Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A simple method to estimate the time-dependent receiver operating characteristic curve and the area under the curve with right censored data

The time-dependent receiver operating characteristic curve is often used to study the diagnostic accuracy of a single continuous biomarker, measured at baseline, on the onset of a disease condition when the disease onset may occur at different times during the follow-up and hence may be right censored. Due to right censoring, the true disease onset status prior to the pre-specified time horizon may be unknown for some patients, which causes difficulty in calculating the time-dependent sensitivity and specificity. We propose to estimate the time-dependent sensitivity and specificity by weighting the censored data by the conditional probability of disease onset prior to the time horizon given the biomarker, the observed time to event, and the censoring indicator, with the weights calculated nonparametrically through a kernel regression on time to event. With this nonparametric weighting adjustment, we derive a novel, closed-form formula to calculate the area under the time-dependent receiver operating characteristic curve. We demonstrate through numerical study and theoretical arguments that the proposed method is insensitive to misspecification of the kernel bandwidth, produces unbiased and efficient estimators of time-dependent sensitivity and specificity, the area under the curve, and other estimands from the receiver operating characteristic curve, and outperforms several other published methods currently implemented in R packages.
Motivation: theory and use in Higher Education

The study of 'motivation' in its variety of forms is something of an academic field in itself and it is a field that is vast. However, there are some pathways into that vastness and for those of us interested in its application to pedagogy, the pathways lead to some discrete (but not exclusive) destinations. First of all, there is the understanding that in terms of student motivation, there is the intrinsic/extrinsic ‘symbiosis’ to be considered. Secondly, there is the interpersonal dimension of tutor/student relationships for while there are models of ‘the tutor’ - and dominant cultural mental models - that emphasise the powerdistance dimension (Hofstede, 2001) in those relationships, the literature on motivation seems to show that "equality-closeness" is (paradoxically) a more powerful motivator. Finally, how we, as tutors, construct the ‘academic playing-field’ of assessments and feedback (amongst other things) are in and of themselves powerful motivators.
Children's peace education in post-conflict Timor-Leste

empowerment and capacity building are vital to their full participation in, contribution to, and enjoyment of the benefits of the reconstruction and development of Timor-Leste. More fundamentally, however, Ba Futuru has proceeded from the assumption that the actualisation of this vision must involve creating the space for children’s voices to be heard, and allowing the children of Timor-Leste to choose for themselves how best to improve their lives as children, and as citizens of a free nation. The TAHRE programme currently consists of 14 hour-long workshops, with activities broken down into five, ten, 15 and 20 minute sections. The workshops utilise a number of techniques to engage the children and impart lessons. These include: brainstorming, guided drawing and imagery, storytelling, partnering and mentoring, game playing and role play, and the creation of individual, paired and group artwork. Recognising that children, particularly those who have suffered extreme loss and trauma, are often initially extremely shy and withdrawn, and may have had limited contact with Malay (white foreigners), the opening sessions focus primarily on building trust, establishing a positive rapport with the children, and creating a safe and comfortable space for their expression. Following discussion between facilitators and the children on how we might work together and the agreement of some foundations and ‘ground rules’ of the programme, the children then create personal name badges and journals, which they use throughout the course of the programme to draw, record ideas, feelings, and so on. Over the coming sessions, children’s thoughts about themselves and their knowledge of human rights and children’s rights are assessed. Through brainstorming, role plays and group discussions, we examine concepts of human rights, self worth and conflict resolution, the relationship between respect for oneself and the human rights of others, and how to maximise both in the achievement of wants and needs. TimorLeste’s human rights obligations under international and domestic law, and the role of human rights in the rebuilding of the nation, are also considered. The final sessions draw key concepts together, and evaluate the impact of the curriculum by re-assessing children’s understanding of human rights and conflict resolution, of how they feel art has helped them learn and heal, and of changes in their sense of self and respect for others.
Chemical and Serological Relationships Between the Heteropolysaccharides of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium kansasii

The identity of a heteropolysaccharide from cell walls of Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Ra with Seibert's tuberculopolysaccharide I was demonstrated by thin-layer chromatography, chemical analysis, and antigenic tests. The polysaccharide of M. kansasii was shown to be identical with that of M. tuberculosis. Defatted cells were disintegrated by ultrasonic treatment in the presence of glass beads; cell walls were obtained by differential ultracentrifugation. Ethyl alcohol-precipitated carbohydrate extracts were analyzed for protein and nucleic acid; these impurities were removed. Tuberculopolysaccharide I from the mycobacterial culture filtrate is probably derived from a lipopolysaccharide of the cell wall, which is partially removed by chloroform in the intact state. Alkaline extraction releases additional polysaccharide, in varying degrees of association with cell wall murein.
Rethinking thecognitiverevolutionfromaneuralperspective:How

Words such as cognition, motivation and emotion powerfully guide theory development and the overall aims and goals of behavioral neuroscience research. Once such concepts are accepted generally as natural aspects of the brain, their influence can be pervasive and long lasting. Importantly, the choice of conceptual terms used to describe and study mental/neural functions can also constrain research by forcing the results into seemingly useful ‘conceptual’ categories that have no discrete reality in the brain. Since the popularly named ‘cognitive revolution’ in psychological science came to fruition in the early 1970s, the term cognitive or cognition has been perhaps the most widely used conceptual term in behavioral neuroscience. These terms, similar to other conceptual terms, have potential value if utilized appropriately.We argue that recently the term cognition has been both overused and misused. This has led to problems in developing a usable shared definition for the term and to promotion of possiblemisdirections in research within behavioral neuroscience. In addition, we argue that cognitive-guided research influenced primarily by top-down (cortical toward subcortical) perspectives without concurrent non-cognitive modes of bottom-up developmental thinking, could hinder progress in the search for new treatments andmedications for psychiatric illnesses and neurobehavioral disorders. Overall, linkages of animal research insights to human psychology may be better served by bottom-up (subcortical to cortical) affective and motivational ‘state-control’ perspectives, simply because the lower networks of the brain are foundational for the construction of higher ‘information-processing’ aspects of mind. Moving forward, rapidly expanding new techniques and creativemethods inneuroscience alongwithmore accurate brain concepts,mayhelp guide the development of new therapeutics and hopefully more accurate ways to describe and explain brain-behavior relationships. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
research with children: methodological issues and innovative techniques

In the past few decades, a growing body of literature examining children’s perspectives on their own lives has developed within a variety of disciplines, such as sociology, psychology, anthropology and geography. This article provides a brief up-to-date examination of methodological and ethical issues that researchers may need to consider when designing research studies involving children; and a review of some of the methods and techniques used to elicit their views. The article aims to encourage researchers to critically reflect on these methodological issues and the techniques they choose to use, since they will have implications for the data produced.
Estudo de correspondência de elementos metadados: DUBLIN CORE e MARC 21

A tecnologia da informacao tem possibilitado o desenvolvimento de aplicacoes e metodologias de tratamento descritivo, como e o caso dos padroes de metadados, permitindo novas abordagens praticas para a organizacao da informacao, principalmente em meio eletronico. A adocao de padrao de metadados propicia a interoperabilidade entre aplicacoes e o compartilhamento de dados entre sistemas. Baseado nesse pressuposto, foi realizado um estudo da correspondencia entre o padrao Dublin Core e o Formato MARC 21, visando fornecer subsidios para o desenvolvimento de ferramentas de conversao de dados oriundos da catalogacao. A maximizacao de esforcos na integracao e intercâmbio de dados, bem como a sistematizacao das relacoes entre esses padroes, propiciam o reuso de conjuntos de metadados na mesma organizacao.
Application of the COPD Assessment Test (CAT) to Patients with Interstitial Lung Disease

The COPD Assessment Test was recently developed to assess health status in patients with COPD. However, little was known about its application to patients with interstitial lung disease, so we examined the relationship between the COPD Assessment Test score and respiratory impairment including the clinical picture in subjects with interstitial lung disease. Data were collected retrospectively from 52 consecutive subjects with interstitial lung disease on admission to our facility. All subjects completed the COPD Assessment Test, in which a higher score represented a worse health status. They were also assessed by pulmonary function test, SpO2 during 6-min walk test, and arterial blood gases. The COPD Assessment Test score was negatively correlated with the percentage of predicted forced vital capacity, forced expiratory volume in 1 second, total lung capacity, diffusion capacity of the lung for carbon monoxide, and PaO2 (p = 0.0005, 0.005, 0.0002, 0.0005, and 0.002, respectively). Breathlessness was detected as the high scoring item, while phlegm and sleep were the last affected items. The COPD Assessment Test score was higher in subjects with oxygen desaturation in SpO2 (≥4%) during 6-min walk test (p = 0.0001) and in subjects on home oxygen therapy (p = 0.0007). More than 75% of subjects with oxygen desaturation during walking were classified into a medium or severer impact level of the COPD Assessment Test score, and subjects on home oxygen therapy were classified into a high or severer impact level. PaCO2 in room air and SpO2 at rest did not correlate with the COPD Assessment Test score. The reliability of items in the COPD Assessment Test was 0.87 by Cronbach’s α coefficient. Our results suggest that the COPD Assessment Test may be a candidate for evaluating the health status and impact of disease on patients with interstitial lung disease.
Spectral covariance in prior distributions of non-negative matrix factorization based speech separation

This paper proposes an algorithm for modeling the covariance of the spectrum in the prior distributions of non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) based sound source separation. Supervised NMF estimates a set of spectrum basis vectors for each source, and then represents a mixture signal using them. When the exact characteristics of the sources are not known in advance, it is advantageous to train prior distributions of spectra instead of fixed spectra. Since the frequency bands in natural sound sources are strongly correlated, we model the distributions with full-covariance Gaussian distributions. Algorithms for training and applying the distributions are presented. The proposed methods produce better separation quality that the reference methods. Demonstration signals are available at www.cs. tut.fi/~tuomasv.
Towards teleoperation-based interactive learning of robot kinematics using a mobile augmented reality interface on a tablet

The integration of augmented reality (AR) techniques in user interface design has enhanced interactive experiences in teleoperation of robots, hands-on learning in classrooms, laboratory, and special education, and user training in an array of fields, e.g., aerospace, automotive, construction, manufacturing, medical, etc. However, AR-based user interfaces that command machines and tools have not been fully explored for their potential to enhance interactive learning of engineering concepts in the laboratory. This paper outlines the development of a mobile application executing on a tablet device, which renders an immersive AR-based graphical user interface to enable users to monitor, interact with, and control a four-link underactuated planar robot. Computer vision routines are used to extract real-time, vision-based measurements of the robot's joint angles and end effector location from the live video captured by the rear-facing camera on the tablet. The obtained measurements are used to render AR content to offer users with additional visual feedback. Touch gesture recognition is implemented to allow users to naturally and intuitively command the robot by tapping and dragging their fingers at desired locations on the tablet screen. Experimental results show the performance and efficacy of the proposed system as it is operated in two different modes: one in which the user has direct control over the angles of the actuated links of the robot and one in which the user has direct control over the end effector location.
Design of a wireless sensor network platform for detecting rare, random, and ephemeral events

We present the design of the extreme scale mote, a new sensor network platform for reliably detecting and classifying, and quickly reporting, rare, random, and ephemeral events in a large-scale, long-lived, and ret askable manner. This new mote was designed for the ExScal project which seeks to demonstrate a 10,000 node network capable of discriminating civilians, soldiers and vehicles, spread out over a 10 km/sup 2/ area, with node lifetimes approaching 1,000 hours of continuous operation on two AA alkaline batteries. This application posed unique functional, usability, scalability, and robustness requirements which could not be met with existing hardware, and therefore motivated the design of a new platform. The detection and classification requirements are met using infrared, magnetic, and acoustic sensors. The infrared and acoustic sensors are designed for low-power continuous operation and include asynchronous processor wakeup circuitry. The usability and scalability requirements are met by minimizing the frequency and cost of human-in-the-loop operations during node deployment, activation, and verification through improvements in the user interface, packaging, and configurability of the platform. Recoverable retasking is addressed by using a grenade timer that periodically forces a system reset. The key contributions of this work are a specific design point and general design methods for building sensor network platforms to detect exceptional events.
Axis measurements, field quality and quench performance of the first LHC short straight sections

The series testing at 1.9 K of the 360 Short Straight Sections (SSS) for the Large Hadron Collider have started at CERN in September 2003. The SSS contain the lattice quadrupoles and correction magnets in a common cryostat. The lattice quadrupoles feature two collared coils with 56 mm bore assembled in a common yoke. The coils are wound in two-layers from 15.1 mm wide NbTi cable, insulated with polyimide tape. The paper reviews the main test results performed in superfluid helium. The magnetic field and magnetic center position of the quadrupoles and associated correctors were measured with two independent systems, namely an automated scanner and a single stretched wire technique. The quench training, the field quality and the magnetic alignment measurements are presented and discussed in terms of the specifications and expected performances of these magnets in the LHC. We discuss in detail the field quality in terms of multipole errors measured at injection and nominal field and decomposed into geometric and persistent current magnetization errors. Warm/cold correlation for the geometric multipoles and the magnetic axis is also presented.
Extended Fourier analysis of signals

This summary of the doctoral thesis is created to emphasize the close connection of the proposed spectral analysis method with the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT), the most extensively studied and frequently used approach in the history of signal processing. It is shown that in a typical application case, where uniform data readings are transformed to the same number of uniformly spaced frequencies, the results of the classical DFT and proposed approach coincide. The difference in performance appears when the length of the DFT is selected to be greater than the length of the data. The DFT solves the unknown data problem by padding readings with zeros up to the length of the DFT, while the proposed Extended DFT (EDFT) deals with this situation in a different way, it uses the Fourier integral transform as a target and optimizes the transform basis in the extended frequency range without putting such restrictions on the time domain. Consequently, the Inverse DFT (IDFT) applied to the result of EDFT returns not only known readings, but also the extrapolated data, where classical DFT is able to give back just zeros, and higher resolution are achieved at frequencies where the data has been successfully extended. It has been demonstrated that EDFT able to process data with missing readings or gaps inside or even nonuniformly distributed data. Thus, EDFT significantly extends the usability of the DFT-based methods, where previously these approaches have been considered as not applicable. The EDFT founds the solution in an iterative way and requires repeated calculations to get the adaptive basis, and this makes it numerical complexity much higher compared to DFT. This disadvantage was a serious problem in the 1990s, when the method has been proposed. Fortunately, since then the power of computers has increased so much that nowadays EDFT application could be considered as a real alternative.
Glocalizing protest: urban conflicts and the global social movements

The emergence of global social movements is essentially symbolized by the names of cities like Seattle, Genoa or Porto Alegre. This is not accidental, because groups stemming from various parts of the world need places to constitute themselves as movements. But the role of cities in representing great parts of the movements' consciousness also hints at the importance urban struggles have for global protests. The article examines the relationship between urban conflicts and global social movements. By looking for continuities and ruptures between former and current urban conflicts it points out the specificity of the latter: to politicize the contradictions of neoliberal restructuring; to challenge the discursive and institutional terrains of urban politics which were shaped in the 1990s, often with active participation of former movement actors; and, finally, to act simultaneously on various spatial scales. In the last part of the article some examples of 'glocalized' urban protests are presented and analysed, pointing out their ambiguities as well as the specific contribution they can make to the strategic orientation of the global social movements: to fight the destructive influences neoliberal globalization exerts on everyday life and, thereby, to develop alternative forms of societalization. Copyright (c) Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003.
Sex Differences in Genetic and Environmental Influences on Longitudinal Change in Functional Ability in Late Adulthood.

OBJECTIVES To determine the extent to which genetic and environmental factors contribute to individual and gender differences in aging of functional ability. METHOD Twenty assessments of functional ability are collected as part of the longitudinal Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging from 859 twins aged 50-88 at the first wave. Participants completed up to 6 assessments covering a 19-year period. Factor analysis was used to create 3 factors: flexibility, fine motor skills, and balance. RESULTS Latent growth curve analysis demonstrated increasing disability and variability after age 70. For flexibility, results indicated significant sex differences in mean change trajectories but no sex differences in components of variance. No sex differences were found for fine motor movement. For balance, there were no sex differences in mean change trajectories; however, there was significant genetic variance for changes in balance in women after age 70 but not for men. DISCUSSION Although idiosyncratic environmental influences account for a large part of increasing variance, correlated and shared rearing environmental effects were also evident. Thus, both microenvironmental (individual) and macroenvironmental (family and cultural) effects, as well as genetic factors, affect maintenance of functional ability in late adulthood.
Assessing Entailer with a Corpus of Natural Language from an Intelligent Tutoring System

In this study, we compared Entailer, a computational tool that evaluates the degree to which one text is entailed by another, to a variety of other text relatedness metrics (LSA, lemma overlap, and MED). Our corpus was a subset of 100 self-explanations of sentences from a recent experiment on interactions between students and iSTART, an Intelligent Tutoring System that helps students to apply metacognitive strategies to enhance deep comprehension. The sentence pairs were hand coded by experts in discourse processing across four categories of text relatedness: entailment, implicature, elaboration, and paraphrase. A series of regression analyses revealed that Entailer was the best measure for approximating these hand coded values. The Entailer could explain approximately 50% of the variance for entailment, 38% of the variance for elaboration, and 23% of the variance for paraphrase. LSA contributed marginally to the entailment model. Neither lemma-overlap nor MED contributed to any of the models, although a modified version of MED did correlate significantly with both the entailment and paraphrase hand coded evaluations. This study is an important step towards developing a set of indices designed to better assess natural language input by students in Intelligent Tutoring Systems.