Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A multi-homing extension of wireless node implementation in NS-2

Due to the rapid growth of wireless communication, it is now believed that wireless devices with multiple interface support will highly increase in the near future. In the research community of Network Simulator, there has recently been quite a large interest in extending the current wireless node implementation so as to be able to include more than one radio interface to work simultaneously. We focus our efforts on the extension of multi-homing ability of ns-2, which has been the most used network simulator in wireless network research. Multi-homing here is defined as the ability of a single end-point to support multiple IP addresses by the use of multiple interfaces. The ns-2 simulation environment is a flexible tool for network engineers to investigate how various protocols perform with different configurations and topologies. However, the support for wireless and mobile networking in ns-2 is monolithic and not entirely consistent with basic design principles so that it makes it quite difficult, if not impossible, to extend a multi-homing support based on current mobilenode design. This paper describes how we extend the ns-2 framework to include support for an imititated wireless multi-homed node.
A model and measure for quality service user involvement in health research

In the UK, researchers across the health professions are increasingly being encouraged by policymakers and research commissioners to ‘involve’ service users in research. A recent review shows there is some evidence that involving patients, carers, relatives, social or community groups directly and actively as part of the research process can improve the conduct of research studies and the impact of the findings. Yet, little is known about how involvement is played out within research studies and there is a need for more critical and consistent assessment of what constitutes quality involvement. The overall purpose of this paper is to support learning about quality service user involvement in health care research. The aim is to provide service users and researchers with a structured and consistent way to reflect and report on their experiences. A range of philosophical and social theories of power and empowerment were reviewed and synthesized to create a model of quality involvement. The analysis encompassed both service user factors (what a person feels able to do, whether they feel their potential is being fulfilled and their sense of being valued) alongside research factors (research relationships, ways of doing research, research structures). A model is presented (Quality Involvement Framework), which contributes theoretically informed perspectives about the meaning and assessment of quality service user involvement in research. The model is developed as a practical measure (a Quality Involvement Questionnaire) for researchers and service users to be more reflective about the constraints and possibilities of involvement. The tools presented here could help research teams to examine personal factors and the research contexts that influence the nature and quality of service user involvement in research. They may also help to identify reoccurring issues about quality which could inform future policy, practice and research.
Masculinity and Non-Traditional Occupations: Men's Talk in Women's Work

Occupation segregation is a persistent aspect of the labour market, and scholars have often researched what happens when women and men enter into what are seen to be ‘non-traditional’ work roles for their sex. Research on men within women's roles has concentrated mainly on the challenges to a masculine identity, while research on workplace language has focused on women's linguistic behaviour in masculine occupations. To date, there has been relatively little research into the linguistic behaviour of men working in occupations seen as women's work (e.g., nursing, primary school teaching). To address this gap, this article focuses on men's discursive behaviour and identity construction within the feminized occupation of nursing. Empirical data collected by three male nurses in a hospital in Northern Ireland is explored using discourse analysis and the Community of Practice paradigm. This paper discusses how the participants linguistically present themselves as nurses by performing relational work and creating an in-group with their nurse colleagues by actively using an inherently ‘feminine’ discourse style.
Role of Chemotaxis in the Ecology of Denitrifiers

A modification of the Adler capillary assay was used to evaluate the chemotactic responses of several denitrifiers to nitrate and nitrite. Strong positive chemotaxis was observed to NO3− and NO2− by soil isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Pseudomonas fluorescens, and Pseudomonas stutzeri, with the peak response occurring at 10−3 M for both attractants. In addition, a strong chemoattraction to serine (peak response at 10−2 M), tryptone, and a soil extract, but not to NH4+, was observed for all denitrifiers tested. Chemotaxis was not dependent on a previous growth on NO3−, NO2−, or a soil extract, and the chemoattraction to NO3− occurred when the bacteria were grown aerobically or anaerobically. However, the best response to NO3− was usually observed when the cells were grown aerobically with 10 mM NO3− in the growth medium. Capillary tubes containing 10−3 M NO3− submerged into soil-water mixtures elicited a significant chemotactic response to NO3− by the indigenous soil microflora, the majority of which were Pseudomonas spp. A chemotactic strain of P. fluorescens also was shown to survive significantly better in aerobic and anaerobic soils than was a nonmotile strain of the same species. Both strains had equal growth rates in liquid cultures. Thus, chemotaxis may be one mechanism by which denitrifiers successfully compete for available NO3− and NO2−, and which may facilitate the survival of naturally occurring populations of some denitrifiers.
Design of an area-efficient partial-sum architecture for polar decoders based on new matrix generator

This paper proposes an area-efficient partial-sum generator (PSG) architecture for polar decoder implementation. High-throughput PSG designs mainly consist of an encoding matrix generator and a partial-sum update circuit. The matrix generator conventionally is built by cascading a series of D flip-flops and XOR gates. By decomposing the target matrix into the Kronecker product of smaller matrices, this paper proposes a new multi-level matrix generator architecture built by interconnection of several matrix generators of small sizes and additional arrays of AND gates. The additional AND gates incurred by our new matrix generator can be integrated with those AND gates required in the partial-sum update circuit when forming PSG such that only two extra AND gates are required for the proposed PSG based on two-level matrix generator architecture. The required number of D flip-flops and XOR gates of two-level matrix generator is only about 50% of the conventional one. Considering the entire PSG module, the overall reduction ratio is still more than 16%. The proposed PSG design can be applied for various kinds of successive cancellation polar decoder architectures.
Mikro Öğretim Uygulamalarının Çok-Yüzeyli Rasch Ölçme Modeli ile Analizi

The purpose of this research study is to analyze microteaching applications by using the many-facet Rasch measurement model. A survey method is used in this research. The working group consists of 32 student teachers who attended “Specific Teaching Methods” course in the Education for Computer and Teaching Technologies Department, Faculty of Education at Firat University in 2008-2009 academic year and whose microteaching applications were completed. The analysis of the observed data about microteaching applications has been done through the many-facet Rasch measurement model. The facets were used in the research (microteaching applications of the student teachers, judge severity/leniency and the relevancy of the used items/ tasks) simultaneously as the analysis was ranked among each other. According to the results, the student teacher coded as P9 seems to be the most talented, whereas the P25 coded seems to be the most untalented. Furthermore, the most lenient judge was J1 while the severest judge was J2. Additional measurement tools and methods should be employed in order to find out the reasons for bias in studies carried out with Rasch Model.
The Antibiotic Monensin Causes Cell Cycle Disruption of Toxoplasma gondii Mediated through the DNA Repair Enzyme TgMSH-1

ABSTRACT Monensin is a polyether ionophore antibiotic that is widely used in the control of coccidia in animals. Despite its significance in veterinary medicine, little is known about its mode of action and potential mechanisms of resistance in coccidian parasites. Here we show that monensin causes accumulation of the coccidian Toxoplasma gondii at an apparent late-S-phase cell cycle checkpoint. In addition, experiments utilizing a monensin-resistant T. gondii mutant show that this effect of monensin is dependent on the function of a mitochondrial homologue of the MutS DNA damage repair enzyme (TgMSH-1). Furthermore, the same TgMSH-1-dependent cell cycle disruption is observed with the antiparasitic ionophore salinomycin and the DNA alkylating agent methyl nitrosourea. Our results suggest a novel mechanism for the mode of action of monensin and salinomycin on coccidial parasites, in which the drug activates an MSH-1-dependent cell cycle checkpoint by an unknown mechanism, ultimately leading to the death of the parasite. This model would indicate that cell cycle disruption is an important mediator of drug susceptibility and resistance to ionophoric antibiotics in coccidian parasites.
Back-off action selection in summary space-based POMDP dialogue systems

This paper deals with the issue of invalid state-action pairs in the Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) framework, with a focus on real-world tasks where the need for approximate solutions exacerbates this problem. In particular, when modelling dialogue as a POMDP, both the state and the action space must be reduced to smaller scale summary spaces in order to make learning tractable. However, since not all actions are valid in all states, the action proposed by the policy in summary space sometimes leads to an invalid action when mapped back to master space. Some form of back-off scheme must then be used to generate an alternative action. This paper demonstrates how the value function derived during reinforcement learning can be used to order back-off actions in an N-best list. Compared to a simple baseline back-off strategy and to a strategy that extends the summary space to minimise the occurrence of invalid actions, the proposed N-best action selection scheme is shown to be significantly more robust.
Embedded line scan image sensors: The low cost alternative for high speed imaging

In this paper we propose a low-cost high-speed imaging line scan system. We replace an expensive industrial line scan camera and illumination with a custom-built set-up of cheap off-the-shelf components, yielding a measurement system with comparative quality while costing about 20 times less. We use a low-cost linear (1D) image sensor, cheap optics including a LED-based or LASER-based lighting and an embedded platform to process the images. A step-by-step method to design such a custom high speed imaging system and select proper components is proposed. Simulations allowing to predict the final image quality to be obtained by the set-up has been developed. Finally, we applied our method in a lab, closely representing the real-life cases. Our results shows that our simulations are very accurate and that our low-cost line scan set-up acquired image quality compared to the high-end commercial vision system, for a fraction of the price.
A Selection Strategy to Improve Cloze Question Quality

We present a strategy to improve the quality of automatically generated cloze and open cloze questions which are used by the REAP tutoring system for assessment in the ill-defined domain of English as a Second Language vocabulary learning. Cloze and open cloze questions are fill-in-the-blank questions with and without multiple choice, respectively. The REAP intelligent tutoring system [1] uses cloze questions as part of its assessment and practice module. First we describe a baseline technique to generate cloze questions which uses sample sentences from WordNet [2]. We then show how we can refine this technique with linguistically motivated features to generate better cloze and open cloze questions. A group of English as a Second Language teachers evaluated the quality of the cloze questions generated by both techniques. They also evaluated how well-defined the context of the open cloze questions was. The baseline technique produced high quality cloze questions 40% of the time, while the new strategy produced high quality cloze questions 66% of the time. We also compared our approach to manually authored open cloze questions.
Reversible effects of dibutyryl cAMP on laminin and type IV collagen secretion from retinoic acid treated F9 cells

The effects of dibutyryl cAMP on the differentiation of embryonal carcinoma F9 cells were studied mainly using the secretion of laminin and type IV collagen as the marker. For this purpose, F9 cells were labeled with 35Smethionine and radioactive proteins in the medium were analyzed by SDS‐polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Treatment of F9 cells with retinoic acid alone induced differentiation into cells secreting type IV collagen. The combination of retinoic acid and dibutyryl cAMP stimulated laminin secretion in addition to type IV collagen secretion. This effect of dibutyryl cAMP was observed only 16 h after adding dibutyryl cAMP. Immunofluorescence staining demonstrated that the majority of the cells in culture were converted into cells secreting laminin under these conditions. In contrast to the irreversible effect of retinoic acid, the effect of dibutyryl cAMP on laminin and type IV collagen secretion was reversible at least during the first 5 days of maintaining cells in the medium containing retinoic acid plus dibutyryl cAMP. Removal of dibutyryl cAMP from the culture medium decreased the protein secretion to the basal levels within 2 days. This reversibility was not due to a change in cell number. An in vitro translation assay also suggested the reversible effect of dibutyryl cAMP on the levels of laminin mRNA. Coinciding with variations of the protein secretion, a reversible and homogeneous change in the morphology of retinoic acid generated F9 cells was observed by dibutyryl cAMP.
Mining Cross-Modal Association Rules for Web Image Retrieval

To alleviate the known semantic gap, it is necessary to integrate the two-modal parts of Web images, i.e. the low-level visual features and high-level semantic concepts (which are usually represented by keywords), for Web image retrieval. In this paper, we associate the keyword and visual features of Web images from a different prospective and a new approach based on the cross-modal association rules is proposed to automatically integrate the keyword and visual features for Web image retrieval. A customized mining process is developed for the special association rule that crosses the two modals of Web images. The cross-modal association rule effectively associates the keyword and visual feature clusters, and seamlessly integrates the two modals of Web images in retrieval process. The proposed approach is utilized successfully in a Web image retrieval system named VAST (VisuAl & SemanTic image search).
Living cohabitation in the Republic of Korea : the reported experiences of lesbians, gays and heterosexuals

In contemporary western culture, cohabitation is not a major issue – it has become a normal practice in everyday life. This is not at all the case in Korea where the institution of marriage is still considered the pivotal relation that authorises ‘adult citizenship’ (Josephson 2005: 272). Non-marital cohabitation is therefore something of a taboo. At the same time, homosexuality, though neither legal nor illegal, is also taboo and hence same-sex couples’ cohabitation has hardly been discussed in Korean academe because first, it is expected to be hidden and, second, given that homosexuality is not generally accepted in Korean culture, the issue of same-sex couples’ cohabitation is constructed as outside of public interest. Hence, overall, little attention has been paid to the question of how Korean cohabiting couples live their cohabitation and what the similarities/differences in experience might be among same-sex and different-sex couples. This thesis centres on couples’ reported experiences of living cohabitation, that is the dailiness of their lives together and its meaning as they articulate it in terms of particular practices. I draw on interviews carried out between April and September 2012 with twelve heterosexuals, nine gays and fourteen lesbians, all of whom were cohabiting. In my research I focus on: 1) how and why couples come to consider cohabiting and decide to do so; 2) the extent to which couples disclose the nature of their cohabitation to others (i.e. mothers, fathers, siblings, friends, work colleagues and neighbours), which remains a big issue in Korea; 3) the ways in which cohabitation is discussed by my participants as emulating and/or rejecting traditional Korean family norms. I argue that cohabiting couples do cohabitation differently, in line with their sexual identity.
Fe b 20 06 EXIT FROM A BASIN OF ATTRACTION FOR STOCHASTIC WEAKLY DAMPED NONLINEAR SCHRÖDINGER EQUATIONS

We consider weakly damped nonlinear Schrödinger equations perturbed by a noise of small amplitude. The small noise is either complex and of additive type or real and of multiplicative type. It is white in time and colored in space. Zero is an asymptotically stable equilibrium point of the determin-istic equations. We study the exit from a neighborhood of zero, invariant by the flow of the deterministic equation, in L 2 or in H 1. Due to noise, large fluctuations off zero occur. Thus, on a sufficiently large time scale, exit from these domains of attraction occur. A formal characterization of the small noise asymptotic of both the first exit times and the exit points is given.
On the methodological limitations of detecting oxidative stress: effects of paraquat on measures of oxidative status in greenfinches

SUMMARY Oxidative stress (OS) is widely believed to be responsible for the generation of trade-offs in evolutionary ecology by means of constraining investment into a number of components of fitness. Yet, progress in understanding the true role of OS in ecology and evolution has remained elusive. Interpretation of current findings is particularly hampered by the scarcity of experiments demonstrating which of the many available parameters of oxidative status respond most sensitively to and are relevant for measuring OS. We addressed these questions in wild-caught captive greenfinches (Carduelis chloris) by experimental induction of OS by administration of the pro-oxidant compound paraquat with drinking water. Treatment induced 50% mortality, a significant drop in body mass and an increase in oxidative DNA damage and glutathione levels in erythrocytes among the survivors of the high paraquat (0.2 g l−1 over 7 days) group. Samples taken 3 days after the end of paraquat treatment showed no effect on the peroxidation of lipids (plasma malondialdehyde), carbonylation of proteins (in erythrocytes), parameters of plasma antioxidant protection (total antioxidant capacity and oxygen radical absorbance), uric acid or carotenoids. Our findings of an increase in one marker of damage and one marker of protection from the multitude of measured variables indicate that detection of OS is difficult even under the most stringent experimental induction of oxidative insult. We hope that this study highlights the need for reconsideration of over-simplistic models of OS and draws attention to the limitations of detection of OS due to time-lagged and hormetic upregulation of protective mechanisms. This study also underpins the diagnostic value of measurement of oxidative damage to DNA bases and assessment of erythrocyte glutathione levels.
Does the integration of TB medical services in the general hospital improve the quality of TB care? Evidence from a case study in China.

BACKGROUND Moving the clinical services from tuberculosis (TB) dispensary to the integrated county hospital (called integrated approach) has been practiced in China; however, it is unknown the quality of TB care in the integrated approach and in the dispensary approach. METHODS A total of 202 new TB patients were investigated using structured questionnaires in three counties implementing the integrated approach and one county implementing the dispensary approach. The quality of TB care is measured based on success rate of treatment, medical expenditure, health system delay and second-line drug use. RESULTS The integrated approach showed a high success treatment rate. The medical expenditure in the integrated approach was USD 432, significantly lower than that in the dispensary approach (Z = -5.771, P < 0.001). The integrated approach had a shorter health system delay (5 days) than the dispensary approach (32 days). Twenty-six percent of patients in integrated hospitals were prescribed with second-line TB drugs, significantly lower than that in the TB dispensary (47%, χ(2) = 7.452, P = 0.006). However, the medical expenditure, use of second-line anti-TB drug and liver-protection drugs indeed varied greatly across the three integrated hospitals. CONCLUSIONS The integrated approach showed better quality of TB care, but the performance of the integrated hospitals varied greatly. A method to standardize TB treatment and management of this approach is urgent.
Magnetocrystalline anisotropy in metallic systems: fast and stable estimation in Green`s functions formalism

In this work we suggest a theoretical approach, that allows to study the effects of magnetocrystalline anisotropy (MCA) in metallic systems using the Green`s functions formalism. We demonstrate that employment of the reciprocal space resolution instead of its reduction in the inter-site variant essentially improves the numerical stability of MCA energy by means of Monkhorst-Pack grid density and spatial convergence. The latter problem is able to be completely removed due to rigorous analytical replacement of pairwise atomic summation by simple composition of sublattices contributions, calculated as a whole. The approach is validated on the effective model of single atom, which nevertheless inherits the qualitative MCA picture of Co monolayer and Au/Co/Au sandwiched material. The numerical convergence is confirmed using the model of atomic chain in the strong metallic regime. For cobalt monoxide, described by ab initio calculations using GGA+U, the MCA energy angular profile reveals the prevailing role of ferromagnetically aligned Co sublattices in forming of the easy axis.
Counting cherry reduction sequences is counting linear extensions (in phylogenetic tree-child networks)

Orchard and tree-child networks share an important property with phylogenetic trees: they can be completely reduced to a single node by iteratively deleting cherries and reticulated cherries. As it is the case with phylogenetic trees, the number of ways in which this can be done gives information about the topology of the network. Here, we show that the problem of computing this number in tree-child networks is akin to that of finding the number of linear extensions of the poset induced by each network, and give an algorithm based on this reduction whose complexity is bounded in terms of the level of the network.