Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tertiary study: Barriers and benefits for health and human services professionals

Results from two 2012 surveys exploring the barriers and benefits of tertiary study for staff within the Tasmanian Department of Health and Human Services suggest that encouraging staff engagement with further study benefits both the individual and the organisation. Respondents reported improved job performance, increased self-esteem and motivation to learn. Barriers associated with limited time and competing demands impacted on staff ability to access information about study options. In this context, workplace and management support for study was identified as a crucial enabler. The investigative process of this study has been made explicit in order to encourage replication by other researchers. This mixed-methods research was informed by the ‘three capitals’ approach in order to examine the personal, social and economic benefits of learning. The relative weakness of benefits associated with social capital in the results reflects the experience of these part-time mature-age students employed in a professionally demanding sector.
Differentiation of several interstitial lung disease patterns in HRCT images using support vector machine: role of databases on performance

Interstitial lung disease (ILD) is complicated group of pulmonary disorders. High Resolution Computed Tomography (HRCT) considered to be best imaging technique for analysis of different pulmonary disorders. HRCT findings can be categorised in several patterns viz. Consolidation, Emphysema, Ground Glass Opacity, Nodular, Normal etc. based on their texture like appearance. Clinician often find it difficult to diagnosis these pattern because of their complex nature. In such scenario computer-aided diagnosis system could help clinician to identify patterns. Several approaches had been proposed for classification of ILD patterns. This includes computation of textural feature and training /testing of classifier such as artificial neural network (ANN), support vector machine (SVM) etc. In this paper, wavelet features are calculated from two different ILD database, publically available MedGIFT ILD database and private ILD database, followed by performance evaluation of ANN and SVM classifiers in terms of average accuracy. It is found that average classification accuracy by SVM is greater than ANN where trained and tested on same database. Investigation continued further to test variation in accuracy of classifier when training and testing is performed with alternate database and training and testing of classifier with database formed by merging samples from same class from two individual databases. The average classification accuracy drops when two independent databases used for training and testing respectively. There is significant improvement in average accuracy when classifiers are trained and tested with merged database. It infers dependency of classification accuracy on training data. It is observed that SVM outperforms ANN when same database is used for training and testing.
What Good Is Learning if You Don't Remember It?.

Teachers should emphasize the educational importance of understanding, but not at the expense of overlooking the importance of memorization skills. Currently, mainstream educational theory embraces such attributes as insight, creativity, inquiry learning, and self expression. But such emphases lead to a bias and under-appreciation of the role of memory in learning. Students cannot apply what they understand if they don’t remember it. Moreover, a good memory expands the repertoire of cognitive capabilities upon which new understandings can be developed and expedited. Effective thinking does not occur in a vacuum. I advocate adding another “R” to the “three Rs”: Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic, and Remembering. This paper attempts to show teachers how they can help students become better learners — and better thinkers — by improving their memorization skills
Minimal-cut model composition

Constructing new, complex models is often done by reusing parts of existing models, typically by applying a sequence of segmentation, alignment and composition operations. Segmentation, either manual or automatic, is rarely adequate for this task, since it is applied to each model independently, leaving it to the user to trim the models and determine where to connect them. In this paper we propose a new composition tool. Our tool obtains as input two models, aligned either manually or automatically, and a small set of constraints indicating which portions of the two models should be preserved in the final output. It then automatically negotiates the best location to connect the models, trimming and stitching them as required to produce a seamless result. We offer a method based on the graph theoretic minimal cut as a means of implementing this new tool. We describe a system intended for both expert and novice users, allowing easy and flexible control over the composition result. In addition, we show our method to be well suited for a variety of model processing applications such as model repair, hole filling, and piecewise rigid deformations.
Strong male-biased operational sex ratio in a breeding population of loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta) inferred by paternal genotype reconstruction analysis

Characterization of a species mating systems is fundamental for understanding the natural history and evolution of that species. Polyandry can result in the multiple paternity of progeny arrays. The only previous study of the loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta) in the USA showed that within the large peninsular Florida subpopulation, multiple paternity occurs in approximately 30% of clutches. Our study tested clutches from the smaller northern subpopulation for the presence of multiple paternal contributions. We examined mothers and up to 20 offspring from 19.5% of clutches laid across three nesting seasons (2008–2010) on the small nesting beach on Wassaw Island, Georgia, USA. We found that 75% of clutches sampled had multiple fathers with an average of 2.65 fathers per nest (1–7 fathers found). The average number of fathers per clutch varied among years and increased with female size. There was no relationship between number of fathers and hatching success. Finally, we found 195 individual paternal genotypes and determined that each male contributed to no more than a single clutch over the 3-year sampling period. Together these results suggest that the operational sex ratio is male-biased at this site.
Análisis de datos climatológicos del área de A Coruña

Since the second half of the twentieth century there is evidence that the global climate may be changing, and well-founded suspicions that this change could have its origin in the activities associated with the socio-economic and industrial development of humanity on the planet. The most effective way to evaluate and quantify this climate change is to statistically analyze the past data of different climatological variables, construct mathematical models that explain the behavior of these variables, and check whether the current climate corresponds or not with what the results of those analyses and mathematical models indicate. Based on this idea, many works have already been carried out on a global scale and over broad geographic regions. These works show different results, but they in general tend to corroborate the existence of the mentioned climate change. However, there are not many works carried out on areas of reduced extension such as small towns or villages. Such studies are useful not only to improve the social and economic management of the localities where they are carried out, but also to evaluate the results of works related to larger geographical areas. There are also not many research works comparing two meteorological stations geographically very close to each other. The results that such researches can yield are important since they can be used to determine the influence of factors such as orography or distance to the coast on the local meteorological variables. This paper statistically analyzed the data of temperature and precipitation recorded in the area of the city of A Coruna in the last sixty years. Data from two different and close to each other weather stations were used to adjust explanatory linear models of the climatological variables as a function of both time and location of the specific station from where the data were taken. Later, these models were used to compare the climatic situation of the past decades with the current one. The results of the analysis suggest that the local temperature of A Coruna has followed, over the last decades, an upward trend that remains at the present time and that could even be getting more pronounced. The situation of precipitation, however, is not so clear, and it cannot be inferred from the analysis carried out whether this climatological variable has followed an upward or downward trend.
Impact of vulvovaginal health on postmenopausal women: a review of surveys on symptoms of vulvovaginal atrophy

Several recent, large-scale studies have provided valuable insights into patient perspectives on postmenopausal vulvovaginal health. Symptoms of vulvovaginal atrophy, which include dryness, irritation, itching, dysuria, and dyspareunia, can adversely affect interpersonal relationships, quality of life, and sexual function. While approximately half of postmenopausal women report these symptoms, far fewer seek treatment, often because they are uninformed about hypoestrogenic postmenopausal vulvovaginal changes and the availability of safe, effective, and well-tolerated treatments, particularly local vaginal estrogen therapy. Because women hesitate to seek help for symptoms, a proactive approach to conversations about vulvovaginal discomfort would improve diagnosis and treatment.
Simplest dynamic walking model with toed feet

This paper presents a dynamic walking model with toed feet that can walk down a gentle slope under the action of gravity alone. The model is the simplest of its kind with a point mass at the hip and two rigid legs each hinged at the hip on one end and equipped with toed foot at the other end. We investigate two cases of the model, one with massless legs and another with infinitesimal leg masses. Rotation of the stance foot about the toe joint is initiated by ankle-strike, which is caused by the inelastic collision of the stance leg with a stop mounted on the stance foot. Numerical simulations of walking show that larger step lengths and higher speeds can be achieved than what is achievable by a point-feet walker of same hip mass and leg lengths. The characteristics of deterministic gait with infinitesimal leg masses is compared with that of nondeterministic gait with zero leg masses. It is shown that deterministic gait does not give maximum speed and efficiency compared to nondeterministic gait with swing leg control. Finally, active dynamic walking of the proposed walker is discussed.
DFT-extractor: a system to extract domain-specific faceted taxonomies from wikipedia

Extracting faceted taxonomies from the Web has received increasing attention in recent years from the web mining community. We demonstrate in this study a novel system called DFT-Extractor, which automatically constructs domain-specific faceted taxonomies from Wikipedia in three steps: 1) It crawls domain terms from Wikipedia by using a modified topical crawler. 2) Then it exploits a classification model to extract hyponym relations with the use of motif-based features. 3) Finally, it constructs a faceted taxonomy by applying a community detection algorithm and a group of heuristic rules. DFT-Extractor also provides a graphical user interface to visualize the learned hyponym relations and the tree structure of taxonomies.
Management of heterotopic ossification and venous thromboembolism following acquired brain injury

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of interventional strategies for the common complications of heterotopic ossification (HO) and venous thromboembolism (VTE) following acquired brain injury (ABI). Methods and main outcomes: A systematic review of the literature from 1980–2005 was conducted focusing on interventions for HO and VTE in the ABI population. Nineteen studies examining a variety of treatment approaches were evaluated. Results: The majority of interventions are supported by limited evidence, defined as an absence of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). All of the treatment approaches for HO are supported with limited evidence. For VTE, there is moderate evidence, defined as at least one positive RCT, indicating that low-molecular-weight heparin is more effective than low-dose unfractionated heparin in preventing VTE, low-molecular-weight heparin is as effective and safe as unfractionated heparin for the prevention of pulmonary thromboembolism, low-molecular-weight heparin combined with compression stockings is more effective than compression stockings alone for the prevention of VTE and intermittent pneumatic compression devices are as effective as low-molecular-weight heparin for the prevention of VTE. Conclusions: There are a variety of intervention and prophylactic strategies that have been postulated to treat and reduce the incidence of these complications, with the goal of improving rehabilitation outcomes. It is therefore important to investigate the efficacy of these treatment strategies to provide guidance for clinical practice based on the best available evidence.
The effect of phonological parallelism in coordination: Evidence from eye-tracking.

In this paper we report an eye-tracking experiment designed to investigate syntactic and phonological parallelism effects in comprehension. Eye-movements were recorded while participants read sentences that contained particle verb constructions. Each experimental item included a coordinated verb phrase (VP), whose two conjuncts either exhibited parallel syntactic forms in terms of particle placement (e.g., The lawyer won over the jury and fought off the developers ), or did not (e.g., The lawyer won the jury over and fought off the developers ). In addition to the manipulation of syntactic form, the number of syllables intervening between the verb and the particle ranged from zero to five across the item set. Linear regression analysis revealed a reading time advantage for VPs that were parallel in terms of the number of intervening syllables. However, processing was not speeded by parallelism of syntactic form per se. We argue that theories that seek to explain syntactic parallelism need to take account of phonological length.
Does HDR Pre-Processing Improve the Accuracy of 3D Models Obtained by Means of two Conventional SfM-MVS Software Packages? The Case of the Corral del Veleta Rock Glacier

The accuracy of different workflows using Structure-from-Motion and Multi-View-Stereo techniques (SfM-MVS) is tested. Twelve point clouds of the Corral del Veleta rock glacier, in Spain, were produced with two different software packages (123D Catch and Agisoft Photoscan), using Low Dynamic Range images and High Dynamic Range compositions (HDR) for three different years (2011, 2012 and 2014). The accuracy of the resulting point clouds was assessed using benchmark models acquired every year with a Terrestrial Laser Scanner. Three parameters were used to estimate the accuracy of each point cloud: the RMSE, the Cloud-to-Cloud distance (C2C) and the Multiscale-Model-to-Model comparison (M3C2). The M3C2 mean error ranged from 0.084 m (standard deviation of 0.403 m) to 1.451 m (standard deviation of 1.625 m). Agisoft Photoscan overcome 123D Catch, producing more accurate and denser point clouds in 11 out 12 cases, being this work, the first available comparison between both software packages in the literature. No significant improvement was observed using HDR pre-processing. To our knowledge, this is the first time that the geometrical accuracy of 3D models obtained using LDR and HDR compositions are compared. These findings may be of interest for researchers who wish to estimate geomorphic changes using SfM-MVS approaches.
Decisions at Hand: A Decision Support System on Handhelds

One of the applications of clinical information systems is decision support. Although the advantages of utilizing such aids have never been theoretically disputed, they have been rarely used in practice. The factor that probably often limits the utility of clinical decision support systems is the need for computing power at the very site of decision making--at the place where the patient is interviewed, in discussion rooms, etc. The paper reports on a possible solution to this problem. A decision-support shell LogReg is presented, which runs on a handheld computer. A general schema for handheld-based decision support is also proposed, where decision models are developed on personal computers/workstations, encoded in XML and then transferred to handhelds, where the models are used within a decision support shell. A use case where LogReg has been applied to clinical outcome prediction in crush injury is presented.
Fortress Europe or Europe of rights? : the Europeanisation of family migration policies in France, Germany and the Netherlands

Abstract Are the restrictive reforms of family migration policy recently implemented in France, Germany and the Netherlands a result of the introduction of the Family Reunification Directive in 2003? Most existing literature on the Europeanisation of migration policies suggests that restriction-minded national governments shift decision-making to the EU level to escape domestic political and judicial constraints. However, as the Treaties of Amsterdam and Lisbon have empowered the Commission and Court to constrain restrictive reform, this perspective is losing analytical validity. Also, this perspective fails to capture the intensifying processes of policy transfer among Member States, which have inadequately been labelled ‘horizontal’ Europeanisation. We therefore propose a new, actor-centred analytical framework of Europeanisation. We show that contrasting yet parallel dynamics of Europeanisation may emanate from a single legislative instrument and may constrain and empower national governments at the same time.
Quality Versus Quantity: E-Mail-Centric Task Management and Its Relation With Overload

It is widely acknowledged that many professionals suffer from "e-mail overload. " This article presents findings from in-depth fieldwork that examined this phenomenon, uncovering six key challenges of task management in e-mail. Analysis of qualitative and quantitative data suggests that it is not simply the quantity but also the collaborative quality of e-mail task and project management that causes this overload. We describe how e-mail becomes especially overwhelming when people use it for tasks that involve participation of others; tasks cannot be completed until a response is obtained and so they are interleaved. Interleaving means that the e-mail user must somehow simultaneously keep track of multiple incomplete tasks, often with the only reminder for each one being an e-mail message somewhere in the inbox or a folder. This and other insights from our fieldwork led us to a new design philosophy for e-mail in which resources for task and project management are embedded directly within an e-mail client as opposed to being added on as separate components of the application. A client, TaskMaster, embodying these ideas, was developed and tested by users in managing their real e-mail over an extended period. The design of the client and results of its evaluation are also reported.
Manipulating and documenting software structures using SHriMP views

An effective approach to program understanding involves browsing, exploring, and creating views that document software structures at different levels of abstraction. While exploring the myriad of relationships in a multi-million line legacy system, one can easily loose context. One approach to alleviate this problem is to visualize these structures using fisheye techniques. This paper introduces Simple Hierarchical Multi-Perspective views (SHriMPs). The SHriMP visualization technique has been incorporated into the Rigi reverse engineering system. This greatly enhances Rigi's capabilities for documenting design patterns and architectural diagrams that span multiple levels of abstraction. The applicability and usefulness of SHriMPs is illustrated with selected program understanding tasks.
Understanding masculine identity among anti-war veterans

The military is an arena in which strong ideals regarding masculinity are enforced, with the soldier often portrayed as a model of hegemonic masculinity in the USA. Men who adopt an anti-war position, which may directly conflict with positions taken by the military as an organization, may be particularly challenged in the renegotiation of their masculine identity upon re-entry to civilian life. This study employs Burke and Stets' Identity Theory (2009) and Connell's hegemonic masculinity (2005) to examine masculine identity among a group of 26 veterans. Using data from in-depth interviews with 26 former military personnel that now claim an anti-war position, the study explores how masculinity is (re)negotiated among these men. The findings include respondents' description of masculinity before and after adopting an ‘anti-war’ identity, as well as variations in masculinity among our respondents. Specifically, we found three types of masculinity among respondents. The masculinity scripts within these typologies, as well as patterns occurring within each type are presented and best explained by social status giving some men more freedom to protest the hegemonic ideal.
Development of electric powertrain with a boost converter for the fuel cells plug-in electric scooter

In this paper, an overview of electric powertrain design for a fuel cells plug-in electric scooter is presented. The design considerations of the torque-speed curve achieving high performance requirement was explained. Based on the torque-speed curve, the specifications of interior permanent magnet synchronous motor and the motor controller with a boost converter were designed. Furthermore, the benefit of a boost converter to electric power system was examined by different turns of motor winding. The design method, simulation results, as well as experiment results of motor are presented. The experiment results not only show excellent agreement with simulation results but also indicate that this motor achieves high efficiencies in most operation regions.
Extractive Question Answering Using Match-LSTM and Answer Pointer

One of the major goals of Natural Language Processing is understanding text, and, in particular, reading comprehension (RC): the ability to read a passage and answer a question about it. The recently released Stanford Question Answering Dataset (SQuAD) is one of the first robust RC datasets and introduces the complexity of variable length and open-ended rather than multiple choice answers. Here, we replicate the match-LSTM with Pointer Net model introduced by Wang and Jiang (2016) and apply their boundary model to directly predict the start and end indices of the answer. Our model shows proof of concept and achieves basic functionality but falls short of the original authors’ results. We analyze our results and suggest future model modifications to help achieve or surpass theirs.