Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The quantity and variety across domains of psychological and social assets associated with school victimization

© 2014 American Psychological Association. Objective: Studies on protective factors for school victimization are rare and usually focus on specific assets. The current study examined the association between quantity and variety of domains of developmental assets and school victimization in adolescence. Method: Data were drawn from the California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS; N = 11,790 high school students attending 17 schools). The Social and Emotional Health Survey-Secondary (SEHS-S) was administered as part of a federally funded school climate initiative in the spring of 2013. A mixed-effects modeling approach tested associations between configurations of assets and school victimization. Results: Adolescents reporting a higher quantity of assets in multiple domains had a lower likelihood of experiencing physical and relational victimization and fear of being victimized in school compared to youth having zero assets. Conclusions: Results supported the importance of considering the quantity of psychological and social assets and also the variety of assets across multiple domains. Interventions promoting multiple protective factors in multiple areas of youthsa' lives may have the highest likelihood of impacting adolescent well-being.
Irvine Modeling , Simulation and Synthesis in an Embedded Software Design Flow for an ARM Processor

System level design is one approach to tackle the complexity of designing a modern System-on-Chip. One major aspect is the capability of developing the system model irrespectable of the later occurring hardware software split, with the goal to develop both hardware and software seamlessly at the same time and to merge the traditionally separated development flows. Hardware/software co-simulation is needed for an efficiently integrated design flow. Depending on the design phase, this co-simulation can be performed at different levels of abstraction. Early in the design phase, a a very abstract simulation at the unpartitioned specification level yields fast functional results. On the other end, the cycle accurate simulation of RTL hardware and instruction set simulated software allows an accurate insight to the final system performance. This report focuses on the software perspective of a co-design/co-simulation environment. In form of a case study, we address three major tasks necessary to build an integrated embedded software design flow: modeling of a processor core (including an instruction set simulator), porting of a RTOS to the selected processor core, and the embedded software generation that includes RTOS targeting of the generated code. In particular, we have modeled a popular ARM core, the ARM7TDMI, at an abstract level, as well as on a cycle-accurate level using SWARM, an Instruction Set Simulator (ISS) for the ARM core. Furthermore, we have ported MicroC/OS-II, a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS), to run on top of the SWARM ISS. Finally, we implemented a software generation tool. It automatically synthesizes C code, targeted to the selected Real-Time Operating System (RTOS), from the refined design captured in the a system level design language. We demonstrate our embedded software development flow by use of an automotive application. An example of anti-lock breaks uses a distributed architecture of sensors and actuators connected via a Controller Area Network (CAN). We undergo all steps of the design flow starting with the capturing of the specification model, down to validation of the implementation with an ISS based co-simulation. Our results show that the co-design/cosimulation environment is feasible. All refined models, including the ISS based cycle-accurate model, show a functional correct behavior.
Empirical Analysis of the General Utility Problem in Machine Learning

The overfit problem in inductive learning and the utility problem in speedup learning both describe a common behavior of machine learning methods: the eventual degradation of performance due to increasing amounts of learned knowledge. Plotting the performance of the changing knowledge during execution of a learning method (the performance response) reveals similar curves for several methods. The performance response generally indicates an increase to a single peak followed by a more gradual decrease in performance. The similarity in performance responses suggests a model relating performance to the amount of learned knowledge. This paper provides empirical evidence for the existence of a general model by plotting the performance responses of several learning programs. Formal models of the performance response are also discussed. These models can be used to control the amount of learning and avoid degradation of performance.
AGRELs and BIPs: Metamorphosis as a Bezier curve in the space of polyhedra

The metamorphosis between two user‐specified objects offers an intuitive metaphor for designing animations of deforming shapes. We present a new technique for interactively editing such deformations and for animating them in realtime. Besides the starting and ending shapes, our approach offers easy to use additional control over the deformations. The new Bezier Interpolating Polyhedron (BIP) provides a graphics representation of such a deforming object formulated mathematically as a point describing a Bezier curve in the space of all polyhedra. We replace, in the Bezier formulation, the traditional control points by arbitrary polyhedra and the vector addition by the Minkowski sum. BIPs are composed of Animated GRaphic ELement (AGRELs), which are faces with constant orientation, but with parametrized vertices represented by Bezier curves. AGRELs were designed to efficiently support smooth realtime animation on commercially available rendering hardware. We provide a tested algorithm for automatically computing BIPs from the sequence of control polyhedra and demonstrate its applications to animation design.
Efficient determination of feedback DAC errors for digital correction in ΔΣ A/D converters

Feedback DAC errors in a ΔΣ analog to digital converter are determined by measuring the idle channel output and removing the DAC elements one by one. This method requires simple computation, does not add excess loop delay, and requires no reconfiguration of the ΔΣ modulator. The errors so determined can be used to correct the output codes in the digital domain or the DAC elements in the analog domain. This technique is a useful alternative to the popular dynamic element matching at high speeds as excess delay cannot be tolerated and at low oversampling ratios where DEM can result in tones. Simulation results indicate that the correction values can be obtained to an accuracy that is sufficient to reduce noise and distortion to nearly ideal levels.
(Some) Open Problems to Incorporate BIST in Complex Heterogeneous Integrated Systems

This paper presents an overview of test techniques that offer promising features when Built-In-Self-Test (BIST) must be applied to complex intgrated systems including analog, mixed-signal and RF parts. Emphasis is on techniques exhibiting a good trade-off between test requirements (basically in terms of signal accuracy and frequency) and test quality.
Saving Babies: The Efficacy and Cost of Recent Expansions of Medicaid Eligibility for Pregnant Women

A key question for health care reform in the U.S. is whether expanded health insurance eligibility will lead to improvements in health outcomes. We address this question in the context of dramatic expansions in the Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women that took place during the 1980s. We build a detailed simulation model of each state's Medicaid policy during the 1979-1990 period, and use this model to estimate 1) the effect of changes in the rules on the eligibility of pregnant women for Medicaid, and 2) the effect of Medicaid eligibility changes on birth outcomes in aggregate Vital Statistics data. We have three main findings. First, the expansions did dramatically increase the Medicaid eligibility of pregnant women, but did so at quite differential rates across the states. Second, the expansions lowered the incidence of infant mortality and low birthweight; we estimate that the 20 percentage point increase in eligibility among 15-44 year old women was associated with a decrease in infant mortality of 7%. Third, earlier, targeted changes in Medicaid eligibility, such as through relaxations of the family structure requirements from the AFDC program, had much larger effects on birth outcomes than broader expansions of eligibility to all women with somewhat higher income levels. We suggest that the source of this difference was the much lower takeup of Medicaid coverage by individuals who became eligible under the broader expansions. We find that the targeted expansions, which raised Medicaid expenditures by $1.7 million per infant life saved, were in line with conventional
A loyalty model according to membership longevity of low-cost fitness center: quality, value, satisfaction, and behavioral intention

Client loyalty is crucial to fitness centers. Studies have analyzed the relationship between different subjective variables and consumer behavior intentions in these types of sport services within fitness centers. Nevertheless, few are those who have studied the influence of such variables on objective measures like membership longevity. For this reason, the objective of this study was to examine a loyalty model by means of the relationship between perceived quality, satisfaction, and future intentions with regard to client loyalty. The study counted with 15820 client (8462 women and 7358 men) participants who answered an online questionnaire. A descriptive analysis, factorial confirmatory and multi-group analysis were conducted. The findings demonstrate a valid and reliable model where relationships among the variables are positive and significant, with differences among the groups according to the longevity of membership.
Nitric oxide-dependent long-term depression but not endocannabinoid-mediated long-term potentiation is crucial for visual recognition memory

• Perirhinal cortex (Prh) is critically involved in visual recognition memory and synaptic plasticity. • Nitric oxide and endocannabinoids (eCBs) have been shown to act as retrograde messengers in synaptic plasticity in several brain areas, but no study has yet investigated their role in synaptic plasticity in Prh. • Evidence is still lacking of a retrograde messenger involved in synaptic plasticity in Prh. • In this study, we show that NO is involved in long‐term depression (LTD) but not in long‐term potentiation (LTP). Conversely, eCBs are involved in LTP but not in LTD. Crucially, inhibiition of NO signalling prevents visual recognition memory acquisition, whilst inhibition of eCB signalling does not affect recognition memory. • These results suggest that LTD but not LTP is a neuronal correlate of visual recognition memory.
Socioeconomic status and the trajectory of self-rated health.

BACKGROUND self-rated health (SRH) likely reflects both mental and physical health domains, and is assessed by asking individuals to describe their health status. Poor SRH is associated with disease incidence and subsequent mortality. Changes in SRH across time in persons with different incident diseases are uncharacterised. METHODS SRH was assessed in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study via annual telephone interviews over a median of 17.6 years. Individual quadratic growth models were used for repeated measures of SRH in persons who remained disease-free during follow-up (n = 11,188), as well as among those who were diagnosed with myocardial infarction (MI; n = 1,071), stroke (n = 809), heart failure (HF; n = 1,592) or lung cancer (n = 433) and those who underwent a cardiac revascularisation procedure (n = 1,340) during follow-up. RESULTS among disease-free participants and across time, there was a trend for lowest mean SRH among persons living in low socioeconomic areas and highest mean SRH among persons living in high socioeconomic areas. Factors contributing to the decline in SRH over time included advanced age, lower educational attainment, smoking and obesity. CONCLUSION addressing factors related to poor SRH trajectories among patients pre- and post-incident disease may favourably affect health outcomes among patients regardless of type of disease.
Disciplining Bioethics: Towards a Standard of Methodological Rigor in Bioethics Research

Contemporary bioethics research is often described as multi- or interdisciplinary. Disciplines are characterized, in part, by their methods. Thus, when bioethics research draws on a variety of methods, it crosses disciplinary boundaries. Yet each discipline has its own standard of rigor-–so when multiple disciplinary perspectives are considered, what constitutes rigor? This question has received inadequate attention, as there is considerable disagreement regarding the disciplinary status of bioethics. This disagreement has presented five challenges to bioethics research. Addressing them requires consideration of the main types of cross-disciplinary research, and consideration of proposals aiming to ensure rigor in bioethics research.
A Near-Linear Approximation Scheme for Multicuts of Embedded Graphs with a Fixed Number of Terminals

For an undirected edge-weighted graph $G$ and a set $R$ of pairs of vertices called pairs of terminals, a multicut is a set of edges such that removing these edges from $G$ disconnects each pair in $R$. We provide an algorithm computing a $(1+\varepsilon)$-approximation of the minimum multicut of a graph $G$ in time $(g+t)^{(O(g+t)^3)}\cdot(1/\varepsilon)^{O(g+t)} \cdot n \log n$, where $g$ is the genus of $G$ and $t$ is the number of terminals. This result is tight in several aspects, as the minimum multicut problem is both APX-hard and W[1]-hard (parameterized by the number of terminals), even on planar graphs (equivalently, when $g=0$). In order to achieve this, our article leverages on a novel characterization of a minimum multicut as a family of Steiner trees in the universal cover of a surface on which $G$ is embedded. The algorithm heavily relies on topological techniques, and in particular on the use of homotopical tools and computations in covering spaces, which we blend with classic ideas stemming from approximation schemes for planar graphs and low-dimensional geometric inputs.
Adaptive and Intelligent Web-Based Educational Systems

Currently, when aiming at providing learners with opportunities for technology enhanced learning, companies, universities, and other educational institution mainly use so-called learning management systems (LMS). LMSs are Web-based educational systems that aim at supporting teachers and administrators in creating, administering, and managing online courses. These systems provide a great variety of features which can be included in courses such as learning material, quizzes, forums, chats, assignments, wikis, and so on. However, at current stage, such environments provide very little, or in most cases, neither intelligent support nor adaptivity for learners. Adaptive and intelligent Web-based educational systems (AIWES) address this issue and aim at providing learners with an environment that reacts intelligently to the learners' needs and incorporates their individual characteristics and situation by presenting suitable suggestions, information, and learning material in order to make learning more effective and easier for learners. The term adaptive refers to the func-tionality of the system to automatically provide different suggestions, courses, or activities to learners with different characteristics and needs. The term intelligent here means that a system uses artificial intelligence techniques in order to support learners or identify their characteristics, needs, and situation. and De Bra's adaptive hypermedia course (De Bra, 1996). During the last few years, many research works have been carried out in the area of AIWESs and many systems have been developed (Brusilovsky & Peylo, 2003; Sadat & Ghorbani, 2004). While the first AIWESs focused on considering and identifying the knowledge state and progress of students in a course or task, a broader set of characteristics, needs, and states of learners has been investigated and considered in current systems, including, for example, students' learning styles, cognitive abilities, affective states, learning goals, interests, misconceptions, and so on. Systems aim at identifying these characteristics, needs, and states dynamically by observing the students' behaviour, progress, and interaction with the system and applying artificial intelligence techniques in order to fill and update the student model.
An Integrated Framework for Disseminating Health Information to Students in Zimbabwe

Abstract University students in Zimbabwe lack immediate access to accurate health information. There is lack of explicit and integrated structures for disseminating health information to students in Zimbabwe. Informed by the salutogenic theory of health, the study assessed the health information needs of students and evaluated existing health information dissemination methods at National University of Science and Technology (NUST), Zimbabwe, in developing a framework for disseminating health information. A case study strategy was used to gather data within the pragmatic paradigm of grounded constructivism. The findings reveal that students need health information on a wide range of health topics and prefer mobile electronic media, workshops, qualified health professionals and peers for their health needs. There are significant gaps between the strategies that are being used by NUST to disseminate health information and the health information needs of the students. Therefore, this paper proposes a needs-based, integrated information dissemination framework for promoting health amongst students. The proposed framework emphasizes utilization of synchronous information and communication technologies, the need for integration of activities, a viable policy, health information literacy training and the use of a mix of persuasion techniques as an effective health promotion strategy.
Parallel no-waiting pipelining accelerating CT image reconstruction based on FPGA

On the research of applied three-dimensional computed tomography (CT) image reconstruction, the high-performance computing problem has always been one of the difficulties and hotspots. As a sort of hardware executed parallel in space domain and reconstructed in time domain, FPGA has developed rapidly in recent years. It has been widely used as high-performance parallel computing accelerating component. In this paper, the problem of accelerating the classical three-dimensional image reconstruction algorithm FDK with FPGA was studied. Then, the new accelerating method which was called parallel no-waiting pipelining was proposed. The experimental results showed that the method obtained a considerable speedup, and had the characteristics of resources optimization. The method may be taken as the useful reference for researchers working on FPGA applications and high-performance applications.
Effect of Collision on Movement Tracking Using Active RFID Power Measurement

This paper reports preliminary work with an RFID based real time location system (RTLS) designed for location and guidance of people in welfare facilities like the sanatorium which has the both of indoor and out door environment. The system consists of a number of fixed RF readers and a number of active RFID tags carried by the target object, or senior people. We compare the performance of several RTLS schemes which use the received signal strength indication (RSSI) values emitted by the moving active RFID tags. Traditional trilateration, fingerprinting, and well-known LANDMARC approaches are evaluated and compared using the SystemC-based computer simulation. Results show a mean estimated error (MEE) performance of 3m with the 130 tags according to the position updated frequency in our simulation environment.
Hindi Dependency Parsing using a combined model of Malt and MST

In this paper we present our experiments in parsing Hindi. We first explored Malt and MST parsers. Considering pros of both these parsers, we developed a hybrid approach combining the output of these two parsers in an intuitive manner. We report our results on both development and test data provided in the Hindi Shared Task on Parsing at workshop on MT and parsing in Indian Languages, Coling 2012. Our system secured labeled attachment score of 90.66% and 80.77% for gold standard and automatic tracks respectively. These accuracies are 3 best and 5 best for gold standard and automatic tracks respectively.
A new space-time-doppler code for time-selective fading channels

Relying on a layered algebraic design, we derive a new space-time-doppler (STD) code for multiple input multiple output (MIMO) time-selective fading channels. The proposed STD code achieves rate N<sub>t</sub> and enables full-diversity N<sub>t</sub>N<sub>r</sub>N<sub>b</sub>(Q +1), i.e., the product of the number of transmit antennas N<sub>t</sub>, receive antennas N<sub>r</sub>, coding blocks N<sub>b</sub> and channel complex exponential bases (Q +1). Simulation results show that the proposed STD codes achieve higher diversity gain in time-selective channels than some existing STD codes.
High-Throughput Sequencing Reveals Circulating miRNAs as Potential Biomarkers for Measuring Puberty Onset in Chicken (Gallus gallus)

There are still no highly sensitive and unique biomarkers for measurement of puberty onset. Circulating miRNAs have been shown to be promising biomarkers for diagnosis of various diseases. To identify circulating miRNAs that could be served as biomarkers for measuring chicken (Gallus gallus) puberty onset, the Solexa deep sequencing was performed to analyze the miRNA expression profiles in serum and plasma of hens from two different pubertal stages, before puberty onset (BO) and after puberty onset (AO). 197 conserved and 19 novel miRNAs (reads > 10) were identified as serum/plasma-expressed miRNAs in the chicken. The common miRNA amounts and their expression changes from BO to AO between serum and plasma were very similar, indicating the different treatments to generate serum and plasma had quite small influence on the miRNAs. 130 conserved serum-miRNAs were showed to be differentially expressed (reads > 10, P < 0.05) from BO to AO, with 68 up-regulated and 62 down-regulated. 4829 putative genes were predicted as the targets of the 40 most differentially expressed miRNAs (|log2(fold-change)|>1.0, P < 0.01). Functional analysis revealed several pathways that were associated with puberty onset. Further quantitative real-time PCR (RT-qPCR) test found that a seven-miRNA panel, including miR-29c, miR-375, miR-215, miR-217, miR-19b, miR-133a and let-7a, had great potentials to serve as novel biomarkers for measuring puberty onset in chicken. Due to highly conserved nature of miRNAs, the findings could provide cues for measurement of puberty onset in other animals as well as humans.