Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Everyday spaces of inter-ethnic interaction: the meaning of urban public spaces in the Netherlands

Ethnic diversity is manifest in public spaces by the presence of people originating from all over the world. It is also manifest in typical ethnic spaces that are predominantly used by specific ethnic groups. This article focuses on how people from various ethnic backgrounds use urban public spaces and the meaning that they attach to them. It examines the extent to which frequent inter-ethnic interaction in public spaces generates more awareness and acceptance of multiculturalism and how it affects private bonding. The article is a result of qualitative research (observations and semi-structured interviews) conducted in a neighbourhood of a medium-sized city in the Netherlands. We show that although the residents appreciate cultural diversity, this appreciation of diversity does not lead to multicultural interactions that go beyond small talk in stores. However, positive feelings for and experiences of diversity have a significant impact on peoples' attitudes, because these feelings and experiences contribute to a more realistic view of multiculturalism.
Identifying multiple stem-loops pre-miRNA using support vector machine

Those pre-miRNAs with multiple loops are usually excluded in the most existing prediction methods. But as more and more miRNA have been identified, amount of miRNA precursor with multiple loops have been found. Therefore, determining how to effectively predict real pre-miRNA with multiple loops from those large of pseudo pre-miRNAs with multiple loops is an imperative problem. Some features of main branch are extracted to describe pre-miRNA intrinsic features, and SVM classifier is implemented to recognize real pre-miRNA with multiple stem-loops. Training and testing on dataset from miRBase12.0, SVM classifier achieves sensitivity of 75.76% and specificity of 95.16% on human test set, and when being applied to pre-miRNAs of all other species, it correctly identifies 86.71% of them. The proposed method in this work provides a powerful predicting method to recognize the real pre-miRNA with multiple stem-loops.
SELECTING DAILY NEWSPAPERS FOR CONTENT ANALYSIS IN CHINA

This study compares different sampling methods and sample sizes in the selection of daily newspapers in China for content analysis of the news. Results show that the method of constructed week sampling is more efficient than simple random sampling or consecutive day sampling, and a single constructed week allows reliable estimates of news content in a population of six months of newspaper editions even for highly volatile variables. The weekday-plus-Saturday constructed week sampling, an often-used sampling stratification approach in content analyses of Chinese daily newspapers, however, requires a larger sample size, depending on the types of variables being analyzed.
Energy Harvesting Using PVDF Piezoelectric Nanofabric

Energy harvesting using piezoelectric nanomaterial provides an opportunity for advancement towards self-powered electronics. The fabrication complexities and limited power output of these nano/micro generators have hindered these advancements thus far. This thesis presents a fabrication technique with electrospinning using a grounded cylinder as the collector. This method addresses the difficulties with the production and scalability of the nanogenerators. The non-aligned nanofibers are woven into a textile form onto the cylindrical drum that can be easily removed. The electrical poling and mechanical stretching induced by the electric field and the drum rotation increase the concentration of the piezoelectric β phase in the PVDF nanofabric. The nanofabric is placed between two layers of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) that have interdigitated electrodes painted on them with silver paint. Applying continuous load onto the flexible PVDF nanofabric at 35Hz produces a peak voltage of 320 mV and maximum power of 2200 .
Deaf Education Services in Southern Regions of Vietnam: A Survey of Teacher Perceptions and Recommendations

Abstract Purpose This survey study explored teacher perceptions regarding services for children who are deaf or hard of hearing in southern regions of Vietnam, including educational successes and challenges, the availability and use of hearing technology, and teacher recommendations for improving child outcomes. Method Using a cross-sectional survey design, hard-copy surveys were sent to professionals who provided services to children with hearing loss ages 3–9. Ninety-eight surveys were distributed and seventy seven surveys were returned, resulting in a return rate of 79 per cent. Simple statistics were used to describe the quantitative survey results; content analysis was completed on open-ended survey comments. Results Access to hearing aids and hearing aid repairs are substantial barriers for many families. Survey respondents expressed desire for more training in hearing technology and effective teaching strategies. Twenty-six per cent of children in preschool and kindergarten used listening and spoken language as their primary mode of communication compared with 7 per cent of children in first to fourth grade who used listening and spoken language. Conclusions Expansion of early identification programmes beyond high-risk cases, with increased access to hearing technology and early intervention services from highly trained professionals were recommended to optimize listening and spoken language outcomes of children who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Duration-Controlled LSTM for Polyphonic Sound Event Detection

This paper presents a new hybrid approach called duration-controlled long short-term memory (LSTM) for polyphonic sound event detection (SED). It builds upon a state-of-the-art SED method that performs frame-by-frame detection using a bidirectional LSTM recurrent neural network (BLSTM), and incorporates a duration-controlled modeling technique based on a hidden semi-Markov model. The proposed approach makes it possible to model the duration of each sound event precisely and to perform sequence-by-sequence detection without having to resort to thresholding, as in conventional frame-by-frame methods. Furthermore, to effectively reduce sound event insertion errors, which often occur under noisy conditions, we also introduce a binary-mask-based postprocessing that relies on a sound activity detection network to identify segments with any sound event activity, an approach inspired by the well-known benefits of voice activity detection in speech recognition systems. We conduct an experiment using the DCASE2016 task 2 dataset to compare our proposed method with typical conventional methods, such as nonnegative matrix factorization and standard BLSTM. Our proposed method outperforms the conventional methods both in an event-based evaluation, achieving a 75.3% F1 score and a 44.2% error rate, and in a segment-based evaluation, achieving an 81.1% F1 score, and a 32.9% error rate, outperforming the best results reported in the DCASE2016 task 2 Challenge.
Dental avulsion: therapeutic protocols and oral health-related quality of life.

AIM The aim of this study is to describe oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) among patients who have had a complete dislocation of the tooth out of its socket (tooth avulsion). The study also sought to identify clinical evidence, associated with OHRQoL, of the ideal therapeutic choice after tooth avulsion among these patients under 18 years old. STUDY DESIGN 73 patients under 18 year old were selected between 101 studied; they received different treatments, after one year adverse impacts on OHRQoL were measured using the 14-item OHIP. RESULTS Our findings show that if patients got into tooth avulsion their quality of life is adversely affected. In this study, 21.2% of subjects reported 1 or more of the 14 OHIP items during the preceding 12 months, which is significantly high. In group A just 4% of subjects reported 1 or more of the 14 OHIP items, while in the other groups the percentage rose, reaching 50% in group F. Group C D G reported a value of 20%, while in group E this is 12%. CONCLUSION This study shows how different treatment options have different effects on quality of life; the ideal one is the immediate replantation, when this is not possible, RPD or functional appliance seem to be the best choice.
Political economy, media, and climate change: sinews of modern life

In this 21st century, examining how climate change is described and considered, largely through mass media, is as important as formal climate governance to the long‐term success or failure of efforts to confront the challenge. Mass media stitch together formal science and policy with the public sphere. And many dynamic, contested factors contribute to how media outlets portray climate change. This paper addresses contemporary political economics—from greater workloads and reductions in specialist science journalism to digital innovations and new media organizational forms—as they relate to media coverage of climate change. By way of recent studies and indications of these dynamics, we appraise how power flows through culture, politics, and society, to construct coverage, public discourses, and knowledge on climate change. In so doing, we explore how media representations of climate change have changed over time, and particularly how the rise of digital media has reshaped climate coverage. Considerations of climate change, arguably the most heavily politicized scientific issue at the turn of the new millennium, seek to inform and anticipate corollary science issues, such as ongoing concerns for genetically modified organisms, nanotechnology risks, and increased threats to water quantity and quality. The focus on political economy—the ‘sinews’ of modern life—can also then help to inform perceptions and decision making in associated environmental challenges. WIREs Clim Change 2013, 4:359–371. doi: 10.1002/wcc.233
Differentiation of Pasteurella haemolytica biotypes A and T with growth inhibitors

Differentiation of type A and type T cultures of Pasteurella haemolytica was accomplished by paper disks containing 0.3 microgram of penicillin G, which produced zones of inhibition larger than 10 mm with type A but not with type T strains. Basic fuchsin (0.2 microgram/ml), brilliant green (0.005 microgram/ml), methylene blue (3.1 micrograms/ml) in brain heart infusion broth permitted the growth of type T but that of type A isolates.
USING A SMART MOBILE DEVICE TO LEARN TO LIVE WITH LONG-TERM DISEASE TREATMENT

Dangerous diseases have many kinds of effects on people. The risk of being taken ill or dying is obviously the primary concern for most patients. Challenges of adhering to longitudinal cures, which may require a disciplined regime of living or acceptance of physical discomfort, are lesser-known secondary aspects. If they lead to nonadherence to the cures, they may cause illness or increase the risk of dying. Some groups are particularly at risk, e.g., children and people living in underdeveloped parts of the world. Taking advantage of the advanced level of present mobile phones and the advent of inexpensive, commonly available sensor devices, this paper presents a proposal to implement a platform for drug administration that is accessible, affordable, and relevant for “smart” mobile phones. At the same time as it should work as a mobile learning platform to help users deal more skillfully with their condition. We conclude by outlining an effort towards implementing an executable specification targeting use of the mobile phone as a “boundary object” between the competences of medical aid, technological support and quality of life.
Exploring the Linkage Between Ministerial Leadership and Performance in Korea

The significance and the role of leadership in organizations and institutions have been widely discussed but not well understood. Much of the previous literature is limited to leadership practices and education as well as to the American context. Focusing on the Korean ministerial level, this study examines the ministerial leadership interplaying uniquely between the president (politics) and career civil servants (administration). Extending the typology of transformational and transactional leadership, this study presents five different leadership orientations and investigates their association with ministers' performances. Based on the 2002 Korean Minister Survey, this study shows that the strategic-transformational and external-transformational forms of leadership are the primary determinants of Korean ministers' performance. This study suggests that political appointees like Korean ministers should strike a balance between their political responsiveness as political appointees and their administrative responsibility as department heads.
Long term cardiovascular risk models’ combination - a new approach

This work addresses two major drawbacks of the current cardiovascular risk score systems: reduced number of risk factors considered by each individual tool and the inability of these tools to deal with incomplete information. To achieve this goal a two phase strategy was followed. In the first phase, a common representation procedure was considered, based on a Naïve-Bayes classifier methodology. Conditional probabilities parameters were initially evaluated through a frequency estimation method and after that optimized using a Genetic Algorithm approach. In a second phase, a combination scheme was proposed exploiting the particular features of Bayes probabilistic reasoning. This strategy was applied to describe and combine SCORE, ASSIGN and Framingham models. Validation results were obtained based on individual models, assuming their statistical correctness. The achieved results are very promising, showing the potential of the strategy to accomplish the desired goals.
NNC 55-0396 [(1S,2S)-2-(2-(N-[(3-Benzimidazol-2-yl)propyl]-N-methylamino)ethyl)-6-fluoro-1,2,3,4-tetrahydro-1-isopropyl-2-naphtyl cyclopropanecarboxylate dihydrochloride]: A New Selective Inhibitor of T-Type Calcium Channels

Mibefradil is a Ca2+ channel antagonist that inhibits both T-type and high-voltage-activated Ca2+ channels. We previously showed that block of high-voltage-activated channels by mibefradil occurs through the production of an active metabolite by intracellular hydrolysis. In the present study, we modified the structure of mibefradil to develop a nonhydrolyzable analog, (1S, 2S)-2-(2-(N-[(3-benzimidazol-2-yl)propyl]-N-methylamino)ethyl)-6-fluoro-1,2,3,4-tetrahydro-1-isopropyl-2-naphtyl cyclopropanecarboxylate dihydrochloride (NNC 55-0396), that exerts a selective inhibitory effect on T-type channels. The acute IC50 of NNC 55-0396 to block recombinant α1G T-type channels in human embryonic kidney 293 cells was ∼7 μM, whereas 100 μM NNC 55-0396 had no detectable effect on high-voltage-activated channels in INS-1 cells. NNC 55-0396 did not affect the voltage-dependent activation of T-type Ca2+ currents but changed the slope of the steady-state inactivation curve. Block of T-type Ca2+ current was partially relieved by membrane hyperpolarization and enhanced at a high-stimulus frequency. Washing NNC 55-0396 out of the recording chamber did not reverse the T-type Ca2+ current activity, suggesting that the compound dissolves in or passes through the plasma membrane to exert its effect; however, intracellular perfusion of the compound did not block T-type Ca2+ currents, arguing against a cytoplasmic route of action. After incubating cells from an insulin-secreting cell line (INS-1) with NNC 55-0396 for 20 min, mass spectrometry did not detect the mibefradil metabolite that causes L-type Ca2+ channel inhibition. We conclude that NNC 55-0396, by virtue of its modified structure, does not produce the metabolite that causes inhibition of L-type Ca2+ channels, thus rendering it more selective to T-type Ca2+ channels.
The Behavior and Electrophysiology of Directed Forgetting in the Auditory Domain

There are many instances in life when a person wants or needs to forget a memory. These unwanted memories can range from something that is simply now irrelevant such as an outdated fact, to something as serious as a traumatic experience. In extreme cases such as post-traumatic stress disorder, the benefit of forgetting becomes obvious. As such, it is important that we understand not only how our brain is able to remember, but also how it is able to forget. Unlike the traditional view of incidental forgetting, recent studies have shown that forgetting can be a strategic and active process. However, the mechanisms by which we can intentionally suppress our memories are not fully understood. Moreover, most of the directed forgetting research has focused on suppressing visual memories. A more complete understanding of the way we can exert inhibitory control over our memories should include all sensory modalities. To address this issue, we examined whether similar electrophysiological findings, as reported in visual electroencephalography (EEG) studies of directed forgetting, would be observed in the auditory domain. Additionally, the role of the prefrontal cortex in this higher-order process was investigated. Here, we utilized the Think/No-Think paradigm to examine the neural correlates of the cognitive control of memory in three studies. First, we compared findings from healthy young adults in two tasks that varied in the number of to-be-remembered and to-be-forgotten repetitions, and found that behavioral and electrophysiological evidence points to similar effects using auditory stimuli, but that it may be more difficult to achieve than the inhibition of visual memories. Second, we extended those findings to older adults, and found that they too showed behavioral and EEG evidence of successful suppression of unwanted auditory memories. Third, we determined that prefrontal cortex plays a causal role in the ability to actively inhibit auditory memories by examining the behavioral and EEG effects of unilateral frontal lesions in a patient cohort. The behavioral evidence for the inhibition of auditory memory and the corresponding electrophysiology is a step toward a more complete picture of how we intentionally suppress unwanted memories.
Electroencephalogram based Causality Graph Analysis in Behavior Tasks of Parkinson's Disease Patients

Electroencephalographic (EEG) signals of the human brains represent electrical activities for a number of channels recorded over a the scalp. The main purpose of this thesis is to investigate the interactions and causality of different parts of a brain using EEG signals recorded during a performance subjects of verbal fluency tasks. Subjects who have Parkinson’s Disease (PD) have difficulties with mental tasks, such as switching between one behavior task and another. The behavior tasks include phonemic fluency, semantic fluency, category semantic fluency and reading fluency. This method uses verbal generation skills, activating different Broca’s areas of the Brodmann’s areas (BA44 and BA45). Advanced signal processing techniques are used in order to determine the activated frequency bands in the granger causality for verbal fluency tasks. The graph learning technique for channel strength is used to characterize the complex graph of Granger causality. Also, the support vector machine (SVM) method is used for training a classifier between two subjects with PD and two healthy controls. Neural data from the study was recorded at the Colorado Neurological Institute (CNI). The study reveals significant difference between PD subjects and healthy controls in terms of brain connectivities in the Broca’s Area BA44 and BA45 corresponding to EEG electrodes. The results in this thesis also demonstrate the possibility to classify based on the flow of information and causality in the brain of verbal fluency tasks. These methods have the potential to be applied in the future to identify pathological information flow and causality of neurological diseases.
Segmentation of myocardium from cardiac MR images using a novel dynamic programming based segmentation method.

PURPOSE Myocardium segmentation in cardiac magnetic resonance (MR) images plays a vital role in clinical diagnosis of the cardiovascular diseases. Because of the low contrast and large variation in intensity and shapes, myocardium segmentation has been a challenging task. A dynamic programming (DP) based segmentation method, incorporating the likelihood and shape information of the myocardium, is developed for segmenting myocardium in cardiac MR images. METHODS The endocardium, i.e., the left ventricle blood cavity, is segmented for initialization, and then the optimal epicardium contour is determined using the polar-transformed image and DP scheme. In the DP segmentation scheme, three techniques are proposed to improve the segmentation performance: (1) the likelihood image of the myocardium is constructed to define the external cost in the DP, thus the cost function incorporates prior probability estimation; (2) the adaptive search range is introduced to determine the polar-transformed image, thereby excluding irrelevant tissues; (3) the connectivity constrained DP algorithm is developed to obtain an optimal closed contour. Four metrics, including the Dice metric (Dice), root mean squared error (RMSE), reliability, and correlation coefficient, are used to assess the segmentation accuracy. The authors evaluated the performance of the proposed method on a private dataset and the MICCAI 2009 challenge dataset. The authors also explored the effects of the three new techniques of the DP scheme in the proposed method. RESULTS For the qualitative evaluation, the segmentation results of the proposed method were clinically acceptable. For the quantitative evaluation, the mean (Dice) for the endocardium and epicardium was 0.892 and 0.927, respectively; the mean RMSE was 2.30 mm for the endocardium and 2.39 mm for the epicardium. In addition, the three new techniques in the proposed DP scheme, i.e., the likelihood image of the myocardium, the adaptive search range, and the connectivity constrained DP algorithm, improved the segmentation performance for the epicardium with 0.029, 0.047, and 0.007 in terms of the Dice and 0.98, 1.31, and 0.21 mm in terms of the RMSE, respectively. CONCLUSIONS The three techniques (the likelihood image of the myocardium, the adaptive search range, and the connectivity constrained DP algorithm) can improve the segmentation ability of the DP method, and the proposed method with these techniques has the ability to achieve the acceptable segmentation result of the myocardium in cardiac MR images. Therefore, the proposed method would be useful in clinical diagnosis of the cardiovascular diseases.
RRDtrace: Long-term Raw Network Traffic Recording using Fixed-size Storage

Recording raw network traffic for long-term periods can be extremely beneficial for a multitude of monitoring and security applications. However, storing all traffic of high volume networks is infeasible even for short-term periods due to the increased storage requirements. Traditional approaches for data reduction like aggregation and sampling either require knowing the traffic features of interest in advance, or reduce the traffic volume by selecting a representative set of packets uniformly over the collecting period. In this work we present RRDtrace, a technique for storing full-payload packets for arbitrary long periods using fixed-size storage. RRDtrace divides time into intervals and retains a larger number of packets for most recent intervals. As traffic ages, an aging daemon is responsible for dynamically reducing its storage space by keeping smaller representative groups of packets, adapting the sampling rate accordingly. We evaluate the accuracy of RRDtrace on inferring the flow size distribution, distribution of traffic among applications, and percentage of malicious population. Our results show that RRDtrace can accurately estimate these properties using the suitable sampling strategy, some of them for arbitrary long time and others only for a recent period.