Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
EXPLORING TEACHERS’ KNOWLEDGE OF CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND CONTROL

Purpose – This paper presents the results of a study that sought to determine teacher conceptions of classroom management and control. The study explored classroom management knowledge of participants, and how the knowledge was gained. It also investigated the extent to which participants held various conceptions, including rule-based, dominance and nurturance conceptions, about how teachers established and maintained classroom control. Methodology – A mixed method involving a rating scale for the quantitative component, and response to open-ended interview questions for the qualitative component were used. The responses from the subjects were recorded, and notes were also taken. The data were first transcribed and double-checked for grammatical errors. The methods used to identify emerging common themes across respondents were the constant comparison and analytic induction methods. Findings – The major finding of the study was that rule-based conceptions were predominant. In their responses to open-ended questions, virtually all teachers mentioned rule-based conceptions, especially the consistent setting and monitoring of rules as being important to the teacher’s ability to be in control of the class. The alternative conceptions of dominance and nurturance were expressed by a few of the teachers. Even teachers who showed agreement with 170 Malaysian Journal of Learning and Instruction: Vol. 14 No. 1 (2017): 169-185 either the dominance or nurturance conceptions showed strong support for rule-based conceptions. Significance – The significance of this study to classroom practice is that knowing how to manage the classroom is one of the most important traits of quality instruction. Therefore it is important that teachers – both new and veteran –find the best way to manage their classroom in order to create a serene atmosphere for quality learning to take place.
MAXIMIZING THE GROWTH RATE UNDER RISK CONSTRAINTS

We investigate the ergodic problem of growth‐rate maximization under a class of risk constraints in the context of incomplete, Itô‐process models of financial markets with random ergodic coefficients. Including value‐at‐risk, tail‐value‐at‐risk, and limited expected loss, these constraints can be both wealth‐dependent (relative) and wealth‐independent (absolute). The optimal policy is shown to exist in an appropriate admissibility class, and can be obtained explicitly by uniform, state‐dependent scaling down of the unconstrained (Merton) optimal portfolio. This implies that the risk‐constrained wealth‐growth optimizer locally behaves like a constant relative risk aversion (CRRA) investor, with the relative risk‐aversion coefficient depending on the current values of the market coefficients.
SDR implementation and verification of distributed load balancing spectrum allocation algorithm

In this paper we verify and study through implementation our earlier game theory algorithm for load balanced dynamic channel assignment. In our algorithm every cognitive radio is initially assigned a channel in a random fashion. The radios periodically evaluate a cost function related to a Quality of Service (QoS) parameter and may change the transmission channel with probability proportional to the excess of the current cost over a cost threshold set by the user application. The actions of the cognitive radios are concurrent and the decision to switch the channel is only based on the current local link quality, which means that neither network state information exchange nor history keeping is required. The earlier theoretical work has shown that the balls-and-bins game theory algorithm has attractive convergence properties and low complexity. In this paper we evaluate the convergence properties of our dynamic channel assignment protocol over real channel conditions for different number of channels and traffic distributions. Our testbed results show that the optimal channel allocations are found in most of the cases within five to eight iterations depending on the complexity of the test case. The proposed algorithm is a good candidate for resource allocation using only local information.
A bioluminescence assay for screening thermoregulated genes in a psychrotrophic bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens

C. REGEARD, A. MÉRIEAU & J.F. GUESPIN‐MICHEL.2000. Random transcription fusion delivery, with bacterial luciferase genes as reporter, was performed in the psychrotrophic bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens. Direct screening on plates of the insertions allowed the isolation of fusions into thermoregulated genes with good accuracy, either in a library of insertion fusions, or after genetic transfer of a putative regulatory mutation. Using this method, it was shown that in Ps. fluorescens, nearly 40% of the genes are thermoregulated and belong to at least three classes according to the maximal temperature of expression of the fused genes. This is more than had been estimated by a previous method, and demonstrates the importance of thermoregulation in psychrotrophic bacteria. As this reporter is the first to be used for direct screening for genes regulated by temperature, it should be of great value in the study of mechanisms involved in adaptation to this environmental factor.
The global epidemiology and burden of opioid dependence: results from the global burden of disease 2010 study.

AIMS To estimate the prevalence and burden of disease attributable to opioid dependence globally, regionally and at country level. METHODS Multiple search strategies: (i) peer-reviewed literature searches; (ii) systematic searches of online databases; (iii) internet searches; (iv) consultation and feedback from experts. Culling and data extraction followed protocols. DisMod-MR, the latest version of the generic disease modelling system, a Bayesian meta-regression tool, imputed prevalence by age, year and sex for 187 countries and 21 regions. Disability weight for opioid dependence was estimated through population surveys and multiplied by prevalence data to calculate the years of life lived with disability (YLDs). Opioid dependence premature mortality was computed as years of life lost (YLLs) and summed with YLDs to calculate disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). RESULTS There were 15.5 million opioid-dependent people globally in 2010 [0.22%, 95% uncertainty interval (UI) = 0.20-0.25%]. Age-standardized prevalence was higher in males (0.30%, 95% UI = 0.27-0.35%) than females (0.14%, 95% UI = 0.12-0.16%), and peaked at 25-29 years. Prevalence was higher than the global pooled prevalence in Australasia (0.46%, 95% UI = 0.41-0.53%), western Europe (0.35%, 95% UI = 0.32-0.39) and North America (0.30%, 95% UI = 0.25-0.36). Opioid dependence was estimated to account for 9.2 million DALYs globally (0.37% of global DALYs) in 2010, a 73% increase on DALYs estimated in 1990. Regions with the highest opioid dependence DALY rates were North America (292.1 per 100,000), eastern Europe (288.4 per 100,000), Australasia (278.6 per 100,000) and southern sub-Saharan Africa (263.5 per 100,000). The contribution of YLLs to opioid dependence burden was particularly high in North America, eastern Europe and southern sub-Saharan Africa. CONCLUSION Opioid dependence is a substantial contributor to the global disease burden; its contribution to premature mortality (relative to prevalence) varies geographically, with North America, eastern Europe and southern sub-Saharan Africa most strongly affected.
Safeguards, Financing, and Employment in Chinese Infrastructure Projects in Africa: The Case of Ghana's Bui Dam

Chinese players are now Africa’s key partner for its infrastructure sector (including water supply projects), providing approximately two-thirds of investments since 2007. The social impacts of these engagements during the construction phase are mostly portrayed in an alarmist tone within the popular press. Meanwhile, scholarly literature investigating them remains scarce. We draw on the Bui Dam, a major dam in Ghana, financed by China Exim Bank (CEB), the largest financier of infrastructure in Africa, and constructed by Sinohydro, the largest dam developer worldwide, as a case study to explore social impacts of Chinese engagements in the African water sector. We particularly examine social safeguards policies from the perspective of Chinese players, the financing modalities, and the dam’s impacts on the local labour market. We find that social safeguards policies were not within the responsibility of Sinohydro. Furthermore, financing modalities were largely favourable from a Ghanaian perspective, comparable to World Bank conditions, partly due to the successful negotiations (from the Ghanaian standpoint) during the planning and design phase of the project. Most likely, the project would not have been implemented if CEB had not stepped in to provide funding. Lastly, we find that most workers employed during construction were Ghanaian, paid significantly above the country’s minimum wage. Nevertheless, working conditions overall were questionable. This case study highlights how Chinese engagement in construction of water infrastructure may help develop projects otherwise stuck in the planning and design phase. However, labour conditions during the construction phase of these projects need to be carefully managed.
Women in leadership and the financial performance of the Fortune 500

Despite more than 30 years of women moving into professional, managerial, and executive positions, very few women have reached the senior ranks of leadership. Although 51% of middle management is female, only 15% of corporate officers in the Fortune 500 are women, and women continue to be sparsely represented in senior leadership positions. Research on this phenomenon has been inconclusive. To further our understanding of women’s underrepresentation in senior leadership, the purpose of this study was to determine whether there is a relationship between the financial performance of companies in the Fortune 500 and the number of women in senior leadership positions in these companies. This study examined companies that were in the Fortune 500 each year between 1999 and 2008. Two financial data points for each company, return on equity and total shareholder return, were collected and averaged over the 10-year period. Average return on equity and total shareholder return was expressed in z scores. The z scores were averaged, creating an overall index, sorted from high to low, which reflected financial performance. The list was then divided into quartiles. The number and gender of the corporate officers were obtained for the top and bottom quartiles for each year. Spearman rank-ordered correlations were run to determine whether a relationship existed between the financial performance of Fortune 500 companies and the number of women corporate officers in these companies. The results indicated that there was no correlation between financial performance and the number of
Design and Preliminary Evaluation of a Touchless Interface for Manipulating Virtual Heritage Artefacts

In this paper, an interactive virtual reality (VR) system, realized with the aim of improving the dissemination and presentation of cultural artefacts, is presented. By using off-the-shelf devices, the system provides the users with an interface where a computer generated representation of a cultural artefact can be manipulated in a touch less way. The proposed system could be a useful instrument complementary to a visit to an actual exhibition without requiring any structural intervention, and allowing the user to become an active actor, able to enjoy different prospectives and all the details of the artefact. The paper describes the hardware and software system components, and details the interface specifically designed to obtain a simple and immediate exploration of a cultural heritage artefact. Furthermore, the paper provides the results of a preliminary evaluation of the usability of the interface which revealed up a significant difference between younger and older adult users.
On the Use of Longitudinal Intrafascicular Peripheral Interfaces for the Control of Cybernetic Hand Prostheses in Amputees

Significant strides have been recently made to develop highly sensorized cybernetic prostheses aimed at restoring sensorimotor limb functions to those who have lost them because of a traumatic event (amputation). In these cases, one of the main goals is to create a bidirectional link between the artificial devices (e.g., robotic hands, arms, or legs) and the nervous system. Several human-machine interfaces (HMIs) are currently used to this aim. Among them, interfaces with the peripheral nervous system and in particular longitudinal intrafascicular electrodes can be a promising solution able to improve the current situation. In this paper, the potentials and limits of the use of this interface to control robotic devices are presented. Specific information is provided on: 1) the neurophysiological bases for the use peripheral nerve interfaces; 2) a comparison of the potentials of the different peripheral neural interfaces; 3) the possibility of extracting and appropriately interpreting the neural code for motor commands and of delivering sensory feedback by stimulating afferent fibers by using longitudinal intrafascicular electrodes; 4) a preliminary comparative analysis of the performance of this approach with the ones of others HMIs; 5) the open issues which have to be addressed for a chronic usability of this approach.
Voltage and Power Balance Control for a Cascaded H-Bridge Converter-Based Solid-State Transformer

The solid-state transformer (SST) is an interface device between ac distribution grids and dc distribution systems. The SST consists of a cascaded multilevel ac/dc rectifier stage, a dual active bridge (DAB) converter stage with high-frequency transformers to provide a regulated 400-V dc distribution, and an optional dc/ac stage that can be connected to the 400-V dc bus to provide residential 120/240 V $_{\rm ac}$. However, due to dc-link voltage and power unbalance in the cascaded modules, the unbalanced dc-link voltages and power increase the stress of the semiconductor devices and cause overvoltage or overcurrent issues. This paper proposes a new voltage and power balance control for the cascaded H-Bridge converter-based SST. Based on the single-phase dq model, a novel voltage and the power control strategy is proposed to balance the rectifier capacitor voltages and the real power through parallel DAB modules. Furthermore, the intrinsic power constraints of the cascaded H-Bridge voltage balance control are derived and analyzed. With the proposed control methods, the dc-link voltage and the real power through each module can be balanced. The SST switching model simulation and the prototype experiments are presented to verify the performance of the proposed voltage and power balance controller.
Efficiency of alchemical free energy simulations. II. Improvements for thermodynamic integration

We attempt to optimize the efficiency of thermodynamic integration, as defined by the minimal number of unphysical intermediate states required for the computation of accurate and precise free energy differences. The suitability of various numerical quadrature methods is tested. In particular, we compare the trapezoidal rule, Simpson's rule, Gauss‐Legendre, Gauss‐Kronrod‐Patterson, and Clenshaw‐Curtis integration, as well as integration based on a cubic spline approximation of the integrand. We find that Simpson's rule and spline integration are already significantly more efficient that the trapezoidal rule, i.e., correct free energy differences can be obtained using fewer λ‐states. We demonstrate that Simpson's rule can be used advantageously with nonequidistant values of the abscissa, which increases the flexibility of the method. Efficiency is enhanced even further if higher order methods, such as Gauss‐Legendre, Gauss‐Kronrod‐Patterson, or Clenshaw‐Curtis integration, are used; no more than seven λ‐states, which in the case of Clenshaw‐Curtis integration include the physical end states, were required for accurate results in all test problems studied. Thus, the performance of thermodynamic integration can equal that of Bennett's acceptance ratio method. We also show, however, that the high efficiency found here relies on the particular functional form of the soft‐core potential used; overall, thermodynamic integration is more susceptible to the details of the hybrid Hamiltonian used than Bennett's acceptance ratio method. Therefore, we recommend Bennett's acceptance ratio method as the most robust method to compute alchemical free energy differences; nevertheless, scenarios when thermodynamic integration may be preferable are discussed. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comput Chem, 2011
Use of differential fluorescence induction and optical trapping to isolate environmentally induced genes.

The techniques of differential fluorescence induction (DFI) and optical trapping (OT) have been combined to allow the identification of environmentally induced genes in single bacterial cells. Designated DFI-OT, this technique allows the in situ isolation of genes driving the expression of green fluorescent protein (Gfp) using temporal and spatial criteria. A series of plasmid-based promoter probe vectors (pOT) was developed for the construction of random genomic libraries that are linked to gfpUV or egfp. Bacteria that do not express Gfp on laboratory medium (i.e. non-fluorescent) were inoculated into the environment, and induced genes were detected with a combined fluorescence/optical trapping microscope. Using this selection strategy, rhizosphere-induced genes with homology to thiamine pyrophosphorylase (thiE) and cyclic glucan synthase (ndvB) were isolated. Other genes were expressed late in the stationary phase or as a consequence of surface-dependent growth, including fixND and metX, and a putative ABC transporter of putrescine. This strategy provides a unique ability to combine spatial, temporal and physical information to identify environmental regulation of bacterial gene expression.
The simulation of fluid-rigid body interaction

This sketch describes the modeling of the interaction between fluid and rigid bodies, how to simulate scenes in which fluid pressure acts on a rigid body, and conversely, in which rigid body motion drives a force back to fluid. We construct the interface between fluid simulation using the Cubic Interpolated Propagation (CIP) method and rigid body simulation using the impulse-based method. For fast simulation, we apply the CIP method to uniform structured meshes. For treating the interaction between rigid bodies and fluid efficiently, we use Volume of Solid (VOS) for rigid bodies, and for the collision among rigid bodies, we use Polygon-Polygon collision detection. For fast response to rigid body's collision, we use smaller time step for rigid body than for fluid.
Precoding Design for Multiuser MIMO Downlink Communication Systems Using an LQ-Based Cascade GSIC Algorithm

This paper proposes a novel LQ-based generalized side-information cancellation (GSIC) precoder for multiuser multi-input multi-output (MU-MIMO) downlink systems with sum-rate performance enhancement. The proposed transceiver comprises the following stages. First, a unitary transform matrix designed through the LQ decomposition of the MU-MIMO channel is proposed for suppressing MU interference and obtaining the low-triangular MU-MIMO channel effect for each receiving user. A subchannel matrix with a nontriangular channel causes interference from other users to degrade the reception performance for each user. To overcome this problem, we propose a novel cancellation matrix for suppressing nontriangular MU-MIMO channel and composite noise effects. The proposed LQ-based precoder scheme, which is coupled with unitary transformation and cancellation matrices, can be extended for use with multiple users. The LQ-based GSIC precoder for two users can be realized and extended to three or more users by adopting a cascaded structure. The closed-form solution of the proposed LQ-based GSIC precoder is derived using a constraint-based optimization algorithm. Furthermore, suboptimum solutions show that the performance of the proposed GSIC precoder is almost equal to that of the optimum solutions, and that the precoder also has low complexity. Simulation results show that the proposed LQ-based GSIC precoder outperforms conventional precoders and exhibits reliable and excellent sum-rate performance.
Trust-based Dynamic RBAC

A prominent feature of almost every computerized system is the presence of an access control module. The Role Based Access Control (RBAC) model is among the most popular in both academic research and in practice, within actual implementation of many applications and computer infrastructures. The RBAC model simplifies the way that a system administrator controls the assignment of permissions to individuals by assigning permissions to roles and roles to users. The growth in web applications which enable the access of world-wide and unknown users, expose these applications to various attacks. This led few researchers to suggest ways to incorporate trust within RBAC to achieve even better control over the assignment of users to roles, and permissions within roles, based on the user trust level. In this work, we present a new trust-based RBAC model which improves and refines the assignment of permissions to roles with awareness of the user trust and reputation. After describing the basic model, called TDRBAC for Trust-based Dynamic RBAC, we describe ways to deal with issues like privacy-preservation and delegation of roles with the consideration of
Genetic programming-based geometry reconstruction of conducting cylinders

A general method for optimizing 2D geometries was presented and applied to an inverse scattering problem. This method uses a tree-structured chromosome that represents the geometric combination of several convex polygons. The convex polygons used as inputs are represented by the convex hull of variable-length lists of 2D points. Genetic operators were developed to modify the tree and the point lists. In the two examples given, the method successfully reconstructed the metallic scattering targets resulting in low error in the scattered fields. This method is flexible enough that it could be used in any 2D electromagnetic design problem as presented, and it can also be extended to three dimensions
A Histogram-Based Chan-Vese Model Driven by Local Contrast Pattern for Texture Image Segmentation

This paper proposes a novel local contrast pattern (LCP) to drive the histogram-based Chan-Vese (CV) model for texture image segmentation. The local contrast pattern has two maps, differential contrast map and orientation map, which are well suited to describe texture structure, especially the texture orientation information. In order to enable the extraction of accurate local texture features, a truncated Gaussian kernel function is also incorporated into the improved model. Then, a novel histogram-based CV model is guided by the LCP feature maps and a truncated Gaussian kernel to obtain the texture segmentation. Moreover, we verify the robustness for illumination, noise and initialization of the proposed model in level set framework. Experiments and comparisons demonstrate that the proposed model is effective on various types of image for texture segmentation.