers. The aims of the paper are to assess the nature, transferability and durability of outcomes arising from the perceived violations. Draws on the perceptions of 20 employees from a range of employment settings who five years earlier shared a common experience with a previous employer. The evidence suggested that a negative experience with one employer led to negative perceptions of employers in terms of trust, loyalty and commitment. Further, the study suggested that outcomes as a result of perceived violation are durable. Finally, the paper supported the findings of that after violation; the transactional contract assumes primacy over the psychological.
Backhaul-Aware User Association and Resource Allocation for Massive MIMO-Enabled HetNets

Massive multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) and heterogeneous networks (HetNets) have been recognized as potential technologies for the fifth generation mobile networks. On the other hand, the backhaul capacity constraint has become increasingly stringent in HetNets. Consequently, we investigate joint user association and resource allocation to maximize the $\alpha $ -fairness network utility for massive MIMO-enabled HetNets with backhaul capacity constraints. The optimization problem is formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming problem and an effective algorithm is developed based on the Lagrangian dual method. Simulation results demonstrate the network utility performance improvement of the proposed algorithm.
Effect of Individual Skills and Performance on Humanitarian Organisations: A Structural Equation Model

The significance of Humanitarian Logistics (HL) skills as basic requirements for employment and career development within the HL field has been demonstrated in previous research by the authors. This research showed a strong relationship between recognised HL skills, individual performance and the HL supply chain. With the increasing number of humanitarian disasters globally, it is essential to determine the correlation between individual performance and humanitarian organisational performance. As with previous research, this paper focuses on HL in the Sri Lankan context. Some limited research has already been undertaken on the subject. However, there were a number of major issues identified during this early research that need to be addressed regarding the effective and efficient operation of humanitarian supply chains. These issues include selecting the right personnel for the job, assessing their performance and building and maintaining measurement indicators to evaluate the performance of the humanitarian organisations. A conceptual model based on a Structural Equation Analysis was deduced from an extensive literature survey and was employed to answer these three interconnected issues. The resultant Structural Equation Model (SEM) was used to analyse the conceptual framework with data being gathered from HL practitioners across Sri Lanka by questionnaire. The existence of a relationship between individual skills and HL performance has been demonstrated previously, but not all skills contribute to individual or organisational performance. This research helps prove earlier theories by other researchers regarding the significance of specific skills for performance. The paper also suggests possible areas of future research.
The potent, indirect adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase activator R419 attenuates mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling, inhibits nociceptor excitability, and reduces pain hypersensitivity in mice

Abstract There is a great need for new therapeutics for the treatment of pain. A possible avenue to development of such therapeutics is to interfere with signaling pathways engaged in peripheral nociceptors that cause these neurons to become hyperexcitable. There is strong evidence that mitogen-activated protein kinases and phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)/mechanistic target of rapamycin signaling pathways are key modulators of nociceptor excitability in vitro and in vivo. Activation of adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK) can inhibit signaling in both of these pathways, and AMPK activators have been shown to inhibit nociceptor excitability and pain hypersensitivity in rodents. R419 is one of, if not the most potent AMPK activator described to date. We tested whether R419 activates AMPK in dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons and if this leads to decreased pain hypersensitivity in mice. We find that R419 activates AMPK in DRG neurons resulting in decreased mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling, decreased nascent protein synthesis, and enhanced P body formation. R419 attenuates nerve growth factor (NGF)-induced changes in excitability in DRG neurons and blocks NGF-induced mechanical pain amplification in vivo. Moreover, locally applied R419 attenuates pain hypersensitivity in a model of postsurgical pain and blocks the development of hyperalgesic priming in response to both NGF and incision. We conclude that R419 is a promising lead candidate compound for the development of potent and specific AMPK activation to inhibit pain hypersensitivity as a result of injury.
Adaptive Multinomial Matrix Completion

The task of estimating a matrix given a sample of observed entries is known as the \emph{matrix completion problem}. Most works on matrix completion have focused on recovering an unknown real-valued low-rank matrix from a random sample of its entries. Here, we investigate the case of highly quantized observations when the measurements can take only a small number of values. These quantized outputs are generated according to a probability distribution parametrized by the unknown matrix of interest. This model corresponds, for example, to ratings in recommender systems or labels in multi-class classification. We consider a general, non-uniform, sampling scheme and give theoretical guarantees on the performance of a constrained, nuclear norm penalized maximum likelihood estimator. One important advantage of this estimator is that it does not require knowledge of the rank or an upper bound on the nuclear norm of the unknown matrix and, thus, it is adaptive. We provide lower bounds showing that our estimator is minimax optimal. An efficient algorithm based on lifted coordinate gradient descent is proposed to compute the estimator. A limited Monte-Carlo experiment, using both simulated and real data is provided to support our claims.
3D video recorder

We present the 3D video recorder, a system capable of recording, processing, and playing three-dimensional video from multiple points of view. We first record 2D video streams from several synchronized digital video cameras and store pre-processed images to disk. An off-line processing stage converts these images into a time-varying three-dimensional hierarchical point-based data structure and stores this 3D video to disk. We show how we can trade-off 3D video quality with processing performance and devise efficient compression and coding schemes for our novel 3D video representation. A typical sequence is encoded at less than 7 megabits per second at a frame rate of 8.5 frames per second. The 3D video player decodes and renders 3D videos from hard-disk in real-time, providing interaction features known from common video cassette recorders, like variable-speed forward and reverse, and slow motion. 3D video playback can be enhanced with novel 3D video effects such as freeze-and-rotate and arbitrary scaling. The player builds upon point-based rendering techniques and is thus capable of rendering high-quality images in real-time. Finally, we demonstrate the 3D video recorder on multiple real-life video sequences.
Age differences between leader and followers as a moderator of the relationship between transformational leadership and team performance

In a field study of 49 R&D teams in the pharmaceutical industry, the age difference between the team leader and the team members was examined as a moderator of the relationship between transformational leadership and team supervisors' longitudinal ratings of team performance. Data collected from 285 team members and 21 team supervisors showed that this relationship was positive when the leader was older than the other team members, but non-significant when the leader's age was closer to the mean age of the team members. This finding broadens the still fragmentary knowledge of the conditions under which transformational leadership is likely to have more or less positive effects on team performance.
Follow the Leader: Commentary on Research in Educational Administration

Implications of the Status of Dependence How does acceptance of the assertion tha t scholarly inquiry in educational administration depends on movements in several social and behaviora l sciences contribute to understanding current conditions and to examining various proposals for one or more a l te rna t ive futures? Of central importance is clear recognition, and full acceptance, tha t specialization rules the day (Immegart, 1977). Selection and prosecution of investigation or line of inquiry depend very little on a commonly s h a r e d c o n c e p t u a l i z a t i o n o r methodology. R a t h e r , inqu i ry either invokes the use of one of several highly specialized conceptual lenses, through which to look at a particular slice of the territory, or derives from the occupational value to the inquirer of examining a particular practice and/ or organizational activity. Campbell's (1979) analysis of articles pub l i shed d u r i n g the first 14 years of the Educational Administration Quarterly neatly documents the variability which charac te r izes both t he choice and method of pu r su ing investigations. So, it is not a matter of dependence on one social or behavioral science; instead, it is the case that several social and behavioral sciences have shaped inquiry in the many sites tha t collectively make up the terr i tory of educational a d m i n i s t r a t i o n . Ident i f ica t ion and examination of the multiple sources for scholarly (and practical) studies confirm the position
A pareto following variation operator for fast-converging multiobjective evolutionary algorithms

One of the major difficulties when applying Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithms (MOEA) to real world problems is the large number of objective function evaluations. Approximate (or surrogate) methods offer the possibility of reducing the number of evaluations, without reducing solution quality. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based models are one approach that have been used to approximate the future front from the current available fronts with acceptable accuracy levels. However, the associated computational costs limit their effectiveness. In this work, we introduce a simple approach that has comparatively smaller computational cost and we have developed this model as a variation operator that can be used in any kind of multiobjective optimizer. When designing this model, we have considered the whole search procedure as a dynamic system that takes available objective values in current front as input and generates approximated design variables for the next front as output. Initial simulation experiments have produced encouraging results in comparison to NSGA-II. Our motivation was to increase the speed of the hosting optimizer. We have compared the performance of the algorithm with respect to the total number of function evaluation and Hypervolume metric. This variation operator has worst case complexity of O(nkN3), where N is the population size, n and k is the number of design variables and objectives respectively.
School achievement differences among Chinese and Filipino American students: acculturation and the family

The general belief that Asian American adolescents are successful has led researchers to ignore variations in Asian adolescents’ academic success. Using samples of Chinese and Filipino adolescents drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study examined whether differences between these two groups in acculturation, parent–adolescent attachment, and parental school involvement could account for academic achievement differences. Results revealed that Chinese adolescents generally performed better in school than their Filipino counterparts. Factors that predicted academic achievement were ethnicity, acculturation, and parents’ academic involvement. An interaction was found between ethnicity and acculturation, indicating that acculturation is a predictor of academic performance among Filipino youth but not among Chinese youth. Cultural values in parent–adolescent attachment, acculturation, and parents’ school involvement are discussed.
Mouse Mammary Tumor Virus Superantigen Expression in B Cells Is Regulated by a Central Enhancer within the pol Gene

ABSTRACT Expression of mouse mammary tumor virus (MMTV)-encoded superantigens in B lymphocytes is required for viral transmission and pathogenesis. The mechanism of superantigen expression from the viralsag gene in B cells is largely unknown, due to problems with detection and quantification of these low-abundance proteins. We have established a sensitive superantigen-luciferase reporter assay to study the expression and regulation of the MMTV sag gene in B-cell lymphomas. The regulatory elements for retroviral gene expression are generally located in the 5′ long terminal repeat (LTR) of the provirus. However, we found that neither promoters nor enhancers in the MMTV 5′ LTR play a significant role in superantigen expression in these cells. Instead, the essential regulatory regions are located in the pol and env genes of MMTV. We report here that maximal sag expression in B-cell lines depends on an enhancer within the viral pol gene which can be localized to a minimal 183-bp region. Regulation of saggene expression differs between B-cell lymphomas and pro-B cells, where an enhancer within the viral LTRs is involved. Thus, MMTVsag expression during B-cell development is achieved through the use of two separate enhancer elements.
Computerized-Adaptive and Self-Adapted Music-Listening Tests: Psychometric Features and Motivational Benefits.

In this study, we compared the efficiency, reliability, validity, and motivational benefits of computerized-adaptive and self-adapted music-listening tests (referred to hereafter as CAT and SAT, respectively). Junior high school general music students completed a tonal memory CAT, a tonal memory SAT, standardized music aptitude and achievement tests; and questionnaires assessing test anxiety, demographics, and attitudes about the CAT and SAT. Standardized music test scores and music course grades served as criterion measures in the concurrent validity analysis. Results showed that the SAT elicited more favorable attitudes from examinees and yielded ability estimates that were higher and less correlated with test anxiety than did the CAT. The CAT, however, required fewer items and less administration time to match the reliability and concurrent validity of the SAT and yielded higher levels of reliability and concurrent validity than the SAT when test length was held constant. These results reaffirm importa.
Using UDP for Reliable Data Transfer over High Bandwidth-Delay Product Networks

As the network bandwidth and delay increase, TCP becomes inefficient. Data intensive applications over high-speed networks such as the computational grids need new transport protocol to support them. This paper describes a general purpose high performance data transfer protocol as an application level solution. The protocol, named UDT, or UDP-based data transfer protocol, works above UDP with reliability and congestion control mechanisms. UDT uses both positive acknowledgement and negative acknowledgement to guarantee data reliability. It combines rate based and window based congestion control mechanisms to ensure efficiency and fairness, including two particular fairness objectives of TCP friendliness and delay independence. Both simulation and implementation results have shown that UDT meet these objectives very well. This paper will describe the details of UDT protocol with simulation and implementation results and analysis.
When the Interface Is a Face

People behave differently in the presence of other people than they do when they are alone. People also may behave differently when designers introduce more human-like qualities into computer interfaces. In an experimental study we demonstrate that people's responses to a talking-face interface differ from their responses to a text-display interface. They attribute some personality traits to it; they are more aroused by it; they present themselves in a more positive light. We use theories of person perception, social facilitation, and self-presentation to predict and interpret these results. We suggest that as computer interfaces become more "human-like," people who use those interfaces may change their own personas in response to them.