Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effects of Video Prompting via an iPad on Vocational Skill Development of Secondary Students with Developmental Disabilities

The Effects of Video Prompting via an iPad on Vocational Skill Development of Secondary Students with Autism Patricia D. Lund Dept. of Counseling Psychology and Special Education, BYU Master of Science Current laws stress the importance of using research-based practices to teach transition and vocational skills to students with disabilities. Some of the evidence-based practices include the use of videos to prompt students through a task. Much research has been done concerning the effectiveness of video prompts to teach daily living skills, academic skills and social skills. Transitional skills that have been taught often include simple, entry level skills such as watering plants, cooking soup in the microwave or setting a table. To date, there is little research regarding the use of video prompts to teach complex employment skills that can help students reach competitive employment. The current research attempts to study the effectiveness of video prompting using a multiple baseline ABA research design. Participants included two high school students with autism. Both students were taught how to use woodworking tools to make a key rack. Independent task completion and quality check scores were analyzed and graphed. Both students showed an increase in the number of skills they could perform independently and the overall quality of their work from baseline to intervention. One student was able to maintain the skills after the video prompts were moved. The other student showed a slight decrease in scores after the intervention was removed. Future studies should seek to replicate the study in order to determine a functional relationship between video prompting and independent vocational task completion.
Influence of oxygen tension on function of isolated spermatozoa from ejaculates of oligozoospermic patients and normozoospermic fertile donors.

Oxygen radical generation is known to be detrimental to sperm function. An example of a reactive oxygen species-associated male pathology is oligozoospermia in which fertilization and pregnancy rates are low in in-vitro fertilization (IVF) programmes. As the extent of the modifications induced by reactive oxygen species (ROS) depends on several factors, notably from oxygen tension in the incubation medium, the aim of this study was to examine the influence of a low (5%) rather than atmospheric (20%) oxygen tension in the incubator gas phase on the function of Percoll-selected spermatozoa from ejaculates of oligozoospermic patients and normozoospermic fertile donors. After incubation for several hours in a gas phase of either 5% CO2/90% N2/5% O2 or 5% CO2/95% air (20% O2), none of the parameters investigated, e.g. movement characteristics, potential of spermatozoa to acquire hyperactivated motility, to undergo the acrosome reaction when challenged with a calcium ionophore and to fuse with zona-free hamster oocytes, was significantly different between the two oxygen tensions in fertile donors. In contrast, among oligozoospermic patients, the motility parameters, the percentage of hyperactivated motility and of induced-acrosome reaction were significantly improved under a gas phase of 5% O2 compared with those observed under an atmosphere of 20% O2 (P < 0.05). Exposure to 5% rather than 20% oxygen tension also induced a significant increase in the percentage of penetration of zona-free hamster eggs after capacitation for 17 h, but no difference was found in the mean number of bound spermatozoa per oocyte. After incubation for 24 h, a significantly higher survival rate was observed under 5% compared with 20% oxygen tension. These results show that the use of a low oxygen tension rather than air might improve spermatozoan competence of oligozoospermic patients during IVF programmes.
A Technique for Using Model Checkers to Teach Formal Specifications

The difficulty of writing, reading, and understanding formal specifications is one of the main obstacles in adopting formal verification techniques such as model checking and runtime verification. Introducing concepts in formal methods in an undergraduate program is essential for training a workforce that can develop and test high-assurance systems. This paper presents educational outcomes and outlines an instructive component that can be used in an undergraduate course to teach formal approaches and languages. The component uses a model checker and a specification tool to teach Linear Temporal Logic (LTL), a specification language that is widely used in a variety of verification tools. The paper also introduces a novel technique that analyzes LTL specifications by using the SPIN model checker to elucidate the behaviors accepted by the specifications.
Change-O: a toolkit for analyzing large-scale B cell immunoglobulin repertoire sequencing data

UNLABELLED Advances in high-throughput sequencing technologies now allow for large-scale characterization of B cell immunoglobulin (Ig) repertoires. The high germline and somatic diversity of the Ig repertoire presents challenges for biologically meaningful analysis, which requires specialized computational methods. We have developed a suite of utilities, Change-O, which provides tools for advanced analyses of large-scale Ig repertoire sequencing data. Change-O includes tools for determining the complete set of Ig variable region gene segment alleles carried by an individual (including novel alleles), partitioning of Ig sequences into clonal populations, creating lineage trees, inferring somatic hypermutation targeting models, measuring repertoire diversity, quantifying selection pressure, and calculating sequence chemical properties. All Change-O tools utilize a common data format, which enables the seamless integration of multiple analyses into a single workflow. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION Change-O is freely available for non-commercial use and may be downloaded from http://clip.med.yale.edu/changeo. CONTACT steven.kleinstein@yale.edu.
Template based shape processing

As computers can only represent and process discrete data, information gathered from the real world always has to be sampled. While it is nowadays possible to sample many signals accurately and thus generate high-quality reconstructions (for example of images and audio data), accurately and densely sampling 3D geometry is still a challenge. The signal samples may be corrupted by noise and outliers, and contain large holes due to occlusions. These issues become even more pronounced when also considering the temporal domain. Because of this, developing methods for accurate reconstruction of shapes from a sparse set of discrete data is an important aspect of the computer graphics processing pipeline. In this thesis we propose novel approaches to including semantic knowledge into reconstruction processes using template based shape processing. We formulate shape reconstruction as a deformable template fitting process, where we try to fit a given template model to the sampled data. This approach allows us to present novel solutions to several fundamental problems in the area of shape reconstruction. We address static problems like constrained texture mapping and semantically meaningful hole-filling in surface reconstruction from 3D scans, temporal problems such as mesh based performance capture, and finally dynamic problems like the estimation of physically based material parameters of animated templates.
Identification of improper processes by variable tap-length complex-valued adaptive filters

Variable tap-length is introduced into complex-valued adaptive filters in order to provide an additional degree of freedom, enhance tracking ability, and provide data-adaptive optimal modelling. This is achieved by extending the fractional tap-length (FT) algorithm from the real domain ℝ and by accounting for some special properties of the complex domain ℂ. For generality, the augmented least mean square (ACLMS) and augmented complex nonlinear gradient descent(ACNGD) are equipped with the variable tap-length in order to cater for both the second order circular and noncircular signals. Simulations on model order selection and the identification of the noncircular nature of complex data support the approach.
Human Gamma Oscillations during Slow Wave Sleep

Neocortical local field potentials have shown that gamma oscillations occur spontaneously during slow-wave sleep (SWS). At the macroscopic EEG level in the human brain, no evidences were reported so far. In this study, by using simultaneous scalp and intracranial EEG recordings in 20 epileptic subjects, we examined gamma oscillations in cerebral cortex during SWS. We report that gamma oscillations in low (30–50 Hz) and high (60–120 Hz) frequency bands recurrently emerged in all investigated regions and their amplitudes coincided with specific phases of the cortical slow wave. In most of the cases, multiple oscillatory bursts in different frequency bands from 30 to 120 Hz were correlated with positive peaks of scalp slow waves (“IN-phase” pattern), confirming previous animal findings. In addition, we report another gamma pattern that appears preferentially during the negative phase of the slow wave (“ANTI-phase” pattern). This new pattern presented dominant peaks in the high gamma range and was preferentially expressed in the temporal cortex. Finally, we found that the spatial coherence between cortical sites exhibiting gamma activities was local and fell off quickly when computed between distant sites. Overall, these results provide the first human evidences that gamma oscillations can be observed in macroscopic EEG recordings during sleep. They support the concept that these high-frequency activities might be associated with phasic increases of neural activity during slow oscillations. Such patterned activity in the sleeping brain could play a role in off-line processing of cortical networks.
Using Internet nodes and routers onboard satellites

An Internet router was integrated into the UK‐DMC remote‐sensing satellite as a secondary experimental payload. This commercial product has been orbiting in space for over three years. We describe the integration of the router and satellite and the successful on‐orbit testing of the router, which took place using the Virtual Mission Operations Center (VMOC) application as part of a larger systems internetworking exercise. Placing this Cisco router in Low Earth Orbit (CLEO) onboard a small satellite is one step towards extending the terrestrial networking model to the near‐Earth space environment as part of a merged space–ground architecture. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Calibration and multiple system fusion for spoken term detection using linear logistic regression

State-of-the-art calibration and fusion approaches for spoken term detection (STD) systems currently rely on a multi-pass approach where the scores are calibrated, then fused, and finally re-calibrated to obtain a single decision threshold across keywords. While the above techniques are theoretically correct, they rely on meta-parameter tuning and are prone to over-fitting. This study presents an efficient and effective score calibration technique for keyword detection that is based on the logistic regression calibration approach commonly used in forensic speaker identification. The technique applies seamlessly to both single systems and to system fusion, and enables optimization for specific keyword detection evaluation functions. We run experiments on a Vietnamese STD task, comparing the technique with more empirical calibration and fusion schemes and demonstrate that we can achieve comparable or better performance in terms of the NIST ATWV metric with a more elegant solution.
Combining Processor Virtualization and Component-Based Engineering in C for Many-Core Heterogeneous Embedded MPSoCs

The design of embedded systems is driven by strong constraints in terms of performance, silicon area and power consumption, as well as pressure on the cost and time-to-market. This has three consequences: 1) many-core systems are becoming mainstream, but there is still no satisfactory approach for distributing software applications on these platforms; 2) these systems integrate heterogeneous processors for efficiency reasons, thus programming them requires complex compilation environments; 3) hardware resources are precious and low-level languages are still a must to exploit them fully. These factors negatively impact the programmability of many-core platforms and limit our ability to address the challenges of the next decade. This paper devises a new programming approach leveraging processor virtualization and component-based software engineering paradigms to address these issues all together. We present a programming model based on C for developing fine grain component-based applications and a toolset that compiles them into a processor-independent bytecode representation that can be deployed on heterogeneous MPSoCs. We also discuss the effectiveness of this approach and present future directions that will have a key role in addressing the above challenges.
Design of Viterbi Decoder for Noisy Channel

The problem of survival memory management of a Viterbi Decoder (VD) was solved by introducing a pointer implementation for the register exchange (RE) method, where a pointer is assigned to each row of memory in the SMU. The content of the pointer which points to one row of memory is altered to point to another row of memory, instead of copying the contents of the first row to the second. In this paper, the one- pointer VD is proposed; if the initial state of the convolutional encoder is known, the entire survivor memory unit (SMU) is reduced to only one row. Because the decoded data are generated in the required order, even this row of memory is dispensable. Thus, the one-pointer architecture, referred to as memory less Viterbi Decoder (MLVD), reduces the power consumption of a traditional trace back (TB) VD by approximately 50 percent. A prototype of the MLVD with a one third convolutional code rate and a constraint length of nine is mapped into a Xilinx.
Monetary Value of Customer Networks in Mobile Social Networking Services

Mobile Social Networking Services (SNS) are an emerging trend in which individuals of similar interests communicate with one another using mobile phones. In this paper, we calculate the monetary value of customers and their networks in mobile SNS using the official data provided by a service provider. The mobile SNS enable users to create their avatars to communicate with each other via blog comments and communities. The company sells various items for these avatars such as apparel and interiors. This service generates consumer purchase history data and user network data. In previous research, the value of the customer is often estimated using the purchase history, but the network value is neglected. In the field of computer science, the value of the network is evaluated via the network structure, but not much attention is paid to the economic aspect of each node. The aim of this paper is to incorporate the social factor with the customer purchase database and calculate the monetary value of each customer and his or her network. The results of empirical analysis show that our approach is useful in finding valuable customers for marketing activities and outperforms conventional metrics such as degree centrality.
[Sedentary behaviour 13-years-olds and its association with selected health behaviours, parenting practices and body mass].

OBJECTIVE 1. To estimate the time spent in sedentary behaviour (watching TV, using the computer, doing homework). 2. To assess the link between the total time spent on watching TV, using the computer, doing homework and dietary habits, physical activity, parental practices and body mass. MATERIAL AND METHODS Cross-sectional study was conducted in Poland in 2008 among 13-year olds (n=600). They self-reported their time of TV viewing, computer use and homework. Their dietary behaviours, physical activity (MVPA) and parenting practices were also self-reported. Height and weight were measured by school nurses. Descriptive statistics and correlation were used in this analysis. RESULTS The mean time spent watching television in school days was 2.3 hours for girls and 2.2 for boys. Boys spent significantly more time using the computer than girls - respectively 1.8 and 1.5 hours, while girls took longer doing homework - respectively 1.7 and 1.3 hours. Mean screen time was about 4 hours in school days and about 6 hours during weekend, statistically longer for boys in weekdays. Screen time was positively associated with intake of sweets, chips, soft drinks, "fast food" and meals consumption during TV, and negatively with regularity of meals and parental supervision. There was no correlation between screen time with physical activity and body mass. CONCLUSION Sedentary behaviours and physical activity are not competing behaviours in Polish teenagers, but their relationship with unhealthy dietary patterns may lead to development of obesity. Good parental practices, both mother's and father's supervision seems to be crucial for screen time limitation in their children. Parents should become aware that relevant lifestyle monitoring of their children is a crucial element of health education in prevention of civilization diseases. This is a task for both healthcare workers and educational staff.
A Unifying Framework for Analysing Common Cyclical Features in Cointegrated Time Series

This paper provides a unifying framework in which the coexistence of different form of common cyclical features can be tested and imposed to a cointegrated VAR model. This goal is reached by introducing a new notion of common cyclical features, namely the weak form of polynomial serial correlation common features, which encompasses most of the previous ones. Statistical inference is obtained by means of reduced-rank regression, and alternative forms of common cyclical features are detected by means of tests for over-identifying restrictions on the parameters of the new model. Some iterative estimation procedures are then proposed for simultaneously modelling different forms of common features. Concepts and methods are illustrated by an empirical investigation of the US business cycle indicators.
Stress Myocardial Perfusion CT in Patients Suspected of Having Coronary Artery Disease: Visual and Quantitative Analysis-Validation by Using Fractional Flow Reserve.

PURPOSE To assess the diagnostic accuracy of stress myocardial perfusion computed tomography (CT) by using visual and quantitative analytic methods in patients with coronary artery disease, with fractional flow reserve (FFR) as a reference standard. MATERIALS AND METHODS The institutional review board approved the study, and written informed consent was obtained from all patients. The diagnostic accuracy of myocardial perfusion CT was assessed for 75 patients who underwent myocardial perfusion CT and conventional coronary angiography with reference to hemodynamically significant stenosis, defined as the presence of an FFR of 0.8 or less or an angiographically severe (≥90%) stenosis. Results of quantitative analysis of myocardial perfusion CT data were compared with those of visual analysis by using areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUCs). RESULTS Among the 75 patients and 210 epicardial arteries, 61 patients (81%) with 86 arteries (41%) had hemodynamically significant stenosis. The per-patient sensitivity and specificity of the visual assessment of myocardial perfusion CT data for all patients were 89% and 86%, respectively. At per-vessel analysis, the sensitivities and specificities, respectively, of myocardial perfusion CT were 80% and 95% for all vessels, 85% and 100% for 63 vessels with severe coronary calcification (defined as an Agatston score > 400), and 76% and 91% for 56 vessels in patients with multivessel disease. In severely calcified vessels, visual assessment of myocardial perfusion CT data in combination with CT angiography provided incremental value over CT angiography alone for the detection of myocardial ischemia (integrated discrimination improvement index, 0.38; P < .001). Quantitative assessment of transmural perfusion ratio had a lower AUC than visual analysis of myocardial perfusion CT (0.759 vs 0.877, P = .002). CONCLUSION Stress myocardial perfusion CT provides incremental value over CT angiography in patients with a high calcium score for the detection of myocardial ischemia as defined by FFR.
Corpus Based Validation of WordNet Using Frequency Parameters

In this paper we define a set of frequency parameters to be used in synset validation based on corpora. These parameters indicate the coverage of the corpus by wordnet literals, the importance of one sense of a literal in comparison to the others, as well as the importance of one literal in a synset in comparison to other literals in the same synset. The obtained results can be used in synset refinement, as well as in information retrieval tasks.
Journal of Rural and Community Development Local Small Business Development in Two Swedish Northern Rural Areas – A Matter of Synergy , Social Capital and Trust ?

This exploratory paper examines the synergy between small businesses and the municipality in rural areas in northern Sweden, by exploring whether the degree of social capital and trust influences local small business development. Previous research shows that municipal policy tools, initiatives, and state-society synergy are crucial for local small business development in rural areas. This study challenge popular assumptions about how state-society synergy is imperative for local small business development by saying that a lack of vertical trust has in fact encouraged the entrepreneurial force and increased small business development in the rural areas studied. A qualitative case-study method was used including interviews, observations and studying of documents. Results show, by using the indicator ‘extent of trust in the municipality’ as measurement, that when there is strong horizontal social capital, it may in fact inhibit the possibility of creating strong vertical social capital, and the extent of trust towards the municipality is insignificant in promoting small business development in a rural area if the horizontal social capital is strong.