Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media

Conventional wisdom about young people's use of digital technology often equates generational identity with technology identity: today's teens seem constantly plugged in to video games, social networking sites, and text messaging. Yet there is little actual research that investigates the intricate dynamics of youths' social and recreational use of digital media. Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out fills this gap, reporting on an ambitious three-year ethnographic investigation into how young people are living and learning with new media in varied settings -- at home, in after-school programs, and in online spaces. Integrating twenty-three case studies -- which include Harry Potter podcasting, video-game playing, music sharing, and online romantic breakups -- in a unique collaborative authorship style, Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out is distinctive for its combination of in-depth description of specific group dynamics with conceptual analysis.
Academic Resilience in Retrospect

In a unique follow-up study, Hispanic (Dominican American) students identified as resilient 10 years ago were reinterviewed to assess their interim progress, and explore how their educational and professional achievements have evolved over time. By having the students reflect on their beliefs a decade ago and how those beliefs have evolved in light of their academic and professional achievements, the study provides a rare view into the time-sensitive phenomenon of enduring resilience. En un estudio de seguimiento único, se volvieron a entrevistar estudiantes hispanos (dominico americanos) identificados hace diez años como resistentes, para evaluar su progreso actual y explorar la evolución de sus logros educacionales y profesionales a través del tiempo. Se les pidió a los estudiantes que reflexionaran sobre sus valores de hace una década y cómo esos valores se han desarrollado debido a sus logros académicos y profesionales, el estudio provee una vista rara al fenómeno susceptible al tiempo de fortaleza o resistencia.
Clouds, Precipitation, and Marine Boundary Layer Structure during the MAGIC Field Campaign

The recent ship-based Marine ARM GCSS Pacific Cross-Section Intercomparison (GPCI) Investigation of Clouds (MAGIC) field campaign with the marine-capable Second ARM Mobile Facility (AMF2) deployed on the Horizon Lines cargo container M/V Spirit provided nearly 200 days of intraseasonal high-resolution observations of clouds, precipitation, and marine boundary layer (MBL) structure on multiple legs between Los Angeles, California, and Honolulu, Hawaii. During the deployment, MBL clouds exhibited a much higherfrequencyofoccurrencethanothercloudtypesandoccurredmoreofteninthewarmseasonthaninthe cold season. MBL clouds demonstrated a propensity to produce precipitation, which often evaporated before reaching the ocean surface. The formation of stratocumulus is strongly correlated to a shallow MBL with a strong inversion and a weak transition, while cumulus formation is associated with a much weaker inversion and stronger transition. The estimated inversion strength is shown to depend seasonally on the potential temperature at 700hPa. The location of the commencement of systematic MBL decoupling always occurred eastward of the locations of cloud breakup, and the systematic decoupling showed a strong moisture stratification.Theentrainment ofthedrywarmairabovetheinversionappearstobethedominantfactortriggering the systematic decoupling, while surface latent heat flux, precipitation, and diurnal circulation did not play major roles. MBL clouds broke up over a short spatial region due to the changes in the synoptic conditions, implying that in real atmospheric conditions the MBL clouds do not have enough time to evolve as in the idealized models.
What Did Quebec Not Want? Opposition to the Adoption of the Youth Criminal Justice Act in Quebec

The review of the Young Offenders Act highlighted major differences between Quebec, where it was opposed, and other parts of Canada, where the act was discredited. This article is an attempt to understand contextual elements that may explain this split and to describe briefly the orientation of the positions taken by Quebec actors. Contextual elements include a deep-rooted rehabilitation approach in services for young offenders; changes that predated the YOA and paved the way for its acceptance in Quebec; a lesser degree of Americanization of perceptions; and a perception that the review responded to political rather than policy needs. New legislation was viewed as unnecessary since desired changes could be made under the YOA. The law that was to replace the YOA was an attempt to impose a criminal justice model that was viewed as a step backwards that would threaten the educative and rehabilitation approach that had inspired the youth justice system built over the years in Quebec.
Destructive Leadership

In this article, we propose a framework for understanding destructive leadership that summarizes the extant destructive leadership research and extends it in new directions. By reviewing the current literature on destructive leadership and drawing on organizational leadership theory and the more general research on deviant behaviors in organizations, we identify the underlying features and mechanisms that define destructive leadership. Recognizing that each form of destructive leadership currently studied (e.g., abusive supervision, petty tyranny, and pseudo-transformational leadership) addresses aspects of destructive leadership but fails to capture the complete picture of the phenomenon, we clarify the boundaries among the constructs studied within the domain of destructive leadership, address some ambiguities about the nature of destructive leadership, make explicit some characteristics of destructive leadership that set it apart from other forms of leading, and integrate this thinking into a theoretical model that helps us understand the manifestations of destructive leadership, and their antecedents and consequences.
Should we target blood pressure in sepsis?

Objective:To review blood pressure targets and their implementation in sepsis. Design:Review of the hemodynamic intervention trials in sepsis. Main Results and Conclusions:Explicit blood pressure targets have been recommended for septic patients. The Surviving Sepsis Guidelines recommend vasopressors to achieve and maintain a mean arterial blood pressure of at least 65 mm Hg in patients not responding to initial fluid resuscitation. Patients remaining hypotensive despite efforts to increase blood pressure have up to twice as high mortality as those whose hypotension can be corrected with fluids and vasopressors. The actual blood pressure targets and their implementation are the main determinants of the patient's exposure to vasopressors. Several randomized controlled trials on hemodynamic interventions in septic shock show that patients continue to receive vasopressors despite the fact that blood pressure targets have been exceeded, and thus vasopressors should be reduced. Accordingly, patients are likely to be exposed to higher amounts of vasopressors and over longer periods of time than would be necessary if the predefined targets would be strictly implemented. Post hoc analyses suggest that in patients without refractory hypotension, the cumulative vasopressor load is independently associated with mortality. Accordingly, reduction of exposure to vasopressors has the potential of improving outcomes. This can be achieved by adhering to the lower currently proposed blood pressure limits. In addition, the lowest tolerable blood pressure levels should be reevaluated.
Exploring memory for product names advertised with humour

Three studies explored the effects of humour in advertising on brand name memory. Study 1 showed that humour impaired memory for products but enhanced memory for advertisements. Study 2 showed that brands that had been promoted in humorous advertisements were less accessible in memory than brands promoted in non-humorous advertisements. Study 3 separated conscious and unconscious memory components with the process-dissociation procedure 1 week after the ad exposure. The memory-reducing effect of humour was found to be due to conscious memory processes alone. Unconscious familiarity was not affected by humour. The results suggest that humour distracts consumers from consciously, but not unconsciously, remembering the brand names.
Hierarchical Factor Structure of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children

A Wherry-Wherry (1969) hierarchical factor analysis was performed on WISC subtest intercorrelations reported by Wechsler (1949). An hierarchical ability arrangement congruent with Vernon's (1950) structural paradigm was obtained. A strong general factor (g) was defined by positive loadings from all subtests and two relatively weak subgeneral factors; a subgeneral factor corresponding to Vernon's (1950) verbal-educational (v:ed) factor was defined by the verbal subtests and another by the performance sub-rests. The latter seemed to correspond to the spatial-perceptual (k:m) factor of Vernon's (1950) paradigm. These data not only provided strong support for the construct validity of the WISC as a measure of g but also provided some conditional support for Wechsler's (1949) decision to maintain separate verbal and performance IQs.
Immature Neurons From CNS Stem Cells Proliferate in Response to Platelet-Derived Growth Factor

Identifying external signals involved in the regulation of neural stem cell proliferation and differentiation is fundamental to the understanding of CNS development. In this study we show that platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) can act as a mitogen for neural precursor cells. Multipotent stem cells from developing CNS can be maintained in a proliferative state under serum-free conditions in the presence of fibroblast growth factor-2 (FGF2) and induced to differentiate into neurons, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes on withdrawal of the mitogen. PDGF has been suggested to play a role during the differentiation into neurons. We have investigated the effect of PDGF on cultured stem cells from embryonic rat cortex. The PDGF α-receptor is constantly expressed during differentiation of neural stem cells but is phosphorylated only after PDGF-AA treatment. In contrast, the PDGF β-receptor is hardly detectable in uncommitted cells, but its expression increases during differentiation. We show that PDGF stimulation leads to c-fos induction, 5′-bromo-2′deoxyuridine incorporation, and an increase in the number of immature cells stained with antibodies to neuronal markers. Our findings suggest that PDGF acts as a mitogen in the early phase of stem cell differentiation to expand the pool of immature neurons.
Stereotypes as Judgmental Heuristics: Evidence of Circadian Variations in Discrimination

The question of when people rely on stereotypic preconceptions in judging others was investigated in two studies. As a person's motivation or ability to process information systematically is diminished, the person may rely to an increasing extent on stereotypes, when available, as a way of simplifying the task of generating a response. It was hypothesized that circadian variations in arousal levels would be related to social perceivers' propensity to stereotype others by virtue of their effects on motivation and processing capacity. In support of this hypothesis, subjects exhibited stereotypic biases in their judgments to a much greater extent when the judgments were rendered at a nonoptimal time of day (i.e., in the morning for “night people” and in the evening for “morning people”). In Study One, this pattern was found in probability judgments concerning personal characteristics; in Study Two, the pattern was obtained in perceptions of guilt in allegations of student misbehavior. Results generalized over a range of different types of social stereotypes and suggest that biological processes should be considered in attempts to conceptualize the determinants of stereotyping.
A measurement system for the blood flow in peripheral territory

The aim of this study was to acquire non - invasively and to analyze plethysmographic waves, by measuring the electrical impedance of a peripheral segment. For measurements we built a device that is designed as an injection module with a microcontroller which generates a sinusoidal pulse with adjustable frequency (10–200 kHz) and adjustable intensity. In output, the device delivers an analoge signal representing the variation of the impedance of the explored section. Disposable electrodes were used for the injection of the sinusoidal pulse and the collection of the bioimpedance signal. The acquisition of the bioimpedance signal on PC was made easier by the use of a National Instrument data acquisition device, the NI USB 6009. The bioimpedance signal processing, the user interface and the display were managed by MATLAB. The results obtained from of measurements fell within the limits of values found in the literature.
High-quality, deterministic parallel placement for FPGAs on commodity hardware

In this paper, we describe the application of two parallelization strategies to the Quartus II FPGA placer. The first uses a pipelining approach and achieves speedups of 1.3x on two processing cores. The second uses a parallel moves approach and achieves speedups of 2.2x on four cores. Unlike all previous parallel moves algorithms, ours is deterministic and always gives the same answer as the serial version of the algorithm, without any significant reduction in performance. We also describe a process to quantify multi-core performance effects, such as memory subsystem limitations and explicit synchronization overhead, and fully describe these effects on a CAD tool for the first time. Memory limitations alone are found to cost up to 35% of total runtime. Unlike previous algorithms, our algorithms have negligible explicit synchronization overhead. These results are relevant to both CAD designers and to any developers seeking to parallelize existing software.
Collagen gel overlay induces apoptosis of polarized cells in cultures: disoriented cell death.

In this study, we attempted to investigate the response of polarized cells to inappropriate interaction with the extracellular matrix. Cell lines of epithelial [Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) and LLC-PK1], endothelial [bovine aortic endothelial cells (BAEC)], and mesenchymal (ESK-4 and NIH/3T3) origins were employed. With collagen gel overlay, MDCK cells underwent membrane remodeling and gradually developed lumen formation within 24 h. Apoptosis could also be observed following cell remodeling. The ratio of apoptosis was enhanced from 12.1 ± 2.4% within 24 h to 58.4 ± 9.8% at day 3, and finally the monolayer was disintegrated. Collagen gel overlay-induced apoptosis was not a result of physical stress, since agarose gel overlay did not induce any morphological alterations. All epithelial and endothelial cells examined developed apoptosis in response to collagen overlay. In contrast, collagen overlay did not affect growth of fibroblasts at all, although their growth under agarose gel was slightly hindered due to physical stress. Collagen overlay-induced apoptosis seems to be a unique phenomenon for polarized cells and thus is defined as "disoriented cell death. " Furthermore, anti-α2-integrin antibody could abolish collagen overlay-induced morphological changes and apoptosis in MDCK cells, indicating that signals through α2-integrin on the apical membrane are required for disoriented cell death. Finally, Bcl-2 overexpression prolonged survival of MDCK cells in response to collagen overlay, but these cells eventually developed apoptosis due to downregulation of Bcl-2 protein. These findings indicate that inappropriate cell-matrix interaction results in apoptosis, which may account for cell death mechanisms during developmental processes or under pathological conditions.
A Semi Range-Based Iterative Localization Algorithm for Cognitive Radio Networks

In cognitive radio networks (CRNs), knowledge of the position of the primary users (PUs) is important as it can be used to avoid harmful interference to the primary network while at the same time be exploited to improve the spectrum utilization. In this paper, a semi range-based localization algorithm is proposed for secondary users (SUs) in CRNs to estimate the positions of the PUs. The basic idea of the proposed algorithm is to take advantage of the estimated detection probabilities, which can be obtained from the binary detection indicators of the SUs, to estimate the distances between themselves and the PUs. Moreover, the accuracy of the proposed localization algorithm is further improved by introducing both a weighted least-squares method and an iterative procedure. The Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) of the mean-square error (MSE) of the proposed localization estimator is also derived. A scenario with malicious users (MUs) is further considered, where the proposed method is modified to detect MUs. To illustrate the benefits of localization, we design a location-aware medium access control (MAC) protocol and show that significant throughput gains can be realized over conventional MAC protocols.
Sketching User Experiences: The Workbook

In Sketching User Experiences: The Workbook, you will learn, through step-by-step instructions and exercises, various sketching methods that will let you express your design ideas about user experiences across time. Collectively, these methods will be your sketching repertoire: a toolkit where you can choose the method most appropriate for developing your ideas, which will help you cultivate a culture of experience-based design and critique in your workplace.Features standalone modules detailing methods and exercises for practitioners who want to learn and develop their sketching skills Extremely practical, with illustrated examples detailing all steps on how to do a method Excellent for individual learning, for classrooms, and for a team that wants to develop a culture of design practice Perfect complement to Buxton's Sketching User Experience or any UX text
Block-based Deep Belief Networks for face recognition

This paper presents research findings on the use of Deep Belief Networks (DBNs) for face recognition. Experiments were conducted to compare the performance of a DBN trained using whole images with that of several DBN trained using image blocks. Image blocks are obtained when the face images are divided into smaller blocks. The objective of using image blocks is to improve the performance of the present DBN to visual variations. To test this hypothesis, the proposed block-based DBN was tested on different databases, which contain a variety of visual variations. Simulation results on these databases show that the proposed block-based DBN is effective against lighting variation. The proposed approach is also compared with other illumination invariant methods and was found to demonstrate higher recognition accuracies.
Exploring Multimodal Visual Features for Continuous Affect Recognition

This paper presents our work in the Emotion Sub-Challenge of the 6th Audio/Visual Emotion Challenge and Workshop (AVEC 2016), whose goal is to explore utilizing audio, visual and physiological signals to continuously predict the value of the emotion dimensions (arousal and valence). As visual features are very important in emotion recognition, we try a variety of handcrafted and deep visual features. For each video clip, besides the baseline features, we extract multi-scale Dense SIFT features (MSDF), and some types of Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) features to recognize the expression phases of the current frame. We train linear Support Vector Regression (SVR) for every kind of features on the RECOLA dataset. Multimodal fusion of these modalities is then performed with a multiple linear regression model. The final Concordance Correlation Coefficient (CCC) we gained on the development set are 0.824 for arousal, and 0.718 for valence; and on the test set are 0.683 for arousal and 0.642 for valence.
Camera pose determination from a single view of parallel lines

In this paper, we present a method for finding the closed form solutions to the problem of determining the pose of a camera with respect to a given set of parallel lines in 3D space from a single view, while it can not be solved by previous methods for the perspective-n-line (PnL) problem. The main idea of our method is that, firstly the distances from the optical center of the camera to these parallel lines are determined, and then the pose parameters are recovered using the obtained distances. The problem of finding these optical-center-to-line distances in fact is the degenerated perspective-n-point (PnP) problem, and we proved that there are at most two solutions for the degenerated P3P problem. An application of our method is to distinguish crosswalks and staircases aiding for the partially sighted. The method also provides a different way to investigate the problem of shape from texture.
Conflict of Ethnic Identity and the Language of Education Policy in Contemporary Ethiopia

This paper examines the current language policy of Ethiopia, especially its significance for the educational systems of the country.1 The policy in its present form was proclaimed in 1991 after the present government drove out the former Marxist-Leninist military junta that had ruled the country for the preceding 20 years.2 The language policy, along with other human rights and ethnic-related policies, was incorporated into the new constitution that took effect in 1996. The language policy provides for Ethiopia’s more than 90 language groups to develop and use their respective languages in the courts, in governmental and other political entities, in cultural and business communications, and in education. The policies do not, however, specify which, how many, or in what order the languages should enjoy priority in governmental support for further development, nor do they hint at any limits as to the number and extent of the languages. In the absence of such specifications, the presumption is that all of them should have the right to find the necessary resources, whether through competition for governmental support or through other means. Practical considerations would suggest that given limited resources in the country or any given linguistic community, the law should provide some guidelines to balance the ideal and the practical. It does not do this; consequently, eventual conflict among the tribal groups is almost certain.
Robust Geometric Self-Calibration of Generic Multi-Projector Camera Systems

Calibration of multi-projector-camera systems (MPCS) is a cumbersome and time-consuming process. It is of great importance to have robust, fast and accurate calibration procedures at hand for a wide variety of practical applications. We propose a fully automated self-calibration method for arbitrarily complex MPCS. It enables reliable and accurate intrinsic and extrinsic calibration without any human parameter tuning. We evaluated the proposed methods using more than ten multi-projection datasets ranging from a toy castle set up consisting of three cameras and one projector up to a half dome display system with more than 30 devices. Comparisons to reference calibrations, which were generated using the standard checkerboard calibration approach [44], show the reliability of our proposed pipeline, while a ground truth evaluation also shows that the resulting reconstructed point cloud accurately matches the shape of the reference geometry. Besides being fully automatic without the necessity of parameter fine tuning, the proposed method also significantly reduces the installation time of MPCS compared to checkerboard-based methods and makes it more suitable for real-world applications.