Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Investigating the Development of Work-oriented Groups in an e-Learning Environment

In this study, we have investigated developmental patterns of virtual groups in the e-learning environment. Our findings suggest that for virtual groups formed for the purpose of e-learning, dependency and inclusion characterize the initial stage of group development, as such characteristics reinforce cooperative relationships and help to build a stronger social bond among group members. This is followed by the second stage, swift work, which enables participants to labor as a team and facilitates continual collaboration among members. However, the third stage, conflict, is inevitable, as conflicts provide important diagnostic evidence for each member to assess and adjust his or her values and preference. Finally, by overcoming conflicts, partners build strong bonding, which fosters intimate communication and provides many opportunities for frequent interactions that demonstrate concern and desire to satisfy the needs and wishes of one another. Our finding suggests that initial active dependency interactions in the first period provide a sense of coherence. Accordingly, the instructor of a virtual learning system should encourage learners to express their concern for one another in order quickly to build strong norms. In addition, as work intensifies, the instructor could aim to support both the effective interaction channels of groups as well as their task-focused activities. Finally, to improve members’ involvement and information sharing, the instructor could provide feedback to groups regarding their level of interactivity and encourage members to remind each other about the quality and quantity of individual contribution.
High level of resistance to nalidixic acid in Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi in Central India.

BACKGROUND Fluoroquinolones are the drugs of choice for the treatment of typhoid fever. But the recent increase in minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values of ciprofloxacin in Salmonella Typhi may result in delayed response and serious complications. Nalidixic acid resistance has been used as an indirect evidence of increased minimum inhibitory concentration for ciprofloxacin in Salmonella Typhi. METHODS We evaluated the isolates received at the National Salmonella and Escherichia Centre for nalidixic acid and ciprofloxacin susceptibility using standard methods. Minimum inhibitory concentrations have also been evaluated. RESULTS Ninety-six percent of the isolates were found to be nalidixic acid resistant while all isolates were found to be ciprofloxacin sensitive. The difference between minimum inhibitory concentration values of ciprofloxacin for nalidixic acid resistant and nalidixic acid sensitive isolates was found to be statistically significant. CONCLUSION The study may be helpful in revising treatment strategies for the infections caused by nalidixic acid resistant Salmonella Typhi in the country.
A scheme for unifying optimization and constraint satisfaction methods

Optimization and constraint satisfaction methods are complementary to a large extent, and there has been much recent interest in combining them. Yet no generally accepted principle or scheme for their merger has evolved. We propose a scheme based on two fundamental dualities: the duality of search and inference, and the duality of strengthening and relaxation. Optimization as well as constraint satisfaction methods can be seen as exploiting these dualities in their respective ways. Our proposal is that rather than employ either type of method exclusively, one can focus on how these dualities can be exploited in a given problem class. The resulting algorithm is likely to contain elements from both optimization and constraint satisfaction, and perhaps new methods that belong to neither.
In situ structural analysis of the Yersinia enterocolitica injectisome

Injectisomes are multi-protein transmembrane machines allowing pathogenic bacteria to inject effector proteins into eukaryotic host cells, a process called type III secretion. Here we present the first three-dimensional structure of Yersinia enterocolitica and Shigella flexneri injectisomes in situ and the first structural analysis of the Yersinia injectisome. Unexpectedly, basal bodies of injectisomes inside the bacterial cells showed length variations of 20%. The in situ structures of the Y. enterocolitica and S. flexneri injectisomes had similar dimensions and were significantly longer than the isolated structures of related injectisomes. The crystal structure of the inner membrane injectisome component YscD appeared elongated compared to a homologous protein, and molecular dynamics simulations documented its elongation elasticity. The ring-shaped secretin YscC at the outer membrane was stretched by 30–40% in situ, compared to its isolated liposome-embedded conformation. We suggest that elasticity is critical for some two-membrane spanning protein complexes to cope with variations in the intermembrane distance. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.00792. 001
The Pattern as a Reusable Component to Adaptive Framework for Load Balancing Mobile Agent in Internet Banking

In recent years, the Software Architecture of an Internet banking has become one of the most challengeable and risky fields of modern technology. The advent of the Internet has revolutionized the way banking is being done. In Internet banking, we analyzed some attributes such as usage, security, availability, load balancing and so on. Among those attributes Load Balancing is a serious problem in the Internet and it is necessary to build new systems incorporating load balancing as integral part of their design. The use of patterns, which is of a reusable component, is a good tool to help designers build load balancing systems. In this paper we are going to propose cluster load balancing technique by using mobile
Swarm ant algorithm incorporation for navigation of resource collecting robots

Swarm robotics requires the development of new strategies and algorithm integration, which allow for the improvement of the design and the applications for harvesting or collecting resources. This paper describes the programming and design of Finite State Machines (FSM) bio-inspired algorithms for seeker and resource gathering Pherobots systems, like Anthill Known Location (AKL) aggressiveness and sense of panic. FSM designing allows for the use of control architectures for behaviour-based agents and for measuring the change in system performance. Simulations demonstrate the capability of the algorithms under different environments and scenarios.
FIVE-YEAR WILKINSON MICROWAVE ANISOTROPY PROBE OBSERVATIONS: BEAM MAPS AND WINDOW FUNCTIONS

Cosmology and other scientific results from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) mission require an accurate knowledge of the beam patterns in flight. While the degree of beam knowledge for the WMAP one-year and three-year results was unprecedented for a CMB experiment, we have significantly improved the beam determination as part of the five-year data release. Physical optics fits are done on both the A and the B sides for the first time. The cutoff scale of the fitted distortions on the primary mirror is reduced by a factor of ∼2 from previous analyses. These changes enable an improvement in the hybridization of Jupiter data with beam models, which is optimized with respect to error in the main beam solid angle. An increase in main-beam solid angle of ∼1% is found for the V2 and W1–W4 differencing assemblies. Although the five-year results are statistically consistent with previous ones, the errors in the five-year beam transfer functions are reduced by a factor of ∼2 as compared to the three-year analysis. We present radiometry of the planet Jupiter as a test of the beam consistency and as a calibration standard; for an individual differencing assembly, errors in the measured disk temperature are ∼0.5%.
Accelerating data mining workloads: current approaches and future challenges in system architecture design

Conventional systems based on general‐purpose processors cannot keep pace with the exponential increase in the generation and collection of data. It is therefore important to explore alternative architectures that can provide the computational capabilities required to analyze ever‐growing datasets. Programmable graphics processing units (GPUs) offer computational capabilities that surpass even high‐end multi‐core central processing units (CPUs), making them well‐suited for floating‐point‐ or integer‐intensive and data parallel operations. Field‐programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), which can be reconfigured to implement an arbitrary circuit, provide the capability to specify a customized datapath for any task. The multiple granularities of parallelism offered by FPGA architectures, as well as their high internal bandwidth, make them suitable for low complexity parallel computations. GPUs and FPGAs can serve as coprocessors for data mining applications, allowing the CPU to offload computationally intensive tasks for faster processing. Experiments have shown that heterogeneous architectures employing GPUs or FPGAs can result in significant application speedups over homogenous CPU‐based systems, while increasing performance per watt. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. WIREs Data Mining Knowl Discov 2011 1 41‐54 DOI: 10.1002/widm.9
Can cochlear implantation improve neurocognition in the aging population?

Introduction The relationship between cognition and the ability to hear is well known. Due to changes in demographics, the number of people with sensorineural hearing loss and cognitive impairment is increasing. The aim of this study was to identify the impact of hearing rehabilitation via cochlear implantation on cognitive decline among the aging population. Patients and methods This prospective study included 60 subjects aged between 50 and 84 years (mean 65.8 years, SD=8.9) with a severe to profound bilateral hearing impairment. A computer-based evaluation of short- and long-term memory, processing speed, attention, working memory and inhibition was performed prior to surgery as well as 6 and 12 months after cochlear implantation. Additionally, speech perception at 65 and 80 dB (Freiburger monosyllabic speech test) as well as disease-related (Nijmegen Cochlear Implant Questionnaire) and general (WHOQOL-OLD) quality of life were assessed. Results Six months postimplantation, speech perception, quality of life and also neurocognitive abilities significantly increased. The most remarkable improvement after 6 months was detected in executive functions such as attention (p<0.001), inhibition (p=0.025) and working memory (n-back: p=0.002; operation span task: p=0.008), followed by delayed recall (p=0.03). In contrast, long-term memory showed a significant change of performance only after 12 months (p=0.021). After 6 months, most cognitive domains remained stable, except working memory assessed by the operation span task, which significantly improved between 6 and 12 months (p<0.001). No correlation was found between cognitive results and duration of deafness, speech perception or quality of life. Conclusion Cochlear implantation does not only lead to better speech perception and quality of life, but has also been shown to improve cognitive skills in hearing impaired adults aged 50 years or more. These effects seem to be independent of each other.
The impact of critical appraisal workshops on residents’ evidence based medicine skills and knowledge

Objective To assess the impact of four evidence based medicine (EBM) critical appraisal education workshops in improving residents’ EBM knowledge and skills. Methods The eligible participants in the workshops were 88 residents-in-training, postgraduate years one through four, rotating through the outpatient internal medicine clinic. Four EBM workshops, consisting of 3 days each (30 minutes daily), were taught by our faculty. Topics covered included critical appraisal of randomized controlled trials, case-control and cohort studies, diagnosis studies, and systematic reviews. Results As a program evaluation, anonymous pre-workshop and post-workshop tests were administered. Each of the four sets of tests showed improvement in scores: therapy from 58% to 77% (42% response rate), harm from 65% to 73% (38% response rate), diagnosis from 49% to 68% (49% response rate), and systematic review from 57% to 72% (30% response rate). Conclusion We found that teaching EBM in four short workshops improved EBM knowledge and critical appraisal skills related to the four topics.
Exact Search Directions for Optimization of Linear and Nonlinear Models Based on Generalized Orthonormal Functions

A novel technique for selecting the poles of orthonormal basis functions (OBF) in Volterra models of any order is presented. It is well-known that the usual large number of parameters required to describe the Volterra kernels can be significantly reduced by representing each kernel using an appropriate basis of orthonormal functions. Such a representation results in the so-called OBF Volterra model, which has a Wiener structure consisting of a linear dynamic generated by the orthonormal basis followed by a nonlinear static mapping given by the Volterra polynomial series. Aiming at optimizing the poles that fully parameterize the orthonormal bases, the exact gradients of the outputs of the orthonormal filters with respect to their poles are computed analytically by using a back-propagation-through-time technique. The expressions relative to the Kautz basis and to generalized orthonormal bases of functions (GOBF) are addressed; the ones related to the Laguerre basis follow straightforwardly as a particular case. The main innovation here is that the dynamic nature of the OBF filters is fully considered in the gradient computations. These gradients provide exact search directions for optimizing the poles of a given orthonormal basis. Such search directions can, in turn, be used as part of an optimization procedure to locate the minimum of a cost-function that takes into account the error of estimation of the system output. The Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm is adopted here as the optimization procedure. Unlike previous related work, the proposed approach relies solely on input-output data measured from the system to be modeled, i.e., no information about the Volterra kernels is required. Examples are presented to illustrate the application of this approach to the modeling of dynamic systems, including a real magnetic levitation system with nonlinear oscillatory behavior.
Static and dynamic task mapping onto network on chip multiprocessors

Las redes en circuito integrado (NoC) representan un importante paradigma de uso creciente para los sistemas multiprocesador en circuito integrado (MPSoC), debido a su flexibilidad y escalabilidad. Las estrategias de tolerancia a fallos han venido adquiriendo importancia, a medida que los procesos de manufactura incursionan en dimensiones por debajo del micrometro y la complejidad de los disenos aumenta. Este articulo describe un algoritmo de aprendizaje incremental basado en poblacion (PBIL), orientado a optimizar el proceso de mapeo en tiempo de diseno, asi como a encontrar soluciones de mapeo optimas en tiempo de ejecucion, para hacer frente a fallos de unico nodo en la red. En ambos casos, los objetivos de optimizacion corresponden al tiempo de ejecucion de las aplicaciones y al ancho de banda pico que aparece en la red. Las simulaciones se basaron en un algoritmo de ruteo XY deterministico, operando sobre una topologia de malla 2D para la NoC. Los resultados obtenidos son prometedores. El algoritmo propuesto exhibe un desempeno superior a otras tecnicas reportadas cuando el tamano del problema aumenta.
Systematic Service Level Agreement (SLA) data management

In cloud computing, service resources are distributed. Cloud service markets respond simultaneously to multiple, remote customers. Every customer needs to agree with a service level agreement (SLA) to lease a new service. SLAs represent contractual terms and conditions between service providers and customers. SLA information can be complex due to the diversity and plethora of offered cloud services. Cloud SLAs lack standardization, which would motivate their automated and consistent processing. We propose the systematic management of SLA information through an SLA graph data model. The SLA graph is positioned in the cloud computing setting, where services are provisioned on-demand. We analyze how flexibly the proposed SLA graph integrates data elements and relationships that are specified by diverse business domains. The SLA graph model supports the data exchange over connected environments and endorses SLA unification and standardization efforts for cloud computing services.
Managing the Principal Agent Problem in Bolsa Familia

A look at contextual factors that affect the quality of implementation RAND Europe is a not-for-profit organisation whose mission is to help improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit the Institute for Fiscal Studies assessed the effectiveness of conditional cash transfer programmes (CCTs) in low-and middle-income countries. By analysing the impact of external conditions on CCTs at both the institutional and household level we aim to address some of the gaps in our understanding of the effectiveness of CCTs, and therefore to contribute to more efficient government programmes to alleviate short-and long-term poverty. CCTs have been extensively evaluated, but important questions remain unanswered. CCTs produce extremely varied results in different contexts. We need to understand how this variety is explained by for instance environmental factors, the availability of health and education services, and individual background variables. We need also to understand the mechanisms by which CCTs secure the results they do. Without this knowledge we cannot determine whether CCTs are likely to alleviate poverty effectively in the current economic climate. This report is the second in a series and looks in more detail at the relationship between the capacity of municipalities and support services involved in the delivery of the programme and the outcomes of Bolsa Familia, the largest CCT in Brazil. It tries to establish which factors are associated with more effective implementation. This report is directly relevant for policymakers and those involved in the administration and design of CCTs.
Automatic maintenance of web directories by mining web browsing data

Web directories allow Web users to browse a hierarchy of categories, under which di-fferent types of resources are classified. We study the problem of maintaining a Webdirectory, that is, the problem of continually discovering and ranking resources that arerelevant to the categories of the directory. We propose an unsupervised computationalmethod that conducts the maintenance of the directory by analyses of user browsingdata. The method is based on the extraction and classification of user sessions (se-quences of resources selected by users) into the categories of the directory. In addition,we show that the directory maintenance method can be slightly modified to find queriesthat are useful to find relevant resources allowing users to switch from directory browsingto query formulation. Experimental results allow for affirmation that the proposed me-thods are effective, that they attain identification of new pages in each category and alsorecommend related queries with high precision, without needing labeled data to conducttraditional web page and query classification tasks.
Acute and chronic swine rete arteriovenous malformation models: effect of ethiodol and glacial acetic acid on penetration, dispersion, and injection force of N-butyl 2-cyanoacrylate.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Liquid embolic agents are increasingly gaining importance in the embolization of cerebral arteriovenous malformations (AVMs). Currently, the most commonly used agent is N-butyl 2-cyanoacrylate (NBCA). Various NBCA mixtures, arterial hypotension, and Valsalva maneuver (increased positive end-expiratory pressure) during the injection of the acrylate have been used to address hemodynamic and architectural variations of an AVM; however, the precise in vivo polymerization, distribution, and kinetics of NBCA mixtures are unknown. We investigated the effect of different acrylate/Lipiodol mixtures and the addition of glacial acetic acid (GAA) on the penetration, dispersion, and injection force of NBCA. METHODS A swine rete AVM model that has been described elsewhere was used for the embolization. In one subgroup of animals, embolization was performed immediately after construction of the AVM model. In a second subgroup, a chronic AVM model was used. GAA was added to the NBCA mixture to decrease the pH value of the solution and prolong the polymerization time. The addition of GAA allowed us to reduce the amount of Lipiodol, thereby reducing the viscosity of the mixture. A total of 30 swine were used for both the acute (n = 23) and chronic (n = 7) subgroups. The following mixtures of Lipiodol/NBCA and GAA (% vol/%vol + microL) were used for embolization: 80/20 + 0; 50/50 + 0; 50/50 + 5; 50/50 + 10; and 50/50 + 20. A total of six retia per mixture were used for the analysis. Glue injection pressure profiles were recorded in each experiment. High-resolution radiographic images obtained from the harvested retia were used to correlate the dispersion and depth of glue penetration with the AVM hemodynamics. The effect of different amounts of GAA on the glue dispersion and depth of penetration of the mixtures was also studied. RESULTS Using the same pressure gradients, less viscous NBCA + GAA mixtures led to a deeper nidal penetration. The addition of 20 microL of GAA resulted in a three times higher penetration and dispersion of the NBCA mixture that was more homogenous. CONCLUSION The viscosity of the liquid embolic agent used is an important limiting factor for an AVM embolization. Reducing the amount of Lipiodol improves nidus penetration. Quicker polymerization can be overcome by adding GAA, which reduces the pH of the mixture.
Better the Tweeter You Know: Social Signals on Twitter

We present results from a web-based experiment conducted to assess the effect of Twitter metadata on decision making in content consumption. Participants were presented with information concerning two tweets and asked which they would prefer to read. Analysis of the results shows that recognition of the author as being within the readers local network is highly influential in the decision to read a tweet. This has analogies with results from cognitive psychology on decision making processes such as the recognition heuristic. The role of more detailed quantitative metadata has also been assessed. Surprisingly, metadata describing the popularity of tweet authors in terms of the number of followers or the number of tweets written has no significant impact on decision making, while metadata describing the tweet content (the number of retweets) has a significant impact, with a large proportion of users preferring to read content that has been retweeted a larger number of times. When friendship information and quantitative values are combined the impact of the friendship information is reduced, but a larger proportion of users still prefer to choose based on this information, while the impact of the retweet value is reduced.