Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Towards increasing learning speed and robustness of XCSF: experimenting with larger offspring set sizes

The XCS classifier system has been successfully applied to various problem domains including datamining, boolean classifications, and function approximation. In all these applications just two classifiers were reproduced in a match or action set, given a time-recency threshold was met in the set. In this paper, we investigate the effect of selecting more than two classifiers for reproduction in XCSF. We either increase the number of selected classifiers or select a number of classifiers relative to the current match set size. In the functions investigated, both approaches showed a highly significant increase in initial learning speed. Also, in less challenging approximation tasks, the final accuracy reached is not affected by the approach. However, in harder functions, learning may stall due to over-reproductions of inaccurate, ill-estimated classifiers. Thus, we propose an adaptive offspring size rate that may depend on the current reliability of classifier parameter estimates. First results with a fixed offspring set size decrement show promising results. Future work is needed to speed-up XCS's learning progress and adjust its learning speed to the perceived problem difficulty.
Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Social Interest Index

Social interest was Alfred Adler’s most important personality trait, and it reflects one’s genuine concern for the welfare of all individuals. Several measures of social interest are available, and the Social Interest Index (SII) is one of the most popular in current use. This study is the first to report the results of a confirmatory factor analysis of the SII. Using college students, three models were tested in an effort to find support for the factorial validity of this scale. All analyses showed a poor fit between the theoretical model and scale items. The results paint a fairly negative picture of the factor structure of this important scale.
On the performance of redundant residue number system codes assisted STBC design

In this paper, we propose a novel application of Redundant Residue Number System (RRNS) codes to Space-Time Block Codes (STBCs) design. Based on the so-called “Direct-Mapping” scheme, the link between residues and complex signal constellations is optimized. We derive upper bounds on the codeword error probability of RRNS-STBC and characterize its achievable diversity gain assuming maximum likelihood decoding (MLD). The knowledge of apriori probabilities of residue generation is utilized to implement a probability based Distance-Aware Direct Mapping scheme for M-ary modulation which further improves the error performance of the RRNS-STBC coding scheme.
Is constrained leisure an internally homogeneous concept

Abstract The internal homogeneity or differentiation of the concept of constrained leisure is investigated by assessing similarities and differences in patterns of the importance of 12 constraints items in relation to two distinct indicators of this general concept (ceasing participation in a former activity, and desire to participate in a new activity) rather than the single measure typical of previous research. By using data from two similar public recreation surveys, the findings show that the strength and relative importance of 12 items as reasons and barriers were generally the same, except that the cost of equipment was more frequently identified as a deterrent to beginning participation, whereas being physically unable to participate was more frequently identified as a reason for ceasing participation. These results were confirmed by internal replication when the data were broken down by selected activities and respondents’ age. The findings indicate that constrained leisure must be viewed as an in.
Cross-Sectional Study of Differences in Speech Understanding Between Users and Nonusers of Estrogen Replacement Therapy

The purpose of this study was to examine whether women who use estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) differ from women not using ERT on several measures of speech understanding. Participants (n = 38, 60 to 74 years) completed a battery of tests including pure-tone audiometry, the Dichotic Sentence Identification (DSI) test, a test of auditory-only and auditory-visual sentence recognition, and a measure of speech understanding in reverberation. In general, women who used ERT were better able to understand distorted speech than were nonusers of ERT.
Integration and Regulation in Organizations: A Contextual Approach

O ut research on integration and regulation in organizations is based upon concerns we share about the way organizations adapt or, rather, fail to adapt in our society. We have observed situations in many kinds of organizations where most people are aware that values are not being served, concerns are not being met and issues are not being resolved, but where either no action is taken or, if it is, it fails to achieve desired results. We call these situations social deadlocks and our long-term normative interest is to see whether they can be broken. ̂ Although this paper is addressed to methodological aspects of our work, we hope to demonstrate how the design of our research project and the concepts and methods we use are guided by these concerns. Starting with a very brief outline of three of the cases, we then identify a number of common themes and concepts as the key research interests. Some of the problems of pursuing these interests are raised in terms of problems of definition, the collection of evidence and of inference. We argue that attempts to deal with these problems lead us to adopt a particular jocus, design and approach for research. The paper then moves to a description of our methods and to some of the problems of analysis and explanation associated with the contextualist style of research we have adopted. Finally, we go back to the cases to demonstrate how our concepts and theories are refined by the research process, which is essentially a dialectic between emergent and imposed frameworks.
Partnerships, New Labour and the governance of welfare

Contents: Introduction Martin Powell and Caroline Glendinning Partnerships, quasi-networks and social policy Martin Powell and Mark Exworthy Partnership and the remaking of welfare governance John Clarke and Caroline Glendinning What is a 'successful' partnership and how can it be measured? Bob Hudson and Brian Hardy Partnership at the front line: the WellFamily service and primary care Karen Clarke and Kirstein Rummery Building capacity for collaboration in English Health Action Zones (HAZs) Marian Barnes and Helen Sullivan Partnerships for local governance: citizens, communities and accountability Guy Daly and Howard Davis Partnerships with the voluntary sector: can Compacts work? Pete Alcock and Duncan Scott Dangerous liaisons: local government and the voluntary and community sectors Gary Craig and Marilyn Taylor 'Together we'll crack it': partnership and the governance of crime prevention Gordon Hughes and Eugene McLaughlin Regeneration partnerships under New Labour: a case of creeping centralisation Jonathan Davies Education Action Zones Sharon Gewirtz, Marny Dickson, David Halpin, Geoff Whitty and Sally Power Public-private partnerships - the case of PFI Sally Ruane Public-private partnerships in pensions policies Sue Ward Conclusions: towards a theory of welfare partnerships Kirstein Rummery
Object recognition system design in regions of interest based on AdaBoost algorithm

Automotive technology has been recently challenged with the issue of ensuring and improving road safety. Several academic institutions and automobile manufacturers are making efforts to develop technology for automotive safety. This study proposes an object recognition system based on the adaptive boosting algorithm that integrates a laser range finder and a camera. The laser range finder is used to measure the distances of objects in front of the vehicle and then, their central position and length can be calculated. The camera is used to capture sequences of images. The positions of objects in the image are extracted using the corner detection method and optical flow. Coordinate transformation based on curve fitting is used to integrate the distance information from the laser range finder with the information contained in the image. The adaptive boosting algorithm is adopted to recognize objects in front of the vehicle as pedestrians or cars. Finally, the system will trigger an alarm once an obstacle is detected in a region of interest. The experimental results show that the accuracy rate is improved after the combination of the sensors.
A perturbation and observation routine used to control a power converter

This paper presents a programable perturbation and observation control implementation for a wind generation system and its power electronic converter. The objective of the method in this particular application is to adjust the power delivered to charge a battery to its maximum and allowable value, function of the real values of several parameters and their continuous variation, the most important the wind velocity and the turbine efficiency. Also, to improve the power throughput and to use the turbine and generator marginal zones of operation, an unusual power converter is used, allowing a wide range for the input voltage values. The implemented control is continuously measuring the actual power and looks for a new and powerful operation point.
Enhancing the Biomechanical Performance of Anisotropic Nanofibrous Scaffolds in Tendon Tissue Engineering: Reinforcement with Cellulose Nanocrystals

Anisotropically aligned electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds based on natural/synthetic polymer blends have been established as a reasonable compromise between biological and biomechanical performance for tendon tissue engineering (TE) strategies. However, the limited tensile properties of these biomaterials restrict their application in this field due to the load‐bearing nature of tendon/ligament tissues. Herein, the use of cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) as reinforcing nanofillers in aligned electrospun scaffolds based on a natural/synthetic polymer blend matrix, poly‐ε‐caprolactone/chitosan (PCL/CHT) is reported. The incorporation of small amounts of CNCs (up to 3 wt%) into tendon mimetic nanofiber bundles has a remarkable biomaterial‐toughing effect (85% ± 5%, p < 0.0002) and raises the scaffolds mechanical properties to tendon/ligament relevant range (σ = 39.3 ± 1.9 MPa and E = 540.5 ± 83.7 MPa, p < 0.0001). Aligned PCL/CHT/CNC nanocomposite fibrous scaffolds meet not only the mechanical requirements for tendon TE applications but also provide tendon mimetic extracellular matrix (ECM) topographic cues, a key feature for maintaining tendon cell's morphology and behavior. The strategy proposed here may be extended to other anisotropic aligned nanofibrous scaffolds based on natural/synthetic polymer blends and enable the full exploitation of the advantages provided by their tendon mimetic fibrous structures in tendon TE.
Effects of Political Framing and Perceiver's Social Position on Trait Attributions of a Terrorist/Freedom Fighter

Positioning theory was invoked to predict that framing effects of political violence are moderated by the social position of the message receiver. As a reference, for the purpose of this study, the societal structural configurations of Malay Muslims and Filipino Christians led to their classification as respondents from the Dominant Social Position, and Malay Christians and Filipino Muslims as participants in the Nondominant Social Position, respectively. Respondents read a vignette about either a terrorist or a freedom fighter who bombed a building, and then described the story character using trait attributes on a semantic differential scale. Respondents from disadvantaged groups preferred freedom fighters over terrorists, whereas respondents from dominant groups evaluated terrorists more highly than freedom fighters.
« Convergence ou résilience ? Une analyse de classification hiérarchique des régimes providentiels des pays avancés »

Dans la foulee des travaux de Gosta Esping-Andersen, plusieurs etudes ont defini divers regimes providentiels en Europe occidentale et en Amerique du Nord. L’examen d’un ensemble d’indicateurs sociaux au moyen d’analyses de classification hierarchique permet de confirmer l’existence de tels modeles, qui correspondent a des articulations specifiques entre la famille, l’Etat et le marche pour produire les ressources necessaires au bien-etre des individus. En fait, notre analyse permet de distinguer quatre ensembles de pays, correspondant aux trois regimes identifies a l’origine par Esping-Andersen — social-democrate, liberal, conservateur — auxquels s’ajoute, comme l’avaient anticipe plusieurs auteurs, un regime distinct de ce dernier, le regime latin. Ces resultats, qui persistent quand on passe des annees 1980 aux annees 1990, relevent aussi l’existence de liens etroits et durables de causalite reciproque entre l’organisation des programmes sociaux dans les societes analysees, les situations sociales qui sont en partie le resultat des politiques elaborees, et, enfin, le niveau de participation civique, qui conduit les gens a se mobiliser (ou non) collectivement pour donner forme aux programmes sociaux. Cette analyse comparative permet de situer le Canada parmi les mondes du « capitalisme providentiel ».
Aligning Teacher Compensation with Systemic School Reform: Skill-Based Pay and Group-Based Performance Rewards

Standards-based education reform requires that teachers develop a new array of professional knowledge and skills to teach a thinking-oriented curriculum, engage in the organization and management of schools, and produce higher levels of student achievement. Such a change is systemic and requires that all aspects of the school organization be restructured. This article describes a potential teacher compensation structure that is consistent with these types of systemic and normative changes and that is an example of the kinds of compensation practices they require for successful implementation. Our purpose is to spur systemic thinking about the role of compensation by offering a concrete proposal that includes skill- and competency-based pay as well as group performance awards.
Normas de concretude para 909 palavras da língua portuguesa

Concreteness norms were collected for 909 words using a seven point judgment scale, where each extremity highly represented the abstract or concrete levels, respectively. Results showed a bi-modal distribution suggesting that words may be classified either as concrete or abstract. The average reliability of the norms was r=0.97. Concreteness judgments were not influenced by sex, age, word written frequency or category size. The results indicate that concreteness may be considered as an independent word attribute.
Violable is variable: Optimality theory and linguistic variation

ABSTRACT Optimality theory (OT) (McCarthy & Prince, 1993; Prince & Smolensky, 1993) has been proposed as a constraint-based theory of phonology in which the phonological facts of each language are accounted for by a language-specific ordering of a universal inventory of constraints. The constraints, expressing desirable (i.e., optimal) phonological states, evaluate possible candidate forms, selecting the optimal output. Any constraint may be violated by a surface form if it is overridden by a higherranked constraint; the ordinal sequence of constraints provides a weak quantification of constraint effects. Variability has been treated within OT by varying constraint orders. This model is analogous in several important respects to the variable rule model (VR) of Labov (1969) and Cedergren and Sankoff (1974). In VR, variable constraints express desirable phonological states which are variably realized on the surface, when not overridden by other constraints; constraints are probabilistically quantified. This article compares the OT and VR models, arguing that the VR model is superior on theoretical and empirical grounds: constraint effects in VR are stable, transparent, and learnable. Moreover, the probabilistic treatment of constraint effects allows VR to model successfully cases in which multiple violations of a single constraint lead to a cumulative reduction in likelihood of a form; such cases cannot be efficiently treated in OT.
Linking Schools and Social Services: The Case of Child Abuse Reporting

Coordination of schools and child protective services (CPS) agencies on child abuse reporting is required by law because school staff are mandated to report suspected maltreatment to CPS agencies. National data reveal that school staff generally comply with the reporting mandate. Although school district policy and resource limitations reinforce compliance with the reporting laws, CPS agency policies designed to limit reports and to focus resources on the most serious cases are inconsistent with district policies. As a result, school staff reports may be greeted with annoyance and rejection. The implications of this apparent conflict for child protection and for other coordination efforts are discussed.
Parallel matrix multiplication on memristor-based computation-in-memory architecture

One of the most important constraints of today's architectures for data-intensive applications is the limited bandwidth due to the memory-processor communication bottleneck. This significantly impacts performance and energy. For instance, the energy consumption share of communication and memory access may exceed 80%. Recently, the concept of Computation-in-Memory (CIM) was proposed, which is based on the integration of storage and computation in the same physical location using a crossbar topology and non-volatile resistive-switching memristor technology. To illustrate the tremendous potential of CIM architecture in exploiting massively parallel computation while reducing the communication overhead, we present a communication-efficient mapping of a large-scale matrix multiplication algorithm on the CIM architecture. The experimental results show that, depending on the matrix size, CIM architecture exhibits several orders of magnitude higher performance in total execution time and two orders of magnitude better in total energy consumption than the multicore-based on the shared memory architecture.
Rheb (Ras Homologue Enriched in Brain)-dependent Mammalian Target of Rapamycin Complex 1 (mTORC1) Activation Becomes Indispensable for Cardiac Hypertrophic Growth after Early Postnatal Period*

Background: Rheb (Ras homologue enriched in brain) regulates mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1). Results: mTORC1 activity and cardiac hypertrophy are attenuated in Rheb-deficient hearts after the early postnatal period. Conclusion: Rheb-dependent mTORC1 activation becomes essential for cardiomyocyte hypertrophic growth after the early postnatal period. Significance: The findings provide insight into the regulatory mechanism of mTORC1 in postnatal heart development. Cardiomyocytes proliferate during fetal life but lose their ability to proliferate soon after birth and further increases in cardiac mass are achieved through an increase in cell size or hypertrophy. Mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) is critical for cell growth and proliferation. Rheb (Ras homologue enriched in brain) is one of the most important upstream regulators of mTORC1. Here, we attempted to clarify the role of Rheb in the heart using cardiac-specific Rheb-deficient mice (Rheb−/−). Rheb−/− mice died from postnatal day 8 to 10. The heart-to-body weight ratio, an index of cardiomyocyte hypertrophy, in Rheb−/− was lower than that in the control (Rheb+/+) at postnatal day 8. The cell surface area of cardiomyocytes isolated from the mouse hearts increased from postnatal days 5 to 8 in Rheb+/+ mice but not in Rheb−/− mice. Ultrastructural analysis indicated that sarcomere maturation was impaired in Rheb−/− hearts during the neonatal period. Rheb−/− hearts exhibited no difference in the phosphorylation level of S6 or 4E-BP1, downstream of mTORC1 at postnatal day 3 but showed attenuation at postnatal day 5 or 8 compared with the control. Polysome analysis revealed that the mRNA translation activity decreased in Rheb−/− hearts at postnatal day 8. Furthermore, ablation of eukaryotic initiation factor 4E-binding protein 1 in Rheb−/− mice improved mRNA translation, cardiac hypertrophic growth, sarcomere maturation, and survival. Thus, Rheb-dependent mTORC1 activation becomes essential for cardiomyocyte hypertrophic growth after early postnatal period.
Detection and Characterization of β-Lactam Resistance in Bacillus cereus PTCC 1015

In the present study, detection, isolation, and characterization of β-lactamases from Bacillus cereus PTCC 1015 were investigated. B. cereus was inoculated in nutrient broth containing ampicillin (50 μg.ml−1) for 24 h (35°C, 200 rpm). Activity measurements were carried out against ampicillin (0.1 mg.ml−1) and cephalexin (0.08 mg.ml−1) by a spectrophotometric method at different conditions (pH 6–10, temperatures 25—45°C). Maximum penicillinase and cephalosporinase activity was observed at pH 7. The optimized temperatures for penicillinase and cephalosporinase activity were 30 and 40°C, respectively. At the above conditions, maximum enzymatic activity was calculated as 0.89 ± 0.014 and 0.037 ± 0.001 units against ampicillin and cephalexin.
Motivation and the Goal Theory of Current Concerns

Synopsis. —Behavior and experience are organized around the pursuit and enjoyment of goals. Accordingly, this chapter first discusses basic motivational concepts that address the processes involvedinchoosingandpursuinggoals,andplacesgoalpursuitwithintheframeworkofthetheoryof current concerns. It examines how people choose goals and traces the effects of having a goal and of the way the goal pursuit ends, in goal attainment or relinquishment. It integrates applicable neuroscientific findings that shed light on these processes. Goal choice depends on the value and costs assigned by the chooser to each alternative (incentive) and its perceived attainability, subject to such complicating factors as forecasting biases and time frame. Commitment to a goal pursuit launches a latent, time-binding brain process (a current concern) that sensitizes the individual to respond emotionally and to notice, recall, think about, dream about, and act on cues associated with thegoal pursuit. These processes affect one another and are subject to implicit (nonconscious) as well as explicit influences. Goal pursuits vary according to whether the goal is an approach or avoidance goal, the time frame for action, the anticipation of the details and difficulties of the goal pursuit, and the degree of conflict with other goals. Emotional responses determine incentive values, serve as evaluative feedback during goal pursuits, and accompany consummation of or disengagement from the goal. The process of disengagement normally entails a sequence of emotional changes: invigoration, anger, depression, and recovery. Each of these components of goal choice and pursuit cangoawry,leadingtoavarietyofdifficultiesthatbecomereflectedinanxiety,depression,alienation, interpersonal and occupational problems, substance abuse, suicide, and other forms of psychological disturbance. Motivational structure (an individual’s pattern of goal striving) is an important determinant of well-being, the sense that one’s life is meaningful, and self-regulation. The chapter briefly considers the implications of the findings for counseling interventions for motivational problems that deter clients from choosing and pursuing the goals that can potentially bring them happiness and fulfillment, considerations that are discussed at length in the book’s remaining chapters.