Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development of a system for teaching CS1 in C/C++ with Lego NXT robots

This paper describes the development of a system for teaching C/C++ using a LegoTM NXT in a CSI college course on introductory programming. The programming of the NXT robot has been implemented using a C/C++ cross-compiler, which generates code that runs on an Open Source firmware platform, nxtOSEK. The system has built in commands and objects that run the motors and receive information from the sensors that are on the robots. The cross-compiler has been embedded in an Open Source Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Code::Blocks. The programming environment for the NXT has evolved from a previous development using the LegoTM RCX and has the advantage that it utilizes a Bluetooth interface, while the RCX uses a tower based infrared communication device. The NXT is more reliable and can be programmed to pair a specific interface with a particular robot, so that there is no cross-talk when different robots are utilized in a classroom setting. The IDE and robotic software executes on a virtual machine running under the freely available software, SunTM VirtualBox. This allows for a uniform programming platform for Windows, MacOS, and Unix/Linux. The use of robots in CS1 affords science and engineering students the opportunity to learn sensorymotor based control, to work with an IDE early in their careers, and to gain experience with development and debugging tools that can be utilized throughout the students’ academic and professional careers.
Islam in the School Curriculum: Symbolic Pedagogy and Cultural Claims

List of Tables Abbreviations Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Policy Contexts and Disputed Knowledge 2. Researching School-based Islam 3. Tradition and Innovation in the Curriculum 4. Liberalism and Social Parity 5. State, Religion and Cultural Restoration 6. The Micropolitics of Representation 7. Symbolic Imaginings in State Schools 8. Creating the New Community 9. Politicized Islam and Civic Engagement 10. Recontextualized Culture and Social Implications Glossary References Index.
Functional Specificity of Gαq and Gα11 in the Cholinergic and Glutamatergic Modulation of Potassium Currents and Excitability in Hippocampal Neurons

In hippocampal and other cortical neurons, action potentials are followed by a slow afterhyperpolarization (sAHP) generated by the activation of small-conductance Ca2+-activated K+ channels and controlling spike frequency adaptation. The corresponding current, the apamin-insensitive sIAHP, is a well known target of modulation by different neurotransmitters, including acetylcholine (via M3 receptors) and glutamate (via metabotropic glutamate receptor 5, mGluR5), in CA1 pyramidal neurons. The actions of muscarinic and mGluR agonists on sIAHP involve the activation of pertussis toxin-insensitive G-proteins. However, the pharmacological tools available so far did not permit the identification of the specific G-protein subtypes transducing the effects of M3 and mGluR5 on sIAHP. In the present study, we used mice deficient in the Gαq and Gα11 genes to investigate the specific role of these G-protein α subunits in the cholinergic and glutamatergic modulation of sIAHP in CA1 neurons. In mice lacking Gαq, the effects of muscarinic and glutamatergic agonists on sIAHP were nearly abolished, whereas β-adrenergic agonists acting via Gαs were still fully effective. Modulation of sIAHP by any of these agonists was instead unchanged in mice lacking Gα11. The additional depolarizing effects of muscarinic and glutamatergic agonists on CA1 neurons were preserved in mice lacking Gαq or Gα11. Thus, Gαq, but not Gα11, mediates specifically the action of cholinergic and glutamatergic agonists on sIAHP, without affecting the modulation of other currents. These results provide to our knowledge one of the first examples of the functional specificity of Gαq and Gα11 in central neurons.
Exploring how practising mindfulness affects people's experiences of living with a long-term condition

There is increasing evidence that mindfulness meditation-based interventions (MMBIs) benefit people with many long-term conditions (LTCs), particularly in terms of psychological wellbeing. Most evidence however relates to short-term outcomes, and limited information exists about how people integrate mindfulness into life over the longer-term, and how this affects their experience. This PhD aimed to address these limitations through the research question: How does practising mindfulness affect people’s experiences of living with a LTC? A qualitative approach was adopted, using grounded theory to explore the processes of change. Using two-stage interviews, diaries and focus groups, data were gathered from 34 participants and seven trainers of Breathworks’ mindfulness course. Almost all study participants reported a diversity of physical and/or mental health problems, many with multi-morbidity. Fieldwork was supplemented by a subsequent Cochrane-informed overview of systematic reviews and a critical review of qualitative studies of MMBIs. Participants’ experiences were predominantly strongly positive, identifying significant changes in thinking and behaviour. They described in detail how mindfulness had become part of their lives, enabling them to be more effective and responsive in their self-care. Analysis identified a core process and metaphor of ‘Starting where I am’ on an unwanted journey to an unfamiliar place. This highlighted how people become more aware and accepting of their condition and its impact, but able to see it in a wider context, and thus to take appropriate action. The process was represented in five interrelated themes: Getting a new perspective; Feeling equipped to cope; Doing life differently; Seeing a change; and Finding it difficult. Through exploration of existing chronic illness literature, the study suggests that mindfulness is a powerful facilitator of transition, through which people come to terms with challenging life events. Transition is associated with improved, self-directed self-management, which is significant to both people with LTC and healthcare providers.
Resampling vs. Shrinkage for Benchmarked Managers

A well-known pitfall of Markowitz (1952) portfolio optimization is that the sample covariance matrix, which is a critical input, is very erroneous when there are many assets to choose from. If unchecked, this phenomenon skews the optimizer towards extreme weights that tend to perform poorly in the real world. One solution that has been proposed is to shrink the sample covariance matrix by pulling its most extreme elements towards more moderate values. An alternative solution is the resampled efficiency suggested by Michaud (1998). This paper compares shrinkage estimation to resampled efficiency. In addition, it studies whether the two techniques can be combined to achieve a further improvement. All this is done in the context of an active portfolio manager who aims to outperform a benchmark index and who is evaluated by his realized information ratio.
Dynamic Enforcement of Dynamic Policies

This paper presents SLIO, an information-flow control mechanism enforcing dynamic policies: security policies which change the relation between security levels while the system is running. SLIO builds on LIO, a floating-label information-flow control system embedded in Haskell that uses a runtime monitor to enforce security. We identify an implicit flow arising from the decision to change the policy based on sensitive information and introduce a corresponding check in the enforcement mechanism. We provide a formal security guarantee for SLIO, presented as a knowledge-based property, which specifies that observers can only learn information in accordance with the level ordering. Like LIO, SLIO is a generic enforcement mechanism, parametrised on the concrete instantiation of security labels and their policy change mechanism. To illustrate the applicability of our results, we implement well-known label models such as DLM, the Flowlocks framework, and DC labels in SLIO.
Tracking and visualizing information flow in component-based systems

Component-based software engineering is aimed at managing the complexity of large-scale software development by composing systems from reusable parts. In order to understand or validate the behavior of a given system, one needs to acquire understanding of the components involved in combination with understanding how these components are instantiated, initialized and interconnected in the particular system. In practice, this task is often hindered by the heterogeneous nature of source and configuration artifacts and there is little to no tool support to help software engineers with such a system-wide analysis. This paper contributes a method to track and visualize information flow in a component-based system at various levels of abstraction. We propose a hierarchy of 5 interconnected views to support the comprehension needs of both safety domain experts and developers from our industrial partner. We discuss the implementation of our approach in a prototype tool, and present an initial qualitative evaluation of the effectiveness and usability of the proposed views for software development and software certification. The prototype was already found to be very useful and a number of directions for further improvement were suggested. We conclude by discussing these improvements and lessons learned.
Vision Based Features in Moisture Content Measurement During Raisin Production

Apparent characteristics of fruits are different in various moisture contents. Some feature changes can be quantified in different stages of drying process. Study on these changes is useful to determine the qualitative properties of dried product. This article represents an approach to investigate the effects of dehydrating on some apparent characteristics of raisin comprising shape, color and texture which are interpretable by machine vision systems. The correlation between the time and the image based characteristics were correlated in raisin drying. Samples were dried under 50°C in an oven dryer. Variations in five shape, nine color and five texture features corresponding to the moisture contents of the kernels were measured at different time intervals during the drying process. All morphological features decreased smoothly with drying time. Several ANN models were employed to predict the moisture content. Overall performance of the network was verified using the excluded test data. Results showed that the machine vision system integrated with the neural networks is a proper tool to predict the moisture content with acceptable values of coefficient of determination (R = 99.84%), Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE = 0.00078) and Mean Absolute (MAPE = 0.0312%). 2
Cross-sectional age differences in body composition in persons 60+ years of age.

BACKGROUND There is little information for age differences in body composition in elderly people > 65 years of age, especially for those > 80 years. As the proportion of people older than 65 years is expected to nearly double during the next few decades, this information is needed. METHODS Age differences in body composition and anthropometry were examined in 316 men and women aged 60 to 95 years. Multiple components of body composition were quantified using dual energy X-ray absorptiometry and isotope dilution methods, and expressed in molecular and cellular models. Analysis of variance was used to test for differences between age groups 60 to 70, 71 to 80, and > 80 years in each sex. Body composition components were regressed on age, controlling for knee height, fat-free mass, or total body fat. Age-adjusted correlations were calculated with anthropometric variables. RESULTS Fat-free mass (FFM), body cell mass (BCM), and appendicular skeletal muscle (ASM) decreased with age in both sexes. ASM decreased relative to FFM in both the men and the women, while BCM decreased relative to FFM in the women only. Total fat mass and percent body fat decreased with age in the women, but not in the men. Body fat distribution did not appear to change with age. Anthropometric indices, muscle area and waist/hip ratio, had low correlations with muscle mass and fat distribution. CONCLUSIONS "Sarcopenia," or muscle loss, continues to occur into old age, and may have significant impacts on physical function and health status. New anthropometric techniques are needed for assessing muscle loss with age.
CLARISSE: A Middleware for Data-Staging Coordination and Control on Large-Scale HPC Platforms

On current large-scale HPC platforms the data path from compute nodes to final storage passes through several networks interconnecting a distributed hierarchy of nodes serving as compute nodes, I/O nodes, and file system servers. Although applications compete for resources at various system levels, the current system software offers no mechanisms for globally coordinating the data flow for attaining optimal resource usage and for reacting to overload or interference. In this paper we describe CLARISSE, a middleware designed to enhance data-staging coordination and control in the HPC software storage I/O stack. CLARISSE exposes the parallel data flows to a higher-level hierarchy of controllers, thereby opening up the possibility of developing novel cross-layer optimizations, based on the run-time information. To the best of our knowledge, CLARISSE is the first middleware that decouples the policy, control, and data layers of the software I/O stack in order to simplify the task of globally coordinating the data staging on large-scale HPC platforms. To demonstrate how CLARISSE can be used for performance enhancement, we present two case studies: an elastic load-aware collective I/O and a cross-application parallel I/O scheduling policy. The evaluation illustrates how coordination can bring a significant performance benefit with low overheads by adapting to load conditions and interference.
Assessing Cue-Induced Brain Response as a Function of Abstinence Duration in Heroin-Dependent Individuals: An Event-Related fMRI Study

The brain activity induced by heroin-related cues may play a role in the maintenance of heroin dependence. Whether the reinforcement or processing biases construct an everlasting feature of heroin addiction remains to be resolved. We used an event-related fMRI paradigm to measure brain activation in response to heroin cue-related pictures versus neutral pictures as the control condition in heroin-dependent patients undergoing short-term and long-term abstinence. The self-reported craving scores were significantly increased after cue exposure in the short-term abstinent patients (t = 3.000, P = 0.008), but no increase was found in the long-term abstinent patients (t = 1.510, P = 0.149). However, no significant differences in cue-induced craving changes were found between the two groups (t = 1.193, P = 0.850). Comparing between the long-term abstinence and short-term abstinence groups, significant decreases in brain activation were detected in the bilateral anterior cingulated cortex, left medial prefrontal cortex, caudate, middle occipital gyrus, inferior parietal lobule and right precuneus. Among all of the heroin dependent patients, the abstinence duration was negatively correlated with brain activation in the left medial prefrontal cortex and left inferior parietal lobule. These findings suggest that long-term abstinence may be useful for heroin-dependent patients to diminish their saliency value of heroin-related cues and possibly lower the relapse vulnerability to some extent.
The Real Effects of Asset Market Bubbles : Loan-and Firm-Level Evidence of a Lending Channel

This paper studies how a shock to the financial health of banks, caused by a decline in the asset markets, affects the real economy. The land-market collapse in Japan provides an ideal testing field in separating the impact of a loan supply shock from demand shocks. I find that banks with greater real estate exposure have to reduce lending. Firms’ investment and market valuation are negatively associated with their top lender’s real estate exposure. The lending channel is economically important: it accounts for one-third of lending contraction, one-fifth of the decline in investment, and a quarter of value loss. JEL Classification: G21; C41
An ontology-based search engine for postgraduate students information at the ministry of higher education portal of Iraq

In recent times, information integration has gained importance in the provision of focused and structured information for more comprehensive purposes in the educational domain. Although the Ministry of Higher Education in Iraq has a Web portal that provides information pertaining to Postgraduate studies and research, information retrieval supported by the Website still pose a major problem to students. In order to address this problem the researcher in this study propose an ontology based framework for performing the process of information integration in four well-known universities in Iraq. This paper applies Uschold and King ontology building methodology to develop the domain ontology to support information interoperability among the selected Iraqi universities. A query system is then developed for assisting postgraduate students in their search for information related to postgraduate research and development at the universities.
A study of a delay magnification system inspired by the Ormia ochracea hearing system

This paper studies the delay magnification mechanism of the parasitoid fly Ormia ochracea and proceeds by proposing and analyzing a simpler delay magnification system inspired by it. The proposed system combined with a conventional cross correlogram has the potential to localize competing sound sources with ITDs in the microsecond range.
Investigating the impact of phonetic cross language modeling on Arabic and English speech recognition

The lack of speech resources in the Arabic language is one of the most important obstacles facing speech researchers. Previously, we designed two Arabic and English automatic speech recognition systems (ASR) using two corpora: TIMIT for English language and West Point for Arabic language. Cross-language experiments were conducted using the two systems, and the results were determined with respect to the main class of phonemes' content in each language. As a continuation of that work, this paper analyzes the system errors of the two corpora by determining their strengths and weaknesses on system accuracies when swapping phonemes models.
Hierarchical and State-based Architectures for Robot Behavior Planning and Control

In this paper, two behavior control architectures for autonomous agents in the form of cross-platform C++ frameworks are presented, the State Controller Library and the Behavior Control Framework. While the former is state-based and generalizes the notion of states and finite state machines to allow for multi-action planning, the latter is behavior-based and exploits a hierarchical structure and the concept of inhibitions to allow for dynamic transitioning. The two frameworks have completely independent implementations, but can be used effectively in tandem to solve behavior control problems on all levels of granularity. Both frameworks have been used to control the NimbRo-OP, a humanoid soccer robot developed by team NimbRo of the University of Bonn.
Time-based calibration of effectiveness measures

Many current effectiveness measures incorporate simplifying assumptions about user behavior. These assumptions prevent the measures from reflecting aspects of the search process that directly impact the quality of retrieval results as experienced by the user. In particular, these measures implicitly model users as working down a list of retrieval results, spending equal time assessing each document. In reality, even a careful user, intending to identify as much relevant material as possible, must spend longer on some documents than on others. Aspects such as document length, duplicates and summaries all influence the time required. In this paper, we introduce a time-biased gain measure, which explicitly accommodates such aspects of the search process. By conducting an appropriate user study, we calibrate and validate the measure against the TREC 2005 Robust Track test collection. We examine properties of the measure, contrasting it to traditional effectiveness measures, and exploring its extension to other aspects and environments. As its primary benefit, the measure allows us to evaluate system performance in human terms, while maintaining the simplicity and repeatability of system-oriented tests. Overall, we aim to achieve a clearer connection between user-oriented studies and system-oriented tests, allowing us to better transfer insights and outcomes from one to the other.
Apical and basolateral endosomes of MDCK cells are interconnected and contain a polarized sorting mechanism

We have evaluated transcytotic routes in MDCK cells for their ability to generate a polarized surface distribution of trafficking proteins by following the intracellular sorting of transferrin receptors (TRs). We find that the selective basolateral expression of TRs is maintained in the face of extensive trafficking between the apical and basolateral surfaces. Biochemical studies of receptors loaded with tracer under conditions approaching steady state indicate that TRs internalized from the two surfaces are extensively colocalized within MDCK cells and that both populations of receptors are selectively delivered to the basolateral surface. Tailless TRs in which the cytoplasmic domain has been deleted display an unpolarized cell surface distribution and recycle in an unpolarized fashion. We show by EM that wild-type receptors internalized from each surface are colocalized within endosomal elements distributed throughout the cytoplasm. By preloading endosomal elements directly accessible from the basolateral surface with transferrin (Tf)-HRP, we show that apically internalized TRs rapidly enter the same compartment. We also show that both transcytosing (apically internalized) and recycling (basolaterally internalized) TRs are delivered to the basolateral border by a distinctive subset of exocytotic, 60-nm-diam vesicles. Together, the biochemical and morphological data show that apical and basolateral endosomes of MDCK cells are interconnected and contain a signal- dependent polarized sorting mechanism. We propose a dynamic model of polarized sorting in MDCK cells in which a single endosome-based, signal-dependent sorting step is sufficient to maintain the polarized phenotype.
Vocal Detection in Monaural Mixtures

In this study, the task of identifying vocals in monaural music mixtures is explored. We show how presently available algorithms for source separation and predominant f0 estimation can be used as a front end from which features can be extracted. A large set of features is presented, devised to connect different vocal cues to the presence of vocals. Two main cues are utilized; the voice is neither stable in pitch nor in timbre. We evaluate the performance of the model by estimating the length of the vocal regions of the mixtures. To facilitate this, a new set of annotations to a widely adopted data set is developed and made available to the community. The proposed model is able to explain about 78 % of the variance in vocal region length. In a classification task, where the excerpts are classified as either vocal or non-vocal, the model has an accuracy of about 0.94.