Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Double gateway to the host society? Knowledge and perceptions of Japanese people living in Catalonia regarding language

ABSTRACT This study explores the degree of language knowledge of Japanese living in Catalonia and their perceptions of the two particular languages used in this multilingual/bilingual society. The data on language proficiency was obtained via a questionnaire survey which was evaluated by the subjects themselves and analysed by means of correspondence analysis. A significant correlation between the degree of knowledge of Castilian and that of Catalan was found, suggesting that Castilian is the first language that almost all subjects learnt upon their arrival in Catalonia or prior to arriving. Catalan, on the other hand, was only learnt by a particular group of subjects who had achieved a certain level in Castilian. Furthermore, in-depth interviews were conducted to determine how the subjects perceive Catalan and Castilian. Commonly, they were perceived in a dichotomous way, with Castilian being a wider-used language and Catalan being a language of limited use not meant for outsiders. Castilian is learnt rather unconditionally, probably because it is the Spanish state's language, which mirrors the traditional language ideology of Japan – one nation, one language. The majority of the subjects had not learnt Catalan for various reasons such as priority given to Castilian and behaviour of the local population.
English Learners With Disabilities in High School

Little is known about the characteristics, transition education, and postschool outcomes of English learners with disabilities (ELSWDs), despite that English learners are a rapidly growing group of U.S. students with consistently poor outcomes. This study examines a nationally representative sample of ELSWDs through a secondary analysis of the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 (NLTS2). Complex Samples statistical analyses were used to identify ELSWDs’ sociodemographic characteristics, education and transition program characteristics, and postschool outcomes. Results confirmed disproportionate identification by race/ethnicity for Latinos and White as ELSWDs. Findings also illustrated alignment between transition planning and courses taken, yet postschool employment was significantly lower for ELSWDs. Implications include the need for research methods that address ELSWDs disproportionality in high school and transition outcome variables unique to this population. Implications for practice include the development of teacher preparation programs that apprise secondary special educators of ELSWD characteristics and their transition-related preferences, strengths, and needs.
Prolactin Causes the Dissociation of Prolactin from Membrane Receptor in Lactating Mouse Mammary Action of High Prolactin Concentration Plasma Cell :

In order to characterize the dissociation of receptor-bound prolactin (PRL) by mammary cells, cells were prepared from lactating mice by collagenase digestion and loaded with PRL. The dissociation reaction was performed in the presence of PRL. In the concentration range 1 ng/ml-1 μg/ml examined, PRL at higher than 10 ng/ml accelerated the dissociation of PRL in a concentration-dependent manner. The action of PRL on dissociation was completed within a short period. At the end of the 1 h-incubation period, the dissociation rate constant (k_,) was about 2 times larger in the presence of 1 μg/ml of PRL than in its absence. The action of PRL occurred predominantly at the level of the plasma membrane receptor. Mammary cells with greater PRL-binding capacities had larger k_1 in response to PRL. The present data showed that the dissociation of PRL from the receptor was influenced by the concentration of PRL and by the PRL-binding capacity of the cell. The rate of PRL-receptor interaction is expressed by the equation of k_1(PRL-bound receptors). It is probable that at exceedingly high levels of PRL, the PRLreceptor interaction occurs more frequently in the presence of PRL-dependent dissociation than in its absence.
Interpolating scattered data points by Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces

AbstractThis paper outlines an approach for the interpolation of scattered data points by Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces. This approach relies in a fundamental way on an algorithm that groups the initial data points into a sequence of control polygons. Each one of these polygons is transformed in such a way that its corresponding limit curve interpolates its original control points. A polygonal complex is then constructed to embody each one of these polygons, which is then transformed to correspond to the original polygon it was embodying. Finally, automatic connection of each complex to its immediate neighbors is established. This process results in a control polyhedron whose limit surface interpolates the initial control points. This process is straightforward and easy to implement. While not utilizing too many auxiliary data points, these additional points can be used to tailor the interpolating surface to suit additional user requirements, without affecting the initial interpolation constraints.
Browsing Icons: A Task-Based Approach for a Visual Web History

We have implemented a task and session based visual web history tool called Browsing Icons that dynamically draws animated graphs of the user’s paths through the web. Using a proxy, it can be attached to any common web browser. Every web session builds an individual Browsing Graph with a characteristic shape. The graphs are organized in a hierarchy of user-defined tasks. Users can interrupt tasks and continue later using the graphs that provide access to all the web pages they have visited so far. The graphs can be reused for similar or recurrent tasks. By clustering the history hierarchically according to tasks, we try to cope with scale and to provide a powerful concept for easy revisitation. The visualizations have been implemented using the Jazz framework for zoomable user interfaces (ZUIs) in Java. A usability study showed that users like the system very much and appreciate its support of revisiting web pages. Ten users revisited web pages after a few minutes and other web pages after one to six days using both Netscape with Browsing Icons and Netscape alone. With the tool they completed the short-term revisits in 84% of the time required when using Netscape alone. The revisits after one to six days users could accomplish in 57.8% of the time they needed when using Netscape, thereby visiting only 53.8% as many pages. Users were significantly more satisfied with Browsing Icons than with pure Netscape.
Adaptive Control of the Electrical Drives with the Elastic Coupling using Kalman Filter

The control problem of the two-mass system originally derives from rolling-mill drives (Sugiura & Hori, 1996), (Ji & Sul, 1995), (Szabat & Orlowska-Kowalska, 2007). Large inertias of the motor, rolls and long shaft create an elastic system. The motor speed is different from the load side and the shaft undergoes large torsional torque. A similar problem exists in the field of conveyer drives (Hace et al., 2005). Also the performance of the machines used in textile industry is reduced by the non-ideal characteristics of the shaft (Beineke et al., 1997), (Wertz et al., 1999). An analogous problem appears in the paper machine sections (Valenzuela et al., 2005) and in modern servo-drives (Vukosovic & Stojic, 1998), (O’Sullivan et al., 2007), (Shen & Tsai, 2006). Moreover, torsional vibrations decrease the performance of the robot arms (Ferretti et al., 2004), (Huang & Chen, 2004). This problem is especially important in the field of space robot manipulators. Due to the cost of transport, the total weight of the machine must be drastically reduced. This reduces the stiffness of the mechanical connections which in turn influences the performance of the manipulator in a negative way (Katsura & Ohnishi, 2005), (Ferretti et al., 2005). The elasticity of the shaft worsens the performance of the position control of deep-space antenna drives (Gawronski et al., 1995). Vibrations affect the dynamic characteristics of computer hard disc drives (Ohno & Hara, 2006) and (Horwitz et al., 2007). Torsional vibrations can appear in a drive system due to the following reasons: changeability of the reference speed; changeability of the load torque; fluctuation of the electromagnetic torque; limitation of the electromagnetic torque; mechanical misalignment between the electrical motor and load machine; variations of load inertia unbalance of the mechanical masses; system nonlinearities, such as friction torque and backlash. The simplest method to eliminate the oscillation problem (occurring while the reference speed changes) is a slow change of the reference velocity. Nevertheless, it causes the decrease of the drive system dynamics and does not protect it against oscillations appearing when the disturbance torque changes. The conventional control structure based on the PI
Rationale and methods of a multicentre randomised controlled trial of the effectiveness of a Community Health Assessment Programme with Emergency Medical Services (CHAP-EMS) implemented on residents aged 55 years and older in subsidised seniors’ housing buildings in Ontario, Canada

Introduction Chronic diseases and falls substantially contribute to morbidity/mortality among seniors, causing this population to frequently seek emergency medical care. Research suggests the paramedic role can be successfully expanded to include community-based health promotion and prevention. This study implements a community paramedicine programme targeting seniors in subsidised housing, a high-risk population and frequent users of emergency medical services (EMS). The aims are to reduce EMS calls, improve health outcomes and healthcare utilisation. Methods/analysis This is a pragmatic clustered randomised control trial in four communities across Ontario, Canada. Within each, four to eight seniors’ apartment buildings will be paired and within each pair one building will be randomly assigned to receive the Community Health Assessment Programme through EMS (CHAP-EMS) intervention, while the other building receives no intervention. During the 1-year intervention, paramedics will run weekly sessions in a common area of the building, assessing risk factors for cardiovascular disease, diabetes and falls; providing health education and referrals to community programmes; and communicating results to the participant's primary physician. The primary outcomes are rate of emergency calls per 100 residents, change in blood pressure and change in Canadian Diabetes Risk (CANRISK) score, as collected by the local EMS and study databases. The secondary outcomes are change in health behaviours, measured using a preintervention and postintervention survey and healthcare utilisation, available through administrative databases. Analysis will mainly consist of descriptive statistics and generalised estimating equations, including subgroup cluster analysis. Ethics/dissemination This study is approved by the Hamilton Integrated Research Ethics Board and will follow the Tri-Council Policy Statement. Findings will be disseminated through reports to local stakeholders, publication in peer-reviewed journals and conference presentations. Trial registration number NCT02152891.
A Data-Driven Dependency Parser for Urdu

One of the main motivations for building treebanks is that they facilitate the development of syntactic parsers, by providing realistic data for evaluation as well as inductive learning. In this paper we present what we believe to be the first data-driven dependency parser for Urdu, which has developed using MaltParser system and trained and evaluated on data from Urdu dependency treebank. A 40000 words corpus is manually tagged to build dependency treebank for Urdu. Four tagging schemes are used for manually tagging, phrases tagset, token position tag, head of each token tag and dependency relation tagset on POS tagged data. The parser achieves a best labeled attachment score of 74.48%, unlabeled attachment score of 90.14% and label attachment of 76.38%. We present a partial error analysis, focusing on accuracy for different chunk and dependencies.
FamNet: A Framework to Identify Multiplied Modules Driving Pathway Expansion in Plants1

Gene module multiplication drives pathway expansion in plants. Gene duplications generate new genes that can acquire similar but often diversified functions. Recent studies of gene coexpression networks have indicated that, not only genes, but also pathways can be multiplied and diversified to perform related functions in different parts of an organism. Identification of such diversified pathways, or modules, is needed to expand our knowledge of biological processes in plants and to understand how biological functions evolve. However, systematic explorations of modules remain scarce, and no user-friendly platform to identify them exists. We have established a statistical framework to identify modules and show that approximately one-third of the genes of a plant’s genome participate in hundreds of multiplied modules. Using this framework as a basis, we implemented a platform that can explore and visualize multiplied modules in coexpression networks of eight plant species. To validate the usefulness of the platform, we identified and functionally characterized pollen- and root-specific cell wall modules that multiplied to confer tip growth in pollen tubes and root hairs, respectively. Furthermore, we identified multiplied modules involved in secondary metabolite synthesis and corroborated them by metabolite profiling of tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) tissues. The interactive platform, referred to as FamNet, is available at http://www.gene2function. de/famnet.html.
STRUCTURE AND PROCESS, POLITICS AND POLICY: ADMINISTRATIVE ARRANGEMENTS AND THE POLITICAL CONTROL OF AGENCIES

I N 1977, Congress substantially revised the Clean Air Act,1 the nation's flagship legislation on environmental policy. Many changes were considered, and among those that Congress adopted was an intricate redefinition of the procedures to be used by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in making rules.2 The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970 (1970 Amendments), which had moved responsibility for air pollution regulation from the Public Health Service in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) to the newly minted EPA, set up the EPA's rulemaking procedures as "informal" with few procedural requirements and considerable decisional flexibility. ' After extensive debate in both the 94th and 95th Congresses,4 Congress changed this to a new hybrid process (more formal than "informal rulemaking" but less formal than "formal rulemaking") that requires a more elaborate written record and a clearer statement of agency intentions and of the bases for its decisions. ' As a reading of the committee reports and floor debates about these and similar proposals makes clear, legislators regard the choice of administrative structure and process as vitally important.6 The legislative history of admin-
Implementation of provably stable maxnet

MaxNet TCP is a congestion control protocol that uses explicit multi-bit signalling from routers to achieve desirable properties such as high throughput and low latency. In this paper we present an implementation of an extended version of MaxNet. Our contributions are threefold. First, we extend the original algorithm to give both provable stability and rate fairness. Second, we introduce the MaxStart algorithm which allows new MaxNet connections to reach their fair rates quickly. Third, we provide a Linux kernel implementation of the protocol. With no overhead but 24-bit price signals, our implementation scales from 32 bit/s to 1 peta-bit/s with a 0.001% rate accuracy. We confirm the theoretically predicted properties by performing a range of experiments at speeds up to 1 Gbit/sec and delays up to 180 ms on the WAN-in-Lab facility.
Cultural domain separation: two-way street or blind alley? Stephen Harris and the neo-Whorfians on Aboriginal education

Pincher Nyurrmiyarri was the first person who talked to me about 'twoway' school, at Daguragu in 1974. The great Gurindji thinker and land rights activist was trying to get a better deal for the next generation of Gurindji - a deal that would involve full equatity for Aboriginal people and Aboriginal culture in the NT education system. H e passed away before he could see success in this struggle - and even now there is a long way to go. (I shall refer to him from now on as Janamayayi, 'deceased man of Janama skin'.)
Nonsurgical treatment of pyomyoma in the postpartum period.

BACKGROUND Only 13 cases of pyomyoma related to pregnancy have been described since 1945. Treatment consists of hysterectomy, which exposes critically ill patients to operative risks and induces infertility. CASES Three cases of pyomyoma in the postpartum period are described. Treatment using computed tomography-guided drainage was realized successfully in two cases. CONCLUSION Therapy via drainage and lavage of pyomyoma is a viable option to preserve patient fertility. In the absence of a proper response to this treatment, total abdominal hysterectomy is the treatment of choice.
SNR estimation based on amplitude modulation analysis with applications to noise suppression

A single-microphone noise suppression algorithm is described that is based on a novel approach for the estimation of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in different frequency channels: The input signal is transformed into neurophysiologically-motivated spectro-temporal input features. These patterns are called amplitude modulation spectrograms (AMS), as they contain information of both center frequencies and modulation frequencies within each 32 ms-analysis frame. The different representations of speech and noise in AMS patterns are detected by a neural network, which estimates the present SNR in each frequency channel. Quantitative experiments show a reliable estimation of the SNR for most types of nonspeech background noise. For noise suppression, the frequency bands are attenuated according to the estimated present SNR using a Wiener filter approach. Objective speech quality measures, informal listening tests, and the results of automatic speech recognition experiments indicate a substantial benefit from AMS-based noise suppression, in comparison to unprocessed noisy speech.
Urban rejection of the vernacular: The SVS undone

Abstract In Raleigh, North Carolina, a Southern U.S. city, five decades of in-migration of technology-sector workers from outside the South has resulted in large-scale contact between the local Southern dialect and non-Southern dialects. This paper investigates the speed and magnitude of the reversal of the Southern Vowel Shift (SVS) with respect to the five front vowels, using Trudgill's (1998) model of dialect contact as a framework. The data consist of conversational interviews with 59 white-collar Raleigh natives representing three generations, the first generation having reached adulthood before large-scale contact. Acoustic analysis shows that all vowels shift away from their Southern variants across apparent time. The leveling of SVS variants begins within the first generation to grow up after large-scale contact began, and contrary to predictions, this generation does not show wide inter- or intraspeaker variability. Previous studies of dialect contact and new dialect formation suggest that leveling of regional dialect features and the establishment of stable linguistic norms occurs more quickly when children have regular contact with one another. Dialect contact in Raleigh has occurred primarily within the middle and upper classes, the members of which are densely connected by virtue of schools and heavy economic segregation in neighborhood residence.
Content-Based Audio Classification and Retrieval Using SVM Learning

In this paper, a support vector machines (SVMs) based method is proposed for content-based audio classification and retrieval. Given a feature set, which in this work is composed of perceptual and cepstral feature, optimal class boundaries between classes are learned from training data by using SVMs. Matches are ranked by using distances from boundaries. Experiments are presented to compare various classification methods and feature sets.
Intraocular expression of endostatin reduces VEGF‐induced retinal vascular permeability, neovascularization, and retinal detachment

Endostatin, a proteolytic fragment of collagen XVIII, is an endogenous inhibitor of tumor angiogenesis that also inhibits choroidal neovascularization. In this study, we assessed the effects of increased intraocular expression of endostatin on vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)‐induced changes in the retina. After subretinal injection of a pair of gutless adenoviral vectors (AGV) designed to provide tamoxifen‐inducible expression of endostatin, diffuse endostatin immunoreactivity was induced thoroughout the retina by administration of tamoxifen. Induction of endostatin in double transgenic mice with doxycycline‐induced expression of VEGF in the retina resulted in significant suppression of leakage of intravascular [3H]mannitol into the retina. The ability of endostatin to reduce VEGF‐induced retinal vascular permeability was confirmed by using [3H]mannitol leakage and two other parameters, fluorescein leakage and retinal thickness, after subretinal injection of a bovine immunodeficiency lentiviral vector coding for endostatin (BIV‐vectored endostatin, or BIVendostatin). Subretinal injection of BIVendostatin resulted in more discrete, less intense staining for endostatin in the retina than that seen with the inducible AGV system, which suggested lower levels and allowed visualization of sites where endostatin was concentrated. Endostatin staining outlined retinal blood vessels, which suggested endostatin binding to a component of vessel walls. More prolonged or higher level expression of VEGF in the retina resulted in neovascularization and retinal detachment, both of which were also significantly reduced by BIVendostatin. These data suggest that endostatin may be an endogenous inhibitor of vasopermeability as well as neovascularization. In patients with diabetic retinopathy, endostatin gene transfer may provide a way to decrease the risk of three causes of visual loss: macular edema, neovascularization, and retinal detachment.
Improvements to satisfiability-based boolean function bi-decomposition

Boolean function decomposition is ubiquitous in logic synthesis. Existing solutions are based on BDDs and, more recently, on Boolean Satisfiability (SAT). A widely studied special case is function bi-decomposition, where a function is decomposed into two other functions connected with a simple gate. Recent work exploited the identification of Minimally Unsatisfiable Subformulas (MUSes) for computing the sets of variables to use in Boolean function bi-decomposition. This paper develops new techniques for improving the use of MUSes in function bi-decomposition. The first technique exploits structural properties of the function being decomposed, whereas the second technique exploits group-oriented MUSes. Experimental results obtained on representative benchmarks demonstrate significant improvements in performance and in the quality of decompositions.